Three Variables That Will Decide the Iran War

On this week’s episode, Israel Policy Forum Policy Advisor and Tel Aviv-based journalist Neri Zilber hosts military affairs analyst Yaakov Lappin. They discuss the ongoing U.S.-Israeli war against Iran now in its second week, the campaign's military goals and achievements, Iran's rational 'madman' strategy, the current mood in Israel, the escalating front against Hezbollah in Lebanon, the three variables that will dictate how long the war will last, possibilities for how this war will end, and more. 

Transcript

Neri 0:04

Shalom and welcome to the Israel Policy Pod. I'm Neri Zilber, a journalist based in Tel Aviv and a policy advisor to Israel Policy Forum. Well, it happened. And don't say you weren't warned. As our avid listeners and watchers know, we here on the Israel Policy Pod took the threat of another war with Iran very, very seriously. Throughout January and February, as tensions mounted and President Donald Trump streamed more and more forces to the Middle East. So now that we're firmly in the war's second week, our good friend Yaakov Lapin, a military and strategic affairs analyst and a veteran defense correspondent here in Israel, will be joining us to make sense of what has happened so far and what may yet happen. It was a terrific conversation as always with Yaakov, with a little surprise at the end for all of us. So without further ado, because sleep and time are very precious commodities in these parts these days, let's get into it. Hi Yaakov, welcome back to the podcast. Good to be with you, Neri, as always. Uh so I mean the first question, and it's a question not just on podcasts, but to every Israeli these days, how are you doing? How's the family? We had a rough night last night in central and also northern Israel. A lot of sirens, but thankfully uh no real impacts or injuries. But how are you guys doing uh so far?

Yaakov 1:37

It uh kind of reminds me of the first and second and also the third lockdowns of coronavirus, but with the added uh uh privilege, quote unquote, of uh sirens and hearing the thud of the interception. I think that, you know, for those people who have not yet heard what it sounds like when a uh missile interceptor over your head smashes into a one-ton warhead, the thud that reverberates, and every everybody who lives in this country uh will will know what that means. I think you can you can really sort of uh uh divide people into those who have who have experienced that and those who haven't, because that's you know when you realize at the most intrinsic level, at your cellular level, that there is a regime that's trying to sow death and destruction in in your very neighborhood. It almost makes it personal. And yet we all seem to have gotten used to it, Nary. I don't know about you, but it seems that uh, you know, uh society is is is obviously uh uh struggling with these disruptions in the middle of the night, but uh there's a resilience, there's a sort of a sort of routine. So that's why it reminds me, you know, the beginning of this war really reminded me of the first lockdown. From the uh pandemic, everybody was was uh literally locked down, everything was shut down, and then in the space of a few days, we were already in a different reality, things were opening up, you know, and and people were taking here in Israel during the war, not during the COVID lockdown, which was yeah, I'm I'm only describing, I'm just doing the sort of uh it reminded me of sort of the three coronavirus lockdowns, but in the space of a week, you know what I mean? Every phase of the past week was less and less restrictive uh until we got to a point where technically most things are are open now and there is traffic in the streets, but we're still advised that you can't get more than 50 people. The home front command has sort of put us in this middle ground. So it's a strange situation, and it reminds me of the in-between situations of you know past uh emergencies and restrictions.

Neri 3:31

Yeah, and uh we'll definitely get into what the mood and also the politics are like here on the Israel front. But yeah, you're right, Yakov. This is um Israelis can get used to anything, I suppose. So everyone here is living from one alert on their phone to the next, one siren to the next, and then trying to conduct semi-normal life in between, uh, which isn't normal at all, but this is our reality. And uh I thought in the beginning when you started your answer that you were gonna go, oh, this reminds me of the first, second, and third war of the past two and a half years, you know, whether it's from Gaza or Lebanon or the Houthis in Yemen or the exchanges with Iran in the war last year, but no, uh this is kind of a continuous of that continuity.

Yaakov 4:16

Exactly.

Neri 4:17

Two and a half years. Just for our listeners and viewers, uh, we're recording this lunchtime Wednesday, Tel Aviv time, uh just in case anything happens between now and when this episode goes up. Uh this is day twelve of the war. So maybe an auspicious day, maybe not, but uh it's fair to say, at least uh from my opinion, the war is not gonna end today or tomorrow. Uh still will likely go beyond the duration of last year's 12-day war. Uh but what I wanted to do with our time this week, Yaakov, is to really kind of make order and make some sense of uh what's been happening and what may still happen on all the various fronts. And and trust me, there are a lot of fronts uh to go through. Uh but before we tack back to Israel, I wanted to start with the most obvious front and the target of the joint US and Israeli offensive, uh Iran. So this started uh Saturday morning, uh February 28th, Operation Epic Fury, as the Americans call it, Operation Roaring Lion, as the IDF has called it. Um I mean, big picture, most basic question to you, Yaqov. Uh, like we said, 12 days in, how do you think the war has been going?

Yaakov 5:30

I think that um this is a very big clear example of a war that's based first and foremost on a military capability removal of the enemy, which is a process that is the fundamental goal of this war as far as Israel is concerned, as far as the IDF is concerned, the military echelon, and it's a process that is not very visible. So we're getting all these big strategic discussions, what is victory, what will victory look like. But when you talk to IDF officials, and you've been hearing from many of the same ones that I've been hearing from, Mary, what they first and foremost prioritize is that the trigger for this war, as far as they're concerned, is the fact that between June of 2025, the end of the last war, Operation Rising Lion, and the eve of this war, uh one night before I think it was twenty-eighth of February when when this uh war broke out, Iran had built a thousand ballistic missiles. It fast tracked its ballistic missile program. The missile estimates that we heard was that at the end of that the previous war last year, in June, they had fifteen hundred missiles, and then on the eve of this war, they had twenty five hundred missiles. That's a thousand missiles that they built in the space of several months. And you know, one of the things that gets lost, I think, in these discussions is the objective assessment of the intelligence community of this country that Iran's missile program, putting aside the nuclear program, the missile program on its own, constitutes an existential threat, we even with conventional warheads. And all we have to do is look at what happened at uh Bet Shemesh with the deadly attack, the one that got through, to understand that if Iran had fulfilled its plan to build 8,000 of these missiles, that's the official assessment that they wanted by by next year to build 8,000 of these, that is an existential threat. You don't need to add the nuclear program. Iran could try to flood our air defenses no matter how good they are, they can always be saturated, and by pure uh quantity, uh they could sow such amounts of death and destruction in our city centers by by by simply saturating our air defenses that this would essentially constitute its own existential threat. And I think that that was the trigger for the war, um, and as far as Israel is concerned, and especially the Israeli defense establishment, and everything else that we're hearing is coming on top of that. Um, so that you know, if we're talking about creating order, in my mind, the Iranian missile program is the primary trigger for Israel's decision to go into action. Now, when you when you accept if if you accept that uh um uh uh analysis, then everything else seems to fall into place. When you hear Secretary of State Marco Rubio say, look, the Israelis were gonna attack anyway. We had to make a decision, are we gonna join or not? Now it makes perfect sense. And when you hear all of the other commentary, uh it makes it all it all falls into place once uh it becomes understood that Israel was going to strike one way or the other soon, either on its own or obviously with you know, it very much wanted American participation in this war, but either way, Israel was was on its way to a preemptive strike uh to take out the resurging Iranian missile program. Now, another thing worth pointing out is that this number, 2,500 missiles, was basically classified until the war. And uh, in fact, I think it was during one of the briefings, the uh our phone briefings with the IDF spokesperson when I asked him how many uh how many missiles does Iran now have? And he came back the next day with a precise answer. I think that's the first time we heard a precise answer.

Neri 9:18

Yeah, and by the way, 2025 missiles that can reach Israel, right? Medium or longer range missiles. They have uh thousands of other shorter range missiles that are now doing havoc, uh especially in the Gulf.

Yaakov 9:30

100%. 100%. So that's the foundation for the trigger, and this is why uh the Israeli Air Force, the Israeli intelligence community, uh uh, as far as they're concerned, this is the main thing. Now, obviously, you know, what we're looking at is a very, very deeply planned operation, and that and and there's no distinction being made between the missile program and other kinds of targets. So the opening strike uh narrow, 200 Israeli Air Force jets, biggest flyover in Israeli military history, never before, of 200 jets taken off from bases in this country, uh uh turned into massive formations headed east, uh, eliminated the head of the Islamic Republic, Ayatollah Khamenei, and 40 other senior Iranian leaders in two different locations in the space of 60 seconds, opening strike. This is unprecedented. Another historical unprecedented situation is fighting a full-fledged war with the United States has never happened before. The U.S. is used to fighting in military coalitions, Israel is not. The last time some people say it's never happened. I I don't think that's true. It actually 1956.

Neri 10:38

Exactly. The Suez crisis. Yeah, with with the Brits and the French.

Yaakov 10:42

Correct. And that was actually very, very tightly coordinated. Very, very detailed planning there. Each side was allocated a role, so there is a precedent. But not with the Americans for sure.

Neri 10:52

Well, not with the Americans and the Israelis. Uh the IDF has never done it before or since 1956, so we're going back 70 years. Yep. Exactly.

Yaakov 11:01

So look, and uh once the the operation gets going, what we're seeing is uh the IDF focus on, I would say, three clusters of categories of targets. The first is uh the missile program, and that in itself can be subdivided into many subcategories. You've got the missile launchers, uh, the mobile launchers, and the stationary big missile uh uh bases, the underground bases, what they call the underground missile cities, which turned out to be, by the way, very vulnerable. Uh, because Israel has learned how to target deep underground targets. And it's very surprising that Ayatollah Khamenae and his inner circle did not realize after the elimination of Hassan Asrella in his very deep bunker in Beirut that Israel can get to these uh leaders anywhere. They did not internalize the lesson. And the same is true of these deep underground missile launching bases, which have very large numbers of missiles, they became very vulnerable because Israel has figured out how to reach them. Um so you're seeing uh that kind of targeting, the mobile missile launchers, which is, I think, responsible for the majority of the missiles that we're now seeing. And you know, you've seen the videos. It's very surprising, another gap between even here in Israel, the public perception and and uh and what the military is putting out. I think not many people are aware that these trucks look like civilian trucks. They're driving down Iranian highways. When you look at them from above, from a drone uh bird's eye view, it looks like a large civilian truck. So you need very precise intelligence to know that these things open up, uh missiles uh uh come out of them, and then they continue driving like they're civilian vehicles. Sometimes they're accompanied by uh anti-aircraft missiles surface to air in order to make it hard for those uh aircraft that are hunting them. So so that is systematically happening. Uh at this point on the 11th of March, when we're talking, the significant majority of Iran's missile launchers have been destroyed. Uh different numbers have been put out. You've heard the same numbers 65%, 70%. I think it's clear that it's a majority. It's clear that it's a majority. And again, and when you look at the data, even though we're still getting hit with missiles on a regular basis, the volleys are much smaller. The first 48 hours we had dozens of missiles per day. Now, you know, every volley is between one to three missiles. So even though they're trying to keep up the frequency, it's clear that their firing ability has been hit. The missile production, you know, what we can call Iran's military-industrial complex, severely degraded. Thousands of missiles that were on the production line, uh, fuel mixing facilities, you know, the list just goes on and on across Iran. A huge country when we compare it to Israel, uh especially, you know, from Tehran to West, uh to Western Iran to northern Iran, you know, very, very uh elaborate facilities for basically producing death and destruction on Israel's cities. This is what this the this was a missile death production uh uh network uh uh is being systematically targeted. And uh you've got uh you know the leadership, that's the second big category. So Ayatollah Khamenei, all the way down to the chief of staff, the commander of the IRGC. Both of those, by the way, are replacements of replacements. So he's getting third-tier uh uh commanders who have been uh eliminated. The their predecessors and their predecessors were eliminated back in June. Now they're being eliminated. I think, by the way, that this is a huge statement by Israel to the Middle East because the the message here is if you're planning to annihilate Israel, Israel is going to first find you and annihilate you wherever you are, whether it's uh in the depth of a bunker in Tehran or in Beirut, you're not safe. There is no immunity. I think that that is a hugely important statement after October 7th, and and it fits much a much bigger pattern. Sinor and Gaza, Lebanon, Iran. It doesn't matter. It's the same principle. And and the third category area, and this is actually the most uh intriguing, is the nuclear program. The nuclear program, at least to me, appears to have received the least amount of operational uh attention as of now. There was one secret site that was knocked out uh several days ago where the scientists had basically, just outside of Tehran, had hoped uh that they and it didn't work. They were they were detected, and now everybody's asking what's gonna happen with the enriched uranium, half of which appears to be under Isfahan, 200 kilograms of 60% enriched uranium, and another 200 kilograms appear to be divided between 4 Dow uh and Natans. Uh, what's gonna happen with that? We don't know. Got a lot of question marks swirling, but the nuclear program seems to have recovered the least. So the last thing I'll say is that you know a lot of the personnel being targeted are not just senior uh military Iranian commanders, they're also besieged. There's clearly an attempt to destabilize the regime by targeting its internal uh repressive forces, the besieged, the police, the so-called national security forces, who are responsible for one of the greatest crimes against humanity in recent decades, killing 35,000 Iranians, according to reports back in January. There's clearly an attempt to destabilize uh uh uh the regime. And and uh we're seeing especially those targets being hit in western Iran and Kurdish areas. So there's definitely an attempt uh uh to create conditions for for the regime to fall, to hasten, to accelerate that. And uh a lot of the personnel being killed are also uh responsible for activating Hezbollah. We're seeing the Kutzforce and the IRGC, what they call the Palestine Corps, which is uh responsible for uh uh uh activating terrorists uh um in both Lebanon and in the West Bank and in Gaza. Uh we're seeing senior uh uh officers from those divisions being eliminated in both Iran and in Lebanon. Um so it's very interesting to see the transnational transnational and and really just complicated, uh uh uh very complex uh formations that Iran has built throughout this region that operate as a single entity from Tehran to Beirut to try and encircle us with a ring of fire. So it's extremely complicated the enemy that we're facing here.

Neri 17:32

Extremely complicated, extremely uh dense, uh just thousands and thousands of targets across Iran, and like you said, not just in Iran. I liked how you broke down the various targets, Yaakov. Uh I mean, really, they're also uh I mean the list is almost endless, right? There's uh various command and control centers that keep popping up, uh like you said, missile production sites, um, you know, uh defense uh industrial complexes, uh, fuel depots were hit uh this past weekend fairly controversially outside Tehran. And this is just the IDF. Uh this is just the IDF. The other side of the ledger, the like you said, the unprecedented historic partnership uh with the U.S. military, uh they're also going after uh well, uh similar but also different targets. Uh obviously the the Iranian Navy uh uh is uh the primary target for uh the US, the the beautiful armada sitting across uh sitting off the coast of of Iran, commanded controlled bunkers, you know, deep underground kind of missile production uh sites that are uh that the heavy US bombers uh can can get to, which are which are now flying uh fairly regularly. Um and also it's super interesting uh to me that uh the IDF and the Americans have kind of divided the labor. So the IDF uh is is uh is in charge of western Iran and central Iran, and especially Tehran, right? That's kind of on the IDF. And the US military is responsible for Iran's like southern flank and the coast and the waters. Uh so really, really interesting.

Yaakov 19:05

Although there have also been strikes that are 2,000 kilometers away from Israel in in eastern Iran as well, but but you're right, that is the general that is the general G geodivision of of labor that that appears to be surfacing. Yeah.

Neri 19:17

Yeah. Uh so really unprecedented uh just campaign. I was gonna ask this. Um I mean in terms of the the pace and the scale of the operation, uh I've heard and you've probably heard as well, the the militaries are actually quite uh happy with the pace of the plan that they put together. And there there really is a plan that that was worked on together, uh, that they're actually ahead of schedule. Uh now 12 days in. Do you I mean do you agree with that segment? If you're the same, and by the way, what how long do you think the joint plan calls for continuing the attacks?

Yaakov 19:54

Uh I think that they are ahead of schedule. Um, and you know, even just looking at the Israeli side that I've been focusing on and occasionally sort of raising my head to hear, you know, what CENCOM and the Pentagon and Pete Hexeth, Secretary of War, what they're updating on, you know, when you factor that in, 5,000 targets, it's phenomenal. Really, I think we're at the total sort of edge of what air power and navy power can accomplish. This is really never before has an operation struck so many targets and so far away. Uh especially from Israel, which is conducting you know these operations from its own air bases. And it's not like the United States, it's not used to projecting uh uh air power uh uh at these distances. The last time we did this was only in June at scale. Um, so this is unprecedented.

Neri 20:44

And by and by the way, um the number of targets that Israel alone hit in the first couple days of this war already surpassed all the targets that were hit during 12 days last June.

Yaakov 20:55

Right. Number of targets, number of munitions, and you you know you have to wonder how this is being done because it's not like the Air Force has has grown. These are the same planes that we had half a year ago.

Neri 21:05

Well, there may be uh an added added value here of uh the massive fleet of U.S. refuelers, the tankers sitting in Israel that are helping refuel.

Yaakov 21:15

100%. 100% that's a major comp enabling component. No question about it. And also I think, you know, um the Israeli Air Force is has always been adept at figuring out how to do new things with the same tools. And when I say the same tools, I mean the physically the same tools. I don't mean um necessarily other things. And what I mean by that is, for example, targeting, okay? The number of targets um and the ability to gather intelligence in real time and also to prepare targets ahead of time. Those are the two kinds of cat targets that intelligence always works with, right? You've got the target bank, which you you you prepare before, and you've got the real time uh targets that are detected as you go, as you have friction with the enemy. Those two things are continuously uh improving, and a lot of it has to do with the fact that artificial intelligence is involved in this. There's just simply massive amounts of data coming into uh intelligence control centers here in Israel, from every kind of sensor you can imagine, you know, from satellite to space to uh to radar to uh electronics. I'm sure that uh uh there's a a lot of eavesdropping going on. You know, we can all use our imagination, but it's way too much data for any human to go through. So I think we've got some cutting-edge AI uh systems here that are able to turn this into actionable targets. Of course, there's always a person in the loop. And then how how are they struck so you know efficiently? Uh, you know, I think the fact that we have so many jets up in the air and they're working in this shift system. So there is always a formation over Iran that can respond to intelligence. And we've got the drones. You know, the drones that I happened to uh speak three days ago to uh a drone operator. He he operates the Heroon One, it's known as Shuval in the Israeli Air Force, the 200th uh uh drone squadron, UAV squadron. Uh you know, they're they create this persistent coverage. So they gather intelligence, they can also they're armed, of course, so they can respond to intelligence. You've really got some sort of symphony here uh that's that's playing, you know, at scale and at an efficiency that we've never seen before. So it's tactically, I think it's just hugely impressive. Uh, you know, I think you asked how long this is gonna go on for or what the time the operational timetable is. I think that you know, from everything I obviously, you know, they're they're not sharing that with us because they don't want to give away too much, but I would speculate and say that based on everything I know from how the defense establishment here works, they have versions of the same operation. They have the sort of flexible planning. In other words, here are their core targets. These are the things we have to hit, these are the things that we can't compromise on. That's the missile program, that's the regime elimination, the ability to activate proxies, the command and control, the IRGC. The IRGC is the most important target. Uh that is that's really you know the heart of the beast. Everything that we've been fighting from October 7th until now, all of it leads back to the IRGC.

Neri 24:14

So the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps.

Yaakov 24:17

Revolutionary Guard Corps, the elite Iranian military, which in many ways controls the country, is the real power broker. You know, if anybody has any doubts about that, when the Iranian president uh was apologizing to his Gulf Arab countries for for their for being attacked, uh a few minutes later the IRGC fired missiles at the same Gulf Arab countries. And I don't think there's any clearer demonstration of who is calling the shots right now in Iran. It's the IRGC. They've always had this alliance with the Ayatollahs, the clerical class, you know, who who set the grand strategy, the grand policies. But it's really in many ways the IRGC that's running this country, and they could tighten their grip. This is a whole different conversation. Uh, I don't know if you want to get into this, uh, trying to figure out what's going to happen in Iran next, but the IRGC is is the heart of the beast. Um, so uh you know, I think these are red lines, I would call them core targets, the critical targets. Beyond that, there are targets that I think that we could categorize as nice to have. And the longer we go on, I think the more we're going to reach completion of the core targets. I don't think we're there yet, but I think in the next I would say guess six six to seven days at tops, the majority of the core targets will have been hit at this pace. And then I think we will reach targets that are still very good to hit, nice to have, but not necessarily deemed as core targets. And I do think there is a differentiation. And once the target bank starts to dwindle, I think we're gonna see much more reliance on real-time targeting, which is more challenging because those are the ones that you have to detect in real time. Uh that's that's essentially how I see it.

Neri 25:55

Yeah, uh, I don't think we're we're in disagreement. Um, I was told in uh my colleagues and I reported in the Financial Times last week that the the plan was you know several weeks, right? At least in the Israeli minds, a multi-phase plan that has, I mean, we're we're definitely in now the third phase, or depending on who's counting, the second phase of the plan where you're now hitting, you're now really going after the regime targets. Uh so the first phase was uh the decapitation, the initial opening strike, taking out Hamani and several other dozen senior leaders. Second phase was the uh opening the air highway to Iran. So you're going after air air defenses, you're going after uh missile launchers and the like. You still are. Uh by the way, the Americans are also focused on Iran's drone program, which is a major, major uh threat to the Gulf, which closer to Iran. Uh and now the third the third phase uh that we're firmly in uh is you're going after core, like you said, regime targets. Uh I assume, like you do, that uh this will likely take another week. Um and we'll get into timing issues uh later on, trust me. Uh as we like to say on this podcast, the the Donald Trump of it all. Um and I'll I'll run a theory by you uh as well, uh the way I think of it. Okay. So this is how the war is going. This is probably at least how long it may last further, at least a week, maybe longer, but likely another week. Um on the other side uh of the of the battle, uh Iran badly battered, but still, you know, as you as you say uh in your neck of the woods, Yaakov, fair play to them. Uh still firing, still firing missiles and drones, not only at Israel, uh at what is it now, eleven other countries in addition to Israel, yeah. Uh ranging from Cyprus to Azerbaijan. Uh there was even a missile that may or may not have been targeting Turkey or maybe flying over Turkey, uh Saudi, UAE, Bahrain, I mean the it's it's everywhere. Qatar Oman, by the way, who was trying to mediate. Uh. So they were firing on Oman. I mean, uh this is kind of the you know, the madman strategy, uh, although I think maybe I was in discussions with you or someone else on this podcast, it was fairly predictable they would they would flash out like this to make this as messy as possible. Uh and they're still doing that. They're obviously still threatening uh shipping and the the the the real choke point of the Strait of Hormuz in the Gulf. Um now the fact that this may have been predictable to some doesn't make it any less threatening. So uh I mean my question to you, Yaakov, uh how long do you think they can keep this up for?

Yaakov 28:39

It's interesting that you describe this as a madman strategy because I think that's exactly what this is. I've been saying for 11 days now uh that this is not crazy, that this is these are not crazy. It's not crazy, this is not impulsive, this is a plan that was hatched long before this war, and they know exactly what they're doing. The goal of the Iranians in doing this is to create a panicked anti-war lobby that will sit on the shoulder of President Trump, Gulf states that have considerable influence and say, Make this stop. Make this stop. Now, some people say, but this will destroy relations between Iran and the Gulf states. Maybe it will, maybe it won't. I I don't know. It could it could well do that. It could well do that, but the Iranians are in survival mode. So they're saying, what does it matter if uh our relations are destroyed if we won't exist? We need to activate this so-called Samsung option. I think it's completely calculated, and uh I think it's probably uh having some some effect uh as just as the Iranians calculated. Some people think otherwise, some people think it backfired, but I'm not sure that it has yet. I think it will in the future. They're gonna pay a heavy price, I think, for for doing this. But I think they're more than willing to pay it to ensure their survival. How long can they keep firing? Look, it's hard to tell. I mean, again, when we look at the graph, it's already uh decreased, but now it's stabilized. So my hunch is, and and this is was reinforced by my conversation with uh the Israeli Air Force drone operator who's flying, you know, very, very long missions uh controlling his uh his platform over Iran. He was optimistic, consciously optimistic, that gradually, and he emphasized gradually, because you know, when you talk to the uh professional operators, uh they stay very clear of uh of um promising things that uh are are quick fixes. They're they're in the midst. They're the surgeons, so to speak. So so I think they're you know a very good source of information. And uh what he was saying is that the professionals. Yeah, the professionals who are uh you know in there, in the surgery room, and uh and and and what he said was that he thinks that gradually the rate of fire is going to decrease. And you know, this is really simple math at the end of the day. The more launchers you hit, they can't produce launchers, they're in a state of war, their uh military uh industries are are largely wrecked. So every launcher you take off the table creates a new bottleneck. And uh, you know, I offer often uh when I talk to people about this, I compare the launchers to guns. You can have 10,000 bullets. If you have uh two guns, you're not firing 10,000 bullets at one time. Maybe you're firing, you know, 50. Uh the bottleneck is the launcher, it's the ability to send those missiles into the air. So I think that it's true. The longer this goes on, the more they're going to struggle to fire. They did disperse these launchers all over Iran and they hid them because they had the contingency planning uh, you know, foresight to do that. This is the that they invented in many ways the concept of a terror army of embedding offensive capabilities in civilian areas, of camouflaging them. It's very interesting, by the way. The drone operator that I spoke to said the many of the things that he sees from above remind him of the same doctrine that he faced when he was taking on Hamas in Gaza and Hispalah in Lebanon. It's the same doctrine. The IRGC is is is the uh I would say the copywriter of this doctrine. They are the ones who exported it to their proxies. And now we're seeing it in Iran. The same scenes that we're seeing that we saw in uh Lebanon and Gaza, using hospitals, using schools, using civilian areas, bunkers, launchers embedded in these areas, camouflaged, asymmetrical warfare. A state is now employing these tactics. So it's gonna take time, but I think time is not on the side of the Iranians. But I don't think necessarily we're gonna reach a phase where they'll have zero firing. We might reach it. I'm not ruling it out, but I think it'll be decreased and reduced and reduced, but it may still continue sporadically until the end of the war.

Neri 32:48

Yeah, we'll get into uh the timing issue in in just a second. It's it's crucial. Um I was struck, you probably saw it like I did. There was a statement that came out of U.S. Central Command. So basically Centcom, the uh the US command HQ responsible for the Middle East. They put out a statement, basically, it could have been a copy paste of an IDF statement about, like you said, fighting Hamas or Hezbollah, where CENTCOM said, Hey, we're we're going after these launchers and uh you know drone uh launching points as well that are embedded in schools, in hospitals, in civilian areas in in Iran. In Iran. Uh and this is something the IDF you know has said uh for years, if not decades, fighting those various terror armies. Uh and also CENCOM went on to add that uh they're firing these missiles as drones at civilian areas. So a a double war crime as far as uh CENCOM was concerned. Literally a copy paste uh of what the IDF has been saying, only now it came from the Americans. Yeah.

Yaakov 33:50

Uh because it's a copy paste of the IOGC's own doctrine that the IDF was facing in Hamas uh in Gaza and Lebanon.

Neri 33:57

Yep. Um and also it shows you the kind of um, as someone put it to me, uh I'm actually writing a piece uh about the US-Israel uh war fighting uh in the in the campaign and the historic and unprecedented nature of it. Uh as one person told me for this article, uh, there's almost a mind melt between the US and Israel, uh especially in the kind of security echelon and amongst the military professionals. Um maybe maybe an Israeli wrote that statement. No, I'm obviously obviously an AI wrote that statement because it's 2026.

Speaker 34:34

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Neri 35:32

Yakov, uh, in terms of staying power and uh the other front closer to home, uh, the most beautiful front here in Israel. I mean, we talked about the kind of mood music and just the vibes uh outside uh on the streets right now. Is your sense that the public is still very supportive and behind this war effort? Uh we obviously saw polling last week. I don't know, 60, 70, 80% of the public, especially the Jewish Israeli public, um, in favor of the war. Uh, do you sense that that is still true and that the Israeli public has uh the stamina and the staying power to see this through however long it takes?

Yaakov 36:10

Yeah, I think I saw an IDI poll last week that said 90 something percent of the Jewish population and 80% of the overall population and a quarter of the Arab Israeli population. I suspect, by the way, that it's higher because Arab Israelis are facing the same missile threats that everybody else is. But yeah, uh it's very interesting, by the way, to compare that to the American situation, where it's basically by party affiliation. If you're Democratic, you're against this war, 80% or so. And if you're a Republican, you're mostly in favor, unless you're in the isolationist MAGA fringe. So absolutely, I don't think that has changed. Um, I think the Israeli uh home front, the Israeli civil society, the big majority of this is for the war because we experience the missiles. We understand that we can't allow Iran to have thousands of these, where after October 7th, we understand that the whole concept of allowing an enemy that is a religious fundamentalist adversary, that does not operate on the same strategic calculations uh that we make, or even, you know, that the Soviets made, or even our former adversaries, you know, the nationalist Arab countries. This is a different enemy, and we understood after October 7th that they cannot be allowed to build force. So I think that the majority of the Israeli population remains very much behind this war. There is a minority voice uh that uh appears to be opposed to it. It's pretty loud on X, and it's drawing a lot of return, so-called fire. So there's some very intense discussions that uh you're probably seeing as well. I think this is a very much a minority voice that's making a lot of noise. Um, I think that there is good staying power. Now, the thing is that uh like every war, you know, because this is a uh standoff war essentially, this is about using long-range firepower, uh, there's a limit to everything. And of course, the Israeli home front uh is not going to want to remain in this condition for for months uh or or weeks upon weeks. I think that uh, you know, this is obviously it still carries a cost, even if there's a lot of resilience. So I think that the uh defense establishment is factoring that in when it makes its advice to the uh political echelon, to the cabinet, to prime minister Netanyahu. I think the assessment is the home front is doing well, uh, but but you know, three dots, uh we we don't want this to go on forever, we don't want a very long war. I think there uh there is an understanding. Also, of course, you have the whole you know economic consideration, which can't be ignored. You if you want to have a strong uh military, you need a strong economy to pay for it. So all of this has to be factored in. Um but as of now, I would say um majority of the population behind the war effort. It's it's pretty much a mainstream, uh I won't say universal, it's not universal, but it's mainstream. And I would say that the resilience is high, and also there is a lot of faith, I would say, in uh two things. One is the air defense system. There's still a lot of faith in the air defense system. We're saying it has improved, by the way. It's clearly to me uh from my own observations, the performance has improved from from the June war. Um, and also I think there's a lot of faith in the in the Air Force, in the offensive uh actions that are being taken. People have have the the faith has been has been restored, I would say, from the crisis of October 7th. So uh so far, so good, I would say.

Neri 39:36

Agree with all of that. And uh I think you should add a third dimension uh to what gives people here sucker and kind of uh staying power. America. Israel is fighting alongside America, and that's uh definitely that's not a minor, not a minor thing, no at all. No, no, no, uh, not a minor thing at all. And uh yes, you know, despite the fact that there is some normalcy that has returned, especially since the opening days of the war last week, uh schools are still closed, uh, which is very difficult for many people. Uh a lot of businesses are are still closed, some have reopened. Uh so obviously um both kind of economically and socially, this isn't this is far, far and away uh not normal. Um especially, and we should now touch on uh the other front in this, a secondary front, but very, very active, and that's the north, the northern Israel uh with Lebanon and really Hezbollah in Lebanon. Um if we were having this conversation uh in northern Israel at the moment, we probably wouldn't be having this conversation in northern Israel because they're under constant uh rocket and drone fire from Hezbollah and also by the way from Iran as well. So uh a real kind of war footing in the north. Um I want to ask you, Yaakov, uh we've talked about this at length in previous episodes, but the front with Hezbollah was um, shall we say, uh planned before this war with Iran? There was mood music even back in December that uh Israel was preparing uh some kind of offensive uh to go uh after Hezbollah and to, I guess, degrade Hezbollah further after the um the previous war that ended in a ceasefire in late 2024. Uh maybe wasn't getting the job done, kind of an act of ceasefire. Israel still striking Hezbollah, but but not uh to Israeli minds enough. Um and Hezbollah essentially uh walked into this uh Israeli trap uh Monday night and into Tuesday morning. Uh Hezbollah fired several rockets at northern Israel, including Haifa, uh after uh uh uh the death of Ali Khamenei, the Supreme Leader in Iran, was was confirmed. And that gave Israel a legitimate excuse, but legitimate nonetheless, uh to begin this kind of wave of airstrikes across Lebanon, including Beirut. Uh they've pushed additional troops into uh the buffer zone uh in southern Lebanon. And now, again, talking on Wednesday, a more aggressive and a more expansive ground offensive is in the offing uh by the IDF in in southern Lebanon. So I want to get your thoughts about this kind of obviously secondary front, but a front that um again uh could even outlast the Iran front.

Yaakov 42:23

Yeah, it's very interesting because um I don't I think Kizbalah had no choice and uh in terms of when I'm looking at it as part of a proxy of Iran, you know, when the Iranians said you're getting involved now, this is what we built you for. I don't think the Secretary General Naeem Qasam was going to turn around and say no. So uh I think you know once we once we go after a let's remember also that Ayatollah Khamenei is a religious figure, he's considered a holy figure by the Shiite fundamentalist access. There's a religious significance here, and that's why I I was pretty sure that Kizbollah was going to get involved. Now it's very interesting when you hear the comments of Naeim Qasam, he was almost saying, look, we only fired a small volley at Haifa. Why did you know you didn't have to go to war? And I think this is um in many ways representative of the new reality that Hezbollah is facing, which is uh intrinsically different from any reality it has known in the past. I think every direction that it looks at, Hezbollah, it's seeing something new. It it's seeing a new Israel, an Israel that says, you can fire uh uh uh you know two sets of small volleys at Haifa, as far as we're concerned, that's an act of war. There are no more equations, we don't differentiate between three, six, and sixty rockets. You fired on our biggest northern city, that's it. You have entered into this war. Uh uh there's a there's a uh very different approach here uh to uh the behavior of the adversary. And I think that uh uh if Hezbollah wasn't sure about that, it's now uh very, very sure. He already saw, as you said, during the ceasefire, which was basically Hezbollah uh violating it not with firing, but with trying to rebuild and reconstitute its case. Capabilities and Israel was striking and enforcing the ceasefire every single day. It already understood that Israel had changed, but now I think it's very clear that Israel is making uh zero allowances for so-called equations. By the way, when I say equations, for those who may not be familiar with the tur with the local definition of that term, equations was how basically Hezbollah communicated its red lines to Israel and said, Look, if uh you do this, we'll do that. So think twice. And there was constant communication between Israeli decision makers and Hezbollah because Israel had accepted the equation. And another way of saying that is that Israel was deterred by Hezbollah and not the other way around. That has completely changed, totally changed. Um I think that that's very interesting. Now, regarding the war effort, the majority of the Air Force is still directed at Iran. I think it's a big majority of the uh resources, the aircraft, the assets are at Iran, and a minority of the Air Force is is is busy in in Lebanon. Uh you can divide it into southern Lebanon, the whole of southern Lebanon has been evacuated. This is pretty dramatic, right up until the Litani River, hundreds of thousands of people. The civilian uh human shield has been stripped uh of Hezbollah. We've got Beirut, especially Dahia, the southern area that's controlled by Hezbollah, also evacuated, massive strikes, airstrikes going on there. And you've got the Beka Valley, you know, in the east on the border with Syria. And when they look east, Hezbollah, what they're seeing is a whole different Syria. Instead of having an ally, the Assad regime, a member of the Shi'i Axis, they've got the Sunni al-Sha'ra regime, who they've been fighting for years in Syria, trying to destroy an Idlib and across Syria, failing, and now these Sunni enemies of Hezbollah are in power. And uh they're making it very clear uh that uh they want to work with the Lebanese government, and that's the third change. The Lebanese government, even if it doesn't have a lot of power on the ground right now, it's still the statements that it's making are unprecedented. They want to banish. Yep, uh they want to outlaw Hezbollah's uh uh military terrorist activities. I don't remember ever a Lebanese government saying that. And so when you look at these three changes, they've lost their political legitimacy, except their own Shiite base. They've got a different Syria, they've got a different Israel. Hezbollah is isolated and it's growing weaker. And so what we're seeing also is an expanded buffer zone. Is this a new security strip? Not uh at the scale that we saw in the 80s and 90s, but significant numbers of Israeli forces have entered southern Lebanon to boost those five uh positions that uh the IDF had beforehand. So that does look like an expanded security zone, uh Neri. I don't know for how long that will be, but that's also a change. Put it all together, and I think Hezbollah's in trouble.

Neri 46:50

Yeah. Um it is a change. Uh this was a, again, a well-thought out offensive by Israel, um, albeit with the resource restraints of uh what Iran requires, uh, if and when Iran ends. I'm just of I don't want to say two minds. I understand the logic and the reasoning behind going after Hezbollah right now. I'm just wondering whether it's uh almost a bridge too far. Right. Not just in terms of resources, but also just in terms of what uh northern Israel can can kind of uh take in, right? Uh you have ballistic missiles coming in from Iran, you have uh constant fire um from Lebanon, Hezbollah. Again, uh fair play, fair play to Hezbollah, but again, this is a shadow of what Hezbollah was prior to the fall of 2024 and the real IDF offensive, right? If we had if if the IDF had been striking the Dahiya in Beirut like Israel is now over the past week, um there would have been constant missile and rocket fire on Tel Aviv uh by Hezbollah. Correct. And that's not the case, okay. Uh I'm just wondering whether the Lebanon front could have been put on hold until the Iran Front was finished.

Yaakov 48:06

I mean, look, there are always you know contingencies and scenarios, but I think the decision, in my view, is ultimately correct because this is an opportun this is a big strategic opportunity uh to go after the two main threats. Hamas can no longer project power out of Gaza. It's still strong in Gaza, but it's not a threat outside of Gaza, and that has to be preserved. So, what was left? We had Hezbollah, according to the Alma Center, where I'm a research associate, uh, they had between 20 to 25,000 projectiles left. That's still, even though it's hugely reduced from their previous arsenal of 150,000, including mortars, etc. But that's still an arsenal that's unacceptable, and they were reconstituting their UAV program. The RUD1 force had cells running around southern Lebanon, so they couldn't do an invasion like they were planning before. They were planning their own October 7th against the Galilee, but they could still infiltrate. And so again, this is all part of the same lesson learning from October the 7th. Enemies who are jihadists cannot be allowed to build up force or be tolerated when they attack. And so when they I think that if Hezbollah would not have fired on Haifa, I don't think we would have seen the opening of the of this front. But the moment that that decision uh by Hezbollah and Iran was made, I think if you know that's when uh the cabinet, I don't think, had much of a dilemma. We've got the United States on side, uh, and and this is all part of the same big window of opportunity to strike down the capabilities of Iran and Hezbollah simultaneously. Um, I don't know how long it's gonna go on for. It's an interesting question about whether the northern arena will have a different timeline from Iran, or maybe not. Maybe they'll both come to a halt at the same time. I know that people are saying otherwise, but I think these things are very dynamic. Um, so either way, the way I see it is there's an hourglass that has been flipped. Once President Trump got in front of a camera a couple days ago and said this is gonna be over soon, I think that represented uh an hourglass that became flipped. And primarily the Israeli Air Force, also the ground forces in southern Lebanon that are not have not launched a ground offensive, they've just beefed up the protective buffer zone for the northern communities, but they're doing sort of raids, you know, in and out. But primarily the Air Force is now working against a countdown clock and striking as many capabilities as possible from Beirut to Tehran.

Neri 50:32

So that was a good segue. Uh, because last topic I wanted to discuss is really looking ahead and what we may see um and what we may not see moving forward. I have a theory, Yaqov, I'll run it by you. Uh that basically the key variables moving forward, it's basically uh competition between three different races. Uh right. So you have the first race is between uh what we were talking about earlier, US and Israeli air power versus Iran's remaining uh missile launchers, right, to kind of uh uh degrade and suppress uh the outgoing fire and to make things well uh not only better in Israel but across the region. Uh the second race is between uh basically the global economy and Iran's ability to project power out of its own borders and and really mess things up, uh also including, by the way, in the Gulf, in the Strait of Hormuz. And yesterday we had uh uh reporting threats about Iran potentially mining the strait, which would be a major escalation by Tehran. Uh that's a second race, uh vis-a-vis the global economy. And then the the final race, and maybe the important one, is the one you alluded to, which is um you know uh Trump's Donald Donald Trump's uh attention span and commitment to this campaign and Iran's uh determination to make this a war of attrition. Uh in other words, basically Iran uh in its own mind doesn't have to win this war, it just needs to run out the clock. So that's how I try to kind of look at and explain to others what we're seeing and and you know what what we may be looking at in the coming week, two, three weeks. Is that fair? Did I miss it? Did I leave anything out?

Yaakov 52:08

Well, I think that that's comprehensive, and maybe you want to throw into that the midterms that are coming up and uh you know the whole American political uh arena, which is its own arena and I I think highly influential on Trump. But yeah, I think that that that's comprehensive. And look, I think that uh this is why I've been saying the why that I've been arguing that at the end of the day, you know, when you look at this from a military perspective, uh uh the wars that we are looking at now, especially when we're talking about standoff aerial naval wars primarily, this is what we're seeing. The real measure of achievement is weakening and and crippling the adversary until they can no longer become a strategic threat that can project power and follow their jihadist ideology, and then preserving that in the long term. I think that that needs to be the real definition of victory. And so people are very hung up, and and rightly so, about whether the regime is gonna fall, not gonna fall. And I and I think that we have to uh you know be um flexible and understand that uh bringing down a regime that's ruling over more than 90 million people uh and that has uh you know two million foot soldiers in the besieged is not something you can necessarily do overnight with air power, no matter how great your air power is. But the regime can be kept very, very weak and paralyzed, and I think that that should be the main thing. And and eventually we can we we can work towards and contribute towards this downfall, you know, strangle it, cut it off uh economically, uh support the opposition, arm the opposition. Uh I think it's a process, and and we have to look at the whole thing, not through very short-term uh uh timetables, Western timetables. You know, I sometimes uh you know I know this uh is an expression that uh we've all heard the instant coffee, uh, you know, the McDonald's timetables. We need to look at, I think, at a process as a spectrum uh in which Iran grows continually weaker together with its its proxies over time. That has to be the most important shift. And eventually, uh, you know, we have to believe that the arc of history is going to lead to its collapse. Whether that happens in two weeks or in two years, I don't think anybody can know. It's not a science, it's it's not something we can predict. So my hope is that this is the uh a milestone as part of a much bigger process. And and my hope is that people understand that we should measure this in terms of years and not in terms of days or hours.

Neri 54:40

So if I'm understanding you correctly, you're basically saying this is currently a war of degradation, right? You want to degrade, if not completely eliminate, uh Iran's missile program, definitely the nuclear program, and they need to find a solution to the highly enriched uranium, about 400 kilos, like you said. Um and then that will be, if I understand it correctly, good enough. And then you shift to uh both a containment strategy vis-a-vis Iran and um mowing the grass, as the Israelis like to say, right? You kind of upkeep the degradation.

Yaakov 55:13

Upkeep the degradation. I wouldn't I wouldn't say containment because I would containment may uh hint at something else, but I would I would talk about preserving the achievement, and that would look that would look like, as you say, mowing the glass. Now that the grass is short, mowing the grass and keeping it short until one day the lawn changes. I think that that that that's a realistic game plan. As long as we're not talking about a mass ground invasion of Iran, which obviously we're not, I think that that's realistic. And and and that should be communicated to the American and to the Israeli public so that they don't feel disappointed in case you know the regime survives at the end of the war and they'll say, Oh, this is a failure. I don't think that's the case.

Neri 55:55

So, but that's exactly the point that this was not communicated publicly. Agreed. Uh the goal the goals, by the way, both from Washington and also Jerusalem, were were quite aggressive, ambitious, bombastic, choose your adjective, at the start of this. Yep. Uh the US no longer even talks about regime change as a goal. They're strictly focused on missiles and drones and navy and the like, uh, sometimes nuclear as well. So there's already kind of a lowering of expectations coming from the US side, um, which uh is a bit of a come down given the scale of this operation, the scale of this campaign. Uh from the Israeli side, uh for for what it's worth, uh BB Netanyahu is still talking about creating the conditions for toppling the regime, uh, and that you know, another kind of war of uh, you know, basically like last year's 12-day war only on a bigger scale, there'll be a lot of disappointed Israelis.

Yaakov 56:49

Yep, 100%. And I think that that's a mistake in communications, in in uh, in adjusting expectations. Because, you know, what if the regime survives, right, this war, but it remains very weak and it falls, let's say, in 12 months. So why, you know, why is everybody uh disappointed? We don't know what's going to happen. We're we're entering into a huge cloud of uncertainty, but there are certain things that we can ensure, and if we communicate those realistic goals, which is keeping the adversary broken, paralyzed, weak, unable to rebuild its capabilities, and committed uh with an ironclad determination to act if intelligence indicates that they will. If we see them start to rebuild missile programs, this whole uh approach that I'm arguing in favor requires jets to go out and not wait until they build another thousand missiles. When they build another 50 missiles, they have to be bombed. Uh if if any activity is is detected at the nuclear program, that requires immediate action. That's what this is based on, is keeping them uh uh uh paralyzed and broken and unable to recover until they fall one day, which I believe I do believe that this regime is gonna fall. I'm not one of the uh pessimists who thinks it's gonna be with us in in a generation. I think that uh the Iranian people will not in the long term accept this regime, but it's gonna I think it's gonna take time, and the conditions may take uh considerable time until they mature. Primarily arming, arming the opposition is not something that I think can be done from today to tomorrow.

Neri 58:17

So uh you beat me to it, and this will actually have to be our final topic and our final question. Um there have been hints, strong hints, that there is a fourth phase to this war and to this war plan, which uh deals less in um you know F-35s and F-15s and more in the dark arts, uh the spooks, as they say, working in the shadows, I don't know, arming various kind of opposition and separatist groups inside Iran, uh maybe providing them with more uh with more. Oh, and we're almost done, and now the Iranians are signaling.

Yaakov 58:56

The Irani are signaling, yeah.

Neri 58:57

The Iranians are signaling that this is this is over. So I guess our final point will be I mean, do you believe that there's a fourth phase to this war?

Yaakov 59:05

So yeah, you know, I've been having uh some intensive debates about this. I I believe that there are there are efforts. I don't know if we can describe it as a phase because you know a military plan has resources that you allocate towards achieving a clear goal, and you can quantify it. How many missile launches have we hit? How many do they have? You can really measure this, and that's the best kind of military plan because it's quantifiable. You can see whether you're succeeding, if you're failing, what you need to adjust. Now, the other kind what you're talking about is is not, I wouldn't call it a phase. I would call it uh an effort. And that's fine. There's nothing wrong with that. I'm in favor of that kind of uh uh uh policy as well. It's okay to try and attack a system without knowing how it's gonna result. We don't need to have all of the information and the and know all the future you know developments. It's perfectly fine to enter, you know, I guess what what the high-tech people call an agile uh uh game plan. And yes, I think that that's underway. I think there are efforts you can see in the number of airstrikes that Israel conducted just in western Iran, in the Kurdish areas, targeting the besieged headquarters, dozens of these, trying to leave them without a base.

Neri 1:00:15

And and western Iran on the border with Iraq.

Yaakov 1:00:18

Right, exactly. And and and there have been too many reports for them to be a coincidence about uh Iranian Kurdish opposition forces who are already armed, receiving more assistance. Okay, now there are also problems with this. You know, the Kurds, the Iranian Kurds are separatists, the mainstream opposition are not sympathetic to separatists, so you already have a tension there. And also I'm skeptical about the ability of the Iranian Kurds to project power beyond their province. I don't think they can take on all of the besiege and get to the heart of Tehran. But if the regime starts losing control over parts of Western Iran and uh Western intelligence agencies and special units can set up you know bases there and start arming uh not only the Kurds but others, then that's that's good. It's worth trying. There's nothing wrong with trying. I just think we need to be realistic and not expect to know the results of these efforts immediately or expect them to bring you know down the regime overnight.

Neri 1:01:15

You have uh a very Middle Eastern analysis of all of this, Yaakov, which is probably correct for uh a war in the Middle East. Um for the record, I'll go on the record before we get sirens likely from from Iran. Uh, I do believe something is in the works for this fourth phase slash effort, uh, maybe involving Kurds, but maybe the Kurds are kind of uh misdirection, red herring, but something maybe with um various uh opposition groups and uh um armed elements inside Iran that could be activated uh from the outside and also uh aided from the outside and and maybe from the air uh remains to be seen. Uh likely won't start tomorrow, but we'll see what happens next week. Uh with that, with that, Yaakov, I'll I'll let you go and and take shelter. Uh I promise we didn't plan this uh incoming missile barrage when we started recording, uh, but I'll likely leave my camera on uh so maybe it'll catch the sirens here in Tel Aviv. But I'll let you go and take shelter, Yaakov. So thank you as always. Stay safe. Okay, thanks again to Jakov Lapin for his generous time and insights. Also, a special thanks to our producer, Jacob Gilman, our editor, Tracy Levy, and our assistant producer Eden Jesselson, as always, and to all of you who support Israel Policy Forum's work. Do consider making a donation to Israel Policy Forum so it can keep being a credible source of analysis and ideas on issues such as these that we all care deeply about, including this podcast. And most importantly, thank you for listening. Please subscribe and spread the word. And most importantly, everyone watching, whether here in Israel or across the Middle East, be safe.