Rescuing Reason - E14 - Iran Pt 3 - State Terrorism

The 2026 conflict between the US/Israel and Iran was supposedly started to prevent Iran from acquiring a nuclear weapon capability, but there is a good argument that says Iran should be attacked because it sponsors proxy wars and state terrorism. This episode is the 3rd episode in a 4-part series on Iran. It considers whether going to war over the Iran's state-sponsored terrorism or proxy wars is "ethical" or a "Just" cause for war - under the 'Laws of War' or 'Just War Theory'. The 'legal' reasons for going to war are detailed, along with a deep review of Iran's 'behavior' since the Islamic revolution. The actual conduct of the war is covered in part 4 of this series, due for publication end-June 2026.

Transcript

SPEAKER_02 0:25

Hello and welcome to Rescuing Reason. This episode continues our four-part series on the conflicts with Iran. In today's episode of Rescuing Reason, we are considering the factors that influence whether we think the US-Israeli war with Iran is a just war or not. In particular, we're looking at it in the context of Iranian proxy wars and state-sponsored terrorism. I'm your host, Bill Carolakis. I'm a retired senior Air Force officer. I use history and research to baseline the topics on rescuing reason, and I'll be offering you a Spartan perspective in each episode. In other words, taking a pragmatic view that values the nation and broader Western society over individual interests. Something we need to bear in mind when we're talking about Iran, terrorism, war, and war crimes is that the media is rife with misinformation, mostly because people are very biased on these topics, but sometimes because of deliberate misinformation or disinformation. I'll call out that bias as we go through the contentious issues related to today's topic. In the first episode of this four part series, we followed the journey of how Persia became modern day Iran, and we finished by noting that modern day Iran is mostly Persian speaking and mostly Shia Muslim. It's also known for supporting anti-West movements, terrorism, and is seeking to enhance its nuclear capabilities, all of which led to severe, albeit sometimes wavering, sanctions imposed by the international community, particularly the United States. The second episode in this series considered whether the Iranian nuclear weapon program justified going to war with Iran, making it a just or legal war under the laws of war, or more specifically international law based on the UN Charter and customary law. Based on the history, the facts, and the research, I concluded that attacking Iran to remove the threats of nuclear attack from Iran was justified. I noted in that episode that you could remove the threats by taking away the capability, in other words, the weapon system, which is what was targeted in the mid-2025 attacks from the US and Israel on Iran, or you could take away the intent by changing the leadership. And it seems like the war that's ongoing at this point in time, this time now being second quarter 2026, was originally, or maybe partially, intending to change Iranian leadership. Today we'll consider another potential just or ethical reason for attacking Iran. And here's a quick refresh from episodes two and three of Rescuing Reason. Under the UN Charter and the norms of the laws of war and the rules-based order, preemptive strike is considered ethical or just or justifiable under certain circumstances. These require that the enemy state has the capability and the intent to commit an act that requires self-defense or a response of some sort. And there needs to be a sense of immincy. In other words, the timing matters under customary and UN law. A war is also justifiable if the attack is in response to an attack by your adversary, of course, that's self-defense. But again, the counterattack needs to occur within a short time frame after the transgression. If you want to understand these rules in more detail, the last episode of Rescuing Reason covered them a fair bit, in particular the legal structure that underpins these principles. Today we'll consider Iran's proxy wars and state-sponsored terrorism and how these might provide the justification for a preemptive or responsive attack on Iran. We'll tie it back to the last episode on the nuclear program to give you a holistic picture of the argument for going to war with Iran. And we'll tackle this episode chronologically by going through Iran's state sponsored proxies and terrorist activities, along with global events related to Iran, Israel, and US actions in the Middle East. As we do that, we'll build a picture of the threats Iran poses to the West, particularly in terms of the proxy wars and terrorism that it sponsors, and the threats those pose to the West. In other words, the capability and intent they have demonstrated. Before we do that, I've used a couple of terms that need to be explained. Firstly, let's cover proxy wars. I've got for you an audio clip now which comes from a YouTuber who did a pretty good job of explaining what proxy wars are, why they exist, and how they've been used over the past 70-ish years.

SPEAKER_16 5:18

Sometimes, nations fight each other without ever firing a single bullet because someone else does it for them. This is the hidden world of proxy wars, silent conflicts where global powers pull the strings, influence nations, and shape entire regions from the shadows. These conflicts allow major powers to exert influence and pursue strategic interests without direct military engagement, avoiding the risks of open warfare. Two powerful countries support opposing sides in a smaller nation's conflict, so they can fight each other without suffering the consequences directly. Why do they prefer this? Because proxy wars offer something real wars cannot plausible deniability, low political risk, lower casualties for the superpower, and massive strategic influence at a lower cost. They're wars without accountability, influence without invasion, victory, without open confrontation. Proxy wars aren't new, but the Cold War perfected them. The United States and the Soviet Union became experts at fighting indirectly. Examples include the Korean War from 1950 to 1953, where the USA opposed the USSR and China, and the Vietnam War, with the USA against Soviet-backed North Vietnam. Also, Afghanistan from 1979 to 1989 saw the USA CIA and USSR's KGB supporting opposite sides.

SPEAKER_09 6:52

They also conduct cyber attacks, psychological operations, assassinations, disinformation campaigns, and utilize human intelligence networks. These operations are designed to shift the balance of power without open war. Proxy wars are not just conflicts. They are mirrors reflecting the ambitions of powerful nations.

SPEAKER_02 7:12

Now that account is about 75% right. There are a few clarifications. Firstly, any organization or nation can employ proxies, it's not just the major powers. It's just that we tend to think of the larger, more capable powers using proxy wars, and as was noted in that clip, it became the way to fight during the Cold War between the United States and the USSR. Basically, powers around the world have used proxies to fight their battles for millennia, and Iran is no different in that regard. The key issue for Western powers is that Iran has used proxies to target Western interests throughout the Middle East region. And before we go on, I need to make a comment about that clip. You may have noticed the voice inflection changing in it throughout the audio. Well, it was computer generated, and funnily enough, they kept the same imagery of the presenter, but allowed the voice to change as the AI system they were using went through the material. It was a bit comical. But anyway, back to our episode. The second term we're considering today is terrorism, or more specifically, state-sponsored terrorism. And here we've got Professor Martha Crenshaw of Stanford University discussing what terrorism is and what sorts of organizations use it. This clip is from around the 2015 era, so she's referring to ISIS and the war in Afghanistan, both of which are no longer ongoing concerns.

SPEAKER_26 8:34

The first thing to remember is that terrorism is one form of political violence. There are other forms of violence that are equally, if not more destructive or horrifying or terrifying even. Second, it's a method or a strategy. It's not tied to any particular political actor or type of actor. Although the term terrorist organization is used frequently. For example, the U.S. government maintains a list of foreign terrorist organizations known as the FTO list. I prefer to avoid the term because the organizations that use terrorism rarely do so exclusively. And if you use the term terrorist organization, I think this is what it implies. I think also that it's still useful to think of terrorism in terms of the 19th-century concept of propaganda of the deed, which is a concept that came from the anarchist movement of the 1880s. This means that the act of violence is a way of communicating a message, which means also that the violence involved is highly symbolic and that it's intended to influence a watching audience. And the concept of an audience is critical. Because this violence aims at the effect of shock and surprise and outrage, it often targets victims who are unprepared and undefended. They're frequently described as innocent. They have no responsibility for whatever evils or transgressions those who are using terrorism object to. So terrorism deliberately chooses civilians as targets. They're not collateral damage that might be incurred when the real target is the adversary's military forces. The specific form of violence is also selected in order to be shocking and disturbing. We think of suicide attacks, in which the perpetrator blows him or herself up with the bomb. We think of videoed beheadings by Al-Qaeda in Iraq and ISIS, and also Al-Qaeda itself in Pakistan. We also think of terrorism in terms of the ism part of terrorism as involving a systematic campaign of violence of this type. An act of terrorism is even more threatening to the audience because it signals that there's more violence to come. Researchers have also tended to regard terrorism as a form of conspiratorial violence. This means that the organization that uses terrorism is typically an underground organization. It exists in conditions of extreme secrecy and clandestinity. Others think of terrorist actors as very loose networks, not as coherent or structured organizations, but as something more diffuse. Yet other views on the subject of what is terrorism and what is not think that if the users of violence are trying to acquire and hold territory, this is not terrorism. Terrorists are supposed to not want territory and to be diffuse transnational groupings that are in effect rootless. However, particularly in the 21st century, particularly post-2003, if we think about the relationship between terrorism and insurgency, the lines become very blurred. It's quite a bit less clear-cut. For example, in the conflict in Afghanistan, the U.S. developed the idea of a distinction between counterterrorism, or CT, and counterinsurgency, or COIN. Counterterrorism supposedly aimed at destroying and defeating a militant organization, for example, using drone strikes against leaders. COIN or counterinsurgency, on the other hand, was aimed at winning over the support of a population to keep them from supporting insurgents who presumably needed both territory, a constituency, and resources that terrorists would not need. But the reality in both Afghanistan and now in Iraq is that the same organization can engage in both terrorism and insurgency, not one or the other. The Taliban and ISIS are certainly cases in point. And both of them wish to become a state. They wish to control territory. They both do and did control territory. They're not stateless organizations. They're not simply transnational conspiracies with no resources at all. They are capable of imposing control over territory and imposing their own form of government. This brings me back to one of the points that I started with in talking about defining terrorism. Terrorism is a method or a strategy that many different actors can use.

SPEAKER_02 13:04

So Professor Crenshaw gave us a good theoretical view of terrorism. I'm sure most of you have heard similar through the media, but part of the problem in the West is how our media is biased towards associating terrorism with Islam. And to give us some perspective on the association between terrorism and Islam, here's Professor Massood of Harvard University giving us his take on it.

SPEAKER_12 13:27

One of the arguments that you might hear from other scholars of the Middle East is that Muslims are often linked to terrorism because Western commentators have some prejudice against Islam. And that's why they're much more likely to call violence by Muslims terrorism and not apply the same name to violence committed by any other religious group. Others will point out that in the last hundred years or so, inhabitants of Muslim lands have had a lot of reason to meet out violence against Westerners. After all, the Middle East was subject after World War I to a series of occupations by Western countries. And there's still a very strong Western presence in the Middle East that a lot of Arabs chafe under. We saw this expressed most clearly on September 11th, 2001, when Al-Qaeda attacked the World Trade Center. Their argument for why they did it was that this was in retaliation for oppression and violence against Muslims. But there's another group of scholars who say that the root of the Islamic connection with terrorism really goes back to the essence of the religion. And they'll point to chapters in the holy text of Islam, this beautiful book, the Quran, which exhort Muslims to engage in jihad or holy war on behalf of the Muslim community. And some people say that jihad really here needs to be understood metaphorically as a struggle against your inner demons, but others say that no, when the Quran talks about jihad, they are talking about fighting wars in order to spread the religion of Islam or to rid Islam of the domination or oppression of non-Muslims.

SPEAKER_02 15:18

Those two professors touched on state-sponsored terrorism. Basically, if a country is funding or promoting terrorism, well, then that terrorism can be said to be state-sponsored. In the case of Iran, there are many examples which we'll cover as we go through this episode. As Massood said, and as I noted a moment ago, Islam is not the only source of terrorism. And here's a lecturer from the Leiden University talking about the many sources of terrorism.

SPEAKER_29 15:48

1979, the year of the Islamic Revolution in Iran, the year the Soviet Union invaded and occupied Afghanistan, and 1979 was also the year of the storming and occupation of the Grand Mosque in Mecca. There were many different religious groups that produced terrorism since 1979. Islam, many Islamic groups, but also the Sikh who from Punjab, from their holy center, their holy temple, the Golden Temple in Amritsar, were for instance fighting the Indian authorities. But it also includes Jewish religious terrorists. Think of the murderer of Yitchak Rabin, who was killed in 1995 while giving a speech in Tel Aviv. But the religious waves also include Christian groups. Think of anti-abortion militants who have killed quite a number of people, and it also includes sects. And the most well-known attack of one sect is the attack on the Tokyo subway by the OM sect, who was responsible for an attack with unconventional weapons, the Nerf Gas Saren, which they tried to kill quite a few people. In the end, they managed to kill 12 and injure more than a thousand. Characteristics of this wave include the modus operandi of these religious groups, its assassinations of key leaders, the military representatives of states, as well as hostage takings. And new is the suicide bombing.

SPEAKER_02 18:52

So in the case of the recent US and Israeli attacks on Iran, which commenced in late February 2026, you could argue that those strikes were justified because of that terrorism and proxy war support that Iran provides to organizations in the region. This history of Iranian state-sponsored terrorism and proxy wars starts in early 1979 when Iran revolted against the Shah's regime and installed Ayatollah Khomeini as Iran's supreme leader. Under his leadership, Iran established an Islamic republic. The history of that revolution was detailed in episode 12 of Rescuing Reason, so two months ago. Later that year, in November of 1979, 66 Americans were taken hostage in Tehran, and this was immediately followed by sanctions imposed on Iran by the United States government, and in 1980, the United States cut diplomatic ties with Iran. This was followed shortly thereafter by the Iraqi invasion of Iran in 1980. Estimates put the war's death toll at about half a million to a million soldiers, most of them being Iranian. The war was defined by large-scale trench warfare featuring machine guns and bayonets, kind of similar to World War I. However, Iraq also used chemical weapons against Iranians and Iraqi Kurds. The US sided with Iraq, deepening tensions between the US and Iran. It was during this war that we started to see the beginnings of Iran's state-sponsored terrorism and proxy wars. A good place to start is June 1982. That's when Israel invaded Lebanon, and Iran started funding what later became the Lebanese resistance movement, which we know of today as Hezbollah. I think this is a good point at which to understand the relationship between Iran and Hezbollah. Here's Mazir Bahari giving us some insight. And we heard from him in the last episode, and to remind you, he's a journalist who was captured and tortured by Iran, so his commentary is probably biased, although he does do a good job of trying to remain objective.

SPEAKER_14 21:05

So I think we have to separate Iran's support of Hezbollah from Iran's support of other groups. Hezbollah is a Shiite Lebanese organization. As such, they are part of the Shiite family. There are many Iranian officials in the government right now who have family in Lebanon. Some of the uh leaders of Hezbollah, their daughters, their sons, their sisters, brothers are married to Iranian officials. So Hezbollah is essentially an Iranian organization in Lebanon. Of course, they have other members who don't have that much of a dedication to Iran as the leadership of Hezbollah. The other groups that Iran supports in the Middle East, including Hamas, they are Sunni Muslims. They do not believe in the brand of Islam that Iranian leadership believes. And this support and their relationship and the friendship is the friendship of convenience. So for example, during the Iranic war, the Sunni Arabs, including people who eventually joined Hamas, they were supporting Saddam Hussein. So the people from Hamas and Islamic Jihad and other groups, they do not have any kind of ideological belonging to what the Iranians represent. Unlike Hezbollah, which is part of this Shi'ite family. Hamas is enjoying the support of Iran because it needs the support of Iran. But tomorrow, if someone else supports Hamas more than Iran, they would just go back to them.

SPEAKER_02 23:04

This is also a good point to introduce the groups that would in time become more well known as Iranian proxies. Here's Sunni Ingul Rasmussen, who is a journalist and author based in Afghanistan, giving us a brief rundown of the proxy network supported by Iran.

SPEAKER_15 23:22

So to show you where Iran's so-called access of resistance works in the Middle East, we have Iran, of course, Hamas in Gaza. There's another group that Iran supports in Gaza called the Palestinian Islamic Jihad, which is actually a closer ally of Iran ideologically, but also working out of Gaza and also in the West Bank. Iran's most important militia ally is Hezbollah in Lebanon. Aside from that, they also have various militant groups in Iraq. And then finally, they also have an alliance with the Houthis in Yemen. One of Iran's aims in the Middle East is to always keep the fight, the military fight, as far away from its own borders as possible. And the presence of these military allies in the land bridge kind of helps it do that.

SPEAKER_02 24:15

Now getting back to our history of Iranian sponsored attacks, I'm going to run through several of them to give you a really good sense of just how much of this there is. And I should point out that I'm not covering anywhere near the entirety of these attacks. These are just a smattering of the ones that occurred. In April 1983, a suicide car bombing killed 63 people, including 17 Americans, at the US Embassy in Beiruts in Lebanon. The Iranian backed terrorist group Islamic Jihad, which was a precursor and early branch of Hezbollah, claimed responsibility. Now you may have heard of Palestinian Islamic Jihad, but that's a different group. Then came the big one. In October 1983, Hezbollah operatives drove a truck bomb at a marine compound in Beiruts, killing 220 U.S. Marines and 21 other people. This incident could be said to have driven the U.S. out of the region. This was followed by a similar attack in December 1983 when Hezbollah operatives drove an explosives-filled dump truck through the gates of the U.S. Embassy in Kuwait City, but no Americans were harmed in that attack. The following month, in January 1984, it was these attacks that led President Ronald Reagan to officially designate Iran as a state sponsor of terror, because the U.S. blamed Hezbollah and named Iran as their sponsor. Soon afterwards, in March 84, Hezbollah kidnapped CIA Station Chief William Buckley in Beirut. He ended up being tortured and ultimately killed in 1985. Islamic Jihad claimed responsibility for that as well. We've now twice heard about Islamic Jihad. From what I can tell, it was either an arm of Hezbollah or a precursor to Hezbollah in the early 1980s. Either way, it eventually became overtaken as an entity by Hezbollah itself, particularly after Hezbollah issued its manifesto in 1985. And here's Matt Levitz, who is a former FBI and State Department official and from the Georgetown University, telling us about that manifesto, which he refers to as an open letter.

SPEAKER_17 26:20

One of the bedrocks of the Islamic Republic was not only the idea of a revolution within Iran, but the whole idea was to export this revolution. And so they looked first to countries where there are decent-sized Shia minorities. There were secular Palestinian groups who were kicked out of Jordan and made their way to Lebanon and were using southern Lebanon as a launching pad to carry out attacks against Israel. Iran provided intelligence. By 1982, Iran is sending people across Iraq and Syria to the Becca Valley, and they're establishing in the uh in a barracks there a training place in Lebanon. Originally, the idea was really just to create an umbrella for these groups, but really it ended up becoming a much more structured, hierarchical organization that became known as Hezb Allah, literally the party of God. The idea, as is made very, very clear in the open letter, that this new group, Hezbollah, takes direction from, pledges fealty to Iran, sees the supreme leader of Iran as their leader and the mouthpiece of God on earth, sees the United States and French specif France specifically, but the West in general as the reason for all the world's ills, is committed to the destruction of the State of Israel, and is against any idea of negotiating with it.

SPEAKER_02 27:50

By this time it was clear that Iran was supporting Shia militia in Lebanon. That was clearly evident after the December 1984 hijacking of Kuwait's Airways Flight 221 by Hezbollah terrorists. Flight 221 was on its way from Kuwait to Pakistan and diverted into Iran, where they killed two American hostages. Interestingly, the Iranian Revolutionary Guard stormed that aircraft and captured the hostage takers. But the hostage takers were then set free by Iran. In June 1985, another Hezbollah hijacking occurred when they hijacked TWA Flight 847 en route from Athens to Rome, and they diverted it to Beirut, where they killed a US Navy diver who was on board as a passenger. The hijackers were never brought to trial for that hijacking. Stepping aside from Hezbollah, in July 1988, the USS Vincennes, which was a US Navy guided missile cruiser, shot down a civilian Iran air flight over the Persian Gulf, killing all 290 people on board. Now this occurred at a time of military tension in the region, and the US claimed this was a case of mistaken identity because the ship thought it was being attacked by a fighter bomber. I'm going to refer to this incident again later when we hear from retired General Stan McChrystal. 1988 was also momentous for Iran in that the war with Iraq ended in August 1988. And also in 1988, Salman Rushdie published his book The Satanic Verses, leading Iran to call for his death, and over the ensuing decades, Iran kept increasing the bounty on Rushdie's head. Some of the people who translated his book were attacked, and at least one of those was killed. As for Rushdie himself, the state sponsored bounty eventually caught up with him and led to an attack in 2022 when Rushdie was on stage in New York State. He lost an eye out of that attack, but as far as I can tell, he's still alive today, and as far as I can tell, there's still a three million dollar Iranian-backed bounty on his head. Continuing on with our story, then in the early 1990s, under the new Supreme Leader, Khomeini, not Khomeini, there came the first mention of an Iranian nuclear program in Israeli newspapers. Israel had supported Iran through the Iran-Iraq war, but with the growth of Iranian-sponsored regional terrorism and proxy wars, along with Iraq's defeat in 1991, Israel's strategy changed and Israel began to consider Iran as their main enemy. And here's Bahari again explaining this shift.

SPEAKER_14 30:36

So the Israelis were supporting Iran in the 1980s, not because of the goodness of their heart, but because the Iranians were fighting against Saddam Hussein's Iraq, who was the main enemy of Israel at that time. So the Israelis they knew that between Saddam Hussein and Homeini, they had to support Homani. But Iran at the same time was cultivating its paroxys in Lebanon, especially Hezbollah, and inside the Palestinian territories. So the Israelis wanted to weaken both Iran and Iraq. But if they had a choice, Saddam Hussein was the main enemy. And then in the 1990s, the first mention of the Iranian nuclear program in Israeli media is around 1991, 1992. They started to talk about the fact that Iran was building a nuclear program. And it was partially based on facts, partially it was exaggerated, partially was based on facts because their revolutionary guards in Iran, especially towards the end of the Iran-Iraq war, which finished in 1988, they were talking about Iran's need for a nuclear program. So the Israelis, they started their secret operations against the Iranian nuclear program, let's say in the middle of the 1990s, but of course it became more intense around 2003, between 2003 until now. So the Israelis changed their stance from helping Khomeini against Saddam Hussein to regarding Iran as their main enemy, as their main regional enemy in the early 1990s, mainly because of Iran's policy of cultivating proxies in Lebanon, Palestinian territories, and other countries in the region, but also because of the fact that Iran was developing a nuclear program.

SPEAKER_02 32:48

This was followed by a strategic shift in Iran's dealings in the Middle East, whereby they actively began to pursue proxy relationships. And here's Bahari again explaining that.

SPEAKER_14 32:59

After the end of the Iran-Iraq war in 1989, and especially since the early 1990s, Iran increased its health to its proxies, mainly Hezbollah, which was basically created by Iran in the early 1980s. And Iran also tried to cultivate relationship with different Palestinian factions in different parts of the region.

SPEAKER_02 33:27

The support for proxies that Bahari mentioned did not go unnoticed. In March and May 1995, the U.S. imposed oil and trade sanctions on Iran. It accused Iran of sponsoring terrorism and seeking nuclear arms. And tighter sanctions followed. President Bill Clinton banned U.S. companies from dealing with Iran, while the U.S. Congress passed a law penalizing foreign entities investing in the country's energy sector or selling Iran advanced weapons. The U.S. cited nuclear advancement and support of groups like Hezbollah, Hamas, and Palestinian Islamic Jihad as reasons for their actions. I'll take this opportunity to talk about the difference between Hezbollah and Hamas. Here's Israeli Danny Sitrinowitz, who is a senior fellow of the Institute for National Security Studies at the Reichman University in Tel Aviv to explain it.

SPEAKER_08 34:23

Well, there is a difference between Hezbollah and Hamas in so many ways. Hezbollah is a Shiite movement, actually the spearhead of Iran's activity in the Middle East. And Hamas is a Palestinian movement, a Sunni movement supported by Iran, not because of the ideological reasons. Yes, of course, both uh movement and country uh want to destroy the state of Israel, but uh one is Sunni, one is Shiite. Less ideological, more interest-wise in so many ways. So it's not that Hamas uh is uh similar to Khezbal, but we have to understand what Iran is trying to do is actually build a circle of fire around the state of Israel. It wants to deter Israel from attacking Iran. So it uses Kizbalah, it uses other movements, organizations, to organization like the Shiite movements in Iraq, like the Houthis in Yemen, and like Hamas in the Gaza Street and West Bank in order to constantly suppress Israel. So in that way, it's similar to Hezbollah, but Hezbollah and Iran has strategic coordinated uh relations, less than what we see today between Iran and Hamas. Iran and Hamas looking the long-term solution. It's not that they're thinking that they can destroy Israel tomorrow, but they believe these horrendous attacks that uh occurred in Israel are one way forward in its ambition, vision to destroy the state of Israel. So even if Iran didn't know about the attack, tactically, it will support it because it's really uh it's uh part of its grand strategy at the end of the day to uh make Israel disappear from the map.

SPEAKER_02 35:55

Now Danny mentioned Hamas and we haven't talked much about them, but in the mid-1990s it made itself well known. In April 95, an explosives laden van crashed into a bus in the Gaza Strip, killing one American and seven Israelis. Palestinian Islamic jihad claimed responsibility. In August 1995, a Hamas suicide bomber blew up a bus in Jerusalem, killing an American and three other passengers and wounding more than a hundred people. In February ninety six, a Hamas suicide bomber blew up another bus in Jerusalem, killing twenty six people. You get the idea. These sorts of attacks continued against Israel and American targets through the rest of the nineteen nineties and two thousands. Leaving the Israeli side of the equation for a moment, in June 1996, a truck carrying 5,000 pounds of explosives blew up the Kobar towers in Saudi Arabia. Now I can give you some personal insight into this attack. I was deployed to that base. It was in Daharan, Saudi Arabia, and I was there for two months in late 1995. It was a large compound with several apartment buildings about maybe say twenty stories high, and they were known as the Kobar Towers. There was a ring road around the base and a fence separating the community from that road and the base itself. I often jogged around that ring road thinking, geez, someone could easily shoot me here while I'm doing my running. Sure enough, in exactly the spot where I used to think about getting shot, that truck pulled up a few months later and leveled the building across the road and severely damaged the next one, which was the building I was living in. Nineteen Americans died and some five hundred people were injured. The Iran-backed Hezbollah al Hejaz, which was a terrorist group in Saudi Arabia, was blamed for that attack. And here's Saudi's Foreign Minister Abdel bin Ahmed al Jubir in 2016 addressing Iranian officials in Belgium.

SPEAKER_03 38:00

Didn't Iran manage, plan, and execute the nineteen ninety-six attack in Khorba Towers against the American Marines? Yes, they did. The control officer was Brigadier General Sharifi. You're a military attache in Bahrain. The bomb maker was Hezbollah. The explosives came from the Beccar Valley. The top three leaders of the plot escaped and have been living in Iran ever since. Isn't that sheltering terrorists? One of them we captured last year in Lebanon with an Iranian passport, not a Saudi passport, even though he's a Saudi citizen. Isn't that aiding and abetting terrorists? We didn't make this up.

SPEAKER_02 38:49

So there's no doubt that Saudi Arabia knows who committed that attack. And Iran wasn't done yet. Iran's tentacles reached outside the Middle East in August 98, when Hezbollah supported Al Qaeda bombers to blow up the US embassies in Kenya and Tanzania, killing 224 people and wounding thousands. According to the 911 Commission report, which is an a an American report, the bombers were trained by Hezbollah in Lebanon. 9-11, of course, happened in 2001, which was Al Qaeda. And I have no idea if Iran played a part in that, but that attack led US President George W. Bush to name Iran as part of the Axis of evil alongside North Korea and Iraq, saying those countries were supporters of terrorism. Interestingly, up until that point, Iran and the US were actually collaborating against the Taliban, but that collaboration ended, and Iran stepped up its nuclear ambitions, terrorist support, and proxy wars. Other Iranian-backed groups began to appear. For example, in January 2002, gunmen affiliated with the Iran-backed Al-Aqsa Martyrs Brigade killed a US Israeli dual citizen and wounded another in the West Bank. In October 2003, terrorists from the Iran-backed Popular Resistance Committee killed three U.S. diplomatic personnel in a bombing in Gaza. By that time, the March 2003 U.S. led coalition had invaded Iraq, giving Iran a fertile ground to recruit new terrorist groups. Within a few years, improvised explosive devices were going off all over the place in Iraq, many of them sponsored by Iran. For example, in January 2007, twelve men affiliated with the Kudz force of Iran's Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps disguised themselves as U.S. soldiers, entered the Provincial Joint Coordination Center in the Iraqi city of Karbala, killed five U.S. soldiers and wounded another three. And oh by the way, putting on another nation's uniform to fool people is called perfidy, and it's a war crime under the laws of war. But as we noted earlier, we'll talk about the conduct of war in the next episode. Around this time, there were about 1,000 explosives going off every month in Iraq, targeting U.S. and occupation forces. And here is retired U.S. General Stan McChrystal relating how the U.S. viewed Iran. And in it, he begins by referring to the shooting down of the Iranian jet, which I talked about earlier.

SPEAKER_20 41:31

If you take that period, Iran seemed like a recalcitrant enemy that hated us for some reason that we couldn't really understand. And then we get into 2007, and I'm leading a counter-terrorist task force. We had to stand up an entirely new task force focused on the Shia militia that were supported by Iran, so the explosively formed projectiles and all of the things that Iran did to give them capability, and it became a bitter fight. In the minds of someone like me and my force, of course, they were the enemy. They were killing us and we were killing them. And it looked as though they were also a threat, not just to the mission in Iraq, but the stability across the region.

SPEAKER_02 42:30

We can explain some of this because of Iranian influence in Iraq. And here's Bahari again making the connection for us.

SPEAKER_14 42:39

The prominence of Iran in the region is a result of the mistakes that the different powers have made. First of all, Iran's main enemy in the region was Saddam Hussein. And after Saddam Hussein was toppled in 2003 by the US and its allies, Iran became prominent, and Iran had a lot of influence in Iraq. Why? Because there were many Iraqi leaders who were living in Iran for many, many years, for 30 years. They went back to Iraq from Iran and they had their own political parties. And even some of them who were not supporting Iran at that time, like Muqtada al-Sadr, they enjoyed the support of Iran eventually because they were also Shias and they had strategic alliances with Iran.

SPEAKER_02 43:31

As a result of being able to pin much of the terrorism in Iraq on Iranian-funded groups, which by the way were often provisioned with Iranian weapons, the US added additional, increasingly tough sanctions on Iran. By 2010, those sanctions were really biting. But not only were sanctions being applied, in September 2010, Iran discovered malware in its nuclear power plant systems and blamed both US and US. And Israel for that. But Iran kept up its pressure. In March 2011, Iran sent Revolutionary Guard Corps troops to support al-Assad in Syria. The tension expanded and started to draw in other nations. For example, in January 12, the European Union began boycotting Iranian oil exports. And coincidentally, or not, a few months later, in July, a bomb blew up a bus in Bulgaria carrying over 40 Israelis. And here is Professor Matt Levitz of Georgetown University again explaining how Iran factored into this.

SPEAKER_17 44:34

For years, the European Union avoided talking about designating Hezbollah as a terrorist group, in part because Hezbollah wasn't blowing things up on the continent. But two cases now in Europe have changed that, one in Bulgaria and one in Cyprus. Hezbollah wasn't carrying out bombings and shootings in Europe anymore as it had been in the 1980s. But now that's changed. All that time Hezbollah was raising money hands over fists, openly like the Red Cross, providing logistics for operations that would happen elsewhere. But now the Bulgarian government has identified three individuals who were behind the Bulgaria bus bombing as being members of Hezbollah. And an individual in Cyprus is now on trial for carrying out surveillance for an almost identical plot there. He was arrested just two weeks before the Bulgaria bombing. And in that case, not only did it happen in Cyprus, at a time when Cyprus held the rotating presidency of the EU, but the individual on trial is a European citizen, Swede. With all this evidence coming out from the Cyprus trial, the Europeans are having to take a new look at what Hezbollah does. As the defendant himself told Cypriot police, I'm part of Hezbollah. I was just conducting surveillance of the Jews. This is something that my organization does all over the world. They're doing that in Europe now. So why is Hezbollah involved in high-profile terrorist operations in Europe? The answer is to be found not in South Lebanon or the Beka Valley, but in Iran. Hezbollah is a strategic partner with Iran. Hezbollah leaders believe in Waliyat al-Faqih, the rule of the jurisprudent. For them, when the Supreme Leader of Iran says to do something, it must be done. This relationship helps explain why Hezbollah will even do things that are not in the interest of Lebanon. Let me give you some examples of how Hezbollah has carried out activities that are in Iran's interests and not in the best interest of Lebanon. In July 2006, Hezbollah dragged both Lebanon and Israel into a war neither country wanted, and had to spend the next few years building up support for Hezbollah again because people were so upset at what Hezbollah had done. Two years later, Hezbollah took over downtown Beirut by force of arms, taking the weapons that were supposedly only for the resistance against Israel and turning them against fellow Lebanese citizens, leading to the deaths of several Lebanese. The government of New Zealand cited this as an act of terrorism when it designated Hezbollah's military wing. Hezbollah has also carried out attacks against Israelis worldwide. It has provided support to Shia militants in Iraq. It is helping Iran ferry weapons to Houthi rebels in Yemen. And look at what it's doing in Syria and dragging the sectarian conflict back across the border into Lebanon. None of these can be explained as being in Lebanon's best interest. One of the reasons the Europeans say they don't want to designate Hezbollah is because Hezbollah does engage in social welfare activity and it is the dominant political party in Lebanon. But even Hezbollah's deputy secretary general, Naim Qasim himself, has said explicitly that there is no such thing as a distinct wing, a political wing or a social welfare wing or a military wing within Hezbollah. They are all overseen by the Hezbollah Shur Council, the Consultative Council, led by Hassan Nasrella, the Secretary General, and they are all in the furtherance of its idea of resistance. The fact of the matter is that Europe and others, none of us, can give Hezbollah or any other militant organization a free pass for its criminal or terrorist activities simply because it also engages in political or social welfare activity. Imagine I went out on the street today and I robbed a bank. Police arrest me, I say I did it, but but but you have to release me because I'm involved in politics and I give a lot of charity. It just wouldn't fly. It's an Alice in Wonderland way of looking at the world, and there's no reason why we should treat Hezbollah that way.

SPEAKER_02 48:17

The 2012 timeframe was one of conflicting messages. Europeans were starting to negotiate the JCPOA, which we talked about in the last episode. That was the agreement to limit Iran's nuclear program. And at the same time, in Lebanon, Hezbollah ended up forming a significant part of the Lebanese government. Despite being a part of a formal government, even the Europeans had to admit that Hezbollah was a terrorist organization, and Europe designated them as such in mid-2013. So you had a named terrorist organization forming part of a national government. I mean, how sticky is that? Although having success in its state-sponsored terrorism and proxy wars, by late 2013, Iran was facing some problems. In September, the IAEA claimed Iran obstructed the IAEA, which is the International Atomic Energy Agency, from inspecting some sites and accused Iran of having increased the amount of nuclear centrifuges enriching uranium. Additionally, in October 2013, the Iranian real, which is its currency, fell to a record low against the US dollar, losing 80% of its value since 2011, largely due to those international sanctions. And so, Iran showed interest in talks to resolve the sanctions and the nuclear program. Between 2013 and 2015, US President Barack Obama and the EU sponsored high-level talks with Iran. In 2015, Tehran agreed to the nuclear deal, formerly known as the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action or JCPOA. It was intended to limit Iran's nuclear activities in exchange for an easing of sanctions and release of funds. China, Russia, France, Germany, the UK, and the European Union were also party to the deal. But Iran's behavior didn't change. Now we heard a little bit about this in the last episode. Essentially, when Trump came to power, there was a different perspective in charge. In May 2018, Trump withdrew the US from the nuclear deal, arguing that the JCPOA was too lenient on Iran and should be replaced by a better deal, and he renewed the sanctions. And here is a State Department spokesman explaining the U.S. position at that time. So we're talking in the late 2010s.

SPEAKER_25 50:35

Since taking power in 1979, the Islamic Republic of Iran has shown instability and terror across the Middle East and around the world. For decades, the Iranian regime has been the world's largest state sponsor of terrorism, funneling money and weapons to terrorist proxies such as Hezbollah and Hamas. The Iranian regime is responsible for assassinations on five continents, unjustly detains foreigners, including Americans, and in just the last two years has conducted large-scale conventional attacks against Saudi oil facilities and an Iraqi base hosting US and coalition forces. The regime has also been caught red-handed building a covert nuclear weapons program, threatening the United States and our allies around the world. In May of 2018, the United States made the decision to exit the Iran nuclear deal or joint comprehensive plan of action. In addition to paving the way for the world's leading sponsor of terrorism to eventually obtain a nuclear weapon, the JCPOA had gifted the Iranian regime $150 billion, which was used to fund terrorism, missile development, hostage taking, and continued human rights abuses against the Iranian people. President Trump directed his administration to immediately begin the process of reimposing the sanctions that were in place before the adoption of the JCPOA and to implement a campaign of maximum pressure to deny Tehran the resources necessary to conduct its malign activities and force the regime to negotiate a new, more effective deal.

SPEAKER_21 52:21

America will not be held hostage to nuclear blackmail. We will not allow American cities to be threatened with destruction, and we will not allow a regime the chance death to America to gain access to the most deadly weapons on earth.

SPEAKER_25 53:07

And in September 2020, a new executive order was signed by President Trump granting the Secretary of State and Secretary of Treasury sanctions authorities to respond to Iran's dangerous conventional arms activities. Together, these sanctions have deprived the Iranian regime of over $70 billion in revenue that could have been used to finance the violent actions of regional and international terror networks.

SPEAKER_02 53:43

Of course, Iran's terror and proxy network were still active, and Iran used those two weapons along with reinitiating its nuclear weapons program. For example, in 2018, rockets fired by Kataib Hezbollah, an Iranian-backed militia, killed an American security contractor and wounded several US service members and Iraqi personnel in the Iraqi city of Kirkuk. And of course, Hezbollah and Hamas remained active in confronting Israelis and US targets in Israel, Gaza, and the West Bank. In response to Iran's continued use of terror attacks, on 3 January 2020, Qassam Soleimani, the leader of the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps' Kuts Force, was assassinated by a US drone strike in Baghdad. He was the head of the elite Kuts Force of the Revolutionary Guard, and the Kudz Force was already a named terrorist organization. And here's Engel again telling us about Soleimani, followed by a few words from Donald Trump after Soleimani was killed.

SPEAKER_15 54:46

Soleimani became famous in the West over the past decade or so because Iran decided to elevate his profile as the mastermind, the architect behind this modern iteration of the axis of resistance.

SPEAKER_02 55:12

Now you might ask what was the U.S.'s aim in killing him. I think this is well captured by Titra Parsi of the Quincy Institute, and here he is giving us his view.

SPEAKER_24 55:22

I think the ultimate goal of the Trump administration when it comes to its maximum pressure is that they actually are seeking the disintegration of the Iranian state. I don't think that this is a regime change policy. A regime change policy would mean that the United States would also then take responsibility for setting up the next regime in Iran. And I think Donald Trump himself is very much allergic to that idea, not because of any particular moral concerns, but because of a cost issue and because of a fear that it would become a replica of what happened in Iraq. So instead, the objective seems to have shifted towards regime collapse. That is a much cheaper alternative, and the United States is then not responsible for what would happen after the regime collapses. In fact, it would prefer that no regime comes and replaces it. The benefits from their perspective and from the perspective of the Israelis and the Saudis that are very much pushing for this is that with the regime collapse and the chaos that would ensue inside of Iran, Iran's power would be consumed internally. And as a result, the balance of power in the region would shift dramatically away from Iran. And I think everything we're seeing right now is pointing in this direction because it's really difficult to explain these policies based on the official objectives that the Trump administration is putting forward.

SPEAKER_02 56:56

Iranian-backed rocket and explosive attacks continued in Iraq and Syria throughout the early 2020s. Then the really big one happened on the 7th of October. On that day, Hamas killed around 1200 people in a brazen attack in southern Israel launched from Gaza. Here's Danny Setrunowitz of the Institute of National Security Studies in Tel Aviv talking about the relationship between Hamas and Iran in this time frame.

SPEAKER_08 57:23

Well, uh we need to understand the relations between Hamas and uh Iran. Iran is sending money, sending arms, training in operatives. But at the end of the day, Hamas is a Palestinian terrorist movement in a way that it's solely independent, especially in the Gaza stream. So there is of course the support of Iran to Hamas activity, but tactically speaking, Hamas doesn't need the approval of Iran to launch this uh attack. Of course, there is some sort of coordination in the background all the time. But at the end of the day, uh it's not that Iran needs to approve any attack carried out by Hamas, but tactically, operationally on the ground, Hamas is independent to do what it wants, what is able to do.

SPEAKER_02 58:08

There is a strategic support by Iran in the aftermath of 7 October, Iranian proxies supported Hamas by increasing pressure on Israel. And here's Ingel again discussing that.

SPEAKER_15 58:20

Iran's allies have responded from different sides. Most importantly, the Hezbollah militia in the northern part with Israel has engaged in skirmishes with Israeli soldiers. Iranian militias in Syria have also gotten closer to the border where they have uh engaged in skirmishes. In Yemen, the Iranian allied Houthi rebels have both fired rockets at southern Israel but also captured a vessel in the Red Sea, even though there's been these types of attacks with increased frequency over the past decade or so. In this context, of course, they compound pressure on Israel.

SPEAKER_02 58:57

When you consider the consequent Israeli action in Gaza against Lebanon and then against Iran, you have to wonder if the Iranian strategy and the Hamas strategy backfired on them. And here's Professor Nasser of the John Hopkins University talking about the Hamas attack of the 7th of October in the immediate aftermath of that attack.

SPEAKER_06 59:23

They began escalating pressure for a strategy of combating Israel, particularly after the killing of their nuclear scientists in Iran, and particularly the way that Israelis bragged about it, tried to humiliate Iran. There were then a series of industrial accidents, attacks on uh drones and centrifuge locations. I don't want to call it necessarily payback, but it's a strategy that Iran always has had in this combating in Israel that you have to keep Israel busy on its borders because if it's not busy, busy on its own borders, it's busy on our borders. And so I would say it was a strategy of trying to revive the Palestinian issue, try to turn the tables on the way Israel felt confident in the region. But I think that the way that this attack happened, what Hamas got done, the way it embarrassed uh Israeli intelligence and the military, and then the way Israel has reacted to it is nothing that I think Tehran had calculated. Like others are also trying to basically grapple with the way that this war is unfolding. Ongoing attacks have a number of reasons. One is uh that obviously they are already trying to think in terms of what would be the Israel, Israel's long-term reaction to this. Uh, if I go in the Iranian uh foreign minister went to Lebanon, he put these words in Hassan Nasrallah's mouth that Israel would would want to first finish off Hamas, then Hezbollah, then it's gonna come basically after Iran, and that in a way you have to follow a strategy that tries to preempt that. And whether or not Iran will escalate, Hezbollah will escalate uh from here on. I think it has a lot more to do with whether they would see waiting for Israel to fight this war with them on its own schedule is a better idea, or trying to actually overwhelm Israel in a way that would prevent that. So I think it's a much longer calculation.

SPEAKER_02 1:01:16

You have to give Nasser credit. He nailed that prediction to a T. Iran and Hamas had no idea that the 7 October attacks would lead to an existential war against terrorism on Israel's borders. We'll talk more about this Israeli strategy when we talk about the conduct of war in the next episode. Here, speaking in the aftermath of the 7th October attacks and the Israeli attack on Gaza is Professor Said of the Tehran University talking about whether Iran will continue to support its proxies.

SPEAKER_10 1:01:56

It is supplying weapons to Yemen, to uh Lebanon. The United States is supplying weapons to the genocidal regime in Tel Aviv. Iran is supplying weapons to those who are indigenous to the land and who are defending themselves and whose women and children are being banned. It's clear who's on the side of morality and who isn't. Iran will definitely support Israel, just as Iran supports Hamas and its allies in Gaza. Iran supports them now. They will continue to support them with whatever they need to defend themselves, and Iran will do the same for the rest of the resistance. By any means necessary. Whatever they need, whatever they need to protect their country, to protect their people, Iran will give to them.

SPEAKER_02 1:02:46

Well, there you have Iran's perspective on the reason for attacking Israel. We could do a half dozen podcasts on the consequent Israeli actions in Gaza and southern Lebanon, but the focus here is the war against Iran. The point to note from Sayyid's comments is that Iran is at the point where they are publicly acknowledging their support for these proxy wars. And you can hear the resolution in Sayyid's voice. The Iranians are not going to stop. And as evidence, it didn't take long for another terrorist action, this one in Iraq in December 2023, which was a drone attack conducted by an Iranian-backed Iraq militia against the US forces in Erbal, which wounded three American soldiers. And a month later, January 2024, a drone launched by Khatib Hezbollah killed three US soldiers in Jordan. Well, the tit for tat started. In April 2024, Israel bombed Iran's embassy in Damascus, killing seven people, including two Revolutionary Guard generals. Then in July, Hamas chief Ismail Haniyeh was assassinated in Tehran, with Israel widely regarded as being behind that attack. This brings up an interesting point about what Iran seeks to protect with regards to the Hamas organization. And here's Professor Nasser again discussing it.

SPEAKER_06 1:04:07

And I would say in Iran's thinking and in Hezbollah's thinking, there's a distinction between Hamas as an ideology and a movement, Hamas as a government, and the Al-Qasam Brigade, which actually is the real connection with Iran and Hezbollah. Yes, at the higher level it is Hamas as an organization, but the real operational relationship between the Otsforce and Gaza is through the Al-Qassam Brigade. I don't know which one of these is more critical to Iran, like protection of Al-Qassam Brigade or extricating it in a way and preserving it, or the preservation of a government or a movement. I think they're less perhaps uh attached to that.

SPEAKER_02 1:04:47

Given the state of Gaza and the unlikelihood of any Hamas government staying in power ever again, I suspect Iran will seek to support the remnants of the Qassam Brigade that NASA referred to. Time will tell. To sum it up, in November 2024, a report released by the Foundation for Defense of Democracies indicated that Iran and its proxies had conducted more than 180 attacks against U.S. forces in the Middle East between October 17, 2023 and November 19, 2024. So that's roughly one every two days, resulting in more than 180 wounded and three killed U.S. service members. The Israeli Defense Force produced a video summarizing this Iranian network, and although it's a bit dated, it gets the message across.

SPEAKER_23 1:06:00

Iran has provided the Huddy terrorist group there with an assortment of radiant UAVs, anti-tank guidance missiles, and ballistic improved missiles, among other weapons. Iran recently increased Hamas's annual funding to $100 million and increased into training Hamas terrorists. In recent years, Iran and Hamas have increased their partnership substantially, increasing Iran's internal involvement inside Gaza. Iran also heavily funds and supports the terrorist regime of Bashar al-Assad in Syria, providing them with training and weapons and sending their own IRJ forces to fight in the Syrian civil war, to maintain Assad's regime in power and secure a safe route to smuggle weapons into Lebanon and access the Mediterranean Sea. Iran has even expanded their access to South America, gaining access to the extensive Latin American drug trade network in order to fund their global terrorism, as well as having a friendly base of operation across the globe. Now they are showing their real face, the architects of global terrorism.

SPEAKER_02 1:06:59

Donald Trump came back to power shortly after that period in March 2025. Trump sent a letter to Iran's Supreme Leader Ayatollah Khamenei, proposing new negotiations on a nuclear deal with the deadline of 60 days. But Khameini rejected the offer, saying the US was not seeking negotiations with Iran, but rather imposing demands on it. Talks started unofficially in Oman and Italy, with Muscat acting as the mediator. Trump claimed his team was very close to a deal after several rounds of talks and warned Israel against striking Iran. Tehran, too, expressed optimism but insisted on the right to enrich uranium, which was a sticking point in those talks, and is today as well. Israel launched strikes across Iran a day before the sixth round of those talks was to commence. The Israeli attacks on Iran kicked off what is now known as the Twelve Day War. Part of that short war included U.S. strikes on three key nuclear facilities in Iran, the US cited security concerns, and the defense of Israel. Now we covered the security concerns from a nuclear attack perspective in the last episode. But you could argue that those attacks were also partly about Iran's behavior and its terrorism and its proxy wars. And of course, we are now in the next phase, which commenced with the US and Israeli attacks on 28th Feb 2026. We haven't mentioned Yemen yet. They too have jumped in on this war and have been attacking Israel off and on with Iran support. And here's Susan Maloney of the Brookings Institute talking about the Houthis in Yemen.

SPEAKER_00 1:08:42

The Iranis provided them a lot of support, training, equipment, materiel. Um, but it's not entirely clear that they're as docile and as um you know sort of tightly controlled as some of the other Iranian proxies might be. So I think that is a bit of a wild card.

SPEAKER_02 1:08:58

Of course, there is a tie to Iran, and here's Dr. Valez of the International Crisis Group think tank on how Iran wants to dominate the Muslim world in competition with Saudi for dominance and how they use the Houthis as part of that strategy.

SPEAKER_04 1:09:12

Iran as the largest Shia state in the region considers itself as the natural leader for Muslims in the Middle East, but especially the Shia community across the region. And so Iran is trying to undermine Saudi position through, for example, helping Housis.

SPEAKER_02 1:09:27

I think this is a good place to summarize. Since 1979, Iran has been actively supporting terrorism and proxy wars across the Middle East, and in some cases taking that action to other continents. Iran has its reasons, which we covered two episodes ago, and its combativeness was well summarized by Yasmin Mather of Oxford and Dr. Tfaiz again with some related commentary. And here they are.

SPEAKER_07 1:10:19

This is a network that is known as the Axis of Resistance. The network is more coordinated than ever, and is more capable than ever. But having said all of this, post-October 7th, it was very clear that Iran was taken by surprise. What is seen in Tehran as defensive is seen by the rest of the region as offensive. My fear is that as a result of the war in Gaza, the credibility of Iran's regional deterrence has diminished. It might now try to compensate that shortcoming with nuclear deterrence, basically the ultimate deterrent.

SPEAKER_02 1:11:00

Even if we remove the threats of nuclear weapons, Iran's actions demonstrate a commitment to engendering violence and continual attacks against Western targets, primarily Israelis and Americans, but others as well. You might argue that, well, Iran didn't directly control the groups that were doing that terrorism or those proxy wars. And if you think back to what proxy wars are, of course, major powers have in the past denied culpability based on an arm's length relationship. But here we have Professor Gordon Gray of George Washington University addressing this point.

SPEAKER_18 1:11:37

Iran does not necessarily exert day-to-day operational control over each and every one of its proxies. That being said, when you provide strategic direction, when you provide significant material, when you provide significant training, you cannot avoid culpability.

SPEAKER_02 1:12:01

I think he's spot on. Those terrorist acts and proxy wars would not have been happening to anywhere near the same degree as they have been without Iran's support. You could make the arguments that this steady stream of attacks means that Israel will never be safe, and that Iran's attacks and sponsored attacks are justification for going to war. The war we started on the 28th of February. And here's Jasmine El Gamal, who's an ex-Pentagon advisor, summaring up that point.

SPEAKER_11 1:12:32

What we know is the Israeli-Palestinian conflict is a problem. What we know is that Iran and all of its proxies use that conflict. Whether it's disingenuous or not, it doesn't matter. The fact is they use that conflict as justification for their aggression in the region, for their actions. Israel will never be safe as long as it continues the occupation.

SPEAKER_02 1:12:58

As well as Jasmine's perspective, let's listen to Barack Sunir, who is a senior fellow of the Henry Jackson Society. Now that's a rights-leaning British think tank, and you need to take this with a grain of salt because Sunir is clearly biased. But here he is explaining why he thinks the current war is necessary and just.

SPEAKER_01 1:17:33

Sanctions are also focused on human rights, how they're treating their own people. And so U.S. sanctions are intended to change those kinds of policies into a direction that we think make more sense either for international security or for the safety and security of the Iranian people. Sanctions are leaky. The reality is that sanctions are never going to be as waterproof as people think they are, that there's always going to be some ability for smuggling activity or evasion to take place. Chinese are willing to continue doing this business, and the United States has been unwilling to go after Chinese banks and other financial entities that might change some of that decision making. So there's a lot of leaks, and the Iranis are benefiting from that, although, of course, not to the extent that they would be if there were no sanctions in place at all. The funny thing about sanctions is I think there's sometimes an impression that you impose them and then everything's done. But sanctions maintenance is as big a task as the imposition of sanctions in the first place. That's because the party that is being sanctioned takes steps to evade those sanctions. So the Iranis are every day trying to find new ways around the sanctions because, of course, they would like to be able to sell oil. They would like to be able to make money. They have a national interest in being able to do so as well. Which does mean that you have to continue to apply attention, effort, intelligence resources, and similar to the task of trying to close those loopholes and work to make them as effective as possible.

SPEAKER_02 1:18:57

Richard made a good point here. You can impose sanctions, but maintaining them and preventing the avoidance actions that follow is very difficult. And at the end of the day, there comes a point where sanctions don't work. Hence where we are today. Given those sanctions and all the strikes Iran has endured, you might find yourself thinking, wow, Iran went to a lot of effort to wage proxy wars and set up terrorism in the region, and they continue to do so despite all the pain they are absorbing. But if we listen to Professor Nasser again, and although it's a bit dated, I think he captured the reasoning well.

SPEAKER_05 1:19:35

And in 2015, there was a meeting between Henry Kissinger and Ali Larijani. Larijani was in New York for a get-together of speakers of parliament. He was Speaker of Parliament. He met with Kissinger. Kissinger basically wanted to know when is Iran going to get tired of this revolution? When are you going to basically become a normal country, right? Kissinger begins to talk to him about Immanuel Kant and his theory of perpetual peace. He didn't know that Lari Jani had translated Emmanuel Kant in Persian. So I apparently, according to Kissinger, later on narrated to me, they had a fantastic conversation because then he got elevated to a subject that both of them really reveled in. But the gist of it was that Lari Jani said, we want to know when are you going to get exhausted?

unknown 1:20:19

Right?

SPEAKER_05 1:20:20

When are you going to leave us alone? And this is not sort of an ideological war for Iran. This is basically us protecting our liberation by exhausting you to just leave it alone. The combination of what Assembl Soleimani did in Iraq, in other words, organizing militias, proxies, which is essentially gradually for Iran, became a very effective way of guerrilla warfare against the US and Israel. To Arabs, this obviously very understandably was very, very unwelcome. Just as much as any villager anywhere in the world would not like when guerrillas show up and take over their village and wage war from there. That Iran actually would see that the best way of dealing with the United States, to making it exhausted, to making it not want to repeat of Iraq, to give Israel second thought every time he thinks about attacking Iran, is actually to have these militias which continuously snipe and attack and remind Israel and the United States of the dangers of attacking Iran. And the strategy obviously worked until it didn't after October 7. But in Iran, they would say that it's not true that it was a failed strategy or that what we did was wasteful. We created protection for two decades. Between 2003 and 2023, for two decades, the strategy worked. That's why, even at the height of the nuclear issue, Israel didn't attack Iran, that's why the United States didn't attack Iran. Now it doesn't work anymore, but it worked at that point in time.

SPEAKER_02 1:21:49

When you hear that, it's no wonder the US assassinated Soleimani and it begs the question now that there is a US government willing to go to war for self-defense and an emboldened Israel, what's the next phase of this conflict from the Iranian perspective? You know, do they continue these proxy wars and terrorism and keep trying to go with their nuclear program? I suppose their raison de Etra, their reason for being, will remain. And that is the preservation of the Islamic revolutionary movement and making the region unpalatable for the US? And that is probably still the critical pathway for them from a political success perspective. One wonders if China would be so supportive if this results in long-term disruption to its oil supply, as we're seeing now in the short term because of the blockage of the Strait of Hormuz. And is the Israeli strategy of total war against terrorism on its borders actually sustainable? Especially if the US were to change governments and then stop fighting the Israeli military? Or maybe this is about Netanyahu leaving his legacy. Is the long run in Iran avoidable? In other words, regime change or more terrorism or more proxy wars. Who knows? You really can't tell. Here's Bahari again, this time summing up the Israeli-Iran incongruence and why this whole thing needs a resolution.

SPEAKER_14 1:23:14

The basic idea that I think we have to talk about is that Iran does not believe that Israel should exist. And Israel, of course, wants to exist. Iran has proxies who are fighting against Israel. Iran is building a nuclear weapon that must be used somehow, most probably against its presumed enemies. So we have a situation that we have a government in Iran that does not believe in the uh state of Israel and wants to destroy Israel, destroy Israel as a Jewish state one way or another. And we have, on the other hand, a Jewish state who wants to survive. So this is the essence of the struggle between Iran and Israel. And both governments are resorting to illegal means to attack and to defend themselves. So whatever I think we talk about Israel and Iran, we have to think about that basic concept. I'm really worried about the future of this because I cannot see the coexistence of Israel and the Islamic Republic in the Middle East at the same time.

SPEAKER_02 1:24:39

We have to ask ourselves: is it enough to justify war, illegal killings, surgical attacks? Well, maybe it is. And I'll leave you with three final thoughts. First, here's Ronald Reagan discussing how the fight against terrorism is indeed an ethical reason to go to war.

SPEAKER_19 1:24:57

All of these states are united by one simple criminal phenomenon. Their fanatical hatred of the United States, our people, our way of life, our international stature, and the strategic purpose behind the terrorism sponsored by these outlaw states is clear. To disorient the United States, to disrupt or alter our foreign policy, to sow discord between ourselves and our allies, to frighten friendly third world nations working with us for peaceful settlements of regional conflicts, and finally to remove American influence from those areas of the world where we're working to bring stable and democratic government. In short, to cause us to retreat, retrench, to become Fortress America. Yes, their real goal is to expel America from the world. And that is the reason these terrorist nations are arming, training, and supporting attacks against this nation. And that is why we can be clear on one point. These terrorist states are now engaged in acts of war against the government and people of the United States. And under international law, any state which is the victim of acts of war has the right to defend itself.

SPEAKER_02 1:26:18

And to be more contemporary, I've got Condaleza Rice summing it up from her perspective.

SPEAKER_27 1:26:24

Iran has been at war with us for at least 47 years, all the way from 1979. People may forget they took our embassy hostage 444 days. They were responsible for the killings of 300 plus Marines in Lebanon in the early 1980s. If you ask people about Iraq, uh, what was the source of many of our casualties in Iraq, you'll get estimates as high as 75 or 80 percent of them were due to Iranian-made uh roadside bombs. And so they've been at war for us a long time. They also have uh developed the military capability to have reach outside of the boundaries of Iran, including Hezbollah and Hamas, which they both uh arm and equip and continue to arm and equip. And I myself negotiated four Security Council resolutions, calling them a threat to international peace and security under Chapter Seven, the strongest chapter of the UN Security Council resolutions, because of their nuclear ambitions. So to say that this uh regime uh was not a threat, I think it's ahistorical. They have been a threat for a long time. And by the way, the Iranians who I think made a strategic blunder in uh attacking the Gulf states like the UAE or Kuwait or others, uh, is demonstrating uh that it is its goal to be a destabilizing force in the Middle East, to render this awful regime incapable of using its military power. That's a word. I think if the goal of the administration is to render Iran incapable of using its military forces outside of its borders, of threatening our neighbors, our allies, of threatening our bases abroad, which we're seeing they are capable of doing. If it is uh trying to deny them a conventional umbrella for their nuclear ambitions, that is a worthy goal. Now, what comes after? People are of course concerned about that. But if you can render Iran essentially incapable of military action against us and against our allies, that's uh worthy. And I think what they're trying to do is to neuter Iran as a military power in the region.

SPEAKER_02 1:28:45

And finally, the reason that I would apply to the current situation is a general thought about global powers, people, and laws. And it comes from Marcus Aurelius, the great Roman Caesar and philosopher. And he said, this is a quote To expect bad men not to do wrong is madness. To allow men to behave wrongly towards others and to expect them not to do you any wrong is irrational. And I think we have been irrational when dealing with Iran for the last forty-five years. And I'll tip my hat to Benjamin Netanyahu and Donald Trump, as much as you may or may not like their politics, they finally stopped treating Iran irrationally. Iran needs to be stopped, and they're doing it. And for that reason, I support the war to raid Iran of nuclear weapons, but even if there weren't any nuclear weapons in the equation, I support the war to impose regime change so that Iran stops this litany of terrorism and proxy wars. Next episode we'll consider the legalities of the conduct of this war between the US, Israel, and Iran, and we'll do so by looking at the laws of war. If you enjoyed this podcast, please forward it to a friend. Thanks for listening.