Podcast: Iran's role in the Gaza war: is escalation inevitable?

TRANSCRIPT: Iran's role in the Gaza war: is escalation inevitable?

Karim Sadjadpour:

Iran doesn't care about the wellbeing of Palestinians. It doesn't care about the wellbeing of Lebanese or Yemenis or Iraqis. Iran really benefits from the misery of these populations and these failing states, and they don't want to see these populations become prosperous. And so, in some ways, the more these populations experience conflict, whether it's conflict amongst themselves or direct conflict with Israel, Iran has tended to benefit from this despair of these Arab populations.

Ian Bremmer:

Hello, and welcome to the GZERO World Podcast. This is where you'll find extended conversations from interviews on my public television show. I'm Ian Bremmer, and today, as all eyes are on Israel's escalating war with Hamas, what is Iran's next move? In Southern Lebanon, Iran-backed Hezbollah fighters have a missile arsenal that dwarfs Hamas' rocket supply, and could easily overwhelm Israel's famed Iron Dome air defense.

What's more, the Pentagon recently redirected the USS Eisenhower aircraft carrier and its strike group of destroyers to the Middle East instead of the Eastern Mediterranean. One big reason, to intercept missile and drone strikes by Iran-backed Houthi militias in Yemen aimed at Israel. Days later, American F-16 jets carried out airstrikes in Eastern Syria on facilities used by Iran's Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps and its proxies. Strikes were in retaliation for a barrage of recent rocket and drone attacks against American forces in Iraq and Syria.

So yeah, Iran gets around. But there's a big difference between skirmishes with Iran proxy forces and an all-out US/Israel/Iran war. So how close is Israel and its Western allies to all-out war with Iran? And how will Israel's ongoing invasion of Gaza up the ante? Those are questions I'm posing to today's guest, Iran expert at the Carnegie Endowment for Peace, Kareem Sadjadpour. Let's get to it.

Speaker 3:

The GZERO World Podcast is brought to you by our lead sponsor, Prologis. Prologis helps businesses across the globe scale their supply chains with an expansive portfolio of logistics real estate, and the only end-to-end solutions platform addressing the critical initiatives of global logistics today. Learn more at prologis.com

Speaker 4:

Global Reboot, a podcast from Foreign Policy Magazine, was created as countries and economies emerged from the pandemic. But rather than rebuilding the same old systems and the same old problems, they called for a reboot. On each episode of Global Reboot, host and Foreign Policy Editor-in-Chief, Ravi Agrawal, sits down with some of the smartest thinkers and doers around to push for solutions to the world's greatest problems. On Season Three, you'll hear about resetting the US-China relationship, dealing with the rise of AI, preserving our oceans, and much more. Find Global Reboot in partnership with the Doha Forum wherever you get your podcasts.

Ian Bremmer:

Karim, welcome back to the show.

Karim Sadjadpour:

Thank you so much, Ian.

Ian Bremmer:

It's good to see you. I have so much I want to ask you about Iran's role in this Israel/Gaza and extended conflict. Tell me how you think Iran has been involved so far.

Karim Sadjadpour:

Since the 1979 revolution, there have essentially been three pillars of the Islamic Republic of Iran. Number one, Iran wants to defeat the US-led world order. Number two, they want to evict the United States from the Middle East. And number three, they want to replace Israel with Palestine. And there's perhaps been no government in the world which has had a more consistent and enduring grand strategy than the Islamic Republic of Iran. They've spent many billions of dollars on militant groups, whether that's Hamas, Islamic Jihad, Hezbollah, trying to defeat Israel. And so, in some ways this is nothing new. It's just a continuation of Iran's longtime strategy to try to end the state of Israel.

Ian Bremmer:

So October 7th, there's no state in the world that's happier with what happened on October 7th than Iran. Is that a fair statement?

Karim Sadjadpour:

That's absolutely fair to say. What Iran wants the world to be focused on is Palestinians being killed at the hand of the Israeli government. And over the last year, much of the world's media was focused on the popular uprisings in Saudi Iran, when the Iran government was killing its own citizens. Or before that, it was Iran's client, Bashar al-Assad, killing Sunni Muslims in Syria. And so, this is the sweet spot for the Iranian government. They like it very much when there is Palestinian/Israeli conflict and they can show images of Palestinian civilians dying.

Ian Bremmer:

Now, the statements that I've heard from the Supreme Leader and from other Iranian government officials, very much in the vein of, "End of Zionism, destroy Israel. The region will be in flames." But it's always sort of in the passive voice. "Region will be," not "Iran will do." They certainly do not want to say that they're going to be involved in this in any way directly. And yet, at the same time, Karim, you've already said and we know, that Iran provides money and weapons and training for not just Hamas, but all of these organizations around the region. How plausible is it that Iran actually wants to stay out of the conflict directly?

Karim Sadjadpour:

Well, Iran doesn't want peace with the United States, nor does it want peace with Israel. Now, do they want direct war with the United States or Israel? In the past, that hasn't been the case. They've tried to operate via proxy. And really, if you look at the Middle East today, Iran is the dominant power in the region. And the places, the countries where it has enormous influence are essentially five failing states, right? You have Syria, Iraq, Lebanon, Yemen, and Gaza, the Palestinian territories.

So Iran tends to thrive where there is chaos, where there are power vacuums. And so for them, Israeli invasion of Gaza, they've experienced this before. They've experienced Israel going into Gaza before. And their proxy groups, whether it's Hamas or Islamic jihad, have come out stronger. Iran's most powerful proxy, Lebanese Hezbollah, was in some ways a byproduct of the 1982 Israeli invasion of Lebanon. And that really helped them turbocharge Lebanese Hezbollah.

So over the course of the last four decades, they've really thrived in these indirect conflicts. Now, the question is whether they're prepared to enter into more direct conflict with either Israel or the United States. And one advantage you could argue that Iran has is the fact that they've had in their Supreme Leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, arguably the longest serving dictator in the world. He's been in power, the Supreme Leader, since 1989, and he has a lot of experience and a lot of institutional memory. And I think one of the chief lessons he's learned over the decades is that if you hit America in the United States, you go after the World Trade Center, they're going to follow you to wherever you are and hunt you down. But if you go after US forces in the Middle East, well that sours American public opinion because people will ask, "What are we even doing there in the first place?"

And so, I think the danger we face at the moment is that it's the Islamic Republic of Iran's view that after two decades of failure in Iraq and Afghanistan, there's no appetite in the American public, whether you're a Democrat or a Republican, to fight more conflicts in the region. And Iran feels particularly emboldened at the moment, whether it's going after Israel via proxy, going after the US via their proxies. And they may be difficult to deter, because they may either correctly read the situation, that we're not interested in a conflict, or they may misread it and it could lead us to more direct conflict with Iran.

Ian Bremmer:

Now, the Israeli response to the terrorist attacks by Hamas has been an enormous amount of military firepower, first an air campaign which continues, and now a ground campaign. And the stated purpose of those operations, not just from the Prime Minister, but by the entire Unity War Cabinet, is to destroy Hamas, which is Iran's principle proxy in Gaza and among the Palestinians. So are the Iranians prepared to stand back and watch that happen? And if the answer is no, what are they going to do about it?

Karim Sadjadpour:

Well, again, if you look at the history of the last two decades, what Iran tends to do is at the beginning of these conflicts, and the 2003 US invasion of Iraq is perhaps an example, where you initially bide your time, but then you prepare your forces for basically the post-war. Right? And so, that's what Iran has done with its proxies in Lebanon after various Israeli invasions of Lebanese Hezbollah, again past Israeli wars in Gaza. They may lose the war, but they tend to emerge stronger after there's a cessation of hostilities.

So I expect this time to be no different. Certainly, Iran is not going to change in any way it's policies, it's longtime policy of trying to essentially replace Israel with Palestine and support proxy groups to that end. And they're prepared to spend a lot of money to do that. And technologically, they're much more equipped to do that as compared to let's say 10, 15, 20 years ago. They've become much more effective at manufacturing these precision missiles, rockets, and drones.

Now the question is whether at some point Iran will want to unleash Lebanese Hezbollah and get them involved. Hezbollah has well over 100.000, perhaps 150,000 rockets they could employ against Israel. That remains a question. But again, as long as Iran feels that there's not going to be any direct consequences on the Iranian homeland, I think they're happy to continue to fight Israel down to the last Palestinian, Yemeni, Lebanese, and Iraqi.

Ian Bremmer:

I'm wondering about the level of Iranian influence. And I understand that this is a bit of an impossible question to answer, but just to provide some context, right? For all of the support that Iran has provided, including training for Hamas, right up until the attacks, the belief of the American intelligence is that the Iranians were not aware of the October 7th attacks coming. They were surprised by it. And the Israeli intelligence seems to accept that assessment. Does that strike you as plausible? And then, more broadly, when you said the Iranians might set loose Hezbollah in Lebanon, is that the Iranian call? Is that 100% Iran's call? To what extent do they really have a level of operational control over these various proxy groups in these five failed to failing states and territories across the region, Karim?

Karim Sadjadpour:

So I would say that Iran tends to macromanage rather than micromanage their proxy groups. So it's not usually the case where they call up, whether it's the leaders of Hamas or Hezbollah or the Houthis and say, "Okay. Do X, Y, and Z today." They tend to defer to those leaders themselves. So they don't micromanage, but on a macro level, they do have enormous influence, just given the fact that they're oftentimes the chief financier and military supplier of these groups.

Now, I've also read the conflicting reports. The Wall Street Journal reported that Iran was directly involved in the planning of these Hamas attacks, and they even quoted Hamas and Hezbollah and Syrian officials arguing that. And I've also heard the counter-arguments from US Intelligence saying that they don't have any specific intel that Iran was behind it. So I think that remains to be seen.

But I guess the main point I'd make, Ian, is that we really have to distinguish between being anti-Israel and pro-Palestine. Iran, the Islamic Republic of Iran, is deeply anti-Israel. And I wouldn't argue it's pro-Palestine or pro-Lebanese Shia even. And I say this in response to your question about whether or not Iran would ask Hassan Nasrallah to unleash Hezbollah rockets.

Ian Bremmer:

That's the ruler of Hezbollah.

Karim Sadjadpour:

The ruler of Hezbollah. Because at the end of the day, Iran doesn't care about the wellbeing of Palestinians. It doesn't care about the wellbeing of Lebanese or Yemenis or Iraqis. I'm always reminded of a conversation I had over a decade ago in a Track Two meeting with a senior Iranian official, and this was in 2008. And I asked him, I said, "Think of all the money that Iran has spent over the past decades on Hamas, Hezbollah, Islamic Jihad." It was then billions of dollars. Now it's many billions of dollars. And I said, "Think of how many Palestinians and Lebanese you guys could have educated, sent abroad to become doctors, lawyers, and engineers."

And I'll never forget his response. He said, "What good would that have done for Iran?" He said, "Do you think had we educated these young men to become doctors, lawyers, and engineers, they're going to want to come back and fight for Hamas and Hezbollah and Islamic Jihad? No, they're going to remain professionals." And the reason why I say this is that Iran really benefits from the misery of these populations and these failing states, and they don't want to see these populations become prosperous. And so, in some ways, the more these populations experience conflict, whether it's conflict amongst themselves or direct conflict with Israel, Iran has tended to benefit from this despair of these Arab populations.

Ian Bremmer:

So they're well-positioned on that front looking forward, I think that seems pretty unarguable. But when I think about the broader geopolitics of the region, we have seen the Iranians with a breakthrough diplomatically with Saudi Arabia facilitated by the Chinese, but really, a grassroots effort by both governments. And right after October 7th, I thought it was very interesting that Mohammad bin Salman and President Raisi, okay, not the Supreme Leader, but still, were publicly talking about, "Hey, we need to maintain stability." And that was a pretty historic meeting. Iran doesn't seem to want to do anything that could jeopardize the progress they've made with the wealthier Gulf Arabs. Is that fair?

Karim Sadjadpour:

I think it was fair at the time when Iran was in a state of national uprising and they felt deeply isolated. And during the rapprochement with Saudi Arabia facilitated by China was a way of lessening that isolation. But on a fundamental level, I think that Iran's Supreme Leader has always believed that the Palestinian issue, or being anti-Israel, still is where the Arab street is at. It's those countries like Saudi Arabia, the UE, countries which signed the Abraham Accord. Saudi Arabia didn't yet do it, but they were negotiating a normalization deal with Israel. It's those countries which have to change their ways, not Iran, because Iran's position is reflective of the popular view in the Middle East.

As I said, since 1979, I would argue very few governments in the world have had a more clear, consistent, and enduring strategy, grand strategy than the Islamic Republic of Iran. And I just don't think that's going to change as long as this current supreme leader remains in power and is now 83, 84 years old.

Ian Bremmer:

Now, the United States relationship, the JCPOA, the Iranian Nuclear Deal, of course, is done. That certainly predates this crisis. There had been some efforts by the Americans to reengage that included five American citizens, one of whom you and I both knew quite well, that were released by Iran. In return, the Americans were unfreezing $6 billion of Iranian assets. Now that money has been re-frozen. The best I can understand, the Americans are not going to be resent back to Tehran. Where do we think the US/Iran relationship goes from here? Does this lead the Iranians to dramatically step up their nuclear efforts? The Saudis wouldn't be happy about that. Does it also lead the Iranians to be much more willing to engage in strikes against American bases, troops in the region, given what you said about that before?

Karim Sadjadpour:

It's an important question, Ian. And at the moment, I think even people inside the Biden administration would probably concede that they don't really have an Iran strategy at the moment. The hope was to revive the Iran Nuclear Deal. That hasn't happened. And now we're in an escalatory situation with Iran at a time when no one really wants an escalatory situation.

But that's not only for us to decide. And I think that it is absolutely plausible that Iran may choose to both advance its nuclear program and up its attacks on US forces and Israel, whether directly or via proxy if they believe that the Biden administration is not interested in a fight. This is kind of what's oftentimes one of the challenges in dealing with Iran, is that you're dealing with a country with a government which needs the United States, wants the US as an adversary for its own internal legitimacy. And so, when we have an administration which is trying to make concessions or conciliatory gestures toward the Islamic Republic, they don't reciprocate that. They oftentimes say, "Oh, we can afford to be even bolder, because America doesn't want to fight with us." And so, that's the challenge that this Biden administration faces, that on one hand they want to avert conflict with Iran. But if you want to deter Iran, whether deter their nuclear advances or deter the regional aggression, you have to make clear to them there's going to be costs for that kind of behavior.

Ian Bremmer:

None of this really affects the American economy so far. Of course, oil does, and I don't think we can have a conversation about Iran without at least one question about oil. They export some 1.4 million barrels a day. In part, that's because the Americans haven't done much to the Iranians in terms of the oil that's going to secondary, non-sanctioned countries. And also about 10X that is going through the Strait of Hormuz every day, which the Iranians certainly could have something to say about if they wanted to. How worried are you about those flows in the near to medium-term?

Karim Sadjadpour:

Well, I think here is an example of America and China having a common interest in ensuring stability in the region in order to ensure the free flow of oil, because China imports much more oil these days from the Middle East than the United States. That should be very much a Chinese interest as well. The US has no positive leverage over Iran. They can threaten Iran with conflict and sanctions, but China has enormous influence over Iran.

I did see Tony Blinken, Secretary of State Blinken, make a statement asking the Chinese to exercise some restraint over Iran, because if there's a country which loses more from disrupted flow of energy from the Middle East, it's China. And here, Ian, I think it's important to distinguish between China and Russia because oftentimes these two countries are lumped together. But as you know better than I do, China is very transactional when it comes to the Middle East. They're not ideological. They do a lot of trade with Iran, but they do much more trade with Iran's rivals in Saudi Arabia and the UAE, whereas Russia is much more ideological, who is a US ally and who is a US adversary? So I think that's one issue, the free flow of oil, in which there is a common interest there between Beijing and Washington.

Ian Bremmer:

Karim Sadjadpour, thanks for joining us on GZERO World.

Karim Sadjadpour:

Thank you so much, Ian.

Ian Bremmer:

That's it for today's edition of the GZERO World Podcast. Do you like what you heard? Of course you did. Well, why don't you check us out at gzeromedia.com, and take a moment to sign up for our newsletter. It's called GZERO Daily.

Speaker 3:

The GZERO World Podcast is brought to you by our lead sponsor, Prologis. Prologis helps businesses across the globe scale their supply chains with an expansive portfolio of logistics real estate, and the only end-to-end solutions platform addressing the critical initiatives of global logistics today. Learn more at prologis.com

Speaker 4:

Global Reboot, a podcast from Foreign Policy Magazine, was created as countries and economies emerged from the pandemic. But rather than rebuilding the same old systems and the same old problems, they called for a reboot. On each episode of Global Reboot, host and Foreign Policy Editor-in-Chief, Ravi Agrawal, sits down with some of the smartest thinkers and doers around to push for solutions to the world's greatest problems. On Season Three, you'll hear about resetting the US-China relationship, dealing with the rise of AI, preserving our oceans, and much more. Find Global Reboot in partnership with the Doha Forum wherever you get your podcasts.