Iran

CFR experts discuss Iran’s attack on Israel and the escalation of the conflict. FROMAN: Well, thanks very much. Thanks, everybody, for joining. And thank you to our six senior fellows here who’ve joined us for this briefing on “Iran’s Attack on Israel and the Threat of Escalation.” I’m going to briefly introduce them and then ask each of them to speak for two to three minutes, just laying out their perspective, and then we’ll open it up for questions.  Steven Cook is the Eni Enrico Mattei senior fellow for Middle east and African studies, and author of a forthcoming book, The End of Ambition: America’s Past, Present, and Future in the Middle East. Martin Indyk needs no introduction, but is the Lowy distinguished fellow in U.S.-Middle East Diplomacy. Ray Takeyh, Hasib Sabbagh senior fellow for Middle East. Elliott Abrams, senior fellow for Middle Eastern studies. Max Boot, the Jeane J. Kirkpatrick senior fellow for national security studies. And Linda Robinson, senior fellow for women and foreign policy. All here at the Council. Six people is a lot of people for a panel, but let me just say it just shows the breadth and depth of the expertise we have here on the Middle East, broadly defined. We’re delighted to have these fellows with us today, and to make them available to the 500-plus people on this briefing.   Let me first turn to Steven. You want to take two or three minutes?  COOK: Thanks very much, Mike. It’s a great pleasure to be here with everybody this afternoon.  I’ll just begin very briefly with just six or so points and my response to what has happened in the last few days. First, from my perspective, Iran’s attack on Israel over the weekend was not limited or symbolic, as many have suggested. Given the number of missiles, cruise missiles, and drones that they launched against Israel’s homeland, they were clearly intended to overwhelm Israel’s defenses and cause as much damage as possible. Because of the size, and the nature, and intent of the attack—despite its failure—there seems to be consensus in Israel about the desirability, and in fact the necessity, of responding to Iran’s barrage. There’s a debate, however, over when and how to respond.  And I think much depends on how Israel’s leaders read President Biden’s call with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. Biden certainly did not give the Israelis a green light, but he also didn’t give them a red light. He said he didn’t support an Israeli response. One can understand if the Israelis see this as not necessarily opposing but suggesting that if the Israelis decide to go alone, they’ll have to face the consequences on their own. I think the escalation risk from Iran’s attack is quite high, as the Israelis have said repeatedly that they will respond in a devastating fashion. And I think if they do there is a very significant possibility of escalation along the northern front. The Hezbollah factor is very—is quite significant, given the large numbers of rockets and missiles and drones in the Hezbollah arsenal.   And then there’s the question of Arab countries and what they would do in the event of an Israeli counterstrike, given their own vulnerabilities. Dubai is wide open to Iranian missile attack, as are some other major cities in the Gulf. Speaking of which, again, there’s been some triumphalism, especially on social media, about a new Middle East and Arabs coming to defend—coming to defend Israel. I think many of these statements are exaggerated and overblown. But at the same time, I think it’s clear that the Abraham Accords are not dead. The peace treaty between Israel and Jordan is durable.   Jordan has been extraordinarily critical of the Israeli government over the course of the last six months, but nevertheless the Jordanian Air Force participated in an operation to shoot down Iranian drones. The Jordanian king has been at pains to indicate that, of course, he was defending Jordanian airspace more so than he was defending Israel, but I think the result is essentially the same. Everybody seems to—everybody in the region seems to dislike and distrust Prime Minister Netanyahu and has recoiled at the tactics of the Israel Defense Forces in the Gaza Strip. But it’s clear that they hate and fear Ayatollah Khomeini and the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps more.  This is also—the successful defense of Israel is also a function, I think, of American leadership in the region. Moving Israel into CENTCOM was an important move. But then again, not all is well. The attacks over the weekend, it’s the third time since 2019 that the Iranians or Iranian proxies have attacked a U.S. partner with drones and missiles. The U.S. has periodically responded by hitting militias, but I think these attacks are the cost of America’s self-deterrence. And I think within Washington there needs to be a very significant conversation about how best to deter and contain Iran, given its desire to continue to sow chaos throughout the region. I’ll stop there and look forward to the comments from my colleagues.   Thanks, Mike.  FROMAN: Great. Martin.  INDYK: Thank you, Mike. Good afternoon, everybody.  I have four points rather than six, but there’s a lot of overlap between my views and Steve’s, so I’ll try to cut it short. What’s happened now is that the war between the wars, the shadow wars between Iran and Israel, which have been basically running for more than ten years, have now become a direct conflict between Israel and Iran. That makes the danger of escalation much higher, especially given Iran’s nuclear program. And if it starts to move more deliberately to the nuclear threshold, where it’s already very close. But, counterintuitively, that, I believe, makes both sides more cautious. Think about the concept of mutually assured destruction. That’s essentially what we’re moving to between Israel and Iran.  My second point is that Israel, in my view—I agree with Steve—is bound to retaliate. It can’t just sit tight after such a large-scale attack. And I agree with him, this was no fake attack, especially the strategic attack on the Nevatim Airbase with ballistic missiles, which was obviously a very deliberate effort to strike a strategic blow against Israel’s offensive capabilities. So I think that that affects Israel’s calculations about whether it can just sit back and accept it.   There are a number of options that Israel has, given the fact that there were no casualties. Israel is no stranger—although one might doubt it given recent actions in Gaza—but Israel is no stranger to a calibrated response when there are no casualties on the Israeli side, and especially given the pressure from President Biden about being careful not to escalate this. They have lower range options, a disavowable act, a targeted missile attack on missile rocket production facilities at night, hitting proxies, as they seem to have done in Lebanon today, all of which stay under the line which would make it necessary for Iran to retaliate again.  My last point is with all the focus on military retaliation, some greater attention should be paid to non-kinetic options. And there Steve pointed to the potential here that I believe is very important. What happened this weekend was that Sunni Arabs, particularly Jordan and Saudi Arabia, came out of the closet, making clear that the threat from Iran was far greater to them than anything else they might be contemplating in terms of rapprochement with Iran. And what we discovered was that coordination—strategic coordination between the United States, Israel, and these Gulf Arab states is a lot further along than most of us knew, and that it’s functioning highly effectively, and that the Arabs who have been attacked by Iran’s missiles and rockets before now have a credible defense umbrella that is part of a U.S.-Israeli-Sunni strategic cooperation arrangement. And that is, I think, very important—the manifestation of their concern, above all, about the threat from Iran, and the way in which they are operating together with Israel in a way that they don’t care if the world now knows about it to protect their basic and vital interests.  Now, that provides a basis for developing this U.S.-Sunni-Israeli alliance. It means that Israel needs to be more sensitive to their concerns. It adds another dimension to the calculation about retaliation, not to create problems for them. But the most important thing is that Joe Biden has been working on trying to produce an Israeli-Saudi peace treaty which would be the anchor of this strategic alliance, which is possible to achieve in short order. But there’s a catch, and I’ll close on this point: It requires Netanyahu to be forthcoming on the Palestinian issue in ways that will cement this relationship.  FROMAN: Very helpful.  Ray, the view from Tehran.  TAKEYH: I should know how to do this by now. Unmute button.  I’ll say a few things to what Martin and Steven added, and I’m sure my other colleagues will be equally perceptive.  Something happened here that hadn’t happened for forty-five years. The enmity between the United States (sic; Iran) and Israel goes back to 1979 revolution, yet this had never let to a direct conflict between the two states. They were both comfortable to some extent by limiting their competition, their animosities within established parameters. Those parameters were evaporated, and the question is why. Why did the Iranians decide to do this? The proximate cause is a proximate cause, the Israeli killing of General Zahedi and six other(s), his assistants. But this shows a number of calculations, or perhaps miscalculations, that the Iranian leadership made.  Number one, they had assumed, perhaps, that Israel was too preoccupied with pacification of Gaza to be able to respond in a measurable way. They certainly assumed that Israel’s division in the—with the international community, and particularly divisions in U.S.-Israeli relations that have been obvious over the prosecution of Gaza in its latter stages, would cause some degree of restraint on the Israeli part. Those are reasonable things to say, but we also have to understand that there is something else happening in Iran. There’s succession.  We always talk about succession as succession at the top. There’s a succession happening throughout the system. The old elite is being excised from power and there’s a new elite coming. The new elite tends to be more parochial. They tend to be more dogmatic. And as we have seen, they tend to be more daring and more bold. So, to some extent, we’re seeing the national security establishment in Iran changing. We don’t know much about the new elite, where they’re coming from. They tend to be drawn from the security services and more conservative religious sectors. This is not to suggest that the old elite was comprehensible to us and we understood them well, but we’re certainly in a new place.  Finally, this reflects the limitation of Iran’s proxy war strategy. For a long time, you could ask yourself that—why does Iran need to have even nuclear weapons, given how effective they have been assembling proxy forces that could inflict damage on their adversaries without reprisal? They certainly did that to the United States. They have done this to Israel. But this reflects the fact that in some ways the Iranians don’t see the proxy war strategy as effective because, as there have been commentaries in their press, it hasn’t been effective in terms of stopping Israel in Gaza. The purpose of the proxy war strategy was to enflame Israel’s frontier in order to induce the international community to impose restraints on Israel and have a battered Hamas survive. That hasn’t happened, and therefore they’re switching to more belligerent tactics.  I agree with Martin and Steven that the Israelis will retaliate, and the Iranians will retaliate back. And the problem with this situation is we’re increasingly on an escalatory spiral where there’s no obvious way of withdrawing. There’s no offramps that I can see. So usually you would say maybe U.N. mediation, but the Israelis don’t have confidence in the U.N. It’s hard to see who has leverage with the Iranians that can actually impose some restrictions or some limitations on them.  I’ll end with one thing—since October 7, two things have happened that surprised us: Hamas acted the way we didn’t anticipate and Iran acted the way we didn’t anticipate. It is time to turn our assumptions into questions. Our adversaries certainly seem to behave differently; and we have not caught up to understanding how their calculations have changed; and they’re becoming more daring, more bold. And we have to essentially start rethinking about how we had assumed the Islamic Republic would conduct its foreign policy, or for that matter how Hamas has conducted its animosity toward Israel. So this is a(n) invitation for new thinking about new adversaries.  Thanks. I’ll stop there.  FROMAN: All right.  Elliott?  ABRAMS: Thank you, Mike. I’m glad to go after Ray and try to follow up a bit on what he was saying.  One of the questions which I think we should be posing is: What did the Iranians think would happen? That is, I agree with Steve this was no performative action; it was meant to do great damage, and it would certainly have elicited a very strong attack. Did the Iranians who made these decisions not know that? They must have known that. So what did they think would then happen? Did they want to go up that escalation ladder? And if so, why? As Ray said, I think we don’t—we don’t really understand the answers to these questions.  For the Israelis, it seems to me that as they think through what to do now, one of the things they will want to do more certainly than a week ago is Rafah, because I think they will believe they need to do that, as they thought even before, to restore deterrence—that is, to crush Hamas as a military power. I think that if we’re looking ahead a few years, October plus this will change the Israeli view that they understand how to deter enemies, and it makes it more likely that there will be a conflict with Hezbollah because the Israelis will concentrate now on the capacity of enemies, not their apparent or perceived understanding of the enemy’s psychology. And of course, that raises questions about the Iranian nuclear program.  I think it should raise a lot of questions for the United States, because there is an embryonic coalition here against Iran. Moving Israel into CENTCOM certainly helped bring that closer. But I think that the questions that the United States needs to ask itself is: What’s our Iran policy? We have thought, in a sense like the Israelis, that perhaps we could bring them into responsible behavior. We cannot. Or we thought that we had deterred them. We have not. So I think the Israelis and our Arab friends are wondering now what will our policy be.  The Biden administration began with a belief that it could regenerate a good portion of the JCPOA. It could not. And I would say that for the last two years, year and half, we’ve not had an Iran policy at all, and we have watched them creep—certainly with respect to uranium enrichment—closer and closer to the ability to create a nuclear weapon. And in the IAEA, we have done nothing. We have not sought Board of Governors resolutions. We have weakened rather than strengthening economic sanctions on Iran. They have a lot more money now than they did three years ago. So the key question, I think, for us is: What is our Iran policy today and tomorrow?  I’ll stop with that.  FROMAN: OK.   Max.  BOOT: Well, I’d say we’ve been struggling to deal with Iran since 1979. And I don’t think any U.S. administration since then has had a very successful policy. I would say Biden was dealt a poor hand when Trump pulled out of the JCPOA, which was holding the Iranian nuclear program in check. And obviously, Biden failed to revive the JCPOA.   I think that there have been two small victories for the U.S. and our allies just in the last few months. I mean, these are—these are not strategic game changers, but I think they are two small, but significant victories. One is that, of course, immediately after October 7, the Iranian militias began targeting U.S. bases in Iraq and Syria in a very dangerous and provocative way. And that culminated on January 28, on the death of—in the death of three U.S. soldiers at a small base in Jordan. And at that point, you know, Biden—President Biden and his team faced the choice of how to retaliate in a way that would get the Iranians to back off without leading to a wider U.S.-Iran war, and I think they threaded that needle. They mounted a series of air strikes, signaling to the Iranians that this was a red line for us. And there has not been another Iranian attack on a U.S. base in the region since February 4, I believe.  Now, what happened on Saturday, I think, is another huge win for the U.S., as well as for Israel, because it shows—as several of my colleagues have noted—it shows how effective this de facto CENTCOM alliance has been, moving Israel into CENTCOM, and allowing CENTCOM to be the coordinating authority for this new air defense network, incorporating Israel, Jordan, Saudis, Emirates, et cetera, et cetera. And that was a tremendously effective—obviously, 99 percent interception rate, which is, you know, off the charts. And of course, the U.S. played a huge role, but so did everybody else.  I disagree with my colleagues, maybe very slightly, about the Iranian intent, although very hard to know, of course, exactly what they’re thinking. I would say that their intent was to strike a symbolic blow. But they—I don’t think they necessarily wanted to cause mass Israeli casualties, because they knew that that would lead to—could lead to a devastating, larger response. And I think what you’ve seen from Iran in the last few months, pretty clearly, is they don’t want a war with the U.S. or Israel; they’d prefer to keep hostilities at kind of a low simmer, where they’re using primarily proxies. They don’t want to be involved in a massive war.  And so I think—I’m sure that they were surprised that the interception rate was 99 percent. I’m sure they thought there was—they would hit a few targets. But I don’t think they were—I don’t think they were trying to truly overwhelm Israeli defenses. Because if they were trying to do that, then they would be firing the Hezbollah rockets. You know, Hezbollah has an estimated hundred and fifty-thousand rockets, and if they were firing them from that kind of proximity to Israel, there would be a much better chance of overwhelming Israeli air defenses. Whereas this attack came from Iran, and it was telegraphed well in advance. Everybody knew it was coming. The Iranians basically announced we’re about to attack, and everybody knew it was coming, and it gave plenty of warning for this air defense network to get activated. And of course, it was much more successful than anybody could have expected.   And I think now, the issue is with Netanyahu and the war cabinet, is what do they do in response? And I was interested to see, there was a poll released by Hebrew University that showed 74 percent of Israelis say they don’t want to retaliate, if it’s going to hurt Israeli security alliances. I think that’s an interesting data point, because I think the fact that this Iranian attack was so unsuccessful relieves a lot of the pressure for a massive Israeli response, which could lead to this tit-for-tat escalation cycle, which could very readily spin out of control. And so, I would hope that the—that the war cabinet and Netanyahu would be pretty restrained in whatever they do, because I don’t think they’re going to achieve any military objectives by striking Iran. It would be another symbolic blow, which would invite more Iranian attacks, could drag the U.S. into this conflict. I don’t think that’s in anybody’s interest. Israel does not want to fight a two-front war. They’re still in Gaza. They don’t want to be fighting Iran right now. And I think, frankly, at the end of the day, the most effective blow that Israel can strike against Iran is what Martin and others have talked about, which is to deepen the alliance with these Sunni Arab states. And part of that is concluding the war in Gaza, and then, you know, taking down the temperature in the region. And that will create and strengthen this anti-Iran alliance, which will do a lot more to contain the Iranian threat than an Israeli airstrike on some random, you know, Iranian factory or air base.   So I think it’s in Israel’s interest to be fairly restrained in its response, and basically take the victory.  FROMAN: Thank you.  Linda.  ROBINSON: Thank you.  I know that we want to get to questions, so I will be synoptic. Many of my colleagues have made the same points. My history is two decades of covering U.S. operations in the Middle East, and a couple intense years in Israel and the Middle—in the West Bank.  I think the big trend—and this leverages what Max just said, but Israel has been losing support massively in the U.S., among allies, on the international front. And it recouped a great deal of support with this attack from Iran and the coordinated response. And I think, depending on what Israel does next, it could lose a lot of that benefit.  My contacts today and yesterday suggest that the full court press to limit the Israeli response appears to be working, from a number of contacts in Israel. And that, therefore, limits the risk of regional war. And that is what, very clearly, the administration is telegraphing as its primary objective. And I think it’s really adapted its approach from the early days after October 7, the bear-hug approach with regard to a very right-wing government in Israel, and it’s become very clear: It defends Israel, it’s protecting U.S. forces, and it’s against a regional war. And I think this clarity is the basis for good policy going forward.   I wanted to reference the coordinated defense effort, and two colleagues have mentioned this. The CENTCOM—this has been a priority of Central Command for quite a few years, to work on the Middle East security architecture, particularly the air defense aspect. And under General Erik Kurilla and his predecessor, this has really been the military part of the political diplomatic normalization effort, which I testified about eighteen months ago on the Hill. And I think continued progress on this front will be difficult if Israel insists on an aggressive retaliation.   And my read is that, while Iran’s direct attack did cross a line, a major line, it looks to me like a one-time response to the U.S. killing of Qassem Soleimani, very equivalent to that. They’ve been signaling to the Brits, to the Russians, that they will not escalate if Israel does not.  And I think, final point is that the de-escalation of this crisis is necessary to get back to the urgent business of Gaza, and it’s very important that the U.S. officials are being crystal-clear about this, as well, the need to limit civilian casualties. And this really requires some very specific changes in their rules of engagement and their targeting practices, including positive identification, which they have not been following, and in addition, a massive ramp-up of humanitarian aid, and actions to get the hostage release. And I realize it takes two to tango.   But this is the real agenda. Gaza is the focus of the efforts. And we shouldn’t forget the latest killings on the West Bank, and cycle of violence with extremist settler violence, really portends the possibility of a third Intifada. And so we need to really be looking at what Israel needs to do to put out the fires at home.  Thanks.  FROMAN: Thank you.  Before I open it up to the group, let me just ask one question, building on Ray and Elliot’s comments. A policy toward Iran. We’ve engaged, we’ve disengaged, we’ve sanctioned, we’ve built alliances with surrounding countries who have a common interest. What more—what differently do you think needs to be done by the U.S. to affect Iranian behavior?  ABRAMS: Ray?  FROMAN: Start with Elliot—Ray?  ABRAMS: You want to—  TAKEYH: Go ahead, Elliot.  ABRAMS: OK.  I think the problem has in part been that our policy—you know, because we have elections, our policy has changed. And it’s—you know, we’ve had ups and downs, and ups and downs.   I don’t think the question is really what more—or, I should say, what new. I think there needs to be a lot more economic pressure on Iran. We know what they do with the money that they have. They give large amounts of it in the past to Hamas, large, large amounts, up to eight, 900 million, a year to Hezbollah. They support the Shia militias in Iraq. They support the Houthis. They build the capacities that we are beginning to see, in terms of drones that they then give Russia for use in Ukraine.   FROMAN: So your view, Elliot, would be to cut off their oil exports?  ABRAMS: Cut off the cash, to the extent possible. Do not let them have that $10 billion. And try to cut off the—yes, the money that they are getting from the oil exports. The less they have, the better.  FROMAN: Whatever the—  INDYK: The problem with that is we’re in a new environment, as Elliot knows, with the Chinese and Russians no longer willing to cooperate in the way that they did before. So economic pressure’s a lot harder to pull off today than it’s been in the past, not that it was successful in the past.   ABRAMS: It raises the question of whether China—which, unlike Russia, is importing oil from Iran and does not want to see a doubling or tripling of oil prices—might be willing to counsel Iran to avoid actions that will have that effect.  FROMAN: Ray, any—cut off—cut off Iranian oil exports, whatever the impact is on the global economy. What else would you suggest?  TAKEYH: Well, I would say one thing, that over the years—I’m not disagreeing with this proposition—but I think we have exaggerated the coercive impact on—of economic penalties on Iran’s strategic decision making. Now, if the economic situation becomes as dire as suggested, with some sort of coordinated international plan to sequester Iranian oil, then I think that may be more important. For the immediate crisis, because upon Israeli attack, however it is, the Iranians will have sort of a compulsive desire to respond. I think if the Iranians perceive that the escalation ladder will include the United States at some point, then that may serve as a deterrent for them in terms of escalating. And there are some episodes in history where that indicates that they don’t want to get entangled with the United States.   And they can only justify stepping down if there is an American angle involved, because they still have respect for latent American power irrespective of the incumbent administration. So the proximity between the United States and Israel is going to be important in terms of managing this crisis from being escalated, because at this point both sides on the tiger’s back and neither of them are sure how to dismount. And only by perception of Israelis being closer to the United States and cojoining them, even in the possibility of retaliation, that may actually—that may actually cause them to climb down. But that is a very speculative judgment. (Laughs.)  FROMAN: OK. Let’s open it up to questions.  OPERATOR: (Gives queuing instructions.)  Our first question comes from Steven Koltai.  Q: Hi, there. I’m Steven Koltai from the Center for International Studies at MIT.   I wonder, Dr. Takeyh, if you could talk more about domestic Iranian politics. I was especially interested in your comment that the new elite is more parochial. I had thought that we were actually moving to a more liberal government, particularly because of some of the women’s protests that were happening. So I’m curious to hear you talk more about that. Thank you.   TAKEYH: Sure. I think you’re correct about the society that is moving in a more liberal direction, and more secular direction. One of the things about the Islamic Republic, it’s constantly publishing statistics that undermines its own claim to legitimacy. And the minister of interior recently published a statistic saying 77 percent of the Iranians want separation of church and state—sort of separation of religion from politics. So your judgment about the Iranian society’s secular and liberal intent is correct.   What is happening within the governing elites, that is where you’re beginning to see very massive purges taking place. And a new elite is coming. And we just—at least, I don’t—know as much about this new elite as we need to. They’re coming from sort of the religious circles. They’re mostly coming from within the security services, within the Revolutionary Guards, and they have gone through that indoctrination. And I should say, this elite has come of age in the past twenty years, when they have seen the ebbing of American power in the Middle East, when they have seen the Americans eager to dispense with their Middle East heritage, with the Middle East—with their Middle East burdens. So they’re coming to the positions of power with the impression of a declining American power. And that all these crises have kind of fit into that as well. So you’re correct. The state and society are moving in very different directions. And that’s not necessarily to the advantage of the Iranian regime at home.  FROMAN: Next question.  OPERATOR: Our next question comes from Farnaz Fassihi.  Q: Hello, everyone. Thank you for the excellent panel. I’m Farnaz from the New York Times.   I wanted to ask Ray what he thought led to this really brazen decision by Iranian leaders to take this step after forty-five years, given all the strains that they’re under economically, you know, that tensions domestically, a population that rose up last year demanding for the toppling of the regime. So they’ve got all these problems percolating, and yet they decide to really put themselves in a position that could lead to war. What do you think that calculus is? And how—given that Khamenei has the last word and ordered the attack, how much do you think that the younger guard really have any influence on this decision making?   And from the rest of the panelists, if you can address whether—you know what the U.S. can do to really stop this from escalating if Israel attacks, as it seems intending to attack, and Iran attacks back? If the U.S. doesn’t want to get engaged, and if the Biden administration really doesn’t want to get into help Israel in its offensive, what can it do to sort of pull things back and defuse the tensions? Thank you.  TAKEYH: I’ll be very brief. I went through some of these points and I want to give my colleagues a chance.  In terms of why would they do it, given the fact that the domestic situation is as contested as it is, they obviously seem to think they have restored domestic controls. They obviously think that the regime has survived the women’s freedom movement and is now essentially in charge. They may be misreading the domestic situation, but they seem to be comfortable with the—with the domestic controls that they exercise.   As far as why Khamenei—the leader—supreme leader made this decision, I think we’re seeing what we would in America called civil-military relations changing. In a sense that suddenly you begin to see a new cadre within the security services who are more demanding in terms of action, and the leadership usually has to respond to this. Ali Khamenei has become one of the longest serving rulers in the history of the Middle East, because he tends to blend pragmatism with confrontation. He didn’t do so, in this case. So there was countervailing pressures taking place that is changing the orientation of the Iranian foreign policy and how they approach their adversaries. But I’ll—  FROMAN: Would anybody else care to comment?  INDYK: I’ll just answer on what can be done. Look, the United States since October 7, President Biden has been actively involved in containing this conflict and preventing a regional explosion. It’s been a real challenge, but he’s succeeded even up till today, even in the current circumstances with Iran. And so I think that the same techniques will be necessary, weighing in with everybody to cool it, getting the Israelis in the first instance not to retaliate or retaliate in a way that does not provoke the Iranians, getting others to get the Iranians to pull back. And there’s that other dimension which Ray mentioned, which is to make clear that if the Iranians do escalate, the United States will be with Israel. And they will not succeed in splitting the United States from Israel.  FROMAN: OK. Let’s take the next question.   OPERATOR: Next, we have Pearl Matibe.  Q: Thank you so much for doing this. I’m Pearl Matibe with Premium Times.  I just want to ask the panel, what is your view on this? I totally get it that the United States and President Biden has continued to say that support for Israel is ironclad, on the one hand, but at the same time they do not want to see escalation. Both of those statements, to me—are those not countering each other? That no matter what Israel decides to do in its counterattack, that the United States will still stand with Israel then? I get it, that the United States doesn’t want to get into this war, but I just wanted your thoughts on how does the U.S. weigh that balancing act between not wanting further escalation, standing behind and Israel as ironclad, and yet no matter what Israel decides we—it’s basically saying, OK, no matter what Israel decides, the U.S. is going to get behind that. I’d appreciate your thoughts on that fine line. Thanks.  BOOT: I mean, to me it’s a little bit reminiscent of what happened during the Gulf War in 1991, when Iraq was firing Scud missiles at Israel and Israel really wanted to retaliate. And the Bush administration said, no, please don’t. We’ll take care of it for you. And I think, you know, obviously, we didn’t—you know, you saw on Saturday the extent of U.S. forces actually protecting Israel, which is a heck of a lot more than they have done for Ukraine or a lot of other countries where you had, you know, U.S. aircraft shooting down seventy Iranian drones. So I think, you know, coming after the, you know, Biden’s show support for Israel after October 7, going to Israel and really standing up for Israel against a lot of people in his own party who are, you know, much more hostile to Israel, I think President Biden has bought some credibility with the Israeli public.   And, again, I refer to that poll suggesting that 74 percent of Israelis say they don’t want to retaliate against Iran if it’s going to hurt U.S. security alliances. And that’s kind of the message that President Biden is sending to Israel. And I think—you know, I think that’s the right message. It’s to—it’s to, you know, say that we will help secure Israel, as long—but we want Israel to behave responsibly. Now, of course, it’s always possible that Netanyahu is kind of—you know, who often suggests—whose behavior often suggests he’s more interested in Netanyahu’s personal survival than he is about the longer-term interests of the state of Israel. It’s possible that Netanyahu may disregard that and act contrary to U.S. pressure, which he’s certainly done in the past in Gaza, in particular.  But, I mean, I think, you know, there’s always limits to what the U.S. can impose on any other sovereign country, even a close ally. But I think the Biden approach is basically a sound one. And I think that, you know, Israel would be—in the present instance—would be better advised to listen to President Biden, both in Gaza and in in dealing with Iran.  COOK: Mike, can I just get in on this very quickly? I just want to turn directly back to Pearl’s question. I think she has hit on something that I think is very important in the relationship, and which is that the Israelis may very well be calculating that based on the ironclad commitments that the United States has made, based on the fact that the U.S. Air Force and Navy had been deeply involved in the defense of Israel, that should the Israelis choose to retaliate—and there’s certainly consensus within the government in the war cabinet that they should—that President Biden, especially at this moment, will have really no choice but to support Israel.   I think that’s why he gave himself some wiggle room by saying he didn’t necessarily support an Israeli retaliation, but he also didn’t specifically rule it out for the Israelis. And, of course, under these circumstances, as Max points out, it’s very, very difficult for the United States to exert the kind of influence that we all imagine it might have over Israeli decision making.   ABRAMS: If I could just jump in for one sec. I think all that’s right. And it raises an interesting point, because the slogan that the U.S. and Israel have been using for, I don’t know, twenty-five years, maybe more, that Israel has the right to defend itself by itself, defend itself by itself. It didn’t defend itself by itself this past weekend. That may be a major change in the Israeli situation in the Middle East, and in the U.S.-Israel, defense relationship going forward.  ROBINSON: Could I just jump in briefly? I’d like to refer the questioner to the Pentagon briefing today. And again, I think the military is trying to be explicitly crystal clear. And, first, President Biden said the U.S. will not participate in offensive operations. And today, the three lines laid out where, we will defend Israel, we will protect U.S. forces, we are primarily concerned about preventing a regional war. And so they are trying to stop that cycle of escalation right now, with a very limited response by Israel. And I think that is the message and the lesson they’ve learned from these past six months.  FROMAN: Martin, did you want to get in on this?  INDYK: No, let’s go to another question. Thank you.   FROMAN: All right.   OPERATOR: Next, we have Peter Galbraith.  Q: Thank you for this panel.   I wonder if you would comment on what Israel was seeking to accomplish when it struck at the Iranian embassy in Damascus. Surely it contemplated, or would have anticipated, that Iran would respond. And that raises the question, given Israel’s longstanding desire to use force to eliminate Iran’s nuclear program, whether in fact Israel’s actions, then or in a possible further escalation, are aimed at bringing the United States into a war with Iran.  INDYK: I’ll take that one, Mike.  I think it’s a mistake to impute too much calculation into Israel’s decision to knock off this high-level IRGC leader. It’s easy and I’ve heard it from a lot of people that this was Bibi Netanyahu’s son-of-a-gun theory on how to shift the focus to Iran from Gaza, and he did it brilliantly. I actually have seen reporting coming from Israel, credible reporting from Israel, that the intelligence assessment got it wrong again, and that the assessment was that it would not trigger an Iranian retaliation; that this would be similar to previous targeted assassinations and would not cross a line that would provoke the Iranians to take some strategic decision to change their policy. And given the way in which the IDF has become the gang that can’t shoot straight, unfortunately, I think that’s the more credible explanation than anything else that you might suggest, Peter.  BOOT: Can I just jump in quickly with two very fast points? One is, I mean, I would assume that what Israel was trying to do was to get Hezbollah to stop attacking northern Israel, which they’ve been doing pretty steadily since October 7. I mean, remember, there’s tens of thousands of Israelis who have been forced out of their homes. So I think there’s a reason why Israel wants to go after IRGC targets.  But, two, I think to Martin’s point, the reporting I’ve read suggested that the Israelis somehow convinced themselves that this building next to the Iranian embassy was not really a consulate, it was not really—it sounds to me like they didn’t really think through the implications of bombing that particular target and did not understand how seriously the Iranians would take it.  FROMAN: Next question.  OPERATOR: Next we have Aaron Shepard.  Q: Good afternoon. Aaron Shepard with the Military Commissions.  You know, following up on that point, I’m curious for those of you who may disagree with Max regarding Iran’s intent, that perhaps there was some performative element to this. If Iran truly desired to deal a serious blow to Israel, why didn’t they engage their proxies who seemingly have a proven ability to do that, especially Hezbollah? Or did they simply maybe massively underestimate Israel and their allies’ ability to defend the actual attack that occurred? Thank you.  COOK: Well, I’ll start. I think that the argument that this was symbolic or this was performative is referring—is inferring from an outcome. Of course, the Iranians nor any of us could have imagined that the layered defense that the Israelis have put in place with the help of the United States and regional partners would have a success rate of 99 percent. So it’s only after the fact that we have decided, well, this was—this was performative in some way. Had the success rate been significantly lower, there would have been very significant damage not just to Israeli military installations, but certainly to civilians as well. So I think that we can always—we can always draw a conclusion after an outcome, but it strikes me that the Iranians took it upon themselves because they were—their generals were taken out at an IRGC facility on the grounds of this—of their embassy in Syria, and needed to demonstrate strength as opposed to just putting out there proxies, which is what they have done over time.  It's important to remember that during this long shadow war any time that the Iranians have tried to attack the Israelis directly they have failed, this time with a rather large barrage on Israel’s homeland. They certainly sought to do a significant amount of damage in response.  FROMAN: Steven, can I push back against that? And I’d be interested in anybody else’s response. If you—if you were—if you were Iran, and you wanted to avoid the prospect of escalation that would bring war to your territory, and you wanted to do real damage on Israel, you might have to sacrifice Hezbollah to a certain degree, but it’s one step removed and they have 150,000 missiles. This was 300 projectiles, not 30,000 projectiles, which Hezbollah could have easily unleashed and really overwhelmed—potentially overwhelmed the defenses. So—and they also—didn’t they give—they signaled well in advance what they were going to do. They had hours of preparation. They made it clear to people it was going to be a limited attack. So, again, I just wonder why we’re—going to Ray’s question about turning our assumptions into questions, are we sure—are we so sure that they intended to do maximum damage and failed, or that this was in fact a face-saving stab? They would have been very happy if some of those missiles had come through, no doubt, but it was much less than they might have done otherwise without risking attack on their homeland.  COOK: Let me push back on your pushback for a moment, Mike, at my great risk, apparently.  FROMAN: Not at all.  COOK: First, let me just point out that Hezbollah has always been preserved as Iran’s second-strike capability. It would be devastating for Iran to throw Hezbollah into the fight, given the capacities of both the United States and Israel—and apparently, there is an ironclad commitment on the part of the United States to help defend Israel. So it would be a devastating blow to the second-strike capability. And after all, the primary concern on the part of the Iranians is preserving their nuclear program as well as their regime.  And then, secondly, I think, yes, you make a very good point: The Iranians made it clear what was coming. Buta t the same time, they could have chosen to respond in kind as, apparently, everybody was expecting them to do, which is to attack an Israeli diplomatic installation somewhere in South America, East Asia, Europe, what have you. Yet, they chose a fairly significant response. As Martin pointed out, they specifically targeted a very important Israeli airbase. So I take your points on this, but I think the—most of what people are doing here is, as I said, inferring from an outcome. I’ll underline the point that we had no idea how effective Israel’s multilayered defense would be under such circumstances.  ABRAMS: I would only add to that that, in terms of notifying people, I mean, those ballistic missiles are, I believe, liquid fueled, so the minute you pull it out of bunkers or storage, you start fueling them, the United States and presumably Israel sees that. So we were going to know that this was planned. The drones, of course, have a nine-hour flight. So I don’t think the telegraph thing really suggests that they didn’t mean to do a lot of damage. We were going to know through intel anyway.  TAKEYH: I’ll just say one thing about this. All the commentary before the attack and after the attack have actually come from the Revolutionary Guards and security services. They said before the attack we are going to attack Israel and we’re going to do it ourselves. A lot of the initiatives for this attack, I think, came from within the Revolutionary Guards, came from within the security services. That’s where the initiative came. I don’t think even today the office of leader has issued a statement on this, and nobody cares what the foreign minister says. The most important commentary before and after came from the generals. So, in that sense, you’re beginning to see in a very disturbing way that important policy initiatives are resting in the hands of the most reckless elements.  FROMAN: All right. Nice debate.  Let’s go to the next question.  OPERATOR: Next is Kathy Gilsinan.  Q: Hi, everybody. Thanks for this. I’m with Politico.  I’m curious to hear the panelists’ thoughts on the argument about the need to restore deterrence, which seems to me the flipside of the—you know, we—Israel risks escalation and spinning into a regional war if it responds kinetically here, you know. The counterpoint is, OK, if they don’t respond kinetically, then don’t they invite further aggression from Iran? And I’m curious for folks’ thoughts on that.  BOOT: I would just say very quickly I think that the incredible success of the Israeli air defense, that itself is restoring Israeli and American deterrence against Iran because it’s calling into doubt the effectiveness of the Iranian missile arsenal that they have spent so much money and so many years building up. I think this—the very—this 99 percent success, which is off-the-charts amazing, I think that itself is a huge increase in deterrence, and so is the fact that Israel cooperated with Arab states against Iran. Both of those things, I think, are major blows to Iranian—the Iranians’ aura of danger that they seek to project, and really undercut the menace that they’re trying to project across the region.  INDYK: Plus the fact that the United States was so heavily involved in this effort—successful effort—so that the second line of Israel’s deterrence, which is the United States, was there front and center.  ABRAMS: On the other hand, attempted murder is also a crime that is punished. We don’t say, well, you didn’t—you didn’t get your guy, so walk away, in the criminal context. And I think that’s the question here: Does attempted murder get punished?  COOK: Well, I—the attempted murder analogy—(laughs)—is an interesting one, but I would just point out that historically the lax response—you look at the attacks on Abqaiq and Khurais in Saudi Arabia in 2019, attacks on Abu Dhabi and Dubai, and other attacks have invited further attacks from the Iranians.  BOOT: But those attacks worked. This one was stopped. That’s the—  COOK: Well, again, the Iranians learn—have learned that when there are fewer consequences that they can—they can continue. Of course, I do think that the success and the role of the United States does give the actors pause here. But there is a record in the region of the Iranians taking advantage of the desire to stand down on the part of the United States and its partners.  INDYK: I think there’s just one broader context that we should bear in mind here, is that on October 7 the Israeli national security establishment had a total failure collapse, a total failure of its deterrence. And therefore, it feels that it has to find ways to restore that deterrence in a broader sense, not just a particular one. So 99 percent helps, but I don’t think from the Israeli point of view it’s enough.  TAKEYH: Can I just say one thing? The Israeli prosecution of the war with Gaza—in Gaza, which has been aggressive, obviously has not restored the deterrence because of what the Iranians just finished doing. So this line of deterrence that needs to be restored will require a very substantial degree of effort, it just seems to me.  INDYK: Yeah. Yeah. And it may be more effectively done through showing the cooperation between Israel, the United States, and the Arab states, than by acting alone. That’s a new idea for Israel that I think they’re just coming to terms with. But it—but it is an alternative way to deter that arguably is more effective.  FROMAN: Excellent. Let’s—given the hour, everyone’s been incredibly patient with their time. Thank you all for joining us, both the participants and, of course, the panelists. And we’ll continue to provide programming for CFR members, our corporate members, our outreach communities, and the press as this crisis continues to evolve. So thank you all for joining us and wish you a good and peaceful day.   INDYK: Thank you.  (END)   

In a collaboration between CFR and Open to Debate, panelists debate the threat of Iran to global security. Did Biden’s diplomacy fail? Can Israel live with a nuclear Iran? Does Iran pose a challenge to the global order? Open to Debate is the nation’s only nonpartisan, debate-driven media organization dedicated to bringing multiple viewpoints together for a constructive, balanced, respectful exchange of ideas. Open to Debate is a platform for intellectually curious and open-minded people to engage with others holding opposing views on complex issues.

Following the drone strike on a U.S. base in Jordan, panelists discuss the possibility of a U.S. military response as well as the implications of conflict spreading in the region.  BRANNEN: Thanks so much. Welcome, everybody, and thank you for joining us today to discuss recent events in the Middle East, and to think about where the conflict could be headed next. I’m Kate Brannen. I’m deputy editor at Foreign Affairs. And I’m joined today by an excellent panel of CFR senior fellows who are ready to share their expertise with us.   On the call we have Steve Biddle, we have Steven Cook, and Ray Takeyh. And before we get started, I’ll just reiterate that the conversation is on the record and a video and transcript will be posted online afterward. And you can check out CFR.org and ForeignAffairs.com for additional analysis and resources.  So we are here to discuss the January 28 drone strike that killed three U.S. Army Reserve soldiers near the Jordan-Syria border. The U.S. government believes an umbrella group of militants called Islamic Resistance in Iraq carried out the strike. And since the strike occurred, President Joe Biden has said that a decision has been made by the administration about how to respond. But we are still waiting, of course, to see what course of action Biden and his advisers have selected.   So I wanted to start with Steven Cook. If you could give us the context for this strike. It’s not out of the blue. It’s happening amidst a real simmering regional conflict, with the sort of center of gravity in Gaza. But then also, if you could tell us a little bit about what we know about this group that launched the strike, what it was trying to accomplish, and where do you put it on the spectrum of Iranian-backed groups that are so active right now in terms of its closeness and coordination with Iran?  COOK: Well, thanks so much, Kate. And it’s a great pleasure to be with everybody. And it’s a particular pleasure to be with my colleagues, Stephen Biddle and Ray Takeyh.   The attack on Tower 22 comes against the background of a number of moving parts in what you correctly call a regional conflict. I think that it remains—the core of it remains the conflict in the Gaza Strip, but I think that it has become regionalized. And in that core in Gaza there are a number of important things that are happening. The first is that there are abundant rumors that there will be a deal that will lead to a significant pause in the fighting that would lead to the release of those hostages that are living and the return of those hostages who have died in this conflict to the Israelis, in exchange for something—whether it is Palestinian prisoners, or Palestinian prisoners as well as something else.  We know that Hamas was seeking essentially an end to the conflict, something that Israeli leaders have said that would not happen. But nevertheless, there is enough out there to suggest that in the coming weeks we may see a longer pause than we saw in November and December, that leads to a major release of hostages. One has to wonder whether Hamas is really prepared for this, given that it’s giving up leverage that they have. Or the Israelis, who have a hard time regaining the kind of military momentum that they’ve had all of these months. But that’s really an issue for Stephen Biddle.   Against the backdrop of—this backdrop, of course, the Israelis are continuing their operations in central and southern Gaza, with very little indication that they’re changing the pace or the tempo of it, which is, of course, putting, you know, millions of Palestinians in jeopardy, as we have all seen in tragic footage and photos from the conflict. Added to this is just a number of weeks after the Israeli defense minister announced that Hamas ceased to be an organized threat in the northern Gaza Strip, the Israelis are actually moving military units into the northern Gaza Strip to fight Hamas, which proves actually to be an organized threat in that part of the Gaza Strip. Which I think lays bare for everybody how challenging an operation this is for the Israelis. And, again, also in Gaza this comes on the heels of reports that the Israelis have really only managed to destroy about 20 percent of the tunnels underneath the Gaza Strip and are now starting to pump seawater into these tunnels in an effort to incapacitate Hamas.   Again, in conjunction with this, the Houthis are continuing to threaten shipping in the Red Sea. The United States announced just yesterday that it had undertaken strikes that had actually prevented a missile attack on shipping in the Red Sea. This is an ongoing problem. And it will seemingly take a long time to deal with this problem, as the type of military operations the United States has undertaken thus far has failed to deter the Houthis, who have suddenly discovered that they have significant leverage over the global economy. And that is something that they are—they are clearly prepared to use. Which suggests this is something that is actually beyond the conflict between Israel and Hamas in the Gaza Strip.  And then that brings us to what happened recently, which is the drone attack that led to the deaths of three American servicemembers. I should point out that dozens were injured. Those injuries didn’t include Americans. There were also Jordanian soldiers who were injured in the operation. And this was undertaken by an Iranian-backed militia group that has, in the past, taken shots at the—at the United States and U.S. forces. There have been, you know, hundreds of these types of attacks since October. Ray can speak more expertly about their relationship to Tehran and their relationship to other members of the axis of resistance.   But it seems clear that IRGC, the Quds Force is engaged in a region-wide conflict, using various proxies to sow chaos, in a way, to suck the United States into the region, in order to convince us that we need to leave the region, which is ultimately Iran’s goal here. And as Ray, I’m sure, will say, that this is perfectly consistent with an overall Iranian strategy of using different groups to advance its interests around the region, while shielding Iran itself from retaliatory measures. As you pointed out in your opening remarks, that may, in fact, be changing. And we’re all waiting to see what the Department of Defense has in store, because they have promised retaliation.  I’ll stop there and give Ray and Stephen an opportunity as well. Thank you.  BRANNEN: Let’s go to Ray next, just to follow up on the question of this group itself, the Islamic Resistance in Iraq. I don’t think many people are familiar with that exact title. Who are they? And, again, when they strike the United States, how appropriate is it to think that’s Iran striking the United States? If you could flesh out that relationship for us.  TAKEYH: Well, it’s an umbrella organization that comprises of five different militias that have come into existence in recent years. In terms of the operational linkages between the two, as far as I can tell there are certain things we know for sure—that Iran trains, arms them. We know that there has been efforts to have a greater degree of coordination between these different pillars of axis of resistance. Hezbollah in Lebanon has been cooperating with the Iraqi groups, and Hamas has also been part of the operational conversation. This actually really took off after the death of—killing of Gen Soleimani, where his successor, General Qaani, actually began to have a great—put together an auxiliary force that’s more connected to each other, as opposed to operating individually and separately. The idea being that there’s a greater force and cohesion if they all come together.  The organization put out a statement saying the Iranians didn’t tell us to do that, which is—which is kind of a way of saying the Iranians told us to do that. These attacks have come about, I would say, because of the regional strategy that the Iranian regime has pursued since October 7, namely inflamed the region in order to provoke the international community to impose some kind of a restraint on Israel. Which, in fact, may happen. The proxy strategy was always successful because it’s sort of presumed immunization of Iranian territory from attack. Now that may be breached. May not be. I don’t know.  But if it’s breached, it comes at a particularly difficult time for the Iranian regime, because it has a lot of domestic challenges, that we can unpack as you go through. And if it is breached, and if the Iranian territory is attacked, then there’s going to be retaliation. There has to be some form of retaliation. And then you get into a situation, Steve can talk about this—Biddle—an escalatory dynamic where things can sort of get out of hand, unless somebody exercises restraint.  So we’re in—we’re on the precipice of potentially a much more expanded regional conflict than we have seen before, where you have—you move beyond sort of Israel versus a non-state actor and the United States being attacked by nonstate actors to more of an interstate conflict. And that actually means a lot of different things as we move forward. So this potentially is a kind of a dangerous inflection point in the three months or so, four months, however long it’s been, since the October 7 war began.  BRANNEN: Mmm hmm. We’ll get to that sort of tit-for-tat dynamic, which might be upon us. But I wanted to stay on the January 28 attack for one more minute. Steve Biddle, I wanted to ask you, one question that the strike prompted, I think, for many people who haven’t been following the region as closely the past few years are, what are U.S. troops doing in Iraq, and Syria, and this outpost in Jordan? What’s their mission? And has it made sense for that deployment to continue? And now that the situation has changed, what are the options for withdrawing them, if there are any?  BIDDLE: Yeah. All U.S. troops in Iraq were withdrawn in 2011. But then when the Islamic State burst upon the scene in 2014 and took the city of Mosul, and started marching south towards the Iraqi capital of Baghdad, U.S. troops were reintroduced into Iraq to assist the Iraqi government in dealing with the Islamic State threat. And to this day, the primary announced mission of U.S. forces in Iraq and in Syria. for that matter the largely unannounced part of the role of U.S. force in Jordan that just got struck, was to facilitate the Iraqi government’s efforts to initially defeat, but now prevent, the reemergence of the Islamic State.  So most of them are providing some combination of training, and intelligence information and airstrike coordination, you know, for various efforts by ourselves and regional allies against Islamic State. The war against the Islamic State has sucked in other actors, including Iraqi Kurds, including Turkey, including Syria. And there is now a U.S. military presence in Syria that’s a second-order consequence of all that, that’s there in an attempt to stabilize what had become a regional war in Syria by reassuring our Kurdish allies that they will not be overwhelmed by their regional our enemies, the Turks, or by the Syrian government.   So there’s a smallish U.S. deployment in Syria whose nominal purpose is, helped the Kurds to keep the Islamic State down. Its secondary, less announced, purpose is reassure the Kurds that they won’t get wiped out by their enemies. And then it’s got a third less widely announced mission of making it harder for the Iranians to move supplies through this real estate to ultimate destinations in Syria and southern Lebanon. So the primary road that links, as a land line of communication, Iran to its Hezbollah proxy in southern Lebanon, and its various allies in Syria, runs right through the part of Iraq and eastern Syria and close proximity to Northern Jordan, where this attack occurred and where most of these malicious strikes on U.S. bases had been happening.  So the nominal purpose is keep the Islamic State from coming back. Clear, but less prominently announced purposes, include reassure the Kurds and include make it harder for the Iranians to supply their proxies elsewhere in the region.  BRANNEN: Yeah. It’s worth noting too, less congressionally authorized as well, those second maybe, at least the third mission for sure. While we have you, Steve Biddle, on the line, I wanted to be sure to get a few questions into you especially about a potential U.S. response to this attack. And I know you can’t predict what the administration is going to do, but what are the types of targets they would be considering? And what are the factors they’d be weighing as they decide what might trip a red line, what can keep the escalatory risks low while sending the message you want? What are the kind of things that they’re thinking about as they decide what to do?  BIDDLE: Yeah. I mean, there’s a rich menu of things we could attack. And we’ve been conducting retaliatory attacks in response to the 150-plus malicious strikes that have, you know, been directed at U.S. bases in the region since the October 7 crisis started. They include things like munitions stockpiles, training areas, various fixed installations that the militias use to prosecute their military activities. That’s the kind of thing we’ve been hitting heretofore.   Probably the administration is going to try to strike something Iranian rather than just the militias, because so far retaliatory attacks against the militias haven’t been effective. This has gradually been escalating in its violence level. I think the administration is going to be concerned that if the steady state continues, this escalatory process will eventually end up somewhere we definitely don’t want it to be. So they’re going to have to do something that they haven’t yet done. That prominently includes a range of things, from striking individual IRGC targets in Syria or elsewhere, single officers, facilities, bases, up to things like striking Iranian targets elsewhere.  The Iranians have had a warship in the Red Sea that most people believe they have been using to help the Houthis target their attacks on commercial shipping in the Red Sea. We could strike that. That would have the advantage of not being on Iranian soil, but clearly being Iranian. Or, as Ray was suggesting earlier, we could escalate into attacks on Iranian soil, either specific military facilities, specific individual leaders. The IRGC headquarters in Tehran. There’s quite a menu of possibilities from which to choose.  What the administration is probably going to be trying to do is to calibrate this carefully. They know they need to be more forceful than they’ve been heretofore, right? Continuing to do the same thing over and over and expecting a different result, right, is the definition of insanity. They’re probably not going to do that. By the same token, they don’t want a war—they don’t want a full-scale war with the state of Iran. Happily, the state of Iran doesn’t want a full-scale war with the United States either.  So there’s some hope that, given that neither side wants this escalatory process to run ad infinitum, there are ways to moderate this so that we do more than we’ve done in the past to suggest that we are not just going to tolerate this, but not do so much that we box Tehran into a situation where their response then has to be way more escalatory than ours. All of these escalatory actions operate in the context of deterrence theory, in which there are at least two audiences for all of these actions and threats. One of them is the opponent. The other is your own domestic population.  And you want to convince the opponent that you’re not going to destroy them if they behave themselves, but if they don’t behave themselves you’re going to inflict more pain on them than their mischief is worth to them. And that leads to these kinds of middle-ish, medium, in-between actions. And the trouble with that is they tend to be very unpopular with publics, who want more forceful action because they don’t like what they’re seeing and they think we need to hammer these people to get them to stop doing this stuff that we don’t like. And that works for the U.S. population. The Biden administration is under intense pressure to escalate.   But it will also operate on Iranian public opinion. In the event that the United States uses a lot of force, then you run the risk of creating enough of a backlash in Iran that Iran feels hemmed in and has to walk up the ladder. It’s because there are multiple audiences you’re communicating with, partly through words and partly through actions, it gets very complicated to get the balance just right. And clearly, it isn’t just right yet. Whether it will be just right the next time is yet to be determined.  One last word on this, which is the Pentagon spokesman just came out today with a statement that the first action you see won’t be the last action you see. Now, I’m reading tea leaves here, right, just like everybody else, but I think what that means is that probably the initial U.S. retaliatory response is not going to be a massive air raid on Tehran. (Laughs.) It’s going to be fairly limited, perhaps mostly in Syria—who knows? And so the Pentagon is trying to signal Republicans—(laughs)—and others: We are not being wimpy, because there will be more to come, right? Don’t misread the initial strike as being all that we’re going to do. That might suggest that the next military action will not be massive, and something that might be called militarily decisive, if there is such a thing.  BRANNEN: Ray, I want to go to you next. As you hear about that sort of menu of options, where you think Iran’s red line is tripped for it to take a further escalatory move in a counterstrike? And I’d also love to hear which side do you think is more persuasive right now about its willingness to use force, the United States or Iran, as they jockeying back and forth?  TAKEYH: Well, I’m sure you know there’s no precise answer to those questions, because this is a volatile situation where everybody is sort of making it up as they go along. This is like improvised theater, except highly dangerous. Steve Biddle made a very important point—very important point. These particular strikes are designed for—there’s how your adversary considers them and there’s how your population considers them. And the domestic population of Iran presents a paradoxical problem for the regime in Iran. Because on the one hand they don’t wish for this conflict to escalate and be part of a direct war with the United States. Yet, on the other hand, the Iranian regime, which distrusts its population, has to appear robust as a means of convincing the population that it still maintains control. It cannot be seen as being defeated, because that will reduce the aura of authority and control and power that it has at home. It will damage that.  So their imperative to respond would be not to satisfy the population but to deter the population from essentially seeking to take advantage of the regime’s perceived weakness. Now, in terms of the menu of options that were offered by Steve Biddle, I think the—being attacked in Syria and Iraq are absorbable propositions, because they have happened before. The Israelis have been doing him so often, and they’ve been part of the shadow war that Iran and Israel have played. It’ll be similar to that. There will be some degree of Iranian bellicosity and promise of retaliation. And they may even procure the American phrase, and the time and choosing of the time of their own.  Blowing up the ship, that would kind of—because it’s such an—such a symbolic and ostentatious target, may require a greater degree of retaliation. And anything in Iranian territory itself would present a very serious challenge for the regime, for the simple reason that the regime has told itself—and has told its constituents—that this would not happen. It has assured itself that it can wage proxy war against its adversaries without measurable retaliatory consequences. And it has signaled to its population that you may be tired of the forever wars that we are engaging in, but you’re not going to be directly a victim of those in a palpable kinetic way.   The shattering of those presumptions is likely to produce some measure of paralysis in the system, and then pressure for retaliation in some kind of a way that’s tangible. Even if it’s symbolic, it has to be—they would have to come out of this conflict with a narrative of success, as they did from January 2020 assassination of General Soleimani. Their version is we had the last shot, and the Americans were the ones who backed down. Now, that may not be convincing to a lot of people, but it was symbolically a satisfactory narrative of success from their perspective. They had the last call.  BRANNEN: OK. I want to turn—I want to go back, Steven Cook, to what you discussed at the beginning, this percolating deal that could end the war in Gaza, perhaps temporarily with an exchange of hostages or prisoners. If there is this kind of deal brokered, what do you think the impact will be on these strikes, whether in Iraq, Syria, or in Yemen with the Houthis? They’ve said, that’s what the goal is of these strikes. Do you think that they’ll stop when that happens? Or has it gotten bigger than that?  COOK: Well, I think this goes to the question that Steve Biddle and Ray have been tackling, which is this question of whether the Iranians want escalation or not. And Steve Biddle suggested that they don’t. Ray had a somewhat more nuanced view of it. It strikes me that it’s not self-evident at all that the Iranians do not want escalation. If they did not want escalation, we wouldn’t see some of the things—recognizing, of course, the relative autonomy of different groups within the axis of resistance—but it strikes me that what we’re seeing is the transformation of the conflict in the Gaza Strip between Israel and Hamas into something larger, into an actual confrontation between the axis of resistance in this loosely aligned group of status quo powers, some of whom are more interested in joining the fight than others.  It is tantalizing to believe that if there is some sort of long pause in the conflict between Israel and Hamas, that these attacks would come to an end. The Houthis had attack shipping in the Gulf—in the in the Red Sea even before this conflict. And they’re not attacking just Israeli-linked shipping any longer. American forces have come under attack by members of the axis of resistance for far longer than the war in the Gaza Strip has been going on. So there’s reason to believe that as the United States engages in a kind of self-deterrence here, that the Iranians believe that they have an upper hand. That this is, in fact, the conflict that the IRGC has long wanted.  I think your initial question is, you know, what’s going to happen with this hostage deal. As I said, there’s a possibility that it can happen. The Israeli government has indicated that its minimum requirements for a deal are the release of all of these people, which—including the remains of those who have been killed, and all of the accounting for them. It seems hard after all of this time to believe that Hamas is going to give up this kind of leverage, because if you bring home all of the Israeli hostages, including the remains of those who have been killed, then it really is open season. Then the Israelis can, you know, believe it or not, loosen the rules of engagement in ways that they have not up until this point.  And Hamas’ demand is for, you know, something moving towards if not an actual sustained cessation of violence, then an end to the conflict. Which would be essentially a victory for them, given the Israelis’ declaration that the intention—their strategic goal was to destroy Hamas. So I’m—I believe that there are negotiations going on. I believe that there are, you know, papers being passed, and things are coming into view. And if anybody in the bureaucracy can do it, it’s Bill Burns. And if he does bring this home, he gets to put an S on his chest. But I think that there are a lot of—a lot of reasons to be skeptical that even as they believe that they’re getting closer, that the parties themselves ultimately will not want to pay that particular price. So in some sense, it’s a—it’s a theoretical conversation. But to your larger question, do I think conflict continues? Absolutely, I think the conflict continues.  BRANNEN: Steve Biddle, I know we have you for barely another minute, but I’m going to sneak in one last giant question to you. And it’s about deterrence. This word is being thrown around so much. We need to restore deterrence against Iran, we need to send a message of deterrence. I’d love to hear from you, is deterrence through military force going to work in this case? And what does it take to make deterrence effective?  BIDDLE: Well, you have to remember deterrence is deterrence of something specific, right? Deterrence isn’t just some general thing that you get, right? The Israelis are guilty of some horribly sloppy usage on this issue. So deterrence is all about preventing the enemy from taking some specific action by threatening to do something you have not yet done, but will do if they do it. So deterrence is working right now in the Persian Gulf, right? The Iranians are not charging across the border and invading their neighbors with Iranian armored divisions, right? That’s because they’re deterred—in part, right—that’s because they’re deterred from doing so. The Iranian-backed militias could be expending more ammunition at the United States than they are now. They’re not doing that because they’re deterred from doing that, right?  So there are all sorts of things that are being deterred, because people expect that if they do them the consequences will be negative enough that they’d rather not. The problem is we’re not deterring as many things as we want, right? What everybody involved, but especially Iranian-backed militias, right, for the current conversation, are doing is they’re constantly pushing against the limit to see, if I do a little bit more what will happen? A little bit more, what will happen, right? But a lot more is being deterred. And the problem with this strategy of do a little bit more, test the waters, see what the retaliatory action is, and then go further, is you get these eventual escalatory spirals rather than a single escalatory leap.  So, A, deterrence isn’t hopeless. It’s going on right now. It’s just not deterring as much as what we want it to deter. B, the problem with deterrence is that it operates in the eye of the other side. We can talk about deterrence until we’re blue in the face. We can talk in the floor of the House of Representatives about all the horrible things that will prevent the Iranians from doing X as opposed to doing Y. But what really matters is what the Iranians think. The purpose of deterrence is to persuade the other side that the consequences—what we will do to you if you do what we’re trying to deter is so nasty that you will choose not to do the thing we’re trying to deter.  And the problem is, that communication is operating through all sorts of filters. It’s operating through a cultural filter, where what we’re trying to do is act on the decision calculus of people we’ve usually never met, we know very little about, who’ve grown up in a very different society, a completely different culture, and look at the world very differently than we do. Thank heavens we have Ray Takeyh to interpret for us, but nonetheless, right, we’re operating through a tremendous amount of fog in understanding what the—how the Iranians are going to perceive what we do.  Secondly, it’s all about, implicitly or explicitly, promising to do something you haven’t done yet. What deters is not what you already done. What deters is the thing you haven’t done and are threatening to do if Iran allows its militias to keep killing Americans, right? And that notion that it’s a threat of a future action you haven’t done yet means the credibility of these threats is central to their success, and very hard to establish. Because there are always going to be conflicting signals about the credibility of what you’re doing. It’s impossible for human behavior to be utterly consistent. I cannot be utterly consistent in my behavior toward my daughter or my cat, right? Somehow or another, I’m going to do something that isn’t quite consistent with the deterrent framework that I have in mind to keep my cat from meowing when I don’t want it to meow, right?   So in the international relations sphere, there are always going to be behaviors of the United States that will suggest that we are tough hombres, and will inflict a lot of pain on you if you do things we’re trying to prevent, but also that we’re, you know, wimpy and unreliable, and won’t act. And so what the Iranians are doing, or what anybody who’s subject to a deterrent threat is doing, is they’re looking through this dim, foggy glass at this complex mix of behaviors on the other side, and trying to say: How do I evaluate the relative importance of American forcefulness—we keep blowing up Iranian-supported militia ammunition supplies—and American wimpyness—we don’t just go blow up the IRGC headquarters in Tehran. And it’s inevitably a mixed menu of stuff. And that makes the credibility of threats hard to establish.   And the problem the Biden administration has got right now is they believe that the credibility of American threats to act forcefully against Iran if it doesn’t restrain its allies isn’t sufficient, and they need to do more to establish that future threats will be credible. The airstrikes that we do are deterrent only in the sense that they establish the credibility of doing something more in the future that we haven’t done yet, right?   One last point on deterrence, which is: There’s a two-way deterrent problem here, in that we have Iranian proxies that are doing most of the nasty stuff that we’re trying to stop. Iran has a relationship with its proxies that Ray is vastly better qualified than I am to talk about in its particular details, right, but as a general matter patrons and proxies have an imperfect degree of influence on each other. Because their interests are never the same. There has never been a patron and a proxy in the history of patrons and proxies whose interests are exactly the same. They always diverge to some greater or lesser degree. And often the way they diverge is the proxy has an incentive to use more violence, because it’s useful for recruiting and it’s useful for establishing your bona fides with your local constituency, than the patron wants. Because they think the patron is going to bail them out if they get into trouble, right?  You see this with the U.S. and Taiwan, right? Taiwan has a tendency to get out over its skis by signaling greater degrees of independence, because they’re relying on the United States to bail them out if they get in trouble. A common interest misalignment between patron and proxy is the degree to which the proxy thinks that the patron will bail them out and the patron is trying to control what they do but it has some—but varying—degree of influence over what they do. So who are we—who is the recipient of our deterrent signal? Is the recipient of our deterrence signal going to be the head of the Iranian militia? Or is it going to be the IRGC? Or is it going to be the mullahs in Tehran, right?  They will tend to perceive the signals differently because it’s a complicated communication process that’s inherent in the nature of deterrence. And we’re trying to deter the—we are—in this instance we’re trying to compel the Iranians, a different version of coercion theory, to restrain somebody else. So that there are all sorts of moving parts here.   TAKEYH: But, Steve, when Kataib Hezbollah issues a statement saying they’re not going to attack American forces again, in this case the proxy is more temperate than the patron.  BIDDLE: It can work both ways.  TAKEYH: Yeah.  BIDDLE: It’s not uncommon that patron wants more violence—that the proxy wants more violence than the patrons. The main point is that their interests are never aligned.  TAKEYH: Right, but is the American deterrence—American deterrence, without even acting, has already worked.  TAKEYH: Well, it’s working all the time as we speak, right? This is the point I was making earlier, right? We’re deterring all—we’re successfully deterring all sorts of things. It’s just we’re not successfully deterring some things we really care about. And that’s a problem, right? But there’s all sorts of deterrence. Hezbollah has not crossed the border in force because the Israelis, with our assistance, are deterring them from doing that. That’s great, right? So, again, the problem with coercion theory—deterrence is one subvariant of coercion theory, compellence is another, for you academics in the audience. And it’s a complicated picture, because there’s a bunch of different things you’re trying to deter, some of what you’re doing successfully, others which not so much.  It’s all about future action that hasn’t happened yet. So there are all sorts of credibility issues going on through all these cloudy filters. I don’t envy the Biden administration having to try to engineer all this, because in many ways the communication challenges make it a blunt instrument. And it’s a dangerous blunt instrument because misinterpretation of future intention, or misreading of somebody’s domestic audience, can lead to a different reaction from the opponent than the one you’re trying to bring about.  BRANNEN: Well, Steve Biddle, don’t be surprised when I tried to come commission a piece from you for Foreign Affairs about patrons and proxies and deterrence theory, because I think we—  BIDDLE: Happy to help.  BRANNEN: (Laughs.) OK, I’m going to hand it over to the operator to take questions from the audience now.  BIDDLE: Yeah, and I’m afraid I’m—I regret that I’m going to have to drop off.  BRANNEN: Thank you so much for joining us.  BIDDLE: I successfully talked so long as to deter questions. (Laughter.) So Steven Cook and Ray Takeyh will have to do them.  OPERATOR: (Gives queuing instructions.)  We’ll take the first question from Nick Wadhams.  Q: Hey there. It’s Nick Wadhams from Bloomberg.  I had a question about the fact that the Pentagon and the administration basically seems to be leaving no surprises about the fact that these attacks are coming down the pike imminently. Do you think that there is a deliberate strategy in essentially telegraphing the fact that the strikes are coming? Secretary Austin was asked about this in a press conference today. You know, the notion that this was giving Iranian officials a chance to skedaddle ahead of the strikes. But is this all part of the sort of delicate balancing act? Or do you think there’s other factors at play? I mean, we’ve all been on pins and needles for the last couple of days thinking that these strikes were going to come, and it just feels like it’s sort of the worst-kept secret in Washington that it’s imminent. And I’m just wondering if you see that as a deliberate strategy, or just happenstance based on weather conditions, timing for the strikes, targets of opportunity, whatever it might be. Thank you.  COOK: Ray, you want to take that first?  TAKEYH: I’m not sure if I can add much light to this question regarding the administration’s calculations. It seemed to me when the president went out and said the United States will retaliate, then that sets the parameters and pretext for everybody to say that. Maybe the president was premature in saying that. I think everybody understood that with American fatalities there has to be some kind of retaliation, but also the pledge of retaliation to come, I think, to some extent, coexists with the diplomacy to try to release the hostages and have some kind of ceasefire, or some armistice, or something in the Gaza front. So that probably did have some kind of an effect on how you talk about retaliation and conduct retaliation. But I yield to Steve on this.  COOK: My own view is—and, again, somebody who hasn’t, you know, served in the military and has a guns and trucks military analyst, is that it’s quite odd that the administration have been so open about, you know, saying, what they’re going to do, how they’re going to do it, what types of targets they’re going to use. It seems to me that it violates kind of all of the things that we all know about successful military operations. And so it suggests to me that, despite the president’s saying we’re going to retaliate, that there is going to be some retaliation but the effect of that retaliation is intended to be minimal.  And to pick up the theme that we were just talking about, is essentially the United States is self-deterring in order to communicate to the Iranians that it doesn’t want an escalation. To my mind, it’s not self-evident that that’s what the Iranians—that the Iranians share that restraint up at this point. And I should add, before we get to the next question, I think that that’s a common problem in our relationship with the Iranians, that we often believe certain things about the Iranians that just aren’t exactly true. And that because we don’t want escalation, we therefore have concluded that the Iranians don’t want escalation.  OPERATOR: We’ll take the next question from Jim Zirin.  Q: I congratulate you all on an excellent discussion.  And one of the aspects that I think Stephen Biddle mentioned was the domestic impact of a strike. And here we are in an election year. And you have certainly the voices of the right saying that of Trump were in charge here, you’d have a different story. And that Biden is weak. And a kind of mushy response, which might be appropriate, might not be enough to satisfy the wolves. And I wondered what your impression was of the domestic impact, and what weight the decision makers might want to give it in determining what we’ll do and when we’ll do it.  COOK: Well, Jim, as you know, I do policy not politics. But I would just point out to those critics that both Republican and Democratic administrations have at times pursued policies—had been restrained, when their critics had called for more forceful responses to provocations from the Iranians and from other ones. You know, President Trump did not respond to Iranian attacks on Saudi Arabia in the summer of 2019, did not respond to the downing of an American drone over the gulf in the summer of 2019, essentially tossing out forty years of declared American policy. I don’t think anybody is suggesting these things are easy.  The difference here, of course, is that American soldiers were killed in this attack, and the president has publicly vowed to retaliate. So now all eyes are watching to see how robust this retaliation will be. Of course, because we are already in the 2024 election season, no matter what happens the president’s opponents are likely to take advantage of it. But, hey, that’s the nature of politics, which I’m not going to touch with a ten-foot pole.  TAKEYH: I would just add one thing to what Steven said. The Iranian use of proxy war goes back forty-five years. Hezbollah in 1983, that attacked the American Marine barracks, the Khobar Towers bombing. So this has been a longstanding Iranian practice, much—profoundly more accelerated in the aftermath of the 9/11 wars, simply because it was greater degree of opportunity, recruitment, and chaos. But this has been a longstanding sort of this aspect of their statecraft.  OPERATOR: As a reminder, please state your name and affiliation after you are called on.  We’ll take the next question from Garrett Mitchell (sp).  BRANNEN: Go ahead, Garrett (sp). You’re on mute.  Q: Thanks very much. Garrett Mitchell (sp).  Thank you, first of all, for a really thoughtful and helpful discussion. Stephen Biddle made mention that he certainly is glad he’s not Joe Biden, who has to figure out the balancing act on all of this. And one of the things that I’m curious about is how he is doing and how he is doing it. Which is to say, how is Joe Biden—how is Joe—how do we measure Joe Biden’s management of these sort of collected issues that we’re talking about? And in particular, I’m interested in the sort of dynamics between the sort of obvious players, which would be State, Defense, and, of course, Bill Burns. I’m interested to know whether you sense that there is a cohesion here, whether Biden is—whether Biden—is Burns emerging as a more significant player in all of this? So rather than trying to lay out a variety of scenarios, I’m curious to know what your perspective is on how the president is managing this.  TAKEYH: I don’t think I can offer a sort of an insight on this beyond what I read in the papers. So I’m not quite sure, Garrett (sp), if I can be much of an assistant in this. How the president’s management of this, I mean, it’s—I say, how is a movie going when you haven’t seen the ending? (Laughs.) So we’re still in the middle of this. And it can go wrong in many different ways, or right in some ways. But in terms of who’s up, who’s down within the northwest corner of Washington, I’m probably not the right guy to ask about that.  COOK: I think the only thing that I’d add is that, you know, Bill Burns, of all the principals in the—in the administration, given his experience in the past being an old Middle East hand, the ambassador to Jordan, ambassador to, you know, Russia, he knows all of these players extremely well, and is well respected by all of them. So he’s an obvious person to be dispatched to try to help hammer out a long pause. or ceasefire, or whatever you want to call it. I don’t think that this is a function of, you know, who’s up, who’s down, you know, the kind of games, you know, the people—I just think Burns is the appropriate person for the moment, especially since the interlocutors here are all the intel people.  OPERATOR: At this time, we have no more questions in the queue.  BRANNEN: I will sneak in one more then, which I’m happy to do. I wanted to ask about what was in the news today, Steven Cook, about the Biden plans to sanction Israeli settlers who have engaged in violence against Palestinians in the West Bank. And just put that move into context. Is it part of some bigger strategy that you think is emerging about how to resolve this conflict? What did you make of that?  COOK: Well, I thought it was an important step, especially since the settlers, even before October 7, had been engaged in violence and seeking to push Palestinians from their own homes and land, and engaged in all kinds of violence, and have injured and killed. Palestinians. These are people who are also, you know, egged on by Israeli ministers. So I think the United States—it was a long time coming that the United States puts—makes its views clear, not just in words but also in deed. It’s really only for settlers. We know that this is a larger problem. It’s been a larger problem for a long time.   I think it does suggest that overall that President Biden, after having, you know, placed the United States shoulder to shoulder with Israel and its goals in the Gaza Strip, is now thinking more broadly about the day after. And that, you know, to return to some sort of status quo—which I should add is probably more likely than anything else—but that afterwards the United States is going to make a very significant diplomatic push to try to find ways to resolve the conflict once and for all, so we don’t return to a—to, you know, a horrible, horrible conflict. And then it’s a recognition that—small as it is—that the Palestinians are under threat by the settlers, who have been encouraged and enabled by Israeli ministers.   So I think it was an important step. I think, to my—to my memory, it is the first time that the United States has directly taken action against settlers themselves, of which there is a strong American contingent. So it is, I think, important in the end.  TAKEYH: Can I just make—can I make one point that that is—nobody has—in this conversation—has talked about the Iranian nuclear program, which actually, in some ways, is acting as a restraint on the Iranian government. Because one of the concerns that they would have to have is if there is an escalatory dynamic with the United States, and things start expanding the—as you go up this escalatory chain, it’s inconceivable to me that at some stage the Iranian nuclear apparatus would not be at least considered a legitimate target. And actually, the preservation of this nuclear apparatus, to some extent, paradoxically, is acting as a restraint on Iran, in terms of getting the regional balance correct with his domestic imperatives. And one of his domestic imperatives, as a legacy project for the leader, is to expand, preserve this nuclear infrastructure. So he cannot—they cannot sacrifice his infrastructure as the conflict potentially veers out of control.  BRANNEN: That’s interesting. You wouldn’t expect it to be functioning in that capacity. But—  TAKEYH: That’s right, yeah. Yeah.  BRANNEN: Just checking if there are any more questions from the audience before we wrap up.  OPERATOR: We’ll take the next question from Hamdam Mostafavi.  Q: Hi. I’m Hamdam Mostafavi from a French newspaper, L’Express, in France.  I was going to ask about the nuclear program. There was actually some talks of détente, of more—there was—before the attack of the 7th of October. It seems that the U.S. and Iran could find maybe some way of talking together. Do you think now all talks, all diplomacy is gone? Or is there maybe some behind the door talks going on between Iran and the U.S.?  TAKEYH: Well, as far as I know, it’s hard to see how the nuclear diplomacy can be generated at this particular point, when the two sides are talking about engaging in direct military confrontation with each other, and so forth. So whatever walls of mistrust existed before, substantially more so. There was, as you mentioned, a sort of an understanding, as everybody called it, whereby the United States would transfer some of Iran’s frozen assets back to Iran, and Iranians would exercise some degree of restraint in expansion of the nuclear program. And there was some evidence that that bargain was taking place, in the sense that rate of growth of Iranian production of highly enriched uranium seemed to have lessened. Not that they weren’t doing it, but they were doing it less.  That bargains seems to have faded now, particularly because the $6 billion that were transferred to the Iranian government, with under—the agency of Qatari government—seem to have been frozen and inaccessible to them. So this sort of bargaining that needs to happen between two sides that is engaged in nuclear exchange—nuclear negotiations and diplomatic exchange requires a modicum of trust that, at this point, is absent in that relationship. There was never that much in it, but it certainly doesn’t seem to be the case. And it’d be very difficult, I would suspect, for the Biden administration to relieve sanctions on Iran at this point for modest nuclear restraints.  BRANNEN: OK, well, I think at that, we’re going to wrap it up. I want to thank everybody for joining us. And just a reminder that the conversation was on the record, and a video and transcript will be posted at CFR.org. And you can also visit the CFR page and Foreign Affairs for additional resources. Thank you, Steven and Ray, for your time. And thank you, everybody, for joining us.  TAKEYH: Thank you.  (END)