Iran and Hezbollah vs. Israel: Full-Scale War?

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On the evening of August 1, Hezbollah launched a massive rocket barrage at Israel. Is this the beginning of an all-out war between Israel and an axis comprising Iran and Hezbollah?

Hezbollah’s July 27 rocket attack on the Israeli town of Majdal Shams murdered 12 children. The Israel Defense Forces responded by, among other things, killing Fuad Shukr, Hezbollah’s de facto chief of staff. Just hours after that operation, Ismail Haniyeh, the political head of Hamas, was assassinated in Tehran, where he was a guest of the new Iranian president. Iran immediately blamed Israel for the operation and vowed revenge. The likelihood of a coordinated campaign against Israel by Iran and Hezbollah, possibly in concert with other members of Iran’s “Resistance Axis,” has never been higher.

Join Senior Fellow Peter Rough for a conversation with Senior Fellow Michael Doran about the significance of these events.

Event Transcript

This transcription is automatically generated and edited lightly for accuracy. Please excuse any errors.

Peter Rough:

Good afternoon and welcome to Hudson Institute. My name is Peter Rough. I’m a senior fellow here at Hudson Institute and analyst of European affairs, and it’s my great pleasure to interview for this breaking news flash event, Mike Duran, the director of our Center on Middle Eastern Peace and Security, the topic being Hezbollah and Iran versus Israel Full-Scale War. And I hope my Ron Burgundy question mark came in loud and clear at the end of that title.

Mike, it’s been a dramatic few weeks. After the attack in Majdal Shams, which killed a dozen Israelis, Israel responded by knocking off Faud Shukr in Beirut, whom you described to me as something like a chief of staff to Hezbollah. Hours later we heard the news, well, eventually we heard the news that the Israelis had also in Tehran knocked off Ismail Haniyeh, the head of Hamas. In between, or perhaps before, I’m getting my dates confused by now, there is the attack in Hodeidah in Yemen against the Houthis, and now just an hour ago or so, we saw images coming from, I suppose, Southern Lebanon of rockets firing over into Israel. So, Hezbollah apparently unleashing its response now to the Israelis.

Working at Hudson Institute, I have the great luxury of just being able to walk down the corridor to your office to ask you what to make of these events, and we thought we would bring that to the world. So, Mike, what are we to make about what’s happening right now? Are we on the cusp of full-scale war in the Middle East?

Michael Doran:

Maybe. We are closer to full-scale war between Hezbollah and Israel, but also between Israel and Iran. And all of Iran’s resistance axis, including in addition to Hezbollah the militias in Iraq and Syria and the Houthis among others. We’re closer to war of that nature than at any time since October 7th, even closer than we were in April when Iran hit Israel with that very large barrage of over 300 rockets and missiles and drones.

The reason for that is just as you mentioned, Israel in the last couple of weeks has carried out a major attack against the Houthis. It took out the senior most military official in Hezbollah’s system, second only to Nasrallah, who was not a military official, but in the military system, basically the chief of staff. And then Ismail Haniyeh, who although he’s a Hamas figure, apparently the Israelis haven’t claimed credit for it. They took him out in downtown Tehran, apparently within 750 yards of the . . . He was a guest of the president, of the new president of Iran, and they killed him 750 yards from the presidential palace. So, he’s under the security guarantee of the Islamic Republic, and Israel killed him. Like I say, the Israelis haven’t taken credit for that, but the Iranians immediately blamed them and vowed revenge.

There’s no way that the . . .

Peter Rough:

The red flag of revenge.

Michael Doran:

The red flag. They raised the red flag of revenge over the mosque in Qom. There’s no way that I see it that the Iranians and Hezbollah can take what happened to them sitting down there. There must be a response and a very significant response. Having said that, I think most analysts looking at this right now say neither side, neither the Israelis nor the Iranians want this to go to full-scale war. I think that that’s . . .

Peter Rough:

Most analysts or Mike Doran as well?

Michael Doran:

I think I would agree with that, that they probably don’t want it to go to full-scale war, but no one is willing to back down at this stage. They have equities in this conflict, they have positions they’ve taken, and they want to protect them. And so, the risk of it escalating to full-scale war is very, very serious.

Peter Rough:

And we didn’t even mention the senior commander Deif killed in Gaza, which is a major event as well. And in any other setting would be the dominant topic of conversation I think for most analysts now.

Michael Doran:

Right. Yeah. That’s a couple of weeks before it, but the Israelis now, yesterday I think it was they verified that this is the architect of October 7th. And that’s not an unrelated issue because what Iran is seeing now, what Hezbollah is seeing is that Israel is in serious risk of achieving its stated goals, Netanyahu achieving his stated goals of destroying Hamas completely.

The Israelis have a most wanted board. The defense minister, Gallant prominently went and crossed Deif off the board and crossed Haniyeh off the board. So, they are going down the list and just taking them out one by one, wherever they are, including in Tehran. That’s a provocation, from Iranian’s point of view, that’s a provocation to Iran as well.

Peter Rough:

After the Israelis hit the Iranian consulate in Damascus, or whatever it was, intelligence building, Iran responded with this barrage on April 13th or 14th. What should we take away from that episode that would inform our thinking on how to analyze what’s happening now?

Michael Doran:

That’s a great question, and I didn’t even feed it to you. I think that is the crucial frame for understanding everything that is going on right now because the Israelis believe, and I wholeheartedly agree with them, that their deterrence was gravely harmed by the very symbolic response that they engaged in. Iran launched the largest ballistic missile barrage at another country that any country has ever launched in the history of the world, and Israel responded by taking out an S-300 surface-to-air defense system.

So, in other words, Israel was able, presumably with an F-35, or we don’t know actually, I still think to this day I never heard exactly how, they either penetrated Iran’s air defenses or from Iraq launched a missile or a couple of missiles that took out this air defense system that is protecting one of the nuclear sites in Iran. So, it was a demonstration of capabilities. It was a way of saying, “Hey, if we want to, we can make your life very difficult.” But they didn’t carry out an attack, and they didn’t because the United States restrained them. Remember President Biden very . . .

Peter Rough:

Take the win.

Michael Doran:

. . . famously now, take the win. Don’t do this. And the Americans restrained the Israelis before the attack. The Israelis saw the Iranians preparing to launch this major attack, and they debated whether to take preemptive action, and Biden said, “No, don’t.” And then after the Iranians did that, he said, “Don’t” again. And the Israelis didn’t. And they feel, and I again think correctly, that the United States put them in a bear hug, their arms are tied, so that Hezbollah and Iran can just sit and slap them.

And what we’re seeing now is with the actions against Shukr in Beirut and Haniyeh in Iran, this is a way of saying to the Houthis first and then to Hezbollah, and now to the Iranians, but also, I’m sorry, but also to Washington, to both Iran and its allies and to Washington, “No, that’s not the way this conflict is going to unfold. We’re not going to sit here and have our hands held while you do this to us.”

Peter Rough:

How would you assess the balance of forces or the balance of power between Israel on the one hand in Iran and these various proxies that is built up on the other hand, meaning if we are on the cusp of major war, who should we bet on, or how should we think about it at the very least?

Michael Doran:

Well, we should always bet on Israel because Israel is our ally and because if Israel doesn’t win, America loses by definition. So, we should be 100 percent behind Israel and working to help it win. But if you look at it, if we call it just like a sporting match, and we step back and we look at Iran and we look at Israel, it’s a very tough match to call because I’ve been talking to our colleague. You get a smile on your face.

Peter Rough:

Smile because sports metaphors are not your strengths.

Michael Doran:

No. But you feel a boxing metaphor coming on, don’t you?

Peter Rough:

I do.

Michael Doran:

Yes. Yeah. Okay. So Peter is pointing out the fact that I don’t follow sports at all. So the minute I have one, you know I got it from somebody else. But I’ve been talking to our colleague, Can Kasapoglu, a lot about this, who always uses boxing metaphors.

Peter Rough:

And he’s a military analyst.

Michael Doran:

And he’s a military analyst. He’s the best military analyst of the Middle East that I know of. It’s really kind of apples and oranges because you have, Iran is a boxer that has one huge muscle, has a really great hook, or maybe a body shot and an upper cut, and it does that really well because if it’s missiles, drones, and ballistic missiles. These are the tools it has that give it advantage in warfare. But at the same time, it has a bad heart. It has a bad heart, it has a bad knee. The regime is decrepit. It is more unpopular than it has been since its inception after the Iranian Revolution. And it has great vulnerabilities, and it doesn’t have a significant regular military air force. Its air defense systems are weak and so on, as the Israelis demonstrated in that.

But it is built up its proxy in Lebanon, Hezbollah, so that Hezbollah is not . . . We call it a militia, it’s a military. It has a bigger . . . If we were able to put Belgium next to Lebanon, it would trounce Belgium. It would trounce most European militaries. It has, I think the number is the eighth largest. I don’t want to actually start . . . I don’t know where I’m pulling these numbers, so I’m going to stop before I say something I’m going to regret. But it has over 150,000 rockets and missiles and some 10,000 to 20,000 of those are precision guided. And the key here is that these mixed strike packages that Hezbollah has as a result of following the concepts of operations that come from Iran and the technology that comes from Iran, they put together missiles, drones, and ballistic missiles in such a way that they can overwhelm the defenses of the Israelis.

Peter Rough:

I think the term is overmatch, which you and Can Kasapoglu wrote up a few months ago. I’d never heard that phrase before I guess.

Michael Doran:

Couple years ago, actually,

Peter Rough:

Couple years ago. But I’ve heard it lots since then. It’s become a real term of art or parlance in the Washington debate.

Michael Doran:

Right. This is the advantage that Iran has. These weapons are very serious weapons and they can overwhelm the defenses. And even if the interception rates are fantastic, 80 or 90 percent, they’re still going to do a lot of damage. And especially, it’s such close proximity from Lebanon to Israel, they can hit all of Israel’s critical national infrastructure. They can hit all of its military bases. They can do a lot of damage to civilians like they did over the weekend with . . . In Majdal Shams, the sirens went off, but not fast enough so that the kids could get off the playing field and get into the shelter. So here’s the center of gravity of the conflict or the challenge from the Israeli point of view. There is no way that Israel can win in Lebanon against Hezbollah in a conventional sense, in the sense that when I say win, there’s no way that they can suppress all of these capabilities and destroy all of . . . They can’t do to Hezbollah what they have done to Hamas, which is basically put an end to all the rocket fire by Hamas to Tel Aviv. They will never get to a point . . . No matter what the Israelis put into the fight in Lebanon, they will not be able to destroy all of the weapons, all of the weapons manufacturing capability, and all of the teams that can wield them.

So on the day that there is a ceasefire between Hezbollah and Israel, whatever the constellation, wherever Israeli forces are located and whatever they have done, there are still going to be rockets being fired from Lebanon into Israel and that will be the case as long as the Iranian regime is there. So even if Israel occupied all of Lebanon, which is something that’s never going to happen, but all of Lebanon and Hezbollah would have to go to ground, run away to Syria and so on, the minute the Israelis started to go back to Israel, they would come back in and the Iranian weapons would follow them back in. This is the challenge that we have, that Israel has.

Peter Rough:

How will the White House process the events of the last week, 10 days, perhaps going back to April, October, whatever the frame that’s set as a result of this sort of series of escalatory spirals and how should it react to what’s taking place? You already mentioned we should move a hundred percent behind Israel, but flesh all of that out a bit more.

Michael Doran:

Well, first of all, I don’t think there’s any way we . . . When I say we, the US government will move a hundred percent behind Israel because we have a weak decision-making structure, we have to be honest about that, in the White House. The president is the lamest of all lame duck presidents that has ever existed, and he’s basically said, “I’m not around any longer.” It’s not by accident that we have this uptick in the tempo and in the severity of the operations by Israel against Iran in the aftermath of President Biden saying that he’s stepping aside because Kamala Harris is not . . . If you think about Prime Minister Netanyahu’s speech in Congress, he praised Biden, he praised Trump, he went to go see Trump, he did not mention Kamala Harris, and that’s not just because Kamala Harris has a history of, let’s say . . . I was going to say the word hostility.

Then I thought maybe that’s a little too strong, so let’s make it a little less than hostility. Let’s say that she has not shown an excessive amount of love for the Jewish state and that’s the feeling in Jerusalem for sure. There’s no doubt about this. Nobody makes any secrets about this, but she’s really not in charge. She’s not in charge, and Biden is only half in charge. So there’s a vacuum in the Middle East and everybody is trying to game it and everybody is trying to compensate . . . The Israelis are trying to compensate for the fact that there is no American policy there really to offer deterrence of Iran. If anyone is going to deter Iran, for Israel, it has to be Israel. It has to do it for itself.

This war or potential war . . . I don’t know that we’re . . . As you and I are sitting down here to talk right now, we’ve seen there’s a massive salvo barrage coming from Hezbollah. Is this going to be the first of many? Are we going to get something from Iran, from the Houthis as well, or is this going to be a rather symbolic barrage and they’re going to be done with it there? That could happen, but whatever it is, the fact that we’ve got to this state right now is a complete indictment of what I would call the Obama-Biden approach to Iran because their belief from day one, when I say they, it’s the Biden team . . . All the people that worked for Biden on the Middle East worked for Obama and they were catechized on how to stabilize the Middle East under the Obama administration and that is by working to engage Iran and with each of Iran’s proxies, to work on them separately and sort of not detach the proxies from Iran, but engage them on their interests and appease them. Appease each one of the proxies separately and appease Iran as well.

They thought this was going to work, this was going to stabilize the region. Instead, what we have is for the first time in history, we have Iran orchestrating all the elements of its alliance system in a war against one of our allies, and we’re sitting on the sidelines.

Peter Rough:

So what is the Israeli plan or what can it be to recover essentially northern Israel? They’ve depopulated that part of the country. I think there are 80,000 Israeli civilians who have had to leave their homes and move south. You just argued that moving into southern Lebanon, even up to Beirut, is insufficient to actually stop the rocket barrages or at least to defeat Hezbollah given their capabilities and their ties to Iran. And so long as the Iranian regime is in place, it makes it virtually impossible, therefore, to draw the conclusion, to further the logic out. For Israel to repopulate its north, I mean, how do they proceed?

Michael Doran:

Well, we have to wait and see how they’re going to do this, but there are several things that we should keep our eye on. If this is . . . I said apples and oranges. We have a fight, one fighter that has this body shot and this uppercut, but then Israel, the other fighter, is very quick on his feet. Its blows may not be as heavy, but they can be much more strategically directed. It’s a much smarter fighter.

Peter Rough:

But their trainer’s holding one arm behind their back.

Michael Doran:

Trainer’s holding one arm behind their back, but they do have this air force. They have this mighty air force that Iran has no answer to and Hezbollah has no answer to, and until now they have not been able to put it into play because the umpire, the United States, is holding its arm behind its back. So how will they use this . . .? If it’s an all-out war and they can unleash the full power of the IAF against their enemies, how will they use it? Will they use it in Iran, for example? Because one way to really moderate Hezbollah and get them to stop the rockets is to threaten the Iranians very significantly. I doubt that’s going to happen. I doubt that’s going to happen. But for the first time since this war started, I do think it is an Iranian-Israeli war, but for the first time since we’ve got this far along, the Israelis are actually threatening Iranians in Iran and how are they going to use that?

What targets are they going to hit? What’s the message they’re going to send? How is the United States going to respond to that? That will be a very important question. But then in Lebanon, what are they going to go for in Lebanon? My guess is that if this goes to all-out war, we’re going to see ground maneuver by Israelis in Lebanon. They’re going to try to drive . . . Their diplomatic message is that UN Resolution 1701, which is the resolution that ended the war in 2006, be implemented because it was never implemented. According to 1701, the whole south of Lebanon is to be demilitarized, Hezbollah is supposed to be . . . The LAF, the Lebanese Armed Forces, is supposed to be responsible for the defense of Lebanon and Hezbollah is supposed to be disarmed.

Peter Rough:

I think this all the time when I see news reports of Israeli strikes in southern Lebanon, and these villages are named, they’re all south of Litani River or many of them are, and I think to myself, “How can the Israelis ever trust a UN Security Council resolution to keep them safe when there’s zero repercussions or mention of this in any of the reporting, that it’s actively violating Hezbollah’s presence in those areas?” That the Security Council-

Michael Doran:

They can’t, they can’t, and they also can’t . . . Look, the United States, we give billions of dollars to the Lebanese Armed Forces, and we do it under the . . . We kid ourselves and claim that we’re building up an alternative to Hezbollah. All we’re really doing is turning Lebanon into an American-Iranian condominium in which Hezbollah is able to hide behind the American financed Lebanese Armed Forces, and Hezbollah tells them where to deploy effectively. “Go do this, go do that.” Just like with UNIGIL, the UN forces there and Hezbollah uses them as a wall to hide behind. And then when the Israelis come into attack, the Americans say, “Oh, don’t touch this target. Don’t touch this target. Don’t touch that target.” We put their arm behind their back. So they’re going to want to demilitarize southern Lebanon, they’re going to want to get what they were promised in 1701, which is a demilitarized southern Lebanon or get some portion of that.

And for the first time since 2006, or since long before 2006, since 2000, the message is going to be, I think . . . I suspect the message to Hezbollah and to Iran will be, “If you want to continue to prosecute this war, you lose territory. This is not how . . . It doesn’t work this way. We don’t run behind . . .. You don’t get to hide behind the Americans and pop up from behind them and shoot at us, and then we have to sit here and just take it. From now on, when you do this to us, you lose something that you hold dear.” That’s going to be what they’re going to try to do.

Peter Rough:

A dilemma for American defense planners is this concept of simultaneity, which is a major war in Europe taking place at the same time as China moving across the Taiwan straits. Of course, that’s how we think of simultaneity. Israel has its own simultaneity in that it has an ongoing war in Gaza while you’re describing these potential operations in the north. What is the state of play in Gaza and how does the temple of operations in Gaza you think shape Jerusalem’s thinking about a war in the north?

Michael Doran:

Well, I think one of the reasons they were able to allow themselves to carry out these high profile targeted assassinations in Beirut and in Tehran is that they recognize that the tempo has really declined. They have moved effectively after having taken Rafah, after having taken the Philadelphi Corridor . . . That’s the border between Gaza and Egypt. They recognize that if they have to move troops from the south to the north, they’re prepared. They’re ready to do it.

Peter Rough:

And there is no comparable Philadelphi Corridor in Lebanon, which is to say it’s just an open field and so it’s hard for Israel to interdict resupply. They’ve drawn red lines and strategic systems and so forth in the past, and we’ve seen periodic strikes, but the basic resupply of Hezbollah is just incredibly difficult to interdict. Whereas in Gaza, you have-

Michael Doran:

Impossible. It’s basically impossible. But what they can do, the south is Shiite, it is the stronghold . . . The two strongholds demographically of Hezbollah are the South and in the Bekaa Valley. So they can hit, it hurts Hezbollah with its own people to lose the South.

Peter Rough:

Israel had formed the National Unity government for some time. Then the politics got a bit shakier again with a big resignation speech. Where do you think Israeli politics goes from here if there is a major war that kicks off?

Michael Doran:

I think Netanyahu is stronger than he’s been at any time since October 7th. So, he’s permanently damaged by October 7th because first of all, he’s the most influential Prime Minister . . . Well, the second most influential in the history of Israel, or third, depending on how you want to think about it, but he’s been the most influential of the last 20 years. And so what October 7th revealed was a huge failure in security concept and in even the very structure of the military. There’s no way, no matter what happened on October 7th exactly, no matter who didn’t notify who, who wasn’t thinking what they should have been thinking and so on.

He’s responsible for the system, but the electorate is going to hold him responsible for just being in power on that day. Having said that, so I think when the war finally ends, there’s probably going to be an election, and it will not surprise me at all if that’s the last election of Prime Minister Netanyahu, but right now, he represents the will of the Israeli people in the war. There’s been this great effort, supported behind the scenes by the Biden administration, to bring him down and to use the hostages as the way of doing it, saying, the claim is, “You Prime Minister Netanyahu, all you care about is holding onto your seat in government and there’s a deal out there to be had with Hamas which you are not taking because you’re just looking after your career.”

And the Israeli public doesn’t buy it. They don’t buy it. They can see that Biden is trying to stop the war and leave Hamas in power. They can see that Hamas is the one that’s not taking the deal, not the Israelis. And they can see that Iran is working with Hezbollah in the north. So he’s saying, “No, we’re going to continue this until we win.” Exactly what win is not clear, but I think that that is a message that the majority of Israelis are going to get behind. The majority of Israelis are going to see that he did not cause this today.

Peter Rough:

Even the little that I caught of Vice President Harris’ speech on this issue had I think two planks. One, end the war. Two, take the hostage deal, but what’s left unsaid is essentially then Hamas survives, and so Israel doesn’t win.

Michael Doran:

This is the absurdity of the American position, which at first, people didn’t see how absurd it was. But since April, since the State of the Union address, when President Biden made it very clear that he was twisting the arm of Netanyahu behind his back, slamming his head down on the table and saying, “You will take this deal. You will take-”

Peter Rough:

A come-to-Jesus conversation.

Michael Doran:

Yeah. He had a come-to-Jesus with the head of the Jewish state. Since the Israeli public saw that, they recognized that Biden wanted to leave Hamas in power. At the same time, the administration is saying, “We need a revitalized Palestinian authority, two-state solution with the Palestinian authority running Gaza.” But anybody with a brain can see that if Hamas is still there, the Palestinian authority isn’t going to run it. So the whole two-state solution, revitalized Palestinian authority thing was purely designed to cause turmoil in the ruling coalition.

Peter Rough:

You’ve named all of the players I can think of that are relevant. Are there any that aren’t? For example, the Chinese just brokered this deal amongst the Palestinians. Are they going to take a position on this? Are the Russians going to take a position? You always like to tell the story of when you were working in the White House, the Chinese often deferred to the Russians. I hope I’m not telling a story out of school, but the Russians basically took the lead on a lot of these positions and the Chinese just flowed in behind them.

Michael Doran:

Yeah.

Peter Rough:

That’s obviously changed. How do you think they might play this?

Michael Doran:

Yeah, it’s interesting. It was amazing what the Chinese used to do, and this has got nothing to do with what we’re talking about really, but it was just the two of us and the three people out there. Hi mom. The Chinese used to pretend that they didn’t have a policy. We would ask them, “What do you think about X? What do you think about Y?” And they said, “Whatever the Russians will do, we’ll . . .” It was a very clever way of starting to . . . This is a moment when they were expanding their influence in the region but didn’t want us to notice in any way. It was very, very clever, I have to say. No, I don’t think they’re really in a position. They are taking a greater interest. They did just broker this deal between the different factions of the Palestinian politics, including Hamas.

They’re becoming more obstreperous in the region or more visible in the region, but I don’t think they’re major players who are going to affect this on the ground. Because the Russians have a position in Syria and an established relationship with Hezbollah, a military relationship, they could possibly do more. They could pass intelligence to the Iranians, for example, and so on. That would be significant, but I think the Russians have compartmentalized their relationship with the Israelis to a significant degree because they are afraid of what the Israelis might do in Ukraine.

Peter Rough:

How are they compartmentalizing it?

Michael Doran:

Well, there’s always been a hotline between the Israeli military and the-

Peter Rough:

Deconfliction of it.

Michael Doran:

Deconfliction in Syria.

Peter Rough:

Right.

Michael Doran:

Which has allowed the Israelis to carry out . . . The Israelis act with impunity in Syria against Iran. Even though Russia is the ally of Iran in Syria, it doesn’t get involved.

Peter Rough:

And has air assets that watch all of this, I’m sure.

Michael Doran:

It has air assets that watch all of this. It doesn’t get involved between the Israelis and the Iranians. It’s very interesting, actually. And they’re afraid, I assume. My working assumption is that their concern is that if they start obstructing the Israelis . . . First of all, the Israelis are more powerful than they are in Syria, and they don’t want to highlight that to everyone. But secondly, Israel could start giving air defense assets or even more offensive assets to the Ukrainians. There are ways-

Peter Rough:

Right.

Michael Doran:

So they want to keep the Israelis out of that arena.

Peter Rough:

Oh, we’ve seen that same dance with the DPRK-ROK dynamic in Northeast Asia, where the South Koreans provide certain capabilities that eventually find their way to the Ukrainians. The Russians countermove by going the North Koreans. Or you could make the argument that the North Korean-Russian relationship began, and then the South Koreans made a counterplay, but all of these theaters are interrelated, and there is a delicate dance unfolding.

So you’ve mentioned the vaunted Israeli Air Force, and we’ve seen Israeli airstrikes going back. You’ve mentioned Hezbollah’s missile systems as being its uppercut or body blow strength. How does Tehran, if it has a war plan, activate a war? So it has in Hezbollah, this enormous missile force. What do the Houthis do? How do they factor in? What kind of trouble might the Iranians stir up in Iraq or in Syria? I remember at the time of the strike on the American base, the Special Forces base in Jordan that you described it as a rather clever move because the Jordanians are large Palestinian majority population. It causes problems for the Jordanians, signals to the Americans, “We could destabilize this if you don’t shut down the Israelis,” et cetera. So that was an original, I think, Iranian thrust. Are there any other plays on the chessboard out there, by the way, it meant by Iran chess?

Michael Doran:

I think the smart way to think about this war between Iran and Israel is a contest for American policy. That’s what’s going on. Each one is taking their steps with an eye to what Washington is doing. Think about it from the Israeli point of view for a second. Netanyahu came to Washington, and what did he argue? He argued that, “This war is a war between Israel and Iran, but it’s really a war between Iran and the United States, and Israel is on the frontline for the United States.” And then what did it do? It went and it took out Fouad Shukur in Beirut. Who’s he? He’s one of the architects of the Marine Barracks Bombing in 1983.

Peter Rough:

Right.

Michael Doran:

So the choice of target there-

Peter Rough:

And he’s emphasized that in his own remarks about the taking out of Fouad Shukur.

Michael Doran:

Netanyahu.

Peter Rough:

Yes.

Michael Doran:

And he also pointed out, “I forgot actually, that dozens of French soldiers died there as well.” So he’s saying to the French and to the Americans-

Peter Rough:

“My Olympic gift to you.”

Michael Doran:

Yeah, “We just took out one of your enemies.” What American can say, “How could you dare kill the guy who killed 243 American Marines?” It’s not possible. That was a very clever choice of target. Killing Haniyeh in Tehran was a very clever choice because the Israelis have already announced, “We’re going to kill every Hezbollah leader, every Hezbollah major fighter in the world, wherever they are.”

Peter Rough:

But Qatar is off limits?

Michael Doran:

Qatar is off limits, Turkey is off limits, but they don’t say that. But there are places where they can’t do it, but in Tehran, they’re going to do it in Tehran, but they didn’t kill an Iranian. So as a provocation to the Iranians, it was pretty major because it’s on their soil and next to their presidential palace.

Peter Rough:

How do you think the conversation went in Doha when Hamas said, “Who’s going to travel to Tehran to the funeral of Ismail Haniyeh?” I’m not sure there were a lot of volunteers who wanted to head there for that.

Michael Doran:

I’ll tell you what, what if you’re in the IRGC and your boss says, “I want to send you to Syria or Lebanon right now?” How many Iranians are volunteering right now? And I’m serious about that and saying, “I really want to go liaise with Hezbollah right now, boss.” They’re not-

Peter Rough:

Although how many are eager to remain in Tehran for that intelligence failure? You have under your care, Ismail Haniyeh in the heart of hearts, in the most heavily guarded, sacred places in Tehran in terms of security, and boom, he’s blown out of bed.

Michael Doran:

This is the thing about the apples and oranges, the different fighters. That message, they took out Haniyeh in Tehran, in downtown Tehran, that was a message to every IRGC leader in Tehran. “We know exactly where you are and we can take you out.” But think even more about the killing of Fouad Shukur, right? Because that took place a few days after we have the killing of the 12 children in Majdal Shams on Saturday, and then Shukur was taken out . . . I forgot already. Was it Tuesday? Just a few days later.

Peter Rough:

Tuesday.

Michael Doran:

When I was working in the wine house, to the extent that I had purview on these kinds of operations that we carried out, the hardest thing to say is what the timing is going to be, because you have a target. If we’re going to kill you, Peter Rough. We’re up on you. We’re listening to your communications. We know how many mistresses you have, where they are, and we’re following the conversations with the mistresses and so on. And then we find out, oh, on Tuesday night he’s going to go have a hamburger at McDonald’s with his mistress. Then what dictates it is your decision to go see her on Tuesday and our ability to pick it up. That could take months for that to happen. These are targets that you decide who you want to kill, but the opportunity is set by events and you have almost no control over it.

For the Israelis, for this to happen on Saturday, and for them to take the guy out on Tuesday, that suggests that they are up on the comms of all of these guys, and they know, that their understanding of Hezbollah’s system is really quite amazing. So that’s one of the things, that intelligence database, I don’t know what the right word is, bank of targets and the penetration of the system, that is something that they’re going to use to their advantage if this goes to all out war. They’re going to move very quickly to take out the stockpiles of weapons and to take out critical nodes in the Hezbollah’s military. I don’t think for a second, by the way, that that means that they’re going to, like I said, I don’t think that they can stop the fire. I think Hezbollah’s fighters are very well-trained. They have a decade of experience fighting in Syria. It’s going to be a very formidable enemy, but the Israelis have certain advantages in this fight.

Peter Rough:

So what is American Iran policy right now, given that this is an Israeli Iranian contest and it’s unfolding before our very eyes, it’s escalating dramatically. Was it at least until this moment to somehow wind down the war in Gaza and then try to pick up where they had left off beforehand?

Michael Doran:

Yeah, it was exactly that. If you were Joe Biden, and you’re looking at November, this is back when Biden was still nominally the president and he was going to go for reelection. He was looking at November, and he’s seeing all of these wildfires in the Middle East. But because of the Iranian position, the Iranian position was the Iranian position, Hezbollah position, the Houthi position was a ceasefire in Gaza, means that you can put out all of these flames. That’s why he slammed Netanyahu’s head on the desk and pulled his arm up behind his back because he thought that I’ll just pressure Israel and that will end all of this conflict and Iran will end all of these other conflicts. But that wasn’t working.

Peter Rough:

I mean, it’s almost the April dynamic at a larger scale. So you get to launch a major attack October 7th, but then you get to survive. You get to do a major ballistic and drone attack on Israel, but then take the win.

Michael Doran:

That’s the Biden doctrine. The Biden doctrine is that Iran and its proxies can send rockets, missiles and drones against anybody in the Middle East. Anybody in the world, but you, especially if you’re an ally of the United States, are not allowed to attack Iran back directly. That’s what the Israeli policy is fighting against now.

Peter Rough:

What should our, aside from moving in behind Israel as our ally, our Iran policy be? I mean, for example, strikes me as one area of low hanging fruit, Iranian energy sales seem to be proceeding as if nothing’s taking place. The US hasn’t really cracked down on any of these areas of Iranian power crucial to their economy. What should our policy be?

Michael Doran:

So conceptually, number one, Iran is the problem, not the source of any solution. Number two, the Palestinians do not get a veto over any of the defense arrangements between the United States, it’s Arab partners and Israel. Number three, we need enough forces in the Middle East, and I couldn’t tell you exactly what that is because I’m not a military expert, but enough American forces in the Middle East to present a credible threat, a credible military threat to Iran and its proxies for actions that they take against the United States and the US allies. And we should send a very clear message to the Iranians, that offensive action against us or our allies by them or their proxies will result inevitably like day follows night in offensive military action against Iran. We or our allies will hold Iran accountable for what it and its proxies do.

And we see we have an ally, Israel. It doesn’t mean we have to send American forces into war. It means we are there to be the backstop for Israel if it wants to go in and carry out offensive action. And if Iran is going to respond, it’s going to have to ask, is it possible that the American military will be coming in behind the Israelis? But it has to be a credible military threat. And the only way that you make a military threat credible is by using your military.

Look at when the Israelis attacked Hodeidah. The first thought I had is how come we haven’t seen that from the Americans? The Houthis have been launching attacks at American ships. It’s not like they’re just sending these missiles out into the ocean. They have been attacking Americans directly. We have never hit them back like that, and we have definitely never hit an Iranian. The Houthis, when the Houthis launch their missiles, they have an Iranian advisor sitting right next to them and saying, “Fuad, push that button.” Why isn’t that guy ever killed? He’s not, because the Biden administration thinks that that guy is going to be the moderating influence on the Houthis. He going to say, “Fuad, don’t push the button today because I got the call from Tehran saying not to do it.” Why? Because Brett McGirk is talking to Tehran and saying nice things to them. That’s not how the Middle East works.

Peter Rough:

Like the moderate Ismail Haniyeh.

Michael Doran:

Yeah, the mod-

Peter Rough:

We’ve lost the force for peace.

Michael Doran:

The austere Scholar. Yeah.

Peter Rough:

Yes, the peist man. Yeah. Interesting. So then all other policy areas flow from that paradigm, the oil, the cyber-

Michael Doran:

Everything. Yeah. A serious Iran policy starts with shutting down as the Trump administration did, shutting down Iranian oil sales to China, which is what is fueling this machine that Iran is igniting the Middle East with.

Peter Rough:

Anything else that we should pay attention for?

Michael Doran:

American policy is the key thing. These guys, because now who’s in charge? It’s the Obama team, and they’re going to reflexively say, “Oh, we have to have an even-handed approach between Iran and the Israelis.” What they should say is, “We want a ceasefire in Lebanon based on the full implementation of 1701,” which is what Hezbollah promised us last time around. Let’s not buy the donkey again. Let’s make them actually give us the donkey this time.

Peter Rough:

Well, now you see what the first 45 minutes after a crisis in the Middle East looked like for me when I walked down to Mike Doran’s office. Mike, thanks so much for your analysis. For all of the insight on American policy, which Mike tracks on the Middle East, please visit hudson.org for our center and Middle East, peace and security. I’m Peter Rough, thanks so much for being with us.