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Produced by the Middle East Broadcasting Networks (MBN), this podcast brings clarity to the complexities of the Middle East. Each episode, host Andres Ilves sits down with regional experts, analysts, and insiders to unpack the stories behind the headlines. From politics and security to culture and social change, "MBN The Podcast" goes beyond the surface to explore what’s really driving events across the region.
Now, of course, we have this looming issue that's at the back of everyone's mind of Iran, and I'd like to chat with you briefly about that. Iran is obviously something that's always, of concern to Israel, and the issue of, ongoing Iranian threats to Israel and its proxies fighting in the proximity of Israel. So I'd like to talk to you about that and and speculation, of course, in recent times that Israel may be preparing to take out, Iranian nuclear facilities. So just in a general sense and also to put into context, one of the questions I would ask is why now? Because the Iranian nuclear program has been in development for a long time and if something were to happen, why would this happen now of all times?
Tom Gross:Okay, well, there are various ways of looking at it, but let's let's start with one of them. The terror attacks on 10/07/2023 on Southern Israel by Hamas were correctly viewed as in a way an Iranian attack on Israel. Hamas, although they get some direct funding from Qatar, Iran is really their spiritual employer or however I'm not quite sure how to phrase it but anyway it's the Iranians gave a lot of trading for Hamas, you know, one of the Hamas leaders Ismail Hania was assassinated by Israel in Tehran during this war last year 2024 and Qizbullah too remember started firing thousands of rockets at Israel One Day later 10/08/2023 so both Qizbullah and Hamas and also the Houthis in Iran sorry in Yemen all three of them are part of the same kind of Iranian axis. All three of them have fired thousands, tens of thousands of rockets at Israel which is a very small state geographically. It's a tiny territory.
Tom Gross:Iran too has fired missiles on two or three different occasions last year at Israel. So Israel feels itself to be under a prolonged prolonged attack from all sides and it's only because Israel has managed to invent really quite miraculous missile defense systems the Iron Dome and the Arrow missile defense system that very few of these rockets have caused big fatalities in Israel but we don't you know these rockets are huge the rockets that the Houthis have been firing one of which recently hit Ben Gurion Airport, Tadah, Israel's main civilian airport in May, earlier in May. That rocket got through Israel's missile defense and that's a ballistic missile that Iran has supplied to the Houthis and I understand a missile like that could be you could have a nuclear warhead on such a missile. So the threats by Iran, know, they're constantly regime, I should say rather than Iran, Islamic Regime is constantly screaming and shouting and organizing rallies shouting death to America, death to Israel. Israel has to take these threats seriously.
Tom Gross:You know, they can't just dismiss them as rhetoric. The Iranian regime has armed the it's moved to Israel's borders in it's attempting to do so in Syria, in Lebanon, in Gaza. It's attempting to do so in the West Bank. So that's one reason Israel is is very concerned about Iranian threats and although it's managed to withhold the threat so far with with a relatively small number of Israeli casualties or property damage a nuclear threat will be altogether different obviously even though it is rumored that Israel has its own nuclear arsenal and could respond. Again the territory of Israel is very small and there's a kind of messianic, if I can use the kind of Christian term, attitudes of some of the Shia clerics in the Islamic regime in Iran, you know, where they may be prepared to sacrifice, accept retaliate, to react action from Israel in order to wipe out Israel.
Tom Gross:It's also a very small landmass, half of it is the Nege Desert. Quite a small device is an existential threat to the existence of Israel.
Andres Ilves:Thank you. That was an excellent outlining of the threats. I guess then this is a question is of the timing because
Tom Gross:Yes.
Andres Ilves:This didn't they didn't do this a year ago
Tom Gross:or Sure.
Andres Ilves:Any other time. Why now?
Tom Gross:Well, Iran has been the the the Islamic regime in Iran has been working on a nuclear weapons program for about twenty years, probably more, in fact. And Israel, sometimes in line with The United States and also with the assistance of certain European intelligence agencies which I I won't name on this broadcast but just to clarify it's not only Israel and America, there are some European countries involved too. They have taken various measures to slow down the thought the Iranian nuclear programme, some of which were very successful like the Stuxnet virus in 02/2009 that essentially was a computer virus that disabled a lot of the centrifuges of the Iranian nuclear program. And as I understand, this virus wasn't just a it wasn't just a virus sent via computer. Somebody went in with a little stick and stuck it into the system on one of the nuclear sites.
Tom Gross:So it involved human human involvement inside Iran too. Israel is also alleged although it's never admitted to doing so having assassinated some nuclear scientists inside Iran Motorbike Assassins very targeted killings and it's taken other measures too to thwart and slow down the Iranian nuclear program. Now it has managed to slow down and thwart the program but it has not managed to stop it because Iran has continued enriching uranium and again I'm not I'm not an expert on the scientific side of things but the international agencies themselves said Iran is the Islamic regime is very very close to being able to manufacture nuclear weapons. Weeks, months, so the window is closing. I know we've heard this before but it it really is closing this time.
Tom Gross:That's one reason and other things have been tried you know Barack Obama did a nuclear deal, there've been sanctions, there've been all kinds of other measures to try and slow down the programme but they've only slowed it down, they haven't stopped it. There's another factor which is that one of the deterrents Iran always had was things like its proxy militia in Lebanon, Hezbollah. Hezbollah had around a hundred thousand rockets and they were threatening Israel that if Israel would do something they would rain down rockets and the Hezbollah rockets were quite strong. Now Israel has essentially degraded, significantly degraded Hezbollah as people will recall they planted a virus in in in the beepers in walkie talkies and so on and they they disabled the entire infrastructural network of Hezbollah, they assassinated the Hezbollah leader, Nazarela. I'm not saying Israel did this but the regime in Syria has fallen, the new government in Syria even though it has Islamist roots is already being fairly friendly to towards Israel or making let's say blocking the rearmament of an Hezbollah across its territory by Iran.
Tom Gross:The they are cooperating in that respect. The the new Syrian government's cooperating with the West to prevent Iran interfering or or reactivating Isbolla. Also last year after Iran attempted to hit Israel with with missiles, Israel hit back at various defensive defensive capabilities inside Iran and Iran hasn't yet rebuilt them. So right now Iran is more the Iranian nuclear sites are more vulnerable than they were six or twelve months ago because Israel has disabled a lot of their defensive possibilities and at some point Iran will rebuild these will rebuild these capabilities. So there's a window of opportunity.
Tom Gross:There's another point which is maybe the more contentious point from Israel or the more complicated point and that is Donald Trump as I said before he likes making deals, he likes saying look at me deal of the century after the deal, his book after the deal and there's a fear in Israel that The United States which is currently negotiating with the Islamic regime in Tehran about its nuclear program may make a deal which is not a good deal. It's maybe similar to the deal that Barack Obama made with slight modifications but it's not a deal that will prevent a nuclear bomb down the down the road. It's a deal that will just allow the regime to buy time. And now this puts Israel in a fantastic dilemma if Trump does that because the question is Israel is literally gambling with his resistance to to rely on that deal working, know, saying they're going to be in power for another three years, whoever comes next even J. D.
Tom Gross:Vance may be a very different president than Trump and you know to state the obvious as everybody knows the Jewish people suffered a holocaust within living memory, they're still holocaust survivors alive, they've almost wiped out the Jewish people and as the Israeli Prime Minister said, Israel needs to take seriously threats to wipe it out. It's not just rhetoric. So the question is, would Israel defy Trump if Trump has signed a deal with the Iranians and say job done? The only deal that Israel will really be satisfied with is a kind of deal of the kind Libya did fifteen years ago under Gaddafi where you remove the enriched uranium from Iranian territory and it is possible there's talk that it could go to Russia, for example, they could store it in Russia. They would have to actually remove the enriched uranium.
Tom Gross:What we short of that, you know, people say well The United States Israel will never dare to defy Donald Trump. You don't know how we'll react. But, you know, in the past Israel has twice hit nuclear programs which of course were at a much earlier stage. One was under Saddam Hussein in 1981 the Osirak bombings. They the Israelis did air raids on that and they destroyed that program although it was logistically much easier to do it was at a much earlier stage it wasn't buried underground like it is in Iran but to remind people Ronald Reagan who was quite pro Israel slapped sanctions on Israel with Jean Kirkpatrick after Osirak and then the second one was in 02/2007 when George W Bush was president when prime minister Ehren Ulmak.
Tom Gross:Ulmak hit the Syrian nuclear program and again the Bush administration was against it. So Israel's twice done it, in afterwards, the Americans years later thanked Israel. They were like, thank heavens that Saddam Hussein or or Assad did not manage to get nuclear weapons.
Andres Ilves:And we know Israel is prepared to, strike. Last year, there were the, sort of the Operation Days of Repentance, Israeli airstrikes on Iran following the Iranian strikes on Israel. And of course, know even now, most recently on May 6, the Israelis took out Sana'a Airport in Yemen so that and because of the Houthis and also, on the sixteenth, I believe, struck three ports as well. So it's clear that Israel is ready.
Tom Gross:And not just that. The distances, because it's a long distance to fly from Israel to Yemen, but that kind of distance is not that different than the distance to Iran. But look again it's not that is look the Israeli Air Force is one of the best in the world, the pilots are very very experienced now having been fighting against Osborne and Houthis as he just mentioned But it's a question of the two things, whether Israel has the has strong enough bonds to get the underground sites in Iran. It's much more complicated. Iran, of course, is a huge geographic country.
Tom Gross:It's it's it's complicated thing for Israel to do. The secondary thing is how Iran would react. So they can no longer react with Khizballah or Hamas. They've already used that card. Even with the Houthis, they're already using that card now.
Tom Gross:But they might react by striking American bases in The Gulf, and that's one reason the Americans might be angry, and it's it complicates it. It's a very, very difficult and complicated decision. And, of course, no one in Israel wants to do this. They much rather the Iranians, agreed to a good solid working deal with The United States. I might go further and say most people in Israel, just like probably most people in Iran, would love the regime to give up power because, of course, if there was a different kind of government in Iran, they wouldn't be that threat.
Tom Gross:It's not it's not Iran that's a threat. It's specifically the Islamic regime in Iran that's a threat, not just to Israel, but to much of the Arab world and and to many other countries.