Carnegie Endowment's Miller on Iran's Arrack on Israel

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Bloomberg Apr 14 23:45 · 21.5k Views

Aaron David Miller, Senior Fellow at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, discusses the latest developments with Iran's attack on Israel. He speaks with Haidi Stroud-Watts and Annabelle Droulers on "Daybreak Australia".

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Transcript

  • 00:00 How can it turn that into a strategic opportunity without courting a regional war?
  • 00:05 So
  • 00:06 give us more insights into that.
  • 00:10 Here's what we know.
  • 00:11 The war cabinet met, Thanks for having me,
  • 00:13 the war cabinet with three key decision makers, the Prime Minister, the Minister of Defence
  • 00:19 and the former Minister of Defence Benny Gantz,
  • 00:23 Netanyahu's punitive successor.
  • 00:25 If elections were held
  • 00:27 today
  • 00:28 and two non voting members,
  • 00:32 there appears to be consensus on the part of the key three key decision makers
  • 00:37 that Israel needs to respond.
  • 00:38 But there is a divergent of opinion
  • 00:41 about the timing of that response
  • 00:44 and the scale of that response.
  • 00:46 And I, and I should say just for for context and perspective here,
  • 00:51 this is a very long movie,
  • 00:53 even if this phase, which is unprecedented
  • 00:56 both in, in terms of what the Iranians did, the first state to strike Israel directly
  • 01:02 in 33 years since Saddam Hussein launched 43 Scuds
  • 01:06 in
  • 01:07 1991.
  • 01:10 Even if this is managed successfully,
  • 01:13 the sources of tensions
  • 01:15 between Israel and Iran, the competition, the rivalry,
  • 01:18 the Israeli Lebanese front, which is critically important is Bullock can do far more damage, far more damage to the state of Israel right now
  • 01:26 than Iran.
  • 01:27 It takes hours for those drones, even the cruise missiles, which are faster
  • 01:31 to travel 1000 miles.
  • 01:33 This ball is kilometers away.
  • 01:35 They have a
  • 01:36 inventory of high trajectory weapons and varying
  • 01:40 ranges, lethalities and precision
  • 01:43 capable of launching 4 to 5000 rockets a day.
  • 01:48 That's going to be
  • 01:49 a source of tension.
  • 01:50 It will, it is not going to be resolved even if we get through this.
  • 01:54 Pro Iranian militias in Iraq and Syria continue sporadically to attack American assets,
  • 01:59 American forces
  • 02:01 in Iraq, Syria and as we saw in Jordan.
  • 02:04 And then you have, of course the chokehold
  • 02:07 that the Houthis, a small Zeidi Shia sect that controls the most populous part of Yemen,
  • 02:12 able to
  • 02:14 impose serious constraints on global shipping,
  • 02:18 forcing
  • 02:20 traffic around the capable grid, hope batting another 3500 miles
  • 02:24 to the supply chain.
  • 02:25 So
  • 02:26 even if we manage this,
  • 02:28 and I suspect an Israeli response is not imminent,
  • 02:34 this is going to be hanging over, hanging over the collective heads of the international community
  • 02:39 and the region for a very long time to go.
  • 02:44 Given that the attack by Iran was so
  • 02:47 calibrated, do you think
  • 02:49 they can still claim this to be a sort of
  • 02:52 success of sorts for
  • 02:54 Tehran?
  • 02:56 Well, internally they are already drumming up the notion that they
  • 03:01 have struck the quote UN, quote Zionist entity, you see demonstrations in Tehran.
  • 03:07 These are all orchestrated and calibrated.
  • 03:09 The reality is that the Iranians suffered, I think, a strategic or at least a tactical defeat.
  • 03:15 99% of these missiles, pilotless drones,
  • 03:20 ballistic and cruise missiles.
  • 03:23 Most, the vast majority never even reached
  • 03:26 Israeli territory.
  • 03:28 But again,
  • 03:30 Iran has Hezbollah
  • 03:32 and Iran also is a nuclear weapons threshold state
  • 03:35 and has all of the elements required
  • 03:38 to weaponize should have decide to do so.
  • 03:40 So I guess I, I, I want to say my judgment on this,
  • 03:46 we're going to get through this
  • 03:48 without what I would describe to you as a major regional war, something the Middle East has never seen before, something that would
  • 03:54 create spiking oil prices, plunging financial markets and a degree of instability
  • 03:59 across the region
  • 04:02 that this region has never experienced.
  • 04:04 We're going to get through this,
  • 04:06 but the problem, the strategic problem that the US has with Iran,
  • 04:10 that the international community has with Iran, and clearly
  • 04:14 the strategic problem Israel has with Iran
  • 04:18 is not going to be resolved.
  • 04:19 We're managing
  • 04:21 and maybe if we're lucky and smart,
  • 04:24 we'll get through this latest phase
  • 04:27 without a serious regional escalation.
  • 04:30 But the trend lines on this one
  • 04:32 do not look good at all.
  • 04:35 Could we get out of this with something better?
  • 04:37 Because I know you've written about, you know, the the
  • 04:41 unpredictable predictability of what happens in this region, right?
  • 04:45 And how
  • 04:45 you often have periods of intense crisis and often
  • 04:49 horrific situations, like what happened on October 7th
  • 04:52 but then followed by positive outcomes.
  • 04:54 Are you slightly optimistic that this could be one of the turning points?
  • 05:00 It's not pessimism or optimism.
  • 05:01 It's just a
  • 05:02 27 years of working on these issues of
  • 05:05 American war making, American peacemaking in the Middle East.
  • 05:08 More often than not, American ideas
  • 05:11 get swallowed up by a region
  • 05:13 in which great powers wrongly believe they can impose their will, their aspirations, their schemes, their dreams on smaller ones.
  • 05:20 Occasionally,
  • 05:21 with the right leadership,
  • 05:23 Anwar, Saddam, man Ahmed Begin and Jimmy Carter, Camp David Accords
  • 05:27 an effort, at least on the Israeli Palestinian track
  • 05:31 with Rabin and Arafat and
  • 05:32 Israeli Jordanian peace treaty
  • 05:35 and now, perhaps, opportunities between Israel
  • 05:38 on one hand and key Arab states on the other.
  • 05:42 But the reality is,
  • 05:44 ladies, you need leadership.
  • 05:46 You need leaders on the Israeli and Palestinian side and in Washington
  • 05:52 that are not
  • 05:53 prisoners of their ideologies or their politics.
  • 05:56 You need a Mandela declare a Sadat, a Big and a King Hussein A Rabin,
  • 06:01 to take the kinds of decisions which are existential, not just politically
  • 06:06 but literally.
  • 06:07 Ask Sadat and Saq Rabin, who paid for their lives, with their lives for their peacemaking efforts.
  • 06:13 So,
  • 06:14 no, I, I, I, I retain a a fair measure of hope.
  • 06:19 But but right now, what is required to turn October 7, the terror surge and what the Israelis have done in Gaza
  • 06:27 over the past six months
  • 06:29 into anything more positive
  • 06:31 really does require leaders
  • 06:33 who can rise above their partisan politics
  • 06:36 and
  • 06:37 risk,
  • 06:38 and in this,
  • 06:39 in this region, that that risk can often prove
  • 06:43 to be fatal.
  • 06:43 We don't have that right now.
  • 06:45 Should Joe Biden get a second term?
  • 06:47 I voted and worked for Republicans and Democrats.
  • 06:50 You can take this as a partisan comment or not.
  • 06:53 Should Joe Biden get a second term?
  • 06:54 Should there be a leadership change in Israel
  • 06:57 with a government that's prepared to be pragmatic and flexible?
  • 07:02 Not
  • 07:03 what we see now, which is the most extremist right wing government history of the state
  • 07:07 and
  • 07:08 significant leadership on the Palestinian side and from the Arab states.
  • 07:12 I think you actually could.
  • 07:13 There is an opening here.
  • 07:15 But again
  • 07:17 nobody ever lost money betting against Arab Israeli peace.
  • 07:20 I'd say that based on my own experiences.
  • 07:25 That's a lot,
  • 07:26 you know and and you set it out there.
  • 07:27 That's a lot of ducks that need to be in a row, right.
  • 07:30 And and a lot of them are not sort of anywhere close to
  • 07:33 close to formation.
  • 07:34 But I, I,
  • 07:35 I do think, you know,
  • 07:36 is it a worthy question to talk about capacity, right, both political,
  • 07:40 economic and and just the willingness for the
  • 07:43 US, for, for Biden during an election year, for Israel when it's already got operations in Gaza, the level of support that we see waning for those operations,
  • 07:53 for Iran's friends like China and Russia, each with their own problems.
  • 07:57 Do you see that coming together and
  • 07:59 impacting the likelihood of
  • 08:01 sort of major developments going forward?
  • 08:03 No, I I really don't.
  • 08:05 I mean, I think you can get British, American and
  • 08:08 and French consensus,
  • 08:10 but the Russians and the Chinese,
  • 08:13 a senior partner in China, a junior partner in Russia, really are determined, it seems to me,
  • 08:18 to make inroads in the global S to oppose American influence, Western influence,
  • 08:24 wherever they find it
  • 08:25 inimical to Chinese and Russian interests.
  • 08:28 The Russian,
  • 08:29 Iran relationship is a strategic 1.
  • 08:34 China obviously is not interested in regional stability.
  • 08:37 After all, it's the US Navy, frankly, that he's protecting.
  • 08:40 Talk about ironies, it's the US Navy that is protecting the exports of
  • 08:44 Saudi Arabian oil to China.
  • 08:47 So
  • 08:48 it it it just doesn't seem to me that The Wanted international community has the will, the bandwidth
  • 08:54 for the cohesion
  • 08:56 to complement, to support
  • 08:58 regional parties who right now
  • 09:00 frankly aren't interested.
  • 09:02 Israel is being led by a man.
  • 09:04 Benjamin Netanyahu is on trial for bribery, fraud and breach of trust in the Jerusalem District Court three years running.
  • 09:10 He has to maintain power at all costs.
  • 09:12 If he doesn't,
  • 09:13 he's faced probably with a conviction
  • 09:16 or a plea agreement that's going to drive him out of politics.
  • 09:19 Mahmoud Abbas is 89 years old.
  • 09:21 He's in the 19th year,
  • 09:23 19th year before year term.
  • 09:26 He has no credibility in the West Bank and less credibility in Gaza.
  • 09:31 So again,
  • 09:33 no matter what the Americans want,
  • 09:35 and I think
  • 09:36 the administration's
  • 09:38 aspirations
  • 09:40 are, are well-intentioned.
  • 09:42 You can't pull the wagon
  • 09:44 without the horses.
  • 09:46 And right now
  • 09:47 you have two leaders in Israel and the putative state of Palestine that are more interested in keeping their seats
  • 09:54 than they are
  • 09:55 risking anything
  • 09:58 with respect to taking advantage.
  • 10:00 Advantage of whatever openings exist.
  • 10:01 So
  • 10:02 again
  • 10:04 I think we have to be very realistic.
  • 10:05 It's going to take time
  • 10:07 and as I mentioned,
  • 10:09 probably wants to do often leadership.