US & Israel have separate agendas for Iran war | Fareed's Take

Regime change by jazz improvisation. That is how the respected scholar of Iran, Karim Sajdipour, described the Trump administration's strategy in the war it has initiated with Iran. Sadly, it's the most accurate description of the scattered, shifting, and uncertain approach that emanates from Washington these days. The president launched this war, exhorting the Iranian people

to overthrow their government.

It will be yours to take.

Perhaps he had assumed that the regime would collapse instantly. But when it didn't, in a day or two, he changed course. He began musing about dealing with potential leaders within the regime

and praising the U. the US intervention in Venezuela as the model to be followed. Perfect, quote unquote. Precisely because far from regime change, it only involved the arrest of two people. Pete Hegset specifically denied that this was a regime change

war, as did his senior aide, Albrich Colby. Both said the goal was merely to degrade Iran's military forces, many of which had been, quote unquote, obliterated last June in a 12-day bombing attack that included the use of stealth bombers. But then, in a new twist, Trump reached out to Kurdish leaders in Iran and Iraq, promising them support if they would join the fight, presumably not

to degrade Iran's military power, but to topple the government in Tehran, maybe even change Iran's borders. This weekend, however, the president backpedaled on this plan. Trump has also now proclaimed that there won't be a deal without unconditional surrender from Iran. So the goal isn't regime change, except when it is.

The most dangerous element of this war, however, is not that the lead actor is improvising like a saxophone player. It is that the two countries waging the war have separate and perhaps incompatible agendas. For Israel's Prime Minister, Benjamin Netanyahu,

the war is clearly about destroying the Islamic Republic. In a video he released, he acknowledged that this war was the culmination of a 40-year-old dream. Israel's military strategy has been focused, brilliantly implemented, and aligned with their goal.

The Israeli strikes are decapitating Iran's leadership, destroying its military forces, striking its leadership compounds, even hitting police facilities. It is, as the Wall Street Journal reported, methodically destroying Iran's police state, leaving the regime ripe for a collapse. And on the current trajectory, Israel might well succeed in its objective. And that will likely result in a power vacuum in the country,

which could invite revolt, but will almost certainly result in a civil war. Keep in mind, whoever makes Sikh power, this regime will fight back. The appropriate analogy here is Syria, a country that was mired in a civil war for more than a decade, with hundreds of thousands dead and millions of refugees. Iran is a country that could easily explode, as Tom Friedman has written.

It's filled with ethnic groups, Kurds, Armenians, Hazaris, with ties to neighboring countries. They've lived peaceably together, but as history demonstrates, from the Balkans to Iraq, when order collapses and a power vacuum develops, people retreat to their tribal groups and lose trust in others. And that's how a civil war begins. What would fuel this war is the fact that Iran's government has a vast cadre of dedicated

soldiers armed to the teeth who will fight against any new government or group. Its Revolutionary Guard is estimated to be almost 200,000 people strong, with an additional paramilitary force, the Basij, of several hundreds of thousands. And then there's the regular armed forces, which is around 400,000. Just as Saddam Hussein's army melted away

after the American invasion, and then much of it reappeared as an insurgency, so too one could imagine the IRGC fighting in different garbs to deny any new government the ability to control the country. In Libya, more than 14 years after Gaddafi fell,

there is still no one group that controls the entire country. It's much easier to destroy a state than to rebuild one. For Israel, this is an acceptable outcome. It rids the country of its greatest foe, and if that produces chaos in Iran, so be it. The Syrian civil war actually improved Israel's security because it did not face a major Arab

state dedicated to fighting it anymore. But an Iranian Civil War is not in America's interests, and it's not in the interests of America's closest Arab allies, who depend on the region being stable and predictable so that oil, goods, money, and people can flow freely and easily through it. Washington needs to find a way to ensure that it secures the gains it has made in this war,

a disarmed and defanged Iran, but without pushing the country into civil war. There are still ways to bolster the achievements and close out this war. As usual, Qatar could play a useful role as an intermediary. But time is running out.

At some point, this war will reach a tipping point, and no one will be able to control the spillover. Let's get straight to it with Jake Sullivan. He was one of the key negotiators of the Obama administration's nuclear deal with Iran in 2015 that Trump pulled out of. More recently, he served as President Biden's

national security advisor. He is also the co-host of a terrific new podcast called The Long Game. Jake, welcome. When you look at the situation right now, put yourself back in the White House

and in the Situation Room, what are you seeing that encourages you or what are you seeing that encourages you, or what are you seeing that worries you?

Well, look, Farid, on the encouraging side, the US military is just simply remarkable. It's remarkable at being able to achieve tactical objectives, to execute operations with skill, professionalism, and courage. And that has been proven out

here over the course of the past week. But the discouraging part is we are asking the U.S. military to put itself in harm's way and we've already lost six service members, pointed towards a completely unclear objective. The administration has not been able to say with any clarity whatsoever what the ultimate goal of this war is. And in fact, they've given perhaps a dozen different explanations shifting by the hour, by the day. And here a week into the war, to have that level of muddiness, that muddle, I think is a huge challenge

because it suggests that this war got launched without being fully thought through and that the end of this war is something that we have no kind of core concept as to what it will bring or how the president will ultimately come out and say, okay, I'm done, I'm moving on. And that leaves us in an extremely precarious position.

It really has widened in a way that frankly is greater than I would have guessed. The Iranians are, I mean, these are pinprick strikes, but they are affecting commerce. Daniel Yergin just wrote in the FT that this is the largest disruption in oil production and transport in history. What are you hearing from the region? You still have very, very strong contacts with the rulers of the Gulf and other Arab countries.

Look, the level of concern across the region, and you're right, I do speak with many people there on a daily basis, is sky high. But what these folks tell me is this was anticipated in a way. Maybe not as broad, but the basic concept was anticipated. Why? Put yourself in the shoes of the Iranian regime. You're getting pummeled by the US and Israel. What are your options? Your best option from their perspective is to try to disrupt energy flows, to hit technology,

to hit tourism, to hit finance, and they're selecting their targets across multiple countries very clearly to achieve the result of imposing greater and greater economic pain on the entire world and on the United States. Why? With a goal to try to hasten the end of this war, because the sooner this war ends from their perspective,

the better in terms of their ability to survive and to reconsolidate power. So at the moment, this is basically a race between the U.S. and Israel trying to impose as much damage as possible. And I thought your opening comments were spot on in what Israel's trying to achieve here. And the Iranian regime trying to raise the price and the cost as high as possible. And who's suffering? The world is. The American people are. Gas prices, for example, have jumped dramatically just in the last week and promised to go even higher. And this is all part of the

strategy of a much weaker opponent playing the hand that they have. And that is something that the administration should have anticipated coming into it. Yes, it seems to me if you launch a kind of existential war against Iran, don't be surprised

if they have an existential response, which is, you know, we're just going to blow up if they have an existential response, which is, you know, we're just going to blow up everything we can because this is regime survival for us.