Can Israel and Iran Step Back From the Brink?

DAN KURTZ-PHELAN

On April 13, Iran did something it had never done before. It launched a direct attack on Israel from Iranian territory. As historic and spectacular as this was, Israel, the United States, and others managed to intercept a huge percentage of the drones and missiles fired and the damage done was minor. Still, the world is waiting tensely to see how Israel will respond and whether the Middle East can avoid full-scale war. To understand the attack and its consequences, I spoke with Suzanne Maloney from the Brookings Institution and Ali Vaez from the International Crisis Group. We discussed where this conflict would go next and how to bring the two sides back from the brink of war.

Suzanne and Ali, thanks so much for joining me and for your Foreign Affairs pieces, not just this week but over the past many months as we attempt to shed light on events in the Middle East and policy options for managing them.

ALI VAEZ

Pleasure to be with you.

SUZANNE MALONEY

Really glad to be here. Thanks, Dan.

DAN KURTZ-PHELAN

So, I should say before we start that we are having this conversation at 1 PM Eastern on Tuesday, April 16, since there will surely be new developments before most people are listening to this. But Suzanne, I want to start with you, actually, by stepping back to set the stage for where we were before this latest back and forth. You have a piece finished before those events in the current issue of Foreign Affairs called “Iran’s Order of Chaos”—and in it, you argue that Iran’s strategy was working quite well. It was in a pretty good position, strategically. So I’d like for you to begin by describing the basic contours of that strategy and explain why you think it was in fact working quite well from Tehran’s vantage.

SUZANNE MALONEY

Well, I think that what we’ve seen, particularly over the course of the past 20 or 25 years, is that Iran has been able to shape the wider strategic environment in the Middle East to its own advantage, primarily through its relationships with proxy groups and militias around the region. Many of which actually predate that period and date back to the founding of the Islamic Republic and this kind of worldview that the original revolutionaries had about the project that they were undertaking of building a new state, an Islamic theocracy in Iran that in fact would not be alone in the world, that it would be part of a wider cascade of change—change that would embrace both revolution and Islam. And they deliberately sought to build a network of like-minded individuals and groups around the region initially, and then even more broadly around the world. And in many cases, they’ve invested in these groups and built up really abiding relationships that have been tremendously valuable to the Islamic Republic over time.

And of course in the aftermath of the U.S. invasion of Iraq in 2003, Iran took this strategy to the next level and created a whole network of groups, many of which predated the invasion—Shia groups initially, but Iran also works with Sunni and groups that don’t have an ideological affinity with the Islamic Republic. And these have really provided Iran with tremendous strategic depth and operational flexibility, as well as some degree of deniability in terms of exactly who the author of any attack might be.

DAN KURTZ-PHELAN

So looking at the post–October 7 war in Gaza, despite the intensity of Israeli attacks on Hamas and, at least by their telling, a fair amount of casualties when it comes to Hamas fighters, leaving aside even civilians in Gaza, in your assessment, Iran was still feeling pretty good about how that strategy was working.

SUZANNE MALONEY

I think that the Islamic Republic saw that its strategy was working, that they were able to deploy assets around the region, they were able to put pressure on Israel, and also that they were feeding into a broader process which was weakening Israel’s support around the world—and eroding even the kind of borders of Israel because so much of the population had been displaced by attacks in the south as well as in the north. And so from the Iranian point of view, what they had always predicted—that Israel would pass from the page of time—was in fact coming to be, really, before their eyes, and they were helping to contribute to it and accelerate it. And this network of militias that they have built up was a big part of that.

DAN KURTZ-PHELAN

Ali, turning to somewhat more recent events, and please feel free to react to or elaborate on any of what Suzanne said. But go to the Israeli attack on the Iranian consular facility in Damascus a couple of weeks ago that led to this latest round of escalation. You noted in your piece that you published in Foreign Affairs this week that Iran "really crossed the Rubicon," to use your words, in attacking Israel directly from Iranian territory. But if you look at the attack that they said they were responding to, why did that represent a new escalation, a new threat? How did that fit into the Iranian sense of threat and strategic opportunity in the region?

ALI VAEZ

Dan, I agree with a lot of what Suzanne said, and I agree that Iran was winning strategically. But I would say that Iran was losing tactically; that the cost of the conflict in Gaza for Iran over the past seven months was starting to accumulate. A lot of Iranian commanders had been targeted in the past few months by Israel, a lot of Iranian assets in Syria, Iranian allies in Iraq, in addition to Israel continuing its covert operations on Iranian soil, which is a pattern that has been ongoing for several years. And the strike against the Iranian consulate in Damascus I think was the last straw from the Iranian perspective.

From their view, failure to respond and redraw the lines would encourage Israel to continue doing one of these two things. One is to continue decapitating the Iranian military and Iranian network of partners and proxies in the region, which would diminish Iran’s regional deterrence. Or it could even signal to Israel that an attack on Iranian soil, given that from their perspective a diplomatic facility is akin to a country’s proper territory, would encourage Israel to eventually also take the fight directly to Iran.

There was also a tremendous amount of bottom-up pressure on the Iranian regime in ways that I’ve not really seen in the past few years. Even after [Qasem] Soleimani’s killing by the United States in 2020, I have not seen this much pressure from the regime’s own constituency for the need to do something, to push back. And for a regime like the Islamic Republic, who has lost a tremendous amount of legitimacy over the past few years, its core constituents today are very important. It really relies on them, the 10 to 15 percent of the Iranian society that supported its survival. And that’s why I think Iran felt the need to basically cross a line and establish a new equation. And that’s why they’ve decided to strike Israel for the first time directly from their own territory. However, they wanted to reestablish a degree of deterrence without triggering a broader conflict, without sucking the United States into a direct confrontation with them.

And that’s why I think there has been a high degree of coordination and contact between Iran and the United States since the April 1 attack on the Iranian consulate to try to figure out a way of squaring this circle. And the attack on April 13, despite the fact that it was spectacular and extremely large in scale and scope, it did not result in any fatalities and very minimal destruction. I think that was not by accident or sheer luck, it was by design. Of course, in any operation of this scale, there’s always a risk. But if you look back at what Iran did after Soleimani’s killing in 2020, that was also a risky operation which also resulted in no casualties, or the Iranian attack on Saudi oil facilities in Aramco in 2019 followed a very similar pattern: a spectacular attack that took out half of Saudi Arabia’s oil exports overnight without resulting in a single fatality. So this model of extremely flashy, made-for-TV operations that are not fatal seemed to be Iran’s way of responding to the other side crossing new red lines.

DAN KURTZ-PHELAN

So let me press you on two pieces of that. One, when you look at the Iranian decision-making process that led to this particular strike, was there pressure from hardliners within the Iranian regime? Is there a kind of internal debate about how much and how aggressively to respond and how much risk to take? And then just to put a finer point on that last point, Iran essentially, you’re saying, expected that 99 percent of these would be shot down and it wouldn’t do any damage? They’re not disappointed by this result—this was intended, as you understand it?

ALI VAEZ

Right. So there was certainly a high degree of debate within the Iranian system between those who wanted some very brazen action and were willing to absorb the risks of it and those who wanted to do something that would reestablish deterrence without risking further escalation. And you could see that in even the public messaging. The Supreme Leader coming out initially talking that Iran was not going to rush into anything irrational. The Friday prayer leaders echoing a very similar view that this was basically an Israeli trap for Iran to commit a mistake. And you would see, then, in the rhetoric of the Revolutionary Guards, the exact opposite—and media outlets that are aligned with them even publicly criticizing the leadership’s previous policy of strategic patience, of demonstrating restraint in the face of Israeli targeting of Iranian assets and interests in the region in the past few months.

And to get to your second question, yeah, I think the Iranian operation was designed to fail. Because, again, the point was not destruction and death. The point was a political message that this is a regime that is now daring to take major risks because it really cares about the balance of power that existed prior to October 7 and the set of rules of the games that Iranians established prior to that.

DAN KURTZ-PHELAN

Suzanne, would you add anything to that basic assessment of the Iranian calculus here?

SUZANNE MALONEY

I think I have a fairly different interpretation. I see no possible interpretation of the scale and scope of the barrage of drones and missiles that Iran sent into Israel on April 13 as having any sort of design to fail. They clearly signaled in a way that was going to make it possible for the United States and its allies to be prepared to be in positions to take out much of particularly the slow-moving drones that were going over territory in which there were those who were prepared to take them out. But as Iran saw in January of 2020, ballistic missiles do have casualties. And in fact, there were many traumatic brain injuries that took place when Iran struck the Al-Asad Airbase after the assassination of Qasem Soleimani. There were many American soldiers who were severely injured as a result of that strike. And so there really could have been no assumption that there would be zero casualties.

There perhaps was an awareness that the technical dimensions of the program were not as buttoned up as some of the propaganda suggests. We’re now hearing that somewhere in the range of 50 percent of Iran’s missiles didn’t complete their full trajectory, either fell from the sky en route or had abortive launches. And so this was, I think, not designed to have a massive catastrophic impact on Israel; but it was designed to inflict some damage and to ensure that there were some casualties. And that is an absolutely dramatic decision for a regime that is engaged in almost every form of confrontation with Israel over the course of the past 45 years, but has restrained itself from ever trying to strike Israeli soil itself. So I would say that what we’ve seen over the course of the past decade, but especially over the course of the past four or five years, is a much more risk-tolerant Iranian leadership. And some of the old assumptions that prevailed through the 1990s and into the 2000s, I think, are no longer valid.

DAN KURTZ-PHELAN

And Suzanne, to the extent that that risk that they took in this particular case is part of a strategy, in your view, what was that strategy? What effect was it intended to have?

SUZANNE MALONEY

I think that what Iran has been trying to do is accelerate a process that it believes is already underway, one in which its primary adversary in the region will be fatally weakened in a way that will no longer pose a direct threat to the Islamic Republic. And they are content to let that play out; but if there are ways to accelerate it, they’re prepared to do that. And I think that’s why you saw a more provocative response to the events of recent months and to the killing of the Revolutionary Guard commanders in Damascus than you did in the aftermath of the assassination of Qasem Soleimani.

And I just want to make one other point, which is whatever the facility was in Damascus, whether it was formal diplomatic property or not, this is not a regime that has invested a great deal of credibility in its protection of diplomatic facilities from November 1979 on through the pillaging of the Saudi embassy. This has been a regime that frankly has made a mockery of diplomatic protection. So the idea that an attack on its military commanders that took place at what may or may not have been a diplomatic facility was such a boundary-crossing action by the Israelis that Iran felt compelled to drop the redlines that had constrained it for more than four decades—it doesn’t really pass muster, I think.

DAN KURTZ-PHELAN

Ali, feel free to respond to any of that. But I’d also be very eager to hear your sense of how the reaction in Tehran has played out in the days since the strike. Has the message been that this was a great success and a bold risk that worked? Is there a kind of debate among hardliners who see it as insufficient? Where does that stand?

ALI VAEZ

Look, I think it’s important to understand both sides of this situation and to understand that although—again, I agree with a lot of what Suzanne said. But the fact that Iran has not respected inviolability of diplomatic facilities in the past does not green-light democracies that are playing by the rules of the game, by the international rules-based system, to also behave in the same way. And I think if diplomatic facilities that are recognized by the host country and registered as such are fair game, then we can no longer have any safe havens anywhere in the world. And so that’s an important point to take into account. And again, I agree that the Iranian regime has become much less risk-averse than was the case in the past. You don’t know of a lot of states that, in the course of just six months, target two nuclear states; which is what Iran has done in the first half of this year, it has targeted Pakistan and Israel directly.

But having said that, if you look at the brazenness of the Iranian response, both after the killing of Soleimani and after this attack on their consulate, it did not come out of the blue. It was not unprovoked in either case. And in both cases, the Iranians have tried to respond in a way that, although it’s risky, it has helped contain the situation. And I’m just saying, we should not overlook those realities. And we should also not overlook the fact that they’re looking at it from the dynamic of the shadow war between Iran and Israel, which was played out by certain rules of the game, and Israel was pushing the envelope too far from their perspective. So the risks of not responding to Israeli action, from an Iranian perspective, were higher than the risks of responding and also doing something brazen, which applied also in 2020 after Soleimani’s killing.

To answer your question, the Iranians are obviously adopting a very triumphalist rhetoric at home. They are contending that there has been a high degree of destruction and casualties in Israel, just as they did after the attack on All-Asad in 2020. And they’re claiming that this has been just a slap in the face. And if Israel responds that the next round of Iranian counterstrikes are not going to be as calibrated and as telegraphed as it was the case with this round. And part of that is bluster, but part of it, I think, is true. I don’t think if Israel targets an Iranian weapons depot in Syria or an Iranian vessel on open seas that Iran is going to strike Israel again from its own territory.

But there are two redlines that I don’t think they can overlook. One is a direct strike on Iranian territory. And the second is any further attempts by Israel to target senior Iranian officials. If Iranians were to overlook those two redlines, basically what they did on April 13—which was again a very risky undertaking, despite the degree of calibration that they tried to put into it—would all have been for nothing. And the deterrence that they have tried to reestablish will be completely nullified.

DAN KURTZ-PHELAN

Ali, the piece that you wrote within essentially 36 hours of the attack really did focus on the risk of further escalation once we see Israel’s response. Talk about what worries you when you look at the ways this has been out of control. What are the scenarios that you’re focused on?

ALI VAEZ

Well, what worries me the most then is the risk of miscalculation. And this is under the general framework that one side’s re-establishing of deterrence is the other side’s loss of deterrence. And this could result in a cycle of tit-for-tat that could easily spiral out of control. It’s understandable that Israel wants to retaliate in kind in order to signal that this kind of attack on Israeli territory is not fair game. Otherwise, it would set a very dangerous precedent from the perspective of the Israeli government. The problem is that a response in kind, which would then target Iranian territory, is also very likely to prompt Iran to then once again target Israel—and this time in a much more destructive and deadly way. And from that point on, it’s very hard to predict whether these tensions could be contained or not.

Of course, in the first round, Iran did not deploy the tip of the spear of its regional capabilities, which is Hezbollah; whereas in the following rounds, Hezbollah might also get engaged. And of course, we know Hezbollah has 150,000 rockets and missiles, some of them precision-guided, targeting Israeli civilian centers. And so the next round is going to be much more catastrophic and dangerous and it might even drag the United States in. So there are just so many risks associated with this cycle of violence continuing that it would’ve been good if, as President Biden said, Prime Minister Netanyahu were to take the win and draw a line on this round.

Because currently, as we stand—despite the fact that, as I said, I understand Israeli concerns—all sides can claim victory. Iran can say that it responded to the Israeli attack on its consulate and reestablished deterrence. Israel can credibly claim that it defeated the Iranian attack on its territory. And the United States can claim that it deterred Iran and defended Israel. So we have a win-win-win situation right now. If this cycle continues, I’m afraid it would turn into a lose-lose for everyone.

DAN KURTZ-PHELAN

Suzanne, I was hoping you could talk a bit about how you see the Israeli debate about how to respond. The Israeli war cabinet is still, as far as we know, debating exactly how to respond. The reporting suggested there is some difference of opinion among different members of that war cabinet. But what is your sense of what those options are and what the most likely response is going to be?

SUZANNE MALONEY

Well, I think that the call for restraint—while laudable, and while one that I support and sympathize with—my guess is that eventually it’s going to go on deaf ears. I think it’s almost inexorable that we’re going to see a retaliation from Israel that creates this cycle of hit-and-response between the two countries, in part because of the current environment. Israel has been very strategic in the way that it has approached this long-running conflict with Iran. But Israeli society and its leadership is deeply traumatized and scarred by the experience of October 7, and I think that that creates a very different dynamic in terms of decision-making.

And what we see from the way that Israel has prosecuted the war in Gaza in a very all-out fashion, this is reflective, I think, of the determination on the part of the Israeli leadership—and one that is widely shared by the Israeli public—to do whatever is necessary at almost any price to ensure that the country does not suffer another unprovoked attack from adversaries who are determined to eradicate not just the Israeli state, but the Jewish people.

And so I think that through that lens, restraint is a much more difficult proposition to sell. And it’s not just with hardliners who want to take care of the entire problem while they have the opportunity to do so. I think that the willingness of the Israeli people to accept a barrage of 350 drones and missiles, even if none actually met their targets with the exception of a poor little Bedouin girl; that is not as easy to swallow for Israelis, I think, of almost any political or ideological stripe at this point in time.

DAN KURTZ-PHELAN

And can you think of any option on that menu that would allow them to respond in a way that would reflect that impulse but not escalate to the point that the United States would be drawn in and we’d have a full regional war? Is there any way to thread that needle?

Suzanne Maloney

I think that there are ways that one could thread the needle, but one of the challenges is that Iran hit Israel in a very attributable fashion, and I think that the pressure will be for Israel to hit back in a very attributable fashion.

DAN KURTZ-PHELAN

And as you assess the Biden administration’s response, which from what I can tell seems to be very much in line with Ali’s observation, that this is a kind of win-win-win, that Israel should accept that it came out of this in a pretty good position and move on—do you think the Biden administration has the right approach? Is that the kind of right U.S. policy? Or would you be doing something differently if you were sitting in the White House right now?

SUZANNE MALONEY

Well, obviously we’re not seeing or hearing everything that they’re doing, but I have no doubt that there is an intense effort underway to try to continue to work with the Israelis to ensure that however they do respond, it’s framed in a way that is least liable to set off a further tit-for-tat set of exchanges between the two countries. I think there could be no one who wants a wider war in the Middle East less than President Joe Biden at this particular moment in time. And I think it’s entirely likely that we would’ve seen a two-front war from the very beginning had it not been for efforts by the Biden administration. And I think that was a wise move, one that has prevented what would’ve been a war that would’ve drawn the United States in from the very beginning in an absolutely direct and probably quite significant way.

DAN KURTZ-PHELAN

Ali, what has struck you about the response from regional states to the events of the last couple of weeks? I think many people focused on Jordan’s assistance in shooting down some of the drones and missiles that were passing over its territory. But as you look at the broader regional reaction, is that a force for containing things and preventing escalation? Are there kind of wild cards here that contribute to destabilization? How do you assess the regional picture?

ALI VAEZ

We are in a very interesting situation in the region right now in the sense that for the first time in many years, Iran and its neighbors in the Gulf actually have much better relations than has been the case in the past. And the Saudis, the Emirates, the Qataris, the Omanis—who actually also facilitate indirect discussions between Iran and the United States—have all played a role in trying to call for restraint on all sides. And these are countries that increasingly also have relations with Israel and could play a conduit between Iran and Israel that, again, did not exist in the past. But all of these countries are wary of the consequences of these tensions spiraling out of control, because then inevitably they would be caught in the crossfire as well, as they experienced in the summer of 2019 when tensions between Iran and the United States peaked.

That doesn’t necessarily apply to extra-regional powers. For instance, if you look at Russia, I think anything that distracts the United States or the West writ large from Ukraine is a plus for Russia. And anything that distracts the United States from pivoting to Asia and focusing on its competition with China, again, is also a plus for China. So it’s this dichotomy between a region that knows that it’s going to pay the price of any further escalation and extra-regional powers who actually see benefit in it.

DAN KURTZ-PHELAN

Ali, let me turn to another issue you’ve written about in Foreign Affairs, which is Iran’s nuclear program. You wrote a few months ago that the events of the past several months have reinforced Iran’s desire to move, at least almost to the point of having a nuclear weapons capability. Where does that stand now? Where is that program, and do you see this heightening of tensions as reinforcing that and perhaps pushing Tehran over the line to actually going nuclear?

ALI VAEZ

Well, when I wrote the piece a few months ago, my concern was that if Iran comes to the conclusion that its regional deterrence is going to be weakened because Israel would diminish Hamas significantly, and then would sequentially go after other Iranian allies in the region like Hezbollah, that Iranians would come to the conclusion that they need an alternative. And the most obvious alternative available to them was the ultimate deterrent in the form of nuclear weapons. Iran has never been closer to the threshold of nuclear weapons than it is today. It has, for the first time, the ability to break out toward nuclear weapons capability without immediate detection from the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA). Iran, in the past two years, has built a lot of centrifuges that the International Atomic Energy Agency is not aware of. It has also been working on building new bunkered facilities that are more protected than its current Fordow facility, which is under a mountain. And the IAEA is also not aware of the details of those facilities.

Now, what adds to my concerns right now is that if Iran’s conventional deterrence also proves insufficient to deter an attack on its own soil, then Iran would have even more reason to move toward nuclear weapons. And add to this the fact that there is currently no real prospect for Iran using its nuclear capabilities as bargaining chips at the negotiating table. They have given up on the prospect of getting sustainable and effective sanctions relief from the United States. And in that sense, the more Israel succeeds in weakening Iran in the region, the more it fails in moving Iran toward the kind of capability that would render Iran a much more existential threat for Israel. Because Iran sitting behind the nuclear shield would be much more protected toward any kind of attacks from Israel or the United States than is the case right now.

DAN KURTZ-PHELAN

Suzanne, to the extent that the American policymakers have a similar assessment of the Iranian nuclear program, is there an American policy right now to avert it? Is this a kind of inevitability given the lack of any real diplomatic process at this point and no sense of any kind of alternative strategy?

SUZANNE MALONEY

Well, I think that you’re quite right that there is not an Iran strategy writ large right now. The strategy had been one of de-escalation, and obviously that proved hollow on October 7. And every day since then, it has been clear that whatever was traded for a temporary period of regional calm in fact only enabled Iran and its proxies to be more well-resourced for the fight when the opportunity arose. And so I haven’t heard or seen an articulation of a policy from the Biden administration that might seek to fill the void. I think that they’ve had their hands full. And I think that while I would disagree with Ali’s assessment of the kind of trade-offs, that essentially the only way you get a nuclear deal is to let Iran run free in the region, I think the sense of duality is actually very important because I think it’s clear that the Obama administration had an approach that succeeded in creating some constraints on Iran’s nuclear program, but they did so by largely disregarding some of the regional challenges.

This is part of what created the position within Israel and among many of Iran’s neighbors to the original 2015 nuclear deal. What we’ve seen, as you pointed out over the course of the past six months, is an American policy that’s almost entirely focused on the question of regional stability and ending the war, but one that doesn’t appear to have a very strong focus on trying to do something about Iran’s, as Ali said, rapidly advancing nuclear capabilities. And I think one would hope that either whoever takes office next January in the United States is going to be well-positioned to try to address both sets of issues—because I think we really can’t afford to disregard or essentially just acquiesce to either an Iranian nuclear weapon or in Iran that is able to sow chaos across the region.

ALI VAEZ

Can I just say I absolutely did not mean that nobody should counter Iranian regional activities. But one has to also, I think—and this is one of the reasons that there's been more than four decades of failure, bipartisan failure of U.S. policy towards Iran, is that we often fail to see the world from their perspective. We often fail to understand that Iran, as a country of 90 million, might also have some legitimate security concerns. And that the enemy also gets to vote, right? So, actions have consequences. And if we don’t take into account how Iran might interpret the loss of conventional deterrence or regional deterrence, then we are setting ourselves up for failure.

SUZANNE MALONEY

Oh, I fully appreciate that Iran has legitimate security interests. I just don’t think the investment in Hezbollah, Hamas, and other groups that target civilians through acts of terror are in fact protecting Iran’s legitimate security interests. And so I think it’s that tradeoff that we really have to interrogate. The regime’s commitment, investment in these groups as a means of power projection, it may have had a particular strategic logic for a ragtag band of revolutionaries who are still trying to create a formal state in 1979 and 1980 and the subsequent several years. But Iran is now, as you said, a country of 90 million with a very well-established military-industrial infrastructure. Its reliance on and relationships with these proxy militia groups is extraordinary, and something that one can find in no other state in the world.

ALI VAEZ

But I think you also agree that there are not a lot of strategic alternatives available to Iran. Of course, its military capabilities pale in comparison to the United States and Israel, and even to much smaller regional countries like the UAE, for instance, because Iran has been under an arms embargo for many years—and still there are not a lot of countries in the world that are willing to provide Iran with cutting-edge technology the likes of which Israel put on full display on April 13. And again, look, my main point here is that there’s plenty of blame to go around on all sides. Everybody has committed mistakes. We didn’t get to the point that we are right now by accident. And I’m saying using the same mentality and the same tools that we have deployed in the past four decades is only going to result in the same outcome.

To believe that we can only pressure Iran either militarily or through sanctions into changing its policies without understanding that they also need to have a viable alternative to some of the policies that we don’t like, I think, again, is setting us up for the same kind of outcome that we’re seeing right now.

SUZANNE MALONEY

I think there’s never been a point in time when any administration has only relied on pressure to try to influence outcomes with respect to Iran or to try to influence Iranian policies. Every American administration, including the Biden administration, but also every Republican administration has sought to engage diplomatically to try to persuade Iran to build a constructive relationship. For most of the past 45 years, Iranian diplomats have refused to even be in the room with American counterparts. And that holds true even under the Biden administration almost exclusively. The fact that we have an adversary that won’t speak to us formally, that won’t engage in normal diplomatic relations, makes it very difficult to set aside tools of pressure, especially when lives are at stake.

DAN KURTZ-PHELAN

Ali, if you were to prescribe a policy that you think would avert some of both the regional risks, but also put the U.S.-Iranian relationship on a better trajectory in the long term, what would that be, very briefly?

ALI VAEZ

Look, we are in a very difficult situation because we have proven to be an unreliable negotiating partner. When the Iranians were willing to talk to us and come to a deal with us that they fully complied with, we reneged on our commitments—not just, by the way, under President Trump, but also under President Biden. We had a detainee/humanitarian deal last year that we reneged on when Hamas paraglided into Israel and committed those atrocities. But the deal between Iran and the United States on the humanitarian agreement had nothing to do with Iran’s regional policy. I think we need a reset in our relationship with Iran, and we need to come to understand that, again, if we expect Iran to make security concessions, we will have to also make security concessions, and we will have to figure out a way of delivering on our commitments to Iran in a sustainable fashion.

Now, that might require an incremental approach. I don’t deny that. But it has to be part of a longer-term strategy that I think has been lacking for a long, long time in our approach toward Iran. But key toward all of that, of course, is to make sure that the current situation doesn’t get out of control, because then that could again burn all the bridges for another generation.

And another major concern that I have, Dan, is that we’ve not discussed the fact that Iran is at a critical moment in its own history. Because the biggest question internally in Iran is none of the things we’ve discussed so far, but it’s the question of succession of the Supreme Leader. And if we end up in a military confrontation between Iran and the United States/Israel, I’m afraid that would only militarize the environment inside the country, would only further empower the most hardline Iranian forces, usually men with guns, security forces, the IRGC, at exactly the wrong time. And that could render any kind of engagement with Iran in the future even more difficult.

DAN KURTZ-PHELAN

Suzanne, I just wanted to take us back for one minute to the war in Gaza. There’s a line of analysis that the strike from Iran takes the pressure off of Israel, in some sense, in the global response and regional response to the humanitarian emergency in Gaza. What do you think this means for operations in Gaza?

SUZANNE MALONEY

Well, I do believe that the international response to the Iranian attack on Israel should remind the Israeli people, and especially remind the Israeli leadership, of the importance of partners and allies in dealing with such urgent security threats as Iran and as the question of Hamas and Gaza. So I would like to think that it’s not actually a distraction, as some have posited, and it does not in any way detract from what I think the administration is pursuing and what I think many around the world want to see, which is a ceasefire and a rapid infusion of humanitarian support to the Palestinian people in Gaza. I think they’re in fact very symbiotic.

But more broadly, I think that in many ways these conflicts are directly connected. Iran was a funder, supplier, trainer, coordinator, very much involved with Hamas for many years before the October 7 attacks. And I think, ultimately, a ceasefire is the first stage of a multiplicity of diplomatic arrangements that need to be constructed, the way for which is already being paved by efforts by the Biden administration. So we would start with the ceasefire in Gaza, even a temporary one, that might enable an agreement which moves some of Hezbollah’s most dangerous fighters back north of the Litani River, or at least in a way that makes it less threatening to Israel and enables Israelis in the north to go back to their homes. And so I think we really need to scaffold a set of diplomatic agreements—but it begins with the ceasefire and moves from there in ways that will give Israel confidence that, in fact, its security is being protected.

DAN KURTZ-PHELAN

Suzanne and Ali, thank you so much for your pieces in Foreign Affairs and for this constructive and interesting conversation.

SUZANNE MALONEY

Terrific. Thank you.

ALI VAEZ

Thank you for having us.