Thomas Friedman on Iran, Israel and Preventing a ‘Forever War’

 

OPINION

Thomas Friedman on Iran, Israel and Preventing a ‘Forever War’

 

“It’s the worst story I’ve ever covered.”

 

April 19, 2024

https://www.nytimes.com/2024/04/19/opinion/israel-war-friedman.html

 

The columnist Thomas L. Friedman joined the hosts of “Matter of Opinion” this week to unpack Israel’s and Iran’s latest attacks, what they mean for Gaza and the implications for the region writ large.

Lydia Polgreen: From New York Times Opinion, I’m Lydia Polgreen.

 

Ross Douthat: I’m Ross Douthat.

 

Carlos Lozada: I’m Carlos Lozada.

 

Lydia: And this is “Matter of Opinion.”

 

Over the past few weeks, Israel and Iran have engaged in a military standoff. Israel struck the Iranian Embassy in Syria, killing several top Iranian military officials. Then last weekend Iran sent hundreds of drones and missiles toward Israel. And finally, early on Friday, Israel retaliated, striking a military base in Iran.

 

Michelle Cottle is out this week, so to try to unpack what all this means, we asked our colleague Thomas L. Friedman to join us.

 

This conversation was recorded before the latest attack, so keep that in mind. But we think it provides some very helpful context to what led us to this moment and what could happen next.

 

Welcome back to “Matter of Opinion,” Tom.

 

Thomas L. Friedman: Thank you, Lydia. It’s great to be back.

 

Lydia: So let’s get right into it. How did Iran’s attack on Israel come to be?

 

Tom: Well, roughly a week before Iran launched its missile attack, Israel killed several very, very senior [Islamic] Revolutionary Guards commanders who were in an adjunct building to the Iranian Embassy in Damascus, meeting with operatives at the same time. And this gentleman was reportedly responsible for really running all the sort of Iranian operations in Lebanon, in Syria.

 

And so, from the Israeli point of view, he was a very high-value target. I was surprised they did this. It’s not something I thought was very wise. My grandmother used to say, just one war at a time, please. And this really was a provocation, even for the ongoing shadow war between Israel and Iran, which has been ongoing now for years.

 

This was definitely a step-up. And the Iranians honored the Israelis’ step-up by taking a massive step-up of their own on Saturday by launching some 300 drones, missiles and cruise missiles at Israel from Iran, marking the first time that any Middle East state has attacked Israel since Saddam Hussein did it with Scuds 33 years ago.

 

And in the context of the Israeli-Iranian conflict, again, tit-for-tat, shadow war, neither has ever done such a thing. I didn’t buy and don’t buy the notion that they were counting on Israel’s air defense system to shoot down basically all 300 with help from allies. That was actually quite a remarkable military feat.

 

Had one of them gotten through and hit an Israeli school or a government building, this audio program would be about full-scale war in the Middle East right now.

 

Ross: So your view is that that possibility was built into the Iranian attack? Because both during the attack, honestly, and then immediately afterward, there was this running debate about the extent to which Iran had deliberately telegraphed this move, telegraphed it to Israel, telegraphed it to the other Arab states that cooperated in shooting down the missiles, which to some people seemed to imply that Iran wanted the attack to fail.

 

But you don’t think that was the case, and you think, therefore, Iran was prepared for really dramatic escalation in response from Israel?

 

Tom: Yeah, Ross. You know, I say two things. One is, just given the physics of it, no one could count on firing 300 missiles and drones at another country, that basically none would get through. That almost all 300 would be intercepted by a, in effect, multinational force. And No. 2, when it comes to Iran, I always prefer to put an s on the end: Irans.

 

So maybe the supreme leader had one thing in mind and the [Islamic] Revolutionary Guards had another thing in mind. It’s a notoriously factionalized system, particularly between the Revolutionary Guards, the army and the government. And not everyone is always aligned.

 

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Carlos: Tom, so how much or how little can we discern about Iran’s offensive capabilities and Israel’s defensive capabilities from what we just saw?

 

Tom: I was trying to imagine when the head of the Iranian Air Force reported back to the supreme leader, Ayatollah Khamenei, did he breathe a sigh of relief or did he say, “Zero out of 300?”

 

Lydia: Hmm.

 

Tom: “If that’s how bad our offense is, what does that mean for our defense?” Remember, Iran’s air force does not have F-35s. It does not have F-15s. So they have none of the advanced technologies that Israel and its allies have.

 

And so I think the Iranians are much more worried right now than not. It has been a risk-averse leadership. This is not people who have gone out of their way to bet the farm. And that’s why I was really surprised that in some ways they did, because if just one out of 300 gets through and causes a mass casualty event in Israel, I think Israel — they would have taken the plans out for Iran’s nuclear program. And we’d be in Day 5 of that war right now. So I don’t think the world fully appreciates how close we came. That’s just my gut feeling.

 

Lydia: What’s going on in Israel? What are the calculations that are happening right now in terms of how to respond? There was in the immediate moment this idea that they must hit back and hit back hard. Now some time has passed. Life seems to be returning roughly to normal in Israel. Where do things stand?

 

Tom: I think we’re all trying to divine that, Lydia. So several factors are sort of converging here. One is Israel is having the best week of this war since Oct. 7, in terms of global public opinion. People now see at the interstate level what they’re up against, and it’s not inconsiderable. And that’s why you’ve had visits by the German foreign minister, the British, people really expressing solidarity. But within the Israeli government, one of the things that’s troubled me since the war began is that there’s basically no opposition in Israel. Since the beginning of the war, there’s been no opposition.

 

It’s not like Gantz and Eisenkot who have joined the government from the leading opposition party, I mean they’re — I don’t know — 10 degrees different from Netanyahu, but it’s not like there’s a liberal party arguing something completely different at all. It’s much more nuanced. In other words, Israeli politics still revolves around Bibi Netanyahu, and he’s in everybody’s head.

 

And as a result of that, there is no loud, significant opposition articulating an alternative strategy, like maybe not retaliating, for either Gaza or now Iran. There’s degrees of caution and separation. And I believe one reason for that is that the army in Israel has often played that role more than the politicians.

 

What happened is that because the Gaza war is a complete and catastrophic military failure, all the military chiefs know their careers are over. And because of that, we are six months into a war with no defined endgame. And the military normally would be playing that role, but I think because everyone here is traumatized and a little bit compromised in their own way, they’re not playing that role.

 

Ross: So I think we want to talk about endgame scenarios, but just to push on the Netanyahu thread for a minute: Netanyahu is politically unpopular in Israel right now, in the sense that opinion polls that we can see suggest that he would not be returned as prime minister if elections were held suddenly.

 

And we’ve had various people — yourself included, our colleague Bret Stephens — arguing that for the sake of Israel’s war effort, Netanyahu should go. If Netanyahu went, in whatever way, shape or form, what would actually follow? Beyond the change in leadership style, who would be in charge, and would there be any shift in strategy or tactics?

 

Tom: Ross, there certainly would be a change in tone. When Netanyahu came in with the farthest far-right government Israel’s ever had — including real Jewish Proud Boys, I mean, Jewish supremacists — their approach was, you know, “We’re living in a one-state reality. Let’s behave without self-restraint. In fact, let’s try to take the Supreme Court down so we can truly behave without self-restraint.”

 

So I think the first answer to your question, Ross, would be it’s a government that would not be looking in any way to provoke things. That’s where I would start. But absent what is the resolution on the ground in Gaza, how much of Hamas survives, now this Iran factor — it’s very hard to predict actually how different they would be.

 

And all I can say about Netanyahu is that he’s compromised. He knows he has to stay in power in order to be able to trade his office for a plea bargain if he is convicted. Therefore, there isn’t a decision he makes in this war that isn’t factored in with his own political needs, which a lot of people would argue would be, keep the war going.

 

And in fact, look, he didn’t invite this Iran attack, I don’t believe, but it sure works for him politically. I bet if they took a poll today, you’d see his numbers have gone way up.

 

Carlos: Tom, I want to widen that question just a tiny bit. In your latest column, you wrote that there’s no hope for a resolution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict or the conflict between Israel and Iran without leadership change, in Israel with Netanyahu but also in Tehran and also in Ramallah with the Palestinian Authority.

 

And it’s very persuasive. You kind of walk through each case. But what I wanted to ask you is how much of this problem is about the particular leadership that’s in place, versus how much is about the competing interests and forces at play that have shown themselves to be somewhat resistant at times to leadership changes.

 

Tom: So Carlos, I’ll start at 30,000 feet ——

 

Carlos: That’s where you live, Tom. That’s great. [Laughter]

 

Tom: Exactly. That’s where I have to live, because if you’re down on the ground, man, there aren’t enough drugs to keep you going. [Laughter.] So anyone who knows my politics knows that it’s a tension between Walter Mondale and Thomas Hobbes. A lot of people keep saying, “Two-state solution’s a fantasy.”

 

And I say, “Oh, thank you for telling me! I had no idea that this was hard. Thank you for telling me.” I get it. There’s about a 95 percent chance that this won’t work. But I’ve decided to dedicate my life 100 percent to the 5 percent chance that it will, because the alternative is a forever war. And if you care about Israel, care about Palestinians, that’s the end of both communities. Because they’ll just destroy each other, basically.

 

And so the hope I base that on, Carlos, is this: Bibi Netanyahu has been in power for 16 years. He has spent 16 years doing everything he could to denigrate the Palestinian Authority. In those 16 years, with kind of a free hand, Mahmoud Abbas, the leader of the P.A., has done everything to shift money to relatives and really take advantage of the fact that they couldn’t have an election.

 

I would just like to do a lab test: What if you had an Israeli leader and a Palestinian leader who actually wanted to try to make this work? Would it work automatically? I have no idea. And we have the whole question of settlements and physical problems on the ground. But I would at least like to run that test of having someone in power in Ramallah and someone in power in Jerusalem who actually wanted to make it work and see how far we can get. And because it’s going to happen incrementally.

 

Ross: I think one of the questions here, right, is people say, “No one wants a wider war.”

 

Tom: Yeah.

 

Ross: But there are people who want a wider war, right?

 

Tom: Definitely.

 

Ross: Who are they right now, and what are they thinking?

 

Tom: So, Ross, one is Yahya Sinwar, the Hamas leader who is hiding somewhere in Gaza.

 

Ross: Right, he needs a wider war.

 

Tom: He needs a wider war, because he’s out to destroy Israel. The thing people need to remember about Sinwar is, Sinwar actually doesn’t know the Arabs very well, which is why I think he was surprised by some of them not joining in. But he knows Israelis really well. In fact, he learned his Israeli studies in prison. He learned all his Hebrew in prison. And he spent years observing Israel and all its weaknesses, and he put them all into play in this war. And he wants Israel wiped out. So he’s certainly one of them.

 

I always go back when I think about Iran, Ross, to remember what Ayatollah Khomeini said when he came to Tehran from Paris in 1979 and took over, basically, Iran from the shah. He said: We didn’t make this revolution to lower the price of watermelons. This is a truly ideological movement with an agenda that it is ready to prioritize over advancing the well-being of Iranians.

 

And we’ve seen that now since 1979. And so you have to take these people very seriously. They want to destroy Israel out of conviction and ambition. Whether they think they can actually do it is a whole other question, but they’re not playing around.

 

Lydia: So the Iranians — what are the Palestinians to them? Are they just an instrument trying to humiliate Israel? Because there’s not a natural alliance, as you said, so how is Iran positioned vis-à-vis the Palestinians here?

 

Tom: So Iran is not popular among the West Bank. Remember a big part of the Palestinian community are Christians — not a majority, but they have a significant Christian minority. In the P.A., Iran is not popular. Iran is extremely adept at cultivating underground networks. And so Palestinians are to them the same as Houthis are to them, the same as Hezbollah is to them, the same as Shia militias in Iraq are to them. They’re instruments, and they are how Iran projects power.

 

And by basically enabling these militias with resources and money to either take over these countries or eat away at the systems there, so you can’t get a majority against them. Lebanon hasn’t been able to elect a president now for a couple of years because Iran can’t necessarily, within the Lebanese system, get the man it wants, but it can make sure that no one else can get the person they want that would be hostile to Iran.

 

And Hamas, — one has to remember, Hamas launched this war because there was a big political struggle going on inside Hamas between more moderate forces led by Haniyeh and Sinwar and because Hamas was in a giant rivalry with Fatah in the West Bank and Fatah seemed to be lining up with Israel and Saudi Arabia to do a giant normalization deal. So take a step back from all the sort of Hamas ideology charter — this was also very much local politics at work.

 

Ross: So I just want to push you to make a specific prediction — sorry — [Laughter] about what the Israelis are going to do. Because in the narrative, your narrative of the Iranian desire for a wider war, it seems like what constrains Iranian leadership is fear. That they would happily go to war with Israel ——

 

Tom: Yeah.

 

Ross: —— tomorrow if they thought they could win it. So if you are in the Israeli cabinet right now, are you thinking, “We must strike back to restore deterrence and maintain fear”? Or are you thinking, “Iran failed sufficiently that they will be deterred from trying this again”? What are you thinking, and what are they going to do?

 

Tom: What are they going to do? I don’t know, Ross. I’ll just say what I’ve been thinking from Day 1 of the war: that Israel needs to ask itself what its worst enemies want it to do and do the opposite. And it’s rooted in a larger framework that I have, which is that I can write the history of this conflict for you long. I wrote a whole book, “[From] Beirut to Jerusalem,” about it. Or I can write history really short, and it fits on a business card: war, timeout, war, timeout, war, timeout, war, timeout, war, timeout, war, timeout, going back to 1929, if not earlier. And the difference between the two sides is what each did in the timeout. Israel built one of the strongest economies in the world. Hamas dug tunnels and nursed a grievance. And my view is that the Israeli No. 1 objective should always be to get to the timeout whenever they can, as much as they can.

 

Now maybe in this situation, it’s unavoidable. They just can’t. That’s what they would argue. I’m not sure that’s the case. But Israel wins in the timeouts, and it loses in times of war, especially where we are now historically, politically and technologically in a social wired network world where when you lose on TikTok now, you don’t just lose Muslim Americans in Michigan. You lose a whole generation. And I think Israel is in real danger of losing a whole generation right now.

 

Carlos: I wonder if we could maybe spend some of our remaining time talking about what the next timeout might look like if we’re able to get there. Back in January, which feels so long ago, you wrote a column saying that Oct. 7 had propelled a fundamental rethinking of the Middle East inside the Biden administration. You outlined what you thought was an emerging Biden doctrine for the region. Given how the conflict has evolved since then, how is the administration thinking about the region, broadly speaking, now? Is there a coherent doctrine that you see still at work or in development here?

 

Tom: Carlos, I’d just say before I answer, I’ve been doing this my entire adult life. I’ve been following the Middle East since I was 15. I’m now 70. This is the absolutely worst moment I ever remember and the most worrisome for the whole region spinning out of control.

 

I would say the administration has a broad doctrine, which is Israel should find a way to finish the operation of dismantling Hamas in a way that spares as many innocent Gazan civilians as possible. It should then work with the P.A., with the support of countries like the U.A.E. or Saudi Arabia, Egypt, Jordan, when they are of sufficient capacity and strength. The P.A. plus allied countries — Jordan, Egypt, U.A.E., Saudi Arabia — should then be the ones to govern Gaza, maybe even with some American logistical help.

 

And then Israel should provide some political horizon for the Palestinians, so Israel can then normalize with Saudi Arabia. And we then find ourselves with a broad inclusion network in the region, stretching from Egypt through Gaza, the Arabian Gulf countries, and we’re in a whole new Middle East.

 

That’s the hope. It’s still not impossible, I would say, but it takes me back, Carlos, to, again, what I said early on after the war, which is what was going on in the world on Oct. 6? On Oct. 6, Ukraine was trying to join the West, and Israel was trying to join the Arab East. Ukraine was trying to get into the European Union, and Israel was trying to normalize with Saudi Arabia.

 

This was a pivotal 1989 moment. And Russia understood the first and stopped it, and Hamas and Iran understood the second and stopped it. Because if these two events had happened — if the first had happened, it would be the biggest change in Europe since East Germany joined West Germany. We would be nine-tenths to a Europe whole and free. In the Middle East, it would be the biggest expansion of the Inclusion Network since Camp David, and it would have opened up the whole Muslim world to Israel. So we were at a pivotal — we still are at a pivotal moment that will actually define the post-post-Cold War world in both Europe and the Middle East if we take these two theaters together.

 

It may not feel like it, but this is 1989. This is a pivotal moment that is going to define the post-post-Cold War world. And that’s why I feel strongly about both aid for Ukraine and making sure that the Palestinian Authority, Israel, Saudi Arabia, Egypt, Jordan come out of this the right way.

 

Lydia: But one big stumbling block to that, and you didn’t mention when you talked about who wanted a widening war, but it’s clear that Netanyahu wants this war to continue ——

 

Tom: Yeah.

 

Lydia: —— and needs this war to continue.

 

Tom: Yeah.

 

Lydia: Does the potential widening of the war weaken or strengthen him? And how do we contend with that as a factor overall? I mean, Biden has been trying very hard to exercise influence, but it’s hard to exercise influence on someone who feels cornered and running for their life.

 

Tom: Yeah. You know, Lydia it’s been a problem from Day 1, and it’s why I’ve focused on him so much. He’s not on the level as a leader right now in terms of his decision making. That said, he’s also not alone. He has to balance his far-right coalition partners with Benny Gantz, with the army and with the public.

 

So it’s not like he can just keep people at war forever. He’s under huge pressure from hostage families. But he can drag things out at the margins, more and less. He can extend this thing if he wants, but I don’t think it’s indefinite.

 

Joe Biden — it seems like an eternity ago, but a couple of weeks ago after the tragic killing of José Andrés’s team, Biden basically called [Netanyahu] up and said: Here’s what you’re going to do, and if you don’t do it, you’re basically on your own.

 

And that got his attention because Israeli prime ministers depend on an American president to deal with their internal politics. They need to be able to go back to the cabinet and say, “I would never do that. But this S.O.B. Biden, he broke my arm! He broke — he broke my arm! I would never do this, but the Americans made me do it.”

 

And so we need to always be aware of that role that we play. Some would say Biden didn’t play it hard enough early enough. I think it’s a tricky question because you also don’t want to give Hamas a pass and think that, OK, now the Americans have got Bibi’s hands tied behind his back because then Hamas will take advantage of it. So navigating this war is just hell on wheels.

 

Ross: But so just to clarify, from the point of view of the Israelis who do not have Netanyahu’s specific political incentives but share his perspective, which, as you’re arguing, is most of the key players ——

 

Tom: Yes.

 

Ross: —— what’s the difference between the endgame you just sketched or the timeout you just sketched, which presumably is the one the Biden administration is seeking ——

 

Tom: Yes.

 

Ross: —— and what they think? Like, if Netanyahu’s cabinet gets what they want in the war in the next six months, what does their view of the timeout look like?

 

Tom: Ross, I’m going to tell you the craziest thing, one of the craziest things I’ve ever seen covering international relations. I don’t know the answer, because no one in Israel has said — even the opposition has not said — what is the endgame in Gaza. And we are six months into this war, and, and I’m not being cute or anything. I, I have no idea.

 

It just doesn’t make sense to me, and worse, I think it’s just incredibly reckless. One can only divine by their actions, Ross, that their idea is to finish off Hamas in Rafah if they can, and I think that’s a dubious proposition. I wrote early on, the four most dangerous words in the Middle East are “once and for all.” Nothing ever ends once and for all there.

 

And then the plan, Ross, seems to be to pull largely out of Gaza, except for a perimeter and the road bisecting it and use those two sort of positions to go in and out at will.

 

But I was there a few weeks ago with General Carrillo, our Centcom commander. We were actually at the Erez crossing and being briefed by an Israeli colonel. And he said, “We’re basically all out of northern Gaza.” I said, “What? What?” He said, “We’ve left northern Gaza.” I said, “Well, who’s governing northern Gaza?” Now, a lot of the population has been depopulated, but he didn’t have an answer.

 

And I immediately — and I wrote a column about this — had a flashback to being in Iraq three weeks after the war in Umm Qasr and saying, “Where are the Americans? Where are the British?” And no one was there because they had left a completely ungoverned space.

 

So either you’re going to have a Somalia, where Israel goes in and out, or Hamas coming back. Or you’re going to get a new Israeli government that invites the P.A. in. But right now, no one is talking that way.

 

And so we’re six months into this war, and I can’t answer your most basic question — not just because Netanyahu hasn’t answered it, because Gantz and Eisenkot, the opposition, haven’t answered it, and the opposition outside the government haven’t offered a kind of third way. And that gets to the deformities of the Israeli political system right now — that there is no opposition.

 

Lydia: Tom, thank you so much for coming to spend some time with us today.

 

Carlos: Thank you so much, Tom.

 

Tom: I feel like it’s wonderful to be with my great colleagues. I wish I had better answers. I don’t. It’s the worst story I’ve ever covered.

 

Lydia: That’s saying something.

 

Tom: Great to be with you guys. Anytime.

 

Ross: Thanks Tom.

 

“Matter of Opinion” is produced by Phoebe Lett, Sophia Alvarez Boyd and Derek Arthur. It is edited by Jordana Hochman. Mixing by Sonia Herrero and Pat McCusker. Original music by Isaac Jones, Efim Shapiro, Carole Sabouraud, Sonia Herrero and Pat McCusker. Our fact-checking team is Kate Sinclair, Mary Marge Locker and Michelle Harris. Audience strategy by Shannon Busta and Kristina Samulewski. Our executive producer is Annie-Rose Strasser.

 

Ross Douthat has been an Opinion columnist for The Times since 2009. He is the author, most recently, of “The Deep Places: A Memoir of Illness and Discovery.” @DouthatNYT • Facebook

 

Carlos Lozada is an Opinion columnist and a co-host of the weekly “Matter of Opinion” podcast for The Times, based in Washington, D.C. He is the author, most recently, of “The Washington Book: How to Read Politics and Politicians.”  @CarlosNYT

 

Lydia Polgreen is an Opinion columnist and a co-host of the “Matter of Opinion” podcast for The Times.