00:00Well, Israel and the United States are fighting Iran together, but do they share the same war objectives?
00:07Daniel Levy is a former advisor to the Israeli government.
00:11Daniel, welcome back.
00:12What do you make of the United States and Israel's objectives in this conflict?
00:18Are they the same?
00:21Well, Jamie, it's an important question to ask, and I think, broadly speaking,
00:26the answer would be yes, with a really significant caveat, namely that Israel has a strategy,
00:35and I, at least, and I think many would be hard-pressed to know whether that is true of the
00:40Trump administration.
00:41Israel knows what it wanted to achieve in launching this war and in pulling America into this war.
00:47And what it wants to achieve is not narrow, nuclear-related, missile-related.
00:52It wants to collapse the regime. It doesn't believe in regime, happy, clappy regime change.
00:59It wants Iran to implode as a state. It's happened elsewhere in the region.
01:04It wants chaos in Iran, where there is no functioning central state, and that begins to dismantle and be fragmented.
01:10That's how Israel could assert regional military domination, continue with its eradicationist project against the Palestinians.
01:19Now, where does that leave the Trump administration?
01:22I think what we've seen from the Trump administration is a great deal of incoherence as to what their actual
01:27objective is.
01:28He flails around, makes claims that are not backed up by reality,
01:31and you see an often quite uncomfortable-looking chair of the Joint Chiefs, Dan Cain,
01:37not entirely aligned with the administration position, and probably not aligned with Israel's far-reaching goals.
01:45Donald Trump has said that the Iran war will end very soon.
01:51I wonder to what extent is it up to him, or is it starting to go out of his control?
02:00Right, so first of all, let's acknowledge, whenever the markets are looking a little bit too dicey,
02:05when oil's nudging over that $100 mark,
02:08Trump has to intervene again to try and get control of the economic fallout,
02:13and to spread that message of it's okay.
02:16But he can only do that for so long.
02:18He's not going to open the Straits of Hormuz.
02:19He's taking an economic hit.
02:22Russia looks on, is enjoying this.
02:24I think there's plenty of reasons for lots of other places not that friendly to the U.S.
02:30to enjoy watching the U.S. being dragged against its own strategic priorities into a war in the Middle East,
02:36and politically it's not going well for him.
02:40Can he end the war?
02:41Well, he has gotten himself and manoeuvred the U.S. and the region into a place where,
02:48I wouldn't say Iran necessarily has escalatory dominance,
02:53but Iran has wanted this to be a war of endurance and attrition,
02:56and that is the direction it is going in.
02:59So the U.S. could tomorrow say, let's finish this.
03:04It's going to have to convince Iran.
03:05I do tend to think that if the U.S. wants out,
03:11a coalition could be created that might include countries closer to Iran
03:15and countries in the region that could bring Iran on board for that.
03:20There is no easy exit ramp for the U.S.
03:22There's no easy victory for the U.S.
03:24And one of the fears, Jamie, is that if Israel and the U.S. say,
03:28we need one more victory image before we end this,
03:31then you escalate and Iran will do likewise.
03:33That's the unpredictability of war alongside the unpredictability of the fragile ego
03:39and the incoherent American president alongside the reality
03:43that Israel doesn't want this to end,
03:45and it will do everything to keep America into a more prolonged war.
03:49Daniel, good to talk to you.
03:51Thanks for coming on the program again.
03:52Daniel Levy, the former advisor to the Israeli government.
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