Eitan Shamir
Subject: Why Did We Attack Iran Now
Bio: Political Science Professor at Bar Ilan University, Former Head of the National Security Doctrine Department at the Office of Israel’s Prime Minister
Transcript:
Larry Bernstein:
Welcome to What Happens Next. My name is Larry Bernstein. What Happens Next is a podcast that covers economics, politics, and history. Today’s episode is Why Did We Attack Iran Now.
Our speaker is Eitan Shamir who is a Political Science Professor at Bar Ilan University, and he previously the head of the National Security Doctrine Department at the Office of Israel’s Prime Minister.
I want to find out from Eitan why we attacked Iran and have we achieved are primary war aims.
Eitan, can you please begin with some opening remarks.
Eitan Shamir:
I would like to address the three major questions regarding this war. First, why are we going to war against Iran versus using diplomacy? Second, why did Israel and the US decide to attack Iran now? What was the urgency? And then the third, has the war achieved its objectives?
Larry Bernstein:
Start with your first point, why did we choose war versus diplomacy?
Eitan Shamir:
Diplomacy did not derail Iran from pursuing its nuclear capability. No matter what we did Iran refused to change its behavior.
Larry Bernstein:
The Americans used diplomatic efforts for 47 years with the regime. The Obama administration felt that it had been successful negotiating nuclear restraint with Iran. Was Obama successful or were the Iranians cheating?
Eitan Shamir:
War is not a desired course of action. We all know that war has risks. You lose men and material. There’s human suffering that is involved. So, war should be regarded as last resort.
What Obama did, not wanting to make war, we reached an agreement that kicked the can down the road. Every American president promised that Iran would not have a nuclear weapon, but none of them did much.
Trump is the exception. JCPOA, the agreement that Obama did, froze the situation for 10 years, so the Iranians could continue to enrich their uranium at a low level that is accepted for civil purposes from 2015 to 2025, but Iran didn’t dismantle their facilities. It did not take away their knowledge, capability, and learned experience.
The Iranians were not open and transparent about their nuclear facility at Fordow. There was nothing in the agreement that addressed the issue of proxies, terror activities and the missile program.
I don’t think Iran’s strategy was to make a nuclear device and then bomb Israel. But if the likelihood that I was wrong even by 1% means that the nuclear threat is existential.
Remember that the Iranians surrounded Israel with the Houthis in Yemen, Hezbollah in Lebanon and Syria, Hamas in Gaza with a missile capability in these nearby locales and ballistic missiles from Iran.
This gave Iran a hegemonic position in the entire region against the Gulf states and Israel.
In 2025, with the nuclear agreement no longer in place, what was next? They lifted the sanctions; they had a lot of advantages in economic terms. They felt immune because under this agreement nobody could attack them militarily. Even Israel would not dare attack them while there was an agreement with the US.
Larry Bernstein:
I understand that diplomatic solutions may not have been an effective means of controlling Iranian ambitions and power, but what motivated the war now? What was the triggered the United States and Israel to do a surprise attack? And how was it possible that it was a surprise?
Eitan Shamir:
Edward Luttwak defined the Obama law that Iran can hit everyone, but nobody can hit Iran. President Obama believes that Iran is a force that could stabilize the Middle East and the consequence is that Iranians learned to believe that they were untouchable.
We must consider the religious factor, which we as Westerns sometimes misunderstand, This notion that the West is weak and decaying. There was no reason to believe that Trump was bluffing. I think the Iranians simply miscalculated.
But going back to the why now? In 2021 Israeli intelligence became aware that the Iranians were enriching uranium from 20% to 60%. This is the famous 400 kilograms.
The only reason to enrich uranium to this level is to make a bomb. With the Biden administration, the law of Obama still applied. Iran was immune. We were not going to attack Iran. The Israelis came to Biden after he lost the election and told Biden, “Look, you don’t have to get elected again.” Let’s do something militarily. And Biden disagreed.
Now, what happened on the 7th of October from the Iranians perspective is that Sinwar jumped the gun and undermined the Iranian plans. From their point of view, Hamas is destroyed as a military force.
Then Hezbollah next. Hezbollah is finished as a fighting force. The next disaster was Syria. Assad was literally under Iranian control. Now, Assad is gone and has been replaced with their Sunni enemies who were oppressed and killed during the civil war in Syria. These guys now control Syria, a total disaster for Iran.
Larry Bernstein:
In June 2025, the Israelis fought alone initially. They destroyed Iran’s aircraft defense systems, and so it created an opportunity for US B-2 bombers to drop massive bombs on Iran’s nuclear facility.
Eitan Shamir:
Exactly.
Larry Bernstein:
There was a lot of disagreement about whether the US attack on the nuclear facilities at Fordow were successful. How much did this undermine the Iranian nuclear program?
Eitan Shamir:
We don’t know for sure. I don’t get access to Israeli intelligence. But from what I hear, the strikes were successful. Those facilities are not operational.
Israel killed many nuclear scientists, took out their leadership and destroyed most of the missile sites and launchers, which was one of the objectives of this operation.
In June 2025, Trump stopped the and demanded that Israeli fighter jets make a U-turn and go back to Israel. Trump knew that the next wave of Israeli fighters was going to inflict heavy damage on Iran. And he stopped it because he wanted to give room for diplomacy. Since June 2025 the Iranians were negotiating but as usual this led nowhere.
They were stalling and stalling and stalling while they rebuilt their offensive and defensive weaponry. Israel intelligence estimated that Iran produced an additional 1,000 missiles per day.
And they transferred a billion dollars to Hezbollah so that they could recover. And today in Lebanon, this fighting with Hezbollah is the direct result of that.
To those who criticize the decision to go to war against Iran, I never heard arguments for what the alternative was. I suspect that the Iranians would reject the previous Obama agreement.
Why did Trump decide to go to war? He was influenced by the embassy crisis in Tehran. Iran tried to assassinate him, so it got personal. In addition, in Trump’s negotiations with a nuclear North Korea, that he had no leverage.
Iran is much more dangerous than North Korea because it has a hegemonic ideology in combination with religious radicalism. This was a big part in his decision to make war.
Larry Bernstein:
The Americans and the Israelis have not considered a ground invasion.
Eitan Shamir:
No.
Larry Bernstein:
And why is that? What is it about Iran’s geography that makes a ground invasion ridiculous?
Eitan Shamir:
Iran is protected by mountains. You have a few passageways like you see in Switzerland.
The Iranians have a historical memory of a glorious Iranian empire, the Persian empire before that, and they believe that their destiny is to be hegemonic in the Middle East. Shia is a minority in the Islamic world, and they were always the underdog. And the Iranian revolution in 1979 was supposed to change this historic relationship.
The struggle is multilayered. They are fighting the West because it is everything that they hate. The West is corrupt, anti-religious and colonialist.
Israel is a forward post of the West, and many radical Jihadi Sunnis say the same thing. The Jews under Islam were always second-class citizens. The Islamists are in shock that the Jews have an independent state in the heart of their Middle East. The plan is that after they kill off the Jews in Israel that they will continue the struggle against the West in Europe and against Sunni Islam in the Middle East. That’s core to their world view.
Larry Bernstein:
What are the Saudis thinking?
Eitan Shamir:
The Saudis are playing a sophisticated game. If you remember, they were trying to use China as a wedge to provoke the Americans to do what they wanted. But the Saudis have a lot to lose, and they are not risktakers. They want to stay low and hope that the fighting stops soon. But they are pushing hard on the Americans to be tough on the Iranians now to win the war.
Larry Bernstein:
How widespread is the view among the Gulf States that they want Trump to keep hitting the Iranians? It seems counter to these other points of making peace.
Eitan Shamir:
The Middle East is full of contradictions. And that is why most commentators in the Middle East have no clue what is going on. When Israel was fighting in Gaza, a lot of Middle Eastern experts in Britain and the U.S. were saying, “Because America is supporting Israel it’s going to alienate the Arab moderate countries.” People who actually visited officials in Riyadh and in the Emirates heard, “Don’t stop the Israelis. Let them finish Hamas because Hamas is our enemy. Hamas is the Muslim Brotherhood, and we are not afraid of Israelis. We are afraid of the Muslim brotherhood.”
Larry Bernstein:
What is the Iranian military plan and what was the purpose of their performative act of firing ballistic missiles that they knew would be shot down?
Eitan Shamir:
Their original strategy was to create deterrence by having a missile wall. We can attack everyone in the Middle East with this unprecedentedly large missile arsenal that is protected underneath the mountains. In addition, Iran will make their proxies fight for them. They had Hezbollah, the Houthis, militias in Iraq and Syria. Whenever Israel retaliates, it will have to retaliate against the Iranian proxies.
The next phase for Iran to get immunity was to be right on the threshold of obtaining a nuclear device, the threat to have the ability to make a bomb in a few weeks.
Since October 7, Iran has seen its global strategy fall apart. They were under enormous stress, and they responded by firing missiles at Israel. I do not think they had a choice. They were trapped. They had to do something because their proxies looked to them to provide leadership.
Now, the Iranians are being humiliated. Their proxies are defeated. Their plan to fire 100 ballistic missiles at Israel and thousands of smaller rockets from Hamas and Hezbollah each day for weeks to be combined with a proxy land invasion was expected to bring Israel to its knees. If Iran got a nuclear weapon, then Israel had no way to deter Iran. I think this was the Iranian plan. And everything went bad for them starting on 7th of October. We should award the Israel security award to Sinwar for changing the whole military dynamic in the Middle East.
Larry Bernstein:
How is Trump different than previous presidents for the Middle East?
Eitan Shamir:
After the Gulf War, using force in the Middle East was taboo. I was sitting in a conference in the Israeli Foreign Ministry and there was a consensus that the Americans were unwilling to use military force in the Middle East after the Iraq war. And I disagreed. There is a reluctance in this Trump administration for certain kinds of military intervention, but Trump is not opposed to all military force.
Larry Bernstein:
Why didn’t the Saudis build a bigger pipeline to handle all the 22 million barrels out of the Persian Gulf and instead of a partial solution of a pipeline that could only ship 7 million?
Eitan Shamir:
There is inertia in the status quo in the Middle East. Being properly prepared for war is only obvious in hindsight.
You know the story of the scorpion and the frog. That the scorpion stings the frog in the middle of the river and the frog asks him just before they drown, “Why did you do it? You killed us both. “Well, I’m a Scorpion.”
Gulf countries are the frog and Iran is the scorpion. Iran is also dependent on sending oil tankers through the Hormuz Strait. Why would they do it? It is this cruel game where no one wins. That is my only explanation.
Why didn’t the Saudis invest more in their defense? They expected that the American security umbrella would protect them and that neither the US nor the Iranians would initiate a war.
Larry Bernstein:
The American and European media believe that the American-Israel alliance is losing the war. That their war plan is ineffective. There was an article recently in the Wall Street Journal that said that killing off the top 40 leaders was a bad idea because they will be replaced by even more horrible people. Some say that the threat to the Strait of Hormuz was not thought through, and that the Iranians are winning the war in every dimension. What do you think?
Eitan Shamir:
I don’t know where it is coming from really, but it’s more of a psychological problem. Foreign Affairs magazine has five articles explaining why the US is losing the war in Iran. I think this perspective comes from people who believe that military force does not solve anything. This is an ideological problem.
We saw the same response with the war in Gaza. All the experts in the media that quoted retired military officers, academics, and analysts said that Israel would surely lose the war in Gaza. And yet Hezbollah and Hamas were completely defeated. And now it is Iran’s turn.
The critics completely ignore the chaos, despair, and problems of the other side. There is a famous story from Israel’s Independence War in 1948, soldiers were complaining to their commander about the rain and the cold and why they cannot go on. And the commander said, “It is also raining on the other side.” Meaning you are suffering, but the other side is suffering as much as you are. Hold on because they will crack first.
Larry Bernstein:
The Europeans have opposed the war in Iran, and they are angry that the United States is not aiding Ukraine in the Russian-Ukraine war. How do you explain the European’s perspective on making war?
Eitan Shamir:
Where you sit is where you stand. The Europeans view Russia as the aggressor. So, this is a no choice war. Russia attacked Ukraine. If Russia wins it will border EU countries. Europe directly is under threat, therefore it’s a “just war,” therefore they must do something about it. But they don’t see a reason to go to war with Iran.
Larry Bernstein:
The Iranian Revolutionary Guard has said they will shoot their domestic opposition on sight, how does that impact regime change?
Eitan Shamir:
We don’t know. Maybe it’s going to get worse before it’s gets better. If you put full pressure on Iran by keeping the sanctions and bombing them, then it might trigger a severe economic crisis. If you remember an economic crisis triggered the previous demonstrations.
The alternative is to do nothing, which means at the end, Iran will get nuclear weapons and dominate its neighbors in the Middle East. This is not something we can afford. So, the military escalation is the best course of action. It’s not perfect. There are obstacles. Our enemy is shrewd and capable. The Iranian people are capable and educated. So this will be a struggle.
Larry Bernstein:
I end each podcast on a note of optimism.
Eitan Shamir:
What we see here is an evolution between Israel and the U.S. and a wonderful joint operation between the two armies. We also broke the taboo that Iran is immune from attack.
Larry Bernstein:
Thanks to Eitan for joining us.
I am doing a series of podcasts on the war in Iran. If you missed our last podcast the topic was Why Does the Press Think We Lost the War in Iran? Our speaker was Mark Penn who was a senior advisor to President Clinton and Hillary’s chief strategist for her senate and presidential campaigns.
Also Iran’s Rope-a-Dope Strategy with Anthony King, a Professor of War at Exeter University.
Previous to that, we had a podcast Allies Fighting Together with Yaakov Katz who is the former Editor in Chief of the Jerusalem Post and I also did a podcast on the Opening of the Strait of Hormuz with James Holmes from the US Naval War College.
We started the series with former Trump National Security Advisor John Bolton about what steps we need to take to win the war.
You can find our previous episodes and transcripts on our website. Please follow us on Apple Podcasts or Spotify.
I am Larry Bernstein with the podcast What Happens Next.
Check out our previous episode, Closing Small Colleges, here.
