Emergency Episode: Israel Strikes Iran — with Dan Senor

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Welcome to an emergency episode of the Prop GPod.

So So I was struck by,

I immediately had this, I woke up this morning and I had an appetite to understand more about Israel's attack on Iran.

And while we're all distracted, understandably with ICE raids at Home Depots or this big, ugly tax bill, I found I had a difficult time getting good information on what had played or unfolded over the last 48 hours.

So I went to my go-to on all things Israel, Dan Senor, in his fantastic podcast, Call Call Me Back.

And I thought I would really like to expose some of that information or insight to our listeners.

So, I got Dan, a friend, on the phone this morning and agreed to come on.

Anyways, this is our interview with

Dan Senor, a leading expert on Israel and the Middle East.

He's the co-author of The Genius of Israel and Startup Nation and the host of the Call Me Back podcast.

Dan, where does this podcast find you?

New York City.

Very much appreciate you on short notice doing this.

As we

are kind of, I don't want to say distracted, but focused on ICE raids of Home Depots or this tax bill.

I actually think the most important thing that's happened in the world in the last at least 72 hours is the, I don't know if it's fair to say the Israeli attack in Iran, the preemptive attack.

whatever the right nomenclature is that threads the needle here and doesn't give a false impression of what happened here.

But I thought, who could I bring on to summarize and talk about, summarize what happened, talk about the planning, talk about what it might mean for a reshaping of what feels to me like a totally reconfiguration of the power dynamic in the Middle East.

And I thought, immediately thought of you and you were kind enough to immediately jump on.

So let's start there.

And also, I just want to bring some Sunshine.

The reason we're on the phone or doing this is, A, we're friends and we go back, but Nadab Ayal was an Israeli journalist who was on your amazing

podcast, Call Me Back this morning.

And I was so inspired by it that I thought, okay, I need Dan to come on and give us the cliff notes.

Anyways, let's start with a summary of what's unfolded over the last, call it, 48 hours.

Well,

on Thursday night, our time,

about, you know, about...

somewhere between 2 and 4, 1 and 4 a.m.

Israel time, Israel launched a military operation.

And to call it a military operation understates it.

A military operation is what Israel did against Hezbollah with its pager attack and then systematically taking out the Hezbollah leadership.

This was an operation in the context of a larger war.

So this is different than what Israel has dealt with over the last two years.

It launched a war, and we can get into what the significance of this being a war rather than just a military operation.

But they launched what was the first phase of a war, which basically involved, I mean, we still don't know all the details, but from what I know so far, is the two most important elements, I say the three most important elements, were one, one, the Israeli Air Force deployed what sounds like close to the entirety of the Israeli Air Force.

When Israel conducted a spectacular operation against Iran back in October of 24, my understanding is that it was about a third of the Israeli Air Force.

This was close to all of the Israeli Air Force

that didn't actually initially take out Iran's nuclear sites, which is what everybody expected.

Everybody expected if there was going to be an Israeli operation, Israel would go, you know, just start bombing the nuclear sites.

It did not do that.

What it did initially is it took out key personnel.

It took out air defenses, which we'll get into, but it took out key personnel in the Iranian military apparatus.

So it took out the Iranian, it killed the Iranian.

the chief of staff of the Iranian army.

It took out the commander of the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps.

It took out

a whole bunch of nuclear scientists.

It took out close to about 20, I think, of the most important players in the command and control structure at the most senior levels of the Iranian military.

Now, why was that so important?

And by the way, when many people were observing that, that was what Israel was doing is that the observation was with they must be going for regime change.

This is not just about taking out the nuclear infrastructure.

This looks like regime change.

It was not regime change.

What it was was

what Israel realized, which I've now learned, is that Iran has an extraordinary ballistic missile offensive capability, right?

We saw that in October of 24.

Iran launched 300 projectiles against Israel, and while most of them did not get through, more got through than Israel could get comfortable with.

And Iran observed that.

And the key to a successful ballistic missile offensive operation that Iran is capable of doing are two elements.

One, having the equipment, and two, having an efficient chain of command that can activate those, you know, that that military official who's at that particular ballistic missile launcher to hit launch.

But in order for that to work seamlessly,

you need the whole system in place.

You need the whole hierarchy.

This one gets a phone call from that one.

This one gets the alert from this commander, from this officer, do this, do that.

So what Israel did was said, well, the first thing we're going to do is we're going to completely disrupt their command and control.

And so they took out the people who make the decisions and give the orders.

And that was, I think, one of the most important important developments of Thursday night.

Then they started taking out from the air a lot of the air defenses.

And then they obviously started to hit the nuclear sites.

But it was first taking out key personnel.

And I think that when I said there were three very important elements.

One was the air operation, which was Thursday night.

Two, which we now know is the Mossad has been operating inside of Iran, inside of Tehran for a long time.

And some of that was just operatives and relationship development.

And so Israel really had a sense for how communications were occurring between different officials and how decisions were being made.

But two, we now understand that Mossad/slash Israeli military intelligence had the capacity to go inside Iran and build sort of mobile factories, if you will, like a mobile base from which to launch drones and what they call these quadcopters.

Because why was this important, Scott?

Because one of the challenges Israel has is refueling.

It cannot deploy all the Air Force assets it needs to deploy to Iran without having to deal with refueling.

And one way to address that deficiency is to just create assets on the ground in Iran that you can activate from the ground in Iran against Iranian assets.

So that Mossad penetration of Iran and specifically Tehran was

another key piece of this.

And the third, obviously, was the deception that was created between the Israeli and U.S.

governments leading up to this operation that led the Iranians to believe that there was a possibility of an Israeli strike, but there was no way it was going to happen anytime soon, or at least not before Sunday.

Because Sunday was supposed to be the sixth round of these talks between the U.S.

and Iran, and there were all these messages coming out of Washington that, you know, Israel may strike, may not, but there's no way they should do anything to undermine the talks.

So the Iranians had

their own conception of the Israeli threat.

And one of them was that Israel would not take action without blessing from the U.S.

And all the messaging coming out of Washington was tension and frustration with Israel because Washington did not want Israel to act before these talks had played out.

And so I think those are the three key components.

The air operation,

obviously, taking out Iranian air defenses, taking out Iranian personnel, key personnel personnel in the decision-making loop, and

what the intelligence community in Israel was able to do on the ground in Iran.

And then the third, the deception coordinated between Washington and Jerusalem.

So a lot there.

And I want to make some comments and have you comment on those comments.

The thing that really struck me is I think it's fairly public knowledge at this point that Iran's air defense systems have been defenestrated, wiped out.

The thing that struck me, or the new piece of information here, is that the ground defenses are now down.

What do I mean by that?

That essentially the Mossad has so deeply penetrated the Iranian leadership structure that everyone is vulnerable, that they can get to anyone.

And your

comment about they went in and took out, eliminated, I don't know what the term is, killed.

Killed, right?

Let's call it killed.

Yeah, killed these key individuals reminds me of Dunkirk, and that is one of the most fortunate things

to take place such that we could extract 400,000 military personnel from the beaches of Dunkirk and continue to fight the war.

And had they been killed or taken, you know, taken prisoner, it might have been, that might have been game over, was that they didn't want to wake up Hitler.

And there was no one to give the order for the panzer tanks to actually move into the beaches of Dunkirk and either take them prisoner or kill them.

That it was the lack of the chain of command.

The chain of command

broke down, if you will.

It's hierarchical.

And if there's no one there to give the order to fire the surface-to-air missiles or to fire ballistic missiles, that that's all the time they need to take them out.

I thought that was really striking.

And would you agree with, were you surprised?

I was shocked.

It appears to me that the Mostad is now on the ground.

penetrated, infiltrated, been absorbed, whatever it is.

They are maybe your neighbor, but they can get to anybody.

And what was also very interesting to me was who they didn't kill.

They didn't go after any of the political leaders.

It seems to me that they're saying, be clear, we know where you live.

We can get to you.

But we're not looking for regime change.

We're looking for you to step back, quite frankly, and dial down some of this rhetoric, your thoughts.

Yeah, I think that's exactly right.

If you go back, it's interesting.

When Israel took out Ismail Hania,

who was one of the two key leaders of Hamas internationally over a year ago,

he was in, about a year ago, he was in Iran.

He was in Tehran for the funeral of the president.

And Israel conducted an operation in a, like the equivalent of like the Blair House, Washington's Blair House, like a VIP residence for visiting dignitaries in the heart of Tehran at night.

when Hania was with the supreme leader a couple hours before.

He was with him face to face.

And message should have been clear like we are everywhere we can we we it for us it's just a matter of you know time of our choosing but it's not a matter of whether or not if we have this capability and i think that message was doubly triply conveyed uh over the last few days which i think this was very specific which was we will take out nuclear assets we will take out military assets we will take out the the brains behind the nuclear weapons program, the top scientists, which they've done, and we will take out the military leadership.

But we are not touching the supreme leader.

We are not touching, as you said, the political leadership, and we're not touching the economic and oil infrastructure.

So now you decide, Iran, and by the way,

now, by the time we're recording this, I mean, Israel's made even more progress.

There is literally, I spoke to someone in the Israeli security system early this morning who said, there's, we have complete freedom of, I mean, we're not, you know, we have total range to fly over and do whatever we

It doesn't mean that there aren't serious, you know, that this could not get bumpy.

It could, but just in terms of their ability to operate freely.

So now the message to Iran is your move.

Now, by the way, this is part of the administration, the U.S.

administration strategy is,

okay, so we're giving you an option to come back to the table and negotiate.

This is sort of like a good cop, bad cop.

So

they are making it clear that their primary goal, Israel's primary goal is making it clear is not regime change unless Iran really escalates.

Now, Iran so far seems to be escalating at least a little bit.

We'll see where that goes.

But I want to make one other point in terms of the psychological impact.

If you are a mid-level or junior level officer in the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps, and they're a talented group from what I speak, when I speak to American military experts on the Iranian military and Israeli and Sunni Arab military experts about the Iranian military capabilities.

The Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps is a sophisticated operation.

If you are a mid-level or junior-level officer and you've been indoctrinated, you've been trained to believe over the last few years that Iran has extraordinary capabilities.

It's developing something on the nuclear front, and it was developing something on the nuclear front that was...

not only was scary to Israel, but was scary to the United States and the West.

And you can see what even President Macron in France has said in supporting what Israel is doing.

I mean,

it was an increasingly alarming situation, what was happening with the nuclear program.

And you've been indoctrinated to believe that, I mean, just understand, in Iran, in downtown Tehran, there's a clock.

There's a countdown to 2040, which is the clock when Israel is going to be destroyed.

So there's a sense that it's just a matter of time before Iran destroys Israel.

Israel's this like weak actor that's just going to be wiped off the face of the earth.

If you're that mid-level or junior level officer in the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps and you just watched what Israel did to Iran over the last three days, not to mention what Israel did to Hezbollah, not to mention what you saw how quickly you saw the regime in another proxy state of Iran's Syria, the Assad regime crumble in 13 days after being in power for 53 years.

If you're that junior level officer and you're watching all this and you've been told all along it's just a matter of time before we take out the Zionist, the evil Zionist entity and we can just wipe him off the map, and you just saw Israel take apart most of Iran's offensive and defensive capabilities.

You've got to be wondering, what have I bought into here?

Like, you know, and it's interesting, Scott, if you listen to the rhetoric of the regime, they are trying to make this about more than just Israel.

This is very interesting.

So they're saying, if anyone else in the region is cooperating with Israel, if anyone else in the region is helping to defend Israel, if we're going to take out your bases, you know, they're making these threats without any context.

Like, there's no signs that, I mean, I think there are different countries that are in the know about it, but it's not clear that there have been, this is an Israeli operation.

Why are they saying that?

Because they can't explain to their own people that Israel could do this.

They've got to believe that it's got to be some grand conspiracy because it completely eclipses the notion that Iran had the upper hand here if Israel was able to do this and do it on its own.

And so I think there's a psychological aspect to what you're describing, which is the mid and junior levels of the Iranian military are sitting here thinking, possibly thinking, do we really want to like keep fighting for this?

What is this?

Because this looks pretty vulnerable right now.

We'll be right back after a quick break.

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The other thing that struck me, and we have a lot of young men who listen to this podcast, and I always like to try and ground some of this in a learning.

And one of my learnings as I get older is that I bring a set of biases to the world that make me feel more comfortable.

And one of my biases is that I believe the Trump administration is incompetent and really bad at what they do.

And so when I saw this morning Secretary Rubio come out and say, we in no way support or don't support or didn't, weren't involved in the attacks on Iran.

And then I see Trump, what feels like a couple hours later, saying, oh, we're supportive of it.

I immediately interpreted it as this is the bad news bears of geopolitics and defense, defense, not even coordinating their messaging.

And they didn't know what was going to happen.

And Israel just kind of said, sorry, boss, we'll do what we want.

And then Trump liked the macho and all of it and decided to try and take some credit from it and stand in the light of that macho.

And something I learned from your podcast, and I have changed my mind and I want to be open to evolving, is that you and

the Israeli journalists on your podcast convinced me there's just no fucking way that the Americans weren't involved here, that the American military, you know, Israel is flying American planes, and without cooperation from the U.S., they wouldn't be able to repair those planes in a matter of weeks.

That it just wasn't, of course, the Americans knew about this.

And that, to the Trump administration's credit, to pull off what I would argue is probably,

you know, the next Netflix dock that's going to be out in 12 months after the Hezbollah Pager docks hit the, you know, hit the hit the streamers.

This was a brilliant, you don't call it a military operation, whatever, first salvo in a war, whatever you want to call it.

This was brilliant.

Years in the making, coordination, stunning.

That

the U.S., to their credit, engaged in a massive head fake that in fact,

and I look back on this, Dan, and I think, Jesus, this was just so obvious.

They tell Americans to get out of there.

And also, and I'll come back to this.

I think Netanyahu, and that it doesn't mean the operation is any less striking.

I think Netanyahu has political reasons to maintain a war footing.

Anyways, comment a little bit about the other observation, and I'll bring this back to what I hope young men learned to do earlier than I did, and that is be a critical thinker and be open to evolving your view when you get new information.

And I got new information from your podcast that, in fact,

this looks to have been quite coordinated.

Yeah.

So, two things.

One,

the only debate, and when I've talked to folks in the administration, the only debate is whether or not the U.S.

supported this Israeli

war or allowed it.

That's the debate.

Meaning, there's a debate, like, did they actively get involved and deeply involved in the coordination?

Or are they basically, Israel said, we got to do this and this is how we got to do it.

And the U.S.

was, Trump was basically persuaded, okay, do it, you know, and we're going to like observe and be helpful, you know, to some degree, but we're not going to be heavily involved.

That's the range of scenario.

It's not like whether or not they were dramatic, you know, dug in, opposed versus intimately involved.

There's a little bit of like great, you know, like wiggle room flexibility within that space.

And I think you're right, Scott, that President Trump, like most leaders around the world,

likes success and want to be associated with success and strength and daring.

And

I've personally heard President Trump, for instance, be critical

of Israel after October 7th,

soon after October 7th, where he thought Israel looked like a

paper tiger, and they did.

And at the same time,

I've heard him marvel at what Israel accomplished with the Pager attack

and completely change his view.

And I think there's a tendency, and I see this a lot in Western capitals, and I see it a lot even among

some very strong supporters of Israel around the world.

There's a tendency to want Israel to be perceived as the David and not the Goliath.

And I understand it, by the way, right?

Because

you're sitting there and you're thinking, give me a break.

It's a country of 10 million people surrounded by enemies that

want to wipe it off the map.

And it's been in a state of war since its founding.

And it's like,

of course Israel's, you know, it's been fighting this since October 7th.

It's seven-front war.

Of course Israel's the David.

And you, you almost, and you want to tell all of Israel's critics, like, who are you kidding here?

But the reality is it's the wrong message.

Because in the world of geopolitics, if your goal is to

find friends that provide strategic value or at least start to cultivate what could be future friends, say Saudi Arabia, if you're Israel,

they really aren't interested in David.

They want to partner with Goliath.

Right.

They want to piggyback onto strength.

If I look at before October 7th, Israel was inching closer and closer to a normalization deal with Saudi Arabia.

If you ask yourself why that was happening, why that was moving so fast, if you ask yourself why the Abraham Accords happened, it was because Israel was...

a technology superpower globally, an economic superpower in the region, and a military and intelligence juggernaut that Saudi wanted to piggyback onto that strength.

And that strength or the perception of the strength was punctured on October 7th.

And I think what you have seen, beginning with the pager attack, if you want to bookend it, to what Israel has just accomplished over the last few days, it's sent a message that Israel is actually a Goliath.

And I think countries around the world, leaders around the world say, hey, we want to be with that.

We could never do that.

That's impressive.

We want that.

And I think the U.S.

government and the president have a similar approach.

They're like, of course, wait a minute.

That country's our ally.

That country's our friend.

We like what they're doing.

That's impressive.

And so, and I will say in a world in which the U.S.

is increasingly,

in ways that make me uncomfortable, to be honest, in a world in which the U.S.

is increasingly pulling back from

world affairs.

And this is a 20-year trend, basically, but obviously we're watching it right now too.

In a world in which the U.S.

is pulling back, Imagine from the president's, from President Trump's perspective and the leadership of the U.S., they say, okay, we're pulling back, but that country, Israel, that one's with us.

And look what they just did.

And in a world in which we're pulling back our resources, it's good to know that they can do what they can do.

And so I think ultimately in the world of geopolitics and diplomacy,

Israel is much better off doing things like it just did.

And I think to your point,

the president is like

softly supporting something versus watching what plays out and then supporting it very publicly and energetically is the difference between a dazzling operation and one that stumbles.

Yeah, there's, I think a lot about brands, and I think geopolitics is 98% brand and 2% actual hard power.

And that is

most people will never come in contact with an American or America, but they've heard that we spend $800 billion on a military and have a very strong, you know, our memory is long and our reach is far.

And that also we're generally, I think until recently, perceived as the good guys, which makes them more likely to want to do business with us and

their best and brightest universities here and more likely to alert the American embassy if they hear about a terrorist cell trying to infiltrate U.S.

interests.

And I think soft power brand, if you will.

And I always think of the Israeli brand was this peanut butter and chocolate of

it's strange.

The world, and you said this is comfortable with a dead Jew.

And that is, I remember my first

exposure to Israel and Judaism was in 72.

We were watching the Olympics and I remember for the first time registering that my parents looked really upset and concerned and they were staring at the TV of this guy in an apartment complex on the balcony with a ski mask on.

and asking what was going on.

And that was, you know, the Munich Olympics and the slaughter of the Israeli athletes.

And then, so it was like, okay, they're a victim.

And that, I think, really benefited Israel to be seen as, is the, as you said, as the David constantly, that anti-Semitism is a light sleeper and obviously the Holocaust.

And then the second part was I remember in, I think I was in the seventh grade, us spending an entire class talking about the

Operation Entebbe and the rescue.

And just how, quite frankly, how badass that was.

And you're a 12-year-old boy.

You think, wow, Israel, right?

And it strikes me that the brand most recently is more the latter than the former.

And then I think that's a good thing.

I think basically Israel has said, look, if you get comfortable with dead Jews, you got to start getting comfortable with fighting Jews.

And I actually think that is a more advantageous position.

that we're going to go on the offense, we are not to be fucked with, and we are very good at what we do.

And our men and women in uniform are not only incredibly brave, they're incredibly well resourced.

And the people on the ground are very good at what they do.

So my sense is this is, I see this, and I'm curious to get your take, I see this as the most important

Israel's actions around cutting off the hands of all of these proxies of Iran, whether it's the Houthis or Hezbollah or Hamas and now Iran, that similar to what Ukraine has done.

fighting back against Russia, that they have defanged what was seen as the superpower in in the Gulf.

And now I would argue that the superpower in the Gulf, hands down, is Israel.

The only thing they have that Saudi Arabia has is they don't have oil.

But it looks as if in an information economy, you'd rather have an entrepreneurial culture.

And you wrote a book on this called Startup Nation.

But is this, could this potentially be a real unlock, if you will, around, I mean, I'm trying to look at the glasses half empty here, that they come to some sort of agreement with Iran, that Saudi Arabia steps up and says, all right, it sucks to be a grown-up.

They're the power in the region.

And this might result in something resembling a sustainable peace.

I think this is what we've just witnessed over the last few days, and really, I think, over the past year, is the biggest transformation in the Middle East and the biggest transformation in terms of Israel's geopolitical position in the Middle East since the Six-Day War, 1967,

which

obviously sent the message to the region and to the world that Israel

is.

Let's just say to bring it back to what you were just saying, it was a dramatic brand enhancement for Israel, the winning the six-day war.

And I think Israel is experiencing

something like there's no present for it.

I asked, for a recent speech I gave, I asked two British historians of military history and geopolitical history, world affairs.

I asked Andrew Roberts, Lord Andrew Roberts from the UK, and I asked Neil Ferguson, who you've, I know you've, you've had on your podcast.

I asked them both separately: is there any precedent for a country

under the kind of threat it was under, which was existential,

from guerrilla commando types like Hamas to 200,000 rockets staring down its country like it had from Hezbollah, not to mention

over 100,000 fighters, to a country right by its border that wants to build a nuclear weapon that say it's openly pointing at

Israel.

Is there any precedent for a country that has

had these kinds of threats arrayed against them?

And in a matter of a year and a half to two years, so dramatically transformed

its situation towards each one of them and to the region.

And they both said you have to go back like a couple hundred years.

I mean, you know, Robert said, like, you know, looked at France and I forget, like,

something like 200 years ago.

I mean, there's not, the bottom line is these are two guys I trust.

And they said there's just no precedent for this.

And so I don't want to say permanent peace because who the hell knows the world is complicated and fluid.

But I think we are on the path to doing two extremely important things.

One, I think more Arab countries today are going to be interested and open to the idea of normalizing relations with Israel than they were, you know, a year and a half ago, a year ago, six months ago.

Okay, so I think that's so that, you know, I think we're, we're on a path towards something big happening.

And this was the necessary ingredient because all of the countries, the Sunni Arab countries in the Middle East are terrified of Iran.

And Israel has just demonstrated that they're the only ones that can, you know, take them apart.

So I think we're on that path.

But there's another aspect here that I think is even bigger than the region.

Iran was very close.

There are debates between intelligence agencies about how close,

but there's no debate about whether or not Iran was getting close to having a nuclear weapons capability.

That is,

the level at which it was enriching uranium, which was getting itself damn close to weapons grade enrichment, which no country needs for a civilian nuclear program.

You only do that for one reason, reason, one reason only.

And then two, as Nadavael said on my podcast, the weapons group, which is the group within Iran that's job it is, is to take the ingredients of a nuclear bomb, like the enriched uranium, and actually create the warhead that, you know, that delivers it.

And the weapons group had gotten extremely active in recent months and was acquiring a lot of things.

So the concern about the speed with which the enrichment was happening and the speed with which the weapons group was moving and seemed to be active scared everyone, especially the Israelis.

The IAEA had expressed concerns.

So

our hope of diplomatic non-proliferation, which was this, I think, a misguided and naive hope when you're dealing with a country like Iran that has made it so clear that having a nuclear weapon was like central to its raison d'être in world affairs and in regional affairs, the idea that through diplomatic maneuvers, you were going to be able to persuade them not to have, not to stop pursuing that, I think was unrealistic.

There are four countries in the world today that pose a real threat to the United States and to the West.

China, Russia, North Korea, and Iran.

All four of those countries, for different reasons, pose a serious threat to the United States and the West.

Three of those countries have a nuclear weapon.

China, Russia, North Korea.

And North Korea as recently as 2006 is when they basically declared that they had a nuclear weapon.

Iran was the only one that didn't.

And the idea that the West was going to be able to stop Iran from getting that nuclear weapon by diplomatic maneuverings, as I said, was not going to happen.

And so by Israel using force to prevent that, it has done a real service to the world and to the West, because had Iran gone nuclear, it would have...

that really would have sparked a nuclear arms race in the Middle East.

And God knows what that would look like.

So

the kingdom didn't want, nobody wanted to have a nuclear weapon.

Also, just as someone who thinks a lot about technology, what has really struck me is the technology, we're all talking about AI constantly.

In my opinion, the more meaningful technology, and maybe AI played a big, you know, AI is more like electricity now.

It seems to be playing a role in everything.

But both in Ukraine and this latest attack, which has happened inside of Russia in terms of taking out a large portion of their strategic bomber fleet, I'm just shocked at what an incredible role, what an innovation drones are playing.

The asymmetric warfare, and it just seems to play so well to Israel's strengths of being innovative, agile, entrepreneurial, really good with technology.

But my understanding is they snuck in kind of portable launch vehicles to launch these swarms of drones such that you didn't necessarily need to count on a $200 million F-15 with

the refueling pressure and all that.

And those bombs are expensive.

Those missiles can cost a couple million bucks or at least a couple hundred thousand.

And then you take a $400 drone and you attach some C4 to it.

And I know, let's send out 1,000 of them on one target and see if one gets through.

Just strikes me that the technology

of the year in terms of

reshaping the geopolitical narrative is, in fact, asymmetric warfare through

drones.

But what I want to talk to you or get your impression of next is

I'm hopeful that,

and of course, as you know, Dan, I turn everything back to me.

I grew up in Los Angeles and went to UCLA, and it's cliche to say it, but some of my best friends were Iranian.

And David Asteel,

my close friend of the fraternity, you know, I think LA has the greatest concentration of Iranians outside of Tehran.

And it always struck me,

these are kids who like, almost all of them, their parents came over the revolution, super into education, super entrepreneurial, love money.

And I say that in a good way, very capitalist, love education.

Ambitious.

Ambitious.

And I went on to have one of my mentors, this younger man, was Hamid Mogadam, who's the CEO of ProLogis.

I have great friends, B.Tech, my friend Alex DeSi.

I just love Iranians.

And I always thought Iranians are more American than Americans.

And to me, it always struck me that the biggest, one of the biggest unlocks and the most natural fits in terms of an alliance waiting to happen would be an alliance between America and Iran.

That if that culture still resides there, and I think it does, and it's such an amazing society, that it will be like hand in glove should at some point we kiss and make up.

And my understanding is that the

IRGC has less than 30% support of the population.

Is there an opportunity here?

I mean, is the big opportunity and how realistic is it, that at some point America and Iran could be great allies?

So to answer your question, yes,

obviously the regime would have to, the Islamic regime would have to fall, but that was certainly the case.

Many of those Iranians you grew up with, Scott, are people who came from an Iran and were raised in Iran, or at least their parents were, that did have close relations with the United States and had close relations, by the way, with Israel.

Israel,

before 1970, before the late 70s, had a very close relationship with Iran and incredible cooperation.

I mean, keep in mind,

it's a young population.

It is a very highly educated population.

It's a large population.

So

in a world in which this regime is gone, I mean,

it's not just an aggressive regime in terms of its use of violence.

It really is a theocratic messianic regime.

So anyone that has the kind of motivational, ambitious Jews that you're describing,

assuming they're secular or quasi-secular, do not want to live under

that kind of regime.

And so they either scatter, which are like the families of the ones you dealt with and got out,

or they just hunker down and don't really contribute to society and mind their own business and

pray that this regime will pass.

And if this regime passes, and like I said, we're watching it happen.

We just watched it happen in Syria.

Okay.

The Assad regime was in power, as I said, for 53 years.

There was a

13 to 14 year civil war being fought.

Hundreds of thousands of Syrians were killed.

And then in 13 days, I mean, that's the thing

people don't appreciate,

you know, how the CIA, you know, there's always these questions.

The CIA missed this revolution, they missed that revolution, they missed.

They didn't anticipate the fall of the Berlin Wall.

Because these things are very hard.

You never know what is actually going to

tip it where people within the regime say enough, and we're gonna start taking on the regime.

I think you have that potential now for the reasons I was saying earlier,

where Iranians, even in this system, in the security system, are saying, What are we fighting for?

What are we doing?

This is Israel just humiliated this regime.

And if the regime falls,

I think the potential for what you're describing is extraordinary.

And I just want to also pick up on something else you said a moment ago.

I think you're seeing the future of warfare.

There are two laboratories in the world today for the future of warfare.

It's Ukraine, as you said, and it's Israel.

And

there's an organization I'm involved with in Israel that is called Startup Nation Central, which was founded sort of after my book came out.

And they keep track of every Israeli startup in every sector.

And about a year, a year and a half ago, there were something like 160, I looked, 160 startups

in the defense tech space in Israel.

And that was considered a lot, country of 10 million people.

I recently cited that number on this, on this other Israeli economic podcast I'm involved with called What's Your Number?

I mentioned the 160, and the head of Startup Nation Central called me and said, Hey, you're wrong.

It's not 160.

I said, What are you talking about?

He says, It's now 330.

And I said, But wait, I just got the 160 number a few months ago.

He says, Yeah, guess what?

All these Israeli engineers and entrepreneurs who've been called up to fight in this war since October 7th are now coming back from their reserve duty.

And they're like, I don't want to go like work on ad tech algorithms at Google, which is where I was working before the war.

I want to go build a defense tech company of the future.

So all these guys and gals are now starting defense tech companies.

And so you're seeing this boom, pardon the pun,

of

the defense tech sick there in Israel.

And so

I think

watching Israel, watching Ukraine, watching the exact things that you're pointing to in terms of the technology, the innovation, and the know-how.

I think this sector is going to flourish in Israel and other spots over the next few years.

And I think it's going to actually,

I think a lot of people are going to economically benefit from the flourishing of this sector.

And I think society is going to benefit because it's going to create technologies that enable countries like ours and others to fight in a very targeted and I dare I say humanitarian way, minimizing civilian casualties with a very targeted military pinprick, like surgical military operations.

That's one of the things these capabilities

give militaries the capacity to do.

We'll be right back.

Hey, this is Peter Kafka.

I'm the host of Channels, a show about the biggest ideas in tech and media and how those things collide.

And today we're talking about AI, which is promising and maybe terrifying.

And if you happen to be in a very select group of engineers that Mark Zuckerberg wants to hire, it's incredibly lucrative, which is why I had the New York Times Mike Isaac explain what's going on with the great AI pay race.

I'm talking to executives across the industry who are pissed off at Mark Zuckerberg because he has dumped the entire market for this stuff, right?

And like this is something that's painful for OpenAI, I think, because they can't shell out a quarter of a billion dollars for one dude.

That's this week on channels, wherever you listen to your favorite shows.

We're back with more from Dan Cenor.

What struck me, and I want to go broader here, and then I'm going to let you go and get back to your family and your Saturday.

is most of my friends, I grew up, I somehow ended up in a Jewish fraternity at UCLA's UBT.

Most of of my close friends from college, still really close, Jews.

And I was the atheist Jew.

Never have felt much affinity for Israel.

I'm a rabid atheist.

And then October 7th happened and I become kind of, I call myself a raging Zionist, although I'm still an atheist.

And I've always been pretty, you know, you're, you're, I would describe you as a Romney Republican.

I don't know if you like that title.

I'm sort of a Clinton Republican or I don't know.

I'm moderate.

I'm sorry, moderate Democrat.

And most of my friends voted for Trump because they're sort of, they came, it kind of became after October 7th, one-issue voters, and their issue is Israel.

And they saw the Trump administration as being more, much more resolute.

Whereas Biden, who I believe didn't get the credit he deserved, deploying an aircraft carrier, strike force, you know, didn't want to take credit and kept being kind of milling, a lot of yeah, buts, a lot of,

I thought,

I thought they could not have handled that worse.

On the ground, they were actually very supportive, in my view, but yet kept saying all this whataboutism.

And I just thought they couldn't have handled it any worse and turned off a lot of my friends who wanted the more resolute Trump who said we full-throated support of Israel.

And by the way, Biden in the early days did talk like that in the early days after October 7th.

He flew to Israel.

He deployed two carrier strike forces for 24 hours.

Right, right.

To tell everyone to tell around to sit the fuck down, right?

Anyways, so

I was, and I'm curious to get your reaction.

I was really disappointed and quite frankly, rubbing it a little bit in my friend's face when Trump decided to go to the Middle East, to the Gulf, and of the five largest economies, skip the two that were democracies or near-democracies, specifically Israel or Turkey, because in my view,

they can't nor will they give him a building or a golf course and accepts a $400 million plane from what I see as the political mouthpiece and the financial sponsors of Hamas.

And my view to my friends was, I just don't think this guy gives a fuck about Jews or Israel.

And I was really disappointed to see the Trump administration take that plane and cozy up to Qatar because nothing's for free.

And I said, this is telling about

where the current administration's heart really lies.

as it relates to defense of the Jewish people.

I want to get your thoughts and your reaction to that.

So I'd I'd say a couple of things.

One, look, obviously, I don't know what's in Donald Trump's head at any moment or heart in terms of, you know,

what is his real personal connection to the Jewish people?

I just don't.

I get asked this question all the time.

I know he has Jewish grandchildren.

I know he,

but I don't really know.

I think I try to take a step back when I get questions like this and say, what do we know about the Republican base?

about the conservative base in American politics?

And it is deeply, deeply, deeply connected to Israel and feels a very strong connection to Jews.

Now, I don't want to get into the, you know, we could spend a whole episode talking about why and the history of that, but it is a reality.

And I think President Trump is very aware of that and very dialed into that.

And certainly members of Congress, Republican members of Congress are.

So I'll give you an example.

About a month ago, there was a letter organized by Senators Cotton and Graham, Lindsey Graham, to President Trump telling Trump, no way can you tolerate enrichment of uranium in Iran in the context of any Iran deal.

No way.

And this is at a time when Steve Woodcoff and the administration appeared to be heading in a direction where they were going to be for some

allowing some kind of enrichment.

And that was a red line for Israel.

And here are a couple of Republican hawks, traditional kind of Republican internationalist hawks, telling Trump no way.

That didn't surprise me that Graham and Cotton wrote that letter.

What surprised me was that 52 of the 53 Republican senators in the Senate Republican conference signed the letter.

The only one that didn't was Rand Paul, and that's for other reasons.

So 52 senators.

Now, when's the last time you saw 52 Republican senators, and an equally proportionately high number among House members sent their own letter?

When's the last time you saw Republican members en masse sign a letter to the President of the United States, pushing him publicly against what appeared to be a policy track he was on?

I can't think of one.

We saw some of it recently with the, you know, some of the tax issues in the, in the, in the big, beautiful bill.

But other than that, we, we've not, we've not seen it.

And that tells me that these members of Congress and these senators are very aware of where their voters are, where their constituents are on this issue.

And I think the president, I think Trump is dialed into that.

So that's one thing.

The second thing I would say is

I was a little unnerved by some of the visuals you're describing from the president's trip to the Gulf.

Now, I, in a sense, I understood and I talked to some officials in the administration why he did not go to Israel on that trip.

One,

there's no leader of the president, no single leader the president has spent more time with since he was sworn in than Netanyahu, right?

Netanyahu's been to the U.S.

several times to meet with the president.

I mean, they're just in constant, you know, his top aides are constantly coming in.

They meet with the president directly.

As we now know, literally now know over the last few days, there's been a lot going on.

So, so

there wasn't a behind behind-the-scenes operational relationship issue.

Now, the question is, was there a symbolism issue?

Was there a symbolism, as you said, of him showing up in Doha and Dubai or Abu Dhabi and Riyadh and not Israel?

And what they were wrestling with at the time, and I don't want to get into the merits of it, but I will just, what they were wrestling with at the time is that Gaza was still a mess.

It was not clear if Idan Alexander, the last American hostage being held in Gaza, was going to get out.

And the idea of the president showing up in Israel with no real end game in Gaza, with an American citizen still being held in Gaza, it's like it just, it would make the president look weak.

Maybe, maybe not.

We can debate that.

But that was their argument.

What worried me, though, more was what you're describing, which is, is this the future of American diplomacy?

Is this checkbook diplomacy where you start showing up to these countries and it's like this country says, well, we're going to put a trillion dollars.

We're going to put $5 trillion into the American.

I mean, it, and, and, and in a world in which that happens, Israel can't compete.

And I think what you saw over the last few days, Israel has its own way of competing.

Because what Israel is demonstrating is, yeah, we're not going to be the country that personally, you know, has, you know, sheikhs and, and, and emirs who can write checks for billions and trillions of dollars into the American economy, but we are the most capable ally in the world.

And you, the United States, are going to get more out of this relationship than you give.

And I think Israel could talk about it conceptually.

I think what you saw over the last few ways is Israel's own version of, you know,

it's an alternative model to checkbook diplomacy.

Yeah.

And

I've said for a while, I think the best ROI, I think of things in terms of through the lens of shareholder value is investments in our university, around RD, around healthcare and weapons, quite frankly.

I think USAID showed us a tremendous return in terms of soft power.

But maybe even above both those things is our recent investments and support in Ukraine and Israel.

And I always like to remind people that Israel took out more terrorists from our most wanted list in six weeks than we had taken out in 20 years.

It just feels like the ROI on military or financial support of Israel has been exponential.

I would argue for the United States and the West.

Dan,

I lied.

I said that would be my last question.

This will be my last question.

You're closer to this than anyone I know.

And one of the things I respect about you is

I think I do know your politics because I've gotten to know you a little bit better, but you're very measured such that you don't immediately prompt people's screens to not listen to you.

I think you're more,

you have figured out something, despite the fact you're much younger than me, that I still struggle with, and that is you understand the difference between right and being effective, and you want to be effective.

Based on everything you see, all the people you talk to, your assessment of the situation, What

are you comfortable speculating about, both internally in Israel with respect to Netanyahu's future,

the

power shift in the region?

What, if any, moons do you see lining up across the geopolitical relationship, relationships in the Gulf, in the Middle East, in Israel, the U.S.?

What do you see forming?

Recognizing no one has a crystal ball, but if you had to guess what the world as it relates to Israel looks like in the next 12, 24 months,

what would you postulate?

I think that

Israel is going to have to go to elections.

Netanyahu is going to have to go to elections by no later than October 26th,

October of 2026.

But

he can choose when he does that between now and then.

But according to Israeli law, he can call an election no later than October of 2026.

And I think after events of the last few days,

I would think he would be calling elections sooner rather than later.

I mean, I don't mean immediately, but I mean, it's not, I don't think he's going to wind the clock down to, you know, summer of, you know, spring of 2026 before he calls an election.

And

I

think whether or not, look, what Israel did over the last few days,

politics in Israel is extremely divisive and extremely polarized right right now.

Like, it makes our politics seem like, you know, like

copacetic, everything's fine.

I mean, it's really, things are really, I don't, I don't want to, I don't want to

understate how tense things are domestically and politically inside Israel.

And, and, and, you know, it's a lot about the tension between the ultra-Orthodox religious Jews and the, and the non-Orthodox, the non-Haredim, as they're called, who, the non-ultra-Orthodox Jews who are, you know, because the ultra-Orthodox aren't serving in the army, it's, it's, you know, the wear and tear on the military, the sense of the frustration that there's no, what is the real end plan in Gaza?

Like, where is this going?

So there's a lot of tension inside Israel.

And I would say, Scott, on this issue of confronting an Iran,

there's no disagreement.

There's total consensus.

And I mean, I speak to political leaders on my podcast, elsewhere who are on the hard, hard left in Israel, who loathe Netanyahu for a whole range of reasons and will stand totally shoulder to shoulder with him on this issue.

So I think Israel, Israeli society, even though it's going to be bumpy, I think over the next few days, I think, you know, we know of at least two Israelis who've been killed,

you know, in Iran's response, I think, you know, and dozens more who've been injured.

I think we're going to see more of that over the next few days, unfortunately.

So I'm not saying it's all, you know, it's all smooth sailing, but

even with that, Israeli leadership completely stands with Netanyahu and actually believes he,

I don't want to say he's singularly talented to have pulled all this off, but

his talents were put to work in a way that pulled all this off.

And so, does that mean he gets re-elected?

I don't know.

But I think no matter who gets re-elected or who gets elected as the next prime minister of Israel, I think the environment we're in right now,

which is for the first time a country that was on its way to a nuclear weapon that posed a threat to Israel, the Arab countries in the Middle East, Europe, and the United States,

that their nuclear program is basically being thwarted by, we've talked about extraordinary military force, extraordinary intelligence.

I think that condition creates the perfect environment for whoever is the leader in Israel,

whether it's Netanyahu or Yair Lapid or Benny Gantz or Naftali Bennett or maybe someone who's not even on our radar, to capitalize on this moment.

and start to do things like we've been talking about here, which is start to accelerate normalization with Saudi Arabia and maybe some other countries too that are not on anyone's radar.

So I think we will look back at this period, Scott, and say this was, this right now was the beginning of what will have been obvious to us a couple of years from now of

just the real normalization of relations in the region.

It won't be,

like I said, it won't all be kind of seamless, but

we're going to see a level of functionality between countries in the Middle East that were probably unimaginable just a few years ago.

Dan Senor is a leading expert on Israel and the Middle East.

He's the co-author of The Genius of Israel and Startup Nation.

He's also the host of the Call Me Back podcast.

Dan, this morning I got up and I'm like, I need to understand what's going on here.

And I went to CNN, very measured, like I, which is too fucking measured for me.

It's like all this self-hate.

And then I go to Fox and they're like, go, Israel, with like literally the nuance of an elephant on, you know, on on adderall or on hopped up on something and i thought where can i go and i immediately pulled up your podcast called me back and you had this this 60 minute tour de force of what is going on here you are i i just love that you're i think you're doing a real service to people who want to call balls and strikes around all things israel also i should point out that I met Dan.

My sister betrayed my trust.

I took her to DC as a big brother, thinking I was doing a nice thing when she was in college.

And she betrayed me and went to work as an intern for some far-right fucking crazy congressperson, much to my horror.

And I'm like, that's not why I took you to D.C.

And I show up and she's living with eight people, including this nice young kid named Dan Senor.

And we connected like 25 years later.

And I'm really, I really enjoy our, our kind of rekindled friendship here.

Anyways.

Can I rock your world?

Given the story you just told,

I don't want to say which son and

I don't want to say for whom, but one of my sons this summer is going to intern in Washington.

And I'm like, wow.

You know, you write a lot about it.

Is it AOC?

I hope it's AOC.

If there's karma in the world, it's AOC.

Or Ilan Omar.

I would love.

I'm not commenting on for whom, but I will just.

Have him call me.

Have him call me.

I'm going to freak you and camera out.

I'm absolutely going to turn this kid.

i'm gonna turn him back to the to the to the light i see light in him anyways my brother thank you for the time i really appreciate it and have a great rest of the weekend take care

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