In this episode, Richard Pater speaks with Behnam Ben Taleblu about the impact of Israel’s and the US’s recent strike on Iran’s nuclear and missile capabilities. In this conversation – recorded during a media briefing hosted by BICOM – Ben Taleblu assesses the scale of the damage to Iran’s nuclear infrastructure and explains why the strike may have lasting psychological and operational effects on the Iranian regime’s strategic planning.
Behnam Ben Taleblu is senior director of the Iran Program at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies (FDD), where he oversees the organisation’s work on Iranian political and security affairs. He specialises in nuclear non-proliferation, ballistic missiles, the IRGC and its proxies, and internal Iranian dynamics. He has testified before the US Congress, the Canadian Parliament, and the UK House of Commons.
Transcript
(This transcript has been automatically generated by AI — please excuse any potential errors.)
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Richard Pater: Hello, welcome to the BICOM Briefing. And Podcast I’m Richard Pater, the director of BICOM today is Thursday, the 26th of June. I’m delighted to welcome back Behman Ben Taleblu. Thank you very much indeed for joining me.
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Behman Ben Taleblu: Great to be with you again. Thanks, Richard.
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Richard Pater: So to remind our audience. Becham is a senior director of the Iran programme at the prestigious DC. Think Tank the foundation for defense of democracies. He’s both a native Persian language speaker and has years of experience
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Richard Pater: following Iranian security and political issues. So I think Bethlehem is ideally placed to comment on a range of issues following the 12 Day war, both on the nuclear issues, ballistic missiles and drones, the role of the Irgc as well as Iran’s foreign and security politics, and maybe if we have time, some of the domestic politics as well.
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Richard Pater: But if we can start kind of with the with the Bda. The battle damage assessment. I’d love to take your view of what you think. The damage that Israel and the Us. Were able to inflict on the Iranian military capacity and as well as the ballistic missiles program, as well.
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Behman Ben Taleblu: Absolutely, and it’s great to be with you. Greetings all, as you know, here in Washington. There’s an evolving debate about the Bda. About the battle damage, assessment. Never has some satellite imagery and signals intelligence put together caused so much rancor.
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Behman Ben Taleblu: It turns out you can literally now pick your favorite intelligence Agency and pick a drastically different battle damage, assessment, be it American or something from the interagency process. Just so, you know. Initially
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Behman Ben Taleblu: there was comments by President Trump, and later on comments by Secretary of Defense Exeth and Chairman of Joint Chiefs of Staff.
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Behman Ben Taleblu: The 1st 2 comments were somewhat more political, with less technically descriptive commentary. There was some slightly more technically descriptive commentary from the chairman of the Joint Chiefs, but there was a few days after that
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Behman Ben Taleblu: a leaked story initially to Cnn that made its way around, basically drawing on a low confidence assessment from the Defense Intelligence Agency that had about 4 individuals who leaked the findings that actually the program, especially here, the nuclear program had been set back only a few months, and then, after a few months, the regime could probably find a way to reconstitute.
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Behman Ben Taleblu: It turns out that much of that assessment was based on signals, intelligence, and the reason I’m stressing this is because this is not a seminar on various forms of intelligence, because we all know in Washington ruminant or rumor-based intelligence is the most prevalent form.
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Behman Ben Taleblu: but because there is a high likelihood that if you’re intercepting communications in an authoritarian country that has a history of couproofing which there’s a good amount of academic literature on how Middle Eastern dictatorships, and particularly Middle Eastern militaries, have been subject to couproofing.
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Behman Ben Taleblu: You’ll know that the higher piece of information gets up the food chain, the less likely that piece of information may have to do with reality, and that correlates with the poor military performance of
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Behman Ben Taleblu: that entity. And the reason I’m stressing that is because the Israelis have had a drastically different battle damage assessment one that says basically about 2 years minimum. The nuclear program has been set back based on both. The Israeli strikes across the whole supply chain for Iranian fissile material, the whole architecture of atomic infrastructure, plus, most importantly what the Us. Struck at the Fordo, which is an underground fuel enrichment plant
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Behman Ben Taleblu: about 300 feet underground. And the reason this signal Intelligence interception that is informing this low confidence, partial American assessment matters is because in a world where you may have Iranian military officials trying to filter up information
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Behman Ben Taleblu: to their bosses to explain the world of the military defeats and the military losses that they have been have been subject to, they may actually be trying to filter up false information or unnecessarily overconfident information about. Oh, no, we can ride this out, or oh, no! This program has not been set back anywhere as much as
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Behman Ben Taleblu: the press or others are saying, and in a world where the Us. May have intercepted one of those phone calls or one of those communications, a piece of disinformation that was designed to trick a higher up Iranian military official, actually in reverse, ended up flowing backwards, and may have, in my view, impacting a Western intelligence military assessment. I think.
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Behman Ben Taleblu: even just looking at the physics of it allegedly. If you believe that the massive ordnance penetrators, the 30,000 pound Bunker Buster Bombs, the Gpu 57 if they were. If those 6 holes, those 6 openings, if you believe that they were dropped at the weakest part of the mountain, if you believe that
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Behman Ben Taleblu: you know, in terms of the physics of the situation that creates a crumbling effect. And even if you believe that not every centrifuge in Fordeaux, and not every, you know, gram of uranium
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Behman Ben Taleblu: basically has been destroyed. There is a high, high, high likelihood, I think, that a lot of it is entombed or ensconced into the collapsed rubble, basically using the weight and the distance of the ford. O fuel enrichment plant from the surface of the earth itself to bring it down on itself, and then, given that, following the American strike, the Israelis had struck the area with the 2 roads leading
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Behman Ben Taleblu: this way into the facility you can. Actually, they call this in international relations shaping, you can shape the risk, tolerance, and the behavior of the adversary to a not go towards the facility, and try to take out something that is entombed, or try to prevent them from actually going down the 2 sets of roads that actually lead to this facility.
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Behman Ben Taleblu: So at least, when it comes to Fordo, I think there’s some reason to be much more skeptical of the earlier leaked assessment, and, like all things in life. It’s probably neither 3 months. It’s probably neither 2 years. It’s probably at a minimum somewhere in the middle. But with the rest
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Behman Ben Taleblu: of the military action taken against Iran’s nuclear program. Given the fact that 5 Us. Presidents in the Post Cold War period had been saying, you know a nuclear Iran is unacceptable, but only one of them was willing to pull the trigger. You may have qualitative reasons for a greater period of delay in the Iranian program than quantitative. You know much of the nuclear program took at least 20 years
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Behman Ben Taleblu: to build on and obfuscate a lot of the stuff that was done on the digging side of the other sites like Natanz and Isfahan, for example. They’re even a little bit older than 20 years, and on that case that was built at a drastically different time, when Iranian society was drastically more permissible, when the economy was drastically more different, when even some Western countries had less means
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Behman Ben Taleblu: to penetrate from an intelligence perspective and monitor this program. So I don’t think it’s a 1 to one that the Iranian nuclear program can snap back just based on the end of a 2 year technical assessment. Even
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Behman Ben Taleblu: so.
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Behman Ben Taleblu: I do think the program has been set back. I think there has been a significant blow dealt psychologically to the folks who run this program. And then, when you look at the rest of the targeting, which is the conversion, facility, field fabrication.
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Behman Ben Taleblu: all the enrichment plans, centrifuge assembly. If you believe that the known elements of Iran’s nuclear program are the beating hearts of it. And if you believe, as I do that Fordo? Was the crown jewel of it that just leaves only one or 2 questions, you know about a deeper facility, such as Pickaxe Mountain. Did the Us. Or Israel strike that?
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Behman Ben Taleblu: And then one or 2 questions about the tunneling near Natanz and near asphan, because there is some unconfirmed open source material about the tunneling, there being used to store enriched uranium, and given that there was one time
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Behman Ben Taleblu: that the Us. Used these tomahawk cruise missiles at that facility as well. It raises questions as to how much of the tunneling infrastructure around
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Behman Ben Taleblu: these 2 other nuclear sites were struck, but put together long story short, I do believe the nuclear program has been set back considerably and more importantly, I think the behavior, the behavior, meaning the willingness and risk tolerance to pull the trigger will have played a major shaping role in Iran’s nuclear thinking in the future.
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Behman Ben Taleblu: Now, when it comes to military very quickly, you saw the simultaneous action taken against the commanding heights of the Islamic Republic’s military apparatus in particular. There’s 2 individuals I want to stress the commander of the Armed Forces, General staff, and the commander of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps. Aerospace force.
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Behman Ben Taleblu: Again, in these kind of more authoritarian military dictatorships you tend not to have the best generals at the commanding military or political heights. But in this case these 2 individuals, from everything you hear internally, and everything you know about their biographies, have been fairly competent men, and you know competence married with zeal, can be a very dangerous combination.
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Behman Ben Taleblu: For example, Haji Sadeh was literally the man with his finger on the trigger of the largest ballistic missile arsenal in the Middle East. He had that position since 2,009, and he was the one that was tasked with the precision project, turning Iran’s
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Behman Ben Taleblu: less battlefield relevant systems and much more battlefield relevant systems, helping with just conventional deterrent capabilities with missiles not just nuclear and it was under his tenure that Iran, starting in 2017, began to more overtly fire ballistic missiles from Iranian territory at foreign targets.
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Behman Ben Taleblu: He played a role in operation. True promise one and 2, which were the historic Iranian direct missile barrages against Israel as well as against the Americans. In January 2020, when the Iranians fired on us bases in Iraq.
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Behman Ben Taleblu: So while traditionally, you can have a game of musical chairs, take over the commanding heights, and if you don’t necessarily believe in the competence of one individual. It doesn’t matter if someone else comes in to replace him who doesn’t have a personal rapport with Khamenei, or if they aren’t, from the same class of veterans of the Iran Iraq War. But these 2 really did have the regime off balance, and given that they were all taken out together
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Behman Ben Taleblu: or taken out essentially simultaneously. That also deals a major psychological blow to the regime. I would just stress a parallel here that much like we didn’t know or didn’t see, the tactical impact of the killing of Soleimani in 2020 until we got to the post October 7th Middle East, where the Iranian proxy strategy was
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Behman Ben Taleblu: still off balance, and the multiple fronts that Israel faced were not as well connected and layered and didn’t have a clear kind of firing authority and chain of command back to their patron in the Islamic Republic. We may not yet know if the Islamic Republic survives, and what’s left of its missile program again serves as the seedling for further expansion. We may not yet know the
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Behman Ben Taleblu: how major or how significant the loss of someone like Haji Zadeh would be for this regime up until we get to another crisis that may involve ballistic missiles as well. And let me now end with missiles itself, and I know that was
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Behman Ben Taleblu: 3 separate sets of very long answers. Even before this conflict began the Islamic Republic was home to the largest ballistic missile arsenal in the Middle East. Back of the envelope, assessment based on 2, 1 in 2021, and one in 2023 assessments from
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Behman Ben Taleblu: essentially former American military officials that the regime had at least 3,000. I think 3,000 was a baseline. Then you could scale up a little bit from there, because I’m sure, both in 2021, and 2023, there was production going on as well, that led to almost like a baseline assessment of 2,000 to 2,500
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Behman Ben Taleblu: medium range, ballistic missiles, or ballistic missiles that could reach Israel from Iranian territory being a part of this arsenal, and then you could begin to do the math. How many Iran fired in 2024. How many Iran fired in 2025, particularly based on Israeli sources in 2025, given the direct exchange as well as what has been struck, and you see, really a military strategy by Israel 1st to
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Behman Ben Taleblu: target the ring of bases in Western Iran that had still medium range, but not necessarily as long range in the medium range category and more precision strike systems more solid propellant systems really preventing them from being able to use the architecture of bases in the country’s West
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Behman Ben Taleblu: and then moving the Iranian firing, scheduling more central and east, inside the country, basically pushing Iran back in its own territory. You begin to have firing from there as well, but at the same time you have
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Behman Ben Taleblu: military strikes on bases and airfields even further east of the country, allegedly 2,300 kilometers away from Israeli territory, going after a military site that houses Iran’s heaviest, ever or heaviest, declared
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Behman Ben Taleblu: Warhead, which is a two-ton warhead on a copy of a North Korean missile that the Iranians have dubbed the Khoramshar. That was late in the conflict, and was at a strike at a military facility in Yazd.
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Behman Ben Taleblu: but given that the regime was forced further inward. That meant the use of the higher, tier, longer range, but still within the medium range, ballistic missile, category, liquid propellant systems that were less accurate, but really became part of a larger counter value strategy. We saw from the regime targeting basically, major population centers. Haifa greater Tel Aviv. Later on, Beershiba
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Behman Ben Taleblu: designed to really erode the will of the Israeli population to stay in the fight, and also, I think, born of a cognizance, especially as you see later in the tail end of the conflict, when there are more missiles penetrating, even though a smaller number are being fired because the Israelis, significantly, either through left of launch operations, which is everything you do, including firing on the projectile and the transporter electro launcher
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Behman Ben Taleblu: before they actually fire at you, as well as intercepting everything that they do fire at you before all of that, I think the Iranians may have understood that there has been a layering effect to Israeli air and missile defense, and given that
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Behman Ben Taleblu: in the end this is a limited game or a numbers game for the number of Iranian missiles and the number of Israeli interceptors, and given that Israeli interceptors, like in any battlefield situation, have to protect battlefield relevant targets and military targets, and quote unquote more high value and critical infrastructure targets. The regime may have intentionally been going towards population centers to fake out or to make the Israelis
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Behman Ben Taleblu: have to conserve and not be able to fire, or be more willing to let a missile penetrate through for fear of having not enough interceptors. If the regime switches and goes from the counter valley. We need to go after some of those much more sensitive military sites. For example, in October there was at least 30, I think, 33 ballistic missiles all directed, and landing at Nebatim Air Base.
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Behman Ben Taleblu: The regime didn’t necessarily concentrate the firepower this way. I think it’s born of both not trying to provoke the Israelis even further, but also at the same time trying to land blows through their more layered air and missile defense. Architecture
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Behman Ben Taleblu: that led to especially the boom and bust cycle of hits.
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Behman Ben Taleblu: even as we saw in the tail end of the conflict. Now, the final thing about
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Behman Ben Taleblu: these really targeting is the the launchers itself. I think
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Behman Ben Taleblu: there’s public open source information that the Israelis are saying a little between 40 and 50%, I think perhaps slightly more.
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Behman Ben Taleblu: but just giving the safest back of the envelope assessment you can have, you know, a million missiles, but if you don’t have a single launcher, then you are forever stuck with a capability that you cannot use, and that if you display, you may end up losing altogether. And so the strategy of the Israelis of going after the archer is going after the launcher here rather than trying to merely just kind of play defense and intercept the missiles.
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Behman Ben Taleblu: And you saw, basically, with the exception of a few underground instances where a missile was fired largely, these things are believed to have been fired from above ground trucks. These transporter rector launchers, sometimes larger than a school bus that had these missiles on it. And precision strikes against those capabilities
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Behman Ben Taleblu: basically led to a decline in the firepower rate. So when you put all of this together, these are not capabilities that the Islamic Republic can easily reconstitute can easily bounce back from.
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Behman Ben Taleblu: But nonetheless, on the military side. The Islamic Republic, if you have to describe it as like a wounded animal, like a wounded lion, or, if you may remember, from several years back a comment from a former Iranian Intelligence Minister is like a cornered cat. Here the regime has significantly lost capability.
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Behman Ben Taleblu: But, as you may remember, back in the 1991 Saddam era conflict, the Persian Gulf War. It is totally possible to still have a major threat, even if you have a major military victory against that threat, and my fear here moving forward is that the regime may not have enough capability tomorrow to pick up the conflict given. The lack of the proxies given the decline in the firepower given the status blow.
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Behman Ben Taleblu: but it has more than enough repressive apparatus to take out and try to project strength at home by cracking skulls, whereas it could not do this immediately tomorrow abroad. And that’s what you’ve seen, with at least 3 to 5 executions, at least 700 plus arrests all within the period of these 1213 days. So when you put it all together, they’re down. But they’re not anywhere at all out.
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Richard Pater: Beckham. Thank you very much indeed for that, just for those that joined us late to confirm. This is an on-record briefing which we’re recording for the vicom. Podcast. But if any of you want to ask questions and I encourage you to do so, please raise your hand, either physical or virtual, and when we release the recording we’ll edit out to keep your identity anonymous. But for this call, Peel.
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Richard Pater: please feel free to ask. I’ve got some follow up questions myself, which I’ll go through. But if anyone wants to come in, then please please do raise a hand, and I’ll come to you. So if I can start, just come back to you on the issue of the highly enriched uranium stockpiles. Just kind of your assessment of the speculation of whether they were buried underneath the sites targeted, or whether they were able to be moved out, and kind of
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Richard Pater: what? What remains of of us, particularly the, as I said, the highly litch beyond 60%.
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Behman Ben Taleblu: This is a major problem, because you have stories that confirm diversion one day before the strike at Fordeaux, and you have stories that confirm an addition or doubling down, or actually movement of some uranium into Fordow as well, because they had believed it was so impenetrable.
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Behman Ben Taleblu: That’s
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Behman Ben Taleblu: not going to lie. That is a major, both intelligence and a policy challenge for the United States and for Israel at this moment, having 2 conflicting sources of information that necessarily mean that there could be loose fissile material out there.
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Behman Ben Taleblu: And I want to stress why, I think some, not all. Some material is out there, and the reason is not because the strike was ineffective, and people came in and figured it out.
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Behman Ben Taleblu: but because in any war game I’ve been in where you are trying to role play what the Iranian intentions are whenever the backdrop for a conflict is the desire to prevent a nuclear armed Islamic Republic of Iran, and given that for better or worse. We’ve been talking about this issue for about 2 decades, and the military option has quote unquote, been on the table in a very public way for Israel and America. And there’s been a pretty rancorous debate
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Behman Ben Taleblu: politically as well as from a policy perspective about preemption against Iran’s nuclear program. Then, the moment the bombs start falling the moment targets start getting hit, it would behoove the Iranians to try to find a way to squirrel things around and not. And I want to stress, not for the immediate purposes of weaponization, but for the immediate
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Behman Ben Taleblu: purposes of regime survival in a world in which the adversary may not be able to detect the difference due to ideological hostility with these 2 countries, or just for paranoia, from the security services at home, and not being able to trust that what started as a counter proliferation operation does not go all the way and end with being a counter regime operation.
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Behman Ben Taleblu: Loose, fissile material or unaccounted fissile material basically is bargaining power for the regime’s survival. It’s basically a way that you can threaten destruction or significantly, more damage to the interests of the attacking adversary.
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Behman Ben Taleblu: Even in a world where you have the supply chain and the interconnected atomic infrastructure of the Islamic Republic essentially taken out by Israeli military strikes. And the reason I’m saying that is because they may not be able to go to a lab that was in the atomic, archive tomorrow for weaponization. They may not be able to find a scientist
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Behman Ben Taleblu: who may have been involved in this issue in yesteryear. They may not be able to go to an enrichment, facility, or to a conversion facility. To make sure this life cycle of fissile material can go from raw uranium to hexafluoride back into and then into uranium metal, and then to be married with an explosive charge shaped into a ball for the warhead.
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Behman Ben Taleblu: They may not have the physical facilities for all of this at the moment.
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Behman Ben Taleblu: But they can basically threaten that if you go for a decapitation, strike in a period of escalating hostilities, and the Iranians are returning fire. If you go for the death blow, you would essentially be collapsing central authority, and thereby not being able to account for what may become an a Hukan network of sorts on steroids, and by using the responsibility and the restraint of the adversary against them. This is very much kind of human shields logic. Now.
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Behman Ben Taleblu: you can actually deter wider sets of targets against the political leadership because they can dangle the Fissan material that they probably either have in deep, deep storage in one of those tunneling facilities in the towns in Isfahan that may have been missed, or may not have been completely destroyed.
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Behman Ben Taleblu: or maybe on trucks just being moved around the country. Much like is assumed about elements of the Pakistani atomic program. The weaponization there, you know, basically diverting, dispersing, normalizing, that if you do a decapitation strike, you would not deal with the nuclear issue or the nuclear deterrent, and thereby you may not have dealt the death flow that you think you did so in this world.
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Behman Ben Taleblu: The regime doesn’t necessarily see the sharp distinction between counter proliferation and counter regime.
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Behman Ben Taleblu: even though their behavior they’re very kind of playing to the edge behavior in this 12 day war against Israel, and late in that conflict America tells you that they do obviously have an intention to want to rebuild. This is a regime with a high level of ideology, a high level of resolve, even a attempted, assassinated former Supreme National Security official, Mr. Shah Mohani, he came out. He said, there is material.
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Behman Ben Taleblu: there is capability. And he said, there’s domestic knowledge. And he said, with these 3 things, if I’m not mistaken, we can reconstitute. Given the high degree of capability, the very limited material, and then the lack of really clear facilities.
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Behman Ben Taleblu: It may be a significant period of time until the Iranians can actually act on what Sham Ghani said, but nonetheless, the reason I worry about this Fissan material, when even some folks, even some friends and colleagues and allies and
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Behman Ben Taleblu: people, may say, Look, if you don’t have this supply chain, you are okay, for now, as long as you have an intent to keep shaping and deterring future Iranian behavior when it comes to trying to move this around my fear there has been. I’m not worried about weaponization tomorrow. With respect to this, I’m worried about this being used for regime survival.
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Richard Pater: Thank you. I just want to pick you up on a couple of things you mentioned there related to capacity and knowledge. And you mentioned earlier about kind of a couple of the significant commanders, quite unusual in kind of in a Western sense, for a military commander to remain in post for a decade and a half kind of we’re used to Israeli, European Us. Militaries of kind of senior people
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Richard Pater: moving on after 3 or 4 years. So it’s interesting that that was so kind of so held, held together for so long that, coupled with the Israeli targeting of the of the scientists and the and the aim to kind of to to kill off the knowledge.
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Richard Pater: the knowledge bases that was held by the senior commanders and scientists. How successful do you think that is and kind of. Where does that knowledge currently lie?
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Behman Ben Taleblu: Well, if if one is talking about, you know nuclear science or weaponization, there may be a whole host of individuals
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Behman Ben Taleblu: that could still contribute to that effort, but I think the Israeli actions were showing that this would not be a fruitful contribution. So again, this is very much a shaping effect they may have gone after. I don’t want to use the word commanding heights on the atomic side again, but they may have gone after people with direct ties to weaponization, or who have done things in the past, or who have contributed meaningfully, politically, to the direction of the nuclear program in the past. You know, I’m thinking right now.
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Behman Ben Taleblu: the former chief of the Atomic Energy organization, who, I think, way back in 2010, if I’m not mistaken, survived an assassination attempt involving him and his wife, Mr. Faridun Abbasidapany. That person also had that kind of combination of capacity and zeal. When you look at his bio, and when you look at his statements, and when you look at
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Behman Ben Taleblu: how he’s reared his head, shall we say, or how he had reared his head, shall we say at several kind of critical junctures in the history of the Iranian Atomic Program, as well as in the history of the public debate
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Behman Ben Taleblu: over Iran’s atomic program, including most recently with, you know, some veiled comments about why the regime is basically a threshold nuclear state already.
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Behman Ben Taleblu: So with that aside, I think it is safe to say that you’re never going to get every single individual who’s had every single role, who’s had even the most marginal role in the nuclear program.
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Behman Ben Taleblu: But that’s okay, because you need not do that to prevent or shape or deter or foster more hedging in the behavior of these individuals. So long as the 1st use here of military force is not the last use of military force, so long as the adversary believes that you have the intention to continue.
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Behman Ben Taleblu: and I think both the Israelis and the Americans have signaled that to a certain degree, that if you strike a certain core you strike a certain brain trust. It’s not that the regime can’t play musical chairs. It’s that the quality of the persons in those chairs may not necessarily be 100% the same. And then, of course, there’s all these things in these sorts of governments, particularly on the military side you mentioned.
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Behman Ben Taleblu: It’s a lot that for almost 2 decades someone would be sitting in the same seat. Well, that’s also a measure of trust in these systems, because they do again play musical chairs. But when they have you in the same seat for that long, they like what you’re doing, and it’s a symbol of trust.
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Behman Ben Taleblu: And
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Behman Ben Taleblu: someone else taking that position means that they have to work doubly overtime to rebuild that trust. So again, the entire logic of those strikes that we saw in the wee hours of the morning Eastern time, or in the
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Behman Ben Taleblu: wee hours of the morning, wee hours of the evening, Eastern time, or wee hours of the Morning British Standard. Time was designed to together really collapse the commanding heights of the nuclear weaponization side and the military commanding heights, and then from there impose a shock on the rest of the body politik of both bureaucracies or both systems.
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Behman Ben Taleblu: and then from there move towards the actual material targeting rather than just the personnel targeting. And then, I mean, there’s a whole host of things the Israelis did on the kind of political symbolism side as well when it came to targeting that we can get into. But in terms of these 2 brain trusts, it’s really going after a core and having both a capabilities based message be sent that it will take you time to achieve again the knowledge, base capabilities, the knowledge base gains.
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Behman Ben Taleblu: but also psychologically, and trust and bureaucratically, even when you do do the musical chairs, you may simply not be at that same level of access and comfortability which, again, these are things in wartime that put the adversary off balance that can lead to miscalculation, that can lead to disruptions or changes in the chain of command or known decision making that all were down to the benefit of the attacker.
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Richard Pater: Thank you. Just kind of based on your experience in DC. And kind of asking a diplomatic question of kind of where to now, what the Iranians are likely to do with regard to the npt
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Richard Pater: and kind of the what we see is the kind of the negotiating stance I think, from, at least from. I’ve heard from Israeli officials, perhaps from Americans as well, about insisting on no enrichment inside kind, of no more developments of centrifuges. Kind of removal of the stockpile of the enriched uranium kind of unlimited and very severe transparent monitoring and supervision
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Richard Pater: kind of is is that realistic? Where do you think the Iran’s will position themselves. What do they have to gain from this? Presumably sanction? Relief is still high up on their minds.
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Behman Ben Taleblu: Sanctions. Relief is but survival is as well, and particularly in a world where they may not have trusted that as coming on the front end pre-strike. They will have even less trust for that to be coming on the back end post strike. But their escalatory game has changed traditionally. They had this capacity based on the program to engage in horizontal escalation or vertical escalation. They could.
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Behman Ben Taleblu: for example, add more capacity. That’s vertical escalation, you know, grow the stockpile
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Behman Ben Taleblu: of something or grow the number of centrifuges, or they can engage in horizontal escalation where they would move into new areas. You know the production of 60%, the development of uranium metal using highly enriched uranium phasing in new types of new centrifuges. For example, you make qualitative changes or quantitative changes to the Iranian nuclear program in a world where that is not on the table. Given the success of the Israeli.
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Behman Ben Taleblu: the American strike, you go back to the bottom half of this equation, which is, if you know Group One is growing. The program group 2 is diminishing the monitoring. And as you grow the program and diminish the monitoring. You basically raise the threat profile and the lack of certainty over the direction of this program and the insight that you can have by the Iaea in this program.
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Behman Ben Taleblu: The reason I’m saying that is because the Parliament has certainly been flirting with Npt withdrawal. But, more importantly, the Parliament recently was talking about circumscribing Iea access and suspending.
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Behman Ben Taleblu: you know, basically work with the Iaea. And here that means that any kind of
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Behman Ben Taleblu: battle damage assessment driven by the Iea’s reporting itself, which is still on the ground in Iran and director. General Grocery, during this entire conflict, has been talking about wanting to return and restore access, and continue to investigate these facilities.
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Behman Ben Taleblu: to talk about everything, from radiation, to talk about everything, from what was destroyed, to talk about everything from Iran’s stockpile to make sure that every piece of declared inventory remains declared, and there is no diversion, for example, to be able to do all of that. They have to be able to again go, and the regime can now prohibit or delay the going which means the Monitoring and Verification Mission is going to be taking a huge, huge hit.
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Behman Ben Taleblu: and this is going to be a powerful tool in the hand of the Islamic Republic. Admittedly not as powerful as the military leverage created by the Americans and the Israelis. But nonetheless, it is going to be a tool that they have and given. That President Trump has recently said that there will be negotiations as early as next week over the Iranian nuclear issue, and he later on circumscribed that by saying, I’m not sure what they need to negotiate over basically hinting at the success of the military mission to defang
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Behman Ben Taleblu: elements of the regime’s nuclear program. You will have
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Behman Ben Taleblu: the question of what do you intend to negotiate? And I think the most important thing to negotiate is the restoration and the managing of this access of the Iea to Iran’s nuclear program. That is going to be something, Major. Do I think that is something that is warranting sanctions relief?
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Behman Ben Taleblu: No, not at this point. I think that’s something that the Iranians should be living up to, but politically, strategically. I see them being able to extract a heck of a lot for this. Given the blows that they suffered, and given some of the questions that we still have about
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Behman Ben Taleblu: the rest of the uranium stockpile. So you know this is, it might just be one or 2 cards in the regime’s hands, but they’re powerful cards, and it certainly is true that you do have the
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Behman Ben Taleblu: quote unquote shadow of power to borrow from former Secretary of State. George Schultz cast across the negotiating table now. But the problem is, the adversary has always understood. There was a shadow of power cast, and instead try to play to the will, to stay in the fight for the regime rather than to have to generate capability, to offset all of a much more conventionally advanced army’s capability, be it the Israelis or the Americans. So this is the Iranian Mo. I think we’re going to see this mo on steroids.
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Behman Ben Taleblu: And you know, these guys have a diplomatic ground game. So just because there is a military success doesn’t mean that there is going to be a political success. In fact, the Middle East is littered with examples of military successes that have not yielded better political outcomes or order, so we will certainly have to watch and wait to see what happens in a potentially future. Witkopf Arakshi meeting.
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Richard Pater: And in terms of kind of the domestic Iran and the stability of the regime. It was interesting in hindsight that the kind of the last full day of the war, Israel seemed to pivot to targets, which did have more of a resonance for the regime, for Irgc bases the entrance of the prison you mentioned kind of the symbolic clock in
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Richard Pater: in Palestine Square, and kind of but the feeling, at least here in Israel was. It wasn’t Israel’s gift or their role to try and bring down the regime. This is really something that is up to the Iranian people. Where do you think that stands. Now, what do you anticipate.
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Behman Ben Taleblu: You know, my personal view is that this go around, Iran. You obviously have the most pro-american and the pro-israeli population in the Muslim Middle East. And I always stress that in conversations where we’re talking like now about things that go boom, that human security element, because I don’t think you could have had a population as Nationalist as the Iranian people be supporting foreign pressure, like.
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Behman Ben Taleblu: you know, the massive, the maximum pressure sanctions back in trump term one without some kind of a rally, but in Iran that was possible because of the level of enmity between the State and the street and the real movement away from reform and towards the desire for a wholesale revolution, and straight up regime change from the street against the State.
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Behman Ben Taleblu: and you saw that correlate with declining numbers of electoral turnout and rising numbers and declining periods of calm between every round of anti-regime protests from 2017, 1819, 2022, twice, once in the spring, second time into 2023 with women like freedom. You even saw before this military conflict began, a trucker strike in Iran, for example.
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Behman Ben Taleblu: there is an undercurrent that is consistently brewing where the regime knows how drastically unpopular it is, and all it really has now to deal with. This is a monopoly on the use of force.
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Behman Ben Taleblu: and the Israeli and American military strikes really showed that that altar, that the Islamic Republic had sacrificed everything on which was, quote, unquote national security regime security
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Behman Ben Taleblu: wasn’t really much of an alter after all, because, while it absconded with everything from the health, wealth, and reputation, public good, and national interest of the Iranian people, and to move it all into the nuclear missile. Military drone basket. That basket could be severely shocked, beaten, squashed setback.
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Behman Ben Taleblu: given the tier one capabilities of a state like Israel, or a state like the United States of America, and in that world you see this massive expectation gap.
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Behman Ben Taleblu: and when the dust settles that can have a significant effect in stiffening the spine of a whole host of anti-regime Iranians, whose priority rightly while the shooting was going on, was not protesting, but was survival, as in any conflict zone where there are civilians, and to that end I’m mentioning this, because I think there was a desire, at least in terms of some Israeli rhetoric, to try to push for protest. But I think they may have
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Behman Ben Taleblu: missed that this is the 1st conflict on Iranian territory since the end of the Iran-iraq war. This is not Gaza or Syria where folks may be used to a boom and bust cycle of violence from an outside country. You know there were people fleeing Tehran abandoning cars on the streets, people going to the north, particularly near the Caspian sea area, to try to escape the shooting war altogether.
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Behman Ben Taleblu: while tons of people just stayed in and hunkered down at home, and I was using the word hunkered down because they had no shelter. They had no bunker, and they essentially awaited their fate, which is a horrible thing. But that’s the split screen imagery you get from a regime like the government of the Islamic Republic and a government like Israel, where, if one cherishes and
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Behman Ben Taleblu: is investing in the health and welfare of their citizenry and population. And one is not
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Behman Ben Taleblu: but moving forward those symbolic targets that the Israelis had struck, I think, were designed to be married with some of that kind of over promised rhetoric moving towards regime change
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Behman Ben Taleblu: to try to spark something within Iranian society, whereas I think that the spark was never going to come during a shooting war, but potentially could come on the back end. But that’s where the Israelis and the Americans need a ground game, I mean, politically, diplomatically, strategically. How do you devalue? How do you keep going after the regime? And here there were some things that were not just symbolic.
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Behman Ben Taleblu: but that were signs that the Israelis were willing to go after the repressive apparatus of the government of the Islamic Republic. The limited strikes in Tehran, on law, enforcement, on Basij, on the Ministry of Justice, on the Ministry of the Intelligence, on blowing the doors of Evin Prison, for example, the strike on the Irib, the hacking of the Irib channel, the going after Irgc intelligence.
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Behman Ben Taleblu: You know these are all things that in the aggregate, if you’re making a cocktail of it, signal that the Israelis are trying to
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Behman Ben Taleblu: both signal their, you know, positivity, and to say to the Iranians that those entities that engage in foreign aggression against us are essentially the same that engage in domestic suppression of view, to try to marry the rhetoric and the reality, but also at the same time to shape and create the conditions on the political side. For when the dust settles for the population to be able to do something. But the problem here is again, I stress that many Iranians, you know.
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Behman Ben Taleblu: have been for many years because they’re nationalist and patriotic, very, very anti-war, but on the condition that they have moved from trying reform to seeking wholesale revolution to some of them, even starting in 2024, you know, literally calling for more direct military intervention, because there was literally nothing else that unarmed protesters could be doing on the streets
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Behman Ben Taleblu: in a world where direct military intervention really only neuters the nuclear program, or really only sets back the missile and military program. The population necessarily is not going to tolerate that cost, particularly if this means a cycle of violence
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Behman Ben Taleblu: comes back again and back again and back again, and risks expanding. This kind of mowing of the grass approach to Iran proper, and that will necessarily mean more civilian casualties. You may begin to actually erode
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Behman Ben Taleblu: that very important support base. And that’s why I’m saying now, in a period of time where there is no shooting. That’s when actually, this signaling about potential for regime change can happen. Now, I will say both America and Israel, due to their own domestic politics as well as I think, to Brightly getting this, understand that you know the final blow always has to come from within. This has to be an Iranian story for a drastically different Iranian political order.
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Behman Ben Taleblu: and the good news is, the Iranian people have been more than playing their part have been more than trying to affect change on the ground with every vector you know, pre deal during deal post deal pre conflict. Now, post conflict.
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Behman Ben Taleblu: they have shown that they are willing to be. They have shown that they’re willing to risk their lives. The problem is that the calculation the regime is making is to say, no one has your back as you risk your lives, and that can erode that stiffened spine that may have been created through those targets of the apparatus of repression. So I am drastically worried about what will happen internally in Iran, even though everyone’s saying, Well, it’s up to the Iranians
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Behman Ben Taleblu: the Iranians have been trying for over a century for representative government. The Iranians have been trying for multiple rounds at least 4 or 5 rounds since 2017, and keep getting set back.
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Behman Ben Taleblu: So the question is to the degree to which other States are now trying to do things against the regime there. To what degree can they pave a better pathway for Iranian protesters, activists, and dissidents rather than just kind of imposing costs, and stepping back and imposing costs and stepping back
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Behman Ben Taleblu: again. There needs to be political connectivity. There needs to be a translation of the dialogue of the targets. You know what was hit. Why was it hit. This has to be a consistent strand of Israeli and American public diplomacy. And, to be frank, I don’t necessarily see that yet.
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Richard Pater: And what about Iran’s international allies, whether it’s the role that China, Russia, North Korea, Pakistan, that they can play in kind of in supporting, supporting the regime, going forward.
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Behman Ben Taleblu: Well, I don’t necessarily see Pakistan in that role, even though there’s quite a bit of concern over the regional role Pakistan plays in the past. Afghanistan kind of consistently vis-a-vis. India, moving into the 21st century, issues the close ties with China, for example.
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Behman Ben Taleblu: But this constellation of actors known as Crink. You know, China, Russia, Iran, North Korea, or the Bad Guys Club, or the Good Guys Club, the Bad Guys Club, or the new 2.0 axis of Evil Club. Whatever language you use for it. The axis of authoritarians here at Fd. We call it the axis of aggressors, you know.
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Behman Ben Taleblu: when the bad guys. If you will create a constellation of partners and allies, the glue between them is not anywhere at all like the glue between the 5 eyes Alliance or NATO, for example, it’s not that a rising tide lifts all boats. This is a mercantilist, predatory group of regimes. They’re anti-american. They’re authoritarian. There is a political overlap between them that is, moving 2 separate circles into much more of a Venn diagram.
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Behman Ben Taleblu: and from the Iranian side, which is the only non-nuclear element of this nuclear armed revisionist, anti-american axis, which includes, again, North Korea, Russia, and China. They have always been auditioning for this great power, support, particularly from the nineties from Russia and China. They’ve gotten it much more recently in the 2,010 s. And in the Post Jcpoa period and the Post-syrian Civil war period
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Behman Ben Taleblu: from the Russians, but it almost always was a guessing game where the Russians would sell them out at the right price. And now that the Russians have been stuck in Ukraine, and the Iranians have all of these Ious. I don’t think there’s any real material coming tomorrow from the Russians. I think the Russians
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Behman Ben Taleblu: have, and will continue to be Iran’s lawyer in International Fora. I think the Chinese have, and will continue to be, the most important purchaser of Iranian crude oil and energy products. And you know, just those 2 things alone are critical to the regime on the back end of a strike, because essentially on the back end of a strike is when you need maximum pressure and significant containment to amplify politically and economically the military effects of your military strike.
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Behman Ben Taleblu: But in a world where
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Behman Ben Taleblu: those actors may not have the capability due to their own internal reasons, or they may feel somewhat more deterred now because of the successes of the Israelis or the successes of the Americans, that they may not want to rush to bail out the regime.
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Behman Ben Taleblu: They have absolutely no problem with a weak Islamic republic that is made to be even more politically and militarily and economically dependent on them. And then from there everything else will flow, because again, they can use Iran as a pawn in their game of strategic competition with the West and to me, and to large swaths of the Iranian people. This is proof that the Go East strategy may keep the regime afloat.
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Behman Ben Taleblu: but will increasingly not do much for the nation, and
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Behman Ben Taleblu: you can really see, with the collapse of the Assad regime in Syria, which was the only State ally that the Islamic Republic had, but it was a state ally that the regime had to prop up rather than really extract or get material things from how isolated
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Behman Ben Taleblu: the Islamic Republic really is. That point is not really or meaningfully dealt with here in Washington, where I live and work. But the Islamic Republic is an isolated actor. Yes, we’re continually talking about showing up at international arms markets. Yes, we’re talking about them having a global apparatus for sanctions. Busting. Yes, we’re always talking about them being in a whole host of UN Fora that they should not be in, for example.
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Behman Ben Taleblu: but
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Behman Ben Taleblu: make no mistake when push comes to shove. There are very few that would risk anything for this sort of regime.
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Richard Pater: So if I can, a double-edged question just to finish with, do you think the doctrine of the ring of fire surrounding Israel with proxies. Has that now been defeated? Or do you see, Iran are likely to try and rebuild that? I mean? Really, I suppose only the Houthis have been left with any substantial capacity for now, and we wait to be seen how they haven’t struck
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Richard Pater: since the ceasefire was declared. We don’t know if they consider themselves bound by it or not, but as a concept, how much of the does the proxy still ring true, and a second follow-up of kind, of how the rest of the region. The rest of the Sunni states in the Gulf now perceive Iran following this conflict.
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Behman Ben Taleblu: Yeah, let’s begin with the ring of fire which has really shown itself to be costly. Post October 7, th meaning the Islamic Republic’s goal was to increasingly turn on these fronts, try to find a way to connect it. We know militarily, logistically, the connection. The logistics between every front was nowhere as integrated as we may have feared, or we may have thought, and that significantly redounded to the military advantage of the Israelis, but that also each front.
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Behman Ben Taleblu: while firing, fired in a very incremental graduated way, which kind of shook the Israelis 1st given the direct attacks, particularly following October 7th on Israeli territory, as well as for the
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Behman Ben Taleblu: for the Shia militias in Iraq and Syria, the targeting of Us. Positions and Us. Bases, and then the historic entry of the Houthis, both against Israel as well as against international commerce and
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Behman Ben Taleblu: freedom of travel. In a place like the Red Sea, for example.
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Behman Ben Taleblu: it really shook the Israelis, but it also shook
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Behman Ben Taleblu: them into the position of seeing that there is no way out but through, and really with following the Iranian direct entry into this back in April you see this series of Israeli successes
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Behman Ben Taleblu: against Haniyah, then moving into the late summer, early fall with the pager and the beeper issue. You see the Israeli see that there’s no way out but through, and the ability to
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Behman Ben Taleblu: overmatch the incremental escalation and the layering on of the ring of fire around the Israelis with the way the Israelis have won so historically in the elements of fighting the Arab Cold War, when it was short and sharp military action, those rounds of short and sharp military action, particularly against Hamas to the south and Hezbollah to the north.
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Behman Ben Taleblu: basically put the regime in the position of having some of its most important proxies neutered, and then, in 2025, with deeper American entry post ceasefire in the spring, directly targeting the Houthis. That also come in with great cost to the element of the axis, to this element of the acts of resistance, which, again looking at things both through the American perspective as through the Israeli perspective. Why this action? Why this military
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Behman Ben Taleblu: action by Israel first, st and America much later.
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Behman Ben Taleblu: took place now is because they had a clear shot. They had a clear shot brought to you 1st and foremost by the proxies being down, but not out by the long range air defense being down by the missile, the offensive, retaliatory, missile strategy of the Islamic Republic being.
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Behman Ben Taleblu: dare I say, manageable, and all of these point you to well, if you’re worried about the status and security dividends of the nuclear program. Well, you have just kind of lived through an experimentation phase of how to regulate and deal with the other threats that the regime would have or the threats that the regime would activate.
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Behman Ben Taleblu: Once you do go after their nuclear program. So this is essentially why, 2025 was a year of decision for such a military strike, and I think the Israelis took it, and the Americans did what they can to, I think pale green light facilitate it. And then on the back end came in the way they did, with kind of like a cleanup operation against those 3 nuclear sites.
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Behman Ben Taleblu: How these major military victories against the axis and against the Islamic Republic itself play in the Arab world is mixed. For example, you’ve had, I think, like 20
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Behman Ben Taleblu: organization of Islamic country. Foreign ministries, early in the conflict, call for a ceasefire, stressed the fact that attacks on nuclear facilities are not consistent with international law push for de-escalation. I think that there is a genuine appetite for that. I mean one drastically different thing about the Gcc. States in 2025
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Behman Ben Taleblu: is that they are the front lines of diplomacy with the Islamic Republic, whereas President Trump’s historic trip to the same part of the world on his 1st trip in 2017.
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Behman Ben Taleblu: That was a drastically different constellation of forces in the Gcc. Where they were. The front lines of maximum pressure against the Gcc. And this has more to do with America, staying or going, military and political posture in the Middle East Post Bush Administration and the signals. Everyone has been sending about pivot to Asia and great power competition.
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Behman Ben Taleblu: These military successes may have changed that may have permitted some of these States again to have a slightly more stiffer spine towards the one major state threat that has been afflicting both the Israelis and the Americans and the Arabs themselves. It’s too soon to tell again, if this bolsters Abraham Accord’s 2.0 extension, or creates political space for it, you know, with the rumors now of potentially Syria or Lebanon.
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Behman Ben Taleblu: or this may be creating political space for such an extension in Saudi Arabia, for example, I think that’s too soon to tell. But there is a world in which you can use the military successes as more attraction and more glue for this expanding series of
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Behman Ben Taleblu: diplomatic engagement with the pro-american status quo order in the Middle East, such that if the trend continues of Americans looking further eastward, given the challenges of countering a rising china, well, then, you have as much of the pro-american order as together as possible, and united against an adversary that they clearly have seen
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Behman Ben Taleblu: can absorb blows, and will have its military threat against these folks significantly degraded if decisive action is taken.
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Richard Pater: Well, thank you so much. Some of those issues. We will have to call on you again, because obviously this is an issue that will keep our attention for the foreseeable, but for today that was brilliant. Thank you very much indeed.
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Behman Ben Taleblu: Always a pleasure great to join you.
