In this episode, Daniel J. Levy speaks with Dr Jonathan Spyer about the aftermath of Iran’s regional setbacks and the evolving security picture in the Middle East. Dr Spyer offers first-hand insights from his recent trip to Yemen, assesses the trajectory of Iran’s proxy network post-Operation Rising Line, and examines the implications of the Assad regime’s collapse in Syria.
Jonathan Spyer is a British-Israeli analyst, writer, and journalist of Middle Eastern affairs. He is director of research at the Middle East Forum and editor of Middle East Quarterly magazine.
Transcript
(This transcript has been automatically generated by AI — please excuse any potential errors.)
00:00:06:24 – 00:00:34:14
Hello and welcome to the BICOM’s Podcast. I’m Daniel J. Leavy, programs manager. And today is 14th July 2025. My guest is Doctor Jonathan Spyer, an Israeli journalist and security analyst specializing in regional affairs and Iranian proxies. He has recently returned from a trip to Yemen. So expire. Thank you for joining me and to open our conversation. Perhaps you can tell me a little bit more about yourself and your work.
00:00:34:16 – 00:01:01:12
Hi there. Daniel. Yes, well, I’ll be happy to do so. So as you correctly point to, I’m an Israeli citizen, but I was born in the UK and I’ve lived in Israel now for the last just over 30 years, 35 years, in fact, based in Jerusalem. And my work really consists of reporting and analysis, on the issues of politics and security broadly defined, in a number of Middle Eastern countries.
00:01:01:14 – 00:01:26:21
Obviously Israel itself and the Israeli-Palestinian Israel-Palestine issue. And then also I focused on Lebanon as Syria in particular over the last decade and a half, really, and also Iraq, that kind of northern, crescent, so to speak, above Israel, the area between the Iraq-iran border and the Mediterranean Sea has really been the focus of much of my reporting and analysis, in recent years.
00:01:26:23 – 00:01:51:01
And I’m also interested in and cover, sort of broader issues of regional strategy, alliance groups in the Middle East. Forms of political behavior, forms of military behavior, the way in which the two, interact with one another, and the way, forms of power take, in the, the confused and constantly changing spaces of the region.
00:01:51:07 – 00:02:11:04
So that’s in a nutshell what I’m what I’m doing. And that’s taken me around and across the region in various parts of the region over the last years, because it’s important to me to, have a on the ground reporting, element to what I do, rather than it being simply sort of ivory tower, efforts, analysis far from the, areas of contact, so to speak.
00:02:11:06 – 00:02:31:20
So that in a nutshell, is what I do. And I do it for a broad, group of organizations on, editor of the Middle East Quarterly for the Middle East Forum think tank, where I’m also director of research. And then I have fellowships at a couple of other think tanks, and then I write for a whole bunch of newspapers, across the English speaking world.
00:02:31:22 – 00:03:00:17
And that’s in a nutshell. That’s what I’m what I’m doing. Thank you for that. And in many ways, Iran has been the golden thread pulling your reporting together, sort of from when it first started through to the present day, if sort of up to the point of 13th of June. So just over a month ago, with Operation Rising line, Israeli and American strikes on Iran, what’s was Iran’s overarching regional strategy, particularly in the areas that you’ve worked in?
00:03:00:19 – 00:03:42:07
Yeah, so I would say that Iran, Islamic Republic of Iran, I think it’s uncontroversial to say, has been issuing a bid for, regional hegemony or domination of the Middle East pretty much since the Islamic revolution in Iran itself in 1979. And the emergent form that that has taken, in recent years, I think, has combined a number of different elements, obviously, there is the, element of the Iranian nuclear program, the effort by the Islamic Republic of Iran to acquire for itself, in a sense, the ultimate, insurance policy against any real action against it, namely the possession of nuclear weapons.
00:03:42:07 – 00:04:09:23
And Iran has been, of course, pushing forward on that, in that area for, for decade, for a couple of decades now, verifiably and visibly, in addition, there is the, ballistic missile, project of the Iranians in which Iran has invested hugely in ballistic missiles with the intention of bringing, and it has succeeded in bringing pretty much any potential enemy within the Middle East, within range of its missile capacities.
00:04:09:23 – 00:04:39:20
And then the third, element of the strategy is the one which I, along with others, have focused on quite a bit in recent years. And that is the Iranian practice of, proxy political and military activity. That’s to say, in essence, the, either the establishment of or the location of existing, political military organizations, usually or almost always of, Islamist.
00:04:39:21 – 00:05:07:02
Outlook, in a variety of Arabic speaking countries. And the turning of those, organizations, notionally at least, into instruments for the advancement of the Iranian interest in the, space in question. So if we think of Lebanese Hezbollah, as the prototype or classic example of a proxy organization of that type established, of course, back in 1982, in, by the Islamic Revolutionary Guard school in Lebanon.
00:05:07:04 – 00:05:32:06
That would be one example of the kind of, phenomenon we’re talking about. If we were to think about Hamas in the, Palestinian context or answer all of the Houthis in the Yemeni context, and these are other examples in those cases, actually, of existing preexisting organizations, which the Iranians found their way to. So the Iranians have followed and pursued a, proxy strategy of, unrivaled sophistication.
00:05:32:06 – 00:06:02:23
I would say a very great success, over recent years. And that had brought them, as the Iranians themselves put it, so the control of or effective control of a number of Arab capitals, on the eve of the current war between Israel and, and Iran and its proxies in the Arab capitals being Sanaa in Lebanon, Baghdad, Beirut and Damascus and so on the eve of October 7th, 2023, that’s on the eve of the beginning of the current conflict, which is still continuing.
00:06:03:04 – 00:06:24:22
Iran was in a very, very, optimal position in the region where it succeeded, succeeded in implanting itself through the practice of proxy warfare in a whole number of spaces in the Arabic speaking world. Its nuclear program was proceeding apace. Its ballistic missile program was proceeding apace, too. And that was where we sort of found ourselves on October 6th, 2023, so to speak.
00:06:24:22 – 00:06:48:08
And as a result of the events of the subsequent 21 months, the balance in that picture has very significantly changed, and it has changed largely to Iran’s detriment outside. And if we take the point of Iran’s detriment there instead of begin with September 24th, Mossad, Hezbollah pages that have taken us up to the present day through to the fall of the Assad regime.
00:06:48:08 – 00:07:26:20
Yeah. How did Iran’s stock collapse so dramatically? And where did what was around left on 12th of June, 25, which was the day before operation Horizon line? Yeah. So I think that’s a really interesting way of posing, the question, because, of course, that the the current round of conflict begins on October 7th, 2023, but precisely what doesn’t happen, on October 7th, 2023, because we don’t see an immediate, overall mobility zation of Iran and its proxies immediately in support of the Hamas, war effort emerging out of Gaza.
00:07:27:01 – 00:08:02:11
That’s perhaps what one might have expected to have seen. That may well be what the late, leader of Hamas in Gaza, Yahya Sinwar, expected to see. But it’s not what happened. And instead what happened between October 2023 and as you mentioned, was the year hence. September 24th was a kind of partial and piecemeal, mobilization of the proxies in which different elements of the proxies, at different times and with different levels of intensity, chose to enter the fight against Israel.
00:08:02:11 – 00:08:26:24
Hezbollah in Lebanon was the first, on October 8th, beginning, to show targets in northern Israel and then the arsenal of the Houthis beginning their attacks on, shipping in the Gulf of Aden Red sea route in November of that year. We saw also by December, the Iraqi Shia militias, the last a shall be beginning attacks on, American, installations inside, Iraq.
00:08:27:01 – 00:08:59:17
And this was pretty much the extent to which it took a partial and piecemeal mobilization. And then, of course, on very significantly, on April and April 2024, for the first time, the entrance of the Iranians themselves into the conversation, so to speak, with an attack by ballistic missiles and drones by the Iranians on Israel. So it’s yeah, it’s by mid 2024, you have after a piecemeal mobilization, the highest level, of proxy and Iranian involvement in the conflict, which we’ve seen until now.
00:08:59:17 – 00:09:42:18
So by mid 2024, of course, we’ve got Hamas in Gaza fighting, continuing. You’ve got, Hezbollah in Lebanon attacking Israel, you’ve got the Houthis attacking international shipping, and you’ve got the Iranians themselves entering the fray, so to speak, from April. And I think the story pretty much from start to speak, September 2024, which is the day that you mentioned, is one in which Israel has basically, confronted each of those components, maybe with the partial and notable exception of, the houses, but has confronted each one of those components and delivered very telling blows against them, leading to a kind of, splitting of the, Iran led alliance in which elements of the
00:09:42:18 – 00:10:26:14
alliance have chosen to unilaterally abandon, the fight, at least for now, to find their own way out of the conflict. So I think what happened between September 2024 and June of this year, as you mentioned, is that we saw a situation in which, first of all, Lebanese Hezbollah. As a result, as you correctly points out, of a number of very successful, intelligence led, operations conducted by Israel, the attacks on mid-level Hezbollah personnel with, by television, their pages and then their walkie talkies targeting Hezbollah communications equipment, and then the wiping out of his senior leadership up to and including the historic leader, Hassan Nasrallah, leading to Hezbollah unilaterally leaving the fray, doing
00:10:26:14 – 00:10:48:11
what it said it wasn’t going to do. In November of that year, the Iraqi Shia militias quietly following suit, such that then the Houthis reaching their own separate cease fire, at least with the Americans or not with Israel, which means that by June 2025, most of the Iranian proxies have found their way to noninvolvement in the conflict.
00:10:48:11 – 00:11:27:04
Very, or at least for now, the immediate conflict significantly weakened in their capacities by Israel’s, responses. And that, I think, opens a window of opportunity from the Israeli point of view, where Israel says, well, the proxies of Iran are very much weakened at the moment. We’ve weakened Iran itself as well through the if you remember, the Israeli counter action on October 26th, 2024, in which much of Iran’s air defenses were taken down by Israeli airpower, which means that the Iranians that were at a point of very great vulnerability, and at the same time there was evidence that both their nuclear and ballistic missile programs were proceeding apace.
00:11:27:04 – 00:11:55:19
There was no sense in which the Iranians were slowing down. The push towards those, capacity. So then Israel decided that the time was opportune, of course, to, to take a very significant direct action against both the nuclear program and the ballistic missile capacity and other areas of, regime, governance in Iran. And we saw that in the context of operation, rise in line and the 12 days of fighting, which, then followed that decision.
00:11:55:21 – 00:12:43:02
And now that rising line has concluded, what impact do you think that will have on the proxy network be that sort of with states or sort of states adjacent actors, and the militias themselves? Well, I think there’s one thing which we another detail which I didn’t mention, which I think is significant in answering this question, which was, of course, the kind of side effect very, very historically significant and statistically significant side effect of Israel’s actions against Hezbollah from mid 2024, which was the fall of Assad regime in Syria in December of 2024, effectively ending the, situation of contiguous Iranian or Iranian proxy control of territory all the way between the Iraq-iran border
00:12:43:07 – 00:13:05:23
and the Syrian border with Israel and Lebanese border with Israel and the Mediterranean Sea. That’s situation came to an end as a result of that side effect of the weakening of Hezbollah, which enabled the some the Sunni Islamist group to march down to Damascus in that remarkable march southwards in the last days of November 2024, in the first days of December.
00:13:06:00 – 00:13:30:15
And that reality is an additional element which must be borne in mind if we try to assess where the proxies and the proxy network is. Now, you know, 21 months into, the conflict, each, arena has to be considered, in its own context. There isn’t, an overarching single reality relating to Iran’s proxies in day.
00:13:30:15 – 00:14:10:20
One might argue that one of the main takeout takeaways from the events of the last 21 months, and the Iranians themselves perhaps needed to have learned this as well, is that there is no single proxy model. Rather, as it turns out, contrary perhaps to Iranian hopes or Iranian propaganda. As it turns out, the so-called proxies are in fact local actors with their own local interests and their own local preferences, who have benefited from Iranian patronage but who did not, as it turns out, become simply servants or instruments of Iranian policy as a result of that process of support.
00:14:10:20 – 00:14:28:14
Which means, I think, if we’re going to look at where the proxies are at right now, we can’t make a single overarching statement like, well, the proxy is a weakened and therefore Iran’s weak. It’s not like that. Each of them has to be considered in those specific contexts. I would say, for example, that in Iraq it remains the case.
00:14:28:14 – 00:14:49:03
That has to be the, Popular Mobilization Unit, that’s to say, the Shia militias, as they’re often known, remain the single most powerful political and military player in the country. And they also remain the key force behind the government of Prime Minister Muhammad Shia. Suddenly now there are elections coming up in Iraq and that situation may change.
00:14:49:03 – 00:15:16:18
But as of now, you know, Iran’s proxies remain largely intact in Iraq. In Lebanon, Hezbollah has, on the contrary, has been very, very severely weakened that it is now a conceivable reality, at least, that Hezbollah might be, pressured upon to largely divest itself of much of its military capacity in the months ahead by a combination of U.S. pressure, Israeli armed action and the preferences of the current Lebanese government.
00:15:16:22 – 00:15:46:14
By contrast, I think by stark contrast in Yemen, the answer of the movement or who sees movement has not been, has not been, I would say, delivered a very, very serious blow by aid of the United States bombing campaign or indeed, Israeli air action. And as we’ve seen in recent days with the sinking of not one, but two ships by, the Houthis, in the Gulf of Aden Red sea area, literally over the last four days, the Houthis are not weakened.
00:15:46:14 – 00:16:24:02
They agreed to a ceasefire with America. They may well now have chosen to to to break that ceasefire. So not all the proxies have been weakened. Some of them have some of not the only really permanent an irreversible, I would say, result of the events of the last 24 months until now at least, is the fall of Assad regime, because the fall of Iranian, of an Iranian associated regime in Damascus and its replacement by a Sunni Islamist new regime is not something that’s going to be reversed, certainly not in the near future, and probably never, that’s and it will probably never be Alawi, Iran linked dominance in Syria again to some degree.
00:16:24:02 – 00:16:46:07
It was an anomaly in any case. And it’s now disappeared. So it means that we have to look, what I’m trying to say is we have to look at each case very, very closely in terms of its own details. There isn’t a single overarching picture, with the exception of the fall of Assad in Syria, all of the proxies to a greater or lesser extent, may have been weakened, but none of them have been yet destroyed.
00:16:46:13 – 00:17:10:08
And what we’re going to see, I think, in the period ahead, is a very determined Iranian effort to begin to build up these capacities again, both the proxy capacity and the missile capacity and the nuclear program, and much will depend now on subsequent actions that will be taken by Israel and the United States and their allies. And on the determination of Israel, the United States and their allies.
00:17:10:08 – 00:17:32:18
So the notion that when we had the 12 Day War and now we’re the winners and we all get to celebrate and go home, is, I’m afraid not the case. Considerable achievements have been registered. Much remains to be done. And given your experience in Lebanon and Syria, we’ve been hearing plenty of times from these writings about intent to bring both countries within the Abraham Accords.
00:17:32:20 – 00:18:08:04
Probably not so likely imminently Syria, more so than Lebanon. But what do you think the roadmap to post Hezbollah and sort of poster writing, weakening the improvement of relations or any kind of detente between Israel, Syria and Lebanon could look like if not for normalization? Yeah. So so we hearing at least and I think, the reports are reliable of, extensive contacts between the government of Israel and the new government or a new regime in Syria of, president sort of, latterly of the hapless, organization.
00:18:08:06 – 00:18:35:06
My own sense of this with regard to that, those connections is that it is conceivable that there could be a kind of, security arrangement or detente between Israel and the new government in Syria, which clearly has much to do in terms of rebuilding its own country and consolidating itself and isn’t really doesn’t really have time right now, at least to be conducting conflict against, Israel.
00:18:35:08 – 00:19:07:00
It’s unlikely, I think, that the new Syrian government will enter the Abraham Accords simply because, the issue of ownership and sovereignty on the Golan Heights will remain for any Syrian government. And since Israel clearly has no intention of divesting itself, of its sovereignty on the Golan anytime soon, the prospect for full diplomatic relations of the kind which, represented by the Abraham Accords, in my view, at least remains pretty unlikely and pretty distant still.
00:19:07:04 – 00:19:35:24
But the prospect for a kind of de facto ceasefire and detente between Israel and this and the new and emergent government in Syria is quite high. It’s, I wouldn’t be at all surprised if the current, contacts produce something along those lines. In the period ahead with regard to Lebanon, the situation is, is very different in the sense that the pro-iran element in Lebanon, unlike in Syria, has not been comprehensively broken and destroyed.
00:19:36:04 – 00:20:02:17
Lebanese Hezbollah remains a very, very powerful player. Inside, inside Lebanon. Now the the the proposal which United States envoy on Syria, Tom barrack presented on June 19th to the government of Lebanon contains a kind of roadmap for progress in which the government of Lebanon is expected to continue and complete the disarmament of Hezbollah.
00:20:02:23 – 00:20:33:13
And this is a condition for the opening up of aid for reconstruction, which the Lebanese desperately need from other regional players who have currently been U.S. ally and regional players who’ve formerly been quite reluctant to provide that assistance. So the Lebanese government has a real incentive for proceeding with this. On the other hand, it’s clear that President Joseph Own and Prime Minister of Salam are deeply concerned about the possibility of, triggering a civil war if they go too quickly with regard to Hezbollah.
00:20:33:15 – 00:20:55:07
My own sense is that the additional player in that picture is Israel itself, in which it will become clear to those in Lebanon, both the government and Hezbollah, that if the government does not proceed quickly with or in a reasonable time frame towards disarmament of Hezbollah, the result will be escalated. Israeli military action against Lebanon. So that’s the kind of three way dynamic in Lebanon right now.
00:20:55:07 – 00:21:18:06
It’s difficult to to predict exactly where that will head. But I think that the, the dynamic, the other aspect is that, you know, is that the, Barak’s proposal, also suggests that Israel and Lebanon should begin the process of final demarcation of their border. Israel has five positions across the Lebanese border, which it established in the course of the fighting in the latter part of 2024.
00:21:18:10 – 00:21:41:03
The Lebanese clearly want Israel to withdraw from those positions. So, again, there’s an incentive for the Lebanese government to move forward. Disarmament of Hezbollah is going to be a key component of any progress. The Lebanese government is clearly frightened of of confrontation with Hezbollah. If they don’t confront Hezbollah, then the likelihood is increased Israeli military action from the air against Hezbollah in the months ahead.
00:21:41:08 – 00:22:22:16
And in the context of all those different dynamics, we’re going to have to wait and see how things, develop. Thank you. Final question for me before we wrap up. I’m just returned from Yemen. What were your main takeaways from that trip or what would you what would you want Western audiences to understand, appreciate? First of all, I think that it is essential for both Israel and the broader Western, security interest, in the Yemeni context that the Ansar al-Houthi movement be delivered a very serious blow and be very seriously weakened because, look, the thing is that the Gulf of Aden Red sea is a is a vital waterway for global trade
00:22:22:16 – 00:23:06:17
in which and with very large amounts of oil and gas and other goods are shipped, on the way to the Suez Canal and to Europe. And the volume of shipping, on that route has been halved, as a result of, the activities in the course of the last 21 months. And that’s not a situation which can stand if that is a situation which is allowed to stand, and what the international community will effectively have conceded is the right of, paramilitary organizations to indulge in a kind of piracy on vital maritime trade routes with the international community left helpless, to, to, mount any kind of effective response.
00:23:06:17 – 00:23:26:21
So I think there has to be an effective response. It’s clear that the Houthis are not going to be easily driven out of Sana’a and their domination of northern Yemen, but it does seem to me that it would be possible. And should be possible for the Houthis to lose a day to the vital, Hodeidah port and maybe much more of the, Red sea coastline.
00:23:26:21 – 00:23:49:21
If you have, as a result of, ground action, it can’t happen only from the air. Now, I do think that there are ground partners available to the west in Yemen, specifically the Southern Transitional Council forces and perhaps some other forces as well. What’s needed is the will on the part of the West to, effectively take up action against the Houthis and begin the process of planning for a campaign of that kind.
00:23:50:02 – 00:24:16:06
This is not rocket science or not, idle speculation. We’re very close to a campaign of this kind just a few months ago. But the United States clearly chose to not put its full backing to a campaign of that kind. I think that needs to happen. I think that it’s unfinished business, frankly, from the conflict to the last, 21 months, the Who sees that particular component of the Iran Liberation Alliance has not yet been, so to speak, put back in its box.
00:24:16:08 – 00:24:26:23
I think that that’s something which needs to happen. Fantastic. Thank you very much. Always a pleasure. Pleasure. And of course, big thank you to Elnet for sponsoring this trip to the UK.