Israel in position to start war with Iran, but not to end it: Middle East expert

Professor Vali Nasr, an expert on Middle East politics and US foreign policy, said that Israel is in a position to start a war with Iran and drag the United States into it, but it is in no position to end the war. His remark comes as the recent missile attack by Iran on Israel following the killing of Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah threatens to deepen the conflict in the Middle East.
In an exclusive interview with India Today TV, Vali Nasr expressed scepticism about Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s potential plans to target Iran’s nuclear facilities. Nasr emphasised that while Israel could initiate an attack, it would not be able to dismantle Iran’s nuclear program entirely.
“Iran’s nuclear infrastructure is deeply entrenched and far more complex than Iraq’s Osirak plant in the 1980s. An attack might damage some sites but wouldn’t destroy the program,” Nasr explained, adding that such actions could escalate into a broader conflict involving the United States.
Here are the excerpts from the interview:
What do you think is Israel’s most likely response to Iran firing more than 200 missiles?
This is not a simple answer for either Israelis or the United States. They have to calibrate what they expect an Iranian counter reaction would be. I think the United States is perhaps advising Israel to retaliate in a manner that does not provoke further retaliation from Iran. And at the same time, also, Israel is busy with wars in both Gaza and Lebanon right now. And although it wants to retaliate against Iran for the missile attack, it does not want to open a third front with Iran at the same time.
What was the signalling in the missile strikes that Iran directed towards Israel? Iran is calling the missile attack a big success, Israel is saying nothing really happened – where does the reality lie?
Nobody has seen footage of those air bases, so we really don’t know. But Iran’s point was not to kill Israelis, because they also don’t want to provoke a larger war. Their point was to say they had the will and the capability to hit Israel. That is important, because in the Muslim world, and particularly in the Arab world, Iran is positioned as the only country that has the audacity to take on Israel.
Secondly, I think Iran’s aim is to say that enough of its missiles can get through the Iron Dome for Israelis to worry. And I think the target audience here is not the Israeli military, it’s the Israeli people who previously thought that the Iron Dome provided 100 per cent protection.
Are we heading towards a larger military escalation between Israel and Iran? And how is that likely to play out militarily?
I think the two are now heading towards some kind of military confrontation, maybe not immediately, but not in the very long future. They have now emerged as the two main great power rivals in the region. The rest of the region is basically bystanders right now. In the most important wars of the region, which is in Gaza and Lebanon right now, these are the two protagonists, and they are also increasingly confronting one another directly.
They may not be ready for an all-out war, but unless things change in the Middle East drastically and the United States is able to redirect the region towards de-escalation, starting with Gaza, then we’re heading somewhere very bad.
But, Israel has a tremendous amount of missile and air capability, but given its size and the number of soldiers it has and its current security situation, it’s not capable of invading Iran. At any rate, these two countries don’t have borders with each other. So the way in which this war would unfold is with missiles, sabotage, bombing from a distance, cyberattacks, but it ultimately will involve the United States.
Because the United States is in the region, it has said that it would defend Israel if it comes under attack, it has stepped up to intercede Iranian missiles as well as Hezbollah missiles in the past and, ultimately, at some level of the war, it may engage Iran directly. And then the war will spread to places like Iraq, the Red Sea and elsewhere.
The idea of Gulf stability, the rise of the Gulf, its tourism, industries, etc, has been backed on a relative peace that we’ve seen there, which actually has come as a consequence of normalisation of relations between the UAE, Saudi Arabia, and Iran. So a war with Israel threatens all of that.
The Gulf economies cannot be bystanders to a war, even if their governments don’t participate in it. And one reason for that is that a lot of American military bases are stationed in Gulf countries.
I don’t see a scenario in which the US would carry out bombing of Iran, for instance, without the bases from which those aeroplanes came becoming targets, or the economies where they are hosting those becoming targets. Already, Iran targeted air bases in Israel that it said were responsible for carrying out the bombing that killed Hassan Nasrallah. So, the same kind of model in the Gulf would mean Qatar, UAE, Kuwait, Oman and all of these countries would be targets. So that’s the worst-case scenario.
A lot is being said about Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu wanting to use this opportunity to take out Iran’s nuclear facilities. How likely is that scenario?
It is not realistic. Iran’s nuclear facilities are not like the Osirak nuclear power plant of Iraq in the 1980s, which is sitting above the ground, an easy target. They can hit some sites, but they will not destroy them. And once they do that, then essentially the United States will have to get into war.
Israel is in a position to start a war between the United States and Iran and itself and Iran, but Israel is not in a position to end the war. Israel is in a position to attack Iran’s nuclear facilities, but it’s not in a position to destroy Iran’s nuclear program.
In fact, if such an attack happened, the consequence would be that Iran would take its program deep underground, in its mountain ranges, in a way that bunker buster bombs cannot destroy them. It will spread them far and wide, farther to the east. And then it would probably come out of the Non-Proliferation Treaty and openly declare itself a nuclear state.
And then once Iran becomes nuclear, then you have to say Turkey, Saudi Arabia, UAE, the whole region will become nuclear. And that is a non-proliferation nightmare which, above all, will threaten Israel.
Israel right now is sitting in the middle of a region that is in disagreement with it over its policies in Lebanon and in Gaza and in the West Bank. Even those countries with which it has good relations are opposed to its policies. Does Israel really want to see several Arab countries and Turkey also being nuclear? So, it’s a course of satisfaction in the short run, but in the longer run it’s a strategic mistake by Israel to push Iran in that direction.
What’s your assessment on this question of whether, because of internal dissent, can Iran be pushed towards a change in regime?
I think that’s a very simplistic reading of it. I mean, firstly, even those who are opposed to the regime in Iran are not necessarily supporters of Israel. And it’s not a given that when they protest at their own government, when their government comes under threat, that they’re not, some of them at least, are not going to rally to the flag. So the idea of thinking of the population of another country as being willing to betray their own government in a moment of war and side with an aggressor, one who they are critical of by and large for his policies in Gaza and Lebanon and don’t view as a friend, is largely wishful thinking.
And then you have to say that even if the regime in Iran fell… You’re assuming that immediately a pro-Western, stable, democratic government is going to come to power, is going to be friends with Israel and America, and is going to basically toe the line. That may very well not be the case.
There are many, many other scenarios of the kind that we’ve seen happen in Lebanon, in Iraq, that would produce much worse nightmares and scenarios. Israel itself went into Lebanon in 1982 to destroy the Palestinian Liberation Organization, and it ended up creating Hezbollah, a far greater threat to it. And right now, even in Lebanon, it’s not in a position beyond killing Nasrallah and downgrading Hezbollah to produce anything positive in Lebanon.
The United States did the same thing in Iraq. So this is very facile thinking.
You said that Israel can push Iran and the United States into war. What’s your reading of Iran’s military capabilities at this moment, given its economic turmoil and economic sanctions?
Iran is not going to fight the United States with tanks the way Saddam Hussein did. It’s not going to fight it in a conventional military war. It may hit American targets with missiles, but ultimately the United States has to consider that it will have to invade Iran. It would have to do what it did in Iraq.
If the United States could fail in Iraq, does it really think it’s going to succeed in Iran? Hitting Iran to punish it is one thing, but in a war, how many American troops would it take to actually invade Iran and occupy Iran?
Israel may want a military solution to Iran, but it seems to me that the United States is not buying into that right now.
With the US elections little over a month away, could the turmoil in Iran and Israel potentially actually work to Donald Trump’s advantage?
Well, it depends on how big it gets. If you actually have a situation where the United States is becoming involved in war or Americans are being killed, and Americans have to actually consider the possibility of war, I think that that advantages Donald Trump over Kamala Harris, largely because of the biases about gender and race that exist in large parts of the United States. And also, because the election is not going to be decided by those who already know who they’re going to vote for. It’s going to be decided by undecided voters who may go one way or the other based on very, very last minute things.
And this issue is exactly perhaps why Israel feels that it has a vacuum in which it can push much harder. Because the Biden administration, fearful of reaction in the elections, is not putting its foot down on Israeli actions. In fact, for instance, it claimed that it didn’t even know or approve of Israel’s killing of Hassan Nasrallah.
My sense is that if this doesn’t escalate much further, the war issue in the Middle East will not be a big concern during the voting.
How far is Tehran from having a deliverable nuclear weapon which can be used against Israel or the United States or wherever?
They’re not near at all. Iran is very near to having enough fissile material for one bomb, but that’s only the fuel for it. Making a bomb is a whole different process. Being able to deliver it, because Iran actually doesn’t have an air force, so it has to be with missiles, is a whole different process. And then one bomb is not going to give you any protection, you need to have 30–40 bombs in order to be able to do that. And Iran is many, many years away from that.
Yes, it has the technology and the know-how to be able to, within a week or two, get to enough 90 per cent enriched uranium that is good for one bomb, but not beyond that.
To what extent has the recent success against Hamas, against Hezbollah, been able to turn around Benjamin Netanyahu’s fortunes?
I’m not an expert on Israeli politics, but my reading of it is that it has benefited him. He’s emerging as the Churchill of Israel- a wartime prime minister that has stood tough, has fought against enemies that the Israeli public is worried about.
And now his message to Israelis is that “I’m going to restore maximum security back to you, vis-a-vis Hamas, vis-a-vis Hezbollah, and vis-a-vis Iran”. That’s a tall order, but it is one that, for now, is benefiting him politically within Israel. And that’s also important because it means that Prime Minister Netanyahu, for now, has to stick to this course of action (against Hamas, Hezbollah, Iran).
Will Israel invade Lebanon again in a full-fledged fashion?
I think it’s being debated in Israel. A ground invasion involves many things. We saw yesterday that eight Israeli commandos were killed in Lebanon, which was a very, very immediate warning to the Israeli public, even more so than its government, that yes, aerial bombardment of Beirut and dropping massive bombs to kill Nasrallah is one thing, but actually putting your soldiers in a line of fire is another thing.
Secondly, invasions are expensive in terms of people and the economy. If you have to go into a country the size of Lebanon, you have to mobilise a lot more troops. Those troops have to be prepared to be there for a long period of time. That means that they were not going to be working in stores and businesses and companies inside Israel, and that the economy would be impacted. And this could be an open-ended war that could take months.
Look at the invasion of Gaza, its bombing has taken a year, and Gaza is still not done in Israel’s eyes. It hasn’t completely finished Hamas.
How does this end? Do you see this battle escalating? How could it potentially end?
Well, it can go on for a very long time, and it can get very bloody, and it could prove very costly to the Middle East. I think, ultimately, it requires the United States to step in. It has to essentially get to a point where Israel needs to declare victory and accept the ceasefire in Gaza. It needs to use the killing of Nasrallah and the downgrading of Hezbollah and declare victory.
I think you have to start by ending the conflicts that are ongoing right now. We have a number of wars that are happening in and around Israel after October 7– in Gaza, in Lebanon, and are now spreading to Iran and the Gulf. And the United States has been either unable or unwilling to actually stop these.
If you can’t even set a ceasefire in Gaza, it’s very difficult to see how this could end well, one way or the other. And I think the Middle East is entering a very dark phase that could potentially be very damaging.
And for countries like India, who are vested economically in the Gulf, in the Middle East, who are neighbours to the Middle East, it will impact some of their interests as well. And the same with China, same with Russia. A Middle East that falls into a complete sinkhole is going to be costly to the world as a whole.