MI6 Spymaster: Was Israel Serious About Regime Change in Iran? (Ft. Ronen Bergman & Mark Mazzetti)

Ahmadinejad is just one element of the larger legacy of this war and its impact on American-Israeli relations. Mossad sold the idea of this guy, this controversial figure, and the U.S. went along with it. That's just one sort of emblematic element of the failures around the planning. The United States got brought into this war that is inconclusive and is going poorly and is incredibly unpopular because of Israel. Donald Trump was a willing participant. The impact on American relations with Israel are going to be a legacy that's going to last for years. Hello and welcome to One Decision. I'm your guest co-host, John Rain. I'm your co-host, Sir Richard Dearlove, the former chief of MI6. And one note for our listeners about In Brief. We're going to be dispensing with that for the time being. And we're going to focus on interviewing the excellent guests that we are having on the podcast and devoting more time to listening to them. And on that, we have excellent guests with us here today. So let's get straight into the interview. Earlier this year, the U.S. and Israel launched Operation Epic Fury against Iran. And that was preceded by detailed war planning. And one particularly interesting element of that was planning around possible regime change. Now, New York Times reporters Mark Mazzetti and Ronan Bergman were part of the investigative team, which revealed a long-running Israeli campaign to recruit former Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad and to make him not only an intelligence asset, but also potentially a replacement ruler in Iran. How did the Mossad succeed in flipping this one-time fierce opponent of the state of Israel and fierce proponent of the Iranian nuclear program and also a Holocaust denier into an intelligence asset? Here to help us answer these questions and explain how the plan was put together and how it fell apart, I'm delighted to welcome Mark and Ronan themselves. Welcome to the show, Mark, and welcome back, Ronan. Let's start with the Ahmadinejad plot, if we can call it that, Mark. It would be really helpful for us and for listeners if you could just recap for us, what was this plot? And in particular, how did it start? And how on earth did the Israelis fix on Mahmoud Ahmadinejad as a potential placement in Tehran? The plan to use Ahmadinejad for some future government of Iran goes back many years, where, as we all know, the Israelis were thinking about a regime change in Iran for years, a decade, something that Netanyahu has talked about for so long. And the question was, what might that look like? Ahmadinejad is one of the perhaps most unlikely people, you might have thought, to be part of an Israeli plan for regime change. He famously was the hardline leader of Iran, famously anti-Israel, talked about wiping Israel off the map, denied the Holocaust, and was also a very instrumental part of building up Iran's nuclear program, which was the central threat to Israel. When Ronan and I first heard about this, we were shocked that the Israelis had sort of brought him in to an effort. But it seems to go back really a few years in terms of when the Israelis tried to groom Ahmadinejad. I think for a lot of people, their view of Ahmadinejad was that time when he was in office, as I said, this hardline leader. But once he was no longer president of Iran and he kind of fell out of the news, he did start to moderate his views and also tried to at least position himself, as something more of a moderate, or at least a critic of the regime. And this is around the time that Mossad started identifying him as someone, at least they could recruit someone who could be a source of information, not necessarily installed in a future government. And as we report, the grooming process took several years, and it happened under the guise of these trips that Ahmadinejad took outside of Iran to Guatemala. And to Budapest. And during these trips is when Mossad met him and basically convinced him to become an asset. And this was before there was really even a plan in place to install him, because there was no real opportunity for regime change until the Trump administration came along. And once they'd taken that decision then, Mark, to groom him for something more than being just an intelligence asset, it took us through the plans that they then made around this critical period, the war plannings going on in Washington and in Tel Aviv. What was, where did Ahmadinejad and his candidacy fit in there? Was that something that Netanyahu promised Trump? Did he serve that up as an argument for sponsoring regime change to make it sound more attractive, maybe more certain than it really was? Yes. So the critical period of time when the decision, making happened about the current war was January and February of this year. Obviously, January was during the time of the protests in the street protests in Iran when Trump tweeted about coming to the rescue and that he said help was on the way. The key moment in the decision making happened the following month in February when Netanyahu comes to Washington and basically they hash out the plan for the war. And during that meeting in the White House, the Mossad director, David Barnea, is on a video into the White House and he's kind of laying out a regime change plan, part of which involved Ahmadinejad. Now, this was surprising to some American officials, right, who hadn't thought about Ahmadinejad in quite some time. And some were quite struck that this guy who they sort of had this, this vision of or perception of that was sort of frozen in amber from years earlier might actually be an Israeli asset and someone they were considering. Now, during this time, Ahmadinejad is under house arrest in Tehran. He is someone who the Iranians were suspicious of. They didn't trust necessarily what he was up to. They didn't trust his followers. And so the plan had to be getting him out of house arrest, springing him from captivity, so to speak, during the early days of the war. And then the Mossad would have him in custody and then he would be used at some future time as a part of a government that takes over after the collapse of the regime. But there's one big point I want to sort of close on this, is that it just shows there were really very shockingly different goals of this war between the Israelis and the Americans. I mean, the Americans were all over the place. You listen to the Trump and his advisers. It wasn't clear what they wanted. Was it regime change? Was it just degradation of the nuclear program? Clearly, the Israelis had a regime change idea in place and they tried to sell it to the Americans. When I hear the story and listen to your account of it, one thing I find, you know, as a former professional intelligence officer, I find it hard to accept that, the IRGC aren't consciously on the other end of this. And, you know, given Ahmadinejad's sort of prominence as a public figure, the fact that he has IRGC security or some sort of security when he travels, he doesn't travel alone. Are we absolutely sure that this, I'm not saying it's a double agent case, but what I'm saying is that there must be some IRGC knowledge of what the hell's going on. And they're talking to Ahmadinejad, about his contacts with the Israelis as well. I mean, is that feasible? It is a central question that we're still trying to answer. Your impulse is, of course, right, which is how would they not know what game might Ahmadinejad be playing, right? And let me just sort of add one other set of facts to this, which is still part of the mystery, which might fuel some of your suspicions as well, which is that after the war begins, when there is a strike, an Israeli military strike on Ahmadinejad's compound that kills some of his bodyguards that have been keeping him under house arrest, and Mossad picks him up, takes him away to a safe house, right? Sometime shortly after that, maybe within days, Ahmadinejad leaves. He leaves Mossad custody and goes back to the Iranian custody that he had been under. Why? Why does he do that? Surely he might've known the risk, the risks of that. And then he shows up weeks later at the funeral of the slain Supreme Leader, seemingly under close supervision. if not flanked by bodyguards, and so basically back under arrest. So was this part of it all along? Were they playing a game? Was he feeding intelligence back to the Iranians about what the Israelis' plan is? That's still something that we need to better understand, and I'll let Ronan weigh in on this too. I must share something that happened to me with one of your former colleagues in your profession that you dealt with. An Israeli, high-ranked Israeli official who was the chief of Mossad London station years ago. And he called me after one of the stories that Mark and I and some other colleagues at the New York Times published about Ahmadinejad. He says, ah, Ronan, you don't believe this nonsense. I said, describe the nonsense. The nonsense is that Mossad was pretending or saying it would be able to topple the regime in Iran, and crown Ahmadinejad, or whether I believe Mossad was able to do that. So he said, no, no, no, the former, you don't believe that they actually said that. I said, I'm sorry, I understand maybe the agency has changed since your time, but they did. They presented a very, very clear goal at the first line of the presentation that was shown to the cabinet, related to the English version to President Trump, which was that the goal of this war, the one single goal of this war is. Yes, to topple the regime. To think that as an intelligence agency, whichever intelligence agency you present, can topple the regime in a country of 90 million people, a size like Western Europe. You need to have a lot of confidence in order to do that. And many, many, many answers to many, many questions that professionals would raise and say, listen, but how this works, how that works. Some of the questions were presented in the ongoing discussion prior, prior to the attack, in the month before, by military intelligence. They even wrote a letter to the prime minister saying, we don't think it works. But I think that at both sides of the Atlantic, the regime is of deterrence towards government officials. They fear to express their opinion because if they continue to express their opinion, it contradicts the one of the lead that they will be fired. So you see the whole, I think, the whole system is like a total collapse of all the oversights and counter-ideas and balances and checks and mature grown-ups in both sides, but mainly in Israel, because Israel came with a plan that led to such a catastrophe. Ronan, can I pick up on that? Mark gave us this really fascinating image of Mark Bonnet briefing in to senior officials in the U.S. this plan, and a lot of the U.S. officials were surprised. Would not a lot of. Iranians have been surprised if they knew that that ex-ruler was going to be Ahmadinejad, in that he had some support, but it was fairly boutique. Some people have described it as a sort of cult around him. It wasn't a broad basis, and he wasn't really an alternative to the regime. So was there an air of desperation in choosing him as a potential candidate? First of all, he was recruited before the plan materialized and was accepted by the cabinet, potentially, but also someone who could supply information and also influence, maybe. Second, I think that when the cabinet ministers in Israel heard that this is Ahmadinejad at the last moment, they were surprised. But, you know, for intelligence professionals to recruit someone who feels that he's not getting what he deserves, which means to be the president after the Legislative Council disqualified him three times from running, bitter, frustrated, depart away from the Supreme Leader, was like a sort of a father figure for him. So all of that makes, I think, a perfect candidate. Someone that has beat the past with believing that he can be much more in the future. Theoretically, if you had Mossad planners sitting in my chair now, and I'm not sitting. Mark knows the place very well, and I'm sitting not far away. In my home, not far away from Mossad headquarters. So if I just cross the road and I ask them for a comment, I assume that they will say, no, but Ahmadinejad was not the only one. It was supposed to be a coalition from within the regime that under the heavy pressure of the other Israeli steps, killing the Supreme Leader, the Kurdish invasion, massive influence propaganda campaign, and destroying some of the infrastructure, the energy infrastructure of Iran. All of that will create the vacuum. It will create the vacuum into which such a council of leaders can proliferate into. But again, there were so many other questions. So it collapsed. In a way, Mossad is right, or Mossad chief at that time is right, when saying, we didn't fail. They didn't let us do it. They stopped it at the beginning. So it was not tested. In a way, it's right, because it collapsed, or it collapsed at least in the mind and soul of the person. The person who makes the shots, the golden soft, President Trump, it collapsed on the third day. So did Mossad really believe that they had recruited Ahmadinejad? I mean, I think that's the key question. You know as well as I do, it's not unusual for heads of intelligence services to meet some pretty odd people in a fashion which is deniable. You know, we've all done it. We've all been there. But to actually believe that they had recruited the guy is a first. It's a further step on. Just let's be clear about this. You're saying that they, if they had thought that, they thought that they were controlling the case, not the IRGC. Absolutely. I am giving you what they said they believed. But this is in real time. And not just that they believed. They made the whole, the Israeli system following them, and then the American administration and the military following them. I think Mark said rightly that. If you have more goals to the war than American officials you ask, they sort of fitted the goals retrospectively, that one of the goals even higher than the nuclear project was destroying the Iranian almighty Navy. Because they destroyed the Navy, so they added that retrospectively. But I think that at the beginning of that, though many, many caveats that many people were very, very, I would say, doubtful about the chances of success, they were very, very doubtful about the chances of this to go, to materialize. But there was a goal, and the goal was to topple the regime. This is what convinced Trump. He thought this is another Venezuela. This is what Bibi Netanyahu, Netanyahu, Israeli Prime Minister, brought to Trump. This is what Mossad chief, as Mark described, on February 11th, when he was on the conference, a secure conference call with the Situation Room. This is what he promised, including. Trump, in the presentation. And so, of course, they believed that they could do that, and they believed that the main asset is in their heads, it's all the way. Do you think that that was the tip-up for President Trump? Do you think that was the thing that decided him to sign up to the goal of regime change? Whether this was convincing to Trump, ultimately having the idea of Ahmadinejad or the 18th, that there was someone in place for after the regime? Yeah, so they'd always been out there, the prospect of. But he was sort of a joke figure. And then suddenly, the Mossad, no less, are serving up a, quote, recruited former head of government as a light candidate. That's quite a thing. Was that what tipped Trump into signing up to that objective, the regime change objective? So I don't think we know yet how much of a factor that they had this idea of Ahmadinejad in their pocket was convincing to Trump. I think. As is always difficult knowing sort of what things are most, you know, in Trump's mind, what are the things that sort of are the biggest factors in his decision-making. It sometimes varies by the day or the minute, right? I think that there was, he was quite convinced that the Israelis had a plan. And I think he was quite convinced that in the first days of the war, that plan could be executed. So if you just look at the language, if his rhetoric of, as we've all said, he's all over the map in terms of what this war is about, right? The very first day, he comes out and he gives a speech. And this is after they believe that the Supreme Leader has been killed, right? And he used rhetoric that he never used basically since, which is that the people of Iran should basically take power and rise up. And, you know, we've given you this opportunity. It is your government to take over. And, you know, maybe not yet because it's still dangerous, but he clearly saw in mind that this war would end with a new government. And he clearly saw that there were elements of the Israeli plan that were going to be executed. And maybe he hadn't thought too deeply about it, but whether it was Ahmadinejad or Ahmadinejad, a coalition of Ahmadinejad and others, but there would be something in place that would replace, the Supreme Leader and the regime. So he was convinced by something. Perhaps it was just Netanyahu's presentation and his own confidence. Clearly, he he believed that the war of the previous year, that so-called 12 day war, was, you know, a shocking success, obliterating the nuclear program so much so that they needed to do it again nine months later. Right. But it was that plus going one step further, sort of finishing the job. So he clearly had in mind that there was a plan in place and that meeting was, you know, quite convincing, if not to the CIA director, John Radcliffe, at that time, it was pretty convincing to Trump. And may I add that, you know, Trump himself, I think two weeks or three weeks later, when walking the British premier of being slow. And not adapting to the speed of the events. He said that when he asked a British carrier to join in, the British prime minister said, I need my assistance to get around this next week or something like that. And that he recalls telling him, Trump saying to the British prime minister, what are you talking about next week? This is going to be end in three days or four days. So what war can end? And after a few days, unless you have a very, very specific target you want to destroy, which is not the case here, or you change the regime and you crown someone like you, someone that, you know, obeys your orders. And in one swoop, you solve all the problems. I see still, I think, a question mark, if I can allow myself to interpret on Sir Richard's face. He doesn't believe that. Mossad fell into that. I think maybe to try to explain, which is also what I said to Sir Richard, one of your former colleagues, who called and said, you cannot believe that Mossad actually believed that. I think that what happened to Mossad was in a way that they started to believe what is said about them in the media. The pager operation, which was mainly a Mossad operation. That ensued by many other intelligence and operational successes against Hezbollah and against Iran, attributed, most of them attributed by the media to Mossad. Many of them were military intelligence. But the bottom line is, I think some people in Mossad started to believe that if they are able to do something like the pager operation, they can topple a regime. Now, the pager operation is very unique. Very significant, you know, sort of. But, of course, something that is a mind-blowing to anyone who will think about the magnitude and the challenges of such a project. But yet, it's far away from toppling a regime in such a country. And I think some people in the Israeli administration sort of got confused. But isn't this, Ronan, still an ongoing story? What I mean by that is the basic presumption is that. Israeli coverage, intelligence coverage in Iran is pretty remarkable, you know, whether they're running Ahmadinejad or not. And we've seen the evidence that their coverage probably is rather good. So, currently, they must have significant insight into the state of the regime. And I cannot believe that the Iranian regime are not arguing amongst themselves about whether to do a deal or not. So, there would. There would be the IRGC hardliners who can, you know, knock out a ship in the Straits of Hormuz when they want to stop the negotiations. But there are definitely, must be definitely those who are saying, hang on a moment, we need a deal of some sort here. We can't go on indefinitely. I suppose what I feel is that your story, which is very remarkable and very interesting, is really an unfinished project. Because I still think that there is hope maybe somewhere in Washington, maybe it's in the CIA. And there is hope. Somewhere in Israel, that they will eventually get a different regime because of the strains now, particularly the economic strains operating on Iran. Of course, as I said, the Mossad position, according to the previous director, who retired a few weeks ago, was that this is an ongoing, not just ongoing situation, it's an ongoing plan. The plan is still there. Maybe it will come to fruition sooner or later. And maybe that said, the Mossad plan or the Israeli-U.S. plan was not about doing something in a way that maybe in a year or 10 years it will happen. They were about doing that in a week or two weeks. But the basis, the essence of the whole plan was to encourage a Kurdish invasion. Kurdish invasion cannot happen unless there's an aerial coverage of the U.S. and Israel. And this can happen only during both times. So this is about a very, very short time. And the fact is, whoever's fault, but the fact is, it did not happen. But, of course, the regime has extreme, extreme challenges. And I think Israeli intelligence is monitoring the differences in opinion. They're also monitoring this process or this ongoing behavior where the negotiators, Paribas or Arakchi, say to the U.S., we agree to this or that. But then comes a note or. Some kind of a sign from this pipeline that at the end is supposed to be Mujtaba. And I think that there's not even a clarity inside Iran by all the officials. Who is at the other side of this line? Is it Wahidi? Is it Mujtaba? How much of the decision-making process is making itself? But anyway, after some agreement is reached, he comes and says, no, reject that. And it creates a lot of mistrust and, of course, a lot of frustration. It leads the negotiation to, I mean, what is this now? Of course, in a push. Mark mentioned other elements in the plan. Clearly, this was the most eye-catching element. But I think, Mark, one of those was also Mossad's intention to ally with the Kurds and encourage the Kurds to mobilize. I'm very interested in your views on that as how credible that was. Because it goes to the wider credibility of basically a Mossad. It's a pitch on regime change. And as you were saying, Richard and Ronan, you know, this is likely to come around again. If part of your pitch is, well, we can raise the Kurds in the north and they can march on Tehran. I mean, how credible is that? How credible in the sense of, like, if President Trump would give the order, would they have marched into Iran? Yeah. Well, it raises the question, OK, if you want to do a regime change war without any ground troops, how do you do that? And is that in itself even possible or feasible, right? If you want to do this war to topple the government but not commit anyone on the ground, how might you do it? So they look for who are their proxy forces, who are their ground troops. And they're looking around. And the Israelis come upon this idea of the Kurds, who by no estimation of anyone we spoke to were going to march into Tehran and take over the government. The Kurdish. The so-called Kurdish option involved at the same time of airstrikes by the U.S. and Israel around Iran. There would be focused airstrikes by Israel in the northern part of the country that would sort of pave the way for a ground invasion by the Kurds, who would come in and basically claim territory, right? They would not be marching on the capital. They are not the next government of Iran, but they are claiming territory. They are. They are tying up the Iranian military, the IRGC. They are basically what they call a force multiplier, right, in the military to make it even more difficult for the Iranian military. Now, that sounds good in theory. The Israelis had been arming, had been secretly or not so secretly arming the Kurds for a period of time, running weapons into Kurdistan for this eventuality. But, of course, the Kurds are a very complicated actor. The idea of them taking over parts of Iran doesn't sit too well with other governments in the Middle East who also get a vote, who might also be American allies. So the question is, what exactly happened? And even that we're still trying to sort of get to the bottom of because very quickly, within days of the war, as Ronan alerted to earlier, President Trump basically comes out and said, yeah, we're not doing that. That this is not a feasible option, having the Kurds come in. You know, they'll get slaughtered. It's going to be complicated. It's complicating for other reasons. And one of those reasons is that the leader of a critical American ally, Turkey, President Erdogan, doesn't want the Kurds to be flexing their muscle in Iran. And he calls President Trump and and makes his views known. Right. So whether this. Had not sort of been on Trump's mind, it had not dawned on him that this would be a complicating factor when he blessed. this Israeli regime change plan. Again, that's something we still want to know. But that's one of the things that short-circuited this other element, John, as you mentioned, of what was the, quote, regime change plan. Mark, I mean, that's fascinating. But, you know, Erdogan would have gone berserk over the Kurdish issue. I mean, it wouldn't have just been an objection. It would be far stronger than that. And if you cast your mind back to the war in Iraq, the original plan was for the British army to go in to northern Iraq through Kurdistan. And the Turkish general staff just said, absolutely no way. And, you know, it never happened, which is why, you know, the British army went in through Basra in the end. And so we've been around that circuit exactly. And I just cannot believe that Trump's advisers didn't understand the sensitivity of arming the Kurds, of all people. You know, it just wasn't appropriate. practical thing to do. And I would have thought that the Israelis would have understood that pretty well as well. I think Netanyahu, first of all, throughout his very, very long time of being by the wheel, he sort of decimated much of the opposition or anyone who can challenge his authority, even inside the administration. So not someone competing to be a prime minister, but the others were intimidated, fearing, deterred. Trump speaking out. So that's, that's one. And I think that he tried to avoid any kind of confrontation before October 7. But after October 7, he changed and he became a gambler. And I think the one thing he was gambling on was the dynamic. So in June, June 25, he went for full scale war against Iran, declaring that Israel wants to destroy the Iranian nuclear project. But knowing that, you know, they're going to start a war against Iran, they're going to start a war against Iran. But Netanyahu said, with the dynamic, with success, he will want to join. And he was right. He bet, he gambled on the dynamic, and he was right. And I think the same thing happened here. It was so far from closing all the different questions and the coordination and the different agencies and militaries that are involved. But Netanyahu, sort of showed that his way, he didn't wait, he saw an opportunity, which was the American military buildup in the Gulf, convinced Trump, and believed that the dynamic would lead the regime to fall, and him, Mr. Netanyahu, to win the elections. He didn't get, he didn't go so far with this. And we see the outcome here. And by the way, the outcome also in inside Israeli domestic politics, because he lost, Netanyahu lost much of the voters that said that they are going to vote for him before. And I think that you see signs in his behavior that he is expecting a loss in the coming elections. One other element here, which I think is still sort of underexplored about the total, the failure and planning on this war was the misalignment between the sort of planning and the reality, right? So events are happening on the ground in Iran with much greater speed than the planning could account for. Netanyahu and Trump meet in December at Mar-a-Lago to sort of begin planning for a war that was going to take place sometime in the spring, maybe early summer of this year, right? But then, you know, history gets in the way, right? The street protests then create this greater urgency for action. And this idea that there might, that the regime might be weak, right? That this might be ripe for regime change because the Iranian people are rising up. So that then sets in motion, okay, let's accelerate, let's accelerate the planning. We have an opportunity act, but there's nothing in January when the protests are happening that would have really allowed the war to happen. There was no American military presence, no significant American military presence in the region, not enough to carry out a war. Nobody was ready. But by the time they were ready, in late, late February, right? The rebellion had been crushed in Iran, right? The street protests had been brutally put down, mass slaughter of people on the streets. And so that window was gone. The regime had exerted its authority and the opposition was weak. So by the time this regime change plan was launched in late February, early March, the conditions weren't there anymore. And I think that's something that's still, we need to sort of, better understand and to see how by the time, really a matter of weeks, that window, if there ever really was a window to change and topple the government in Iran, it was gone by the time the war started. Mark, that's a really helpful point. Thank you. And I wanted to just widen this out slightly now and discuss, if you like, the legacy of the Ahmadinejad plot in the U.S.-Israeli relationship over Iran. So, what has it done to that relationship? Has it left a legacy of distrust? Did it introduce more friction into the relationship? Or do you think, you know, looking out in the coming months, that the U.S.-Israel will somehow manage their way through this? Bearing in mind, those couple of months include the midterms in the U.S. and elections in Israel. What's the legacy of this been? The legacy is not yet written entirely. I think, but Ahmadinejad is just one element of the larger legacy of this war and its impact on American-Israeli relations. The idea that, you know, Mossad sold the idea of this guy, this controversial figure, this, you know, frankly, become sort of comical figure in the United States who was mocked in Saturday Night Live skits, etc., right? That he was the guy who they had in mind to put in place and the U.S. went along with it, that's just what. That's just one sort of emblematic element of the failures around the planning, right? And the idea that on a larger scale, which is playing out right now, this idea that the United States got brought into this war that is inconclusive and is going poorly and is incredibly unpopular because of Israel, right? And this is not the case necessarily of, you know, Israel dragging the United States in because Donald Trump was a willing participant, right? He saw, as Ronan said, as Ronan said earlier, he saw this idea of what had happened a year earlier in Iran. He saw Venezuela. He thought this would be quick and easy and that this would sort of cement his legacy, doing something that George Bush never did, Joe Biden never did, right? He was going to once and for all end this regime in Iran. Ronald Reagan never did it and he thought it would be easy. But it is also the exact opposite of what he said he would do as president, right? He had a base of support. He has a base of support of people who were sold on an idea that the wars of the post 9-11 wars in the Middle East had been a failure, had been costly, had dragged the United States in places it shouldn't go. And in part, Israel was to blame for that. Whether that's reality or myth, that was what they believe. And Donald Trump just confirmed that for a lot of people and is losing support in the process. So, John, you asked about the legacy. And I think it's something that we're going to be talking about for a long time. But the impact on American relations with Israel are going to be a legacy that's going to last for years. And we're seeing it in American politics now. One of, I think, the most important barometers of that will be two months from now when elections in the United States are going to be in part decided on, in some places, on the United States. This war. And what are candidates' views and beliefs about support for Israel, which is front and center in American politics right now? And given how much both of you have seen close up of this relationship operating under the stress of extreme security threats and war, do you think that Israel effectively manipulates certain groups of people? Do you think that Israel actually manipulates certain groups of people? In order to meet its security agenda? I think that we still need to know more about what happened in that meeting on February 11th. And what exactly were the figures that were given to the president. But I think that this is not in order to relieve Prime Minister Netanyahu from his historical responsibility for that part of the war, hopefully the last part of the war, meaning the second war with Iran, as much as for the whole war, and as much as his share, his major share, profound share, in the reasons that led to October 7th, a strategic surprise. But, you know, he did not meet with President Trump alone. There were advisors, there were counselors, there were other people around President Trump, and President Trump himself, And if these advisers only spoke out very minorly or didn't do what they needed, or if it was President Trump, because this is how the American system works, and he is the Commander-in-Chief of the Armed Forces, and said, I heard you, but I completely disagree with all the objections, and I go with my friend Bibi, then at the end it was his decision. I asked one of the high-ranked intelligence officials that was present in the discussions inside Israeli intelligence prior to the attack, and he talked about the self-confidence that Mossad officials brought to the meeting, that they can do that. They said, if the military would do as we asked in the first 100 hours, so killing the Supreme Leader, killing other leaders, opening the aerial corridor, the corridor for the Kurdish invasion, we take it from there, and we are able to topple the regime. And I asked this official who was present, I said, like, why didn't anyone stood up and say, what the hell are you talking about? And the same goes to the people present in the Oval Office or the Situation Room presentation. The way that these two administrations, the Israeli and the American, is dictated more than any period before in history by the personalities, and the difficulties of the two people in charge, they fit each other. I'm not sure that they fit how an administration or a system works, and we see the outcome. At the moment, what is the sort of mood of the Iranian people? I mean, are they completely intimidated into silence because of the brutality of the suppression of the last uprising? Because, I mean, clearly, this is not a normal war in a way, because we know that, you know, the Iranian people are clearly very unhappy with their current administration or government. But are they powerless? The Israelis must have a finger on this pulse quite significantly. What do they, you know, is your reading at the moment that they have any optimism at all, or have they got themselves into a sort of dead-end street militarily? I'm not an expert with Iran Domestic, so what I'm saying is basically what is reflected by Israeli intelligence capabilities inside Iran. I think there is, of course, massive resentment. Resentment is nothing in the world that fits this, but hatred towards the regime. The massacre in January, of course, was just on top of everything that was there before, but it gave a very fresh look into the horrors that this regime is conducting. On the other hand, I think that there was, there was hope when Trump said help is on its way. There was hope that help would be on its way. And that hope ended with Trump signing on the sort of MOU, the ceasefire, and the feeling that of some people, or many people in Iran, that instead of help is on its way, what they got was help to the regime because this only give better force, such an MOU, if ever executed, will give just, you know, relief of sanctions. And basically a recognition of the American administration in the current regime in Iran. So they are very much, they hate the regime, but they're extremely frustrated and angry with the U.S. And I think also disappointed by Israel that Israel recruited Ahmadinejad. You know, that's the person who sent the police and the arms forces to kill them in the streets in 2009. So they basically, they feel betrayed by everybody. Ronan, do you think, and Mark too, is there a deal between the U.S. and Iran that the Israelis would accept or are the ever persuasive Mossad going to weigh in on every single deal and maybe wreck it? I think you don't need the Mossad. You have, as long as Netanyahu is in power, he's calling the shots. And he will say to any deal, as he said before, he said to the JCPOA in 2015, he said, there's no like this, there should not be a deal with Iran. And I think that so, there's so far the gap between the, I would say the U.S. minimal terms for a deal and the maximum that Iran is willing to give, at least for now, not bridgeable. So of course that between Israel and Iran, I don't see something that the U.S. and Iran will agree to that Israel will feel that it's not endangering its national security. And I think the question is, would it matter, right? Would Israel's objection to a deal matter? You know, Netanyahu is so out of favor among Trump's circle of advisors and the president himself to a degree that there would be this question of, well, who cares if Bibi hates this deal, right? And he's fighting for his own political survival now in Israel. And we, the United States, have to get out of this war. Now that's, of course, this is just easier said than done, right? Setting Israel's objections aside, is there a deal that the Iranians would agree to who hold so much of the leverage now? And the Trump administration could at least sell as a something of a victory or, I mean, they can spin it any way they want, but it's hard to see any deal that would come away as a, you know, unalloyed victory out of this war for the United States and Israel. But something that at least the president could sell. And the objections that Netanyahu might have are secondary right now in Washington because, you know, of this view that, you know, among some, whether it's reality or not, that the U.S. bought a bill of goods here that the Israelis were selling and it didn't turn out well. Mark Ronan, thank you very much for getting towards the end of our fascinating conversation. It's been terrific talking to you on this intriguing subject. But I have to ask you one question, which we ask all our guests. What is the one decision that you are watching in the weeks and months to come? Well, I will say that one that is quite, quite urgent will be that this sort of decision on the new phase of the war is being executed by the Trump administration, which is this massive economic sanctions as a way to try to bring the Iranians to their knees in ways that the war itself hasn't. So this is what is happening. The Trump administration's new strategy this week and in the weeks to come is to bring what they have called maximum pressure, which is huge economic sanctions that will cripple Iran's economy and make the Iranians rethink this idea of whether there should be a deal or not. And frankly, there is this deja vu to what is happening this week to what has happened years past. Recall the first Trump administration. The first Trump administration got out of the nuclear deal signed by Obama because Trump said it was a bad deal, right? And he exerted what was called, quote, maximum pressure, which was crippling economic sanctions, which did what? Get Iran to increase, accelerate its nuclear program to get into a position where the Trump administration decided that there needed to be a war because the nuclear program had been accelerated so much. And here we are in a war that's not going well. And what is our last best gasp? Crippling economic sanctions. So, you know, we're all, you know, color everyone skeptical about what this might be, but this is, this is the decision this week that is going to have an impact on the next phase of the war. Mark, thank you. Ronan, any thoughts? Well, not in the terms of the first, the coming week, but coming weeks, I think the most important decision is going to be taken, going to be taken by, on October 27, and this is by the Israeli public, who is going to be Israeli next prime minister. I have a personal edge here because I live in Israel, but I think this will have a profound impact, not just on the history of Israel, but the history of the region, this way or the other. And this is, this is by far the most important elections in the history of the country. And do you think that Bibi will lose? I made some bets in the past on this issue, and I'm not going to lose again. So I take the fifth. Ronan, Mark, thank you. And we're glad you didn't take the fifth on our other questions. Only about the future. Look forward to seeing you again. Bye-bye. Great talking. Thank you. Thank you very much. Well, Richard, a fascinating conversation on a quite bizarre sounding plot, but one with wide consequences. I mean, on the plot itself and on the consequences, what was it that you took away from that? Well, I still find it pretty hard to believe that Mossad could approach that relationship with Ahmadinejad with a degree of what I would describe as naivety to think that they had recruited him. But Ronan seems pretty insistent that that was the position as they understood it. So I think that's the first point that I find striking. The second point that I find particularly disconcerting is the speed with which Netanyahu persuaded Trump apparently that regime change was literally a pusher. When it clearly never would have been. I think the third point is I think this story is unfinished because the. a lot to be played out. The war hasn't really come to an end. Okay, Trump's current position is maximum economic pressure, but I just wonder whether that is a bit of a distraction and that there is a further kinetic or military episode to be fought out. I've always wondered why there wasn't an American initiative to take Karg Island. If you really want to damage the Iranian economy, you take Karg Island. And I would have thought that that could be done. Okay, it's not boots on the ground, it's boots on an island. It's heavily defended, but I think it could be done in a pretty clinical fashion by the US military. We've seen how formidable they could be. So there's an awful lot here. And I suppose the fourth issue really, is these two crucial elections. You've got the midterms in November in America, the Democrats are in disarray. But on the other hand, there's a lot of opposition to Trump. And it's not clear in Israel either, because I think Ronan would have given us a steer if he had been confident that Netanyahu would lose. So there's a huge amount wrapped up in this discussion, which is potent. And so I think it's important that we think about the future. And certainly going to determine aspects of the news between now and Christmas time. I certainly agree with you on that, Richard. There were elements of the plot, which sounded a little bit more circumstantial. Ahmadinejad had been out there for a long time as a critic. I guess that naturally drew him to the attention of those looking for an alternative. But I was trying just to imagine what that conversation was like, between the head of Mossad, Bonaire, and Ahmadinejad in maybe a hotel room in Budapest. I mean, is that something, given your background, that you could illuminate? It struck me as an extraordinary, but not entirely improbable, use of a head of an intelligence service. Quite risky. Yeah, I mean. What do you think? Well, it certainly occurred to me in my career, I remember a very discreet meeting with Shavit, who had been foreign minister and then became president of Georgia. And I certainly remember having meetings with him for reasons that I think people could imagine, given what was happening to the former Soviet Union at that point in time. I suppose the most famous, well-publicized meeting that I had with Gaddafi in the desert outside Sirti in Libya, when we were discussing with him Libya's disarmament. As head of an intelligence organization, you find yourself in some pretty strange situations. I think those two I can freely mention and talk about, maybe others that I should be more discreet about. I don't find that surprising at all that the head of Mossad flies to Budapest for that sort of assignment. But what I do find very strange in this story. is someone like Ahmadinejad dumping his own mind as his own security. That somehow doesn't ring very true to me. And I would have thought that, you know, the IRGC would have stuck to him like a leech if they were suspicious of his behavior. And then, you know, if you read the full story, there are these two visits, a manufactured visit to Budapest and another one to Guatemala. I still don't take the whole story quite at face value. So, arguably, he was on a long leash, but a leash nonetheless. I think so, possibly. Maybe on a long leash and out of control. And the IRGC gambling and seeing what they could get out of it, but in fact not really controlling. So, I mean, the human element in this story is probably quite important. And I think the other point, historically, is that, you know, the IRGC are pretty sophisticated and good at handling quite complex intelligence issues. I think we professionals understand and know that. Yeah, I think between them and the Ministry of Internal Security, you would have thought they'd closed down pretty tightly on a character like Ahmadinejad. But now that we've given our comments, it's time to turn to our audience. We've had some terrific audience responses on, in particular, the episode with Tim Weiner, who did a pretty bleak assessment of the current state of the CIA. We had one comment from MacDibbon, who wrote to us with a note of optimism, citing the historic example, Richard, which will resonate with you, where after World War II, the British intelligence services were, quote, "absolutely rotten with Soviet spies, Burgess, McLean and Blunt. But this revelation shocked the UK and also the Allies, including the US. Nevertheless, the relationship recovered and trust was rebuilt, unquote." Our commentator hopes that this will be the same for the US. Richard, do you think that's right, after all the bad press? In fact, it comes good in the end. Well, I think I've said this before. You learn from your disasters. Well, if you're a sensible organization, you do learn from your disasters. There's no question that after the penetration of Blake and Philby, there was a massive change. And really, the tables were turned. And I would say that the balance of advantage in the latter stages of the Cold War were generally to Western intelligence, and in some cases to MI6 in particular. And a lot of some of those successes like Penkovsky, Gordievsky have been well publicized historically. But there's a lot of other stuff which has not been publicized and won't be. But on the other hand, you know, if you've had a disaster, you can recover from it if you, as it were, understand the lessons and take full account of them and then reorganize and reassemble your forces. So yes, I agree. I guess it's as true for intelligence services as anybody, that you can be redeemed by future performance. Thank you, Richard, for that. And secondly, Tony P., raises the interesting question, whether or not there's a coincidence between the drawdown of US naval assets in the Far East for Epic Fury, which we've just been discussing, and on the other hand, a reported cyber leak from within the Tianjin National Supercomputing Center in China, which suggested that there were weaknesses and limitations in the People's Liberation Army armaments. So these two ice elated events, or is there some coincidence between a drawing down of US assets and the revealed weaknesses of Chinese assets? I don't know, Richard, what do you think about that? Yeah, I'm not sure I could comment on that. I think all I would say is, despite the massive buildup of the PLA, particularly in terms of its own naval capacities, I think it still has some very, very fundamental weaknesses. And if you follow internal events in China, you will know that Xi Jinping has changed massively the general staff of the PLA. I think 18 or 19 of the senior generals and admirals have been shifted in the last 18 months to two years. My own feeling is, or my theory about the PLA in particular, is that going on there, that it's structurally weak, and that the new appointments probably have weakened it further in terms of command and control and experience. So interesting revelations which correlate with the probable reality too. Richard, thank you for that. And thanks to our two listeners for writing in. If you have a comment or a question, then please do leave us a YouTube comment or email us at [email protected]. And that's all for this episode. Please do join us every Thursday for more exciting conversations about world events that we hope goes beyond the usual headlines. You can email us at [email protected]. Please subscribe to One Decision on YouTube so you never miss out on a conversation which puts the global news in a broader context. For more conversations with leading decision makers and thinkers, please check out OneDecision.com, where you'll find additional commentaries, conversations, and more. Thank you. I'm John Ray. Thank you for listening.