Has the Iranian Threat Been Neutralized? | Michael Doran

[RUSH TRANSCRIPT BELOW] To understand Middle East dynamics, I always count on Michael Doran, Director of the Middle East Center at the Hudson Institute.

“For the first time, Jan, in history, Israel and the United States have taken military action together. This is totally new,” he tells me.

We sat down to discuss what has now been dubbed ‘The 12-Day War’ and how Middle East political realities have been transformed.

“One of the most amazing things about the Israeli attack against the Iranians is that they totally took the Iranians by surprise. Scientists were in their beds. Commanders all got together, thinking they were safe. That is just remarkable,” says Doran.

How did the strikes on Iran change the geopolitical landscape? Was World War III ever a real possibility? And has the threat of a nuclear Iran been neutralized … for good?

There’s still a little lingering doubt that maybe some of the enriched uranium was squirreled away by the Iranians in some other secret site,” says Doran. “Right now, Iran is a nuclear power of indeterminate status. So, we have to wait and determine.”

Views expressed in this video are opinions of the host and the guest, and do not necessarily reflect the views of The Epoch Times.

RUSH TRANSCRIPT

Jan Jekielek:

Michael Doran, such a pleasure to have you back on American Thought Leaders. 

Michael Doran:

Great to be here. 

Mr. Jekielek:

Michael, tell me what you think is happening with Trump’s foreign policy. What is the actual reality of what he’s trying to accomplish over there? 

Mr. Doran:

I think Donald Trump is trying to establish a new template for the Middle East. And it’s between the isolationists on the one hand and, for lack of a better word, let’s say the neoconservatives on the other. He knows that we have to stay in the Middle East. We can’t abandon it, as some in the isolationist right are saying. It matters too much in the contest with China, for example. But on the other hand, the American public doesn’t want the United States to become engaged in large-scale military action, especially open-ended large-scale military action. 

And so if the United States is not going to do the military work itself in the Middle East, but it’s not going to leave, it has to create new roles and missions between the United States and its allies. And so what we just saw between the United States and Israel with regard to Iran is the new model. Israel did most of the work, and the United States came in behind it and supported it on the big strategic goals.

Mr. Jekielek:

Well, so explain to me these camps, actually, because it’s sort of the, it’s like, I don’t fully believe that this is sort of, you know, the rightist neocons and the… It’s not a Left-Right thing, is it? It’s something quite different.

Mr. Doran:

On the progressive Left and an element of the MAGA Right, there are groups making pretty much identical arguments, saying that Israel is dragging us into a war that’s not in our interest. There’s a deal to be had with Iran. The goal of U.S. policy should be to reach a deal with Iran, stabilize the Middle East that way. Michael Dimino, who’s the Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense, is a restraintist, that is, one of those, you know, from the isolationist right. Just before he took office, he said that the United States has no vital interest in the Middle East. It’s only there because of Israel and Saudi Arabia, to protect Israel and Saudi Arabia, and not because there’s something that we need to protect, but they’re using undue influence on us.

Mr. Jekielek:

Well, and this is something that I thought was incredibly interesting in how the president chose his, let’s say, foreign policy community and even some of the intelligence community and so forth, because it seems to be a kind of a mix of people that tend to be more in this sort of isolationist, as you call restraintist gap, which by the way, you know, your piece, The King’s Foils, that I remember came out in April, I think has aged unbelievably well. I would recommend everyone to actually read that piece. And you use this term restraintist. It’s quite interesting, quite specific. So there’s these restraintists, but there’s also people that are, I think of it as realists, but I think the restraintists call themselves realists as well, so I don’t know what to call them.

Mr. Doran:

Yes, I think Donald Trump is a realist in the classical sense. The problem is that in American foreign policy, the term realist has been hijacked by people like John Mearsheimer and Stephen Walt, and they’re anti-Israel. Realists believe in a balance of power over sentimentality. And Israel’s a powerful state. And it can help us balance the power of our enemies. So I think that’s a realist foreign policy. They don’t like Israel. They say it’s entangling us in conflicts with Iran, that Iran really has no conflict with us other than Israel. 

This is, I think, total nonsense. Anyone who’s seriously studied Iranian foreign policy can see that Iran has an agenda with us first and foremost. That’s why we’re the great Satan and Israel is the little Satan. So the terminology gets all messed up. But they call themselves restraintists, these people who are arguing this way, that there’s a deal to be had with Iran and we need to distance ourselves from Israel. 

And then there’s Donald Trump. And Donald Trump knows that the American public supports Israel and knows that Iran is our enemy and knows, as he himself said very clearly to Tucker Carlson, Iran cannot have a nuclear weapon. It’s not in the American interest. Fortunately, the majority of Americans totally agree with him on that question. Iran cannot have it.

Mr. Jekielek: 

But at the same time, I think they also agree with Tucker Carlson that they don’t want foreign entanglements.

Mr. Doran:

Yes, there’s been a general climate since the Bush administration. There’s a backlash to the Iraq war. And I think a majority of Americans don’t want to see another major open-ended war, another regime change war in the Middle East.

Mr. Jekielek:

But also one based on a false predicate.

Mr. Doran:

Right. Yes. So they don’t want a repeat of that. And they’re skeptical about the use of American power in the Middle East. The restraintists, the Tucker Carlsons, the Steve Bannons, the Quincy Institute and so on, have a very particular ideology which is seeking to take advantage of this public mood and the ideology, as I mentioned, says Israel is the problem and Iran wants to deal with us. There’s a deal to be had there with Iran. If we will just ignore Israel and reach out to Iran, we can solve this problem that has been dogging us since 1979. I think it’s completely unrealistic.

Mr. Jekielek:

Steve Bannon never struck me as being sort of negatively inclined towards Israel. Is he?

Mr. Doran:

He is now. I didn’t notice it in the past at all. Didn’t sense it. But the last two weeks before President Trump ordered the attack on the Iranian nuclear program, Steve Bannon said that Israel was dragging us into this and went and very ostentatiously warned the president against it. The president met him in the, if not in the Oval Office, in the West Wing. It was very well reported. 

To my amusement, the president used it as part of the deception about what was about to happen because it looked like by meeting Bannon, who was being very vocal about his claims that Israel was dragging us into a needless war, the president made it look like the distance between him and Prime Minister Netanyahu was much greater than it actually was. And I think that helped to deceive the Iranians so that when the Israelis attacked on Saturday night, I think if I recall correctly, Bannon met with the president on Thursday. And it looked like the Israelis and Trump were very, very far apart.

Mr. Jekielek: 

And it’s also interesting because there’s also all these different shades. Like there are people that seem to be just, you know, structurally, you know, believe that Israel’s playing this kind of negative role overall. Then you’ll have people, and maybe I’m thinking about, you know, this discussion, there are people that might believe, well, Israel’s generally okay, but they’re just kind of obsessed with Iran and stopping its nuclear capability, and we don’t necessarily need to be a part of that. There’s all these kinds of gradations, right, of positioning all the way up to, you know, we use the term neocon very liberally, but I guess that’s like, yes, let’s keep the wars going. That’s a position I don’t fully grasp, to be perfectly honest.

Mr. Doran:

I think a lot of this really isn’t foreign policy at all. When Donald Trump first ran for president in 2016, his message about the Middle East was all based on the Iraq War. But it wasn’t really about the Middle East. The message was, your elite doesn’t care about you. Your elite is off carrying out these boondoggles, these crazy adventures abroad, lining its own pockets. We need to focus on the problems at home. And so the Middle East was just a screen onto which the president could make this argument. 

And I think in a sense, Bannon and Tucker Carlson and others, they’re making the same argument now and saying that this is a distraction. This war against Iran is a distraction from what we should actually be focusing on, what the president promised us he was going to focus on. But if you followed Trump’s policy in the first term and everything he said on the campaign trail to get to this term and everything he said since he came into office, he’s been very, very consistent. Iran cannot have it.

Mr. Jekielek:

Yet you also describe in The King’s Foils, and I think very astutely, his approach as a kind of a zigzag.

Mr. Doran:

Yes. 

Mr. Jekielek:

And so just lay that out for me a little bit with a few examples.

Mr. Doran:

So the president has a very diverse coalition, elements of which care a lot about the Middle East. He won Michigan, so he has Arabs in Dearborn who are not particularly well disposed toward Israel. But then, of course, he has lots of Zionist supporters. He’s got evangelical Christians as well as Zionist Jews who expect him to be supportive of Israel and hostile to Iran. 

And he has these restraintists that he’s brought into his administration. These are mainly libertarians. They’re, I think, more a kind of online phenomenon than a deeply entrenched point of view. I think all the polling shows the majority of MAGA supporters are against Iran and against having a nuclear weapon. But younger MAGA, I think, is very much influenced by a lot of the new MAGA media that has appeared. 

So he has to hold this coalition together, and he holds it together through this zigzag. One day he says, you know, maybe I’ll bomb Iran, and the next day he says, well, no, maybe I’ll have a peace agreement with it. And, well, those Israelis are pulling me in one direction. but maybe I’ll try to go in the other direction. And he’s riding two horses at once. And I think the important thing in terms of understanding what he’s doing is to follow the vector rather than any statement on any one day. 

You know, some other examples, I mean, he came in about a month or two ago after he came into office. He said that he was going to hold Iran responsible for every attack by the Houthis. But then just before he went to the Gulf, he cut a separate deal with the Houthis, and he never held Iran responsible for it. So if you take him too seriously, too literally on what he says at any one given moment,he’ll look like he’s all over the place. But if you follow the trajectory, I think it’s pretty clear he doesn’t want Iran to have  a nuclear weapon, and if necessary, he will use force.

Mr. Jekielek:

So it’s kind of a power projection with the minimum use of force or something.

Mr. Doran:

Exactly. Force as a use, as last resort, and used very judiciously. But he will use it. And I think he learned the first time around that if he sends the signal to the Middle Eastern players that he’s totally unwilling to use force, then he’s just going to invite aggression from them.

Mr. Jekielek:

Well, I just remember, you know, I always come back to this. I think it may have been in 2018 I remember the Wagner group made this kind of incursion into Syria right right and the way Trump dealt with that was he didn’t like call Putin I don’t think he did you know he just kind of bombed them and and there was and there were no more incursions of you know unclear Russian aligned paramilitary people?

Mr. Doran:

They were marching on the American position, testing us. Actually, General Mattis, who was the Secretary of Defense at the time, did call his Russian counterpart. There was a hotline. And it makes even more sense now that we know the whole history of the relations between the Russian military and the Wagner Group. But the Russian military did not take responsibility for what the Wagner Group was doing. And then we unleashed hell on them. And we killed, I don’t know how many total, but well over 100 for sure in about a half hour.

Mr. Jekielek:

I find a lot of what the president’s approach is, I find it kind of breaks with a lot of the pigeonholes that all sorts of different interests have in trying to place them in terms of his foreign policy strategy.

Mr. Doran:

Yes, completely. I totally agree. It’s interesting. In that particular case that you brought up, it went against all of the whole Russiagate narrative at the time, because remember they said that he’s in the pocket of the Russians.

And then he went and killed more Russians than any American. I don’t know if we’ve killed any Russians since the end of the Cold War. But the press quickly ignored that and just kind of moved on because it didn’t fit what they were trying to say about him.

Mr. Jekielek:  

There was a lot of narrative breaking that was ignored, let’s just say.

Mr. Doran:

Sure. Also on Nord Stream 2, because remember he prevented the Russians from exporting their gas to Germany. And it didn’t break the narrative that his opponents were trying to build on. I think prominently the German UN mission were laughing at him, I think, about this.

Mr. Jekielek:

If it does not immediately change course.

Mr. Doran:

Trump has a little bit of a problem explaining himself. I mean, I think there’s this challenge that there are always very large vocal interests, especially in the media, that want to depict him as incompetent or nefarious or some kind of mix of incompetent and nefarious. It was absolutely true, but I think he’s also this zigzag that he does. He doesn’t help himself because he often, I think, fails to articulate what he’s trying to do in a big picture sense. 

He clearly wants to maintain personal relations with all the major leaders,

Xi Jinping, Putin, even Khamenei, and so on. So he avoids attacking them personally. I think this is just the guy from a New York real estate family, because in New York, you’re competing against all the other families, but there will be projects where you’ll actually be partners, even though you hate them and want to compete with them. 

And so you always keep the personal lines open because you never know when you’re going to actually be partnering on one thing or another. It’s kind of a – New York real estate is probably not a bad way to learn how to conduct diplomacy on the international stage. But he needs people around him to explain this so it doesn’t look like he is actually somehow enthralled to these personalities.

Mr. Jekielek:

You mentioned China earlier and how the U.S. involvement in the Middle East is actually necessary to deal with China. This is actually quite interesting because there’s a whole different school of thought, right?

I mean, something that’s just obvious to me, for example, and maybe it’s not obvious to everybody, that it has indeed been the Chinese regime’s policy to, as much as possible, keep the U.S. fixated on other projects, Russia, Ukraine, Iran, Israel, terrorism in various places. It’s very convenient. Keep the gaze away and watch China’s, quote-unquote, peaceful rise. Let it continue until you can unleash the unpeaceful aspects.

Mr. Doran:

I think that’s totally the case. And I’d also add a couple of other elements to it. Let’s think about it in terms of the Houthis. There are two countries in the world that have, or two actors in the world, that have developed an anti-ship ballistic missile. And they are China and the Houthis. The anti-ship ballistic missile is for one purpose and one purpose only, and that’s to take out a U.S. aircraft carrier. I think the Chinese are using support for the Houthis as a way to gain intelligence and information about how the United States can respond to an actor that’s shooting ballistic missiles at them. 

The Houthis get targeting data for tankers and for American naval vessels in the Indian Ocean and the Red Sea from the CCP. CCP passes it to Iran, which passes it to the Houthis. The Israelis took out, in the exchange that they had in October, exchange of fire, the Israelis took out the air defenses of the Iranians. They also took out the missile production facilities for medium-range solid fuel propellant missiles. The Israelis thought that they had taken the production of those offline in Iran for a year. 

But what happened was the Chinese moved in immediately and gave the Iranians the components that the Israelis had taken out. So they were able to get their production up right away. And the Iranians developed a new strategy to double or triple the total missile arsenal that they had within the next five years. And that would give the Iranians a conventional military equivalent of an atomic bomb. And that’s what, if you listen carefully to the Israelis now when they’re talking about fighting the Iranians, they’re saying we have two goals. 

One goal is the nuclear program, but the other is the ballistic missiles. And the Chinese definitely have a hand in helping the Iranians and helping through the Iranians the Houthis in developing all of these ballistic missiles. Not only is it great for the Chinese to see how the Americans and systems deal with these threats, but it also brings, look, we have three carrier groups in the Middle East. So it’s a way of moving American assets out of East Asia. It’s a practice run. 

If there’s going to be a war for Taiwan, you want to try to move as many assets as possible to the Middle East. I think Donald Trump helped us in that regard too, though, because by allowing the Israelis to weaken the Iranians as much as he did and taking their nuclear program away from them, I think it’ll be hard if, let’s say, Xi Jinping wanted to attack Taiwan this year. I think he won’t be able to use the Iranians as a mechanism for moving American assets away from East Asia. 

Mr. Jekielek:

Did I hear you correctly that the Chinese are actually providing targeting data to the U.S. for civilian vessels as well, in addition to the military? Did I

understand that correctly? 

Mr. Doran:

I know that there’s a Chinese company that through the Iranians is providing targeting data and the U.S. Treasury has sanctioned them. I assume that’s targeting data for anyone. But clearly, the major interest that the Chinese have is the American military.

Mr. Jekielek:

That was just interesting because I would also, you know, some other people might have issues with, hopefully would take issue with this. But this also highlights, I think, just in case this is sort of the unspoken reality that any such company, of course, is under the auspices of the regime. It’s not some private company doing its own thing, as many people believed for some time. Oh, yes, it’s this rogue company giving targeting data.

Mr. Doran:

Yes, a rogue company giving targeting data to the Houthis—I don’t think so.

Mr. Jekielek:

Right. Okay. So let’s discuss what has actually happened in the Middle East since this, what’s been dubbed now the 12-day war. Clearly, the political reality has been reshaped substantially. 

Mr. Doran:

So Iran has been taken down two or three notches. I mean, if you just go back to 20 months ago, Hamas attacked Israel. And the next day, Hezbollah, Iran’s proxy, opened up on the Israelis. A few weeks after that, the Houthis opened up on the Israelis. If I’d have told you then that within two years, less than two years, Israel was going to have an unimpeded air bridge to Iran, was going to control the Iranian airspace, and was going to take out 30 top military officers in the Iranian regime and nine or ten nuclear scientists, you’d tell me I was crazy. 

But Israel did do that and by the time they did it, Hezbollah couldn’t attack. One of the things that we all felt back in October of 2023 is that Israel couldn’t afford to escalate against Iran because Hezbollah, which had 150,000 rockets and missiles, would open up on Israel and those rockets and missiles, like we’re seeing the Iran, they basically everything that Iran has, Hezbollah has or had. And so we assumed that Hezbollah’s missiles could penetrate Israeli defenses and they would be blanketing Tel Aviv with missile fire. 

But the Israelis very deftly were able to decapitate Hamas first, then turn their sights on Hezbollah, and they were able to neutralize Hezbollah before it could open up with all guns against the Israelis. Once they took out Hezbollah, then they were able to go and take care of the Iranians. And so Iran was never able to carry out a full front, you know, a total campaign against Israel with all elements of its resistance axis operating all out at the same time. So almost miraculously, Israel now has a victory at least as great as the victory it had in 1967 in the Six-Day War. 

Mr. Jekielek:

Why do you say almost miraculous?

Mr. Doran:

Just because I don’t think anyone could have imagined this out. Israel was laid so low and taken by surprise on October 8th. And the IDF [Israel Defense Forces], which you think of as being an extremely adept, modern force, was nowhere to be seen October 7th. And you wondered, maybe it’s not as good as we thought it was. But it turns out that the two wars it was prepared to fight, it wasn’t prepared to fight the war with Gaza, but it was very much prepared to fight the war against Hezbollah and the war against Iran. 

So first we have this war against Hamas, then we have the neutralizing of Hezbollah’s missile systems, right? And then we have the clearing of the Iranian air defenses. And then there’s also what happened in Syria. That’s another piece of the puzzle.

Mr. Doran:

I left that out, yes. The fall of Bashar al-Assad as well. Yes, that’s huge, and which also made possible the air bridge to Iran, because as long as the Russians and the Iranians were in Syria and the Assad regime, it would be a lot harder for the Israelis to overfly Syria and go to Iran. Of course, they could do it, but it would have taken extra resources, and you never know what the Russians would have done in terms of helping give the Iranians early warning. 

One of the most amazing things about the Israeli attack against the Iranians is that they totally took the Iranians by surprise. The scientists were in their beds. Commanders all got together thinking they were safe. That is just remarkable.

Mr. Jekielek:

You know, I just remembered there was one of the more recent Star Trek films where one of the villains actually employed this strategy of bringing all the people he wanted to kill into one space. So maybe they were…. 

Mr. Doran:

Getting their cues from Game of Thrones or from Star Wars.

Mr. Jekielek:

Star Trek. 

Mr. Doran:

Star Trek, sorry. 

Mr. Jekielek:

Yes. No, there’s some incredible, I mean, some of these examples that are just actually coming out now. Of course, there’s the whole pager thing, which was kind of an astonishing level of intricacy and preparation over years, right, to actually make these things happen.

Mr. Doran:

No one else can do this kind of thing. The United States can’t do this. I mean, it takes such penetration of the system to lay the groundwork for these operations. I think that Donald Trump and Prime Minister Netanyahu were loosely coordinated throughout all of this. I don’t think it was all meticulously choreographed. And when the Israelis went against the Iranians, my interpretation, I could be wrong, we’ll find out over time, but my interpretation is that Trump gave them a yellow light, the Israelis. He had promised them that he wanted to try to get a diplomatic answer to the Iranian nuclear program. He had promised them that he’d only take 60 days.

The 60 days came and went, and Prime Minister Netanyahu said, we have to go against the Iranians now. This is our window of opportunity. And so Trump gave them a yellow light. They executed flawlessly, and they were so successful that Trump himself wanted to be associated with it. And I think if they had not been so successful in this unbelievably well-coordinated attack, then Trump might have thought twice about getting the United States involved.

Mr. Jekielek:

There’s a lot of discussion right now about the reality of the nuclear program in Iran, right? So everything from it’s completely decimated, it’s over, it doesn’t exist, to it was all moved away just in time.

Mr. Doran:

Right.

Mr. Jekielek:

From what you understand at this moment, what is the reality of that?

Mr. Doran:

So from what I understand, the reality is that there was enormous damage done to it. But we don’t know that it was totally destroyed in every respect.

And I don’t think we can know for sure until the three major nuclear sites in Iran, Isfahan, Fordow and Natanz, are investigated. Some of these, like Natanz especially and Fordow, have deep underground facilities. And there’s still a little lingering doubt that maybe some of the enriched uranium was squirreled away by the Iranians in some other secret site before Isfahan and Fordow were attacked. So we have to say, and I think to be very, very judicious, that right now Iran is a nuclear power of indeterminate status. So we have to wait and determine. 

I think it’s very obvious that this early DIA report that came out and said that it was only, you know, set back months and not years is nonsense. There was very severe damage done to these sites. It troubles me though to see how politicized it got immediately because the anti-Trump elements wanted to deny this success to him and the anti-Netanyahu elements wanted to deny success to Netanyahu. They ran with this story which said that very little damage was done. And then the Trump administration, to protect itself, came back and said, no, no, no, no, an enormous, you know, it was completely obliterated. 

Well, the answer may be slightly, a little bit more toward almost completely obliterated. We have to wait and find out. I think this is a question that can be objectively answered. There’s an objective answer to this question. And we have the tools eventually. It may take weeks or months to figure it out. We have the tools to know for sure. So everybody should just back off a little bit, cool down, and wait and find out.

Mr. Jekielek:

My producer and I were discussing earlier that one of the things that isn’t as well known is that the Iranian nuclear program has a modular nature. It was designed this way to make it easier to not have it all be obliterated. And of course, it’s been in development forever, I mean for many decades.

Mr. Doran:

It gives me great pleasure to think how successful the Israelis were, and together with us. There were some 18 different sites. The four that mattered the most were Arak, the plutonium reactor, Fordow, the deep underground bunker under the mountain, Natanz, which is the major enrichment facility, the hub of the whole system, and Isfahan, which was where the conversion facility. Those are the four most important ones. 

But there were some 14 more. And I thought it was almost impossible for the Israelis to hit all of them. And I’m glad I was wrong about that. Bottom line is the program has been degraded dramatically. Dramatically. And it won’t surprise me if the Trump administration is 100% correct that it has been totally obliterated. It’s just at this point, we can’t know that for sure. 

But we have also sent a signal. We’ve broken a number of taboos or, I don’t know, red lines that we imposed on ourselves. We have once again made the Iranian nuclear program completely illegitimate. We’ve shown that we will take military action to make sure that they never have a bomb. And for the first time in history, Israel and the United States have taken military action together. This is totally new. 

There’s always been a taboo in American national security culture of working together militarily with the Israelis. There was some sense that that would taint us in the eyes of our Arab and Muslim allies. And Trump has a totally different approach. I mean, he’s really saying association with Israeli military power enhances the power of the United States. I think that’s a beautiful thing.

Mr. Jekielek:

Well, that brings up a bunch of thoughts I have. Again, I’m thinking back to your remarkable article, The King’s Foils, looking at this whole situation. Of course, a huge player in the region is Turkey, and Turkey is no friend to Israel. I mean, and I know just from, you know, many things I’ve read of yours and many discussions that we’ve had, that you view a Turkey-U.S. alignment, alliance, as actually a very valuable thing, right? At the same time, as you just said, you view the Israeli-American alliance as a very valuable thing. But what happened just now, isn’t Turkey getting awfully worried all of a sudden?

Mr. Doran:

I think it’s complex. I mean, think about it this way. President Erdogan gave a speech recently in which he attacked Israel in the harshest terms. And he also announced that he was giving orders to develop the missile capabilities of the Turkish military, presumably so that they can penetrate Israeli defenses. 

At the same time, however, he or his government gave advice to Ahmed al-Sharaa, the new leader in Damascus, who is where Turkey is the dominant power, not to get in the way of the Israelis as they make their way to Iran. And I think we, the United States, our B-2 bombers that went to Iran also went over Syria, I believe. If they didn’t go over Syria, they went over Turkey.

So one way or another, we were able to attack Iran and the Israelis were able to attack Iran because the Turks facilitated might be too strong a word but you know didn’t interfere did not interfere and they could have interfered if they wanted they could have made life very difficult if they wanted and I think we should all remember that they saw it as in their interest whatever feelings they may have toward Israel they didn’t see it as a bad thing that Israel won this war.

Mr. Jekielek:

Well, and so now you’re speaking to this, you know, dramatic realignment in the region, which is, I think, really started with the Abraham Accords, which were, you know, one of these things that I never thought I’d see anything like that. I don’t know what you thought.  Maybe you were the one guy that was predicting it all.

Mr. Doran:

I wasn’t, actually. I wasn’t totally on top of that. 

Mr. Jekielek:

But prominent diplomats are saying there’s more coming, right? More Abraham Accords are going to be expanded now with this situation. 

Mr. Doran:

Well, Steve Witkoff, the president’s special envoy, suggested and he said we’re going to be surprised at some of the countries that are going to get involved. I’m not sure what he has in mind. One of them might be Syria. Now, that would be very, very interesting. They’re saying that. I’m a little skeptical. 

I think a lot of people are, a lot of Middle Easterners are telling Donald Trump what he wants to hear in order to ingratiate themselves. So I’ll be surprised if there’s a Lebanon-Israeli peace agreement, and I’ll be

surprised if there’s a Syrian-Israeli peace agreement. I won’t be shocked completely, and I wouldn’t say it won’t happen, but I’m more inclined to say, well, let me see how this unfolds. 

A couple of weeks ago, a few weeks ago, Steve Witkoff talked about Armenia and Azerbaijan joining the Abraham Accords. Now, there I know the Turks are very much ready to normalize with the Armenians, and the Azerbaijanis are almost ready. There’s a couple of points where there’s sticking points. But we could see a historic reconciliation between Turks and Armenians.

Mr. Jekielek:

That itself is remarkable, not something that was on my bingo card, as they say.

Mr. Doran:

And it’s very important, too. It’s very important, given your interests, because this will further solidify the middle corridor from which goods and people from Central Asia can make their way to Europe without being controlled by China or Russia. I think it’s a good thing for the security of Europe, for the energy security of Europe, for a multipolar Central Asia.

Mr. Jekielek:

Again, if we go back to the Chinese Communist Party’s strategy, looking especially through Iran, to have a lot of influence in the region, right? And of course, through Iran, it had a huge influence. I’m very curious about how they get something like 77% of Iran’s oil goes to China, if I believe it. I think that’s the number. So how is that going to play out? 

Mr. Doran:

Well, President Trump, almost the day, may have been actually the day after we struck the Iranian nuclear sites, maybe two days after, he announced that the United States was not going to get in the way of trying to tamp down tensions and reassure the Chinese that he’s not going to try to harm them directly through this action. And also not collapsing the Iranian economy, which that would in effect do, right? 

I think he’s hoping to change the calculus of the Iranians and orient them toward building up the prosperity, advancing the economic prosperity of their country, rather than carrying out jihad against the West and Israel. I’m a little skeptical about that. Having watched this regime in Iran since 1979, I’ve never seen it waver from its jihadi mission. I’ll believe that this military chastening has done that when I see it.

Mr. Jekielek:

But the bottom line, and this is what I think I’m hearing after thinking through everything we’ve discussed right now, is that this has reduced the CCP’s power and influence in the region.

Mr. Doran:

Totally. I have no doubt about that whatsoever. It’s enhanced the United States and the United States and its alliance through Israel. So if the Saudis normalize what the Israelis are more moved closer toward normalization, they’re not going to call it Abraham Accords because Abraham Accords was the UAE [United Arab Emirates]. And I don’t know that they’re going to rush to do that right now because the Gaza conflict is still going on and it has soured relations somewhat. But if we move in that direction in a year or so, and I think it’s quite possible that that could happen, we should think of Abraham Accords and related developments as the American answer in the Middle East to One Belt, One Road.

Mr. Jekielek:

And just speaking about Gaza, what do you think the implications are for the Gaza war?

Mr. Doran:

I think that President Trump and Prime Minister Netanyahu are going to try to solve and to end the war in Gaza sooner rather than later with some kind of big deal. And if they do that, if there’s a major deal and all the hostages are returned, I think that Prime Minister Netanyahu will go to early elections. You know, there’s a cloud hanging over him because of October 7th, because he was the man in power on October 7th, because he’s the dominant politician in Israel over the last 20 years. 

So some measure of responsibility for October 7th attaches to him. He has almost completely redeemed himself because he has removed an existential threat to the Jewish people. You know, all Jewish holidays are, they tried to kill us, they failed, let’s eat. It’s Friday, as you and I are talking to each other, as they go to have their Shabbat meal tonight, this is basically what they’re all going to say. They tried to kill us, they failed, let’s eat. And Prime Minister Netanyahu knows he’s got that story now. And this was his life’s mission, ending the Iranian nuclear threat. On that basis, I think he’s going to want to go to elections. 

Mr. Jekielek:

And just very briefly, for the record, the threat of war in the Middle East, which there always is some, more or less at this point? 

Mr. Doran:

Oh, much less. Much less. Absolutely. 

Mr. Jekielek:

And I mean, we discussed many of the reasons why that might be the case, but succinctly, why does this arrangement right now after this 12-day war, after the U.S. involvement, which a lot of people feared, would create more war or unleash even a world war? I mean, this is what some of the people feared. 

Mr. Doran:

I never understood how they were seeing that. How’s it going to be a world war? China is supporting Iran, but from a distance, like we discussed, with companies providing data and missile technology and that kind of thing. But they’re not getting directly involved with their military. Russia can’t get directly involved because it’s been weakened by Ukraine and it’s busy in Ukraine. So who’s going to come to the aid of Iran? 

Iran is a third-rate military power. You know, it’s like a boxer that has one arm that’s atrophied. There’s no regular military. There’s no regular Air Force to speak of at all. What they do have are terrorism, ballistic missiles, drones, and cruise missiles, and a nuclear program. And that’s it. 

And the United States can handle that. Clearly, we saw it with President Trump. So there wasn’t going to be any kind of large coalition coming and attacking in America. Iran was behind all of the wars in the Middle East of the last 20 years and so we’re gonna have a little bit of stability now. 

Mr. Jekielek:

Because the ring of fire is gone basically right? 

Mr. Doran:

Except for the Houthis. 

Mr. Jekielek:

Except for the Houthis right. 

Mr. Doran:

Which China is going to be interested in keeping on a low boil I think. 

Mr. Jekielek:

Michael, as we finish up, of course Israel wanted to degrade the nuclear program of Iran. That’s obvious. But we have basically different motivations, all these different stakeholders that are playing out. We’ve got the Gulf states. We’ve got America. We’ve got the Iranian people, which are certainly not the same thing as the mullahs. Where do you think they stand in this picture?

Mr. Doran:

All of those different elements? 

Mr. Jekielek:

Yes. 

Mr. Doran:

I think the American people were overwhelmingly in favor of what President Trump did. He did split his own coalition because there is this younger crowd that is very much influenced by these online influencers who saw this as some kind of betrayal of the MAGA ethos. But the polling shows that the American public, and particularly the MAGA base, were supportive of this. Every president since Clinton has said Iran cannot have a nuclear weapon. In Israel, again, overwhelming support, particularly among the Jewish population, but even a very significant percentage of the Arab population was supportive. 

 In the Gulf, I think you have a kind of duality in people’s minds. People are afraid of instability. They’re afraid of another regime change, more turmoil. And in particular, in the Gulf, they were afraid that the Iranians might retaliate against the Americans and the Israelis by targeting them, by targeting Saudi oil fields, the Emirati oil fields, or even the Emirati population, and so on. 

So there was a lot of vocal opposition by the leadership in Saudi Arabia and the UAE to the war, which was partly out of fear of the thing devolving into something that was gonna be detrimental to everyone, and partly out of fear of being targeted by the Iranians. Nobody in the Gulf, nobody in the Gulf, is sad to see Iran cut down a few pegs, to see its proxies neutered, and to see its nuclear program destroyed. They’re all ecstatic.

Mr. Jekielek:

What about Qatar?

Mr. Doran:

The Qataris are always a little bit more pro-Iranian than the other Gulf states. That’s for historical reasons. Iran, under the Shah, actually helped them get independence. Just geographically, there’s always a kind of greater sensitivity toward Iran or, let’s say, empathy for Iran than some of the other Gulf states have. But the Qataris don’t want the Iranians to have a nuclear weapon. Anyone else does.

Mr. Jekielek:

And the Iranian people?

Mr. Doran:

Well, the Iranian people don’t have any, the majority of them, let’s say 80% of them, are disaffected from the regime. I doubt that they are shedding any tears when they see the top rungs of the IRGC [Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps] killed. But they also are afraid of instability. They were afraid of the war. Right now, I think they’re just getting back to life and thanking God that they’re still alive. 

Mr. Jekielek:

Michael, this has been an absolutely fascinating conversation. A final quick

thought as we finish? 

Mr. Doran:

My final thought is that there’s a gap between the Israeli position, stated position in the war, and the American. The American position is that we have to prevent Iran from getting a nuclear weapon. The Israeli position is that we have to prevent Iran from getting a nuclear weapon and prevent them from developing their ballistic missile program. I think the Israelis have it right, and I hope that American policy will put as much emphasis on the missile program as on the nuclear program, because that missile program is being put at the service of the global coalition, the Chinese, Russian, and Iranian coalition against the United States.

Mr. Jekielek:

Michael Doran, it’s such a pleasure to have you on the show.

Mr. Doran:

Thank you.