The Cost of a Nuclear Iran and How Decades of American Diplomacy Backfired: Yoram Ettinger

[RUSH TRANSCRIPT BELOW] “More and more Iranian-supported, anti-American, Islamic terrorist cells are established on U.S. soil with the aim of eliminating key American personnel, and eliminating key American institutions and installations. This has been the ayatollah’s vision from day one,” says former Ambassador Yoram Ettinger.

In the 1980s and 1990s, Ettinger held a number of high-profile positions within Israel’s government, from minister of congressional affairs in D.C. to director of its press office. A now retired insider and expert on U.S.–Israel relations, he regularly advises Israel and America’s legislators, and produces a weekly newsletter challenging conventional wisdom on Middle East affairs.

“The State Department probably still is under the delusion that the U.S. has a choice between Arab countries that abide by human rights and Arab countries that do not abide by human rights,” says Ettinger. “The choice is between pro-American Arab regimes that violate human rights or anti-American Arab regimes that violate human rights.”

In this episode, we dive into key realities of the U.S.–Israel relationship that are poorly understood, and the global threat posed by the Iranian regime.

“The early pilgrims and the Founding Fathers, to a large extent, viewed themselves as the modern-day chosen people. They viewed this country as the modern-day Promised Land, and they considered the manner in which Moses governed the Jewish people to be the foundation for the system which they established: the separation of powers, and later on the Constitution and the Bill of Rights,” says Ettinger.

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:

Yoram Ettinger, such a pleasure to have you on American Thought Leaders.

Yoram Ettinger:

Thank you. It’s my pleasure. 

Mr. Jekielek:

I often hear the Israeli-U.S. relationship is characterized by Israel having an inordinate influence over American decision-making. How do you view the U.S.-Israel relationship?

Mr. Ettinger:

U.S.-Israel relations have two sets of foundations. The first one has to do with U.S. culture and the U.S. political system, which are based largely on biblical values and biblical legacies, mostly what the Founding Fathers referred to as the Mosaic legacy. It goes back to the arrival of the early pilgrims in 1620, before the first Jew arrived in this country, before the first Jewish community was established here. 

It had to do with the fact that the early pilgrims and the Founding Fathers, to a large extent, viewed themselves as the modern-day chosen people. They viewed this country as the modern-day promised land, and they considered the manner in which Moses governed the Jewish people to be a foundation for the system they established: the separation of powers, later on the Constitution, and the Bill of Rights. This is one set of foundations. 

The more modern set of foundations has to do with the critical role played by Israel in advancing the strategic interests of the U.S. in the Middle East and beyond. It has to do with Israel’s capabilities, mostly technological defense and commercial capabilities, which have transformed Israel into the number one innovation center for U.S. commercial high-tech and U.S. defense high-tech. In addition, ever since 1967, Israel has been transformed from a misperceived burden and liability upon the U.S. into a strategic asset and, more so, a force multiplier for the U.S., a dollar multiplier for the U.S., and in very concrete terms, a battle-tested laboratory for the U.S. defense industry and U.S. aerospace industry, as it has been for many, many years. Israel receives very critical military systems, without which we wouldn’t be able to make ends meet, and for which we are immensely grateful. 

However, this is not a one-way street in relations where the U.S. gives and Israel receives. It’s a mutually beneficial two-way street whereby Israel receives those military systems and uses them in the most intense manner, way beyond the manner in which American military forces are using American military systems. As a result of that intense use of the F-35, F-16, F-15, missile launchers, missiles, tanks, and our personnel carriers, etc., we have concluded a multitude of lessons, all of which we share with American manufacturers, who integrate those lessons as upgrades into the next generation of American military hardware. 

I visited the plant in Fort Worth, Texas, the Lockheed Martin plant, which manufactures the F-35 and the F-16. One of the plant managers indicated that there is an Israeli team on location receiving every single day lessons learned by Israeli pilots; operational lessons and maintenance are integrated. For instance, the cockpit of the F-16 is roughly 50% based on Israeli lessons. The firing control of the F-16 is 75% developed based on the Israeli lessons. He said that there are hundreds, hundreds of such upgrades, which are derivative of the Israeli lessons. 

When I asked him if he could attach a dollar value to those upgrades, his response, and it’s a quote, was a mega-billion-dollar bonanza to the manufacturer. I asked him how he arrived at such an amazing number. Is it based on some facts? His response was that the Israeli lessons shared with the manufacturer saved Lockheed Martin between 10 and 20 years of research and development. Anyone who knows anything about the cost of research and development of combat aircraft knows that by itself amounts to the manufacturer of the F-35 and the F-16, because due to those upgrades, it has enhanced the competitiveness of the F-35 and the F-16 in the global competition in the global market, generating much more export, which again amounts to billions of dollars. 

I have never visited the Boeing plant in St. Louis, Missouri, for the F-15, which again we receive from the U.S. and use in Israel. But I assume that a similar mega-billion dollar is also the share of Boeing in this mutually beneficial two-way street type of relationship. We enjoy and benefit from hundreds of American military systems. Each one we use intensely in what I would call this structure of a battle-tested laboratory. That underscores the fact that it’s a two-way street, not a one-way street type of relationship.

Mr. Jekielek:

Many people say that the U.S. military-industrial complex is bloated. There’s too much money being fed into middlemen, places that it actually doesn’t need to go. It’s not pared down. What you’re describing could be characterized as money coming from the U.S. taxpayer into Israel that then goes into the defense industrial complex. Would that be an accurate way to portray it? 

Mr. Ettinger:

No. First of all, money does not reach Israel. We get credit to buy American products, and we get those American products and return much more than the value of the products we receive. We’re talking about a defense industry that employs about three and a half million people in addition to subcontractors, and the Israeli contribution of the Israeli lessons shared with the manufacturers not only saves billions in research and development costs, not only increases exports by billions of dollars, but also expands employment in the United States. In fact, we cannot buy Israeli products with a credit extended by the U.S. 

We must buy American products, but that’s only part of the contribution by Israel to American defense and national security—intercepting Islamic terror attacks on Americans in Syria, Americans in Jordan, Americans in Iraq. We provide Americans intelligence on enemy and rival military systems. We confront enemies in the Middle East who use Chinese, Russian, British, French, Italian, and other military systems. Following every clash, we share with the Americans our findings about those military systems, which once again has enhanced the quality of the American military product but also has spared American lives. 

In fact, a former head of the U.S. Air Force Intelligence, General George Keegan, who was very enthusiastic about expanding intelligence cooperation between the two countries, claimed that if the U.S. were to procure on its own the intelligence that the U.S. receives from Israel, then the U.S. would have to establish five CIAs. This is one heck of a return on investment, which is four or five hundred times of what we get annually in what is wrongly referred to as foreign aid, while in fact, it’s an American investment in Israel. We are located in a very critical area. 

The late General Alexander Haig, who was Supreme Commander of NATO and later Secretary of State, suggested that for him, Israel constitutes the largest American aircraft carrier that does not require a single American on board. It can be seen in the Indian Ocean, the Persian Gulf, between Europe, Asia, and Africa, situated in an area that is the number one epicenter of anti-American terrorism and anti-American drug trafficking. 

Alexander Haig suggested that if there were not a Jewish state in the Middle East, then the U.S. would have to manufacture a few more real aircraft carriers, deploy them to the Indian Ocean and the Mediterranean, in addition to a few ground divisions deployed to the Middle East, all of which would have cost the American taxpayer between $10 and $20 billion annually, all of which is spared by the existence of Israel and the capabilities of Israel in the Middle East. 

We have done the same thing when it comes to the commercial high-tech sector in America. Some 250 giant high-tech corporations have established research and development centers in Israel, leveraging the very unique brain power in Israel, which has sustained American global leadership in the area of high tech. Recently, the CEO of Intel said, if not for our research and development centers in Israel, we, Intel, would have been decimated by the global competition. 

The CEO of Microsoft said that by the day Microsoft becomes increasingly an Israeli company because of the impact of the research and development centers in Israel on Microsoft’s own product. The same applies to irrigation, where we collaborate closely with American companies. The same applies to agriculture. The same applies to health and medicine. 

There has been very, very tight collaboration between American and Israeli institutions and companies, which obviously has benefited the number one country in the world. But at the same time, our unique challenges have produced a multitude of innovations, groundbreaking applications, most of which we have shared with Americans, maintaining Americans’ global leadership in the area of high tech, which employs many millions of Americans.

Mr. Jekielek:

How would you respond to—and there are a number of prominent voices that believe this—that it’s actually America’s relationship with Israel that’s keeping America in the region?

Mr. Ettinger:

The U.S. has been interested in the Middle East before there was a Jewish state. But more than that, Islamic terrorism, which is centered in the Middle East, has targeted the USA, irrespective of U.S. relations with Israel and irrespective of U.S. policy. Islamic terrorism and other enemies of the U.S. do not consider Israel to be the number one influence on their policy. They view Israel as the vanguard of the U.S. in the Middle East. They view Israel, and rightly so, as the most effective U.S. beachhead in the Middle East. Iran’s ayatollahs refer to Israel as the little Satan while referring to the U.S. as the great American Satan, which tells us about the priorities. 

There’s no zero-sum game between U.S. relations with Israel and U.S. relations with Arabs. Namely, supposedly, ostensibly, the U.S. is losing Arab favors the more it gets closer to Israel. The fact is that the U.S. has maintained very productive relations with Israel and, at the same time, very productive relations with Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates, Bahrain, Egypt, Jordan, and all these countries, in fact, have considered Israel to be an asset rather than a liability.

For the Saudis, the Emiratis, Bahrain, and also Egypt and Jordan, Israel has been regarded as a power of deterrence in the face of the threat posed by Iran’s ayatollah and the Muslim Brotherhood. The Saudis, the Emiratis, and Bahrain have the machetes of the ayatollahs and the Muslim Brotherhood at their throats. They look around and ask themselves, who can we rely on? Sometimes they can rely on the U.S., depending on the tenant in the White House. Does the tenant try to appease the ayatollahs, or is the tenant facing the ayatollahs very decisively?

The U.S. sometimes is reliable as far as they are concerned, sometimes not so reliable. They have written off the Europeans because the Europeans have lost their will to flex a muscle against Islamic terrorism. Every single relatively moderate Arab regime has the machetes of terrorists at their throats. The only country upon which they can rely to an extent has been Israel.

Therefore, American ties with Israel are not at the expense of American ties with the Arabs, because the Arabs realize Israel serves as a major line of defense of the pro-American Hashemite regime in Jordan. Israel has developed pretty close defense ties with Saudi Arabia. The same goes for the king, who highly respects Israel’s capabilities in combating terrorism. The bottom line is that when it comes to facing Islamic terrorism, the U.S., Israel, and the pro-U.S. Arab countries are facing a mutual enemy.

Mr. Jekielek:

People sometimes imagine that the U.S. has always been very pro-Israel, but that hasn’t always been the case. Could you give us an overview from 1948 on?

Mr. Ettinger:

In 1948, the State Department was the number one enemy, not opponent, but enemy of the idea of establishing a Jewish state. At that time, the CIA and the Pentagon sided with the State Department while President Truman was debating, wavering, and still on the sideline before he decided to support Israel. We had the same thing before the Israeli decision to bomb the Iraqi nuclear reactor. Israel destroyed the Iraqi nuclear reactor in 1981.The U.S. imposed severe punishment on Israel, suspending the supply of critical military systems, including combat aircraft. 

In fact, it took the U.S. 10 years to admit that Israel was right and the U.S. was wrong. And it took place after the first Gulf War of January 1991. There was a major event here in Washington of the defense establishment. The keynote speaker was then Secretary of Defense Dick Cheney. I was at the event because, at that time, I was at the Israeli embassy in charge of our relations with the U.S. Congress. 

I still remember the first sentence by Secretary of Defense Dick Cheney. He said, thank you Israel, for bombing the Iraqi nuclear reactor in 1981, which spared the U.S. nuclear confrontation in 1991. How many trillions of dollars were spared by that gutsy Israeli bombing of an Iraqi nuclear reactor? How many thousands of lives were spared because of that Israeli operation? And there are many, many other examples. 

One of them is the Six-Day War. Before the 1967 war, Israel had all the intelligence information that Egypt, Syria, and Jordan were planning a surprise attack on Israel. The Israeli prime minister flew to the U.S. and met with them. President Lyndon Johnson shared with him the information. The advice by the U.S. to Israel was, “Do not preempt because if you act alone, you may remain alone, and we are not going to extend a hand to you.” Israel defied the U.S. pressure, preempted, and devastated the Egyptian and Syrian military forces. 

At that time, Egypt was on its way to becoming the supreme pan-Arab power, jointly or assisted by the Soviet Union. The devastation of the Egyptian military by Israel denied the Soviet Union a major, groundbreaking historic achievement in the Middle East, spared the U.S. a major economic and national security blow because, back in 1967, the U.S. was heavily dependent on Persian Gulf oil. 

Moreover, on the eve of the Six-Day War, 70,000 Egyptian soldiers were stationed in Yemen, aiming to invade Saudi Arabia and topple the pro-U.S. House of Saud, which would have been a major catastrophe for the oil market and the economy of the West at large. All of that was spared by Israeli defiance of U.S. pressure. Israel bombed the Syrian nuclear reactor in 2007, and again, the U.S. was not very happy with that. 

But one can only imagine the impact of the civil war in Syria over the last 10 to 15 years if there had also been nuclear capability involved in that Syrian war. The bottom line is that on occasions, there are frictions between the two countries. Every American president, except for the current one, pressured Israel and sometimes punished Israel. 

But from 1948 through 2025, independent of or notwithstanding the ongoing U.S. pressure on Israel and the occasional frictions between the U.S. and Israel, the strategic relationship has exceeded the wildest optimistic assessments of 1948, 1988, and 2008. No one would have expected the U.S. and Israel to act so closely. 

The reason we have acted, we have collaborated so closely, in spite of occasional disagreements, is because of the realization, the American awareness of the unique Israeli capabilities in the area of civilian high tech and defense high tech, the unique fighting capabilities of Israel, and the unique Israeli achievements in a variety of commercial areas such as agriculture, irrigation, and medicine, etc. As we know, when you’re confronted by very intense challenges, you also develop very impressive capabilities, most of which we have shared with the U.S., which we have seen all along as our number one ally. 

Mr. Jekielek:

In the 1980s, you were an Israeli diplomat working with Congress. Please tell us about your work today. 

Mr. Ettinger:

For 10 years, I established and headed a Middle East research unit in the Israeli civil service. After those 10 years, I was sent to serve as Israel’s consul general to the southwestern states based in Houston, Texas. That’s when I got to know pretty well small-town America or what some call flyover America, which not too many Americans know, let alone Israelis. 

Then I went back to Israel. I was the head of the government press office, which is in charge of Israel’s relations with the foreign media in Israel, which introduced me to the very, very amazing, in a negative sense, way the foreign media operate in Israel. How do they cook stories? How do they respond? How do they report stories in order to maintain good relations with the different Palestinian terror organizations in the area? 

Then I was sent back to the U.S. to be at the Israeli embassy in charge of our relations with the U.S. Congress, which was the most educational and also instructive time of my life, became educated about the American legislature, co-equal to the executive. And that also drew my attention to the very, very major, impressive impact of American constituents on American legislators. Since the end of my civil service, which was at the Israeli embassy in the U.S., I have established my own operation, continuing ties with the U.S. Congress. Part of it includes my three to four annual visits to the U.S., which brought me to this studio.

Mr. Jekielek:

What do you think of President Trump’s and the current administration’s posture on Israel?

Mr. Ettinger:

It seems to me that if you want to understand President Trump’s policy on Israel and other parts of the world, the first thing to note is that just like his first term, he has literally expelled the State Department from the center stage of forging U.S. foreign policy and national security policy. During the first administration, by bypassing the State Department, he achieved the four peace accords between Israel and the UAE, Bahrain, Morocco, and South Sudan. 

He understood, I believe, that following the State Department’s way of thinking about the Middle East would only lead him to more and more failures because the State Department introduced scores, if not hundreds, of plans to resolve the Palestinian issue, to expand the Israeli-Arab peace, and they failed on all of them because of their detachment from the real Middle East. 

Mr. Jekielek:

This posture has been in the State Department for a long time. Please explain that before we continue.

Mr. Ettinger:

We can look back to 2011 when the turbulence on the Arab streets was heralded by the State Department as an Arab Spring. It was an Arab tsunami, but “Arab tsunami” doesn’t fit the alternate reality created by the State Department, which means peace is around the corner, and if we only talk with the enemy, peace will come. At the end of 2010 and still going on throughout the Middle East, it was referred to as the Arab Spring, the Facebook revolution, the youth revolution, etc. 

The U.S.-led NATO military offensive against Gaddafi in 2011 was under the contention that Gaddafi had brutally mistreated the opposition in Libya. They just missed a small point: that indeed Gaddafi was brutal in treating Islamic terrorism, which attempted to topple him. It was Gaddafi who desisted from terrorism since 2003, transferring his nuclear infrastructure to Tennessee, by the way, where it’s there until today. 

But for the State Department, the most important thing was the violation of human rights because the State Department was, probably still is, under the illusion that the U.S. is a choice between Arab countries that abide by human rights and Arab countries that do not abide by human rights. They are not yet attached to the fact of life that the choice is between pro-American Arab regimes that violate human rights or anti-American Arab regimes that violate human rights. 

That military offensive against Gaddafi has transformed Libya until today into a chaotic state, a major arena for anti-American Islamic terrorism, an arena of civil wars with the involvement of Russia, Egypt, Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates, France, and Greece—all a result of policy by the State Department, which had nothing to do with Middle Eastern reality. You can look at the way the State Department ushered in the ayatollah’s regime to topple the Shah of Iran, who was America’s policeman in the Gulf. 

If you study the telegrams from those days, the documents which were exchanged between the U.S. Embassy in Washington, the U.S. Embassy in Tehran, and the U.S. Embassy in Paris, which was a site of exile, you will see that this led the State Department and President Jimmy Carter to conclude that Ayatollah Khomeini was expected to be an Iranian edition of Gandhi. That’s the term that they used. President Carter told global leaders, you can rest assured Ayatollah Khomeini is going to be preoccupied with tractors, not with tanks. 

Obviously, we know that those assessments of Ayatollah Khomeini had nothing to do with reality. They were consistent with the alternate reality developed by the State Department, which has always claimed that there is no need to fight terrorists. We can reason, we should negotiate, and diplomacy is preferred to military action when it comes to terrorism. You can look at the State Department that welcomed Bashar Assad as a potential moderate. Why? 

Because he was working in Britain and he was a successful ophthalmologist, and he was president of the Syrian Internet Association, and he was married to a British-educated woman. Aren’t those qualifications for a potential moderate leader? American senators and American State Department officials flew to Damascus. They welcomed Bashar Assad, and they expected moderation to prevail. Obviously, we know it had nothing to do with reality. 

The same thing applied to Saddam Hussein and the American ambassador to Kuwait and Baghdad, April Glaspie, who basically transmitted the assessment of then Secretary James Baker and the establishment of the State Department. When Saddam Hussein asked Ambassador Glaspie about the inter-Arab issue, I don’t think there could be a more green light than that to Saddam Hussein’s invasion of Kuwait. I can only imagine how bewildered he was when suddenly the U.S. attacked him after the State Department gave him a green light to invade Kuwait. 

I can add more and more. You have the issue of Yasser Arafat, who was welcomed into the community of law-abiding entities, but the State Department referred to Yasser Arafat as a terrorist turning peacemaker and basically ushered Yasser Arafat into receiving the Nobel Prize for Peace, endorsed by the State Department. Obviously, in 1948, the State Department did not want a Jewish state. 

The State Department claimed, first of all, that Israel had no means to face an all-out Arab assault. We proved the State Department wrong in 1948 while the U.S. was boycotting any shipment of arms to the area. This has been the State Department’s track record in the Middle East: wrong and wronger and wrongest. 

When a president comes and realizes that the State Department is not a reliable source of policy, that, in my mind, enhances U.S. policy and enhances U.S. interests. A feature of President Trump’s worldview is the fact that he does not see the UN as a positive element in international relations, contrary again to the State Department, which highlights a common denominator between the U.S. and the UN. 

President Trump has understood that the UN is fundamentally anti-Western and anti-American. He harbors the same attitude toward most international organizations, one of which is UNRWA. He has suspended U.S. support for UNRWA, due to UNRWA’s role in furthering hate education among Palestinians, which has become the most effective production line of terrorists in our part of the world. 

President Trump, unlike the State Department, is aware that terrorism is driven by fanatic ideology. The State Department believes that terrorism is driven by despair, and you don’t deal with despair by military means. You deal with despair through financial and diplomatic means. It seems to me that the current administration is much more realistic in that context as well. 

I think the challenge for both Americans and Israelis is to highlight the reality of the Middle East, in particular the world at large, and expose wishful thinking, oversimplifications, and misrepresentations. Highlighting reality would serve the strategic interests of the U.S. and of Israel and substantially expand the already impressive cooperation between the two countries commercially and defense-wise.

Mr. Jekielek:

You mentioned Iran briefly. There is the discussion about a potential stopping of the nuclear site in Iran, like what happened in Iraq before. Some people say that’s tantamount to inciting war. How do you view that?

Mr. Ettinger:

While the West is preoccupied with nuclear Iran, the West is missing the point that a non-nuclear Iran is already the chief epicenter of war and terrorism in the Middle East, in East and West Africa, and throughout the American continent, from southern Chile all the way to the U.S.-Mexico border and increasingly on U.S. soil itself. It seems to me that the concern should be primarily with the existence of the regime rather than denying the regime’s nuclear capability. 

Today, without nuclear weapons, Iran is in a process of attempting to topple the pro-U.S. Hashemite regime in Jordan. They do it in conjunction with proxies in Iraq and Syria. They do it in conjunction with Muslim Brotherhood terrorists who are very well entrenched in Jordan. They do it together with some Palestinian terrorists in Jordan. Should they succeed in doing that, which does not require nuclear capability, they are going to transform Jordan into another front from the north, Jordan; from the east, Iraq and Iran; and from the south, Yemen—threatening not only Saudi Arabia but the entire Arabian Peninsula, the entire block of pro-American oil-producing Arab regimes.

At the same time, transforming Jordan into a platform of Islamic terrorism would trigger ripple effects into Sinai, which is already a platform of Islamic terrorism, and from Sinai very swiftly into Egypt, where General Sisi feels the machete of the Muslim Brotherhood at his throat. With a chaotic Jordan, rather than a pro-American Jordan as it is today, this could be the end of the pro-American Sisi regime and the return of the Muslim Brotherhood to the helm in Egypt. Therefore, while it’s extremely important to deny Iran nuclear capability, we should be aware that without nuclear weapons, it is the number one epicenter of instability, terrorism, and war throughout the world, not only limited to the Persian Gulf.

Mr. Jekielek:

You mentioned the machete being at throats. To clarify, do you mean that the group that is holding the machete is ready for a regime change?

Mr. Ettinger:

They are aspiring to do it. The ayatollahs of Iran base their policy on their constitution, which reflects a 1,400-year-old ideology. This 1,400-year-old ideology mandates them to topple every single regime they call apostate Sunni. Namely, they have held a machete at the throat of the UAE, Bahrain, Kuwait, Saudi Arabia, Oman, and, in fact, Egypt and Jordan all the way to Morocco. Part of their deeply entrenched fanatical religious belief goes back to a battle that took place in 680 AD, the Battle of Karbala. For Westerners, this is next to irrelevant. Who cares about 680 AD? The ayatollahs of Iran care very much. It is mostly Shiites that care about it very, very much. 

Many of your viewers probably are aware of annual processions by Shiites in areas where there are many Shiites, not only Iran, Lebanon, and Iraq, but also in Los Angeles, Chicago, London, and Paris, where bare-chested men walk on the main street, flagellating themselves with iron bars to remember the treacherous Sunnis who massacred the Shiites back in 680 AD. The leaders of Iran, the ayatollahs of Iran, have based their entire policy on memory, and the memory is very, very strong. Therefore, the president of Iran repeats on a weekly basis, sometimes on a daily basis, the slogan, the front of Ali is going to defeat the front of Yazid. 

Now, Westerners say, who cares? Yazid, Ali. If we want to understand the motivation of the ayatollahs and other radical Shiites in the Middle East and beyond, we should realize when the president of Iran talks about the front of Ali, he talks about the Shiite front which was betrayed in 680. The front of Yazid is the front of the Sunni caliph who murdered the Shiite leader. 

As far as the Iranians are concerned, 1500 AD is very, very critical. That’s when the Shiite religion became for the first time the official religion in Iran. They view 1979 as a major, major milestone. And they look back and they say, from a very minuscule Muslim element, here we are in 2025. We are a major regional and global leader, and all that without nuclear. 

What I’m aiming at is that the Western world has tried to approach the Shiites of Iran through Western lenses. Let’s talk, let’s discuss, let’s arrive at an agreement, let’s negotiate. Westerners don’t realize negotiation for Westerners is a step towards reconciliation. Negotiation for the ayatollahs, as it is for Hamas and Hezbollah and for the Houthis and other Middle Eastern terrorists, negotiation is a time to regroup, to bolster capabilities before you launch another attack on your rivals. Going back to their vision, according to the Shiite, according to the ayatollah’s constitution, they are mandated to take revenge against the treacherous apostate Sunnis and then bring the Western infidel to submission, and especially the great American Satan.

Now, many Americans will take it very lightly as a delusion on the part of the ayatollahs, and many Americans have ignored the fact that the ayatollahs have entrenched themselves in South America and Central America since the early 1980s in the tri-border area of Argentina, Paraguay, and Brazil, and in the tri-border area of Chile, Bolivia, and Peru. Why do they strike very close cooperation agreements with every single drug cartel in Latin America, especially Mexico? Why do they provide predator unmanned aerial vehicles to Venezuela? Why do they provide sophisticated equipment to construct underground tunnels between Mexico and the USA, as they have done in Gaza, Syria, and Lebanon? 

They have done that because they view, and rightly so, they view Latin America as the soft underbelly of the United States. And therefore, they also have established large numbers, some say scores, some say hundreds of sleeper cells on U.S. soil. Last year, in 2024, then the director of the FBI, Chris Wray, appeared four times in four separate hearings on Capitol Hill, two in the House, two in the Senate, in the Homeland Security Committee, and in the Appropriations Subcommittee on Homeland Security. Each time he highlighted the fact that more and more Iranian-supported anti-American Islamic terrorist cells are established on U.S. soil with the aim of eliminating key American personnel and eliminating key American institutions and installations. This has been the ayatollah’s vision from day one.

Mr. Jekielek:

So it’s not just Israel, because the ayatollahs have a specific vision of the elimination of Israel as part of their ideology?

Mr. Ettinger:

If there were not Israel in the Middle East today, the ayatollahs would still be mandated by their own vision, which is not despair-driven. It’s domination-driven. That domination-driven, fanatic, religious vision mandates them to bring the Western infidel and primarily the great American Satan to submission, irrespective of whether there is Israel or there is no Israel. Their efforts to do away with Israel have to do with their obvious awareness that Israel is the vanguard of the U.S. in the Middle East. They view Israel as the most effective outpost of the U.S. in the Middle East. 

In order to undermine U.S. strategic posture in Latin America, they collaborate with every anti-American, Latin American regime. And in order to undermine U.S. strategic posture in the Middle East, they try to undermine every regime, every country, which they view as an ally of the U.S. That’s the reason they want to do away with Israel. That’s the reason they want to topple the House of Saud in Saudi Arabia and the Emirates in the United Arab Emirates, and certainly also the Sunni regime in Bahrain. 

Mr. Jekielek:

The Iranian regime actually does fund Sunni groups as well, not just Shiite.

Mr. Ettinger:

The habit in the Middle East has been to leverage any opportunity to advance your goal, even if it means joining forces with your enemy or your adversary. The ayatollahs have collaborated with the Muslim Brotherhood for a reason. The Muslim Brotherhood follows an agenda, a constitution since 1928 and the Muslim Brotherhood are Sunnis.  But since 1928 they have attempted to topple every single national Muslim regime. They believe in establishing a universal Muslim society based on what they call the only legitimate religion in the world, Islam, and the core values of the Quran. 

If it takes joining forces with the Sunni Muslim Brotherhood to bring down the Sunni regime of Saudi Arabia, the ayatollahs are very happy to do that. It doesn’t matter, but they accept the Sunni Muslim Brotherhood as a contributing tool to advance their own goal. That’s the reason they have supported Sunni Hamas in Gaza while they support the Shiite Hezbollah in Lebanon. Both are very effective tools for them against Israel and against Egypt and against other Sunni entities.

Mr. Jekielek:

What you are describing is not generally understood here in America.

Mr. Ettinger:

Most people do not realize how deeply the Shiite, the ayatollahs have spread their arms, or the ayatollahs’ octopus, not only throughout the Gulf and not only throughout the Middle East, and not only in Latin America. Most people do not realize that the ayatollahs of Iran are deeply, deeply entrenched in a vision that transcends monetary benefits by far. The Western norm is that money talks. As far as the ayatollahs are concerned, well, money may talk, but it’s the ideology that walks. We have seen it in the last 46 years of the ayatollahs’ regime in Iran, since they toppled the pro-American Shah of Iran. 

The West, and especially the U.S., has showered the ayatollahs with hundreds of billions of dollars. Not only hasn’t it moderated the ayatollah’s anti-American zeal, it has bolstered the ayatollah’s machinery of anti-American terrorism, anti-American drug trafficking, anti-American money laundering, and anti-American proliferation of advanced military systems, and as I indicated, more and more in the backyard of America’s own soil, namely throughout Central and South America.

Mr. Jekielek:

What is your solution to this seemingly intractable problem?

Mr. Ettinger:

For 46 years to solve the ayatollah’s threat through diplomacy. And diplomacy backfired, and diplomacy became the chief engine of the ayatollah’s bolstered might. For the last 40 years, different presidents tried to deal with the ayatollahs through economic sanctions. President Trump, during his first administration, even implemented maximum pressure crippling economic sanctions, which almost brought down completely the Iranian economy. But we know now that economic sanctions, by definition, are reversible. 

They can work as long as there is a particular president, but then comes another president with another worldview, and the economic sanctions are reversible. And after the failure of the diplomatic option and the failure of the economic sanctions, it’s time to consider and implement the regime change option and attempt to implement the diplomatic option, but this time arriving at a better agreement, the message to the domestic opposition in Iran is hopeless. 

Because if the mightiest power in the world does not dare aspire for and implement regime change, who are we, the domestic opposition in Iran, to rise against the regime of the ayatollahs? Therefore, as long as the U.S. refrains from advancing the regime change option, there will not be any of most Iranians and against the interest of Western democracies.

Mr. Jekielek:

There isn’t much of an appetite in the United States for regime change with this administration and the general populace as well. There have been plenty of examples of U.S. attempts at regime change that have ushered in even worse regimes. In fact, Iran is an example of that.

Mr. Ettinger:

I’m aware of the lack of appetite, but I’m also aware of the threats to global sanity, to global even existence of many, many countries in this world, as long as the current ayatollah regime is in power. You can produce regime change in Iran through the power of cyber capabilities by the U.S. You can produce regime change in Iran following even the example of Israel versus Hezbollah, where we managed to liquidate most leaders of Hezbollah, most leaders of Hamas. 

But more than that, let’s assume that I’m underestimating the cost of regime change. There is a reality that Iran is very close to becoming a nuclear power in Iran would dwarf the worst-case scenario of the cost required to produce a regime change in Iran right now. Therefore, whether there is appetite or there is no appetite, I think this challenge calls for a leadership that is much more aligned with the long-term national security of the United States than the immediate-term convenience of military and political leadership.

Mr. Jekielek:

The argument would be, we’ve tried these things before. We’ve tried them repeatedly and they have failed. There must be another way.

Mr. Ettinger:

President Trump rightly stated that his goal is to bring an end to war and terrorism. You cannot bring an end to war and terrorism without taking care of the epicenter of war and terrorism, which is the regime of the ayatollahs in Iran. I would compare it to a fire that erupts in California or somewhere else, and the fire department comes and they attempt to extinguish the fire. Extinguishing the fire completely is very costly and creates many problems. Let’s contain the fire; let’s limit the fire to a certain area. 

The same applies to the battle of the U.S. against terrorism. You cannot contain terrorism because a fire that is contained is definitely going to erupt again and may consume more and more lives and more and more properties. As long as you allow the regime to remain, you must not delude yourself that they will moderate themselves. You allow them to be contained, and they are going to erupt in a much more ruthless manner. 

There is a rule in the Middle East. When you commit yourself to any appeasements toward terrorism, terrorists always bite the hand that feeds them. And any show of patience, of appeasement, of gestures toward terrorists is rightly viewed by terrorists as a sign of weakness. And weakness only whets their appetite. It does not change their appetite. 

Mr. Jekielek:

There is interest among the Iranian people themselves in having a different government. We have seen eruptions of that multiple times over the last several years. 

Mr. Ettinger:

There was an attempt at uprising during President Obama’s tenure, and the president left them hanging high and dry. There was an attempt mostly by women during Biden’s presidency, and once again, they were left hanging high and dry. Today, most of the population does not want the ayatollahs. When they hear voices from the U.S. saying, we don’t have the appetite for regime change, to them that resembles a very robust headwind, which is defeating those who want an uprising against the regime. A call in the West for regime change would produce that tailwind which they aspire for. And therefore, there must be a credible threat of regime change hovering above the head of the ayatollahs that maybe, maybe would generate the tailwind that the domestic opposition requires.

Mr. Jekielek:

What is the cost to the U.S. and the world of a nuclear Iran?

Mr. Ettinger:

Devastation beyond the Gulf, beyond the Middle East, global devastation. There’s no doubt in my mind that the ayatollahs do not aspire to nuclear capability in order to brag about it. For them, the guiding force is their ideology. Their ideology, by the way, is not only in their constitution, it has been reinforced in their school curriculum. It has been underscored every Friday during the sermons in the mosque. It is being repeated every single day through their official media. 

The message of that vision is very, very clear—toppling all Sunni regimes and bringing the West to submission. They tried to topple the regime in Morocco. They are very heavily involved in civil wars in Yemen, in Iraq, and Syria, and increasingly involved with terror organizations in Latin America, with drug cartels in Latin America, doing their utmost to erode U.S. strategic posture. 

The question remains, why would the West display indifference, watching the actual progress of the ayatollahs’ threat? In 1979, no one took them seriously. Today, they have surged from second or third Middle East power to a prime global power. Why should anyone doubt the notion that nuclear capability would provide them with an unprecedented dramatic tailwind to fully accomplish their vision of global domination? Well, Yoram, this has been an absolutely fascinating discussion. 

Mr. Jekielek:

A final thought as we finish up?

Mr. Ettinger:

As I have always believed, it’s incumbent upon Western policymakers to refrain from sacrificing the inconvenient, frustrating reality on the altar of a very convenient, very appealing alternate reality because alternate reality has led the world to disasters as we saw in the pre-Second World War and as we have seen in the pre-ascension of the ayatollahs to power in Iran. The Western world would be better off sticking with inconvenient reality than falling into the trap, a suicidal trap, of alternate reality.

Mr. Jekielek:

Yoram Ettinger, it’s such a pleasure to have you on the show.

Mr. Ettinger:

Thank you very much. My pleasure and my certainly deep satisfaction.