Ray Takeyh on What Iran Wants

The Tikvah Podcast

Tikvah

Judaism, Politics, Religion & Spirituality, News

4.6 • 620 Ratings

🗓️ 2 February 2024

⏱️ 36 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Since October 7, there have been more than one hundred attacks by Iran-backed militias against American forces in the Middle East. On January 28, a drone strike, probably launched by Iran’s most powerful proxy in Iraq, killed three and injured more than 40 American soldiers. Iran-supported Houthis have launched dozens of attacks on commercial ships in the Red Sea. Iran’s most important proxy in Lebanon, Hezbollah, sustains a low-grade confrontation with Israel. And, of course, 130 Israelis remain captive to Iran-backed Hamas as hostages in Gaza.

In other words, there is a war, sometimes hot, sometimes cool, happening across the entire Middle East between Iran, Israel, the U.S., and various other smaller actors. What does Iran want out of this war? Is it achieving its objectives? What is it concerned about?

To answer these and other questions, Ray Takeyh here joins Mosaic editor Jonathan Silver. Takeyh is a senior fellow for Middle East studies at the Council on Foreign Relations, a regular contributor to the Wall Street Journal and Foreign Affairs, and the author, just last week, of a New York Times opinion piece called “Why Iran Doesn’t Want a War.”

Musical selections in this podcast are drawn from the Quintet for Clarinet and Strings, op. 31a, composed by Paul Ben-Haim and performed by the ARC Ensemble.

Transcript

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0:00.0	About 350 U.S. Army and Air Force personnel are deployed to the logistic support base located at Tower 22 of the Jordanian Defense Network near Jordan's northeastern border with Syria.
0:20.2	They're there as part of Operation Inherence
0:22.1	Resolve, the American-led mission to defeat ISIS. On January 28th, a drone strike, probably launched
0:29.5	by Iran's most powerful proxy in Iraq, killed three of those 350 U.S. soldiers, and injured
0:35.9	more than 40 others. Since October 7th, there have been more
0:39.8	than 100 attacks by Iran-backed militias against U.S. forces. This comes, of course, at a time when
0:46.0	the Iran-backed Houthis have launched dozens of attacks on commercial ships in the Red Sea.
0:50.7	It comes at a time when Iran's most powerful proxy in Lebanon, Hezbollah, sustains a low-grade
0:56.4	confrontation with Israel, not a full-blown war by any means, but enough that many thousands
1:01.7	of Israelis cannot return to their homes. And it comes at a time when some 130 Israelis remain
1:07.4	captive to Hamas as hostages in Gaza, after Hamas, with Iranian support,
1:12.9	perpetrated the deadliest terror attack in Israeli history. Since October 7th, we've been covering
1:18.3	these battles between Israel and Hamas, and we've tried to be attentive to the larger context
1:23.4	in which the American-led alliance in the Middle East, including Israel, confronts Iran.
1:29.1	In fact, many of our listeners have been obsessed with what's going on in Gaza
1:32.6	and are gripped by the news coming out of Israel, I myself am.
1:36.6	But in today's conversation, we're going to look at that larger conflict in the Middle East
1:40.6	from a different point of view.
1:42.6	Welcome to the Tikva podcast. I'm your host,
1:44.9	Jonathan Silver. Zoom out of the Kiryan Tel Aviv and zoom back into Tehran. And now, for the sake of
1:51.4	today's conversation, let's survey the battlefields of the Middle East from Iran's point of view.
1:56.9	Looking not only at Gaza, but Iraq, Yemen, Syria, Lebanon, how's the war going right now?
	...

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