PODCAST TRANSCRIPT: Israel’s Iran paradox
This transcript was generated using an AI transcription service and lightly edited for readability. Please consult the corresponding audio before quoting.
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Alaa Salama
Welcome to the +972 podcast, your direct line to the journalists, thinkers, and activists struggling for justice in Israel-Palestine. I’m Alaa Salama, Audience Engagement Manager at +972 magazine, and your host for today’s episode. Our podcast grounds the discussion in lived realities to bring you closer to the issues that matter most between the River and the Sea.
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Alaa Salama
A week into the Israeli-American war on Iran, the scale of the destruction is already staggering.
Hundreds of Iranian civilians have been killed, alongside much of the country’s political and military leadership. Meanwhile, rockets continue to fall on Tel Aviv, Jerusalem, and Kiryat Shmona and as a ground invasion of Lebanon appears imminent, the war is already becoming regional.
What does Israel want from this escalation? Beyond the immediate violence, what can it gain and what might it lose? Most importantly: where does the core issue of the conflict, the Palestinian people and their rights, fit into all of this? To answer these questions, I’m joined by my colleague: journalist, analyst, and editor at Local Call, with decades long experience reporting on and analyzing Israeli politics, Meron Rapoport.
All right, Meron, good to see you. Thank you for joining us on the podcast.
Meron Rapoport
Thank you for having me.
Alaa Salama
Always a pleasure. Meron, Before this war that started in February, Iran struck Israel on 3 occasions, each following Israeli strikes once on Iran’s consulate in Damascus, and twice on Iranian soil. It seems like Israel could have easily avoided further strikes, and even further conflict now that Iran’s proxies in the regions were significantly weakened, but it went for it anyway. Why?
Meron Rapoport
Almost no Israeli would agree with you, or maybe with me in what you said — that Iran did not attack Israel unless it was attacked. To most Israelis, I would say more than 90% of Israelis, this question seems as detached from reality, because the perception in Israel that has been cultivated, I would say, for 30 years — even more, Netanyahu was of course the architect, but he was not the only one — that Iran is an existential threat, that Iran attacks Israel, that all Iran wants to do is to destroy Israel, and that therefore to attack Iran will always be a preemptive attack. As it was portrayed in the last attack where Israel said, “It’s a preemptive attack,” although everyone knows that Iran had no intention of attacking this time.
It has to do, of course, with things that Iran did. It’s not that it was completely innocent. Of course, it did support, as you mentioned, proxies that did attack Israel, especially Hezbollah in Lebanon. It supported the Assad regime, which was at least theoretically hostile to Israel. It did sponsor attacks — terror attacks — on Israeli facilities abroad, outside of Israel. So there is something.
But I think it was really built mainly by Netanyahu as the arch enemy. Every threat that there is on Israel was attributed to Iran: Hamas attacks by Palestinians on Israelis in the West Bank, in Gaza, inside Israel, everything was Iran. It was also, I think, a cynical tool by Netanyahu to circumvent the Palestinian issue, always, and to attribute everything to Iran — to its extremist regime, to its fundamentalist regime, that this is the reason, that if this regime will disappear, then Israel will have no problem in the Middle East with its neighbors. Therefore, on this ground, it is easy to understand why Israel attacked and it is very easy to understand why there is such a huge support among the Israeli public for this attack.
Alaa Salama
This is what I, and I think a lot of people, are trying to reckon with. The propaganda is there. We understand it. We understand that the Israeli public and perhaps the American public for decades have been conditioned to believe that Iran is an existential threat to Israel. But what is there to gain? Instead of having an enemy that is viewed as an existential threat, but is not, to have an enemy that is now bombing every city in Israel?
Meron Rapoport
First of all, of course, there is the political gain. The very cynical, internal political game — that was Netanyahu’s card for 30 years. By the way, it should be mentioned that Israel supplied arms to the Iranian regime after the revolution. The Iran-Contra deal was Israel sending arms to Iran? If Iran is a Nazi regime, I don’t see the Jewish Agency with all its flaws sending arms to Hitler. Seems a little bit strange that they would arm Hitler. So Israel did play a role and supported the Iranian regime with arms, meaning that it didn’t see it as such a threat. So there is this, as I said, this political gain for Netanyahu, 30 years, this is a card: “Here, I am crushing the Iranian regime.” Of course, if the Iranian regime will fall, it will be great. Even if not, he can say we have weakened this arch enemy, this existential threat. Then I would say there is another thing that is also very eminent, that is now, which is to distract attention from Gaza. Israel does not want to go to the second stage [of the ceasefire deal]. Netanyahu wants the situation to stay as it is, with Israel controlling more than 50% of Gaza Strip, with Hamas in power. The coalition between Netanyahu and Hamas is a long issue, more than 10 years of very this strategic shared interest for Netanyahu and Hamas. He wants Hamas to stay. He doesn’t want to go to the second stage.
The second stage did not really start, but there was still pressure. The Board of Peace was established, and this Palestinian committee was established. It didn’t go into Gaza, it’s still in Cairo, as we know. But still, there was some building pressure to go to the second stage. Netanyahu does not want it. This war distracts attention from Gaza. I think he thinks to himself — Netanyahu — that the chances that Trump will pressure him to go to the second stage after him being such an ally in a strategic war are limited, if maybe non-existent. So I think this is also a consideration that Israel had.
Thirdly, maybe because they know that Iran is quite weak. That’s a great reason to go to war, because it’s a war that you can, if not win, at least not suffer too much. Then, I think, if the idea is to set a new order in the Middle East, then I think it makes sense to attack Iran. It makes sense if the idea is to make a new American-Israeli order in the Middle East, in which, of course, the Americans will sit at the head of the table, but Israel will sit at the table next to to the Americans, then it does make sense to go to war with Iran.
Alaa Salama
We’re seeing an unprecedented level of cooperation, of military cooperation between the U.S. and Israel. For more than 30 years, Netanyahu has been building the case inside Israel and on the world stage for decisive action against Iran. So, why now? And what is different with Trump?
Meron Rapoport
First of all, we have to go to Gaza. I think what Israel did, it started with the Biden Administration, is it showed itself, first of all, and the world, that it can completely ignore international law, that it has no boundaries. The war in Gaza, the ethnic cleansing and the genocide in Gaza was a laboratory in international law, to see how much it still is a reference in international relations. Israel showed that it can do it with impunity from the Biden administration. Then came Trump, who, for him, all these rules, regulations, laws, do not apply — not internally and certainly not externally. It does not apply inside the U.S. He does not have to obey laws. He went to war without the approval of Congress now. He is above the law, the administration is above the law, and the U.S. is above the law.
So Trump, I think, may have seen the laboratory of Israel in Gaza, and maybe he had it in him before, but he didn’t do it in his last administration. I don’t think he really changed. But now he saw that this is possible, it’s possible to ignore completely. That it is a laboratory. For that, it was easier for Netanyahu to go with Trump because in this basic despise for international law, international regulation, what limits do states have on opening war, on humanitarian, the way that the U.S. is boasting with taking down the Iranian boat near Sri Lanka. Certainly, I think here, Israel and the U.S. they have a common heritage here. It’s really a heritage. A heritage developed by Israel and adopted by Trump.
Alaa Salama
You talked about Israel wanting to maybe reshape the politics of the Middle East. And clearly this partnership now with the U.S. begs the question, is this a partnership or did Israel drag the U.S. into its own mission or maybe one man’s mission?
Meron Rapoport
It’s a little bit hard to tell, to see the lines. I think certainly there is an impression that Trump was dragged. Netanyahu had a clear vision of what he wants for so many years, and he found a partner in Trump. He, I think, presented to Trump a way of how to win, at least he explained to him that it is possible to win and Trump likes to win. Maybe he pointed to the really huge imbalance that was also evident in the last war, in the war in June 2025, when it was clear that Israel has a huge superiority over Iran. So he may have convinced Trump by saying, “Listen, it’s an easy win. They cannot do too much.”
As for, what are the goals here? I’m not sure that it is identical. I think that Trump would settle for a Venezuela kind of arrangement that will stay more or less the same regime, but will take orders from Trump concerning oil, concerning American interests in the Middle East. Netanyahu, I think, is pointing for more: His aim is basically to make the Palestinian question go away. This is behind everything. This is what he is pointing at.
I’m not 100 percent sure that Trump is there. I’m not 100 percent sure — this is a pure speculation — and I am always accused as an optimist without any reason, but I’m not 100 percent sure that if an opportunity of a second Madrid conference after this war will come up, at the request, for example, of the Gulf state, of Saudi Arabia, that Trump will be completely against it. If Iran is to be a new Venezuela and the price is a regional conference around the Palestinian issue. This, of course, is the worst result that Netanyahu could have imagined.
Alaa Salama
It’s good that we landed here. I think you would agree with me that the core conflict between Zionism and the Palestinians is here. It’s between the River and the Sea. This is where the real war is either won or lost. Where do you see the Palestinians in Israel, in the West Bank, in Gaza, and the Palestinian refugees fitting in Israel’s or Netanyahu’s plan for the region and for Iran?
Meron Rapoport
In two words: not here. I think the genocide and the partial ethnic cleansing in Gaza set a model that this is possible. Or at least I think Netanyahu and his allies think it’s possible, even if we, Israel, failed to do the total ethnic cleansing. There are still two million Palestinians in Gaza. Yes, they live in tents and in broken houses, but they are there. But I think it opened up the appetite to do this, that this is possible, that the world will not oppose, that there will be no internal opposition to that.
Of course we see that in the West Bank, it’s still the semi-official policy in the West Bank. It’s not the official policy — the ethnic cleansing. In Italian there is ufficiale and there is ufficioso. Ufficiale is official and ufficioso is half-official. There is this policy in the West Bank of half-official policy of ethnic cleansing. Still, you have to see the big picture, it does not still succeed fully or even partially. You know, for the communities hit in the Jordan Valley or Masafer Yatta, it’s terrible for every community, but there are still two and a half million Palestinians in the West Bank. But I think this is the idea. The idea is put on the table. It was more or less agreed upon by the army, which was previously a little bit opposed to this kind of move. So I think that there is a semi-official policy of ethnic cleansing and really wiping out any opponent like Israel did in Gaza. We see it in Lebanon now really leveling out.
The opposition leader, Yair Lapid, said yesterday that Israel should have no alternative but to go into South Lebanon and bring down a few villages, level down a few villages. This really went into the bloodstream of Israeli society, not only Netanyahu and his allies, the army, the institutions. Of course, it will be hard to do the same thing in Iran, 2,000 miles away and with 80 million people but what we are seeing, the bombing, the pressing now in Tehran, other cities are leveling down. The idea is the same.
This is, I think, really here Israel’s biggest contradiction maybe or problem. Because if this is the thinking — that taking down the Iranian regime — if someone really believes, and of course we put a lot of question marks on this, but let’s say that people do believe that taking down the Iranian regime will make it possible for Israel to live in peace in the Middle East without giving Palestinians their rights. If someone really believes in this I think quite soon he will realize this is not the case. I think Israel will learn quite quickly that it did not solve anything, that the Palestinians are here. Even in Gaza, while there’s no Palestinian agencies — as so many have said, in the Board of Peace there’s no PA, no Fatah, no Hamas, certainly not Hamas in representation. They are not part of the future of Gaza at the moment, but they are there.
So I think that if you look again, it’s very hard. I imagine for people in Gaza, it is very hard to say, “Well, let’s look at the big picture,” when they are struggling to have food and medicines. Israel is using, of course, this war as a pretext to shut the checkpoints going into Gaza. They are there, they are there, and Israel failed. Whatever it does — leveling down whole neighborhoods in Tehran, leveling down villages in southern Lebanon, neighborhoods in southern Beirut, attacking Palestinians in the West Bank, Bedouin communities in the West Bank, non-Bedouin communities in the West Bank, and intensifying the settlements — it will not help. The world will not buy it, and I think even the Middle East will not buy it. Despite all the reservations about Palestine, Palestinians, they showed how not committed they are to the Palestinian issue, they cannot buy it.
I think some kind of a new Madrid Conference is even a more plausible result. Very far away for the moment, it’s really, but it’s even more plausible than Israel, succeeding in convincing the Middle East, even the Emirates, not to speak about Qatar and Saudi Arabia and Iraq, that, “No, the Palestinians issue is closed.” Israel can do whatever it wants with the Palestinians. It can either strangle them, starve them, and drive them away, and there will be no consequences. No, I don’t think so.
Alaa Salama
Was that an alarm?
Meron Rapoport
Yes, the alarm came. We’ll continue.
Alaa Salama
Okay. Ready? All good?
Meron Rapoport
Yes, I can. I’m ready.
Alaa Salama
So far, you’ve had to leave us and go to a protected area twice, and we keep hearing sirens. Now you’re telling us a rocket, I assume, fell very close by.
Meron Rapoport
I don’t know if it’s debris or the rocket itself, but it’s 200 meters from where I am.
Alaa Salama
So maybe this is a good opportunity to ask about the Israeli public. How much do you see — as an insider and as a journalist — how much do you see the Israeli public being aware of the situation that they’re in? Also, how are you seeing the Israeli media covering this war, especially with what we know about military censorship?
Meron Rapoport
First of all, with military censorship, it is very harsh this time, even harsher than before, in the war in June 2025. There is zero information where the rockets are landing. In this case, it’s just nearby, so the neighbors are telling me there’s an ambulance. But there’s very little information.
I think Israelis, as in many cases, are in a strange situation. There is wide support for this war, and we talked about it in the beginning, the claim that this is inevitable — that it maybe should have been done before — but certainly now it is inevitable is very widespread. Even those who do not support Netanyahu, even those who suspect his motives, even those who are not anti-Palestinian, who think Palestinians should have rights, among those. Not all of course.
At the same time, I think there is, first of all, fatigue. As we talk now, we are the eighth day of this war and a direct attack on Tel Aviv should not have occurred after eight days, and certainly after the last war, in which we were promised that this is for generations, as Netanyahu said, that we have solved the issue for generations. So it’s eight months, and rockets are landing in the middle of Tel Aviv. People are going to the shelters yesterday, for example, Saturday here in Tel Aviv we went nine times into the shelters in one day.
Yes, it’s not like Gaza, it’s not like Tehran, people are not dying in the hundreds in the streets. But it’s not easy to live like that and you don’t know if you can sleep. So there is this shadow hovering over the Israeli mind saying, “Okay, what are we doing this for?” In an intuitive way, I think many Israelis do understand, even if they support the war, that it will not solve anything. I think the sick moment in which Israeli society is in is that the very big majorities of Israelis, even those as I said oppose Netanyahu and even are ready to accept the Palestinian state, do not see another way. They do not see that there is another way other than fighting.
They rejected Netanyahu, but they basically adopted his vision. Netanyahu has this ability to understand where Israeli society is, and he understood perfectly. Once the war is on, they will be on board. They will be on board because Israeli society has reached a moment in which all other alternatives do not exist, and the only alternative is using more power. Israel, in their eyes, seems stronger than ever vis-à-vis its opponents in the Middle East.
Maybe they’re right, in a way. Hamas is certainly weaker than it was two and a half years ago. Hezbollah certainly. Syria, as we said, does not exist, or the Assad regime does not exist. And Iran is much, much weaker. So they say, “There’s no other alternative, military might is the only way. We are good at it. We are the best. We sell weapons for hundreds of billions of dollars. Our economy depends on it, so why not?” And the cost? Yes, a rocket landed here, not far from where I live. Some people were wounded. I don’t know, the numbers are not clear. But it’s not that high a cost. But it’s not that high a cost: The economy is going pretty well, the numbers are very good. The shekel is one of the strongest currencies in the world. Yes, Israelis are experiencing hardship and economic hardship, it’s not that everything is rosy. But the situation is much, much better than you would have expected after two and a half years of war.
In this, Netanyahu knows exactly the Israeli psyche. He knows it deeply. Of course, Netanyahu wants to be re-elected like every other politician, but I think that if you would have asked Netanyahu 30 years ago that this is your legacy, that Israelis will stop thinking about any other alternative other than continuous war with their neighbors and of course continuous occupation and dispossession of Palestinians, and this will be the only alternative, I think he would have said, “Okay, I’m ready to step down because I achieved my goal. I achieved my mission. I changed Israeli society.”
Not that it was peace-loving before, I don’t have to tell you, but at least the alternative, the option existed. It does not anymore, for the moment. The past, the present, and the future of Israel is a Sparta, is continuous war, sometimes in high intensity, sometimes low intensity. But this is our life here, and we have no other alternative, and all other alternatives are impossible. This, I think, has completely taken over Israeli society. It is a very sad —and I would say even sick — moment.
Alaa Salama
This existential fear is core to Israeli society. And Iran has served as the image of the mortal enemy in Israel for decades. If the Iranian regime were to fall, and a docile regime or even a friendly regime were to replace it, will Israel look for a new mortal enemy?
Meron Rapoport
Yes, I think it’s very paradoxical. I think that Netanyahu himself risks losing his main asset in the Israeli public discourse: the fear of Iran, the Iranian threat, the existential threat of Iran. If it does not exist, Israel will have to look for a new enemy.
If it chooses, and for the moment it does choose, to continue the occupation and the dispossession of Palestinians, it will need a new enemy. Because it was not about Iran, as we said from the beginning, it was not about Iran. But I think, some elements in the government or in the military establishment already understand it — what you are saying. Some of the Israeli establishment, there was Bennett saying the same thing — maybe the future Prime Minister of Israel — the ex-Defense Minister, Yoav Gallant said the same thing, “Yes, that Turkey is the enemy.” We had, in the last few months, especially since the last war with Iran in June 2025, but mainly in these days, that Israel is already paving the ground for the new enemy, which will be Turkey, and Egypt, and Pakistan and maybe Saudi Arabia maybe.
But certainly they’re talking about this new Sunni threat on Israel. If once there was this Shia axis, now they’re talking about a Sunni axis. We’ve seen it even in what is called the Qatar Gate issue, it is doing a lot of propaganda against Egypt. I spoke with Europeans that said that they met Israeli officials briefing them how dangerous Egypt is. I mean, Egypt has a peace agreement with Israel for more than 40 years. I think, yes, Israel will need a new enemy.
If the new enemy is Turkey, I don’t know exactly what the Turkish capabilities are, but I would guess, and I think the Israelis also guess, that if there is an attack on Istanbul, the response will not be a few dozen missiles on Tel Aviv. That’s not the same thing. Turkey is much more of a threat. On the long term. It might pose more problems for Israel if Israel wants to continue, the occupation, the annexation, the ethnic cleansing, and the genocide. If it prefers to leave all that behind, then maybe Turkey is not a problem and Egypt is not a problem and Pakistan is not a problem. But if Israel is determined to continue the occupation, the colonization of the West Bank, and the ethnic cleansing in Gaza, then I think Turkey — some kind of this axis — could be more problematic to Israel than Iran.
There’s another thing. This propaganda or this narrative — say it’s not a propaganda but a narrative — that Iran is the biggest enemy, the biggest enemy of the stability of the Middle East and the world is shared not only by the Americans, it’s shared by the Europeans. I think it has to do with old colonial ideas that these are the barbarians, that they represent the barbarians, that Iran is the representation of the old barbarians, the image of what a barbarian regime is.
We see it in this war. An attack on a sovereign state, against international law — all experts say that this is a breach of international law — is met with condemnation of the Iranian response in the Emirates and Qatar and Bahrain. These could be condemned because, okay, these are attacks on sovereign states, but they don’t condemn this.
Chancellor Merz said in June that Israel is doing the West’s dirty work. Why is that? Is Iran threatening Germany? Not really. It’s not serious. They are threatening Germany in the sense that they are the barbarians, and Israel is using it. It will be more difficult, much more difficult, to convince Germany, or France, or the UK, or even the U.S., that Turkey are the barbarians, that Egypt is the barbarian.
I don’t know if there is a Sunni axis, I doubt it. But certainly the combination of Turkey, Egypt, Saudi Arabia, Pakistan, if you put them all together, their capabilities and their standing in the West is much, much more difficult to handle than Iran.
Toppling the Iranian regime could be great news for the Iranian people, and I hope it will come, not in the way it is done now. But I hope this day will come, that the Iranian people will be free of this regime. This will be great news for Iran, for the Iranian people. But will it really be good news for Israel’s colonial project in the Middle East? I doubt it.
Alaa Salama
Thank you so much, Meron. This was great. Thank you so much for your time.
Meron Rapoport
Thank you.
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Alaa Salama
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