Target Tehran: Stopping a Nuclear Iran through Espionage, Diplomacy, & Cyberwarfare

Arnold Stricker
00:00:00

Israel is using sabotage, cyber warfare, assassination and secret diplomacy to stop a nuclear Iran and create a new Middle east. And we're going to talk more about that in the book, Target Tehran with our guest, Elan Evutar. Welcome to St. Louis in tune and thank you for joining.

Join us for fresh perspectives on issues and events with experts, community leaders, and everyday people who are making a difference in shaping our society and world. I'm your host, Arnold Stricker, along with co host Mark Langston. Mark, it's going to be an interesting show today.

Mark Langston
00:00:47

I know. In fact, we are connecting with our guest in Israel, right?

Arnold Stricker
00:00:51

Yes. We will be getting him on the line here in a few short moments, but he's been, it is 8 hours ahead. He's in the evening time right now.

And I really appreciate him taking time out of his busy schedule to get with us. First, our return to civility.

If you get put on hold like our guest is during a phone conversation, stay by the phone while you're waiting, don't wander away and leave the person on the other end thinking that you hung up on them. Besides, you might never learn the answer to what you called about.

Mark Langston
00:01:21

Oh, no, no.

Arnold Stricker
00:01:24

And we really want to know what's going on.

The book we're going to be talking about is called Target how Israel is using sabotage, cyber warfare, assassination and secret diplomacy to stop a nuclear Iran and create a new Middle east.

And our guest is going to be at the new Jewish Book festival and he's going to be doing an online event and that's going to take place Tuesday, November 12, and it's starting at 01:00 p.m. it goes to 215. It's an online event, so you have to sign up for that. Go to the St. Louis Jewish Community center or the Jewish Book Festival website.

We'll have more about that on the podcast page. Direct links for you. But our guest, Ilan Evyatar, is a former editor in chief of the award winning magazine the Jerusalem Report.

He's also a former news director, columnist and senior contributor at the Jerusalem Post. He's edited and translated several books, worked as a speech writer and ghostwriter. He was born in Israel and raised in London.

Something about this book.

He talks about how Mossad has employed all of these things to attempt to thwart Iran's nuclear weapons program and how the agency played a role in leveraging mutual fear of Iran to forge alliances with Gulf Arab states. He uses the talks about the nuclear agreement in 2015.

He draws on exclusive interviews with top intelligence sources from Israel and the United States, including the Mossad and the CIA Day. And it's really, folks, an intricate web of international diplomacy and security.

And he provides some really essential context for things that are going on currently in Lebanon with Hezbollah and Hamas in Gaza. So here's Ilan. We're talking to Ilan Evyator.

He's an author and journalist, and we're talking to him about the book target how Israel is using sabotage, cyber warfare, assassination and secret diplomacy to stop a nuclear Iran and create a new Middle east. I'm grateful for the time that we can spend together. Today you're going to be at the Jewish Book festival coming up, and we'll talk more about that.

Ilan, what was prompting you to write this book with Yonah? Jeremy?

Ilan Evyatar
00:03:37

Bob, great to be with you, and thank you for that question. The idea for the book basically came when Israel, in what was really quite an unprecedented step, announced publicly at a press conference.

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu in 2018 revealed the heist of Iran's UK archive. Now, this is something that's very unusual in the intelligence world. Usually you would pay that to a few select allies.

You give them some access to some of the information.

But Ansel used this as a very prominent public act of diplomacy, as it were, in expect to get the Trump administration to pull out of the 2015 JCPLA UK release of information. He showed the files that had been seized in this daring heist in Iran and the further details were leaked.

So that gave us a lot of information to work with in the book. The first capture of the book is devoted to this heist. And what's unusual about the book is that we have this. It's very up to date.

It came out in September 2023. And they basically go right up there to April of that year. And books of our intelligence can be 2030, 40, 50 years old.

Arnold Stricker
00:05:08

Yeah, I was really amazed at the detail and the specific situations that are described in the book. You had, it seemed, unprecedented access to a variety of intelligence officers and those individuals within governments to discuss this information.

How did you get that access like that?

Ilan Evyatar
00:05:28

Both myself and Yonah have reported for so many years on these issues. So between the two of us, we had contacts with intelligence officials over period of coming for 30 years.

Between the two of us, we were basically able to reach out to our contact and provide the whole art. The story of Israel's campaign against a royal nuclear program getting from the mid 1990s all the way through to 202-020-2223.

Arnold Stricker
00:05:59

It really is a historical analysis of the israeli push to keep the Iran nuclear program in check.

And did it surprise you, even though it was a political and a push with the Trump administration, did it surprise you that the Mossad revealed that information and that Israel revealed that information internationally?

Ilan Evyatar
00:06:21

Yeah, absolutely. Like I said, it's very unusual to release intelligence information in that way.

But israeli intelligence official, the mandan by Yossi Cohen before Mossad said that it's more important what you, the use you make of the intelligence himself equipped, as far as I'm concerned, you can put it in the main plaza in parish, in the arc de trio. For them, it was far more important to get across the message that Iran is lying about its nuclear program. And they also wanted to.

Yossi, Korea had a Mossadan there, and Jammin Netanyahu, the prime minister, wanted the US out of the 2015 nuclear as a bad agreement that would eventually allow Iran to become a nuclear state or a threshold nuclear state.

Arnold Stricker
00:07:15

How much, you know, speaking about that, how much does Israel rely on the relationships and influence that they have with the arab states through the Abraham Accords and the EU and the United States and decisions that they are making currently? How much influence is played in that?

Ilan Evyatar
00:07:35

But as well as looking at Mosaic's efforts to thwart the nuclear program or to slow it down, at the very least, I think also looks at Mosaic's involvement in the behind the scenes secret diplomacy that led to the Abraham accords with the United Arab Emirates, with Bahrain, and also ties with Saudi Arabia, which have yet to come to full normalization that exists.

We want to say, for example, we saw in the iranian attacks against Israel, the iranian ballistic missile attacks against Israel in April of this year and in October of this year, how Israel cooperated with intelligence agencies of other countries, how they received intelligence, how they received radar data, things that would have been completely unimaginable a few years ago.

Arnold Stricker
00:08:33

Do you see a normalization with many more arab states in light of what I would call Hamas defeat and what's going on in Lebanon with Hezbollah? Do you see more of a normalization of Israel with the rest of the arab communities and countries and vice versa, even in light of what Iran's doing?

Mark Langston
00:08:54

Yeah.

Ilan Evyatar
00:08:55

When we look back through the civil, it's very clear now and has been for some time, but one of the aims really, Hamas attack massacre's world seemed to derail what looked like imminent normalization between Israel and Saudi Arabia and the clown bridge, Mohammed bin Salman, MBS had basically said it was, this is going to happen any day, but it was really a question of when and not if. And the rhetoric has changed a lot since then happen. Saudi Arabia has been much more circumspect about its ties with Israel.

It's even been quite caustic in it, in its rhetoric. But behind the scenes ties are still ongoing.

And yes, I think eventually we will see a reduction of that normalization process, especially now that from us has really been almost completely dismantled.

But I think that there will have to be some kind of a hostage deal, there will have to be conditions which allow this to be in place, and there'll have to be some kind of commitment from Israel at least to placate saudi public opinion bar by preventing any kind of path towards the palestinian state. That is also debatable.

Arnold Stricker
00:10:12

What that will mean now, as we've heard the news here in the states, with what's gone on in the Gaza Strip with Hamas and in southern Lebanon with Hezbollah, the arab countries, as I've read in the book, it seemed like they were, yeah, we understand we have to protect our arab brothers and watch out for them. But we really would like to have a normalization with Israel with these recent developments.

And you mentioned about what's going on with Saudi Arabia there.

How has now Hezbollah's influence and that kind of flare up in the north, has that distracted even further from Saudi Arabia and other arab states to keep tight with their normalization?

Ilan Evyatar
00:11:02

The Saudis and the other moderate hidden states, on one hand, they have a commitment to the palestinian polls, to the palestinian people, the palestinian state.

The Saudis are the guardian of the two mosques and they have a special role within the islamic world, where Kashtokinz kala is for now is shiite proxy of Iran. There's no love lost between Saudi Arabia and Iran. And al Sharp, a Saudi Arabia, they have certainly pushed out their influence in Lebanon.

Shopping dismantled even further and perhaps some kind of arrangement whereby fisdal act, it gives up some of its strategic weaponry or gives up some of its control over the navy state.

Arnold Stricker
00:12:02

This is Arnold Strucker with Mark Langston of St. Louis entombed.

We're talking to Elon Evjutar, author and journalist of the book Target Tehran, and he is going to be doing an online event at the Jewish Book festival, and that is Tuesday, November 12, and it will be at 01:00 p.m. it will end at 215 pm. We will give more information about that on the podcast page.

But Elon, as I read the book, it's a great overview in detail of things that I really never knew and maybe we never knew because these things aren't given out by intelligence communities.

I'm sure there's probably a whole lot of stories from the Central Intelligence agency that we would be aghast at or seriously, wow, that's surprising.

But you revealed in the book, and as time has gone on and now things that are developing with many of the Hamas leaders being just going away, I'll put it that way, and disappearing and coming off the scene, it seems like Mossad is continuing methodically to make sure that their focus is keeping Iran from that, getting that nuclear weapon and eliminating these proxy wars that are going on. Is that kind of the real feel for this latest insurgents that they've gone on and really taken out the Hamas leaders?

Ilan Evyatar
00:13:26

I think at the moment they really have their work cut out because, like you say, on the one hand, they're very busy with the fight against Hezbollah, with a bunch of success on iranian proxy militias both in Syria and Iraq, for the Houthis in Yemen and Hamas basically fighting on seven thirds Jews, including Iran, which is attacked Israel's wife and then the West bank as well.

And at the same time, Monsanto has to be busy, keep yourself busy with making sure that Iran, under the COVID of the fog of war, doesn't make any kind of nuclear breakthrough.

And of course, we also have the question of what is Israel going to do in a response to the latest iranian ballistic missile attack against the jail in which it fired 180 also ballistic missiles at Israel, causing quite severe damage in various places, although without beating too major. But Inshallah is going to respond. And the question is, will Israel respond directly against Iran's nuclear program?

Will it limit its response to ministering sides, perhaps connected to the Islamic Revolutionary guards here and so on? Victorian Guard of the, of the iranian leadership? Or will it target economic interest?

I think we're pretty much the big question at the moment, but that happened around three weeks ago. Question is, when? Also, will Israel respond? The choose holidays end in a few days.

But then you also have the american elections coming up in, what is it, less than three weeks?

Arnold Stricker
00:15:10

Yes.

Ilan Evyatar
00:15:11

Will ensure wait until the elections, will launch an attack after the election? Sure. A lot of questions on that front.

Arnold Stricker
00:15:18

And there's other activities, as you well know, the attack on the president Netanyahu's house and also the release of israeli plans to attack Iran. And whether that came from american sources or where that came from, and those all play into that.

From your perspective, does that make Israel step back a little bit and wait for some of the dust to settle before they figure out what they're going to do, or what do you think is going to happen there?

Ilan Evyatar
00:15:48

I think the big question the United States is, will interrupt attack before the elections, which could be seen as a move that tries to influence the elections in some way. In terms of the leak, in terms of official Shaiwali Kerry, the negativity itself is very grave.

There's nothing really operational there that can give the Iranians any kind of advantageous.

Arnold Stricker
00:16:15

I was in one of the chapters you talked about the importance of how cyber warfare has really, I don't want to say overtaken real warfare with guns and ammunition and bombs and missiles and things like that.

But it seems to be really becoming a more prominent and my words, a destructive kind of thing because it can really cripple an economy and cripple a country very quickly.

Do you foresee that is probably a venue that Israel will take to cripple the iranian economy doing that more in a cyber way than a direct attack militarily?

Ilan Evyatar
00:16:57

It's definitely a possibility, as I've shown in the past with various attacks that have been attributed to it.

For example, the 2010 Stuxnet operation, which crippled the iranian centrifuges that nuclear plants considered one of the first cyber attacks that moved over, as it were, into the physical world.

It was believed to be a joint cooperation with the US and other countries, and it also launched a major attack a few years ago against the Dundar bus port, which basically, according to foreign sources, would never take their direct responsibility. But that attack basically crippled one of Iran's major ports for a few days.

And that came after an iranian attack on cyber attack on israeli water sources.

It was aimed at releasing large amounts of chlorine into the water supply, which could be quite deadly, even though it didn't actually reach that stage. So cyber is definitely an option. Israel's defense minister said that Israel's response will be precise and surprising.

That very much could be one of those surprises, and there are other options that Israel could take there.

Arnold Stricker
00:18:25

What is the attitude of the israeli people at this point right now?

You're over in Israel right now, and what do all the people think about things that are going on in the Gaza Strip with Hamas, what's going on with Hezbollah up north and with the iranian threat through proxies? What does the status of the people and their thoughts towards all of this activity?

Ilan Evyatar
00:18:50

Obviously, Israel is a democracy with diverse opinions, but I would say if there's any kind of difference of opinion in Israel about what's going on at the moment, it's made me aimed at the Sabin funded Galva. Whether Israel should, what is it be prepared to do now, especially after the ambassador, meanwhile, yes, Sidwa was killed last week.

What should it be prepared to do in order to achieve a hostage release? And some people say now is the time for Israel to agree to pull out of its forces from Gaza. Well, Aberdeen should say Israel has to push ahead.

It has to continue to dismantle Hamash, at least Hamas mas, at the very least the expelled from the Gaza Strip of measures the put in place. You're not allowed to have any kind of military cavalry in the Gaza Strip when it comes to Lebanon.

I think at the moment they surely are much less broad support for the campaign in the north. Once you get tens of thousands of people displaced from their homes. They've been displaced for over a year.

Just below in that time fired thousands and thousands of rockets.

Israeli communities, which this campaign generally has broad popular support, even though it is an output to far greater number of people under the rage on Hezbollah's rocket fire, because the current campaign aims to push fizzballal back from controlling ground from the Iran of site from which it can fire anti tank missiles against israeli communities.

What kind of support will it enjoy if Israel decides to deepen its ground operations, perhaps up to the litany river further north to push Kizballa out of Byzantines, which will be a longer and more complex operation.

Arnold Stricker
00:20:58

You know, the politics and the involvement of other countries in the Middle east and in israeli affairs, this whole thing looks like a 3d chess game where you just can't make a move and expect somebody else to make a move back when you have so many individual countries involved. And Israel's not making its own autonomous decisions because they want to consult the United States.

They want to make sure they're not upsetting other arab countries that they're trying to establish normalization with. What was the surprise in you putting the book together that was like, wow, I didn't know that.

And it makes sense now, or it totally took you by surprise and you're still wondering what was going on.

Ilan Evyatar
00:21:42

I'm actually already surprised because this has been going on for such a long time. Iran has been building its proxy army, its ring of fire around Israel for a long time, for decades.

What's interesting is that basically all of the people who conceived this ring of fire and part of it are now going to the scene. Nasrallah assassinated. Hezbollah was a major player in there. So was Kassid Suleimani, the IRG free general assassinated by the United States in 2020.

He was also basically the driving force behind the string of fire. And now Yafsheidwan Yulf, Hamas, who had very close ties with Iran, he's also gone. We're going to see changes. Obviously.

Iran's proxy army very severely hit. It doesn't really have the capability anymore to do what it wanted to do on October 7.

And Doctor Gehsh Balad, we've seen this through all the tunnels and ammunition ducts that have been uncovered just tens of metres from Israel's border fisbalauers. Basically planning the same kind of operation to conquer israeli territory and perhaps like from us to commend these horrific acts.

You mentioned the TD chess team. That's very true. Around Iranians are. An american official, intelligence official told me they're a nation of chess players and rug weaver.

They're very sophisticated, they're very patient. What happens now? We'll have to see, of course.

Arnold Stricker
00:23:17

What are you working on now individually that we may see hit the bookshelves or read in the press sometime? You're working on anything specifically?

Ilan Evyatar
00:23:26

Yeah, actually I'm basically working on a new book by very much thinking on how Iran built its rear fire on its project to destroy Israel.

That is the ultimate aim of the regime of the islamic republic, not Iran, because a lot of Israel and Iran have had very friendly relations in the past.

But now, since the regime, since the revolution of 1979, Ayatollah Khomeini came to power, the present Ayatollah Khamenei, they're both very ideologically motivated, antisemitic. They want to achieve regional learning and they want to see the individual basically tremble and disappear.

Arnold Stricker
00:24:12

I want to encourage the listeners to get your book target Iran. Elan Evjutar is our guest today. He's an author and journalist.

It's how Israel is using sabotage, cyber warfare, assassination and secret diplomacy to stop a nuclear Iran and create a new Middle east. He wrote that with Johann, Jeremy, Bob and Elon is going to be at the Jewish Book Festival on November 12.

He's going to be doing an online event starting at 01:00 and you can get more information at the St. Louis Jewish Community Center. Ilan, thank you very much for your time.

I greatly appreciate the efforts that we put into trying to get you online and it's been a pleasure to read your book, sir.

Ilan Evyatar
00:24:53

Thank you very much for having me.

Arnold Stricker
00:24:54

On the side, Mark, that book is just incredible.

Mark Langston
00:24:59

I'm a bit speechless at some of the things he says and what's in the book when you think you have an idea of what's going on over there?

Arnold Stricker
00:25:13

We have no idea.

Mark Langston
00:25:14

You're right.

Arnold Stricker
00:25:15

We have no idea. When they talked about the nuclear agreement, and it's something that was going on, Iran wanted this.

Maybe I shouldn't say Iran wanted it, but it happened during the Obama administration and then during the Trump administration, they cut that off. And a lot of it was due to the israeli information and documentation that they provide.

And just to make it short for listeners is the Mossad went into Tehran to the place where all of these documents were being stored, broke in and stole them and took them back to Israel and translated them, put together a presentation that President Netanyahu made, which you can go on YouTube and look at, and where he presented to the international community how Iran lies and how they have lied for 20 something years about all of this, about their nuclear program and about, gee, we don't want this to be a military kind of thing. We're not building a bomb. We're doing this for our country and generating electricity, blah, blah, blah.

But it's really, it's a fascinating read about international affairs and espionage.

And I guess I was really surprised at the frankness of some of the activities and how the leaders actually opened up and let people know what was going on because the Mossad's pretty close cards, they don't say, hey, we've done this. They don't go, yeah, we did that. They don't say anything, which to me makes a lot of sense.

And it makes you wonder, but even recently, about what we've heard about the pagers blowing up or the phones blowing up or the walkie talkies blowing up, and then different things like that, of how they are using technology. And that's why I was asking them about the technological warfare with the cyber warfare, which seems to be a huge deal.

Even more militarily, you can blow stuff up at any time, but when you can do what they did to the gas situation, the gasoline, apparently on a certain day, you can go get gas for half the price. And the gasoline in Iran is apparently subsidized by the government. And on a certain day, you can go and get it even in a half price.

Everybody was going that day and there was a cyber attack on their gasoline situation, and you couldn't get gas. And so that really crippled them and created a lot of confusion. And there's a lot of consternation going on in Iran right now.

Anyway, it's not like everything. Everybody's. Yeah, we love this place.

Mark Langston
00:27:56

Right?

Arnold Stricker
00:27:56

There's a minority group there that's we're sick of living under these economic conditions. We're sick of living under kind of the rule that you have right now.

And if you go back to when we were in high school and when the shah was in power and Iran was a very western, western, eastern kind of culture, a very proud culture, they have a huge history. The persian culture has a huge history, and now it's a islamic state and with the Sharia law, and it's a tough situation for a lot of people.

Mark Langston
00:28:29

You hope that eventually the people that want a better life will stand up and be heard and you'll start to see the changes. It's taking a long time for any of the changes, I think, to happen in that part of the world.

And I think we talked about it off microphone about Jordan and how sick of it those people are.

Arnold Stricker
00:28:52

Yes.

Mark Langston
00:28:54

Why don't they stand up and fight against it?

Arnold Stricker
00:28:57

And he describes that in here, that off the books they're having all these talks. They want to have normalization with Israel.

They see Israel as a major player because they don't like Iran either, but they don't want to come out and say, yeah, we're going to normalize relationships with Israel because it's like, who wants to be the first? That's why the Abraham Accords was very significant and important. And Saudi Arabia, they've still not come up publicly.

And a lot of it involves the United States. A lot of it involves now the EU and what are we going to give? What's Israel going to give?

And we're not talking about just, we're talking about money, we're talking about military support, we're talking about trade, we're talking about business dealings, all that kind of stuff. And if I give you the support, what am I getting in return?

And it's just a fascinating read that, not that I didn't know things like that were going on, but I didn't know the extent. He talks about in there, about somebody coming to, speaking with President George W.

Bush and they were having a conversation said, we want to do this. And President Bush was like, no. And the guy kept pushing. He says no means no and that countries at different times aren't ready to do certain things.

He talks about how during the Obama administration, when there was an uprising in Tehran, that the administration, the west did not give any support to the uprising group. They ignored them.

And had they given support to them, which they were looking for at that time, that group was looking for that things might be a little different.

He's talking about how President Trump at the time, when he had the ability to do certain things and take out that he didn't do that and they could have done that much earlier, would that have saved Americans getting killed, et cetera, et cetera, like that. Some of the inside conversations that he puts in here are just unbelievable.

Mark Langston
00:31:09

And I don't hear that when these decisions are made not to help. And you think, okay, they're the president, they probably know more than we ever know.

They know a lot of the backstory, but I never hear that backstory come up. Oh, this is why you didn't do it, because it would have triggered this. That and the other.

Arnold Stricker
00:31:28

This is the backstory.

Mark Langston
00:31:29

Yeah, that's exactly right.

Arnold Stricker
00:31:30

This is the backstory.

Mark Langston
00:31:31

So these decisions, I have to say, and it, and it doesn't go along. Any particular party? No, it's both.

I just hope in the White House, somewhere in the Oval office, there's some reason why they're not stepping up and helping the uprisings. Because all that's going to do, Arnold, is going to help that region to be more of a peaceful region, a prosperous region.

Arnold Stricker
00:31:57

Absolutely.

Mark Langston
00:31:58

And, wow, why is it so bad to live in peace?

Arnold Stricker
00:32:03

If you want to have the destruction of a country, which is happening, as.

Mark Langston
00:32:07

Your motto, which is happening. They're in rubbles.

Arnold Stricker
00:32:09

Right. And then this is what you get.

Mark Langston
00:32:12

And then generations of people are upset and mad.

Arnold Stricker
00:32:15

And what's interesting about this is this proxy war that's going on, that Iran is not dealing directly with Israel, they're dealing indirectly through subordinates.

And who is suffering are not the direct iranian people or the iranian government, but people who they put in for proxies to do their dirty work for them.

Mark Langston
00:32:32

Isn't that terrible? It's just terrible.

To me, at some point, you gotta call a spade or whatever they say, it's just, it is what it is, and we need to step up and say, yes, you're right, it's a proxy war. It's pathetic. When does it. I guess I get very weary of it. And sometimes I say, let's just try a peaceful way.

But was someone attacking the United States like that? We would be relentless. We would. I don't believe we would stop.

Arnold Stricker
00:33:03

Absolutely.

Mark Langston
00:33:04

And we haven't.

Arnold Stricker
00:33:05

And there's so many political decisions that go into these things, so many economic decisions that go into. If you do this, it's like a domino board. And when I talked about that 3d chess thing, I thought about Star Trek.

I got enough trouble with a 2d chess board, let alone thinking at three different levels. And looking down and all of that. And that's exactly what I want to say. It's not even 3d. It's four or 5d. There's so many players involved in this.

So many players.

Mark Langston
00:33:30

And the destruction goes so deep and it's going to go so long and so many generations.

Arnold Stricker
00:33:35

Yes. Yes.

Mark Langston
00:33:36

And the rebuilding is going to.

Arnold Stricker
00:33:37

It's been going on for so long.

Mark Langston
00:33:39

Yeah.

Arnold Stricker
00:33:40

We're going to take a break and we'll be right back. This is Arnold Stricker with Mark Langston of St. Louis centum. Don't go away. This is Arnold Stricker of St.

Louis in tune on behalf of the Dred Scott Heritage foundation. In 1857, the Dred Scott decision was a major legal event and catalyst that contributed to the Civil War.

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Louis at info@iistl.org or call 314-73-9090 that's info@iistl.org or call 314-773-9090 welcome back. Welcome back to St. Louis in tune. This is Arnold Stricker with Mark Langston. Mark, there is a quote in the book that he mentions, and this was when.

Mark Langston
00:36:04

And the book is titled.

Arnold Stricker
00:36:06

The book is titled Target Iran how Israel is using sabotage, cyber warfare, assassination, and secret diplomacy to stop a nuclear Iran and create a new Middle east. It's by Yonah Jeremy Bob, and our guest who we were listening to, Ilan Evyatar, I think.

Mark Langston
00:36:23

Was he in Israel?

Arnold Stricker
00:36:24

He was in Israel when we talked with him. Yes. We do some tremendous things.

Mark Langston
00:36:28

Yeah. That he's right there in the middle of it all.

Arnold Stricker
00:36:33

Oh, yeah.

Mark Langston
00:36:35

This is someone that knows what's going on. There's not just somebody sitting in wherever.

Arnold Stricker
00:36:41

Yes. And his background, which we talked about, he was a former editor in chief of award winning magazine the Jerusalem Report.

He's a former news director, columnist and senior contributor at the Jerusalem Post. He's edited and translated several books. A speech writer, ghost writer. He was born in Israel, raised in London. You could tell by his accent.

But he has the contacts. He's interviewed a boatload of intelligence officials and politicians, business and cultural personalities.

In the book, they were talking about killing Soleimani, who has been charged in southern Lebanon with Hezbollah, of attacking Americans and attacking Israel. And he's had this long history of hate towards the west and hate towards the United States and Israel.

And they were, this is during the Trump administration, and they were trying to decide who is going to do this. Is it going to be Israel that takes this guy out? Because they've had opportunities. Is it going to be the United States? They've had opportunities.

And finally, that, the CIA director at the time, who was Gina Haspel was talking about, now is the time to really do this, that she gave the decisive moment and she said the risk of doing nothing is greater than the risk of doing something. And Mike Esper, who was the defense secretary of defense at the time, that's what he said.

And then she also, there's also John Bolton, who was also national security advisor, he said, if you punt, you're not just punting for 24 hours, you could be punting for months. In other words, if you pass this opportunity by, you may not get another opportunity for quite a while. And what could happen in that meantime?

And these are decisions that, but we hear on the news and we wonder, all of a sudden there's this attack happens and people go, how could we do that? We don't know. We're not even scratching the surface of what's going on behind the scenes.

Mark Langston
00:38:47

The backstory on it.

Arnold Stricker
00:38:48

Yeah, the backstory is huge on this. And the fact that he's going to be doing an online event at the Jewish Book festival on Tuesday, November 12, is huge for the St.

Louis Jewish Community center and the Jewish Book Festival to get him on there to do that.

Mark Langston
00:39:05

I know this is such a heavy subject, but there's so much of what he talks about that I had no clue about. I had no idea. I'm always like, give peace a chance and peace should happen. I hope it does. I can't wait till it does.

But there are so many circumstances here, so many levels, like you said, that need to be dealt with in order for peace to even work or even to get a foothold into it. So it is as heavy as it is.

I think these are things that we need to be educated about so that we can understand it, so that maybe then our passions can come out and really help find the solutions.

Arnold Stricker
00:39:46

Part of the reason we had him on the show and part of the reason I love doing this show with you is because we try to deal with facts. We try not to. I'm not going to take a side in this deal. Here are the facts. And I wish he would write a book on the history of Israel, okay.

Because when you look back on the history of Israel and you go back to when the UN granted them the territory to be there and the situations that happened, when Palestine wants to be recognized and they want to be normalized as a country and people talk about the palestinian flag, there really is no Palestine, okay? It's a group of people right now. It's not a country.

Mark Langston
00:40:24

Right.

Arnold Stricker
00:40:25

And how many times Israel has reached out to them, supported the palestinian people, and the leaders of the people who got into power by hook or by crook, have made decisions not in the best interest of the people, and they've made an interest in the best interest of themselves. And Israel has offered things that's been turned down.

That's why the rest of the arab community, especially Saudi Arabia, I would say, was like, and Qatar and the Emirates were like, we want to have normalization of relations with Israel. But Hamas, you're screwing things up. Hezbollah, you're grew things up, or Iran, you're screwing things up.

They don't want to, you know, they're afraid of Iran. They really are.

They're afraid of, because you've got, in Saudi Arabia and a couple of these other countries, you still have a kingdom where it's not a government kind of thing. You got a king. And they don't want to lose that individual power.

And so they have to tread carefully about that, but also about the arab brothers and not upsetting them. But they can't stand Iran. And that's why they like Israel, because Israel's not going to stand down from Iran.

Mark Langston
00:41:36

No not at all. It's amazing. Such a small little country that is. We're not going along with that. And Iran has allies that are Russia.

Arnold Stricker
00:41:46

And the, Russia's kind of, they're concerned about with what's going on right now in Ukraine. They're divided right now, stretched.

Now they've incorporated with the North Koreans to provide weapons, the Chinese to help provide weapons and things like that. They're, they're stretched right now.

And I thought about that same thing, Mark, because Russia and Iran, you had a really tight relationship, but you haven't heard a lot about that, right?

Mark Langston
00:42:08

No, you really haven't. And they've got to get help. They're not. Iran is just not. They have to have help. They can't do it on their own.

I don't believe at this point, something.

Arnold Stricker
00:42:17

That really surprised me in the book that he wrote was Mossad saying they knew where all of the governmental officials were in Iran and they could basically take them out at any time. Now that is. Are you kidding me? Are you kidding me?

And which shows you how much, how much they have infiltrated and how much contact they have with minority groups that are at odds with the regime over there, that those kind of groups are helping them do their work. And even probably those people of the regime who are like, I'm sick of this stuff. Yeah, I'll help you out.

How do you walk into somebody's backyard at their house and steal their most valuable secrets and walk away and not get caught?

Mark Langston
00:43:06

I, it's amazing.

Arnold Stricker
00:43:07

That's crazy.

Mark Langston
00:43:08

Yeah, it is amazing.

Arnold Stricker
00:43:10

I really highly recommend the book target to run. If you are a history buff. This is a great book. Now he goes, I would say this. He goes into a lot of detail. He goes into a lot of detail.

And he lists in the front and also in the back of the book, like, hey, here are the players. These are the people. What I would want to know is how many of these players are now dead because they've been like going by like flies.

They've been falling like flies recently. So it's just wild. It's truly wild.

Mark Langston
00:43:41

It's difficult. It's such a difficult. I still am hopeful that it can be peaceful over there or workable anyway, sometime where they can get along.

Arnold Stricker
00:43:54

Sometime it might. And kudos to the jewish people who just tolerate it. The Iron Dome. Oh, I know that we hear about on the news. It's not that old.

Mark Langston
00:44:03

No.

Arnold Stricker
00:44:04

There used to be that Israel would get bombed quite a bit from the missiles and they developed the Iron Dome and they also, United States has their defense system that they've moved over there also. So it's remarkable. It's crazy. Why would you want to live over there? People would say, probably say, why do we want to live here?

Yeah, there's reasons. Yeah, there's reasons. Which gets me to the word of the day.

Mark Langston
00:44:27

Oh, no. Okay.

Arnold Stricker
00:44:30

Defenestration.

Mark Langston
00:44:32

Defenestration.

Arnold Stricker
00:44:33

Defenestration. I wonder what that could mean now. It's a swift dismissal or expulsion as from a political party or office.

It could be like a defenestration of a political leader. The mass defenestration of middle management like Boeing is doing some layoffs. And the defenestration of middle management at Boeing was a shock.

Or it could also mean this in light of an oligarch who supposedly committed suicide by jumping out of a building again. Another oligarch jumped out of a building again, a throwing of a person or thing out a window. Ah. In other words, assassination by defenestration.

Mark Langston
00:45:19

I would have to be a scholar to understand this.

Arnold Stricker
00:45:24

Goes with our book.

Mark Langston
00:45:26

Oh yeah. With the whole theme of the show.

Arnold Stricker
00:45:29

Yes, listeners, I really highly recommend Tuesday, November 12, the St. Louis Jewish Book festival Elan Evyatar is going to be talking more about Targa Tehran. It's a 01:00 to 215 online event.

You can get more information by going to the St. Louis Jewish Community center. And we'll post more of this on the podcast page. So that's all for this hour. Mark.

Mark Langston
00:45:54

Wow, that was quite an hour. I'm telling you, it was quite, quite an hour.

Arnold Stricker
00:45:59

Thank you for listening, folks. If you've enjoyed this episode, you can listen to additional shows at stl and tune.com dot.

Consider leaving a review on Apple Podcast, podcast chaser, or your preferred podcast platform. Your feedback helps us reach more listeners and continue to grow.

I want to thank Bob Bertha cell for our theme music, Elon Evutar, author and journalist for our as being our guest and co host, Mark Langston. And we thank you folks for being part of our community of curious minds. St.

Louis in tune is a production of Motif Media Group and the US radio Network. Remember to keep seeking, keep learning, walk worthy, and let your light shine. For St. Louis in tune, I'm Arnold Strucker.