1 00:00:01,890 --> 00:00:11,490 All right. Good afternoon and welcome, everybody. I'm honoured to present our speaker this afternoon, Dr. Jonathan Leslie, 2 00:00:12,030 --> 00:00:18,420 who received his Ph.D. from Soares, University of London, in politics and international relations. 3 00:00:19,650 --> 00:00:27,180 Jonathan's thesis examines the relationship between Israel and Iran, focusing on Israeli perceptions of Iran as a security threat. 4 00:00:27,690 --> 00:00:32,969 He receives his master's degree in international relations and international econom economics from 5 00:00:32,970 --> 00:00:38,310 johns hopkins school of Advanced International Studies in washington and his bachelor from princeton. 6 00:00:38,820 --> 00:00:45,960 And he the title of his talk today is Fear and Insecurity Competing Narratives of Iran Israel Relationship. 7 00:00:46,500 --> 00:00:52,950 Thank you for coming. Thank you for having me. It's really nice to be here and I'm so excited that all of you turned out today. 8 00:00:53,820 --> 00:01:01,280 You're hearing the first edition of this talk. I got of Dimension, but I just got my Ph.D. like five months ago. 9 00:01:01,290 --> 00:01:04,480 So is is is is new for me. 10 00:01:05,130 --> 00:01:10,950 I'm very excited to share it with you. And as of now, I think three people have read the thesis. 11 00:01:10,950 --> 00:01:16,410 So hopefully that will change. I actually know for my mom read it too, but I don't think my dad did. 12 00:01:16,710 --> 00:01:22,260 But well, I hopefully are going to change that when the book gets published. 13 00:01:22,260 --> 00:01:33,180 So yeah. So I think just in terms of starting off here, it's helpful to sort of explain how I came to this subject. 14 00:01:34,020 --> 00:01:39,420 I think that will also help illuminate why I find it so interesting and what's so unique about it. 15 00:01:41,450 --> 00:01:51,170 My background in sort of Iranian studies begins in my master's program, which I started in 2010. 16 00:01:51,470 --> 00:01:55,670 Prior to that, I had focussed mainly on on Arab Middle East studies. 17 00:01:55,940 --> 00:02:04,010 That was mostly what I worked on in my undergrad, and I spent some time living in abroad in Jordan and Syria, obviously, before the war. 18 00:02:05,840 --> 00:02:10,800 And I happened to start taking Persian language when I started my masters. 19 00:02:10,820 --> 00:02:18,139 Rather than Arabic, I was just looking for a change. And I think that really sparked this this interest in in Iran. 20 00:02:18,140 --> 00:02:21,600 And that interest eventually grew into this thesis. 21 00:02:21,620 --> 00:02:27,440 It also helped that when I graduated from my master's program two years in 12, there was a government sequester and I couldn't find a job. 22 00:02:27,980 --> 00:02:31,910 So, you know, did what anyone does in that situation and go back to school again. 23 00:02:32,120 --> 00:02:43,430 So I started this study of this specific topic and sort of 2013 when I was applying and then I started my my program in 2014. 24 00:02:43,940 --> 00:02:50,570 And I know that feels like ages ago for all of us, but, you know, the world really was a different place back then. 25 00:02:52,490 --> 00:02:55,550 To put it bluntly, I mean, it really didn't feel like a total disaster. 26 00:02:56,030 --> 00:03:04,910 Things seem to be getting better at the time. We were in the midst of, at least in terms of Iran, relationship relationships. 27 00:03:05,180 --> 00:03:08,630 Iran was really re-engaging with the West in that period. 28 00:03:09,620 --> 00:03:12,320 Rouhani had just been elected president in 2013. 29 00:03:13,370 --> 00:03:22,070 We are in the beginning stages of negotiations between Iran and the United States, along with the rest of the the P5 plus one. 30 00:03:22,880 --> 00:03:31,070 And, you know, I don't think Brexit or certainly Trump, we're not part of our sort of political lexicon back then. 31 00:03:31,100 --> 00:03:35,420 I mean, Trump is was just a, you know, a right wing conspiracy theorist back then. 32 00:03:35,990 --> 00:03:44,900 It mostly confined to birtherism. This general populist wave, you know, wasn't a thing that we talked about much at that time. 33 00:03:46,010 --> 00:03:49,700 Certainly, Netanyahu was still was prime minister at that point. 34 00:03:49,700 --> 00:03:53,779 And he was a right wing leader and a far right leader might you might even say. 35 00:03:53,780 --> 00:03:58,760 But he wasn't part of it wasn't thought of as part of a broader populist movement. 36 00:03:59,210 --> 00:04:00,530 That's the sense that I got. 37 00:04:04,470 --> 00:04:12,480 And you know, especially in terms of Iran, you know, the beginnings of the negotiations provided a lot of reasons for optimism. 38 00:04:13,050 --> 00:04:21,300 And I think I felt like it was an interesting subject because even as Iran seemed to be reconciling it, 39 00:04:21,300 --> 00:04:25,470 the West, its tensions with Israel seem to be worsening. 40 00:04:25,500 --> 00:04:34,209 Despite this this optimistic period. There was, of course, a lot of opposition to these negotiations. 41 00:04:34,210 --> 00:04:41,080 Certainly like the Republican Party in the United States, opposed everything that that Obama attempted, including this. 42 00:04:42,370 --> 00:04:47,259 But to me, at least in terms of thinking about an interesting project, it was less obvious, 43 00:04:47,260 --> 00:04:54,190 at least at first glance, why there was such fierce opposition to even the idea of negotiations in Israel. 44 00:04:57,490 --> 00:04:57,760 You know, 45 00:04:57,760 --> 00:05:09,910 Iran was at least ostensibly making a play towards placing strict limits on its on its nuclear program for swearing its attempts to get a bomb. 46 00:05:11,470 --> 00:05:16,780 And I would just add a disclaimer front that I think from a technical standpoint, 47 00:05:16,780 --> 00:05:23,500 it was always unclear to the extent to which Iran was ever fully committed to developing a nuclear weapon despite its nuclear development program. 48 00:05:25,360 --> 00:05:30,040 But in terms of thinking about a potential topic for further research, 49 00:05:32,050 --> 00:05:38,290 the opposition in Israel and certainly the fear of Iran seems outsized to the nature of the threat that they faced. 50 00:05:39,100 --> 00:05:45,010 There wasn't a lot of considerable strategic overlap between Iran and Israel in terms of actual strategic interests. 51 00:05:45,520 --> 00:05:50,560 Iran did support Hezbollah and it made feints towards Palestinian groups in the past, 52 00:05:51,460 --> 00:05:57,970 but was certainly at the time more concerned with its interests in Syria than it was in Israel. 53 00:05:58,570 --> 00:06:08,500 And add to that the fact that Iranian society in this period, 2013, 2014 seemed to be in a much more post-revolutionary phase. 54 00:06:08,500 --> 00:06:13,450 And I think there's a lot of research that was coming out and being done around this period that supported that idea. 55 00:06:15,310 --> 00:06:19,180 Its interest in exporting the Islamic revolution seemed to have waned, 56 00:06:20,140 --> 00:06:24,790 especially with the election of Rouhani sort of indicating a broader willingness to engage with the world. 57 00:06:25,660 --> 00:06:35,500 And this image of Iran in particular, has seemed to clash with the image that was being portrayed by Israelis who were detractors of the deal. 58 00:06:37,550 --> 00:06:41,520 You know, certainly post-revolutionary Iran society was fine and divided. 59 00:06:41,530 --> 00:06:47,650 But the the appetite for war or if not worse, genocide didn't seem to be there. 60 00:06:49,420 --> 00:06:55,480 But the idea of negotiations had really sparked an intense backlash cross from across the political spectrum in Israel. 61 00:06:56,200 --> 00:07:02,499 And there was this real obsession with the idea of an Iranian bomb and the fear of the 62 00:07:02,500 --> 00:07:08,140 possibility of a nuclear conflict had really come to dominate Israeli foreign policy concerns. 63 00:07:09,130 --> 00:07:13,360 And. And even going a step further. 64 00:07:13,360 --> 00:07:14,919 There was widespread agreement, I think, 65 00:07:14,920 --> 00:07:22,960 in Israel that the reconciliation with Iran in the West and its re-entry into the global community represented a really terrible step. 66 00:07:24,970 --> 00:07:33,460 And I think the real irony of this entire situation was that in comparing the two, 67 00:07:34,450 --> 00:07:37,810 Israel was a country that possessed the weapon that it professed to fear. 68 00:07:40,420 --> 00:07:51,590 Even if it didn't admit it. So. A lot of that that into my curiosity is sort of how this disparity and in fear had developed between the two 69 00:07:51,590 --> 00:07:58,610 nations or you know Israel in all its wars and conflict had never actually directly engaged militarily with Iran. 70 00:07:59,000 --> 00:08:02,780 But the way in which Israelis were expressing that fear was also interesting to me. 71 00:08:02,810 --> 00:08:11,630 There is this concern about the continued existence of the country and description of the conflict in real apocalyptic terms. 72 00:08:12,470 --> 00:08:16,910 And I didn't think that there was a real rational explanation for this, 73 00:08:16,910 --> 00:08:23,720 certainly in terms of the casualties that had taken place in previous conflicts. 74 00:08:24,200 --> 00:08:30,770 You know, Israel had done more damage to Iranian interests in Hezbollah and Lebanon than Iran had done to Israel, 75 00:08:31,370 --> 00:08:42,290 either directly or through indirect means. And add to that that in terms of a real strategic comparison, Israel seemed to hold most of the advantages. 76 00:08:43,640 --> 00:08:54,270 So that led me to think about. A project that examined sort of how this came about, how this situation occurred. 77 00:08:55,110 --> 00:08:57,989 And I think, you know, there's a lot to cover. 78 00:08:57,990 --> 00:09:05,490 And I you know, I could talk about this all day, but I'm going to just try to boil it down to sort of three distinct elements. 79 00:09:06,360 --> 00:09:12,480 So I talk a bit about the sort of theoretical foundations for this conflict and the way I approach this subject. 80 00:09:13,530 --> 00:09:18,330 I mean, I go through the history very briefly of the Iranian Israeli relationship, 81 00:09:18,840 --> 00:09:23,370 and then I'll talk a bit at the end about sort of the modern situation and how 82 00:09:23,370 --> 00:09:27,750 this conflict has intensified under under Benjamin Netanyahu as prime minister. 83 00:09:29,040 --> 00:09:38,790 So in terms of theoretical foundations, one thing I heard a lot in my research was when I especially when I was in Israel doing field research, 84 00:09:38,790 --> 00:09:42,510 was this oft repeated devotion to realism. 85 00:09:43,170 --> 00:09:48,180 And especially when you talk to academic types in Israel, a lot of thing, 86 00:09:48,180 --> 00:09:53,520 you always hear this sort of refrain that Israel is extremely a very realist country and 87 00:09:53,520 --> 00:09:58,139 that they're just being realistic about the threats that they face and what surrounds them. 88 00:09:58,140 --> 00:10:04,080 And that sort of dictates their response to to strategic concerns. 89 00:10:05,880 --> 00:10:11,440 But especially when you think about it in terms of Iran and I mentioned this just a moment ago. 90 00:10:11,850 --> 00:10:18,570 You know, with the exception of physical size, Israel enjoys a lot of actual military and relative power advantages to Iran. 91 00:10:18,630 --> 00:10:22,230 I mean, it possesses a much more modern and sophisticated military. 92 00:10:23,070 --> 00:10:27,840 It spends more on its military both in absolute and certainly in per capita terms. 93 00:10:28,380 --> 00:10:35,250 And it enjoys the backing of the most powerful military in the world, the United States, whereas Iran has no real patrons. 94 00:10:37,080 --> 00:10:43,140 And as I said before, Israel possesses a nuclear deterrent, even if it's not fully admitted. 95 00:10:43,320 --> 00:10:45,330 Everyone knows that it exists and is there. 96 00:10:46,050 --> 00:10:55,920 So it really begs the question, if this realist element doesn't fully explain why Israel is so fear Iran, then what does? 97 00:10:56,730 --> 00:11:00,510 And in sort of starting my research, 98 00:11:00,510 --> 00:11:08,670 I began to think a lot about the narrative of the conflict and how it's been portrayed by Israeli politicians and political elites. 99 00:11:09,300 --> 00:11:17,550 And I think narrative has become something of a now omnipresent term recently, and you hear it a lot, 100 00:11:18,000 --> 00:11:25,200 especially I sort of oddly from like sort of far right thinkers talk a lot about dominating the narrative these days. 101 00:11:26,700 --> 00:11:30,629 But I sort of got into it more from an academic angle. 102 00:11:30,630 --> 00:11:37,770 And I do think that these things matter and like the political narratives and sort of within that, within political narratives, 103 00:11:37,770 --> 00:11:46,890 foreign policy narratives do dictate the way that, you know, we as individuals but also as polities, think about strategic problems. 104 00:11:47,700 --> 00:11:53,820 So if we're broadly speaking, you know, narratives or stories that political leaders tell, 105 00:11:53,850 --> 00:11:56,999 tell their their citizens to get them to understand the world. 106 00:11:57,000 --> 00:12:02,399 But if we also think about it in that way, it's there's a meaning to this and a message. 107 00:12:02,400 --> 00:12:08,280 And these messages are designed to sort of push support for certain policy objectives. 108 00:12:08,910 --> 00:12:14,370 And if we're saying sort of hypothetically, this is a story about what we've experienced as a people, 109 00:12:14,790 --> 00:12:17,700 where we're going and what we need to do to prepare. 110 00:12:18,900 --> 00:12:27,090 And within political and foreign policy narratives, there's a very specific type of narrative, which is the national security narrative. 111 00:12:27,990 --> 00:12:36,940 And I think these these stories are often portrayed in good and evil terms. 112 00:12:36,960 --> 00:12:39,960 I mean, there's there's the good guys, there's the villains. 113 00:12:39,960 --> 00:12:47,550 And they're always framed in how they the society forms a response to the so-called political other. 114 00:12:49,950 --> 00:12:58,350 But I wanted to think about it, not necessarily in those terms, but more in the difference between historical narratives and threat narratives. 115 00:12:59,550 --> 00:13:09,090 I think there is a distinct difference between the way historical narratives are written normally by academics or other trained historians, 116 00:13:10,410 --> 00:13:14,879 and threat narratives where they, which have a much more political objective historical narrative, 117 00:13:14,880 --> 00:13:19,620 certainly can inform threat narratives and vice versa, but they have different purposes. 118 00:13:20,190 --> 00:13:25,889 The historical narrative, for example, seeks to inform or illuminate and the threat narrative. 119 00:13:25,890 --> 00:13:30,960 Meanwhile, the goal is to inspire some kind of fear or insecurity. 120 00:13:31,530 --> 00:13:34,410 And fear in this case may be a purpose in and of itself. 121 00:13:35,280 --> 00:13:41,990 In that sense, the threat narrative is extremely anti academic or sorry, anti diplomatic and actually, 122 00:13:42,000 --> 00:13:46,980 you know, a good sort of modern example of where this comes into play in a. 123 00:13:47,030 --> 00:13:53,149 Rare instance, I think, of someone admitting to the fact that they think about this is if you're familiar with Ben Rhodes, 124 00:13:53,150 --> 00:14:02,210 who is Barack Obama's deputy national security adviser, he was very involved in crafting the Iran deal under Obama. 125 00:14:02,900 --> 00:14:09,590 And in the aftermath of that, I think right after he left office, he might have been I mean, he was a former fiction writer, 126 00:14:09,590 --> 00:14:17,419 so he didn't really have the formal training in foreign policy that a lot of the people who would have previously had his job would have had. 127 00:14:17,420 --> 00:14:25,610 And, you know, you may have heard they often the Obama administration often referred to the American foreign policy establishment as the blob. 128 00:14:26,150 --> 00:14:32,030 And and Rhodes, I think when he was talking about sort of in the aftermath of the Iran deal, 129 00:14:32,420 --> 00:14:40,370 what inspired what inspired them to or what sort of shaped their their selling of this, 130 00:14:40,400 --> 00:14:47,600 not only to the American people, but to other politicians, was the idea that the narrative on Iran had to change. 131 00:14:47,600 --> 00:14:51,110 And he he said as much openly, which I thought was really I mean, it's unique. 132 00:14:51,110 --> 00:14:59,419 You don't hear that a lot, I think, from political actors and that the U.S. had been trapped in this sort of narrative of animosity with Iran. 133 00:14:59,420 --> 00:15:08,569 And he saw and the Obama administration saw the Rouhani administration as a chance to really shift that into something more more positive. 134 00:15:08,570 --> 00:15:14,510 And that was his goal in selling the deal to, well, not the Republicans, 135 00:15:14,510 --> 00:15:21,080 because they never would have accepted it, but to Democrats and other Obama's Obama's supporters. 136 00:15:24,350 --> 00:15:29,899 And of course, he faced a lot of backlash for this because it was considered misleading to think about it in those terms, 137 00:15:29,900 --> 00:15:37,100 to think only about the narrative. But of course, this was really what ended up shaping how the deal was accepted. 138 00:15:37,100 --> 00:15:44,710 And the idea that Iran had changed that fundamentally changed and that they could be trusted to enact the agreement that they concluded. 139 00:15:47,150 --> 00:15:53,150 So I wanted to think about in this in this project, sort of what shapes the narratives in Israel. 140 00:15:53,210 --> 00:16:01,490 I mean, what shapes the historical narrative of the Iran Israel relationship, but also what shapes the Israeli threat narrative of Iran. 141 00:16:02,000 --> 00:16:05,840 And these are obviously two separate things. 142 00:16:05,840 --> 00:16:11,329 And at some point I think there's a divergence that takes place and that helps explain both 143 00:16:11,330 --> 00:16:15,770 where the conflict originates and how it's come to arrive at the point it currently is that. 144 00:16:16,670 --> 00:16:24,500 So I'll also say as an aside, say that when I started the day itself, as apparently you need to, 145 00:16:24,860 --> 00:16:30,230 if you're at source or any British university, you need to spend a lot of time thinking about political theory. 146 00:16:31,310 --> 00:16:39,050 That's not something you do a lot of in the United States anymore. In politics in particular, you know, it's a very quantitative subject matter now, 147 00:16:39,560 --> 00:16:46,610 and everything needs to be to be measured and, you know, you have to use statistically significant results. 148 00:16:47,060 --> 00:16:50,690 And so this was all relatively new for me as well, 149 00:16:50,690 --> 00:16:56,660 just getting into the idea of thinking about sort of what the what theories are going to shape the way I approach this. 150 00:16:57,410 --> 00:17:07,220 So having not had that real long academic background in that regard, I did what any good entrepreneur does and I just made something up. 151 00:17:08,180 --> 00:17:18,799 So I started by sort of searching around for a for a theory that would help sort of help me understand the basic contours of the conflict. 152 00:17:18,800 --> 00:17:25,760 And I landed on securitisation theory, which is kind of a subset of constructivism, 153 00:17:26,450 --> 00:17:31,250 and I focussed mainly on the work of the Copenhagen School and their, 154 00:17:31,550 --> 00:17:40,490 their innovation was sort of thinking about how issues, political issues in particular become securitised, 155 00:17:40,490 --> 00:17:46,309 meaning moving from this realm of politics where sort of ordinary rules of political procedure, 156 00:17:46,310 --> 00:17:55,220 governance that govern policymaking to this other extraordinary round in which sort of a threat narrative dominates. 157 00:17:55,730 --> 00:18:02,690 And they thought about it really clinical terms and who's the they they define it as the various parts, 158 00:18:02,690 --> 00:18:05,150 as the referent object or the thing that is threatened, 159 00:18:05,570 --> 00:18:14,030 the securitising actor or the person or political actor who's actually doing the securitising of the of the threat and of course, the threat itself. 160 00:18:16,070 --> 00:18:22,040 And I thought this was really relevant for the Iran Israel conflict because you 161 00:18:22,040 --> 00:18:28,549 could see sort of the the means through which Iran became securitised in Israel. 162 00:18:28,550 --> 00:18:37,160 And then obviously it helps that it gives you a language to discuss how this process takes place even in the absence of direct military conflict. 163 00:18:39,410 --> 00:18:46,400 So I started there and as I said, like the world changed quite a bit as I was doing this research and. 164 00:18:46,780 --> 00:18:53,980 I mentioned before sort of the populist wave that took place between 2015 and 2016. 165 00:18:54,520 --> 00:18:58,599 And it got me thinking at that point, I was in the middle of my field research, 166 00:18:58,600 --> 00:19:05,620 which is a perfect time to change your theoretical approach, but also a very typical one, I think, for most PhD students. 167 00:19:06,100 --> 00:19:12,430 And they got me thinking about how how populism might affect this conflict. 168 00:19:12,450 --> 00:19:18,489 I know that's sort of like the thing. It's really in vogue now to just apply populism and everything. 169 00:19:18,490 --> 00:19:23,080 But trust me when I say I did it correctly so. 170 00:19:23,680 --> 00:19:31,930 But yeah, I think one thing that I thought was interesting because I was in Israel when this was when this was taking place. 171 00:19:31,930 --> 00:19:41,770 And as I said, you know, the first discussion of populism was mainly about Brexit and Trump. 172 00:19:41,770 --> 00:19:51,489 And then in in Europe, you know, Le Pen and Viktor Orban and like this, this it was very centred on, you know, the United States and Europe. 173 00:19:51,490 --> 00:19:55,630 But Netanyahu really wasn't part of that discussion, at least initially. 174 00:19:56,890 --> 00:20:04,630 And I thought that actually a lot about the way that he governed Israel could actually be seen through a populist lens. 175 00:20:05,200 --> 00:20:12,279 And actually, before I get into that, let me just say that when I use the word populist, I you know, I think it's overused today, 176 00:20:12,280 --> 00:20:20,180 especially because of the frequency with which, you know, it's discussed both in regular media and academia, I think. 177 00:20:20,200 --> 00:20:26,560 Harold, Harold, I recently read Harold Meyerson called it the sloppiest word in American journalism, which I think is probably accurate. 178 00:20:27,550 --> 00:20:32,800 When I when I talk about populism, I'm talking about a very distinct variety of populism. 179 00:20:32,800 --> 00:20:41,440 And that's defined by John Warner, Moore's version of populism, which he helpfully wrote a book in 2016 called What Is Populism? 180 00:20:42,200 --> 00:20:49,299 And he he defines populism and with sort of three distinct features. 181 00:20:49,300 --> 00:20:58,900 And it's a type of political practice that is involves the wall, one, the moralistic imagination of pop of politics, 182 00:20:59,890 --> 00:21:05,170 two, the fostering of constant crisis, and three, the selective application of law. 183 00:21:05,710 --> 00:21:12,550 And I think all three of these really do fit within Netanyahu as a domestic political leader in Israel. 184 00:21:13,720 --> 00:21:23,560 Certainly the. The level of corruption involved was not quite clear at that time, although now he's he embodies that as well. 185 00:21:23,560 --> 00:21:29,620 And I think since Trump's election, Netanyahu is growing closer to Trump both in style and substance, 186 00:21:29,620 --> 00:21:35,710 which I don't know if necessarily was true before. Before that, the terrorism 16 American election, 187 00:21:36,460 --> 00:21:44,590 but led me to examine the possibility of thinking about how populists not only conduct themselves internally, 188 00:21:44,590 --> 00:21:46,930 but also how they engage in foreign policy. 189 00:21:47,410 --> 00:21:58,240 And I thought that, you know, given these three tendencies, one or more defines them, there might also be an application through securitisation. 190 00:21:58,660 --> 00:22:04,420 And let me to sort of create a hybrid theory that I think really helps explain this conflict well, 191 00:22:05,500 --> 00:22:11,020 that I called populist securitisation so very novel. 192 00:22:11,470 --> 00:22:18,280 But for me, there are three tenants to this and this is obviously the moral imagination of the threat. 193 00:22:18,670 --> 00:22:26,170 So how Israeli leaders construct the Iran threat, not necessarily on straight strategic terms, 194 00:22:26,170 --> 00:22:33,880 but on moral terms, the and then to the creation and perpetuation of a crisis atmosphere. 195 00:22:34,360 --> 00:22:41,049 So something that is not necessarily fact based but activates the emotions of fear and keeps 196 00:22:41,050 --> 00:22:46,420 them keeps them at a high level regardless of what's happening within the conflict itself. 197 00:22:47,080 --> 00:22:59,080 And then third is the the use of the conflict to justify decisions that challenge the conventional norms of government and international procedure. 198 00:22:59,800 --> 00:23:05,020 And I thought that the Iran conflict is really a useful example to see how Netanyahu 199 00:23:05,020 --> 00:23:10,450 used populist tropes not only to discredit critics and promote his own leadership, 200 00:23:10,960 --> 00:23:16,660 but to really vilify Iran and build an international coalition against them. 201 00:23:18,500 --> 00:23:22,450 In the process, he used a number of specific procedures. 202 00:23:22,900 --> 00:23:27,130 He twisted historical visions to fit his own version of events. 203 00:23:28,360 --> 00:23:41,290 He ignored typical rules of conduct to promote and build his his people, which in that I mean, in terms of like the populist people. 204 00:23:41,290 --> 00:23:49,270 So his supporters and really establishes a manichaean struggle in which are, you know, 205 00:23:49,600 --> 00:23:55,810 there it's a very Bush war on terror, if you will, like you're either with us or against us. 206 00:23:56,620 --> 00:24:05,050 So these are sort of the the basic rules that I establish when I approach this issue and thought about it in terms of theoretical terms. 207 00:24:06,850 --> 00:24:12,760 So having sort of discussed probably the theoretical outline, 208 00:24:13,030 --> 00:24:19,420 I think it's useful to go through the history a little bit to get a sense of sort of how this conflict developed and where it came from. 209 00:24:20,440 --> 00:24:28,270 And to do that, I need to start sort of way back with ancient history, since that does form the basis for this conflict. 210 00:24:30,370 --> 00:24:38,349 And really there's two events that if you read any any history on Iran and Israel that always it always begins here. 211 00:24:38,350 --> 00:24:45,940 And that's Cyrus is liberation of the Jews from Babylon 538 BCE and the story of Purim. 212 00:24:46,450 --> 00:24:55,719 So for those of you unfamiliar with the with the latter, the story of Purim involves Queen Esther, 213 00:24:55,720 --> 00:25:00,610 who's a Jewish woman who marries a Persian king but does not reveal to him that he's Jewish. 214 00:25:01,480 --> 00:25:10,780 And when the king's when the king is viceroy, I think of him and plots to murder all the Jews in the Persian Kingdom. 215 00:25:10,780 --> 00:25:14,889 Esther, along with her Uncle Mordechai, attempts to stop him. 216 00:25:14,890 --> 00:25:21,610 She reveals to the king that she is Jewish, and the king subsequently allows the Jewish people to take up arms to defend themselves. 217 00:25:21,610 --> 00:25:32,380 And Heyman and his evil forces are destroyed. And these two story is the liberation of the Jews from Babylon and the Purim story. 218 00:25:34,820 --> 00:25:41,030 Actually inform a lot of what happens in different ways from from the from then on out. 219 00:25:41,810 --> 00:25:47,900 Jews actually have a place in the Persian Empire from from Cyrus's liberation. 220 00:25:48,260 --> 00:25:53,750 Many of them choose to stay with him rather than return today to the Holy Land. 221 00:25:55,880 --> 00:26:02,150 But there's a there's a presence in Iran from that point forward of of the Jewish people. 222 00:26:02,150 --> 00:26:07,280 And I'm actually going to go ahead and just stop from antiquity and skip right 223 00:26:07,280 --> 00:26:13,550 up until 1948 just because it's too much to go through the varying relations. 224 00:26:13,560 --> 00:26:19,129 But other than to say, you know, they retain this presence and there's you know, 225 00:26:19,130 --> 00:26:23,900 they have varying relations with with the various Persian shores up until the modern era. 226 00:26:25,070 --> 00:26:29,660 And really the next stage of this is the founding of the state of Israel in 1948, 227 00:26:29,960 --> 00:26:34,400 presents a major disruption of the Middle East, and particularly for the Shah at that point. 228 00:26:34,850 --> 00:26:41,020 Who was Mohammad Reza Pahlavi, the last shah, and is faced with a dilemma. 229 00:26:41,020 --> 00:26:52,310 I mean, he's the ruler of a muslim majority country in the Middle East, but he's also an ethnic outlier, is a Persian nation amongst Arabs. 230 00:26:53,270 --> 00:26:57,470 Iran votes against the creation of the Jewish state in the U.N., 231 00:26:58,010 --> 00:27:08,809 but very soon after begins thinking in terms of involvement, begins an alliance, a relationship with the state of Israel. 232 00:27:08,810 --> 00:27:14,300 And this was actually the brainchild of one of Israel's founding fathers, David Ben-Gurion, 233 00:27:14,720 --> 00:27:21,140 who established the Periphery Alliance, or what was also known as the Alliance of the Periphery, 234 00:27:21,650 --> 00:27:33,410 which was a theory for for Israel that as a tiny state surrounded by Arab populations, 235 00:27:33,410 --> 00:27:40,819 that they could form a not necessarily counterbalancing, but some sort of strategic alliance with the non Arab states in the Middle East. 236 00:27:40,820 --> 00:27:47,240 So this included Iran, Turkey and Ethiopia, which I mean, whether that's in the Middle East or not, is up for debate. 237 00:27:47,240 --> 00:27:52,309 But really, Iran was the the foundational element of this. 238 00:27:52,310 --> 00:28:03,110 And in his overtures to the Persian to the Persian monarch and also in the Shah's response to David Ben-Gurion, they cited these stories, 239 00:28:03,110 --> 00:28:10,400 these biblical stories as the as the inspiration for this ancient relate as for this modern relationship or what it could be. 240 00:28:12,590 --> 00:28:16,610 Eventually, the relationship grew and the alliance strengthened. I think. 241 00:28:17,860 --> 00:28:26,010 Not so much in terms of cultural or even ideological terms, but I think a lot of that was Cold War based, at least at first. 242 00:28:26,020 --> 00:28:31,510 Both nations were allied with the U.S. Meanwhile, the Arabs were moving more towards the Soviets, 243 00:28:32,260 --> 00:28:39,100 and that sort of gave an excuse for the two to form more cooperative engagements, both militarily and economically. 244 00:28:41,770 --> 00:28:47,410 Iran sold Israel oil and in return, Israel provided Iran with sort of technical expertise, 245 00:28:49,000 --> 00:28:55,110 but importantly, they also provided Iran with military expertise. 246 00:28:55,120 --> 00:29:06,009 There was a lot of cross military exchange between Iran and Israel and infamously Israeli operatives who helped train the Shah's secret police, 247 00:29:06,010 --> 00:29:11,310 the SAVAK, which had an impact, I think, on everyday Iranian society. 248 00:29:11,320 --> 00:29:15,400 I mean, this was not necessarily a well publicised relationship, but it was one that was widely known. 249 00:29:16,510 --> 00:29:20,200 There weren't any official diplomatic ties, but they maintained embassies. 250 00:29:21,010 --> 00:29:22,840 It was possible to visit between the two. 251 00:29:24,700 --> 00:29:35,140 And I think as these details leaked out, especially in the run up to the revolution, this helped fuel Khomeini's argument against the Shah. 252 00:29:36,580 --> 00:29:48,340 The revolution actually in 1979 changes, obviously the balance of of well, changes the outlook of Iran towards Israel, no doubt. 253 00:29:48,340 --> 00:29:56,739 But it doesn't necessarily end the relationship. You're probably all familiar with Iran-Contra and the Israeli involvement in 254 00:29:56,740 --> 00:30:02,950 selling weapons to to to the Islamic Republic and to finance its war with Iraq. 255 00:30:05,320 --> 00:30:10,719 I don't really want to get too in the weeds about the details of Iran Contra, which is its its own mass. 256 00:30:10,720 --> 00:30:15,640 But suffice to say, Israel continued receiving oil from Iran during this period, 257 00:30:16,060 --> 00:30:23,340 and only when it was discovered in the late 1980s did the relationship sort of formally end. 258 00:30:23,740 --> 00:30:29,649 But there was another important element to this to this exchange at the time, and that was within Israel. 259 00:30:29,650 --> 00:30:38,440 In the early years following the revolution, there was a sense that the Islamic revolution wasn't representative of the real Iran 260 00:30:38,530 --> 00:30:44,740 and an Israeli academic eventually coin called this this feeling periphery nostalgia. 261 00:30:45,430 --> 00:30:52,690 And there was the idea that within Iran there was going to be some sort of counter-revolution at some point, 262 00:30:53,440 --> 00:31:03,400 and that this Islamic government that had been established was not necessarily representative of of the actual Iran. 263 00:31:03,880 --> 00:31:07,340 So. I think. 264 00:31:09,710 --> 00:31:14,780 The relationship takes a turn in in the 1990s. 265 00:31:14,780 --> 00:31:18,980 And I think this is really when securitisation starts to take place in this conflict. 266 00:31:19,190 --> 00:31:23,030 And if there's a sort of beginning moment for this, a patient zero, if you will. 267 00:31:23,720 --> 00:31:35,330 Labour minister named Efraim Snell begins the the sort of securitisation process with Iran when he gives a speech on the subject in Parliament. 268 00:31:35,690 --> 00:31:39,560 And he's the first one to really define Iran as an existential threat. 269 00:31:39,890 --> 00:31:46,730 And he says that Iran has three things that that define its its danger to Israel, its ideology, 270 00:31:47,450 --> 00:31:52,880 its effort to spread influence regionally and globally, and its desire to acquire weapons of mass destruction. 271 00:31:53,210 --> 00:32:01,820 And this is the first time that any sort of Israeli official had spoken so directly and so publicly on what made Iran specifically a threat to Israel. 272 00:32:03,110 --> 00:32:07,130 And it was a departure from the late eighties, especially for Rabin, who was prime minister at the time, 273 00:32:07,550 --> 00:32:14,270 who had argued that Iran really did impose anything of a of a threat to Israel and actually was a natural ally. 274 00:32:14,990 --> 00:32:20,000 But this really represented the end of periphery nostalgia in Israel. 275 00:32:21,380 --> 00:32:25,910 It securitised the issue in the sense that it defined, at least for this government, 276 00:32:25,910 --> 00:32:33,049 that Iran was a threat, but it didn't really capture the public attention, the public's attention. 277 00:32:33,050 --> 00:32:38,810 I mean, I think a lot of other politicians and security officials were still more focussed on Arab threats, 278 00:32:39,710 --> 00:32:50,370 in particular in Iraq, and it didn't gain that sort of traction within Israeli society that it would later and over the years, 279 00:32:50,370 --> 00:32:57,590 that following that, there's sort of a steady trickle of news leaks that slowly begin to gain purchase in Israel, 280 00:32:58,490 --> 00:33:02,809 particularly with regard to Iran's nuclear program. But even still, 281 00:33:02,810 --> 00:33:11,299 it's a backwater issue for a very long time that changes sort of in the mid-to-late 2000 with three 282 00:33:11,300 --> 00:33:17,810 things that really bring this from a backwater security issue to the primary challenge that it is today. 283 00:33:18,350 --> 00:33:21,709 And I'm going a little bit longer than I anticipated. 284 00:33:21,710 --> 00:33:31,520 So I'm going to try to speed up a little bit. But the the first of these is in 2005, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad is elected president of Iran. 285 00:33:32,090 --> 00:33:37,879 And it's interesting because, you know, for those of you who aren't familiar with Ahmadinejad, 286 00:33:37,880 --> 00:33:40,910 he was a sort of a political new newcomer in a lot of ways. 287 00:33:40,910 --> 00:33:48,559 He was Trump before Trump. But in the Iranian version, he had been the mayor of Tehran previously. 288 00:33:48,560 --> 00:33:57,230 He was an IRGC hardliner, but he didn't possess the same sort of political pedigree that had dominated Iranian electoral politics before his arrival. 289 00:33:57,920 --> 00:34:02,690 Certainly he was a reaction to the reformist president who preceded him, Mohammad Khatami. 290 00:34:03,500 --> 00:34:09,170 And but most important for Israel's purposes was just how he conducted himself. 291 00:34:09,170 --> 00:34:20,090 I mean, he was a very bombastic and enthusiastic leader who really revelled in the spotlight and controversy that he created. 292 00:34:20,090 --> 00:34:27,350 He was extremely anti-Semitic. He held this Holocaust denier conference in Iran shortly after he became president, 293 00:34:27,740 --> 00:34:35,600 which included a fellow Louisiana and David Duke, who was a white supremacist figure in the United States. 294 00:34:37,040 --> 00:34:43,759 I'm from New Orleans, so I actually remember when I was a kid, like handing out flyers against David Duke's governor campaign where he won, 295 00:34:43,760 --> 00:34:48,350 he got like 46% of the vote or something, so so in the early 1990s. 296 00:34:48,860 --> 00:34:56,420 So yeah, I think a lot of people since Trump have sort of pointed to that as like a bellwether moment. 297 00:34:58,490 --> 00:35:00,799 But anyway, Ahmadinejad, 298 00:35:00,800 --> 00:35:08,450 he was really the first Iranian elected official that behaved in the way that Israeli politicians expected Iranians to behave. 299 00:35:09,080 --> 00:35:17,270 And he was really a symbol for for Israeli leaders to point to and say, this is the irrational Iran that we've been fighting against. 300 00:35:17,750 --> 00:35:26,690 And also his penchant for for promoting and sort of aggressively pushing Iran's nuclear program was very important as well, 301 00:35:26,690 --> 00:35:33,829 because previous Iranian leaders had had made gestures towards the nuclear program, 302 00:35:33,830 --> 00:35:38,720 but not in the same way Ahmadinejad promoted and boasted about it on the international stage. 303 00:35:39,890 --> 00:35:46,370 It wasn't difficult, therefore, after that to sort of think about Iran as an existential threat. 304 00:35:46,370 --> 00:35:51,440 I mean, he is the perfect image of the person that you don't want to have his finger on the nuclear button. 305 00:35:52,040 --> 00:35:57,590 Whether or not he ever would have if Iran had developed a nuclear weapon is debateable. 306 00:35:58,130 --> 00:36:08,600 But that was really the first moment I think a lot of Israelis started to think critically about what Iran means for that and following that. 307 00:36:08,940 --> 00:36:13,020 The following year is the sort of second major event, and that's the 26th Lebanon War. 308 00:36:13,530 --> 00:36:20,760 And in the summer of 2006, Israel fights this sloppy five week war with with Hezbollah. 309 00:36:22,080 --> 00:36:28,410 And I think I think in most people would say the war ended in a stalemate. 310 00:36:30,030 --> 00:36:35,230 If you go by Israel's definition of its objectives, they probably would consider it a defeat. 311 00:36:35,250 --> 00:36:38,790 I mean, they wanted to root out Hezbollah from southern Lebanon and weren't able to. 312 00:36:40,290 --> 00:36:42,059 But in the post-mortem of that, 313 00:36:42,060 --> 00:36:50,760 there was a real reckoning in Israel about what what had caused their defeat and what it would have prevented them from defeating Hezbollah. 314 00:36:50,790 --> 00:36:54,060 There's also a bit of surprised at how sophisticated Hezbollah was, 315 00:36:54,720 --> 00:37:04,680 and I think a lot of the conclusions pointed towards Iranian sponsorship of Hezbollah as the reason for for Israel's inability to root them out. 316 00:37:05,550 --> 00:37:14,970 And it led to the publication of an influential book by Israeli investigative journalist Ronen Bergman called Israel's Secret War with Iran, 317 00:37:14,970 --> 00:37:21,630 which sold 750,000 copies, I think in Israel, which is a huge number for a small country, 318 00:37:22,200 --> 00:37:32,489 and it really provided some legitimacy to the Iranian threat and pointed directly towards Iran, not only as the the root cause for the defeat in 2006, 319 00:37:32,490 --> 00:37:38,420 but also reframed sort of Israeli military history as this long conflict with or 320 00:37:38,580 --> 00:37:43,260 with Iran that had gone back decades to the founding of the Islamic Republic. 321 00:37:44,340 --> 00:37:49,919 Also significant in this period was the debut of Israel Hayom, which was a free excuse me, 322 00:37:49,920 --> 00:37:56,549 a free newspaper founded by Sheldon Adelson that quickly became the most widely read publication in Israel. 323 00:37:56,550 --> 00:38:09,540 And it was extremely right wing. So this well, I actually, you know, since I am an American quantitative at heart, I did a bit of my research, 324 00:38:09,540 --> 00:38:21,959 did a bit of sort of lexicon analysis or corpus analysis on and try to slide it over here, because actually I should have done this differently. 325 00:38:21,960 --> 00:38:31,440 But you can really see, I mean, at least graphically, where the the press interest in Iran picks up. 326 00:38:32,700 --> 00:38:39,180 And this is just a simple word search within the news bank archives. 327 00:38:39,510 --> 00:38:45,660 This is only the Jerusalem Post is only sort of a long running archive that they have access to. 328 00:38:46,410 --> 00:38:54,389 But yeah, I mean, in 2006 and then beyond is when the Israeli media really starts paying attention to the Iranian threat 329 00:38:54,390 --> 00:38:59,670 and the number of articles spike and this is true both of sort of overall articles and see if this. 330 00:39:02,300 --> 00:39:06,240 Can't know how to go forward here. Yeah. 331 00:39:07,190 --> 00:39:13,190 I don't want to waste time with that, but it's true of opinion articles as well. 332 00:39:13,190 --> 00:39:17,840 And if you look at sort of the usage of terminology that goes alongside Iran, 333 00:39:19,220 --> 00:39:25,550 it also spikes with words like Holocaust and Nazi comparisons really pick up during this period as well. 334 00:39:26,250 --> 00:39:34,730 So the third major event and this is really sort of the crux of the populist part is the election of Netanyahu in 2009. 335 00:39:35,990 --> 00:39:39,680 Iran doesn't necessarily play a huge role in his election campaign. 336 00:39:40,670 --> 00:39:50,750 He does campaign as the security candidate. But once in power, he's quick to define Iran as the primary strategic and security challenge to Israel. 337 00:39:51,710 --> 00:40:00,020 Notably, he does so in English with his first interview as prime minister with Jeffrey Goldberg of The Atlantic. 338 00:40:01,970 --> 00:40:11,060 And he lays out sort of this is this this vision of Iran as this omnipresent and omnipotent enemy for Israel. 339 00:40:11,750 --> 00:40:18,800 And it really it really serves a purpose in that. 340 00:40:20,540 --> 00:40:27,949 It establishes, like his his his priorities that he's going to he's going to be tackling Iran more than anything else. 341 00:40:27,950 --> 00:40:36,110 And I think, given what actually followed it, it was helpful in distracting from the the the problems with the Palestinians as well. 342 00:40:36,830 --> 00:40:46,220 So as Prime Minister Netanyahu built on sort of three rhetorical tropes, and this is really where I get into the populist angle of it. 343 00:40:46,640 --> 00:40:54,290 And so if we think about how how he defines the conflict, he does so in very moralistic terms. 344 00:40:55,670 --> 00:41:04,850 He defines Iran is this or he calls them, I think, in that interview, a messianic apocalyptic cult and asks rhetorically, 345 00:41:04,850 --> 00:41:09,010 you know, people say they'll behave like any other nuclear power, but can you take the risk? 346 00:41:09,020 --> 00:41:12,739 Can you assume that it started this Iranian exceptionalism? 347 00:41:12,740 --> 00:41:14,780 But it's Iran as exceptionally evil. 348 00:41:16,880 --> 00:41:24,500 And I think if you're thinking about this in terms of populist politics and this is very useful from from Netanyahu's perspective, 349 00:41:24,500 --> 00:41:31,310 because in a in a moralistic universe, negotiation with the enemy becomes impossible. 350 00:41:32,090 --> 00:41:37,309 There's no way to actually engage with them on a human level because they're morally inferior 351 00:41:37,310 --> 00:41:42,110 and therefore cannot be trusted to live up to anything that they promise in negotiations. 352 00:41:43,220 --> 00:41:48,530 So second the second trope he builds on is the idea of perpetual crisis. 353 00:41:49,160 --> 00:41:58,400 And for Netanyahu, I mean, it's they're the best example of this, I think, is sort of the idea of nuclear timelines. 354 00:41:59,180 --> 00:42:06,950 Iran is always in this world about 6 to 12 months away from acquiring a nuclear weapon, and they have been for about 20 years. 355 00:42:07,490 --> 00:42:19,850 And this idea that, you know, disaster is just around the corner is useful not only from, you know, a strategic element, but also as a as a populist. 356 00:42:19,850 --> 00:42:25,310 It creates this sense of fear in the population and bolsters his leadership credentials. 357 00:42:28,400 --> 00:42:35,180 And I think also you can see that even as negotiations are taking place, 358 00:42:35,630 --> 00:42:40,910 the shifting of the theme that that Iran is not a nuclear threat so much as a terrorist 359 00:42:40,910 --> 00:42:46,340 threat adds to the idea that Iran's going to be dangerous no matter what negotiation, 360 00:42:46,730 --> 00:42:52,129 what conclusion takes place. And finally, 361 00:42:52,130 --> 00:43:03,560 there's sort of the claim to leadership and the idea that the disregarding of norms and procedures and I think for Netanyahu in particular, 362 00:43:04,940 --> 00:43:13,280 his willingness to sort of break the protocols of international relations, I mean, his speech to Congress in 2015 is sort of the perfect example of, 363 00:43:13,490 --> 00:43:19,030 say, accepts and ignores Barack Obama in, you know, 364 00:43:19,070 --> 00:43:28,879 speaking out forcefully against the deal in front of Congress and really defines himself as not just the leader of of Israel on the Israeli interest, 365 00:43:28,880 --> 00:43:33,680 but tries to position himself as a as an international defender of the Jewish people. 366 00:43:34,160 --> 00:43:40,250 And he's standing up to Iran's destabilising elements, not just in the region, but also globally as well. 367 00:43:41,460 --> 00:43:48,920 And so I think it's a lot more I could talk about, but I really do want to get to some questions and answers. 368 00:43:48,950 --> 00:43:51,620 I'll just end with a sort of a brief anecdote. 369 00:43:53,510 --> 00:44:04,910 So in the course of my research, I came to discover a book by an Iranian intellectual named Jalali Ahmed, which I don't know some of you made from. 370 00:44:05,020 --> 00:44:12,000 They may be familiar with this if you follow him at all. He was the author of a book called Kabza Diggy. 371 00:44:12,010 --> 00:44:21,160 So West Talks of Vacation, which sort of formed the one of the intellectual motivations for Khomeini during the Islamic Revolution. 372 00:44:21,610 --> 00:44:31,930 But he actually went on a on a trip to Israel in 1961, and this text they wrote a travelogue for was not widely known, I think, at least in Iran. 373 00:44:32,320 --> 00:44:41,110 I'm not sure it's widely known anywhere. But it he interestingly, on this trip, it was his propaganda trip. 374 00:44:41,110 --> 00:44:49,509 I think he was invited by the Israeli government. But he was really he admired Israeli society, admired what he saw. 375 00:44:49,510 --> 00:44:58,120 And he was really interested in this sort of socialistic, you know, marriage of socialist values and religious principles. 376 00:44:58,120 --> 00:45:07,450 And he actually saw Israel as the ideal religious society, which, I mean, given his role as an intellectual inspiration for the Islamic revolution. 377 00:45:07,960 --> 00:45:08,860 SEMI Ironic. 378 00:45:10,210 --> 00:45:19,270 But he was also extremely concerned about the way Israel approached the Arab population and the fear that they're engendering in their citizens. 379 00:45:19,780 --> 00:45:22,050 And he probably kind of seen it at the time. 380 00:45:22,060 --> 00:45:29,710 But yeah, a lot of the way he he worried about the way that Israel was going about its relationship with the Arabs, 381 00:45:31,960 --> 00:45:34,870 ended up being applied to Iran well after his death. 382 00:45:35,350 --> 00:45:42,129 And it was interesting because I thought this really represented a different path that they could have, 383 00:45:42,130 --> 00:45:48,670 that Israel and Iran could have gone, and that they really did have a lot in common, but they obviously diverged along the way. 384 00:45:49,240 --> 00:45:54,520 And, you know, I conclude my project sort of in 2015, 2016. 385 00:45:54,520 --> 00:45:57,970 So it ends on a well reasonably optimistic note. 386 00:45:59,920 --> 00:46:05,770 I'm not sure how optimistic I am anymore, but I think at least for now. 387 00:46:05,770 --> 00:46:12,840 And well, we'll see what happens next year. So anyway, with that said, open up to questions or.