“This war, does not have one finish line. The first is the American finish line where President Donald Trump may choose to declare victory even if the strategic reality on the ground has not fundamentally changed,” says Shay Gal, analyst who works with the Israeli government on strategy and security issues.
In an interview on The Gist, Gal said the Iranian finish line is the second and for Tehran survival is victory. As long as the system holds, it will claim success. That is how it has operated for decades.
“The third is the Israeli finish line which is the decisive one. Israel does not see itself as a bound by a ceasefire shaped in Islamabad,” he warned. “As long as enriched uranium exists, as long as the missile program is not dismantled, and as long as Iran continues to arm proxies, Israel will treat any ceasefire as a pause.”
Gal says Israel never expected anything serious or defining to emerge from the Islamabad talks, because Pakistan is not a neutral mediator. It ran the AQ Khan network that proliferated nuclear materials and therefore cannot serve as the guardian of a process meant to restrain Iran’s nuclear capability.
He said Pakistan came up with ideas during the talks that could not be credible. For instance, it proposed that Turkey or Pakistan (which has a history of nuclear proliferation) should be the guardians of Iran’s nuclear weapons.
“The US, for decades, saw Pakistan as their partner. It’s one of the historical mistakes it has done. And I mean every administration, whether Republican or Democrat. And who paid the price for it? Israel, India, the Gulf.”
Gal believes that President Trump wants to end the war at the earliest. He has enforced a blockade but there’s no guarantee he won’t do a U-turn tomorrow.
Gal says Israel is determined to press forward and destroy Iran’s nuclear facilities and its missile silos. They have a pretty accurate idea as to where these are with with some more intelligence, precision weapons, use of cyber attacks to disrupt, Israel will be in a position to ensure Iran’s capabilities are not only degraded but cannot be reconstituted.
Tune in for more in this conversation with Shay Gal, Israel-based analyst.
