Model to End War in Iran Should Be Cold War, No Boots on Ground: Former Israeli Ambassador to U.S.

And why is Iran unrelenting in the strikes on Israel and its demands on the U.S., even as U.S. and Israeli strikes have decimated its assets and killed its leaders? And how could a long-term solution to the conflict be looking like? Former Israeli ambassador to the U.S., Michael Oren, joins me from Israel with his insights and analysis. Ambassador Michael Oren, thank you so much for joining us. Great to be with you, Iris. So, Ambassador, you once served in the IDF. First, help us understand the scope of this military operation we are seeing right now. Are we witnessing an unprecedented level of strategic cooperation between the U.S. and Israel? And as this war goes on, can this alliance remain as strong as it is right now? That's a great question. The U.S.-Israel Strategic Alliance has been, throughout the decades, the deepest and most multifaceted strategic alliance which the United States has had with any foreign power in the post-World War II period. It's deeper than the U.S.-British, certainly the U.S.-French or Italian alliances, and it has many different aspects to it. It is a weapons development. We've seen the Iron Dome, the Arrow 2 and Arrow 3 systems. These are American-Israel projects. It is joint maneuvers. It's intelligence sharing at the very highest level. But what we've seen now in the last few weeks is a level of cooperation which has really been unmatched at any point in our history. We're talking about the first time that the United States and Israel have actively cooperated and really shoulder-to-shoulder on an offensive maneuver, not defensive, and the first time the American military has placed offensive assets, including the F-22 jet, the most advanced jet fighter in the American arsenal, on Israeli territory. So this is quite a development in our joint relationship, and I think it sends a very So as you said, this is the first time that the U.S. and Israel are working together in an offensive operation, and that goes into a whole debate inside the U.S. right now about if Israel is, quote-unquote, dragging the U.S. into an unnecessary war. We know that you just wrote an article about this. Talk to us more about your take on this. Is Iran potentially behind some of the narratives being spread around inside the U.S. now when it Well, Israel is not dragging anybody into anything. Israel has to take what measures are necessary to ensure our safety. Iran was building an arsenal of ballistic missiles, and we're talking about not hundreds, but thousands and even tens of thousands of these missiles. Each one carries a warhead of about a ton of TNT. It knocks down not a building, but an entire neighborhood. We've had these missiles falling on us every single day. Huge. And that was a situation that was intolerable to the state of Israel. So Israel was going to act to preempt Iran from acquiring the arsenal. And the Iranians made it very clear that if we struck at the arsenal, they were going to strike back at American military targets in the Middle East. America has about 40,000 troops here. It has air bases. It has naval bases. Iran would strike back. So the president of the United States had to make a decision. Either he's going to wait for Iran to strike first against these American targets, or he was going to preempt together with Israel. He decided to preempt together with Israel. But the point of who dragged who in is kind of moot, because there's only one country that dragged both our countries into it, and that is Iran. And the debate is interesting from our perspective, because we can't figure out why anybody would think that we dragged the United States into a war. Clearly, Iran has an interest in promoting that narrative, but not just Iran. There are anti-Semites in the United States who want to say that the Jews have dragged America into a war. Or just people who are against the president's decision. We would hope that they would criticize the president's decision without dragging Israel into the debate. And speaking of which, we have seen the U.S. and its allies take out Iranians, leadership, missile launchers, as well as nuclear sites. We've heard from the U.S. Central Command saying that they've taken out 6,000 targets by today. And President Trump now saying that the war could be ending soon. Where does the timeline stand right now in your view, and what still needs to happen before this conflict could be officially over? We're still being hit by a great number of rockets from Iran, less than the beginning of the war, that is true. And it depends when you ask me. Today I was in a cab and I had to run out of the cab and lie down on the highway, because there was a rocket coming in. But most of the rockets now are coming from Hezbollah. Hezbollah is the Iran-backed terrorist organization in Lebanon. Last night Hezbollah fired 250 rockets at the Galilee in northern Israel. And so it's a very serious threat. And we see no let up. On the contrary, there's actually a significant escalation coming from Lebanon. And we also know that there's cooperation between Iran and Hezbollah, because the rocket attacks are coordinated. They fire at the same time. And so clearly there's coordination there. From Israel's perspective, at least on the Lebanese front, and of course on the Iranian front as well, we don't see this war ending any time soon. Where do you think things are standing with Iran's whole network of regional proxies, especially when it comes to, for example, Hezbollah? Well, they all have in common the same definition of victory. And that is that victory for them means simply not to lose. So you can destroy great amounts of military hardware in Iran. You can sink Iranian boats. You can blow up headquarters. But if they're still standing, they win. In fact, just recently, a few minutes ago, the Iranian president came out and dictated terms of surrender to the United States of America. Said that the United States has to agree to an unconditional ceasefire. America has to pay reparations to Iran. And America has to commit to never again attack Iran. So they feel in their position that, okay, they've lost their navy. They've lost many of their headquarters, but they still feel they're winning. And that same holds true for Iran's proxies. You can blow up a large chunk of Gaza, as we did during this war. And Hamas still feels that it's winning. Hezbollah was greatly degraded during its war with Israel. And look, they still feel that they can fire 250 rockets in a night. And the only way that Iran and its proxies can be defeated is by a long-term policy. And I don't mean continuing the war indefinitely. But once Iran's missile launchers have been eliminated, once it can no longer fire at us and its neighbors, then the United States can move into a position, as it did during the Cold War, of imposing very strict embargoes, blockades. No oil gets exploited from Iran. No weapons get into Iran. And slowly, it may take time, the Iranian regime will fall. How long does this need to be going on? And could there be an end solution to this? Well, I don't see a solution that doesn't leave Iran feeling that it won. And if Iran feels it wins, then everybody is endangered still. It will rebuild. It will rebuild very quickly. And as it did even after the last summer's war, the 12-day war, it rebuilt its missile capabilities very, very quickly. And you're going to be back in the same place maybe a year from now, maybe two or three years from now, but with Iran much stronger and much better positioned to threaten the United States and the world, and certainly its neighbors. So I can't put a time limit on it and tell you it's going to take, you know, five days or five weeks or five months. I do not know. But I know that the model should be the model of the Cold War, not Iraq and Afghanistan. No boots on the ground. And in fact, the intense military stage should end relatively soon. I think that the president is right there. But that doesn't mean you let up pressure on Iran. And that doesn't mean you agree to Iran's conditions for a surrender of the West. Certainly not. And the message will be relayed not just to the Iranians, but to America's adversaries throughout the world. And they're paying very, very careful attention to this. I'm concerned that the lack of response by NATO countries to the attacks on Cyprus and the attacks on Turkey, they're members of NATO. Will be read, I think, rather unfortunately by the Russians. Ambassador Michael Oren, thank you so much for joining us. And thank you for your timely insights. Appreciate it.