Despite the shocks of recent conflict, Roule notes that some of the region’s long-simmering challenges—from Lebanon’s unresolved tensions with Hezbollah to the humanitarian disaster in Gaza—remain dangerously unresolved.
But Roule also points to signs of quiet progress. The survival of the Abraham Accords, new Arab pressure on Hamas, and Gulf-led efforts to rebuild Syria all point to a growing regional appetite for stability—even if the road ahead remains fraught.
As policymakers in Washington weigh the implications of the 12-day war and its aftermath, Roule argues that the region's evolving dynamics offer not just challenges, but also a chance to reshape American influence in a more pragmatic and sustainable direction.
THE CONTEXT
- Israel’s cabinet is reportedly considering approving a full military takeover of Gaza, which would be the first in two decades, following the collapse of ceasefire talks.
- Steve Witkoff, President Donald Trump’s special envoy to the Middle East, visited an aid distribution site in Gaza with U.S. Ambassador to Israel Mike Huckabee amid international condemnation of the humanitarian crisis in the territory.
- France announced it will recognize a Palestinian state in the U.N. in September. The U.K. said it will follow suit if Israel does not agree to a ceasefire in Gaza. Canada said it will do the same, demanding the Palestinian Authority to make democratic reforms.
- Lebanese President Joseph Aoun urged Hezbollah to disarm, saying the Lebanese cabinet will discuss the matter next week and warning that if Hezbollah does not agree, Israel will continue attacks.
- Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi says Tehran will not resume nuclear negotiations with the U.S. until Washington gives compensation for damages inflicted by U.S. and Israeli strikes on Iranian nuclear and military targets.
- Israel has intercepted several missiles launched from Yemen in recent days. The Iran-backed Houthis have claimed responsibility for the attacks.
- Syria faces continued unrest, with government-affiliated fighters reportedly clashing with the Kurdish-led Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) near Manbij, and government forces reportedly clashing again with Druze militias in the southern province of Sweida.
THE INTERVIEW
Cipher Brief CEO & Publisher Suzanne Kelly spoke with Norm Roule, former National Intelligence Manager for Iran under multiple U.S. Administrations about what all of these events mean for the future of the region. The conversation has been lightly edited for length and clarity.
Norman T. Roule
Norman Roule is a geopolitical and energy consultant who served for 34 years in the Central Intelligence Agency, managing numerous programs relating to Iran and the Middle East. He also served as the National Intelligence Manager for Iran (NIM-I) at ODNI, where he was responsible for all aspects of national intelligence policy related to Iran.
The Cipher Brief: The Middle East has seen a lot of extraordinary events over the past year, and the pace hasn’t slowed. As you’re thinking about the most consequential of these events, where is your focus right now?
Roule: We have had a substantial reshuffle of a very traditional strategic deck of policies in the region. And this doesn't make the game of policy easier for policymakers, but it does give us some new hope for policymakers of winning the game. Let me give you a sense of what policymakers in the region, in Europe, and in the United States, are facing now as Steve Witkoff and others are going to the region and dealing with these various events.
Iran has spent many years turning our red lines pink and for the first time, the U.S. has struck Iran. Israel struck multiple Iranian nuclear sites, missile sites, et cetera, building on previous strikes. Those were red lines. The U.S. joined Israel in military operations and people thought that had been a red line in the past. This precedent has now been set.
For the nuclear negotiations and other talks going forward, Iran now has to deal with a new world where there is this precedent. The 12-day war in June didn't create a new international order. There is no new regional framework that has been set.
Iran's stature as a regional coercive actor has been diminished by its decision to aggressively expand its nuclear program and attack Israel because it allowed the U.S. and Israel to demonstrate the unsurprising strategic superiority of our joint intelligence and military capabilities. And now, Iran is constrained, but they also see, I think, a sense of where they can operate and not operate. And if they stay within those boundaries, we will maybe leave them alone.
In Syria, former president Bashar al-Assad is now gone. The new Syrian president is someone for whom we should take some risks, even bold risks, but we need to be realistic and patient.
And I think as you're looking at this region, it’s important for the U.S. to have a stable and unified Syria with friendly relations with Israel, and help from the Saudis to keep Iran out. A few countries have managed all of those things at any one time. And the Syrian president must do this with a population that contains multiple armed groups, his own pedigree of being a former terrorist and a population that has many years of dark and deep grievances against its own various elements of that same population. We need to be prepared for future outbreaks of violence as we saw against Suwayda and against the Alawites.
We also need to deal with the foreign fighters that are out there. We're also watching Steve Witkoff and others deal with Lebanon. And that is another example of things moving in the right direction, but we need to be realistic. Hezbollah won't put its arms down willingly. Beirut lives in a world where more than a few Lebanese leaders have been on the wrong end of a car bomb if they push too hard against events.
And Israel is now fighting a hard and long war. Its military is efficient and effective in doing what a military should do. But we shouldn't overlook the fact that it's tired. This has been an expensive war. It has taken serious losses. There will be Israelis who will look at any peace talks and say, my son and daughter died or was wounded in that conflict and you're now talking about giving peace to Hamas? You're now talking about standing down in that war? This is a very turbulent Israeli political situation. Israel's political problems are going to continue. But this bleeding ulcer of Gaza, then the bleeding ulcer of Sudan are going to continue in the near term.
But there is some good news in the region as well that I think Witkoff and others have to work with now. You've got the Saudis, the Emiratis, even the Qataris trying to stabilize Syria. The Saudis just announced a $6 billion investment in basic industries. That should be applauded. We've got the U.S. trying to do everything it can to bring a diplomatic solution to Sudan, let alone Gaza. The Arab League just called for Hamas to put down arms and pull itself under the Palestinian Authority. That's a first. That's never happened. That's amazing. And I think maybe something that has also been missed is that the Abraham Accords have survived this war. And the United Arab Emirates has demonstrated that the Abraham Accords could be used to funnel a significant amount of badly needed humanitarian assistance to the Palestinian people. And God knows they have needed this in terms of food and medical assistance. And the Emiratis have shown tremendous generosity in providing this assistance. And then they have pressed the Israelis and Palestinians on this conflict.
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The Cipher Brief: We want to dig in on many of these events. Syria's foreign minister made his first official visit to Moscow. Are you concerned by that?
Roule: Well, to an extent, the Syrians need to develop a stable, unified country. They will need some assistance from everyone. That includes Russia. And that will mean some fuel assistance. That will mean some financial aid of sorts. But Russia's day as a major player in Syria, I think is in the past. Russia has moved on to Libya and to an extent, Algeria. I think it's also unrealistic to think that Russia will be entirely out of the picture in Syria. It's going to be a balancing act between the various players of Russia, Turkey, Israel, the Gulf and Iran will have the least impact. But in the end, the Syrians will need to find balance between the many players who have been part of its environment. But I don't see Russia returning in the big way that it has been a part of Syria in the past.
The Cipher Brief: Now that analysts have had more time to assess the damage done from the 12-day war in June, what is your assessment of what was actually achieved by this attack?
Roule: The execution of the conflict demonstrated that the U.S. and the Israeli military and intelligence communities did exactly what should have been expected of first world institutions of their nature. We saw a crisp, efficient success delivered with great skill and hard work by two communities that had years of cooperation to build on. And this involved the use of very important technologies, not just F-35s, but also the Massive Ordnance Penetrator (MOP). And we should keep in mind that these are not new technologies. The MOP program began in 2004. The program against Fordow, specifically with the MOP, according to public information, began in 2009. So we're talking about technologies that, in many ways, are a decade old. But nonetheless, these were executed in a manner against a long-standing adversary that resulted in a strategic setback without starting a regional war.
Now, you have to expect that inside of Moscow and Beijing, they're looking at this and saying, ‘Holy cow, this is an amazing demonstration of American technology’. I can't help but think that the way in which this conflict played out will have some impact on Russian and Chinese war planning, and also on how they may look at how China would execute an attack on Taiwan.
But let's focus on what actually happened. Israel achieved air dominance over Iran in every way that mattered within 48 hours. That is extraordinary because they not only had air dominance, Israel controlled the skies, but it also controlled what buildings, bridges, personnel they could take out. Iran's enrichment program - as a program - and Iran as a weapons threat, no longer exist. Now, that can be rebuilt and we shouldn't understate that and I'm not trying to downplay that, but Iran's enrichment program no longer exists.
My sense is that the threat of Iran's nuclear program as defined prior to the attack has probably been set back by one, if not two years. The exact time would depend upon what type of weapon Iran would build, how fast and how covert, but Iran's centrifuge manufacturing facilities, its enrichment facilities in Fordow appear to be damaged to the point of total destruction or massive destruction. Iran's conversion facilities which are required to transform enriched uranium into nuclear fuel or weapons-grade metal, have been destroyed. Iran's plutonium reactor and heavy water reactor have been destroyed. Multiple key scientists have been killed. And I don't think people understand what that means. These are not only scientists, but these are people who manage scientific organizations. Their loss will be significant. And last, there is no public evidence, despite what all the rumors are, that Iran has retained any enriched uranium. And the president and the secretary of defense have stated that they have seen no evidence that Iran has removed that material. If Iran did, that material would still have to be enriched in centrifuges that don't appear to exist, in facilities that don't exist, etc.
Israel likely destroyed more than half of Iran's ballistic missiles and 60 to 80 percent of Iran's missile launchers and the personnel associated with those launchers. Israel's decapitation of Iran's military didn't stop Iran from responding with missile attacks. That's not a surprise. Iran is not a terrorist organization like Hezbollah. It's a government with multiple layers and multiple facilities, and it has an independent structure, and that's expected. But that decapitation meant that Iran's response was different. It was less efficient, and it lacked the strategic vision and agility that those senior commanders would have demonstrated. Imagine if George Patton were taken away from the third army. The war would have played out very differently, right? So Iran responded with missile attacks, but those attacks continued at a diminishing rate. They continued using missiles that were fired from further east. Those missiles also involved larger warheads which meant they had a bigger impact when they hit the ground. It didn't mean that Iran wasn't getting missiles through, but those attacks had no impact on the strategic course and the direction of the conflict.
I can't help wondering if that conflict would have continued, what would have remained of Iran's missile force if in essence the decision had been made in Jerusalem and Washington to just let this play out until Iran had no missile program. Would that have been possible?
That said, Iran retains a coastal defense and missile force that they can use against the Gulf Cooperation Council. And therefore, when people think about Iran as a missile threat, it may not be as significant a strategic threat against Israel, but the threat to other regional actors is no less significant than it was prior to the conflict.
The Cipher Brief: One thing that wasn't deterred by the attack was Iran's nuclear ambitions. With Iran firmly a part of the Axis of Resistance now, referring of course to its associations with North Korea, Russia and China, how long do you think it would take for Iran to reconstitute and become just as much of a challenge as it was before the strike? You said one to two years. Is that on par with how long you think it would take them to be back where they were before?
Roule: If you're in Iran, you have to make a strategic decision. ‘If we restart the program, will the United States and Israel attack?’ They've got to ask, ‘If we do this, will we survive?’ And then ask, ‘How do we restart the program in a way that will allow us to survive? And how much money do we invest and where do we get the parts and pieces and do we rebuild factories? How long does that take?’
They have plenty of underground facilities. That's not going to be a problem. They likely have centrifuge parts that they retained from their previous construction. I wouldn't be surprised. They may have some entire centrifuges from their previous construction that they had not declared to the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), but that doesn't mean they have cascades.
But again, as they build this, they've got to think about storage. I do think there's a sense of nationalism in Iran. Some people will want to work there to be part of this program, maybe thinking they are protecting their country. And some will decide against it realizing the last three guys who did that were killed. That's going to impact the efficiency of those programs and their success moving forward. This will take a lot of time. And Iran is not an efficient country. It's going to have to decide what it will gain. Really where that plays out is with the nuclear talks and the IAEA.
Shifting to the topic of nuclear talks, right now Iran is half pregnant. It is saying they're not allowing the IAEA in to assess the program. They may allow the IAEA in for some discussions. They don't want to leave the nonproliferation treaty. Their refusal to cooperate with the IAEA could be a violation of their international safeguards commitments under the Non-proliferation Treaty (NPT), which could require they be sent to the UN Security Council for this very reason. I think what Iran is going to try to do is to use this half-pregnant period to squeeze concessions out of the Europeans to delay the snapback of UN Security Council resolution 2231 sanctions to delay that in order to give itself more time to think about where its program will go.
I think if you're in Iran right now, you know Western intelligence is pretty good. We know what was destroyed. It's available public information through overt imagery. They're thinking the U.S. and Israel are not going to go to war for what's left of their nuclear program.
Therefore, if you’re Iran, you’re likely asking, ‘Why shouldn't we just buy ourselves some time to think about this and to think about where this goes? Why do we have to rush to rebuild this program? Why don't we just delay this and see how many concessions we can squeeze from the Europeans, the West, and make defiant statements as much as we can, diplomatically?’
The Cipher Brief: Let's talk more broadly about U.S. relationships in the region. We've heard about the investments that you mentioned by the Saudis, the Emiratis, the Qataris as they try to bring stability to the region through their investment schemes. You're seeing President Trump, showing public frustration over what's happening in Gaza with so many people going hungry. How do you see the nature of U.S. relationships in the region given everything that's happening?
Roule: The deck of cards has been reshuffled. What occurred prior to the 12-day war remains in place, then the U.S. strategy for the region was rather consistent. The U.S. does not wish to see the outbreak of a region-wide conventional war, and that includes a war started by Israel.
The U.S. will use military action if it believes that the Iranians are engaged in some sort of weaponization and or terrorist activity. The U.S. will pursue unrelenting diplomacy with any actor. The U.S. will pursue economic sanctions on Iran. The U.S. will talk to near anyone. The U.S. will provide partners in the region with weapons they need. The U.S. will not involve itself with engagements in the region that mire it in conflicts. I think this is all the same. But the U.S. also is not going to tie itself to local political issues.
So let's look at Gaza itself as a problem. If Gaza is going to be solved, in my mind, eventually it's going to require four elements.
The first element is going to be the Israelis are going to have to have some freedom for Israel Defense Forces (IDF) to ensure that nothing occurs in Gaza that threatens Israel, again, such as the October 7th terrorist attack.
The second, is you will have to have some sort of Palestinian authority or Palestinian governance through a Palestinian leadership architecture that Israel has yet to admit.
The third is that you're going to have to have a renewed relationship between the Gulf States and the Palestinian Authority.
And last, you're going to have to have a security architecture that does not involve Hamas, but some international relationship that can promote reconstruction so that the Gulf States aren't throwing away their money, the IDF is assured that there isn't a terrorist element and a Palestinian authority can promote governance. We're not anywhere near that, but that's how this is going to be solved.
Right now, we're in a blame game on humanitarian issues. We're not solving the humanitarian issues. We spend all of our time blaming who's responsible for the humanitarian issues. Is it Israel? Is it Hamas? Is it the United States for not putting enough pressure on people? But we've seen extraordinary steps in the last week. The Arab League said to Hamas, ‘put down the weapons’. The United Nations has admitted that a vast majority of the trucks that entered into the country had their goods stolen by someone, armed gunmen, and that's going to be criminal gangs, Hamas, or someone. We do have food drops, which is a terrible way to deliver food into a location because only the strong grab it, and it's just a terrible way.
I think more broadly, we're looking at a world where we talk about dealing with wars in Ukraine and Taiwan and The Cipher Brief covers this, but really? We can't manage - internationally - a conflict in a piece of land that is 24 by seven miles wide? Really? The international community can't get that taken care of, but we're gonna take care of Taiwan? We're gonna take care of Ukraine?
And there is a growing frustration, and you see it in many areas around Washington D.C., that this is a bleeding ulcer. There is also a recognition this isn't going to change until we have a different approach and even a different government in Israel. So, we’ve seen the United Kingdom, France, and now Canada, all saying that they're going to recognize the Palestinian government in the coming weeks. This doesn't really mean much because there really isn't a Palestinian government in Gaza. This might have meant something 20 years ago, or 15 years ago even, but until we have those four elements, you're not going to have those political gestures translated to something that is meaningful.
And that means until you have a government approach by Jerusalem, you're not going to have a shift. I do think what the Arab League is doing deserves attention because that demonstrates what I've been watching for quite some time, which is significant quiet diplomacy by the Saudis in particular. The Saudis have done significant work behind the scenes pulling together the Arab League. We don't think about Arab diplomacy as being very active. It's just very quiet. It's unrelenting. They have a difficult political environment in their world. But Gaza does not look promising in the near term, nor does Sudan.
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The Cipher Brief: Shifting for a moment to energy, there's always an incredible economic interest in the stability of the region. How will what we're seeing in the region today affect short-term and long-term energy prices?
Roule: I think that it's imperative that your readers understand that the relationship between energy, chemicals, and artificial intelligence is a marriage that is here to stay. And if you understand that trifecta, you will understand the relationship between the United States and the Gulf. And you will understand money movements. You will understand how the administration assigns personnel, how it assigns trade, how it assigns political attention to the region.
Working from west to east, it’s clear that you're going to see more attention paid to North Africa. The Moroccans have been very active on solar power. You're seeing Morocco and Algeria each trying to play a larger role in demonstrating to Europe and Africa that they can be reasonable and key interlocutors on energy in their own way. Morocco tends to be a more favorably treated partner by the United States, but the Algerians are engaged in considerable outreach as well. I'm confident that Libya is going to be a much larger player in the oil world in the coming months. We've seen four or five different energy companies develop new contracts. And I think Libyan oil production is going to increase toward the end of this year and into 2026.
And as we watch U.S. oil production drop toward the end of this year - the number of wells, in the United States, the number of rigs has declined - and I think we're below the level of maintaining our production at this point, unsurprising, but Libya may go up to two million barrels.
But the gold is really going to be in the Gulf with natural gas and oil, but you can't separate this from their artificial intelligence ambitions. And I want to keep going back to the reshuffling of the deck and the drivers before the 12-day war, because that really should be your paradigm.
And here's where I want to touch on something that I think people don't focus enough on. The president of the United States went to the Gulf and he conducted deals that were worth two and a half trillion dollars. These are big sums and it's all energy. And he's gone to Europe and he said, ‘We're going to sell you a lot of energy and it's natural gas and we're going to tie you to our technology’ and he did the same in the Gulf. How many of those leaders came to the United States? How many of those people has the president engaged directly? Now, explain to me why we don't see more Gulf leaders coming to the United States. So, I think you're going to see more Gulf leaders coming here. We need to see the Crown Prince of Saudi Arabia in the United States speaking to our technologists, our policy leaders, our military.
We need to have the head of president of the United Arab Emirates and the Qataris. If you're going to have the prime minister of Italy, if you're going to have the prime minister of Asian countries coming here and if we're going to have that kind of economic strategic energy engagement, I think what's missing is that we're not having that sort of engagement with those actors here as often.
I'm going to make a prediction that you're likely to see more of that because just as the Trump administration has done things differently in so many different ways with regard to the region in the past, I think it's willing to have different types of relationships with people.
You will see the unraveling of the OPEC constraints in the coming months. You will see the Gulf become a leader, if not the leader on natural gas production in the coming years. You will see a production of nuclear energy in Saudi Arabia in the coming months, if not, a year or two.
I will close by saying there is a challenge that I think the Trump administration is going to face. All of these different and complicated interagency requirements - to do so many meetings at once - must make this a difficult processing time in which to get so many trade deals done. And I think what that's going to mean is that these energy deals, trade deals might end up being executed a little more slowly than people think. So, people should be patient and not see that as a failure on anyone's part and more in terms of a natural progression of bureaucracy.
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