EXPERT INTERVIEW – Just a few weeks ago, the Middle East seemed in a rare moment of relative calm: ceasefires were holding in Gaza and Lebanon; the rebel leaders now ruling Syria had brought order and relief to the population, after decades of rule by the Assad regime; and for the most part, from the Mediterranean to Iran, the guns were silent.
That calm has been shattered in recent days on many fronts – most notably in a new wave of aerial and ground attacks by Israel in Gaza, an insurgency mounted by Assad loyalists, and a heavy U.S. campaign against the Iran-backed Houthis in Yemen.
These were independent flare ups, but as with so much in the Middle East, they are related, and to differing degrees the violence continues.
THE CONTEXT
- Israel resumed airstrikes in Gaza on March 18, followed by new ground operations in the territory. More than 600 Palestinians have been killed in the three days since. On March 20, Hamas retaliated with rocket fire at Israel. This marked the collapse of the two-month Gaza ceasefire negotiated in January. U.S.-backed efforts to extend the truce failed.
- Syria’s new transitional government is dealing with various outbreaks of violence. In early March, remnants of the ousted Assad regime attacked Syrian government forces. The clashes devolved into revenge killings along Syria’s western coast, which killed over 1,000 people.
- Late on March 16, Syria’s defense ministry accused Lebanese Hezbollah of abducting and killing three Syrian soldiers. Syrian forces shelled Lebanese Hezbollah targets in retaliation, resulting in a cross-border exchange of fire. Lebanon and Syria have agreed to a ceasefire.
- The Trump administration has made offerings to Iran to negotiate on its nuclear program, including a letter President Donald Trump said he sent to Iranian Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei. The Iranian leadership has rejected the outreach; Khamenei said Tehran will not succumb to “bullying governments.”
Cipher Brief CEO and publisher Suzanne Kelly spoke this week with Cipher Brief expert Norman Roule, a former National Intelligence Manager for Iran at the Office of the Director of National Intelligence (ODNI). Roule gave an assessment of these crisis points, how Iran may be viewing them all, as well as what he called the “four pillars” of the current U.S. approach to Iran. Roule also spoke about a less-noticed but crucial White House visit made recently by the National Security Advisor for the United Arab Emirates (UAE).
Excerpts of their conversation have been edited for length and clarity. You can watch the full interview on our YouTube channel.
The Cipher Brief: We're seeing attacks in Yemen, and a ramp up of violence in Gaza, Syria, and Lebanon. What does all this mean?
Roule: We're seeing three relatively contained but very intense chunks of violence that have erupted in the Middle East between very different sets of actors. Some good news: it doesn't look yet as if these eruptions of violence will spread into a broader regional conflagration. It doesn't look as if any of these actions will have an impact on global energy or commodity markets, the global economy. It doesn't look yet as if they'll produce any large migration issues. There will be a loss of lives, particularly in Gaza, which is obviously a tragedy, and to a lesser extent in Yemen and Syria.
Syria and Lebanon
What we're watching is a continued erosion between Hezbollah and Syria, which in many ways is a good thing. We're seeing negotiations fostered by the Trump administration, bringing Israel and Lebanon together to deal with long-standing small but critical border disputes. As Lebanon and Israel come closer together to resolving their differences, Hezbollah seeks to survive. One of the things they need to survive is weapons. They engage weapons smugglers from Syria — criminal gangs, sympathetic members of the former Assad government.
We've watched in the last week three Syrian soldiers be kidnapped and executed by individuals tied to Hezbollah. At first Hezbollah denied involvement, and then admitted some role, and then we saw Syria and Lebanese Hezbollah engage in some violence. There's nothing good to say about violence, but if there is a small silver lining, it shows that it will continue to be difficult for Iran and its primary proxy in the region, Hezbollah, to use Syria as a channel to bring people, money and stuff into Lebanon — and that's good for regional peace.
Gaza and Israel
Moving to Gaza, that's more complicated. Hamas refused to accept multiple U.S. proposals to extend the first phase of the ceasefire. The Trump administration did pretty much everything it could to get that first phase extended — to include meeting with Hamas itself. This made the new violence, new military operations on the part of Israel inevitable. President Trump himself warned that Hamas would have “hell to pay” if they didn't release hostages. Hamas chose badly.
Israel hopes to do a couple of things here. And this is complicated. Israel hopes to degrade Hamas's capacity to reform politically within Gaza. Hamas has been touting its ability to do so, wearing crisp uniforms, cruelly parading hostages in a circus-like environment. Israel needs to crush those elements, and it has indeed killed a number of Hamas mid-level actors who have appeared. It now appears to be engaged in a campaign to ensure that Hamas' militant leadership as well as its political element in Gaza is destroyed. The Israelis are also seeking to conduct operations that will prevent Hamas from moving hostages around in the byzantine Gaza environment.
Will it be successful? It's too early to say. It is certain that there will be a loss of Palestinian lives. The Hamas Ministry of Health has stated that 400 Palestinians have died [Editor’s Note: the figure is now more than 600]. It's unclear how many of those will be civilians and fighters.
There is a political element to this. We're in a world where we have Israeli family members of hostages who are telling the Israeli government to do whatever is needed to get my family member or their remains back. We have Israeli family members of soldiers who have died in Gaza saying, my son or daughter's death should not have been wasted by allowing Hamas to survive. You have hardliners who have always stated that the only way to win this campaign is through a military effort. This is an intensely political issue within Israel with multiple opinions on different sides. And there are those who believe that this campaign is in part driven by Prime Minister Netanyahu's political motives. That may be unfair, but there are people who say this.
The Israeli government is required to come up with a budget on March 31st. If they don't do so, then the government collapses. They'll have about three months to call for elections. By undertaking these operations, they have been able to pull back some hardline supporters and perhaps strengthen the government.
I'll leave it to others to say what motives drive this operation. But what we should say is that these operations are probably a new normal. The hostages that remain are likely in mortal peril.
Yemen
The last area of conflict is Yemen. The Trump administration has initiated operations aimed to end the Houthi ability to block traffic in the Red Sea. The Biden administration routinely conducted such operations, but while the Biden operations were focused on defending against Houthi attacks and degrading Houthi capabilities, the Trump administration is adding operations that clearly are aimed to deter Houthi decision makers from undertaking these attacks.
It's too soon to say the impact of these operations. The Houthis remain defiant. They fired at least one missile against Israel, a small number of drones and one missile against the U.S. But this is not something that could be handled quickly. It is clear that the Trump administration is going to deal with this in a more decisive manner than the Biden administration.
There are some terrifically stark statistics that go with this issue. The Houthis have attacked American military ships and American civilian ships 175 times, and whatever we have done is not sufficient to stop them. They have also attacked civilian ships of other countries more than 140 times. They have sunk ships; they have killed Vietnamese and Filipinos; they have come very close to creating the world's largest environmental disaster with shipping oil and fertilizer; and they have damaged communications cables that are critical to the global economy.
The president has stated that this campaign will continue until the Houthis are deterred. He has also stated that he will hold Iran directly responsible.
I want to close with one more comment on the U.S. attack on Yemen. This is in support of freedom of navigation in a body of water that generally supports actors in the Red Sea. That is Israel, but it's also Jordan. Jordan has suffered the loss of tens of thousands of shipping containers and that primarily impacts the Palestinian population of Jordan, as they work in those shipping industries. It has cost Egypt $7 billion in 2024 and has damaged the Egyptian economy. And it has prevented humanitarian aid from reaching Sudanese who are suffering terribly in a civil war. So this is a regional issue, but more than that, this trade largely impacts Europe. So at a time when people routinely talk about the United States pulling out of the global community or architecture, the United States is making perhaps one of the most robust gestures of unilaterally supporting that architecture without the support of Europe and risking American lives to do so.
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The CIpher Brief: You brought up that this president is using very strong language against Iran. But how can this president, who is becoming known in his second term as a very anti-war president, how can this president put teeth to this? What is the deterrence lever here?
Roule: The Trump administration's approach to Iran has had, I think, four pillars. The first pillar is no war, but don't push us. This is the administration that killed [former Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps commander] Qasem Soleimani. This is not an administration that should be tested. This is also coming at a time where Iran's vulnerability to American military technology, which one may speculate was likely known to Pentagon planners for some time, is now public knowledge.
The second element to the Trump administration approach is that “maximum pressure” is back, and it's real. The Secretary of the Treasury has made a number of statements, supported by the National Security Advisor and Secretary of State, that we will not tolerate trade with Iran. I would expect more meaningful sanctions and pressure on Iran's oil industry in the coming weeks, if not days. The administration is looking to bankrupt Iran, and that may take some time.
The third issue is we will provide Israel with whatever it needs to protect itself against Iran and to conduct offensive operations it needs to protect its national security from existential threat. That doesn't mean a massive war on Iran – we're not sending those types of military capabilities around Israel right now, but we're providing them with bunker-busting equipment.
And last, the U.S. is working on a diplomatic option. We have conveyed to the Iranians repeatedly, publicly and reportedly through the United Arab Emirates, that the current situation is approaching something that could lead to military conflict. Iran must recognize it cannot have a nuclear weapons program, and it cannot be in a position of using the sanctions relief from that program to simply fund and create militias in the region that repeat what we're seeing in Yemen and what we have seen on October 7th, [2023, in the Hamas attacks against Israel]. The Trump administration's approach has been consistent, but we're in an early chapter of the book on where this will all go.
The Cipher Brief: How do you think the Iranians will respond? What are their options?
Roule: First you have to define “the Iranians.” The Iranians are the Supreme Leader, who will set the left and right lanes of policy. But the bulk of Iran's leadership are individuals whose worldview has been shaped by events since 2001.
You get defiance publicly – a mix of, We will not negotiate under pressure, and a little bit of, We're ready to talk about this. So whereas [Iranian President Masoud] Pezeshkian and others have indeed shown defiance, you also have an Iranian deputy foreign minister talking to the IAEA this week. Talks have gone on with the Europeans.
Iran's goal has to be as follows: They want to delay pressure. They want to fracture coalitions that are against it. They want to delay the likelihood of military action. They don't want to provoke a war. They need to get through the leadership transition they're facing. They need to preserve their relationships with Russia and China. They need to make sure the detente with the Arab world continues. They need to see what they can do to preserve their nuclear achievements, but they'll probably be willing to consider some sort of reversibility in their capacity.
But here's what's most important: What do they do with the Quds Force? It's a can that we've kicked down the road. Does the West, does the world, allow Iran to retain the Quds Force? No country in the world has a Quds Force. If the Quds Force, a terrorist militia-organizing organization is allowed to exist, that means more Hezbollahs in the world.
Iran's goal is, We can rebuild Hezbollah, Hamas, we can rebuild the Houthis if we have a Quds Force. Now if the Quds Force turns into a counterterrorist element, as you have in most countries, we're in a different place. I'm not trying to be policy prescriptive, but if you followed a path that sought a nuclear deal that in essence constrained Iran's nuclear program permanently, was reversible if Iran proved to be unreliable, and at the same time didn't allow Iran the capacity to use sanctions relief simply to provide more missile systems to the Houthis or drone systems as technology improves to expand the Houthis reach around the region, then that's a reasonable outcome.
Here's the challenge: Iran will seek to make lengthy negotiations, much as the Russians are apparently now about to do on Ukraine, because countries such as Iran or Russia know that the United States has many things going on on its schedule. They have darn little on their schedule in many ways. So all they have to do is say, I'm gonna sit here and I'm gonna talk to you for weeks and weeks on end about this issue.
Now if you are willing to walk away – and I think the Trump administration might be a walk-away kind of administration – that puts pressure on me. But if not, sooner or later you'll cave. That becomes the challenge for the world. Do we allow the Quds Force to exist? Are we willing to walk away? Will we use military action against Iran?
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The Cipher Brief: The Russia-Ukraine talks are happening in Jeddah, Saudi Arabia. In terms of the region, why is Jeddah so symbolic in this?
Roule: When King Salman and the Crown Prince, Mohammed bin Salman, ascended to power, they began an initiative to make their country the center of the region in many ways.
Saudi Arabia, and in a different way the Emirates, they are now capitals of capital. This isn't just money. This is money that's being used for transformational purposes in societies. And these countries are now drawing people into this vision, and as a result their global influence has increased tremendously. The idea that the United States would meet Russians in Saudi Arabia, in Riyadh, and not Geneva is a significant shift in history. You'll also note that in many of the discussions, Europe isn't mentioned. We're watching the shift from Europe to these countries.
The Qataris played a large role with Afghanistan and they played a role with Iran, and other countries played a role with Oman. We're now about to watch technical talks take place between Russia and, I believe, Ukraine in Jeddah. Saudi Arabia’s architecture is being formalized into something that's very different from anything it's had in the past. It’s similar to what we would have seen with Paris or Berlin and certainly Geneva for the last 40 or 50 years. The world has changed.
The Cipher Brief: The UAE’s Sheikh Tahnoun made a visit to the U.S. and met with the president. Talk to us about why this is important.
Roule: The Emirati National Security Advisor, Sheikh Tahnoun Bin Zayed Al Nahyan, made an official state visit to Washington. It follows a very successful trip by the head of the Abu Dhabi National Oil Corporation and Emirati Minister for Minerals, Dr. Sultan Al Jaber, who was in Houston and in Washington and also met with senior officials. These discussions are focusing on significant joint investments between the United States regarding artificial intelligence, semiconductors, biotech, energy, which is the foundation of all of this — natural gas, petrochemicals, especially petrochemicals relating to data centers, infrastructure investments relating to energy.
President Trump held a state dinner for Sheikh Tahnoun and it had all the trappings of a head-of-state dinner. Sheikh Tahnoun manages about 1.5 trillion dollars in assets in a number of funds. Sheikh Tahnoun is routinely considered to be one of the more visionary, tenacious and highly focused actors in the Middle East and in the international investment world on transformational technologies and focusing investments to build societies. So what the Emiratis are doing is basically saying, How do we use our vast capital to transform our society for the next few generations in a way that provides us with a different world for our people? But also, have it be the capital of capital; a reach into India, Africa, the Global North, the Global South.; building upon what was a highly successful COP28 where they brought together energy producers and climate activists to say, look, batteries aren't there. We don't have enough renewables. There's not enough energy for artificial intelligence. How do we produce maximum energy with minimum emissions as a team? That approach is where they're going.
They're also talking to the Trump administration about Iran, about Yemen. No one wants a war.
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