Iran is willing to take the risk that a larger war will develop, says Harvard’s Meghan O’Sullivan

Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen saying the US can stream new sanctions on Iran in response to last weekend’s strikes on Israel. Yellen saying the administration also considering ways to further restrict Iranian oil exports. Joining us right now is Harvard University’s. I’m Megan O’Sullivan, who serves as director of the Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs and Kennedy Schools GEOPOL Geopolitics of energy projects, his former deputy national security adviser and serves on the Secretary of State Lincoln’s Foreign Policy Advisory Board. Want to thank you for joining us. It’s great to see you this morning, Megan. I think we’re all trying to understand where this whole situation goes next and what the role of the United States can or can’t be, what what kind of influence we even have on the situation as it stands right now. Right. Good morning. It’s great to be with you, Andrew. the US has a very significant amount of influence on the situation. Of course, it doesn’t have full control. Israel as its own entity, it’s not a proxy of the United States and it will make its own decisions. But the Biden administration and the larger international community really does have the ability to set a framework that can influence the very intense internal debate going on within Iran, Israel right now about how to respond. It will. It being the Biden administration and its European partners and other allies will stress that it is possible to hold Iran accountable for the attacks on on Saturday without a big Israeli military response. And that is the real intense focus of not only the Biden administration but other European officials right now. The reason I ask the influence question is we have already gone from a situation where, well, let’s say even before what happened over the weekend, you know, it’s unclear, maybe I’m being polite, unclear whether President Biden’s message to Netanyahu on on on some of the efforts in Gaza and where the appropriate way to go. And of course, Netanyahu continued over the weekend. The president, at least according to the readout of phone call that we all got publicly, was that he said take this as a win and there’s no need to retaliate at all. And now, of course, we’re having a conversation about retaliating it. And that was really the the background to to the influence question about what kind of leverage we really have in all this. You know, you could have thought or I would have thought given all we did even over the weekend to help Israel that that might have actually given us a better relationship of a more influence. But it doesn’t appear to be the case. Well, I’d say a couple things. First, on the retaliation question, in my mind, there is no question that Israel will respond in some fashion that it will need to, both in terms of its domestic politics but more importantly in terms of regional dynamics. But what that response looks like, what timeline that’s on, what mode it takes, I think is still open to question and that’s where the debate is happening. In terms of your point, I think it’s true that what the United States did alongside other Europeans and and even with the help of some Arab states was very forceful in saying to Israel this can be a new strategic position for Israel and the region and that holds weight within Israel. Whether it holds sufficient weight to keep Israel from doing something that may escalate this further is is still unknown. I think what we did see this weekend is that even though we have a a clear falling out between Bibi Netanyahu and President Biden that the US Israel relationship is still very strong. So there is still the ability to, you know, make the case that Iran can be held accountable. And I think in that if if I were an Israeli leader, you can’t dismiss that and you can’t also dismiss the Arab state cooperation that we saw, which is important, significant, but also fragile. I had one Arab leader say to me that the continuation and the deepening of these partnerships that we saw manifest on Saturday night really depend on Israeli restraint. So if if Israel wants to capitalize on this new reality, it will require a calibration of their response. Do you believe that if there is a retaliation that you could retaliate, if you will, without escalating and creating more retaliation? Well, of course. I believe that there is a world in which that is possible, right. Retaliation does not have to mean that, you know, the most serious kind of retaliation is something that is being considered and advocated by some, which would not only be striking Israel, striking in Iran, but striking after Iran’s nuclear facilities, taking this as an opportunity to do something that Israel has threat as seen as a threat for a long time. That’s the most extreme, but there are also non kinetic responses. There are cyber kinetic, cyber responses. You know there are diplomatic responses. I think Israel will want to go beyond the diplomatic, but I think exactly how far it goes towards the extreme side of the spectrum is very much an open question and whether this escalates. Again, there are two parties in this conflict and so some of that will have to do with how Iran sees its its options as well. How much of this is performative? And, you know, someone described even what Iran did over the weekend as performative, insofar as that it was telegraphed, if you will, for days prior. Having said that, of course, you know there were many missiles and drones in the air, and if one of them had struck, it would not have been as performative. But what? How do you think about that word even? Yeah, I know this is a a debate I feel very strongly or come out very strongly on the side that it’s very hard to look at the scale of this response and consider it performative. I think that the the collective response of Israel, the United States, Arab states, the UK couldn’t have been taken as a given and certainly Israel, Iran was taking a huge risk and waging that kind of response. What we can see from that response is that Iran although it may not want a larger war, it is willing to take the risk that a larger war would develop because it sees it as essential to establish itself and to to make clear to the world that it is a a rising power in the region, that it is a power that can protect its interest, that it will respond to the attack in Syria that happened 10 days prior. And you know, Iran sees itself as a a threshold nuclear state. It sees itself as part of this emerging partnership with Russia, China, North Korea. Russia is courting Iran now rather than the other way around. And in light of this new feeling of power that Iran has in the region, it felt it needed to respond, was willing to take a risk of wider, wider action. What you just talked about Russia and and and China and we had David Sanger here who has a new book out on on what he describes as the new Cold War which is a fascinating read. But look, we have obviously a a terrible relationship with Russia, for for for a lot of the right reasons we have this different type of relationship. At least we say we have a different type of relation with China. Do we have any influence or leverage with the Chinese as it relates to what’s happening in the Middle East and the pressure points and leverage that they may have with Iran? Yeah, I think there are leverages is quite limited and one of the striking things that’s emerging from the last couple of days is the shift in the Chinese stature towards what’s happening in the Middle East. You saw Wang Yi, China’s top diplomat, talking to regional actors, calling for calm and de escalation, but coming out very squarely on the side of Iran. And that’s different in the past when these things have escalated, China has made clear that Iran should take limited measures and that in the past, when Iran has threatened to close the Straits of Hormuz, China’s economic interests have kicked in and they’ve come down very clearly against that. We do see a different dynamic now where Russia, Iran, North Korea and China are working together in concert in a way that we have not seen before. And as a result, China, I think, is, is going to be much more allergic to any kinds of Western US Israeli reaction, an effort to try to put additional pressure on Iran. And this, I think, calls into question how effective some of the sanctions are that we heard National Security Advisor Jake Sullivan in a statement last night saying that the world should expect in the coming weeks on missiles and drones, particularly on military technology. Without Russia, China, you know, this is going to be this is going to have more limited effect than it might be in the past, where Russia and China had cooperated on, exerting a certain amount of pressure on Iran’s military capabilities.