Updates

Update 07/24 #01

 

The latest Update, now just over nine months after October 7 – when Hamas invaded southern Israel, massacring innocent civilians and IDF soldiers alike, murdering approximately 1,200 people and taking 251 hostages – looks at the strategic implications of the latest potential hostage deal and ceasefire negotiations and what such a deal might mean for Israel’s wars with Hamas in Gaza and Hezbollah along Israel’s northern border. At the same time, we also get some good analysis into what the world might expect from the new Iranian President Masoud Pezeshkian.

First up are fascinating excerpts from the latest “Call Me Back” podcast episode titled “A Hostage Deal”. In this fresh podcast recorded on the morning of July 8 (Melbourne and Sydney time) host Dan Senor (co-author Start-Up Nation) quizzes top Israeli strategic analysts Haviv Rettig Gur from the Times of Israel and Nadav Eyal from Yedioth Ahronoth on the merits of the potential deal, but also the downsides it might have long-term, especially regarding Israel’s deterrence against its enemies. Both Rettig Gur and Eyal – who interestingly have never been interviewed together before – concur that it is essential that Israel agrees to get as many living hostages home as possible, but the two differ on the negative consequences such a deal that is shaping up might have on Israel’s reputation as an unbeatable foe, with Rettig Gur taking the more pessimistic view of the two. To listen to the entire hour-long podcast, click here – however, to read key excerpts we’ve had transcribed,  CLICK HERE.

Next up is Dr. Michael Milstein, director of the Palestinian Studies Forum at Tel Aviv University’s Moshe Dayan Center for Middle Eastern and African Studies and a senior researcher at Reichman University’s Institute for Policy and Strategy (IPS). Writing in Hebrew in Yedioth Ahronoth [adapted to English using Google Translate] for an Israeli audience and pulling no punches, Milstein uses the nine-month anniversary of Hamas’ October 7th attack to draw six conclusions he says can be drawn from the war so far. The most important conclusion, he writes, is that “In view of the need to focus on external threats, it is essential to abandon the issues that create internal divisions that on the evening of October 7 weakened and diverted attention from existential threats.” For more of Milstein’s thoughtful insights, “some of which”, he warns, “are difficult to digest”, CLICK HERE.

Finally, American Enterprise Institute Senior Fellow Michael Rubin looks at new Iranian President Masoud Pezeshkian, winner of last Friday’s untimely Iranian presidential election in the aftermath of the sudden death of Ebrahim Raisi in a helicopter accident. Rubin says that many in the media calling Pezeshkian a “reformer” are mistaken since “Iran’s clerical leadership tightly controls elections, vets candidates, and allows on average fewer than 2% to run. This means that the difference between reformists and hard-liners is negligible when compared to the broader Iranian political spectrum.” For that reason, Rubin says, the apparent shifts between “hard-liners” and “reformers” do not reflect real change. “At issue” Rubin writes, “is not shifting Iranian attitudes, but rather [Supreme Leader Ali] Khamenei’s desire to keep all factions off balance and prevent any single one from establishing a bureaucratic position it could leverage against him.” Rubin further warns, “Iran’s nuclear program advances disproportionately under reformists as Western diplomats let their guard down.” For more of Rubin’s insights, CLICK HERE.

Readers may also be interested in…

• Journalist Noah Beck catalogues many examples and manifestations of the rampant anti-Israel bias that have appeared in the media in recent months.
• Veteran Israeli military correspondent Ron Ben-Yishai writes about the increasing military pressure the IDF is putting on Hamas in order to increase chances for a hostage deal.
• Behnam Ben Taleblu from the Foundation for the Defense of Democracies joins i24 News to discuss Iran’s presidential election and Iran’s Lebanese proxy Hezbollah’s continuing attacks on northern Israel.
• Israeli military affairs journalist Yaakov Lappin interviews academic Eyal Zisser, who describes how, under cover of its proxy war against Israel, Iran’s nuclear program is rushing ahead.
• Read a summary of Washington Institute’s recent Virtual Policy forum with Matthew Levitt, Hanin Ghaddar, David Schenker, and Assaf Orion on “Hezbollah-Israel Escalation: Prospects for War”, or watch the entire 90-minute discussion.
• At the Begin-Sadat Center for Strategic Studies, Brig. Gen. (res.) Eran Ortal gives his take on how Israel can win the “thirty-years war” with Iran.
• According to Israel’s Central Bureau of Statistics, new housing starts in Israeli settlements in the West Bank over the past two quarters have dropped to almost nil – which is tantamount to a silent housing freeze. Amidst the war, however, news coverage about this development, even in Israel, appears to be non-existent.
• Some examples from the many stories and comments now appearing on AIJAC’s daily “Fresh AIR” blog:
  • AIJAC’s Tzvi Fleischer and Visiting Fellow Greg Rose write about how the NGO Médecins Sans Frontières has lost its way as one of its staffers in Gaza was implicated in terrorism and the NGO politicises itself at the service of Hamas in the war.
  • AIJAC’s Oved Lobel blogs how a recent Sydney University stabbing highlights issues in AIJAC submission on right-wing extremism.
  • In the Australian, Colin Rubenstein writes how Australia must never be a party to cynical, pro-Hamas lawfare.

---

Hamas came for everyone it could kill in Israel on October 7. Today, The Hague encouraged it.

Call Me Back podcast, July 7, 2024

Excerpts

Haviv Rettig Gur: I hate to say it. I think the case for [agreeing to the current deal that is being negotiated with Hamas] is part of the case against it. The case being made for it is very, very peculiar.

It is not the argument that we shouldn’t try to oust Hamas from Gaza. It is not the argument that the military is incapable of winning in the south or seriously dealing Hezbollah, the kind of deterrence-restoring blow in the north that most Israelis still want. It is the argument that this government can’t win.

Not the army, not the country. This government can’t win. And if this government can’t win, then the best you can do, the least harm you can do, is to get the hostages out at any price.

If you track the polls of Israelis who distrust the government’s either desire or ability to win the war, the numbers who say the government doesn’t want or can’t win the war are identical to the numbers who say sign the hostage deal, and they have risen together. In other words, we had a poll on Friday on Channel 12, the biggest news channel in Israel. 67% of Israelis prefer the hostage deal to 26% preferring continuing the war.

It’s an extremely large majority. Also, totally separately, 68% believe we’re very far from a total victory, and 23% believe we’re very close to it. 10 points off, but the same fundamental numbers.

54% say Netanyahu’s political considerations are the only reason the war is still going. There is a deep sense, fairly deep even into the right, that this is a government that either can’t or doesn’t want to actually win. 34% say that it’s been nine months because of substantive and operational considerations.

And all of that is to say that the argument for the deal is the argument that Israel is not politically capable of winning. And that leads me to the argument against it…

The argument against it is that it is in every important sense, in every sense that matters, a loss. It is a total loss of the war.

We had Hamas yesterday, I think it was Osama Hamdan, said that Gaza won’t accept, the Palestinian people won’t accept any kind of guardianship in Gaza. Hamas is the only legitimate government in Gaza, or a Palestinian government is the only legitimate government in Gaza. And Hamas will make sure that it uses its continued presence in Gaza to make sure that nothing else can take root.

In other words, there’s no Arab alliance coming in, [Hamas] will make it impossible. Hamas and Hezbollah met on Friday … in the Hezbollah stronghold in Beirut, and put out pictures of that meeting and put out statements in which Hamas reports that it is in fact informing Hezbollah of its answers to the ceasefire. Hezbollah and Hamas are trying to look like they are coordinated.

And Iran is part of the story. There is a multi-front access strategy. And that’s what’s going to bring the Israelis to heel.

We get out some tiny fraction of these hostages. Now, if you’re their families, they’re the entire world. But what’s the difference for Israel strategically, if there’s 100 or 120, there’s no difference at all.

We still have the same fundamental problem and weakness facing Hamas. It is smelling an extremely weak Netanyahu. And it’s playing that extremely weak Netanyahu.

I don’t think Hamas will, I don’t think there’s a deal with the Israeli army still in Philadelphia [Corridor on Egy[t’s border] destroying tunnels. I don’t think that there’s any chance on God’s green earth that there’s a deal [that allows that].

…

In other words, if from Israel’s perspective, the war is ongoing, even as the war is allegedly at a ceasefire. Why would Hamas sign that deal? Hamas has 120 Israeli hostages.

That is the only advantage and leverage it has over Israel, that and the fact that Hezbollah will empty our north for them. Why would it lose that for anything less than ending the war and survival? And so if you see them signaling that they’re willing to lose those hostages for something less than their survival, it’s a lie, it’s not going to come through, it just doesn’t make any sense.

So long story short, this is an offer from Hamas that comes to serve Hezbollah’s interests, comes to serve Hamas’s interests. Hamas’s goal is to retain control of Gaza the day after. It smells a very weak Israeli government because of those polling numbers.

67% want a deal because 66% or 68% don’t think we can win, don’t think this government can win.
…
And so it’s it’s a little bit of a game that everybody’s playing. If we take it seriously, how is this not a loss of the war?

Dan Senor: Okay, so I want to return to the political implications both in Israel and in the US… But Nadav, just on the merits of the deal, coming back to the initial question I just asked Haviv, Haviv just made the case against it. So rather than asking you to make the case for it and make the case against it, I’ll just ask you to respond to Haviv and lay out your views.

Nadav Eyal

Nadav Eyal: Well, first of all, I would say that there are no 120 living hostages in Gaza. At the most, unfortunately, there are 60 and probably less than that. So getting a third of those is very substantial for Israel.

Secondly, I would also point out that getting the hostages back is not a sentimental thing strategically for Israel. We live in a very tough neighborhood. And the Israeli contract, the Israeli idea of all for one, that’s not a slogan for a state of the union speech.

Not that I’m trying to say that it’s different in other countries, but when you live in an area surrounded by enemies who want to destroy you and to sometimes murder every woman, man and child in your country, the fact that your country will do everything to get you back after you’ve been kidnapped from your house, from your kitchen, from a party, that is substantial for the history of Israel, for the strategy of Israel. And Israel has never said no to a hostage deal, but one case.

That case was of Ron Arad, an Israeli pilot, that his aircraft had a malfunction over Lebanon. And that is an Israeli tragedy. So to make a calculated decision, a rational decision, to say no to a plausible deal right now, that will mean something for the Israeli society, the Israeli deterrence, the Israeli solidarity, the willingness of Israelis to continue on fighting.

Because the idea that you have the backing of Israel, that Israel will do everything, anything, that is one of the strongest points of Israeli society.
…
So my first point to this matter is that this is not measuring or deciding between the sentimental nature or humanist values of getting people back to their homes and their families or making the strategic calculus. No, it’s not strategic for the future of Israel to say no to a deal. Now, my second point is that this deal is an offer that we made.

It’s not [from] Hamas. It’s true that Hamas, as Haviv said, that Hamas came back to us now. And I’m sure they did that because of their interests.

But I suspect that their interest is very much related to us holding the Rafah crossing and the Philadelphia Corridor and that border with Egypt and us advancing into Khan Yunis and us eroding a lot of their military force in Gaza and of Hezbollah wanting to end the war. So if this is the case, is this such a loss for Israel to say after Hamas has actually redrew from its position that it’s the end of the war? This is the compromise.

This is what has happened, that they came back and they said at the time that the Biden offer actually means that the war would continue and Israel didn’t budge and the Americans didn’t budge. And now Hamas came back with a much better wording and an opening.

Haviv Rettig Gur: The choice Hamas gives us, because that is our astonishing strength and our ethos, because the terrible trauma of October 7 was watching our own inability to save them, as much as the death toll itself. We have had events, wars with a much greater death toll than October 7 that did not sear us in the same way. Protecting each other is our fundamental truth.

I am with you. But Hamas has played that like a fiddle. And the choice Hamas offers us today is not release 20 or don’t release 20.

The choice is release 20. And then at what cost? What if the 40 never get out?

What if there’s not 40, but 75? And it’s a lot of people who will never get out. I think the IDF has confirmed 44 dead out of the 120, something like that.

…

Hamas at first demanded that Israel vow that this is the end of the war, that it’s not going to be before the second phase of return to the war. And that was where Hamas and Netanyahu couldn’t meet and therefore nothing moved forward. And now Hamas is saying, you know, and now that the Israelis are moving forward with it, and [Mossad Director David] Barnea is starting to run around the Middle East to talk about this, Hamas is now coming back and trying to front-load some of the Israeli withdrawal questions.

And then the question becomes at what cost, if we can get out 20 and it means a six-week pause, we have to, there’s no question, there’s no question…

…

Nadav Eyal: Does Israel have really any other option with 67% of the public demanding a deal right now, not to have good faith negotiations with Hamas and try to see if there’s a possibility, if there’s a window, to have at least that first phase? I’m not saying that you’re wrong about the end scenario, that everything’s going to blow up and that it might serve Netanyahu towards his Congress speech and that it’s not going to happen, that even the first phase is not going to happen.

But aren’t we obliged at least to do this? And also another point that I want to make, because as far as the Israeli defense apparatus is concerned, they need this ceasefire, even if there were no hostages at all…

Dan Senor:  Is this Nadav because of the wear and tear on the IDF and the reservists?

Nadav Eyal: Yes. Yes. And this was said today.

[Defence Minister] Gallant today spoke in government and said, we don’t have enough soldiers. People don’t understand the erosion of the army after nine months. The IDF was never built strategically to hold up to a nine-month war that has developed into a guerrilla war.

And we have the threats in the north. And therefore the army is saying very clearly, and Gallant in private conversations is explaining, that even if there were no hostages, we would have wanted that ceasefire regardless of anything else in order for the army to move up north, to renew its stockpiles, to get some more international support, to block the spiral of regional deterioration, which is really on our doorsteps to tackle some threats in the east with Iran. So I’m not saying that this is a good scenario. And I agree with Haviv that the Israeli public doesn’t feel that we can win this war, but this is not an argument against the deal.

I think Haviv, this is an argument for the deal, isn’t it?

…

Haviv Rettig Gur: Dan, what have we just acknowledged? I agree the deal moves forward.

It can’t not move forward. I’m saying it’s definitely going to fail, and it’s definitely going to fail. Nadav is saying, is not such a, is the advantage because we will still be there ready to fight.

And so that’s the response to my pessimism that anyway, it’s probably going, yes, all true. And by the way, very few people are going to be making these decisions. And so it’s hard to predict what those decisions are going to be.

But we have just admitted that our enemies have figured out how to fight us in ways we cannot win. Our enemies have figured out how to produce the long wars that we don’t know how to fight. We don’t have the wherewithal, the time.

If we lose the American missile shipments, can we fight Hezbollah in the future? Do they force on us another year of emptying the north? The hostage question to me is the most painful question.
…
But the fundamental strategic question is the question of the next war and the next wave of suffering. Are we leaving Hezbollah intact on that border and making the north unlivable for the future? Are we going to end up to get more hostages out?

Because if Hamas really can, what if the deal itself is a staged plan by Hamas? In other words, it goes through, they do it, they give us the six, we give them the six weeks, a release of some number of prisoners of some number of Hamas mass murderers. And then they give us those 20 hostages.

And then they say, here’s the next 20. Well, a political polity, an electorate that doesn’t trust this government to do anything. I mean, to do anything.

…

Our enemies have figured out how to impose on us massive costs, at cost to them that they are utterly willing to bear. Hamas is not upset that Gaza is destroyed. Hamas is upset that Gaza isn’t 10 times more destroyed, because a 10 times larger Gaza death toll would be would mean the world would come crashing down on Israel’s head.

Hezbollah has lost 450 fighters, but it doesn’t care. And so it has emptied the north for nine months. And what we are informing the Middle East is Iran’s strategy of our slow death by 1000 cuts is going to work.

We don’t have an army built for it. We don’t have a political system capable of making hard decisions capable of being decisive in the battlefield, at least not under this government or under these particular politicians. And in fact, our enemies have figured out our basic DNA.

They couldn’t beat us with tank columns. They couldn’t beat us with guerrilla terrorism. They have figured out how to beat us.

And an Israel that did not send the opposite message on October 7 is an Israel in vastly greater danger going forward. The deal that gets 20 out and in six weeks we go back to the war, we can’t not. But a deal that is anything else is part of a slow, long, strategic setback that we are too small to afford.

For the complete podcast, including Nadav Eyal’s rebuttal to Rettig Gur’s pessimistic view, click here. The official website for the podcast is here (updated more slowly than the feed on Apple Podcasts linked to above), and for those who do not have time to listen to the hour-long podcast, within a couple of weeks, the entire transcript of the podcast will be uploaded on the official site.

---

Iron Swords is a war the likes of which we have not experienced

Like the rest of Israel’s conflicts in recent decades, the Iron Swords War is also characterized by the fact that the enemies are non-state entities advocating an extreme Islamic vision. But this time they are more numerous, more coordinated and better equipped – a combination that creates a real strategic threat to the country. The situation requires the adoption of several conclusions – some of which are difficult to digest, but necessary.

Dr. Michael Milstein

Yedioth Ahronoth, July 7, 2024

Nine months ago today, the anomaly among Israel’s wars broke out – a conflict without an agreed name, which is not clear when and how it will end, but has already become the longest campaign since 1948.

The war embodies several historical precedents: October 7 was the deadliest day in the history of Zionism. It was accompanied by an unprecedented invasion of the country’s territory, mass slaughter and kidnapping of civilians, and a wide evacuation of the settlements in the south and north.

The exception is also evident in the broad strategic aspect. Israel has previously experimented with multi-arena systems and conflicts with non-state forces, but these were mostly confined to its immediate borders and were not deployed across the entire Middle East.

This time there is a confrontation with the Houthi threat and the Shi’ite militias in Iraq. The war also included the first frontal confrontation between Israel and Iran, which fuels a significant part of the current threats but is not necessarily the source of all of them, especially not in the context of Hamas, most of whose actions are independent.

The current war is another clash between Israel and the regional camp advocating the idea of ​​resistance (Mukawama). The elements of this camp are at the center of the struggles that Israel has been waging for the past half century, which are different from the past wars that were waged against armies and states.

The theory of resistance rests on several foundations: leadership by non-state actors who adhere to an extreme Islamic vision; asymmetric conflict, mainly through artillery force, guerrilla warfare and terrorism; short wars without a decision; Demonstration of “alsabru walthabatu” (patience and steadfastness); The “melting” of the organizations in the civil space, so that any fighting against them provokes moral dilemmas and international pressure; Exhaustion through converting losses and preventing a stable fabric of life in Israel.

These elements are also present in the current campaign, but this time their strength is unprecedented and innovations are added to them that together become a strategic threat. The leaders of the struggle are not only focused on guerrillas or rocket fire, but are equipped with the capabilities of conventional armies, as embodied in the October 7 attack and Hezbollah’s plans to invade the Galilee.

The guiding principle is no longer victory through non-loss, but damage to strategic military and civilian objectives in Israel and the neutralization of its defense and intelligence, among other things using precision weapons provided by Iran.

Other innovations that appear in the current campaign are the deep coordination between the members of the resistance camp, and the unprecedented international pressure on Israel, which is gradually being relegated to a “leper” position.

These changes reflect transformations that occurred in the elements of the resistance: organizations that became de facto sovereign (Hamas) or quasi-state (Hezbollah), but never abandoned their ideological vision.

They have the military power of a country, dominate territory, and engineer the consciousness of the public subject to them, as is evident in Gaza, many of whose residents are identified with Hamas and are integrated into its activities. The strengthening of these factors also stems from global changes, chief among them the American difficulty in functioning as a “world policeman” and the weakness of the Arab world.

The current conflict is gradually turning into a war of attrition on two fronts, with intense internal disputes within Israel and tension between Jerusalem and Washington in the background. Against this background, the perception of Iran is changing, which for decades defined the extinction of Israel as a feasible goal, but one that could be achieved in an unspecified future.

The reports regarding an Iranian plan to advance the destruction of Israel in about two years reflect a feeling in Tehran that this time the vision is within reach, as Khamenei declared: “Israel has experienced a blow from which it will not heal, it is defeated by forces weaker than itself and is faced with a world that has begun to side with the slogans of the resistance.”

In Gaza, even after the previous blows it suffered, Hamas is still the dominant factor in all the plains and all the regions, and does not allow any alternative to grow in its place. A significant part of its leadership survived, the military arm is effective even after the dissolution of the regimental frameworks, the organization dominates the civilian space, and no widespread protest against it develops.

This reflects the failure of the strategy that Israel has been using for the past six months, according to which the rule of Hamas can be gradually undermined through raids, even without direct control and presence in the occupied territory.

Recognizing the unique nature of the current campaign requires the adoption of several conclusions, some of which are difficult to digest:

1. Regarding Gaza – the current doctrine does not lead to the collapse of Hamas or the release of the abductees and illustrates that it is necessary to choose between the occupation of all of Gaza, which is not applicable at the moment, and a deal that means the cessation of fighting for now.

2. In any deal, Israel must insist, beyond the release of all the abductees, on a new order in the Philadelphia axis and on preventing the rehabilitation of Gaza – a goal that proves to Hamas that it can maintain jihad and government at the same time. Gazans will be able to receive humanitarian aid, but not horizons and normalcy.

3. Instead of basing ourselves on wars of attrition in the south and the north, we must realize that Iran is the strategic threat and focus on it, especially in the nuclear program. This, while convincing the world of the threat it poses in many arenas (for example the Red Sea and Ukraine), which necessitates its isolation and activity against it.

4. Learning the lessons will require abandoning the concepts on which Israeli strategy has been based in recent decades, chief among them economic peace and peacekeeping (the war between wars). It must be replaced by broad offensive initiatives, especially against Hamas. Israel cannot accept Hamas’ continued existence as a government in Gaza.

5. On the Palestinian issue – which Israel avoided discussing and deciding on the evening of October 7 – it will be necessary to examine how, on the one hand, to strive for physical separation between the two peoples, and on the other hand, to prevent an existential threat that would arise from Palestinian independence (in particular, control of the gates between the Palestinians and the world).

6. And most important of all: in view of the need to focus on external threats, it is essential to abandon the issues that create internal divisions that on the evening of October 7 weakened and diverted attention from existential threats.

Dr. Michael Milstein is the head of the Palestinian Studies Forum at the Dayan Center at Tel Aviv University.

---

Ignore the Reformer Charade in Iran

Michael Rubin

Washington Examiner, July 8, 2024

Iranians elected Masoud Pezeshkian, a surgeon turned politician and a supposed reformist, for a four-year term following the sudden death of Ebrahim Raisi, a cleric whose hard-line rhetoric mirrored that of Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei.

On cue, Western journalists and think tank analysts bought his self-description hook, line, and sinker.

“Iranian reformist wins presidency, seeks engagement with the West,” the Washington Post headlined. The New York Times declared him, without qualification, a “reformist [who] wants warmer relations with the West.” NPR, which previously took money from the pro-Islamic Republic Ploughshares Fund in a pay-to-play scheme, likewise declared Pezeshkian an unqualified reformist.

So too did these outlets accept at face value Iranian statistics. Khamenei repeatedly cites voter participation as a testament to regime legitimacy, especially after the 2022 “Woman, Life, Freedom” movement. It is always careless to accept data from dictators and ironic that the same journalists who pour over the latest election results in the United States would report uncritically poll statistics provided by the Islamic Republic of Iran.

Their depiction of Iranian elections as equivalent to American ones also blinds them to how Iranians signal their disdain for the regime. The relevant election statistic is not voter participation, but rather number of spoiled ballots. Because Khamenei compels citizens to vote under threat of job loss or university disqualification to inflate participation rates, many Iranians respond by receiving proof of participation and then spoiling their ballots, a phenomenon even Khamenei has acknowledged in his periodic speeches.

Iran’s clerical leadership tightly controls elections, vets candidates, and allows on average fewer than 2% to run. This means that the difference between reformists and hard-liners is negligible when compared to the broader Iranian political spectrum. Nor should election outcomes surprise analysts. There is a three-decade rotation of hard-liners and reformers.

“Reformist” Mohammad Khatami succeeded Ali Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani, and hard-liner Mahmoud Ahmadinejad succeeded Khatami. Diplomats cheered the election of “moderate” Hassan Rouhani, only to have “hard-liner” Raisi come next. At issue is not shifting Iranian attitudes, but rather Khamenei’s desire to keep all factions off balance and prevent any single one from establishing a bureaucratic position it could leverage against him.

To their credit, nearly three decades after Khatami rose to power promising a “dialogue of civilizations,” journalists and diplomats no longer pretend that reformists have the capacity to change policy. What too many observers of Iranian policy get wrong, however, is the assumption that reformists sincerely want to change the system in any meaningful way.

Western officials scorned Ahmadinejad’s Holocaust denial, for example, but ignored that it was Khatami, the diplomatic darling of Secretary of State Madeleine Albright’s eye, who gave asylum to Wolfgang Frohlick and Jurgen Graf, two of the world’s most notorious Holocaust deniers. While Mir-Hossein Mousavi led the supposedly reformist “Green Movement,” he refused to renounce his 1987 statement that the mining of U.S.-flagged tankers in the Persian Gulf represented “an irreparable blow on America’s political and military prestige.” No Iranian reformist resigned in protest to the regime’s murder and mutilation of “Woman, Life, Freedom” movement protesters, nor have any denounced Iran’s long history of hostage-taking.

Capital punishment statistics show public executions increase during reformist administrations. There are two likely explanations. First, reformist presidents wish to signal to Iranians that reformist rhetoric is for export only. Second, reformists understand that Western diplomats’ desperation for diplomacy leads them to ignore such abuses.

The same pattern holds true with Iranian nuclear developments. Iran’s nuclear program advances disproportionately under reformists as Western diplomats let their guard down while Iranian diplomats whisper sweet nothings into their ears. This is no coincidence. Abdollah Ramezanzadeh, Khatami’s spokesman, expounded in a 2008 interview that the purpose of dialogue was not to compromise, but to avoid sanctions.

“We had an overt policy, which was one of negotiation and confidence building, and a covert policy, which was continuation of the activities,” he explained.

The reality is that reformers are not sincere in changing Iran’s system, but rather want to make it palatable to diplomats. They are the good cop to Khamenei’s bad cop. Both, however, aim for the same goals: theocratic supremacy, a nuclear arsenal, America’s humiliation, and Israel’s destruction.

Michael Rubin is a senior fellow at the American Enterprise Institute, where he specializes in Iran, Turkey, and the broader Middle East.