MICHEL MARTIN, HOST:
We wanted to hear more about what could be ahead, not just for the two main adversaries, but for the region. So we've called Jonathan Panikoff for this. He directs the Scowcroft Middle East Security Initiative at the Atlantic Council after working for years as an intelligence officer in the Middle East, and he's with us now. Good morning.
JONATHAN PANIKOFF: Good morning.
MARTIN: So Israel and Iran have been adversaries for decades. Just given everything we've already heard so far this morning, do you think the conditions are there or maybe the incentives are there to actually hold this ceasefire?
PANIKOFF: I think the incentives are certainly there from Iran. Iran has seen its power significantly reduced in the region. It has seen its ability to defend against Israel, frankly, be obliterated. It just did not exist fundamentally in the way that I think even a lot of Iranian officials thought it was going to. And I think for Israel, after years of war in Gaza and certainly the last 12 days, it's accomplished most of its objectives to really diminish Iran's ballistic missile program and nuclear program and may itself be running out of interceptor missiles to defend against Iran's missile strikes that we've seen into Israel, including overnight.
MARTIN: So before Israel began bombing Iran, the U.S. was negotiating with Tehran over its nuclear capabilities. Do you think those negotiations will go forward, and what might we expect from them?
PANIKOFF: I think that this is probably going to be the beginning of the end, not the end of the end - presuming the ceasefire holds for this conflict - precisely because Iran's nuclear program is still a question. President Trump may have significantly destroyed or at least mostly destroyed Fordo with the strikes. But there's real questions about whether Iran's highly enriched uranium was ferried out of the site and whether or not it could ultimately be spun up in a smaller site, in a secretive site, and turned into 90% weapons-grade enriched uranium that would be a real threat to Israel. To manage that, either there's going to need to be further strikes eventually when those sites are found out, or you're still going to need some sort of fundamental, diplomatic solution over the long term to deal with a future Iranian nuclear program.
MARTIN: And I guess that's what I'm asking you - is do you think that a pathway to that exists?
PANIKOFF: I think the pathway probably exists indirectly for now. I think you can imagine that U.S. mediators like Oman, maybe Norway, the Swiss could continue to play a role to try to bring the parties back to the table. Or you could even imagine, potentially, an outside actor like China trying to convince the Iranians to come back. So I think that pathway exists, but I think it's going to take quite a lot of cajoling over the coming, frankly, weeks and months.
MARTIN: OK. So let's broaden it out. Like, two weeks ago, the balance of power in the Middle East was - looked very differently, so - right? So where - how would you describe it now?
PANIKOFF: The balance of power in the region has certainly shifted towards Israel's favor and away from Iran. And there's - really, a reason for that is the Iranian triad of which its power projections were based was ballistic missiles, its nuclear program and then its proxy network. All three of those over the last year-plus have been tremendously diminished, especially the latter two over the last two weeks of this war.
And so now I think Iran is really facing a challenge in terms of how it's going to go forward. Is it going to reinvest billions of dollars to rebuild those entities at a time when its economy is really struggling, and that could lead to even further internal strife? Or is it going to try to take a different path and say it's going to rebuild some defenses over time, but it's not actually going to try and have the same proxy network or nuclear program that it always has - has been a broad threat to the entirety of the region, including Arab Gulf states?
MARTIN: So before we let you go, we have just a little under a minute left. What about Russia? Russia has been an ally of Iran for years, and as, of course, I think the world knows, Russia's been very much sort of tied down in its war against Ukraine, has lost many people, lots of munitions and so forth. What happens to Russia now? What's Russia's role here?
PANIKOFF: I think there's a real reason to be concerned about, over the long term, whether or not the nature of the relationship between Russia and Iran, which has largely been transactional, becomes much more strategic. If both Russia and Iran are fundamentally viewing themselves as isolated on the world stage, then they may decide that there's better reason to work together. And that could mean that you have Russia engaging with Iran and even eventually deciding it's going to provide defense systems...
MARTIN: Wow.
PANIKOFF: ...Again or ballistic missiles again...
MARTIN: Interesting.
PANIKOFF: ...To Iran.
MARTIN: Well, thank you so much for this. That's Jonathan Panikoff of the Atlantic Council. Thank you so much.
PANIKOFF: Thank you. Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.
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