US, Israel Not Targeting Regime Change Directly, but Creating Conditions for It Analyst

Welcome back. As the Iran war enters its 19th day, what does support look like in the U.S. and in Israel? Joining us in studio for analysis is Joan Leslie McGill. She is the executive director with the U.S. Israel Education Association. So great to have you here joining us in studio. Thanks for coming in. You know, I want to go right to the latest news, the IDF overnight announcing that they were able to take out Iran's Minister of Intel, Esmail Khatib. He is supposedly the person responsible for, as President Trump quantified, 32,000 peaceful protesters. What does this mean as a result of this campaign in Iran? Absolutely. So what I'm watching right now is even though the U.S. and Israel have said that regime change is not a core objective of this mission, they are continuing to set the conditions for that regime change to take place. And so they are systematically one by one picking off the Iranian leadership. So the Iranians had a very deep bench of leaders. They were prepared for something like what happened on the first day of these attacks, taking out the Supreme Leader and his other leaders around him. So they built that deep bench. And you're watching the United States and Israel take them out one by one in hopes that the Now, Israel was unfortunately hit recently, just yesterday. What's your understanding of the shrapnel attack that we've seen? And what is life like in Israel right now? Absolutely. So I just returned from the region. I got back from Israel one week before the strikes took place. And so I was just with government leaders and people on the ground really understanding the sentiment leading up to these strikes. What you have is a nation that is very war weary. There is war fatigue. They have been at war for two and a half years since October 7th. But there's also a deep understanding that this is the moment that could be the nail in the coffin to finish the conflict in the region for good if the United States and Israel have the will to see it all the way to the end. So the shrapnel yesterday, I saw that a couple did unfortunately die from it. But in general, the sentiment is that as hard as life is right now, they want to see this finished and to be successful. Yeah. And of course, here in America, we seem to be getting criticism of Epic Fury, kind of along party lines, even though there's a humanitarian situation there. It seems like the Democrats, as well as some of the mainstream media outlets, they're just critical of the operation in general. But when we look at the people, for example, the extraction of Maduro, the Venezuelan people in America, and they're celebrated, we're seeing here is the same thing. Iranian people in America, in Canada, they're celebrating. So the most impacted people, though, are clearly, as you just described, the people of Israel. You said that they're war weary. Are they in support or do they have division in their society over this operation? They are vastly in support of this operation. So I think that when you look at who is supporting, it tells you everything you need to know. It's easy for Americans to sit here in the United States and dispute policy or why was this an imminent threat? Did we have to go in? But when you look at the people who are actually in support, the Iranian diaspora around the world and the Israelis, that tells you everything, that they know this regime needs to be put to bed and that there needs to be a Middle East that opens up for cooperation between all of the countries in the region. So looking more at life in Israel right now, unlike in the U.S., really everybody in Israel serves in the military there. And now being in this state of war for two and a half years, many of the people there have been called into reserve duty, especially more recently. If you could explain what that process is like and what is it like for people there at this point in time in terms of serving in the military? Right. So they do have the mandatory service. It's two years for women and three years for men. And then of course you do go into reserves. And Israel just recently this week called up over 400,000 reserve members as they were preparing to go into Lebanon and work against Hezbollah. And so there is an interesting solidarity amongst Israeli society when you have all had to serve, which I think could be very beneficial to American society at times. There's a solidarity that comes in wartime from that, but there's also a huge amount of PTSD. You have a lot of post-traumatic stress from the war in Gaza. And so you're seeing that, again, the fatigue that I talked about. You have these families with parents who are in their 30s and 40s. They have young kids, but they're getting called back into reserves again. It disrupts every bit of your daily life. Jon, Leslie, I want to go to yesterday. For the first time, a high-level Trump counterterrorism administration official, Joe Kent, he twice ran unsuccessfully for Congress. But with the endorsement of President Trump, he's very much reversed course and he's become critical. He says that Iran—he resigned yesterday. He said Iran posed no imminent threat to the U.S. and that the current armed conflict is due to pressure from Israel and its lobby. And that's something that you sort of hear these sort of like memes on social media. How do you respond to that? First of all, that is one of the oldest, most tired scapegoat arguments that you can come up with. When you don't like how something's going or you feel afraid of the outcome, let's blame the Jewish people in Israel. So first of all, I think that is completely discredited. Second of all, the president himself and his inner circle has said, if anything, he pressured Prime Minister Netanyahu to going to war. The prime minister said, again, we've been at war on seven fronts for two and a half years. We're not quite ready to go to war with Iran. We tried to do that last summer. You stopped us. We're not ready right now. And the president said he pushed this forward because he did believe in the imminent threat. And so when you can disagree with the president's policy, you can land on the isolationist wing of the conservative movement, which it sounds like Joe Kent did. But that doesn't make what the president did immoral. It doesn't make it wrong. It just means you disagree with it. So building on that, why do you think it's important for the U.S. to really support Israel and in terms of the war, but also in terms of the Abraham Accords and more normalization within the region? Sure. We've done a lot of work with the Abraham Accords countries looking at ways to build and deepen those collaborations and economic ties. And I will say that supporting Israel is the number one national security interest of the United States. They are positioned in a region that is fraught with instability and that wants to see the demise of the United States. And so they are our intelligence on the ground. We are seeing that at play right now in this war. Their intelligence capability has been tremendous and has informed our success, really, on the ground. So it's the intelligence gathering. It's the shared values of democracy and Western values, again, in a region that does not share those values. And then when you look at the Abraham Accords pulling in the modernized Arab nations into that, it's creating a line, a front against the bad actors like Iran. That was the original point of the Abraham Accords to begin with, is these Arab countries were looking for allies in the region to protect them against Iran. So we're seeing that at play right now. And I want to go to the northern front in Israel because Israel has boots on the ground in Lebanon. They're taking on the Hezbollah threat, Hezbollah sending a barrage of missiles at Israel. There's an investigation currently that two non-Hezbollah Lebanese soldiers may have been killed in the operations. What is happening with the northern front? Sure. So that's still under investigation. They're trying to understand what happened there. But you have to understand that the Lebanese communities are supposed to stay behind the Latani River line. They're supposed to give that buffer line to Israel so that they can remain safe on their northern borders. That has not been true since October 7, 2023. You've had Hezbollah coming below the Latani River. And because of that, the northern communities in Israel have not been safe. You've had thousands and thousands of people displaced. So it's as if Israel is having to concede its northern border without an actual invasion. But that's the effects of what's happened. So they're going in to say, no more, you can't taunt us on our northern front. Our people who live in the northern communities have to live in peace and security. And if the United Nations, who's supposed to be helping with this effort, is not going to step in and actually monitor Hezbollah, then we're going to go do it ourselves. Well, Jo and Leslie McGill, thank you so much for coming in the studio, sharing your insights with us. We really appreciate it. Thank you for having me.