UT expert talks about the history of Iran, Israel and NATO

AUSTIN (KXAN) — After the U.S. struck Iranian nuclear facilities last week, questions were raised by experts and officials about how much damage was caused by those strikes.

This comes after a preliminary intelligence assessment, which was leaked earlier this week, cast doubt on the impact of those three strikes carried out Saturday. However, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth held firm about the success of those strikes, saying “Iran’s nuclear facilities have been destroyed,” according to The Associated Press.

Hegseth launched an investigation into the leak, as well as characterized the report as a low-confidence assessment in its early stages.

“If you want to make an assessment of what happened at Fordow, you better get a big shovel and go really deep,” Hegseth said.

Hegseth said the report was leaked to the press in order to create confusion about the strike.

To provide some context, KXAN spoke with Jeremi Suri, professor of public affairs and history at the University of Texas at Austin. He’s also the Mack Brown Distinguished Chair for Leadership in Global Affairs, according to the UT website.

As discussions are expected between top U.S. leaders and Iranian leaders, Suri said “the talks will focus upon the nuclear question in Iran” and whether it will be able to continue its program or not. Or, if it gives up its nuclear program, what will it get in return?

“In a strange way, the events of the last two weeks have proven how important this is to the United States and Israel,” he said.

Suri said Iran “has been one of the chief sponsors of terrorism in the Middle East” over the last three to four decades.

“This goes back to the Americans who were held hostage in the American Embassy in Tehran in 1979, and then Americans who were held hostage in Beirut in the early 1980s. And certainly, through the funding of Hezbollah and other terrorist groups, Iran is a primary terrorist sponsor. Their approach to foreign policy has been to use terrorist proxies,” he said.

Over the last three or four decades, Suri said Israel has tried to resist Iranian terrorism and has moved toward a preventive policy to not only fight terrorism but to go after the source of terrorism in Iran, especially since Oct. 7, 2023. That is when Hamas launched a surprise attack that led to a war between Israel and Hamas, an Iranian ally in the Gaza Strip.

“Israel has moved toward a preventive policy of not only fighting terrorism, but going after the source of terrorism in Iran. So that’s where we’ve seen an escalation in the last two years, and particularly in the last few weeks,” Suri said. “The United States position has been to limit and sanction Iranian terrorist activity and to try to limit and prevent Iran from developing a nuclear weapon, but not to infringe upon the sovereignty of Iran, but instead to seek some sort of negotiated solution.”

Suri said that was the U.S. position until President Donald Trump launched those strikes on Iran last weekend.

“Are we going to go back to negotiations? That’s what President Trump has said, or are we going to continue to use preventive force? And the Iranians are seeking wherever they can to show that they will not give into force and to try to get more leverage for their negotiating position,” he said.

Less than 48 hours after the U.S. strikes on Iran, Trump took to his social media platform, Truth Social, saying a ceasefire was “achieved,” according to the AP. However, Iran fired 14 missiles at a major U.S. base in Qatar on Monday. Suri said Iran warned the U.S. in advance.

“So, the ceasefire usually occurs after both sides have tired themselves out, and they needed time at least to gather themselves and to have a sense of where they are. The Israelis did not want a ceasefire right now, because their military activities in Iran were quite successful. They had killed a large number of Iranian military leaders, killed a large number of scientists, taken out a lot of sites. When we’re talking about whether the Iranian nuclear project has been pushed back or not, it’s really a question not just about American strikes, but also about Israeli activity. So Israel was gaining the military upper hand. But the United States, President Trump in particular, does not want to see this expand into a wider war,” Suri said.

NATO Summit

Trump just got back from the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) Summit, where he pushed for other NATO countries to increase or double their defense spending.

Suri talked about the history of military spending in Europe and why it was such a high priority for the Trump administration.

“So the United States, since 1949 when NATO was formed, the United States has been the leading military element way above all of its peers within NATO. The defense of Western Europe has been a priority for the United States, and that’s a priority we’ve doubled down on after the Russian invasion of Ukraine. So the United States has pulled way ahead of its partners in NATO in the quality of our equipment and the kind of equipment we deploy, because we invest so much more in our military as a whole,” he said. “We’re so much bigger than any European state, and we have put more emphasis upon the global projection of our military power — whether we’re talking about Iraq, whether we’re talking about the United States Navy in the Pacific and the Atlantic. European states have not had the resources, nor have they had the technology to do this.”

Suri said Trump, as well as other American presidents, have tried to get European states to invest more.

“There’s no way European states are going to reach the level of operability that the United States has. Our military is so much larger, and the truth is that European states are giving a lot of aid to Ukraine, in some ways, more than the United States is. So a lot of this is political theater. Yes, Europeans should contribute more to NATO’s defense, but this is a way of trying to show Americans that we’re spending less and they’re spending more. It’s not as much of a national security issue as it is political,” he said.