Dr. Lustick holds the Bess W. Heyman Chair in the Political Science Department of the University of Pennsylvania.  He teaches Middle Eastern politics, comparative politics, and computer modeling. He is a recipient of awards from the Carnegie Corporation, the National Science Foundation, the National Endowment for the Humanities, and the Social Sciences Research Council.  Before coming to Penn he taught for fifteen years at Dartmouth College and worked for one year in the Department of State. His present research focuses on the implications of the disappearance of the option of a negotiated “two-state solution” to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and techniques of counterfactual forecasting. He is a past president of the Politics and History Section of the American Political Science Association and of the Association for Israel Studies, and a member of the Council on Foreign Relations.  Among his books are Arabs in the Jewish State (1980); For the Land and the Lord (1988, 1994); Unsettled States, Disputed Lands (1993); Trapped in the War on Terror (2006); and Paradigm Lost (2019). In a written interview he answered our questions like the following:

Gulan: What is your main take away of the Israel’s strikes against Iran?

Professor Ian Lustick: This is grave mistake.  An agreement to limit enrichment, keep the peace, and move the region toward sanity was within reach.  Netanyahu exploited the weakness and inexperience of Trump.  He hopes to entrap Washington into first protecting and resupplying the Israeli war effort and then using American forces directly to attack what remains of Iran’s nuclear capacity and effect regime change.

Gulan:What has been the main cause of Israel's strikes? Why did Israel feel the need to take this extreme action?

Professor Ian Lustick: Netanyahu has long wanted to attack Iran with American support.  The Iranian threat to have even a small nuclear weapon capability threatened Israel with a situation in which it would fear escalation too much to use force against its adversaries with the very low risk and cost that it requires to sustain such policies in the face of domestic fear of casualties.  The destruction of Hezbollah’s threat against Israel opened the door to the Israeli attack, but it would not have happened if Netanyahu did not think he could manipulate Trump into supporting the attack.

Gulan: Do you believe Israel will be able to firmly establish dominance, or do you expect a protracted period of strikes and counterattacks?

Professor Ian Lustick: I don’t know what you mean by dominance.  I do expect a protracted period of war, and then a return to war in the gray zone with more terrorism against Israeli and perhaps American targets worldwide in the years ahead.  What happens in the next week or two will in part depend on whether Iran attacks US forces directly.  I do not think a clean or direct process of “regime change” in Iran will be the result of this war, even though that is what the Israeli government would most like to see.

Gulan: How likely is it that the situation will worsen and turn into a full-fledged regional conflict?

Professor Ian Lustick: I don’t foresee regional war involving ground forces.  But I do fear the use of unconventional weapons and the destruction of or attacks on very sensitive targets.

Gulan: Do you think the United States will be directly involved in this conflict? If so, what would the repercussions be?

Professor Ian Lustick: I think this is the most important question right now and I am afraid the US is already involved.  I will watch carefully to see if the United States starts a major resupply effort to replace equipment, interceptors, and bombs or if Israel’s need for resupply will be used to end the fighting.

Gulan: Is it reasonable to conclude that the Middle East's security environment has undergone a significant transformation? If yes, what will this new security structure's key characteristics be?

Professor Ian Lustick: The elimination or drastic weakening of Iranian proxies in Lebanon, Syria, and Iraq, combined with the devastation Israel was able to wreak on Iranian air defenses, mean that Israel will resume its ability to operate militarily without much risk. Much will depend on what the United States does, and with Trump in charge in Washington, that is more or less impossible to predict.   Instead of a balance of power between Israel and Iran as the two dominant military powers in the region there will be a preponderant Israeli military power, but that will not last.  But the U.S. could restore a semblance of stability to the region if it makes it clear to Israel that the Gaza War must end and that an agreement between the United States and Iran is possible and will be reached.