Iran’s Attack on Israel, With Steven Cook and Ray Takeyh

LINDSAY:
Welcome to The President's Inbox, a CFR podcast about the foreign policy challenges facing the United States. I'm Jim Lindsay, director of Studies at the Council on Foreign Relations. This week's topic is Iran's attack on Israel.

With me to discuss Iran's unprecedented attack on Israel over the weekend are Steven Cook and Ray Takeyh. Steven is the Eni Enrico Mattei senior fellow for Middle East and Africa studies here at the Council, and a columnist at Foreign Policy magazine. He's the author of the forthcoming book, The End of Ambition: America's Past, Present and Future in the Middle East. His newest piece for CFR.org is, "Iran Attack Means an Even Tougher Balancing Act for the U.S. in the Middle East." Ray is the Hasib J. Sabbagh senior fellow for Middle East studies at the Council. His research focuses on Iran and U.S. foreign policy toward the Middle East. His most recent book is, The Last Shah: America, Iran and the Fall of the Pahlavi Dynasty. Ray wrote a piece this past Sunday for CFR.org titled, "Iran Attacks on Israel Spur Escalation Concerns." He also has an op-ed co-authored out in the New York Times today, titled "Keeping U.S. Power Behind Israel Will Keep Iran at Bay." Steven and Ray, thank you very much for joining me on The President's Inbox.

COOK:
Thanks for having me.

TAKEYH:
Thank you for having us. Thanks.

LINDSAY:
Ray, I'd like to begin with you, if I may. Iran and Israel have been waging a shadow war for decades. Iran has used a wide variety of proxies to attack Israel. Israel has used covert operations to target Iran, and particularly its nuclear weapons program. Fighting from the shadows provided both countries with a level of deniability, but this weekend's attack was from Iranian soil to Israeli soil. Why did Iran take the war out of the shadows?

TAKEYH:
Well, that's exactly the good place to start because what happened this past week hadn't happened in forty-five years of enmity between the two countries, and now we're beginning the process of speculating, as we often do, in the aftermath of something Iranians did about why did they do it? Well, there are several explanations that can compete with each other. Number one, they may have perceived that Israel is too preoccupied with Gaza war and its various stages, and therefore it will be less reluctant to engage in reprisals of significance. Number two, they wanted to make a point to their own proxies that as they battle Israel in the front lines, Iran is not going to sit in the corner and just watch them get battered. Number three, there are divisions between United States and Israel and between Israel and the international community, and therefore they may have perceived that a more isolated Israel will be a less belligerent one in terms of its retaliation.

And finally, there is a new national security elite that is coming to power in Iran. When we talk about succession, we talk about succession at the top, but there's succession taking place throughout the system. We don't know much about the new elites. Not that the old one was comprehensible to us, but they seem to be bolder and more reckless as their conduct indicated this past week. So all the combination of those factors could have led the Iranians to believe that they could succeed in what I believe they intended to be a mass casualty event.

LINDSAY:
Now, I'm struck Ray. One thing you didn't mention is that the Iranians might've attacked because they saw Israel having crossed the line in taking the war out of the shadows with their April 1 attack on the Iranian consulate building in Damascus, Syria, and that is under the international law, Iranian soil. How do you respond to that argument?

TAKEYH:
That was certainly the proximate cause, although Israel has attacked Iranian military personnel in Syria before. The shadow war that you are speaking of had its limits, but those limits were expanded in Syria. Iran was trying to put military encampments on Israel's boundaries and Israel had been reacting against those by actually using force against Iranian military personnel. 

There is the dispute about whether that particular building was a registered diplomatic compound. I'm not going to get into the international law aspect of it, but the Israelis do insist that the building was not actually recognized as a diplomatic sanctuary in a sense that the Iranians had not registered with the government of Syria. Now, would they attack General Zahedi anyways? Probably, but there is some dispute on international law. 

But as I said, it is my estimation that that may have been the proximate cause, but then Iranian retaliation could have been limited to an Israeli diplomatic compound. That will still be within the limits of the proxy shadow war that they have conducted against each other. This was 300 projectiles being launched against Israel, which had civilian casualties as its intent. That's a real experience.

LINDSAY:
Okay, Steven, let me bring you into the conversation now. How do you assess the Iranian decision?

COOK:
Well, I think it seems clear that the Iranians, as Ray has indicated, intended for a mass casualty event. I don't think that you fire 300 missiles, drones, and cruise missiles in a symbolic attack as many at the outset said it would be. The shadow war, as you point out, has been going on for quite some time, but obviously has been intensifying since the October 7th attacks. And quite honestly, the April 1 attack on the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, headquarters, facility, whatever you want to call it in Damascus, was not terribly surprising to me given the fact that the IRGC leadership had been coordinating chaos on Israel's borders even before the October 7th attacks. And given the opportunity, the Israelis were going to go after those leaders, which is perfectly consistent with the shadow war that they've been conducting for the better part of a decade. I think the issue here for many observers was that it was reported that they attacked the Iranian embassy. The Iranians don't have a very good record on the sanctity of embassies themselves.

LINDSAY:
Yes, I recall something that happened back in 1979.

COOK:
1979, 1992, 1980s in Beirut, '92 in Buenos Aires. The U.S. embassy in Baghdad has been attacked repeatedly by Iranian linked proxy forces, but this was seen as an escalation for which the Iranians must respond, and clearly, over the weekend they responded. It does seem that they were intent on demonstrating their capacity to inflict damage, as much damage as possible on Israel. Yet the combination of American leadership and technology and cooperation of neighboring countries demonstrated actually the weakness of the Iranian strategy.

LINDSAY:
The argument that you both offered up differs from a lot of commentary I am seeing in newspapers, on the internet, and that counterpoint view is that the Iranian attack was largely performative, that the Iranians did this because they felt compelled to given the Israeli attack on April 1, that the Iranians did this in such a way that they were really trying to send a signal. People have drawn parallels to the sort of attack the Iranians launched after the United States killed Soleimani a couple of years ago with a limited missile attack against American troops. Obviously, if you're on the receiving end of such an attack, that doesn't seem terribly limited.

One of the interesting things was that the Iran mission at the United Nations tweeted out at the start of the attack that the matter can be deemed concluded. It's hard to reconcile an attack that is designed to produce mass casualties as being a one-off. So how do you respond to the argument that this actually wasn't designed to inflict mass casualties on the Israelis? Ray, you want to go first?

TAKEYH:
Sure. Well, as you mentioned, the missile barrage was intercepted, and as Steven said, you don't launch 300 projectiles, about 100 whatever ballistic missiles, in Israeli population centers, as well as some military installations hoping that you miss, hoping that you essentially are intercepted and therefore exposed as hollow. Your intention is not to engage in an attack that actually emasculates your military capabilities. You want to have casualties and there was an apartment building that they just missed that was intercepted before. What happened if that has succeeded? What happens if that apartment building was hit and large number of Israelis die? Then the scope of Israeli retaliation will certainly be more significant.

At the end of the day, I cannot look into the Iranians' mind and say they intended to be performative, symbolic or they wanted to inflict substantial damage. The capabilities that they launched were quite substantial. Now, did they execute some kind of restraint? To some extent, yes. They didn't have Hezbollah launch missiles from his territory, which would be much more devastating because the timeframe differs. To launch a missile from Iran as opposed to launching it from southern Lebanon would be different. So that is an indication of some degree of restraint and keeping Hezbollah's powder dry, but just what they did reflects to me that they intended this to register a blow against the state of Israel and the population centers.

LINDSAY:
Steven, let me draw you in on this, and particularly I'd like your response to Ray's point about what didn't happen. We didn't see Hezbollah, largely regarded as Iranian proxy, joining the battle. Hezbollah clearly could overwhelm Israeli defenses if it chose to. Hezbollah is believed to have as many as 150,000 missiles as Ray noted because of the location just north of Israel, to be very little time for the Israelis. So why didn't we see Hezbollah join the fight?

COOK:
It's a very interesting question, Jim. I think first to underline something that Ray said, what if the Israelis with the Americans and other allied forces had not been as successful? I think we would be having a very different conversation about a mass casualty event in Israel. From my understanding, Hezbollah did fire on Israel, though not in the way that many had expected. And in fact, just yesterday, Israeli Air Force struck deep inside Lebanon against Hezbollah targets in retaliation. I suspect though that there are two reasons for Hezbollah essentially sitting on the sidelines here. 

First, the Iranians themselves wanted to demonstrate that they who were attacked by the Israelis on April 1 can respond in kind and with strength. Any previous moment when the Iranians had tried to respond directly from the Israelis, they have come away looking quite weak. There was an incident in which they sought to fire missiles at Israel from Syria directly, the IRGC and the Israeli Air Force was able to handle that with great ease. This was a number of years ago.

And so again, the Iranians have developed these capabilities and I think wanted to demonstrate them on their own. Second, I think that there's a strong deterrent factor. I think the United States and the Israelis have made it very, very clear the consequences of an escalation along the northern border. I think the Israelis have been working diligently since October 8th to destroy Hezbollah capabilities and to cow, the Hezbollah leadership. Many of their outposts and storage facilities and leadership in the south among its allegedly elite battalions have been killed. This has had an impact on Hezbollah's view of the conflict.

So those are at least my two preliminary assessments of why Hezbollah largely stayed on the side. I think just to draw out the point a little bit about whether this was performative or symbolic or however you want to look at it, it's not crazy to think that, of course. The Shahed drones take hours to get towards Israel. The Iranians called in the Saudis and the Emiratis and the Bahrainis and the Jordanians and said, "Hey, look, this is what we're going to do." The idea that that was not going to get back to the United States and the Israelis.

LINDSAY:
The Iranians claim to have won the United States.

COOK:
Right. At the same time, however, like I said, and like Ray has said, the sheer numbers of drones and missiles shot at the Israelis, and had the Israelis not been able to handle it with the help of the United States and others, this would've been a very, very serious incident.

LINDSAY:
Steven, I want to ask you quickly a question about the countries who participated in responding to the attack because we had Israel involved, obviously, the United States, United Kingdom, France, but my understanding is that many of the drones were shot down over Jordanian or Saudi airspace. I presume that means that the Jordanian government and the Saudi government gave a green light to the Israeli coalition to do that. Is there anything significant there politically or diplomatically?

COOK:
Well, I'm glad you asked the question because I'm writing about it right now in my regular column in Foreign Policy about whether this was truly the vindication of the peace treaties in the Abraham Accords that some are saying. I think it's clear that the Jordanians were a full and active participant in shooting down the drones. The Saudis issued a statement, parsed it out if you will, in which they said they were not involved in bringing down Iranian drones. It's hard to believe that the Saudis did not contribute to this effort given the vast amounts of airspace that these projectiles had to travel over Saudi territory. I think the same thing goes for the Emiratis who were likely participants but did not want to be public participants in this.

After all, these countries, I think there's two things to keep in mind about the Saudis and the Bahrainis and the Emiratis. First, they are quite vulnerable. Dubai is very close to Iran. The Emiratis do not have, nor do the Saudis nor do the Bahrainis, the layered air defense system that the Israelis do. Second thing is I think the Saudis and the Emiratis in particular remain angry at the Biden administration for not coming to their defense in a very significant way after they were attacked by the Iranians and/or their proxies. The Emirati leader, Mohammed bin Zayed remains very upset with the Biden administration after Abu Dhabi and Dubai were attacked a number of years ago by Iranian proxy, the Houthis in Yemen, and did not receive the adequate support from their perspective from the United States.

But nevertheless, I think it's reasonable to infer that there was a lot of cooperation here, whether it was providing information by radar tracks and so on and so forth for the Israelis, the Americans, the French, the British, and the Jordanians ultimately to shoot down 99 percent of what was fired towards Israel. It's important to point out that the Jordanians have made the case that this was not a defense of Israel. It was a defense of their sovereignty and their airspace, and that if drones and missiles were going in the opposite direction, they would do the exact same thing. Now, of course, King Abdullah has political problems given the outrage about the way Israel has conducted itself in the war in Gaza Strip that has killed so many thousands of people. So you would expect that.

LINDSAY:
Ray, I want to return to the question of Iran and its policy going forward. As you've laid out that your view, this was not just a symbolic act. They were trying to demonstrate Iranian strength and will and determination, but the attack was foiled. Steven noted 99 percent of the missiles and drones were shot down. We did not see the mass casualty results that Tehran may have interpreted or expected. So what does that mean? Do we have any sense of how Tehran is responding to its own attack and its failure?

TAKEYH:
I want to pick up one thing about that Iran forewarned Saudis, others and the Americans. They actually said it in their press before the attack that, "We are going to attack Israel. We are going to do it ourselves. We're not going to rely on proxies." So I don't need any intercepts to tell you that. So this event is being celebrated in the press as you would expect. It's a ritualistic thing that they do.

LINDSAY:
Well, they control the press. It's not a free and open press, correct?

TAKEYH:
Well, it is a competitive press. So there are criticisms in some reform wing of the press, but at this point, the political elites, even those that are outside the corridors of power, like former President Mohammad Khatami who's a reformer, they have issued statements and support. So the political elite is notionally coming together, at least on the issue.

LINDSAY:
A rally around the flag effect, so to speak.

TAKEYH:
Well, an attack on Israel is going to be something that they're going to have to condone, if not accept and endorse. The regime is showing videos of its missiles flying over various places in Israel as a demonstration of its success in at least penetrating Israel. And the thing that they are acknowledging most directly is that at least for a period of time, they traumatize and already traumatize Israeli society, that they kept Israelis on the edge of their seats for a period of time. And that psychological blow to a country that's already trying to rehabilitate itself from the October 7th attack is something that is also being acknowledged.

But as this unfolds, they're going to obviously suggest that they are triumphant, particularly if there is a limited or no Israeli reprisal coming at this point. At this stage, they have a narrative of success in a sense that they were the last to do the shooting. And that's how, by the way, they approached the Soleimani killing. The United States in January 2020 killed General Soleimani. The Iranians responded with missile attack on an American military base, and the Americans didn't respond.

LINDSAY:
So they claimed victory because they threw the last punch.

TAKEYH:
That's right, yes, and the other side backed down.

LINDSAY:
Steven, I want to talk about what comes next, and President Biden has signaled that the United States will not support a counterattack. We've heard from the British Foreign Minister David Cameron, that it is time to have restraint, but my sense is that the debate in Israel isn't about restraint. It is about when and how to attack. I'll note that war cabinet member Benny Gantz said on Sunday that, "Israel would exact a price from Iran in the way and at the time that suits us." And that in some sense is one of the more measured responses. National Security Minister, Itamar Ben-Gvir said that Israel needed a crushing counterattack, urging Israel, let me quote him here, "To go crazy," and to, again quoting him, "Ignore restraint and proportionality." So help me understand how the Israelis are thinking about what they should do next?

COOK:
Yeah, let me just track back one quick second on this question of the idea that Israel is a traumatized society and that this is what the Iranians are trying to achieve is to further demoralize them. I think it is true that the Israelis are reeling from October 7th, but I have to be honest with you, I don't get the impression that the Israelis were either panicked or further demoralized as a result of what happened over the weekend. My conversations with any number of Israelis as this was unfolding and in the aftermath was one of actual calm, waiting to see for instructions from the Homeland Command. There were typical photos from Tel Aviv of people moving couches, standing outside Forever 21 to do some last-minute shopping for clothing. I woke friends up the next morning who seem to be obviously concerned, but not the same kind of way in which they were after the October 7th attacks and the shock of that.

When it comes to retaliation, this is a good segue, I think most people in Israel agree that there has to be retaliation. I think the government is faithfully reflecting the position of the Israeli public and indeed Benny Gantz, who is largely seen as a centrist in comparison to...is actually quite hardline on this issue. And I think that the question in Israel is not if they are going to respond, but when and how. You'll notice that the president said he did not support retaliation

LINDSAY:
Biden.

COOK:
Biden. President Biden said that he did not support it. That is certainly not a green light from the president of the United States, but it's also not necessarily from the perspective of Israelis a red light. And there's a certain historical echo here to the run-up to June 1967 war in which President Johnson gave essentially a somewhat obscure response to Israeli questions about support, and they read it as in fact a yellow light, but that they would be on their own. And I think that's what they're debating right now.

I'll note that the Israeli chief of staff and his first statement afterwards positioned himself in front of Israeli aircraft that would be used ostensibly in a retaliatory strike against the Iranians. So clearly, Israelis are planning something they would like for it to be devastating, but the how and when remain open to debate. I don't think that there's really any question at this point that the Israelis are going to let this go by, which raises the question of further escalation in the region.

LINDSAY:
Steven, do we have a sense of what the range of options the Israelis are considering?

COOK:
Well, not being a guns and trucks analyst, I'm somewhat restrained in my commentary, but of course, they have F-35s. They have what's called the F-15I, which was purchased by the Israelis in the late 1990s, specifically because it had the range to reach Iran. The Israelis have submarines that can operate far from Israel with capabilities to launch their own missiles. The Israelis have a missile force, and then of course, there is Israel's well-known cyber capabilities, sabotage capabilities, assassination capabilities. So I think the whole range of things are open to the Israelis, once again, given Israelis will set aside the British. I think it's the president of the United States that Israelis listen to has said that he doesn't support it, gives them some pause, but I think what they're doing is trying to figure out the best way to go about this.

LINDSAY:
Ray, your piece in the New York Times essentially is critical of the position that President Biden has taken. Lay out your argument for what U.S. policy should be?

TAKEYH:
Well, the crux of the piece was that a separation between Israel and the United States at this critical time does not serve the cause of deterrence, that historically the Iranians tend to respect latent American power irrespective of who the incumbent is, of whichever party, just American power. And if they perceive that Israel and the United States are divided, that gives them additional motivation for escalation or this particular attack.

So a closer relationship between the two sides at this particular point would actually help abort a potential escalatory spiral. When, and I don't think it's a question of if, but when the Israelis strike some form, whether it's Iranian territory, whether it's some diplomatic or military compound or what have you, and we cited some historical examples that people can accept or take issue with.

LINDSAY:
Do you think Israel should try to attack Iran's nuclear facilities?

TAKEYH:
I do believe that if we are in an escalatory dynamic, at some point the Israelis will have to consider that because it seems difficult to envision separating the Iranian attack, and Iranian conduct from a nuclear program that would further energize and enable the Islamic Republic. So they would at some point consider that. Now, here we get into question of capabilities, whether they can do it and so forth.

As Steven said, I'm not a specialist either on military hardware and whether the Israelis have sufficient hardware to inflict substantial damage of Iran's dispersed underground and hardened nuclear infrastructure. But at some point, I think they would have to consider that. This is why this escalatory dynamic is essentially what you see is two antagonists who have no real communication with one another, both getting on the tiger's back and not knowing how to dismount.

LINDSAY:
But are you arguing that you should escalate to de-escalate, that if you go up another level or two on the ladder that the Iranians will cry, "Uncle?"

TAKEYH:
Well, I think what we argued is that the perception by the Iranians that Americans would support the escalation of the conflict could be an act of deterrence in of itself.

LINDSAY:
Steven, how would you assess that argument?

COOK:
If I'm hearing Ray correctly, I think if the president had said privately to Prime Minister Netanyahu, "Take the win," but publicly released a statement saying, "We continue to have Israel's back and this Iranian attack needs to be met with a strong response," that it would intimidate the Iranians to the extent that it would de-escalate the conflict. And there's some logic to it, but of course, there is a hunch at the heart of the argument that with those kinds of statements that one, the Iranians would back down, and two, that the Israelis would hold their fire and that it would arrest the escalatory risk that we confront right now. And I don't think that we know that to be the case, as Ray points out. Once you go down this road, you ride a tiger that you don't know the answer to.

So I am sympathetic to the argument, it makes sense. I fear, and I think that the administration fears that this could get out of control very, very quickly. Certainly, the Iranians haven't expended all of their capabilities. A regional conflict as my Saudi friends have relayed to me leaves them quite vulnerable, as well as others in the Gulf who are important to the United States, and that's something I think that we want to avoid. We want to avoid the Iranians retaliating against Riyadh and Jeddah or Dhahran in response to Israeli retaliations to the Iranians.

TAKEYH:
I would say one thing, what Steven is saying is perfectly reasonable. The article that we did was the exercise in speculation and different people can look at the situation very differently and arrive at different conclusions. There is an argument to be made about what Steven and others have said, namely, that it's time for the United States to deescalate and so forth. So the counter argument to our argument is actually perfectly reasonable and sober-minded.

LINDSAY:
So I want to ask both of you where you think we are headed. As I look at the situation, it appears that both sides want to be the last one to throw a punch, which is more likely to lead to escalation, than to deescalation. I take Ray's point that the Iranians are very concerned about American power because the United States can inflict catastrophic damage on Iran if it chose to. At the same time, if you're President Biden, you have a very full inbox of problems, not just the issue here in the Middle East, but obviously concerns about what is happening in Ukraine. You have the issue of deterrence in the Eastern Pacific, but also if you're Israel. You right now are involved in potentially a four or five-front war. You have Gaza, you have the West Bank, you have your northern border with Hezbollah. You could talk about the Houthis in Yemen and Iran being a fifth possible front. So how do you think this is all going to shake out? Steven, I'll let you go first.

COOK:
I certainly think that the Israelis are going to retaliate. As I said before, I think that Benny Gantz, who was a chief of staff, represents the consensus thinking within the IDF, many of whom believe, and I think quite rightly, that the Iranians are central to the four or five-front conflict that they are fighting right now in that October 7th was an extraordinary blow to the prestige of the IDF and the IDF Officer Corps. And that needs to be answered, not just the weekend's attack on Israel.

So I think we are headed for more. This is not over by a long shot, and I think Ray is quite right. Both want to be able to say that they fired the last shot. This puts the United States in quite a difficult position. As you point out, the president's inbox is quite full and the risks of escalation in the region, not just as I said, Iranian retaliation on again, American partners, but Hezbollah, all of these things. And that is why the president has said he opposes it. But again, I go back to the idea and I think that there must be some thinking within the administration that is consistent with Ray's view, that the Israelis do actually need to demonstrate force, and that a coalition needs to demonstrate force in order to back the Iranians off.

LINDSAY:
And President Biden is certainly going to hear that line of argument from Republicans. You have to remember, we're in the middle of a presidential election year. Ray, how do you respond? Where do you think we're headed?

TAKEYH:
We're headed to some kind of an escalatory situation. And I would say that the United States had since October 7th, warned Iran not to escalate the conflict. And the Israelis have waged a fairly aggressive war in Gaza, not just to defeat the current enemy, but also perhaps as a demonstration effect to their other enemies. Both those propositions have failed. The American insistence to Iranians to exercise restraint obviously failed, and the Israeli perception, at least at this point, that their prosecution of Gaza war could deter their enemies, at least in case of the Iranian enemy has failed. I do think it has had some effect on Hezbollah. So we're in a situation where United States and Israel's deterrent posture is compromised. How do you restore that?

Second of all, who's going to actually try to mediate this conflict if there's a tit-for-tat? Usually you will say the United Nations, but for a variety of reasons, the Israelis don't have confidence in the UN, and not that the Iranians have much love for the United Nations either. Is there a regional mediation effort? The mediation efforts historically have allowed the two powers to step down from a conflict that they don't wish to escalate. I don't know what the mediating body is here and there certainly no direct communications between Iran and Israel, and probably in some very critical ways they both misapprehend and misunderstand each other.

So this is not a good context for trying to deescalate, and we're in a situation where neither party wants to back down to the other one. At the end of the day, when the United States did not retaliate against Iran for attacking its military base in Iraq as a result of Soleimani affair, American power was not really contested. Israel at this point is a difficult situation because they are in a war. They may be in a war on the northern front at some point. So there's a certain sense of vulnerability by which they approach this, as do in some way the Iranians, while the United States did not feel the same sort of a strategic vulnerability that Israelis do.

So as we go into the escalatory dynamic, the off-ramps aren't obvious to me, and I can't look at the Iranian situation today. I can't comment with Israel because I'm not that proficient in this politics, but the argument that cooler heads in Iran prevail, I don't know who those cooler heads are today.

LINDSAY:
Point taken. On that very sobering note, I'll close up The President's Inbox for this week. My guests have been Steven Cook, the Eni Enrico Mattei senior fellow for Middle East and Africa studies, and Ray Takeyh, the Hassan J. Sabbagh senior fellow for Middle East Studies at the Council. Steven and Ray, thank you for joining me.

COOK:
Thanks for having me, Jim.

TAKEYH:
Thank you.

LINDSAY:
Please subscribe to The President's Inbox on Apple Podcasts, YouTube, Spotify, wherever you listen and leave us a review. We love the feedback. You can email us at [email protected]. The publications mentioned in this episode and a transcript of our conversation are available on the podcast page for The President's Inbox on CFR.org. As always, opinions expressed on the President's Inbox are solely those of the host or our guests, not of CFR, which takes no institutional positions on matters of policy. 

Today's episode was produced by Ester Fang with Director of Podcasting, Gabrielle Sierra. Special thanks to Michelle Kurilla for her research assistance, and to Justin Schuster for his editing assistance. This is Jim Lindsay. Thanks for listening.