TERRY GROSS, HOST:
This is FRESH AIR. I'm Terry Gross. As the war between Israel and Hamas continues, the conflict between Israel and Hezbollah is escalating. Hamas is based in Gaza, Hezbollah in Lebanon - both groups want to create an Islamist state, both groups are backed by Iran and both want to eliminate Israel. My guest Dexter Filkins is a staff writer at the New Yorker. Earlier this summer, he went on a reporting trip to the south of Lebanon, which has largely been taken over by Hezbollah fighters. It's the area targeted by Israeli rockets, and it's the most dangerous part of Lebanon.
Filkins is used to danger. He covered the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan for the New York Times and wrote the book "The Forever War." In Lebanon, he spoke with a Hezbollah commander and to its deputy secretary general. He also talked with a Maronite Christian priest, whose village was not targeted by Israelis, but it was surrounded by villages that were in ruins. Filkins crossed over the border into Israel and visited a kibbutz near the border, which had largely been abandoned because of the danger from Hezbollah rockets. His article on this week's New Yorker is titled "Will Hezbollah And Israel Go To War?" He says if they do, it will be a war that could draw in Iran and the U.S. We recorded our interview yesterday morning before Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu spoke to Congress.
Dexter Filkins, welcome back to FRESH AIR. I'm always glad to see you safe (laughter)...
DEXTER FILKINS: Thank you, thank you, thank you.
GROSS: ...When you return from a conflict zone. So before we talk about your reporting trip, which I'm really anxious to get to. I just want to clarify some of the differences between Hezbollah and Hamas - what they have in common, what they're not. Because I think so many people really don't know the difference, and we're going to be largely talking about Hezbollah. So I mean, Hezbollah and Israel have a long history of conflict. Can you describe some of the differences and similarities between Hezbollah in Lebanon and Hamas in Gaza?
FILKINS: Well, they're pretty different. Using Israel as a kind of centerpiece on their southern border is Hamas. They're Sunni Muslim. That's an important distinction. They're backed by Iran. They want an Islamic state. They want to destroy Israel. Hezbollah is to the north. They're in Lebanon. They're Shiite Muslim, also supported by Iran, also have vowed to wipe Israel off the map.
But they don't really cooperate. And they're not - you know, it's not - they're not integrated in any way. Hamas does its own thing. Hezbollah does its own thing. And that's kind of so - as the war, against Hamas begins to wind down, Israel has been kind of turning its attention to the north and Hezbollah.
GROSS: Hezbollah started attacking Israel in sympathy with Hamas. Israel and Hezbollah have a long history of conflict, armed conflict. And you write that Hezbollah now has at least 150,000 missiles and rockets, many of them capable of hitting targets across Israel. So how much of a threat do you think Hezbollah poses to Israel right now?
FILKINS: It's a way, way bigger threat than Hamas. And that's the kind of irony here. You know, we've all been focused on the war in Hamas. For Israel, Hamas is the - they're the junior varsity. I mean, they're the second stringers, and you know, they've been at war for months and months against what they regard as kind of the junior fighters. Hezbollah is formidable. They have, as you mentioned, 150,000 missiles and rockets. Some of those missiles are long range, can hit any part of Israel and they're precision-guided - so airports, nuclear reactors, ports, hospitals, schools, everything. And so that's really the nightmare scenario. If they go to war, both of those countries will likely be destroyed, largely. And that's what's kind of looming over this conflict, is a war that's far more catastrophic than the one against Hamas.
GROSS: Early in the war with Hamas, between Israel and Hamas, the experts I was hearing were basically saying, you know, no one wants this to be a regional war and that Hezbollah doesn't really want to go to war with Israel - you know, that their conflict has been contained. But that seems to be changing. Is that right?
FILKINS: That's right. That's right. It's a strange thing. On each side, Israel and Hezbollah - they don't want a wider war. And they're all happy to tell you that. We don't want a big war. But they both know that the other side doesn't a wider war, so they keep turning up the volume and the intensity on their attacks because they think, well, look, Hezbollah doesn't want a wider war. We can just bomb the heck out of them. Hezbollah thinks the same. What's happened over the last several months is the level of violence and the level of destruction on their border - they're firing rockets and missiles at each other practically every day. The level of violence has just gone up and up and up. And so the fear is that the thing's going to get out of control. And if it gets out of control, basically, it's Hezbollah firing all of its rockets, Israel's Air Force basically leveling Lebanon. And then Iran is in the back, supporting Hezbollah, and of course, the United States is supporting Israel. And so that's the kind of nightmare scenario that all the diplomats are trying to avoid.
GROSS: So why did you go to Lebanon's southern border? It is the most dangerous part of Lebanon. It's where Israel has been firing, you know, missiles, rockets. What exactly is Israel firing?
FILKINS: Well, I'll give you a great illustration. I drove into south Lebanon to meet a Hezbollah commander. And practically the moment I walked into his house, there were these two big concussions - windows rattled, the ground shook. And I thought it was artillery. I thought it was, you know, the Israelis fired some rockets or missiles or something. And the Hezbollah commander laughed and said, those are the Israeli jets breaking the sound barrier. He's like, every day. And I think the Israelis have been pummeling South Lebanon. I mean, just just hammering them like every day.
And I witnessed that kind of everywhere I went. But I went there because that's where - you know, that's where the war - there's a war there going on right now, and there'd be a lot more attention on it if there were not a war also going on against Hamas. But so the war is going on every day there. So I just wanted to go down and see it.
GROSS: Would you describe the landscape that you found?
FILKINS: Well, well, I mean, first of all, Lebanon is just stunningly beautiful. It's a Mediterranean country. It's beautiful sea coasts and cliffs and mountains in the background. But as you drove - I drove out of Beirut, which is in the center of the country on the coast, towards the South, along the coast, and through these old Phoenician cities. But there's - the further south I went, the greater the destruction I saw. So everywhere I went, village to village, house to house, the Israelis were striking. So, you know, over here, there's a house leveled, hit the night before. Over here, there's another house attacked, you know, a week before. So there's just rubble all over the place. There really is.
GROSS: Hezbollah has accused Israel of using white phosphorus. Israel has denied it. Did you see any evidence of that?
FILKINS: I did. I did. I think they are using it. I looked out on the border and along the Israeli-Lebanese border, there's a lot of farm land on the Lebanese side. And so the Hezbollah fighters use the farmland and the crops as cover and they kind of sneak up on the border. So they basically just been burning everything. So white phosphorus, for the listeners who haven't seen it before - it's pretty gruesome. It breaks up in the air and basically you see these flaming chunks going, scattering all over the place and then it just burns and burns and burns, and it burns very slowly.
But they're using it to basically denude the whole area along the border.
GROSS: One of the places that you visited was a Maronite Christian neighborhood that was untouched because it's not a Hezbollah neighborhood. It's a Christian neighborhood, so it's been spared by Israelis. You spoke to a priest there who wanted to remain anonymous for obvious reasons, so you call him Father Najib. What were his fears?
FILKINS: It was so interesting going in this village, which was called Rmaich. It's right on the Israeli border in the - sort of the very, very southern tip of Lebanon. And southern Lebanon is mostly Shia, Islam, mostly Hezbollah. Every village is Hezbollah. But occasionally, here and there, there are predominantly Christian villages. And that - and, you know, that's Lebanon. It's just like - it's a crazy quilt.
So as I drove into Rmaich, there's destruction everywhere. There's Hezbollah everywhere. There's flags everywhere - Hezbollah flags. There's martyrdom posters. There's all this stuff. Drive into Rmaich. It's untouched. It's perfectly fine. It's scary. It's creepy because the Israeli jets are going over, and the missiles are going over, and they're going both ways. But the Israelis have basically left it alone. You know, their - I think their sense is, our fight is not with the Christians. It's with Hezbollah only. Rmaich is a Christian village, so we're not going to touch it. Everything around it, all the villages around it - those are fair game.
GROSS: It sounds like Hezbollah fighters have tried to move into this Christian village, but Father Najib has kind of kept them out. What has he done to try to prevent Hezbollah from taking over this Christian village?
FILKINS: Well, it's just - it's so weird 'cause, you know, like, if you're Lebanese, everybody knows each other. So - but these - you know, there's these kind of fault lines, and so it's very strange. And so, you know, we're standing in this Christian village, Rmaich, and surrounded by Hezbollah villages all around. And so what the Hezbollah guys have done is come in. On a couple of occasions, they've come in and set up their missile batteries and fired into Israel. And this is twice now, I think. The Israelis - as they always do, they responded immediately. You know, they just immediately did an airstrike on the Hezbollah missile battery and took it out.
And so Father Najib went to the Hezbollah guys and said, look. We don't want you here. You know, this is not our fight. This is your fight. You can - you know, we can't stop you from passing through here, but we are going to stop you from setting up here. And so Hezbollah so far has kind of left them alone. So, again, it's this weird - it was a very strange but super-interesting way to see the war because, like, I couldn't go to a Hezbollah village. You know, I couldn't. It was hard enough just navigating getting down there. But when I was in Rmaich, in the Christian village, it was completely fine for me, you know? And so I could see - I had, like, a 360-degree view of the war from this kind of protected bubble.
GROSS: Well, let me reintroduce you here. If you're just joining us, my guest is Dexter Filkins, a staff writer for The New Yorker. His article in this week's New Yorker is titled "Will Hezbollah And Israel Go To War?" We'll be right back. This is FRESH AIR.
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GROSS: This is FRESH AIR. Let's get back to my interview with Dexter Filkins, a staff writer for The New Yorker. His new article is titled "Will Hezbollah And Israel Go To War?" It's based on his reporting trip earlier this summer to the south of Lebanon, which has largely been taken over by Hezbollah fighters. He also crossed over the border to Israel.
So, you know, you've said that you couldn't go to a Hezbollah village for obvious reasons. That would be very dangerous. But in Beirut, you were able to speak with Naim Qassem, who is the deputy secretary general of Hezbollah, the No. 2 in Hezbollah. He's a former chemistry teacher. And he wrote...
FILKINS: (Laughter) Yes.
GROSS: ...The movement's official account of its history, a book called "Hezbollah: The Story From Within." In that book, it says that one of the goals is imposing an Iranian-style Islamic republic in Lebanon and destroying the state of Israel. What did you want to talk with him about? Well, first of all, how did you get to talk with him? Why would he agree to talk with you?
FILKINS: Well, they're - you know, Hezbollah's, like, very - they have a communications office and, like, a public relations department. And so they're very savvy, and they want to get the word out, and they want people to understand them. He doesn't talk very often. So I felt very fortunate to get him.
Like Lebanon, Beirut is all divided and carved up between the various groups and various sects. And so the Shias and Hezbollah - they're in Southern Beirut. So I kind of drove in there. And just for your listeners 'cause it's really interesting, southern Beirut was - you know, there was a war between Hezbollah and Israel in 2006. They've already fought once. Lebanon was leveled. And southern Beirut, which is the headquarters of Hezbollah, was just completely destroyed.
And it's been rebuilt, but - so it's a suburb called Dahieh. And so I drove into Dahieh, and it's - like, all the buildings are rebuilt. But you can sort of imagine, as you're driving in, like, this is ground zero 'cause this is Hezbollah's headquarters. If the war comes again, the Israeli jets are coming right for this place.
GROSS: What did he tell you Hezbollah's goals were in this conflict?
FILKINS: Well, he - it's interesting. He wanted me to know that Hezbollah does not want a big war with Israel, and he's very clear about that. He's like, we don't want this to escalate. He's very worried that it will. He said, I don't know that we can control this war. He said, I doubt we can control this war. But he said, look. We got into this war to support Hamas. So as soon as that war started, yes, we fired on Israel. Basically, we're trying to take the heat off Hamas.
So in that way, even though, you know, Hezbollah and Hamas - they're kind of different, they have a common enemy. And as Naim Qassem said, it's in support of Hamas and in support of the Palestinians. And he said, you know, we have this other effect by doing this, by firing missiles into Israel every day. We've basically taken a huge chunk of the Israeli army, and they've deployed it to northern Israel. So we've diverted a lot of their resources and a lot of their firepower by doing that. He said, look. Our goal is to kind of keep this limited but to kind of - you know, to try to cause a lot of trouble for Israel. And I think they're doing that.
GROSS: Well, in part, one of the things that they've accomplished is displacing thousands of Israelis who live near the border of Lebanon.
FILKINS: Yes. It's like a no-man's-land on both sides, largely. Northern Israel - empty, just empty. It's like, you know, tens of thousands of people have evacuated to the South. And then Southern Lebanon, the same - tens of thousands of people have fled, because particularly in Lebanon, they're kind of, you know, they've been through this before, and, like, they've been through kind of the really precise and really intense Israeli bombardments. And so you know, everybody's basically waiting - waiting for the war or waiting for the peace.
GROSS: Israel is really shrinking because on the border with Gaza, a lot of Israelis have been displaced because of the fighting and on the border with Lebanon the same.
FILKINS: Yes, yes, it's eerie in Northern Israel. Like, I drove up in Israel. I drove to the northern border. So I drove right to the Lebanese border and to a little kibbutz called Malkia. Malkia - it's very small. It's a kind of an agricultural cooperative. There's, like, crops all around and trees and stuff. But the Lebanese border is right there. Empty - before the war, it had, like, five or six hundred people. And now it was just like - it's a ghost town. And so it's pretty eerie. And these people who've been evacuated, you know, tens of thousands of them. They're living in apartments, they're living in hotels way to the South. I spoke to an Israeli cabinet minister, and he said to me, this is not sustainable. Like, we cannot do this forever because it's - you know, for one thing, it's being done at government expense, you know, like 80,000 people in hotel rooms and apartments all around the country and it's like, we can't keep this up, and people have to be able to go home. We've basically surrendered sovereignty over a huge stretch of our own territory, and we can't live this way, basically. So that's - the status quo is, I think for Israel, is not sustainable. It can't go on. It can go on for a while, but it can't go on forever. And I think that, you know, that's where the possibility of war looms pretty largely.
GROSS: When you say that, you mean that Israel can't afford the threat from Hezbollah in a war, which will be an incentive for Israel to do an all-out war against Hezbollah?
FILKINS: I think that's right. They almost did. Right after October 7, when Hamas on the Southern border of Israel attacked, you know, did the big horrific attack, four days after that, the Israeli cabinet came - and I talked to a lot of people who were involved in the decision - very, very close to launching what would have been a massive preemptive strike on Hezbollah in Lebanon and to take out their missile batteries and basically destroy their military infrastructure. That was very, very close. I mean, that's the exact quote I got from one of the Israelis in the cabinet meeting. He said, we were very, very close. President Biden got on the phone and basically said, don't do it, don't do it, don't do it.
Planes were in the air. They were literally seconds away from attack, and they called off the attack. And so the question now is, once the war on Israel's southern border against Hamas winds down, does Israel decide that it's time to take care of its northern border? And that's basically the question. I mean, I think if a big war starts, I think it's probably going to be the Israelis that kick it off, and they're going to do that because they've decided we can't go on like this any longer. So there's a lot of work being done to kind of make a peace deal before that happens, but it hasn't happened yet. And so that's really the question over the next several months.
GROSS: I think a lot of Biden's concern had to do with, will Iran get involved in the war if Israel all-out attacks Hezbollah in Lebanon, and will that become a regional conflict, will it draw in the U.S. too? I mean, the risks were huge. But you report that people in the Israeli leadership are really worried now since they didn't do a preemptive strike. If they strike now against Hezbollah, they think that they can, you know, eradicate most of the missiles within, like, a week or two. During that week or two, Hezbollah could fire into Israel and destroy airports, the electric grid, seaports. I mean, it could do a whole lot of damage to Israel.
FILKINS: Yes, a very senior official in the American government - he said, in an all-out war, Israel will be set back 50 years, and Lebanon will be returned to the Middle Ages. They will really completely destroy each other. There's really intense American diplomatic efforts to make a deal, so this war doesn't happen. But the nightmare scenario, which includes the United States, is if Israel decides to go after Hezbollah, I think the fear is, even though the Israeli defenses and the anti-missile defenses and the iron dome and the Patriot missile batteries - even though they're really good, they'll be overwhelmed. The fear is that as the war intensifies between Hezbollah and Israel, that Iran will get involved in the war. And then if Iran gets involved in the war, then - you know, then it's really almost existential for Israel. And so that means almost, I think, necessarily the United States gets involved in a much larger way. And so that's the really scary scenario that everybody can see on the horizon, and they're kind of working pretty frantically to prevent.
GROSS: Well, let's take a short break here. If you're just joining us, my guest is Dexter Filkins, a staff writer for the New Yorker. And his new article is titled "Will Hezbollah And Israel Go To War?" We'll be right back after a short break. I'm Terry Gross, and this is FRESH AIR.
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GROSS: This is FRESH AIR. I'm Terry Gross. Let's get back to my interview with Dexter Filkins, a staff writer for The New Yorker. We're talking about his reporting trip earlier this summer to the south of Lebanon, which has largely been taken over by Hezbollah fighters attacking Israel. Filkins also crossed over the border into Israel. Residents near each side of the border have fled. The conflict between Israel and Hezbollah has been escalating, and if it goes any further, it could lead to a regional war and could involve Iran and the U.S.
So if there's a cease-fire deal between Israel and Hamas, what does that mean for Hezbollah and its conflict with Israel? Hezbollah started attacking Israel in sympathy with Hamas. Will Hezbollah necessarily stop if there's a cease-fire with Hamas?
FILKINS: I think they will stop. I mean, the - Hassan Nasrallah, who's the leader of Hezbollah, has been super clear. He's been super clear about it. You know, he's kind of signaling to the Israelis, we're only doing this as long as you, you know, beat up on the Palestinians in Gaza. And the moment you stop, we stop. But I think - and again, I think this is the larger fear - let's say, tomorrow, there's a cease-fire in Gaza. Everybody stops, right? They stop fighting in Gaza, and then Hezbollah stops firing missiles into Israel.
That's one piece. But it's the second piece that's the really hard piece, which is Israel has made it very clear they are not prepared to put up with the presence of Hezbollah on their southern border anymore. And they did. I mean, they put up with it for years. And they've been very clear about that. They're like, we're not going back. I heard this phrase many, many times in Israel - we're not going back to October 6. And not October 7, but October 6. We're not going back to the world that existed before October 7, and part of that is Hezbollah being on our northern border. So what that means is that Hezbollah has to be willing to, like, pack up and move away, you know, 10 or 15 miles, whatever they can negotiate. There's a lot, a lot of skepticism about whether they'd be willing to do that.
GROSS: Dexter, I want to get back to your interview with the deputy secretary-general of Hezbollah. He's lived underground for years. And you asked him about that, and he told you that he's living his best life. And he said, who said we don't go to the beach and to restaurants? What is he talking about? How can you live underground and be living your best life and go to restaurants?
FILKINS: It's super strange. It's, like, a really strange situation. And I think it's kind of like what we saw on October 7. And again, in Gaza, where there was - you know, they pulled the curtain back, and it turns out Hamas had miles and miles of tunnels way underground. I think in Lebanon with Hezbollah, it's far more extensive. I think they have basically entire cities underground. And that's where the Hezbollah leadership has been for years. And I think, you know, they do come out occasionally. Like, you'll see, like - there'll be a video clip on Twitter or something, and it'll be, you know, Naim Qassem attends funeral of fallen fighter or whatever. But it's very fleeting, super brief, unannounced and then they go back underground. And that's the way they live. And this is in southern Beirut.
And so they're basically - they've been in these fortified bunkers, you know, forever. And I spoke to a Western - I'll have to say a Western official and keep it really vague - who met Nasrallah, the leader of Hezbollah, who met Naim Qassem, the No. 2, underground. And he described it for me. And he said, I got into a car with a bunch of Hezbollah guys. I threw my cellphone away. I told my security guys to go away, so they were totally freaking out. I got in a car. The windows are blacked out. We drove for a while. We switch cars, we switch cars again and then, boom, like, we went underground. And he's like, we went down, down, down, down.
And then he said, we got out of the car and these elevator doors opened. We went up and the doors opened again, and there was Hassan Nasrallah, the head of Hezbollah. So, you know, God knows - they were 100 feet underground, like, under concrete. And so that's where they're living. So it's really weird. And if there's - you know, if there's a war, which there very well may be, that's what the Israelis are going to go after, are these very, very fortified, very deep bunkers, you know, all across southern Lebanon and southern Beirut.
GROSS: I want to talk about another meeting you had while you were in the south of Lebanon. You met with a Hezbollah field commander at his house near the Israeli border. He also wanted to remain anonymous, so you call him Habib. And he said, the Iranians want us to escalate, so we are escalating. Is he supposed to acknowledge that he's doing Iran's bidding?
FILKINS: I don't know. That was very mysterious to me. I was surprised at how open he was about that. But I think he was a pretty senior guy. And he'd been to Iran several times, kind of knew the Iranians, said they were on the ground in Lebanon with them. You know, Hezbollah was created by Iran. They are funded by Iran. They couldn't exist without Iran. So it's basically - Hezbollah is basically, even though it's Lebanese, it's an extension of Iran all the way to the Israeli border. So I've always thought, like, the best way to imagine Hezbollah, it's like an aircraft carrier, like, parked on the Israeli border. I mean, that's what - an Iranian aircraft carrier.
And that's kind of - so the connection between Iran and Hezbollah is, like, super close, and it's super intense. And what I didn't realize until I talked to Habib was just how close it is. Like, he said - I think at one point he said to me, the Iranians control every bullet we have. And so just in the days that I was there, he said, look, these are very controlled and limited exchanges of missiles and kind of everybody understands that. But he said the Israelis have been kind of escalating a lot, and we've kind of, you know, responded. But he said, recently, the Iranians have been telling us to escalate. And so we've been escalating. And so it's like, they get a phone call from the Iranians, I mean, at some point, and they take it up.
And so it's like, he made it absolutely clear they're, like, lockstep. But not even just lockstep, but they take orders from the Iranian government. You know, Hezbollah is kind of a stand-in for the Iranians.
GROSS: So I don't know if you have an answer to this. But I'm curious, like, if you're one of the leaders of a militia like Hezbollah and you're taking your marching orders literally from another country, what does that do to your sense of pride about your militia, which is supposed to be representing your best interests?
FILKINS: Well, I think for Hezbollah, I think religion comes first. I think Shia Islam, Iranian Shia Islam, and in particular the Iranian Revolution, that's priority one. Like, they see the supreme leader in Iran as their kind of ultimate boss. He has, more or less, a direct line to the Almighty. And Lebanon comes second. But inside Lebanon, it's a real problem for them because, you know, Lebanese, particularly Lebanese Christians, but even Lebanese - you know, other Muslims who are not Shia, they look at Hezbollah and they're like, you guys are going to get us into a war. You're going to get the country destroyed.
And so, like, I was at a dinner party in Beirut. And somebody just kind of blurted out at the dinner, they said, you know, if the Israelis came in here and just, you know, knocked the heck out of Hezbollah, that wouldn't be such a bad thing. Like, half the country would cheer. And so there's this weird kind of tension inside Lebanon for just exactly the contradiction that you point out, which is they - Hezbollah kind of wears two T-shirts. You know, one is Iran and the other is Lebanon.
GROSS: Is there a comparison between Lebanese people who don't like Hezbollah and Gazans who don't like Hamas?
FILKINS: Yes. I mean, I think it's very similar. I think there's a lot of people in Lebanon who don't like Hezbollah and wish they didn't exist because they're - you know, among other things, they're dragging them into a potentially catastrophic war and they cause a lot of problems for them. But they're afraid. They're afraid to say. And I saw that everywhere. And, you know, many of the interviews I did with Lebanese, particularly those who were critical of Hezbollah, they said, look, I got to talk to you kind of off the record here. You know, it's too dangerous. And I think it's a very similar phenomenon in Gaza.
GROSS: Let me reintroduce you here. If you're just joining us, my guest is Dexter Filkins. His article in this week's New Yorker is titled "Will Hezbollah And Israel Go To War?" We'll be right back. This is FRESH AIR.
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GROSS: This is FRESH AIR. Let's get back to my interview with Dexter Filkins, a staff writer for The New Yorker. His new article is titled "Will Hezbollah And Israel Go To War?" It's based on his reporting trip earlier this summer to the south of Lebanon, which has largely been taken over by Hezbollah fighters. He also crossed over the border to Israel.
So getting back to your interview with the Hezbollah field commander, he told you that he's planning a very special operation for the Israelis. He didn't give details. You weren't sure if you should believe him. But what message do you think he was trying to send you, knowing that you're a reporter and would report on what he said?
FILKINS: I don't know. You know, it was hard to tell if he was boasting. I don't think he was. But he was - you know, we were just chatting. And so - you know, and I said, look, I mean - I said, you know, the Israelis have been, like, hammering you guys. And so he kind of said, well, you know, we've got a really special thing in the works for them, too. I think he was telling the truth. I'm just not sure what it was. I think the dream for these guys, because they're all just - really, they're zealots. They want to go. They're not afraid of war. They want war. I mean, they told me that. As fighters, they want to fight the Israelis.
I think the ultimate - the nightmare scenario on Israel's side but what Hezbollah would love to do is send guys across the border into Israel, like, on foot and do something like what we saw on October 7, do that on Israel's northern border. That's what they want to do. And, you know, Israel knows that, is on guard. Troops deployed all over the place. You know, can they do it? I don't know. But, you know, I'd say if, like - very special operation we have planned for the Israelis, and it's going to be a big, dramatic thing, and the whole world will notice, it'd be something like that.
GROSS: And what do you think that would mean?
FILKINS: I think that would be really - that would be very, very dramatic and important in Israel if something like that happened because, you know, Israel - and I spent some time in Israel for this piece. It's a different country now. And I think, you know, they're - this has been reported elsewhere. But the kind of sense of national self-confidence and kind of - and especially of security - like, we are safe in Israel, like, as Jews - that's really - that took a big hit on October 7. Like, the sort of national psyche was shaken very badly. And I think they can't let that happen again. I mean, I think that's the feeling, you know? It's like, there was this terrible breach of security on the border on October 7. You know, there were these terrible events. We can't let that happen again.
And so I think - again, I think this has forced the Israelis to kind of look at Hezbollah and look at Lebanon and say, like, we got to deal with this before something like that happens. But they're absolutely concerned and thinking about an October 7 on the northern border. And Hezbollah would love to do it.
GROSS: When Iran and Hamas and Hezbollah all say that they want to, you know, destroy or eliminate the state of Israel, what do they mean? Do they mean drive out Jews to someplace else and take it over for Islamists or for Arabs or for Sunni or Shia? Like, what is their vision? I know, you know, there's destruction, but what after?
FILKINS: That's a really, very good - it's the basic, central question, which is, what do they want and what do they think they can achieve? On paper, they're super clear. Hezbollah, Hamas -both of them - they're like, we want to destroy Israel. We will not rest until we do. I don't doubt their intentions.
But I spoke, for instance, to a very senior Western official who has met with Hezbollah, the Hezbollah leadership - met with Hassan Nasrallah, met with Naim Qassem. And he came away - you know, and this is not 30 years ago but recently. And he said, I think that Hezbollah knows very well that the destruction of Israel is completely impossible. He said, I think they know that. I think they've accepted that. And if that's true - and it may or may not be true - it kind of changes things because it's like, then there's a lot of bluff there. It doesn't mean they won't go to war. It doesn't mean the war wouldn't be catastrophic, but that Hezbollah has kind of much more realistic aims. It's just very, very hard because this is the sort of thing that they're not going to really speak to you honestly about. And so, when I met with the Hezbollah commanders, when I met with Naim Qassem, you know, they're very clear about what they want. They want to fight it out with the Israelis, and they want to push them into the sea. And so it's hard because it's just mixed up with a lot of bluster.
GROSS: So Israel could face a war on four fronts. What is that possibility? I mean, who would be fighting who?
FILKINS: Well, it's - you know, I think this dawned on me when I was there. Maybe it should have beforehand. But if you look at Israel on the map, they are surrounded by enemies who are getting stronger, with the exception of Hamas. So you have Hamas in Gaza in the south of Israel. And then to the north you have Hezbollah. And then you have all the Shiite militias in - and I'll explain that in a second. But you have the Shiite militias that have been armed by Iran in Syria and in Iraq. And then you have Iran itself. And then you have the Houthis in Yemen, who've been firing missiles at Israel for the last several months.
So Israel is really under siege, and they've been under siege since October 7. And it's not just Hamas. It's not just the war in the south. It's all around. And this is basically everything we're seeing. It's an Iranian creation. I think it's fair to say, like, all roads here lead to Tehran. But this was built and designed by the Iranian regime. And so that's what Israel's facing. And I think, you know, October 7 was a big wake-up call for them, not just with regard to Hamas, but all of this, you know, all of it.
And so, you know, how do you deal with a war on four fronts? And somebody - one of the diplomats I spoke to in the piece said, think about this for a second, this person said. He said, look, if on April 14, 15, when Iran fired the missiles at Israel - they fired 300 or so. He said, well, what if they'd fired 600 missiles? And what if Hezbollah had fired, you know, 3,000? What would happen then? And the answer is that the Israeli defenses would have been overwhelmed. The Iron Dome would have been overwhelmed. And, you know, both of those countries could do that for days on end, fire missile after missile after missile. And so that's what Israel is confronting now. They're confronting what amounts to an existential threat.
GROSS: Let me reintroduce you here. If you're just joining us, my guest is Dexter Filkins. His article in this week's New Yorker is titled "Will Hezbollah And Israel Go To War?" We'll be right back. This is FRESH AIR.
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GROSS: This is FRESH AIR. Let's get back to my interview with Dexter Filkins, a staff writer for The New Yorker. His new article is titled "Will Hezbollah And Israel Go To War?" It's based on his reporting trip earlier this summer to the south of Lebanon, which has largely been taken over by Hezbollah fighters. He also crossed over the border to Israel.
What do you think the difference would be between Kamala Harris as president and Donald Trump as president in terms of the position they'd take on Israel's conflict with Hamas and Hezbollah and what the U.S. role should be? I know you can't really predict that but if you have any impressions so far.
FILKINS: Well, you can't predict. But my impression would be the Israeli - the current Israeli government sees Trump as a blank check, much more leeway, don't have to deal with being criticized. You don't have to have the American diplomats saying, we want a cease-fire, we want a cease-fire, President Biden, we want a cease-fire. They wouldn't have to deal with that. That's what they see. What they see is, like, Trump comes in, it's like, we can do whatever we need, and he's going to, like, have our back.
And I think Harris would be more like, you know, potentially, I think, a greater impediment to what the current Israeli government would like to be able to do. And they would see Harris as potentially, like, being much more difficult to deal with certainly than Trump but even than Biden. Harris has been - at least as far as I can tell, she's been more critical of Israel, you know, kind of more demanding of a cease-fire, kind of more understanding of, I think, and more sensitive to the suffering of people in Gaza.
And exactly how that would translate into policy if she were present? It's a little hard to say. I mean, I think it would be pretty hard to cut off Israel in any meaningful way. You know, politically or practically, I think it'd be very difficult. But I think Harris has - I think she's definitely distinguished herself as being, I think, slightly different from Biden on that and kind of more critical of Israel. And the Israeli officials I spoke to are quite aware of that.
GROSS: Can you elaborate on how you think Kamala Harris, if she becomes president, would compare to how President Biden has handled the conflict?
FILKINS: Well, I think Biden has given the Israelis pretty much whatever they want in terms of weapons, in terms of support. Recently, he's pushed them - he's tried to push them to a cease-fire. You know, he hasn't pushed them that hard because, like, pushing hard would be he's going to cut off, you know, the flow of ammunition, bombs and weapons. And he hasn't really done that to any meaningful degree. But he's been largely and, I think, a very, very supportive ally.
GROSS: Do you see any, like, fairly direct connections between what's happening now in the Middle East with Israel, Hamas and Hezbollah and Iran to the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan that you covered?
FILKINS: Yes, definitely. The thing that links them is Iran. That was very difficult for me to see in Iraq. I mean, you know, it was covert, so it was hard - it was meant to be hard to see. It took me a long time to figure out just how deeply involved the Iranian regime was in killing Americans, and they were deeply involved. And they were basically involved in the killing of hundreds of American soldiers in Iran. There were Hezbollah guys in Iraq killing Americans. And it wasn't clear at the time, and it was just very, very difficult to figure out.
So Iran created Hezbollah. Iran was fighting the United States in Iraq. They're fighting Israel now. So Iran is really kind of the epicenter for this. It kind of - it's anti-Western. It's anti-American. It's anti-Israeli. And all of those things were kind of present, you know, back in 2006, 2007, when I was in Iraq. It was just a lot harder to see.
GROSS: Dexter Filkins, it's great to talk with you again. Thank you so much for your reporting and for coming back on our show.
FILKINS: Thank you so much.
GROSS: Dexter Filkins as a staff writer at The New Yorker. His new article is titled "Will Hezbollah And Israel Go To War?" If you'd like to catch up on FRESH AIR interviews you missed, check out our podcast. You'll find lots of interviews, including this week's with Anne Applebaum about the new kind of authoritarian regime and Jon M. Chu, who directed "Crazy Rich Asians" as well as the film adaptation of Lin-Manuel Miranda's musical "In The Heights" and is now directing a film adaptation of "Wicked."
One name in our closing credits will soon be missing because our producer Amy Salit is retiring. After 39 years of FRESH AIR deadlines, she's definitely earned the right to some freedom and to have time to travel, which she loves to do. Amy started on our show in 1985, back when it was a daily local radio program and had recently added a half-hour national edition. When we became a daily NPR program, Amy became the producer of our author interviews and, years later, started producing our news-related interviews, which she's been doing ever since.
Thirty-nine years is a long time to work with someone, and it's hard for me to imagine FRESH AIR without her. It's amazed me how she's on top of everything, including music. Keeping up with the news hasn't stood in the way of her going to clubs and music festivals, which has been so helpful in booking musicians. Our show - and me personally - owe her a lot. She's been so important in keeping the show timely and relevant. She's about to find out what it's like not to have to stay on top of everything that's happening around the world all the time. We're excited about her adventures yet to come. I'll miss you. We'll all miss you, Amy.
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GROSS: FRESH AIR's executive producer is Danny Miller. Our technical director and engineer is Audrey Bentham. Our interviews and reviews are produced and edited by Amy Salit, Phyllis Myers, Roberta Shorrock, Ann Marie Baldonado, Sam Briger, Lauren Krenzel, Heidi Saman, Therese Madden, Thea Chaloner and Joel Wolfram. Our digital media producer is Molly Seavy-Nesper. Susan Nyakundi directed today's show. Our co-host is Tonya Mosley. I'm Terry Gross.
(SOUNDBITE OF WARREN VACHE AND BRIAN LEMON'S "THERE WILL NEVER BE ANOTHER YOU") Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.
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