Escalation: Middle East war widens

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0:40Rosie Blau:Grainger, for the ones who get it done.

0:50Rosie Blau:The Economist

0:57Rosie Blau:Hello and welcome to The Intelligence from The Economist. I'm your host, Rosie Bloor. Every weekday, we provide a fresh perspective on the events shaping your world.

1:11Rosie Blau:Among the many striking aspects of America's assault on Iran was that it involved the use of AI. Tricky thing is, the Trump administration is having a big spat with exactly the company whose software it relied on, our correspondent explains.

1:30Rosie Blau:And as they used to say, now for something completely different. 30 years ago, a game released on Nintendo featured a strange set of pocket monsters that spawned what is now the world's highest-grossing media franchise. Happy birthday to Pokémon.

1:49Rosie Blau:First up, though.

2:01Rosie Blau:This morning, Israel launched further strikes on Tehran and on Beirut, preparing for a ground offensive in Lebanon. Israeli bombs had already killed dozens of people in Beirut yesterday in response to attacks by Hezbollah, an Iranian proxy, on targets in northern Israel. The war started by America and Israel is now entering its fourth day. Iran has directed missiles not just at US bases, but also at cities, airports and energy infrastructure across the Middle East, and most recently the American embassy in Saudi Arabia. War is rapidly engulfing the region. I hear the people are saying, you're going to have an endless war here.

2:48Rosie Blau:You're not going to have an endless war. Israel's Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu told Fox News that there's still much he wants to achieve. I said it could be quick and decisive. It may take some time, but it's not going to take years. It's an effort right now to achieve the peace that we all yearn and pray for. And I think together we'll achieve it. For the moment, the question is not when the war will end, but how far each side could escalate.

3:17Anshel Pfeffer:The situation in Israel now is that for the last three days, there have been first Iranian missiles and now also Hezbollah missile drones being fired at Israel.

3:30Rosie Blau:Anshul Pfeffer, our Israel correspondent, is in Jerusalem this morning.

3:34Anshel Pfeffer:There isn't yet official data, but I'm assessing it around 200 plus. There's been, from what we've seen, four direct hits on residential or built-up areas, and 11 civilians have been killed. So over the last, let's say, 24 to 36 hours, the rate of Iranian missiles has lessened to quite a significant degree. From the polls, we know that this is more that the overwhelming majority of Israeli public support. But on the street, I'm detecting a feeling of war weariness and almost boredom with this after over two years of almost constant warfare.

4:16Rosie Blau:And Shul, how do you think Netanyahu will think this war is going?

4:21Anshel Pfeffer:Well, from Netanyahu's perspective, this war is going extremely well so far. They've achieved, on the very first strike, almost total decapitation of the Iranian leadership, starting from the Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei and downwards. Certainly the success of Israel's intelligence services in pinpointing the location and the timing of the meetings of Supreme Leader Khamenei and other senior Iranian figures alongside the American intelligence will be something that Israel and the Israeli leadership are very pleased with. and perhaps what's most important from Netanyahu's perspective, it's very clear that he's working in full partnership with Donald Trump.

5:03Anshel Pfeffer:Israeli and the American militaries and intelligence communities are working very closely together. That's the kind of image that Netanyahu has always been very eager to project that he is Trump's number one partner in the world.

5:18Rosie Blau:What is Israel's strategy from here onwards?

5:22Anshel Pfeffer:So the officials I've been talking to, both on the record and off the record, are no longer hiding the fact that regime change is what Israel wants to happen. They're not quite saying we're going to make it happen. The official line, and I think also the unofficial line is still that this is something that only the Iranian people can ultimately achieve. we are now providing the Iranian people with the means to do it. And one type of target that the Israeli warplanes have been attacking over the last 24 hours or so are what they call targets which are connected to suppression. In other words, headquarters and offices of the besieged militia which were involved in the bloody suppression of the protests back in January.

6:04Anshel Pfeffer:So there's both a physical attempt and also a message here to say we are trying to remove the forces which prevented the Iranian people from rising up. But now they have to do that.

6:17Rosie Blau:And so you've spoken about a full partnership between Israel and the US. Something that came up yesterday when we spoke on the show to Shashank, our defense editor, was that yes, US and Israel had gone in together, but there could be a rift ultimately about their goals. What do you think of that?

6:36Anshel Pfeffer:Well, I certainly think that there is a point where the interests of Netanyahu and the interests of Israel are not always the same thing. And those of Trump and of America may start to diversion. I think it'll be around not so much what's happening between Israel and Iran in this war, but around what's happening between Iran and countries in the Gulf, the effect on their economy, which is not so much Israel's concern. But I think America is more concerned about how that could have a ripple effect on global economy and, of course, energy prices. and the question is how long will Donald Trump want to continue?

7:12Anshel Pfeffer:They think that he probably has less tolerance for a more drawn-out war than the Tenghau is and I think Israel has more of an interest in eliminating certainly the Iranian ballistic missile threat totally whereas probably Donald Trump is less concerned about that because it's not exactly targeting the United States.

7:33Rosie Blau:And yesterday we saw Hezbollah, which of course is an Iranian proxy, get involved with attacks from Lebanese territory. That was then followed up by retaliation from Israel and what now looks like a ground invasion. Was Hezbollah's involvement in this war inevitable, do you think?

7:50Anshel Pfeffer:I think it was inevitable because ultimately Hezbollah, it's a Lebanese movement, but it's also Iran's number one proxy in the region. It's a movement which was founded partly by Iran back in 1982 and funded and directed by Iran for most of the period ever since. It was also the apple of Khamenei's eye, the supreme leader, now the late supreme leader of Iran, saw Hezbollah very much as an extension of Iranian power and influence in the region and insisted on funding Hezbollah even when Iran's economy was in free fall. So they have an obligation to join in now, a religious obligation, a moral obligation.

8:33Anshel Pfeffer:But at the same time, it's a very bad idea for them to be involved because it's the most unpopular thing they can do now in Lebanon. And it invites Israeli retaliation against Lebanon. We're already seeing the Lebanese government announcing that Hezbollah has military operations and from now on illegitimate. I'm not quite sure what the Lebanese government can do about that, but it still shows how Hezbollah is now running afoul of its own country, of its own population. Another reason why Hezbollah would be reluctant to join in is that they were very severely weakened back in the war in the end of 2024.

9:12Anshel Pfeffer:And for them, they would have hoped this would be a period in which they could rebuild their force rather than being engaged in yet another damaging war with Israel, but they don't seem to have had much choice. The Iranians have forced them to join in.

9:25Rosie Blau:And how well prepared is Israel for a wider regional war?

9:30Anshel Pfeffer:Well, it's been fighting in many ways a wider war since the day after October 7, when Hezbollah joined in then with the sort of constant stream of rocket and drone attacks on Israel. And it's been fighting the Houthis from Yemen. So, you know, this has been a wider regional war from Israel's perspective, a multi-front war almost since October 7, nearly two and a half years ago. The Israeli military, the Israeli intelligence community are pretty prepared for that. And the same thing, I think, for the Israeli public, sometimes when there's a missile, people say, hold on, is this from Gaza? Is this from Lebanon?

10:05Anshel Pfeffer:Is this from Iran? Is this from Syria? Is this from Yemen? It's the constant threat or fire from all directions, and people are used to it and are almost blase about it in some ways. So I think what's different about this round is the involvement of the Gulf states. And we may see two outcomes. One outcome may be that they are very insistent on keeping their bubbles of prosperity and peace and will therefore be pushing very strongly on Trump to try and end this as soon as possible. there is another dynamic that we may see is that they will think well this is what iran is capable of doing and therefore we need to make sure that they don't do it again and if that is the consensus then we may see them joining in this war perhaps not actually sending their own warplanes but being supportive of israel and the u.s in finishing the job in iran and that's i think what we need to look Act in the next few days.

11:06Rosie Blau:Anshul, thank you very much.

11:08Anshel Pfeffer:Thank you for having me, Rosie.

11:12Rosie Blau:And you can hear more from our colleagues on Iran on a special edition of The Insider, our new video offering, which went out last night. Deputy Editor of The Economist, Edward Carr, was joined by a panel of our experts to analyse how the war could unfold. You can find it on economist.com and a link is in the show notes.

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12:43Rosie Blau:Grainger, for the ones who get it done.

13:00Rosie Blau:Artificial intelligence is crucial to the Pentagon's war machine. Over the weekend, America used AI in its strikes against Iran. According to reports by The Wall Street Journal and Axios, the assault involved Claude, which is a powerful AI model run by Anthropic, a giant of Silicon Valley. Yet just hours before the attacks on Iran, Donald Trump ordered federal agencies to stop using the tool, labelling Anthropic a radical left AI company, which was, he said, run by people who have no idea what the real world is all about. All of that raises fundamental questions about the role of AI in conflict.

13:40Rosie Blau:just as a war itself appears to be heating up.

13:44Moeka Iida:For many weeks now, the Pentagon has been locked in a high-stakes standoff with Anthropic, which is one of the world's leading AI companies.

13:53Rosie Blau:Henry Trix is our US technology editor.

13:56Moeka Iida:The crux of the issue is the fact that the Department of War has a contract with Anthropic to use its powerful, clawed family of AI models for military purposes. Anthropik was one of the first AI labs to work with the DOW. It signed a contract last year, but it has clear red lines when it comes to using its models for national security, and these have become more of an issue. And this resulted in a very public showdown between Anthropik's boss, Dario Amadei, and the Secretary of War, Pete Hegseth, last week, which brought in President Donald Trump as well, all guns blazing against Anthropic.

14:43Rosie Blau:So if Anthropic had agreed to work with the Pentagon, then where did this spat kick off from?

14:49Moeka Iida:It came about because Anthropic has a hard line on Claude not being used for mass domestic surveillance or for fully autonomous weapons systems. Hegseth, for his part, argued that AI companies who are working with the Pentagon should give them carte blanche to do whatever they wanted with the technology as long as it was within the bounds of the law. And he issued an ultimatum, which was basically agree to my terms or else. Things kicked off when it became clear that Amadei was not going to accept. And Donald Trump and Hegseth responded with a sort of blistering assault on Anthropic at the end of last week, in which not only was the DOW cancelling its contracts with Anthropic, but it was also going to designate it a supply chain risk.