MARY LOUISE KELLY, HOST:
Just when you thought this month - January 2026 - had already delivered more than enough news to keep us awake at night, President Trump is ramping up war talk - again - on Iran. Make a nuclear deal or the next attack will be far worse, he wrote on social media, adding, time is running out. To which Iran replied that it will, quote, "defend itself and respond like never before." That last was in all caps, in a tweet from Iran's Mission to the United Nations.
How seriously should we take this saber-rattling, and what would be the end goal of U.S. military action against Iran? Questions I want to put to Sima Shine, who focused on Iran back when she ran research and analysis for the Mossad. That is Israel's espionage agency, the Israeli counterpart to the CIA. Today, she's here in Washington, so we invited her to stop by our studios. Sima Shine, good to see you.
SIMA SHINE: Good to see you and to be here.
KELLY: How seriously do you take these threats coming out of the White House that the U.S. is prepared to hit and hit hard? And I wonder, does the way you hear those words change after Venezuela and the fact that the U.S. did follow through on threats against a very different country, different part of the world?
SHINE: Yeah. Yeah, I think the president was encouraged by the success of Venezuela, and I think that the reason why we hear today also a lot of talking about taking out the supreme leader in Iran. Of course, this is - if it happens, it's a major, major development. The question is whether it will bring the result - one, of an agreement, two, of Iran surrending (ph) this way or the other on many issues, or will it start a prolonged war between Iran and the U.S., even though the forces you cannot compare? That is a huge question and a huge worry for different countries in the region.
KELLY: So I have a spy question for you, given your career at Mossad.
SHINE: Not as a spy (laughter).
KELLY: As an analyst.
SHINE: Yeah.
KELLY: Yes. How do we know what's happening in Iran? Even if the internet comes back, neither your country, Israel, nor mine, the United States, has diplomatic relations with Tehran. How do we know?
SHINE: So without knowing, I assume that both the CIA and the Mossad do have people inside Iran that will tell them, if they are not already telling them, in different ways. I think there is a capability of having, you know, different ways to understand what is happening on the ground. And I think there is an understanding of what is happening. Not everything, of course, but...
KELLY: You're talking about technical ways? Surveillance?
SHINE: Technical as well as human.
KELLY: So the impact of the digital blackout on the ability of the rest of the world's intelligence services to know what is happening inside Iran - do we know how great it is?
SHINE: We understand that all the time, the Iranians know how important it is to bring to the international community the information from inside. You cannot close 93 million people and make sure that nothing comes out. That's impossible. Things will come out more and more. And I think it will be only encouraging President Trump to come and do something.
KELLY: So it sounds like you're hoping that there are further developments in terms of military action from the U.S.?
SHINE: You know, it's interesting because I was always very moderate and was accused of being too soft, maybe. But I think we are today in a very different situation. And therefore I think I have a little bit changed my mind because I do think that this regime is not capable of doing anything different than it has been doing in the last decades, and even stronger than what they have done, because the feeling that they are less secure.
KELLY: So it will require some kind of external force or change to force change inside Iran?
SHINE: I think so.
KELLY: Last thing. The last time - in fact, the only other time I have seen you in person was in Tel Aviv. It was just days after the October 7 Hamas attack. We talked about, among other things, your granddaughters, and you were trying to explain what had happened in the war in Gaza, and you were trying to do it in a way that was honest but also not too scary because they were really little. How old are they now?
SHINE: Five and a half and 4, and now they understand. And every time they hear a motorcycle in the street, they ask, is it rockets?
KELLY: How do you explain what's happening to them now?
SHINE: (Laughter) We are saying that there are some bad people, and they are doing bad things, and we hope it will stop early and we are protected, and we are OK, and we are together. But it's not easy.
KELLY: Sima Shine, former senior Mossad official, now at Israel's Institute for National Security Studies. Good to see you. Thank you.
SHINE: Good to be here. Thank you. Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.
NPR transcripts are created on a rush deadline by an NPR contractor. This text may not be in its final form and may be updated or revised in the future. Accuracy and availability may vary. The authoritative record of NPR’s programming is the audio record.
