TranscriptAlex Kane: Hi, and welcome to On the Nose, the Jewish Currents Podcast. I’m Alex Kane, the Senior Reporter at Jewish Currents, and I’m back at the host desk today. Before we start the show, just a quick note. Jewish Currents’ themed issue on the state of Florida is hitting mailboxes soon. We’re offering a special deal for On the Nose listeners: Subscribe to the magazine using the code ONTHENOSE50—that’s ONTHENOSE50 in all caps—and get 50% off our normal subscription rate. You won’t regret getting our Florida issue, where we take a look at the past and present of the Sunshine State, from Ron DeSantis’ attacks on anti-racist education to the little-known history of the Jewish cell of the Cuban Revolutionary Party. And now, onto the show.
Since October 7, a regional war pitting Israel against Iran-backed forces has played out across the Middle East. The Yemeni Houthi faction has targeted ships in the Red Sea in response to Israel’s war on Gaza, prompting a wave of US and British airstrikes on Yemen. Iraqi militias have repeatedly fired rockets at US forces in their country, while Hezbollah and Israel have traded deadly fire. The relatively low-level regional war now threatens to turn into a far bloodier conflagration. Last week, Israel killed a senior Hezbollah commander in a Beirut suburb. The next day, Israel killed Hamas political leader Ismael Hania while he was in Iran. And just a note, as of today—I’m recording on the afternoon of August 5—Iran and Hezbollah have yet to retaliate, though that could very well have changed by the time this podcast is in your feed. I’m going to be discussing these alarming developments and what they portend for the future with Trita Parsi and Karim Makdisi. Trita is executive vice president of the Quincy Institute for Responsible Statecraft and the author of three books on US foreign policy in the Middle East. Karim is associate professor of international politics at the American University of Beirut and the director of its Public Policy and International Affairs Program. Karim and Trita, welcome to On the Nose.
Trita Parsi: Thank you.
Karim Makdisi: Thank you.
AK: Let’s start with Lebanon. Israel and Hezbollah have been firing at each other since October 8, the day after October 7, when Hezbollah fired rockets and artillery shells at Israeli military positions in the Sheba Farms. Obviously, since then, Israel and Hezbollah have been firing at each other. Israel’s military has killed over 500 people in Lebanon, including 90 civilians, while Hezbollah fighters have killed 22 Israeli soldiers and 24 civilians. What are Israel’s and Hezbollah’s respective strategies and interests in this low-level war?
KM: I think, from Lebanon, Hezbollah’s strategy is fairly obvious. I think the Israeli one, perhaps less so, but the Lebanese one is fairly obvious, insofar as it’s been declared, and they’ve been very consistent. So Hezbollah opened, as you said, on October 8, their southern front (the Israeli northern front) as a way, on the one hand, to express solidarity with Palestinians in Gaza and, more strategically or tactically, as a way to divert attention away from Gaza—what was going to be clearly a reaction to Gaza—and to engage Israeli systems and personnel and weaponry, etcetera, into their front, and to try to keep at least one of these fronts open. And then, another one opened in Yemen and in various parts in the region, as the Axis of Resistance increased as the Israelis increased their ferocity in Gaza. So Hezbollah has been very clear in this and has also been very adamant that this will not stop until the genocide in Gaza ends—until what the UN’s now calling a permanent ceasefire takes place in Gaza. So Hezbollah is quite clear that it needs to keep this front going to ensure that Hamas is not defeated in its totality—which is simply not going to happen anymore—and at the same time, to ensure that the strategic depth of the Axis of Resistance is maintained. This is the main issue that comes from Hezbollah.
I think the Israelis—and Trita might know more—but it seems to me that they’ve kind of gone up and down. But in the last few months, in any case, I think Netanyahu has been pushing very hard to try to draw in Hezbollah further and further, to try to draw Iran in further and further—we’ve seen this now, most dramatically, with these assassination attempts over the past few days—and to try to instigate a war, which, of course, would then, in turn, bring the Americans in, and much more forceful. So whatever reticence was taking place in DC and America now, 10 months into the genocide, 10 months into this futile war that even they want to try to stop and kind of get into a ceasefire, I think it’s fairly clear that Netanyahu returned from the US with that rather grotesque standing ovation in the US Congress. He came back quite emboldened and wants to draw Lebanon in, wants to draw Iran into a war in order to continue his war on Gaza, to escalate to war in the West Bank, and to try to get to Iran in the kind of way that they’ve been trying for at least two decades now.
TP: I have to say, I completely agree. l’Il just add a couple of points. I think it’s not been recognized as well as it should in Western media that what Hezbollah and some of the Iraqi militias and even the Houthis have done has been, very explicitly, about putting pressure on Israel to agree to a ceasefire. It’s also not been widely reported that the pressure from Hezbollah after the attack clearly has been designed to pressure Israel into a ceasefire rather than opening up a new front. If they wanted an actual war, then they could have done that right away after October 7 when Israel was in complete disarray. Israeli military officials have admitted publicly that had that taken place, Hezbollah (if this is what they’re designed to do) could have gone in quite deep into Israel because of the complete disarray that had occurred at the time. Clearly, that was not their objective. This is not what they did. What they did is that they upped the ongoing codified war between Israel and Hezbollah that has been going on for quite some time, in which they are, at a low scale, attacking each other. But there’s some rules of the game: how far, [how] deep they attack, etc. Those lines, of course, have been redrawn, but it’s not been a full-scale war.
TP: I think Karim is also right that when it comes to what Israel’s calculation at this point is, I think it’s very much leaned back into the direction it held earlier on, after October 7, in which this narrative was formed that it’s simply intolerable for Israel to live next to Hezbollah because of what Hamas did. Hamas managed to kill X amount of people (somewhere around 1,200) because of its October 7 attack, and Hamas is nothing compared to Hezbollah. So if Hamas could do this, just imagine what Hezbollah could do. And instead of waiting for that attack, this narrative in Israel said: Israel has to take action itself—at a minimum, push Hezbollah north of the Litani River. But I think what happened now, because there was a lot of resistance against this, primarily from the United States early on, I think what happened now is that Netanyahu came back from Washington—he saw that the deference that he had been receiving from the Biden administration, or Biden himself, was coming to an end, not because Biden has changed his mind but because he no longer would be president and that Kamala Harris would now have a greater say in Biden’s policies as well, and she clearly had a different disposition. I’m not saying that she’s going to change the policy dramatically, but based on what we saw in terms of rhetoric and tone, I think it’s quite clear that if you are Netanyahu, you’re worried that this could be the beginning of a shift that would be to his detriment. But you also saw the disarray that exists in Washington right now, including in the White House, and I think he took the opportunity to expand the war as much as he could.
Just one last data point. They assassinated the number two in Hezbollah in Beirut, and all of the buzz and all of the questions were: Will Hezbollah retaliate? How big will that retaliation be? But before even that happened, what does he do? He goes and he assassinates the number one political leader of Hamas in Tehran during Masoud Pezeshkian, the new Iranian president’s, inauguration. The proximity between these two attacks makes it very difficult to conclude that Netanyahu’s calculation was to not achieve escalation. The fact that he took out the number two, the political leader of Hamas, Haniyeh, in Tehran, so shortly after the attack in Beirut, seems to indicate that he was doing everything he could to get an escalation, and ideally, from his standpoint, an escalation that not only drags the United States into the war but also corners the US, particularly the next US president. The next US president, whether it’s Trump or Harris, will then enter into office with a major crisis already in place, in which the US is already dragged in. And as a result, whether it’s Harris or Trump, he or she will only be left reacting to the crisis that Netanyahu has created rather than being able to take a new initiative, have momentum on their side, as new presidents usually do.
AK: I want to talk about both the assassination of the Hezbollah commander, Fuad Shuk, and the killing of Haniyeh, but let’s take a step back to look at a couple of days even before that. There was this rocket strike on a soccer field in Majdal Shams in the Israeli-occupied Golan Heights. 12 children were killed. Israel immediately blamed Hezbollah. Hezbollah acknowledged launching rockets towards the Golan Heights but said they had nothing to do with the attack in Majdal Shams. What do we know about this strike, and why did that trigger an escalatory pattern that we’re now in the middle of?
KM: Hezbollah has totally denied this attack. And really, the more we think about it, you really have to stretch the imagination to try to understand why Hezbollah would attack Majdal Shams—which is not Israel, of course, it’s occupied Syria. It’s a Druze area, and all the people killed, and most of the village there, do not have Israeli citizenship. These are Syrians in Israeli-occupied Syrian territory. And as you know, the Druze population, there’s plenty in Syria and in Lebanon as well. So the idea that Hezbollah would hit and target an area that has this kind of community just really stretches any kind of—but if not, was it by mistake? Maybe. They deny it completely, and what they’ve called for is to say: Okay, let there be an independent investigation. I mean, all the satellites of the world, all the things: Let’s do an investigation. We’re telling you, it’s not us. We are sure it’s the Israelis who tried to intercept it, and then the intercepting missile just went wrong and came down in this way. Perhaps it’s this, perhaps it’s this, and perhaps it’s some third actor that has not yet been identified. Who knows? But we do not know. There’s been no evidence, there’s been no proof, and there’s been no independent verification by anybody about this, only accusations.
What’s interesting to note here is that the Israelis, and Netanyahu in particular, were able to take advantage of this very, very quickly, to try to seize the moral upper ground that happened just after this whole performance in the United States that Trita was talking about. This whole thing in Congress is getting the—what a lot of people here felt was: Okay, they got the green light from the US. Or Netanyahu felt that there was nobody in control, so he wanted to push the buttons and, knowing the Americans would follow him either way, it doesn’t really matter. He took action. He took advantage of this. You can be sure. The crocodile tears of worrying and crying over the kids that were tragically killed in Majdal Shams is total nonsense, considering that they’re responsible for the absolute murder of over 15,000 children in Gaza; dozens, even, in Lebanon and in many wars before this. So this idea that they’re worried about children is total nonsense. The idea that they have a self-defense right under international law is nonsense. It was clear. It’s very clear that they took advantage of this in order to do something that they wanted to do, which is to push and escalate in Lebanon, and escalate in Tehran and Iran, and try to get this response that Trita was talking about earlier. It’s fairly clear in terms of Netanyahu’s motive, in terms of the Israeli motive; it’s not clear in terms of what actually happened in Majdal Shams. Hezbollah has totally denied it, and there’s really no reason to think otherwise that Hezbollah should be behind it.
AK: The rocket strike in Majdal Shams was followed by the assassination of Fuad Shukr, a senior Hezbollah commander. This was an Israeli air strike on a Beirut suburb. Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah responded by saying that the strike crossed, quote, “a red line,” and that the conflict had entered a new phase. Why was this strike so different from the past months of constant airstrikes in Lebanon?
TP: Well, I mean, this is a very senior person in Hezbollah that had been targeted, and as I mentioned earlier on, there has been this type of unspoken (but actually codified) rules between Hezbollah and Israel. Where can you strike? Where can you not strike? What would be considered escalation? What would not? If Hezbollah had struck and managed to kill a very, very senior person from the IDF, rest assured Israel would have viewed that as an escalation of what is acceptable within the ongoing low-level war. So I don’t think it’s surprising. I think where it happened, in terms that it was in Beirut—this was also particularly after rumors were being spread that the United States was putting pressure on Israel to retaliate against the attack in occupied Golan but to do so in a way that would not actually hit population areas or Beirut itself. Incidentally, in terms of what Karim said that I agree with, I think we should take note of the fact that it was quite impressive to see how fast the Biden administration managed to conclude that this strike actually was committed by Hezbollah, mindful of the fact that months and months have taken place in which they have not managed to make any progress on almost any of the strikes against hospitals and other things in Gaza that Israel has been accused of committing. So the speed with which the Biden administration came to that conclusion certainly adds further questions as to whether it really was Hezbollah or not.
KM: Also, let me add as well, just one thing, if I can—which is that Hassan Nasrallah had made, and Hezbollah—Nasrallah, you know, personifying Hezbollah—had made this very famous speech a few years back. It gets repeated and is often on social media, always gets repeated, which is this claim after the 2006 War, which was a huge war here and ended in this Resolution 1701, but what happened, in effect, was it created a deterrence that Lebanon never had, that Hezbollah never had, and which kind of created this deterrence between the Israelis and Hezbollah in Lebanon and in South Lebanon, particularly.
What his speech was: As of then, any attacks that would take place in Beirut that killed civilians would be met by an equal response to Tel Aviv or one of the Israeli cities. He made clear, very clear: If you hit the Beirut airport, we’re going to hit Ben Gurion Airport. If you hit civilians in Beirut, we’re going to hit civilians in Tel Aviv (or in one of the cities). So this idea of saying the days pre-2006 where the Israelis, as always—you know, when I was a kid, it’s always been like this. Israelis come over, they bomb something, they hit something, they kill somebody, they invade, they occupy, whatever, and in effect, it’s very difficult for there to be any real response. Now those days are over, and there’s this kind of equivalency; and now, by doing this, the Israelis knew exactly what they were doing, which is hitting in Beirut, assassinating a top leader, but also killing eight civilians along with it and then taking down an entire building in a very densely-populated area. And I think around 80 or so were injured, including several quite critically injured.
And so it wasn’t just an assassination, which was of a very important person. It was also a big slap in the face to Hezbollah, to Nasrallah in particular, and a show of force to say: Okay, we’re going to go further than the red lines. We’re going to push, and what are you going to do about it? We have the US at our backs, and anyway, we’d love for you to attack, because then we’re going to have an excuse to escalate even further and have the US, again, behind us. So this is an important thing to note.
Just one other thing, what Trita was saying, which is interesting—he described it as a low-level war. I’m not sure it’s a low-level war, certainly not from here. It’s maybe— I know that scholars like [name] refers more to it as a medium-level war. It’s quite heavy. I mean, if you’re living in South Lebanon, it’s daily, it’s intense. The amount of bombings in the clearing of five to seven or so kilometers along the Lebanese border is really incredible. It’s all burnt and destroyed, and Israeli strikes and drone strikes are coming. I was in Beirut today, and there was the biggest—the planes that came through broke the sound barrier. So this is a very regular occurrence. And the kinds of attacks that are happening on both sides, I think, elevate it beyond the very, you know, a bit of this and a bit of that kind of thing. We’ve crossed that point of only low-level warfare, as far as I can see from here.
AK: As you mentioned, Trita, the day after the Israeli assassination of Shukr, Hamas’ top political leader, Ismail Haniyeh, was killed in the Tehran guest house where he was staying while in the country for the Iranian presidential inauguration. Iran’s Supreme Leader has vowed to retaliate. What do we know about this killing, and how big of a blow was this to Iran?
TP: This was deeply, deeply embarrassing to Tehran. The fact that a very high-level guest such as Haniyeh—I think it’s important to understand that in the region, Haniyeh is not seen the way he is seen, of course, in the United States. This is a person—and you know, Hamas itself has really risen in the amount of respect that it’s getting, mainly because of what Israel has done. But nevertheless, for Tehran, this is deeply embarrassing. Israel sent a signal that anyone who’s opposed to Israel, Israel can kill. Even in Tehran. Tehran’s protection and support will not protect you. And in some ways, I think it is more likely that the Iranians would retaliate against this—because he was a guest—than had it been an Iranian official that had been assassinated in Tehran.
Now, exactly how this was done, there’s some conflicting reports on. There is a narrative that has been published in The New York Times, which seems to be mostly based on Israeli sources, that says this was a bomb. It was placed in the specific room already two months ago. This is then questioned by a narrative that is coming out of both Iran and other places, which argues that actually, this was some sort of a projectile. It wasn’t a ballistic missile. This was something that was shot from some form of a drone into that building—which still is deeply, deeply embarrassing, of course, for Iran, and in some ways, frankly, more so than the idea of a ballistic missile. And there are other data points that seem to put some question marks as to whether this was a placed bomb, because The New York Times story essentially relies on the idea that this is a specific room that Haniyeh traveled to regularly. This has been questioned, however, both by Hamas and Tehran, who say that actually, this is not the usual place that Haniyeh goes to, and this time around, he was in a room that is different from rooms that he’s been at before. So the idea that the Israelis had planted this two months ago—unless, of course, Israel had planted tons of bombs in tons of different apartments in this very difficult place to penetrate and was just waiting for Haniyeh to show up in the right room—it’s a bit unconvincing.
Moreover, I think we should also keep in mind the Israelis could have taken out Haniyeh on almost any occasion while he was in Doha. They chose specifically to do so when he was in Tehran. The idea that they would have gone to great lengths to place a bomb there, in a specific room, in the hope that he would show up in that room, whereas actually, it’s much easier for them to take him out in Doha, again, I find somewhat unconvincing. One potential explanation for this narrative that has been published in The New York Times is, beyond the fact that arguably it’s even more embarrassing to Iran—because if it’s a bomb, it really tells you of how deeply the Israelis have penetrated Iran, including Iran’s security apparatus, which I personally have to say, is not necessarily a surprise. I mean, they took out the number one person of the Iranian nuclear program, so the idea that this was necessarily way beyond what Israel has managed to do inside of Iran, I’m not convinced of. I think it may have more to do with the fact that, if this is presented as a bomb and an assassination through a bomb, it makes any Iranian response through ballistic missiles, etc, come across as highly disproportionate, which then justifies the Israelis to undertake an even more aggressive retaliation, because the Iranian response was so disproportionate. So I do wonder if this is a deliberate narrative that was pushed out in order to justify a future Israeli escalation after the Iranians have responded.
AK: Trita, I spoke to you for an explainer that I published at Jewish Currents a number of months ago, and you and others had said that Iran is not interested in a regional war; and it seems like Iran has tried to walk this line between maintaining credibility and their interests by showing support for their ally Hamas while not going far enough to provoke a war with far more powerful foes like the US and Israel. Do you think this is still Iran’s calculus, or has it changed with these killings?
TP: I think, by and large, this is still Iran’s calculus, in the sense that they are talking about restoring deterrence. They’re talking about making sure that an insult like this is responded to. They’re not talking about dragging it into a larger war. They are, on the other hand, saying things that they didn’t say before, which is: They are going to respond; if Israel then so chooses to turn this into a larger war, then so be it. I think that’s a bit of bravado, but I think we should also recognize another thing. The Iranians have also kind of trapped themselves in a bit of an escalatory cycle here. See, they took a lot of hits—a lot of hits—before the April 1 attack against the consular section of their embassy, and that was the first time that they decided to really respond. And then they made a big idea out of the fact that they had restored deterrence. And then three months later, or four months later, Israel clearly shows that deterrence had not been restored. So this then puts the Iranians in a corner in which it’s going to be far more difficult, now than before, not to respond to this. Had they never responded in this way to the attack against their embassy in Damascus in April, the same pressure would not be on them right now—that they have to respond even more aggressively to this attack. That’s not necessarily an argument that had they not responded, everything would be fine, and Israel wouldn’t have done this. In fact, the Iranians believe that had they not responded, Israel would just have kept on attacking, and even more aggressively so. And I think there’s some truth in that, but I think it’s also fair to say that, precisely because they responded before, they’re actually under more pressure now to respond again.
AK: I’m curious what you both think about why Israel carried out these killings at this moment. Israel has a clear reason for why they killed Shukr, which is this was their response to the Majdal Shams strike, which we talked about. But the Haniyeh strike— obviously, there are more questions around that. I think there was some reporting in Axios that Biden was very upset about it because of the way it might impact ceasefire negotiations in Gaza. Do you have any thoughts as to why Israel carried out the Haniyeh strike in particular at this moment?
KM: The way it appears to us is that he—Netanyahu, and those around him—clearly don’t want the deal. They don’t want the ceasefire. They’ve been very explicit about that. They’ve been blocking all attempts at a ceasefire, not just recently, but for many, many months, and this was a way to literally kill the deal, by killing the guy who was the main negotiator in Hamas. So the way in which this operation was carried out meant that Netanyahu clearly thought that he could not only end this ceasefire but then perhaps even convince Americans, to draw them in, to say: Look, I can still win this. I can still defeat Hamas. I can still carry this out. Look, the public opinion globally is no longer interested in Gaza. They’re not really paying attention anymore to the genocide. We’re going to pick these people off one by one. We’re going to increase the pressure. And we don’t need to be seen as—it will be a defeat in Gaza.
Any kind of ceasefire now could be interpreted, in some places, as a defeat by the Israelis. I mean, Israel has performed abysmally in Gaza. Ten months fighting against Hamas. It’s very clear that any time ground forces go into Gaza, they’re being defeated. The Israelis have taken heavy casualties, much more than they’re declaring, and after 10 months, they’re still fighting in northern Gaza, let alone in other parts. So they’ve been very, very effective, very successful in the genocide part of the attack in Gaza, in rendering Gaza uninhabitable to people—to land, to water, to the infrastructure, they’ve absolutely annihilated the place and destroyed it. They’ve been very successful at that; but they’ve been very ineffective in their actual declared objective, which is to defeat Hamas totally and retrieve their hostages without any kind of negotiation. That’s obviously not happening.
So if you’re Netanyahu, what do you do? You try to torpedo this, and try to buy yourself time, and go on the offensive to draw these other forces like Hezbollah and Iran in, which, in turn, brings America in. And then, as far as the world will be concerned, nobody will even pay attention to what’s going on in Gaza. So the way I see it, and what many people see, is that Israel, militarily, was humiliated in Gaza. They will not be able to sustain a double war in Palestine and in Lebanon, let alone if something’s also coming from Iran, and Yemen, and other places. And so he’s trying to provoke as much as possible in order to keep pushing this further down the line in the hope that he might gain something, and to try to not only draw the Americans in but to try to get his own constituents to support him further and further. If there’s a war, more people will rally around him. Presumably,
TP: We have to also recognize that Netanyahu is facing some very, very severe political crises at home, and if the war ends, his political career ends. His coalition falls apart, and he’s going to be faced with the continuation of these corruption charges and, very likely, a prison sentence. Again, I think it goes back to what he realized was happening in Washington when he came here. He saw that there would be, under Kamala Harris, not the same deference. More pressure on him to actually end the war in Gaza and come to a ceasefire. And this would happen before the elections because this is important for Harris’s ability to win the elections; by escalating and killing the negotiator on the other side of the table, starting a new war, he will essentially be able to turn the tables on the Biden-Harris administration and corner Kamala Harris, I think. And this is not just speculative. I mean, see what the former deputy head of the Israeli National Security Council, Eran Etzion, is saying publicly on Twitter. He’s calling Netanyahu out, accusing him of driving Israel towards a second Holocaust, says that he has no mandate to create a regional war that would suck in the US. So it’s a bit odd to me how open the debate is in Israel about Netanyahu’s personal motivations behind this, and how little of that is trickling into the American media.
AK: I wanted to get into both of your assessments of the Biden administration’s response. Right now, the Biden administration has deployed more warships and fighter jets and also is saying that they want to continue working on a ceasefire in Gaza, which is obviously connected to Iran and Lebanon. Because if there’s a ceasefire in Gaza, the potential for regional war becomes much less or even zero. What is your assessment of how the administration is handling this dangerous moment?
TP: This has been absolutely abysmal from the very beginning. Biden gave up almost all of the leverage that he could have used in the beginning by doing this bear hug. He essentially expressed complete support for Netanyahu, even before knowing what the strategy would be, and then has gone out of his way—further than any previous American president—to protect Netanyahu and Israel despite the fact that it’s been crystal clear to them that Netanyahu has been lying to them, that Netanyahu has an interest in prolonging the war, not bringing the hostages home, not coming to a ceasefire. And yet, they have protected him, they have supported him, they have armed him.
There is this debate here in Washington as to whether the US has leverage over Israel or not. I find it to be an insulting debate. If the United States was not providing bombs to Netanyahu, Netanyahu would not be able to drop those bombs on civilians in Gaza. The United States has tremendous leverage. The question is if it has a president who has the backbone to use the leverage, and he clearly does not. When the history of this is written 10 or so years from now, I think the assessment of the Biden administration’s conduct is going to be extremely harsh. Because the damage this has done—not just to the people of Palestine and Gaza and in the West Bank as well, but also to the United States itself—its global standing, its ability to have any moral high ground on any issue going forward—the damage done to the United States in the Global South, I think, is really not measurable at this point. The United States is more isolated at the UN on Gaza than Russia was on Ukraine. That’s quite a distance to fall for the United States.
And this was done under a president who campaigned on the slogan, “America is back.” You know, our leadership is back, and this is what he did with it. And for what? What are the US national interests that justify this degree of deference, this degree of support for what really is a genocide? There is absolutely nothing. And once the tough questions are starting to be asked by the US media—which rarely happens when it should be asked—but later on, once those questions are asked, I think we’re going to see a very, very uncomfortable and ugly picture of what the administration did.
KM: I agree totally. In fact, Trita used the word abysmal. I think he’s being very generous. From here, it’s very clear for most people in this region—and for a lot of people across the world—that the United States (and Biden specifically, in person) is complicit in the genocide. Trita said, absolutely, without US weapons, the Israelis would have had to agree to a ceasefire months ago; many tens of thousands of people in Gaza would have been spared. Many tens of thousands of children, babies, would have been spared. And there could have been some kind of agreement and some way out of this.
Now, that’s too late. So the United States, and Biden in particular, and Anthony Blinken and the core group that’s involved in this administration, are considered to be complicit in genocide. He will be judged terribly in history; he will be responsible for bringing an incredible amount of Islamophobia, of anti-Palestinian, anti-Arab sentiment. We saw in the encampments across US universities how this was dealt with, and I think it’s a very grave time. The US standing in the region certainly is as low as it’s ever been, and as low as it was, for example, during the Iraq War in 2003 under George Bush Jr. So the US has been—under Obama and others, it went up a little bit, and now it’s as low as it’s ever been. I don’t think the US can recover, frankly, in the region, after what they did with this overwhelming support in Gaza, which is viewed by every single person in this region and understood.
And it’s not even that it needs to be understood. Biden says it over and over: that Arab lives, Palestinian lives, Gazan babies, simply do not count. I would love to hear from Trita how he thinks and how people in DC can possibly think—what is US interest now? Separating from the whole discussion of AIPAC and this very obvious pressure that’s coming through AIPAC and through the pro-Zionist lobby groups—what is the US interest in this? Surely it can’t be this. It boggles the mind, and I’d love to hear it.
TP: It boggles my mind as well. I’m very happy you asked that, Karim, precisely because there’s such an unclear discussion about what US interest actually is in the Middle East. When it even happens, it usually even doesn’t—it just goes on autopilot. Take a look at almost all of the reports produced by mainstream think tanks in Washington, DC on the Middle East. To the extent that they even define US interests—which most of the time they do not, but when they do, it’s a very long list, and at the end of it, there is the interest of standing by our allies. It’s like a catch-all variable because it essentially means whatever the interest of our allies or partners are, it’s also our interest. So suddenly everything is an American interest, and with that type of an approach, it means that the United States sees as its interests (explicitly or implicitly) to be involved on the side of its allies, on whatever wars they’re in, or that they themselves start. And this is part of the reason why the United States is so embroiled in so many different conflicts in the region; why it’s never—at least in the last couple of decades—a peacemaker in the region but always a belligerent, because it immediately goes in and takes sides.
Take a look at what happened in Yemen. The US itself was actually bombing al Qaeda and viewed the Houthis as the strongest force inside of Yemen against al Qaeda. And then suddenly, the Saudis go on attack, and now the US is at war with the Houthis. What was the US interest in this? Completely unclear. But what was clear to folks was that we had to be on the side of a US partner. This is part of the reason why we at the Quincy Institute advocate for restraint; because it calls for a much more narrow definition of what US interest is in the Middle East and other regions, precisely because narrow interest-based foreign policy also dramatically reduces the amount of times that the United States actually would use force. It would not mean that the US is isolationist and withdraws from the rest of the region, but it would mean that the bar for actually being involved in wars, or even conducting war, would be dramatically higher than it is when we define our interest to be the extension of the interest of partners—and in some cases, countries that are not even treaty allies but we’re, in Washington, nevertheless treating them as if they are treaty allies.
KM: It’s difficult to try to understand US interest, but actually, it’s not difficult for me. It’s not difficult at all to understand American interest. It’s American interest is not to have a war in the region. American interest is to keep stability in the region, to keep as much of the region going as possible within its own hegemony. What it’s doing now, in throwing all its weight behind Israel, is to lower its standing, is to get all the main players to try to look elsewhere as much as possible. And it also shows great weakness. So it’s interesting. That’s why it’s interesting now to hear what Trita is trying to say, what he’s getting in terms of being in DC, which is a whole other kind of world there.
AK: What do you think needs to happen right now so that this moment does not turn into an even more bloody and awful escalation of violence or full-blown regional war? What do you think needs to happen, and do you think what needs to happen will happen, given the players and interests at hand here?
TP: I think for the last 10 months, the slaughter in Gaza was what was driving these other conflicts. I fear that with what Netanyahu did with the latest assassination, we at least may temporarily be beyond that. Meaning that, even if there’s a ceasefire tomorrow in Gaza, it’s not clear to me whether the Iranians would refrain from retaliating, but I think it’s worth, nevertheless, exploring that.
So when it comes to what I think needs to happen—first of all, let me say this: To get the Iranians and others to show restraint, it is absolutely necessary for the United States to restrain Israel. Because from their standpoint, when they see that the US is doing next to nothing to restrain Israel, it leaves them with the calculation that unless they respond, retaliate, and raise the cost for the Israelis to conduct these types of attacks, Israel will continue to do so. Now, if the US was restraining Israel, their calculation could also change, and they would realize that there may be other pathways to avoid further attacks from Israel, short of them retaliating and inflicting a cost on Israel. But we’ve hardly seen that. We saw it only temporarily during—I think the Biden administration deserves some credit for making sure that after the Iranians retaliated against Israel in April, the Israeli response after that was very, very limited, and I think it’s because, at that point, Biden actually did use some of his leverage. So I think first of all, it’s very important for the calculations on the other side to see that the US is actually willing to use its leverage to restrain Israel.
If I was in the White House right now, I would explore the opportunity to see: If the US forces a ceasefire on Israel, could the Iranians refrain from attacking? And that would not be that the US will have another behind-the-scenes, mythological conversation with Netanyahu, in which, apparently, he uses some harsh words. No. It would mean that the United States would do exactly what the UK did today: Stop sending more weapons to Israel. If the Biden administration completely halted arms sales as a way of forcing Israel into a ceasefire, it may not happen right away, but within a couple of days, the Israelis simply would not be able to continue it. And test and see if that actually would lead to the Iranians refraining from retaliating. I think it’s worth exploring.
But if we’re past that point, and there’s going to be a response anyway, then I think the other thing that is absolutely crucial here is to make sure that the United States does help make sure that the damage from these attacks is minimized, but then puts complete pressure on the Israelis not to retaliate for it in order to avoid this war. At the end of the day, Netanyahu triggered this with a very provocative and deliberate assassination, and the rest of the region and the United States should not have to pay the price for this. Apparently, Biden told Netanyahu in the last conversation on Thursday of last week that “We’ll help defend you, but we will not defend you further if you do this again.” Well, that’s exactly what he said back in April. And guess what? Netanyahu did it again. So if he wants to be taken seriously this time around, then he has to make very clear he will cut off arms sales to Israel. Otherwise, these types of threats and warnings carry absolutely zero weight with Netanyahu.
KM: Yeah, I totally agree, except that I think we’re way past—I don’t think anybody takes these leaks that Biden is upset, and Biden hit the wrist of Netanyahu. I think all that stuff, nobody—certainly nobody I know, certainly not in this region—takes that seriously at all. These are all just leaks to make the administration maybe feel a little bit better. I don’t know, but it’s nonsense. The Biden administration is 100% behind the Israelis, and Netanyahu now has taken the lead. He’s feeling empowered, and the Americans are trying to scramble behind them and, perhaps, try to do something.
I think Trita is 100% right. The key to this is you need a ceasefire in Gaza. We began this conversation by saying that Lebanon, the October 8 war, what happened later in Yemen, with the Houthis, the Iraqis, even in Iran, all have been very consistent, very clear. Ceasefire in Gaza and all of this stuff stops overnight. It has been clear from October 8, literally. It’s the same thing; it has been very, very clear. The Israelis have provoked and pushed, and they know that they had the United States behind them. Trita is absolutely right; for the Israelis and for Netanyahu in particular, to change his calculation, he has to have some kind of serious idea that the US will tell him “No” at some point. And that’s extremely important, and I’m glad Trita is saying that.
I just don’t see why, 10 months later, that’s going to happen. In an election year, in an election season, where Netanyahu has years and years of basically spitting in all sorts of politicians’ faces, even after they give him everything he wants. Here in Lebanon, people are getting ready. They know 100% there’s going to be a response by Hezbollah. I don’t know about Iran. My suspicion is it’s going to be a coordinated attack. Certainly, there’ll be a response from Lebanon, from Hezbollah. There has to. There has to be a return to deterrence of some kind. So there will 100% be a response, and it will not be just a purely symbolic one. It’s most likely to be some kind of—not a full-scale war, obviously, but something that’s beyond a symbolic attack.
Then the question is: Will the US be able to restrain the Israelis from then hitting back again and to get into that further escalation? This is key. It is in Biden’s hands. It is in the Biden administration’s hands, but they seem to be totally absent or complicit. So I’m quite pessimistic about this. Perhaps, domestically, the Israelis—you know, you can see there’s major schisms in the Israeli decision-making apparatus, within the Israeli army, within various parts. Maybe there’s restraints that will come from there. Maybe there are people there that will be clear that going into regional war is not in Israeli interest. Forget everything else; it won’t be in Israeli interest. Perhaps there’ll be some kind of restraint there. So it has to come either from within the Israelis or from the Americans. I don’t see it coming from the United States, but there will definitely be a substantive reaction coming from Lebanon. People are expecting it even tonight, and it’s a lot of concern. There’s a lot of worry. People are getting supplies. They’re scrambling, hoping that the next few days will pass relatively okay.
AK: Karim, I hope that you and your family are safe.
AK: And that’s our show. Thank you to Trita and Karim for joining us. If you like this show, share it with your friends and rate us on all your podcast apps. And just one more reminder before you go: Use the code ONTHENOSE50 in all caps to get 50% off your subscription to the magazine so you can get our Florida issue in your mailbox. We’ll see you next time.
