Breaking Points with Krystal and Saagar - 1/16/25: Trump Steamrolls Bibi, Netanyahu Sabotages Gaza Deal

Episode Date: January 16, 2025

Krystal and Saagar discuss Trump steamrolls Bibi, Netanyahu sabotages ceasefire deal. Shaiel: https://x.com/academic_la/status/1879791678191738980?ref_src=twsrc%5Egoogle%7Ctwcamp%5Eserp%7Ctwgr%5Etweet  Faiz Shakir: https://x.com/fshakir?ref_src=twsrc%5Egoogle%7Ctwcamp%5Eserp%7Ctwgr%5Eauthor  Trita Parsi: https://x.com/tparsi?ref_src=twsrc%5Egoogle%7Ctwcamp%5Eserp%7Ctwgr%5Eauthor   To become a Breaking Points Premium Member and watch/listen to the show AD FREE, uncut and 1 hour early visit: www.breakingpoints.com   Merch Store: https://shop.breakingpoints.com/See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Hey guys, Sagar and Crystal here. Independent media just played a truly massive role in this election, and we are so excited about what that means for the future of this show. This is the only place where you can find honest perspectives from the left and the right that simply does not exist anywhere else. So if that is something that's important to you, please go to BreakingPoints.com, become a member today, and you'll get access to our full shows, unedited, ad-free, and all put together for you every morning in your

inbox. We need your help to build the future of independent news media, and we hope to see you at BreakingPoints.com. Good morning, everybody. Happy Thursday. Have an amazing show for everybody today. Packed show. What do we have, Crystal? Yes, we do. We got a bunch of guests and we got a lot of big news. So we're going to start the show with a full breakdown of the Gaza ceasefire deal, how it came to be, the different phases, some of the remaining question marks. We've got two different guests to give us analysis on that, Dr. Trita Parsi and Shia Laban Ephraim. We've had him on before. He's like a liberal Zionist who has a great view of the Israeli domestic political situation, which is becoming increasingly relevant as Netanyahu is sort of, I guess,

pumping the brakes on the deal. Anyway, we'll get into all of the details there. We're also going to break down for you the confirmation hearings that happened yesterday. We got Lil Marco all grown up and facing not very contentious hearings, actually. He's a senator. He's got respectability. So even though he's a war hawk, they all like him in there. You also had Pam Bondi, who, of course, is Trump's nominee for attorney general. So we'll take a look at that. Vivek has emerged sort of. Trump is now pushing for him to be in the mix for that Ohio Senate seat that is being vacated by J.D.

Vance. We'll break that down for you. Take a look at Jon Stewart ripping Republicans over their desire to withhold aid to California, or at least to put a bunch of stipulations to that aid to California and to LA as they struggle, continue to struggle with those horrific wildfires. Mr. Beast might buy TikTok, the latest in TikTok. I mean, I don't know that that's all that likely, but we wanted to cover TikTok again because the ban is set to go into effect on what, Sunday? Sunday, January 19th. So, you know, this is happening absent some significant development. So we'll give you the latest on that. And a little bit of breaking news here.

Fash Akir, who is now the head of More Perfect Union but previously ran Bernie Sanders' 2020 presidential campaign, he has just jumped into the race for DNC chair, and he is going to join me here live, a little bit of an exclusive he just announced yesterday. I don't know if he's done any other interviews yet, so he may be the first. So I got a lot of questions for him. It'd be really interesting to hear what his vision for the Democratic Party is. Before we get to any of that, though, we have some big plans for the inauguration coverage next week. Yes, that's right. Make sure you guys are tuning in. We'll be streaming it here live on the channel. We'll give you our instant reaction to the inaugural address. Excited to see it already. Washington is a buzz. It's going to be a cold one for any of you out there who are attending. Please check the weather. It's going to be somewhere in the teens with the wind chill.

Oh, it's going to be brutal. It's going to be a brutal inauguration for the people who are attending. You really got to love Donald Trump to be out for that one. Please, if you are doing that. I've attended several of these inaugurations. People are never prepared. They're from Florida or whatever. Like, oh, it'll be fine.

You don't know what you're talking about. All right, take it from a guy from the South. It's brutal up here, especially whenever there's wind chill. There might be snow the next day and all of that. So please stay safe out there and make sure that you make all of your plans. It's one thing when you're moving around outside and it's cold, but at inauguration, you're going to have to walk to where you're going to stand. And then you're just going to stand there.

You will walk for miles because the metro will be unusable. And you will be standing in place hundreds of yards away from the only porta potty. So again, you need to make sure that you know what you're getting into. I hate to be a buzzkill, but I've seen too many. Didn't you look up the history of like the coldest inauguration? Yes, I did. This might be the second coldest, maybe third coldest inauguration on record for what we have. Ronald Reagan's second inaugural, 1985. It was minus four degrees that morning. They actually canceled the inaugural parade because it was just too damn cold. Wow.

Anyways, we will have all of the coverage here live that you will need. We'll cover the ceremony, obviously, but I'm really interested to see what the actual inaugural address will be. I still think American Carnage is one of the most unique inaugural addresses literally ever given in U.S. history just because of the tone. I mean, there's literally never been a president who has come in, even FDR in the middle of the Great Depression, gives this optimistic speech. Trump chooses the opposite. I think fundamentally that was actually a political genius point, and it's one that he has used now to come back and assume the Oval Office. So anyway,

giving away some of my commentary, but I think you guys are really going to enjoy our coverage. And then next day on Tuesday, we'll do a live show as well, because we are expecting a flurry of executive orders, and there's going to be news coming in. It's going to be a really big week here for the show. So sign up if you can, breakingpoints.com, et cetera, and we will be live here no matter what. All right, let's get to some rare but excellent news. That's right. In the Middle East, a ceasefire deal has been achieved. There are a couple of question marks

and caveats. We'll get to those in a moment. But let's start with the celebration in the streets of Gaza. I mean, these people, these Palestinians have suffered. They've been in terror. And by the way, Israel is continuing to bomb in the Gaza Strip up until the moment when the deal is supposed to go into effect. So there's still plenty of carnage there going on. But we can go ahead and put these celebrations up on the screen. People are just ebullient that there might be some break in the horror that they have suffered for more than a year at this point. I mean, you see these little children. This is a reporter for Al Jazeera who is reporting that the ceasefire deal has been achieved. He has a crowd

around him. He's taking off his flak jacket there and then they actually, I think, like carry him off on their shoulders. People here parading through the streets, so happy. Part of the ceasefire deal is not only the, you know, a cessation of the carnage and the bombing and the snipers, but also increased food aid. We know that resources have been just incredibly, incredibly scarce. More of the children of Gaza out in the street dancing. And, you know, it's just, it's so beautiful to see them so happy. Doctors in the hospital also celebrating. I cannot imagine what these people have seen, what horrific wounds they have treated, the number of dead they have had to carry out. Huge crowd celebrations here as well.

Everybody recording and filming this moment when they feel that at least they're set to get a respite. And then this is some, I don't know if it's Hamas or Palestinian Islamic Jihad, but some fighters who are feeling comfortable to emerge here as this deal is announced, which, you know, that was included very intentionally because, as we've been saying from the beginning, Sagar, Israel was not able to wipe out Hamas. In fact, Tony Blinken just came out this week and said, actually, we estimate that they have recruited about as many fighters as they have lost. So, you know, it's predictable from the beginning that accomplishing that objective, that maximalist objective from Israel, at least through military means,

was going to be impossible. And yet we do have this ceasefire deal that has been achieved, you know, in large part because Donald Trump was willing to actually apply a little bit of pressure to the Israelis and to Benjamin Netanyahu specifically. Let's put the ceasefire agreement up on the screen so you can see these phases. And this is going to be relevant as we talk about how this might unfold and some of the question marks and caveats to this actual deal. But let me just read through the outline here. This is the draft. This, by the way, is the exact same deal that was crafted back in May under Joe Biden that Hamas agreed to and the Israelis backed away from. So we've had months of slaughter and carnage to achieve nothing other than additional horror. This was the original deal. So in any case, phase one, 42 days, Hamas is going to release 33 hostages, including female

civilians and soldiers, children and civilians over 50. Israel is going to release 30 Palestinian prisoners for every civilian hostage and 50 for each female soldier who's being held hostage. There'll be a cessation of fighting. Israeli forces will move out of populated areas but remain on the edges of the Gaza Strip. Displaced Palestinians will begin returning home and more aid will begin entering into the Strip. Okay, that's phase one, 42 days. And that is set to go into effect Sunday if Bibi Netanyahu doesn't blow up the deal, which we'll talk about in a moment. Phase two, 42 days. Declaration of, quote, sustainable calm. Hamas frees remaining male hostages, both soldiers and civilians, in exchange for a yet-to-be-negotiated

number of Palestinian prisoners and a full withdrawal of Israeli troops from the Gaza Strip. Phase three, you have the bodies of deceased Israeli hostages, and we're not sure how many there are of those at this point, exchange for bodies of deceased Palestinian fighters, implementation of a reconstruction plan in Gaza, still very little details in terms of how that will work and who will govern in Gaza and all of that is still major question mark. Border crossings for movement in and out of Gaza are reopened. I referenced before, we can put this up on the screen, this tear sheet, and we talked about this a little bit and Ryan and Emily talked about this a little bit as well. This is behind the scenes of how this deal went down. As I said, the contours of this deal have existed

since May when Hamas agreed to it and Bibi Netanyahu and Bezalel Smotrich and Ben Gavir, who was out there bragging about how he tanked multiple potential ceasefire deals. They were the primary obstacles, them and the fact that the Biden administration was never willing to apply any pressure whatsoever and actually are out now admitting that they never applied any pressure whatsoever. So they say in this article from the Times of Israel and similar things have been reported in other outlets as well. A tense weekend meeting between Prime Benjamin Netanyahu and incoming Mideast envoy Steve Witkoff led to a breakthrough of the hostage negotiations with the top aid to U.S. President-elect Donald Trump, doing more to sway the premier in a single sit-down than outgoing President Joe Biden did all year to Arab officials.

Told the Times of Israel on Tuesday, Witkoff has been in Doha for the past week to take part in those hostage negotiations as mediators try to secure a deal. Before Trump's January 20th inauguration on Saturday, Witkoff flew to Israel for a meeting with Bibi at the premier's Jerusalem office. During the meeting, Witkoff urged Netanyahu to accept key compromises necessary for an agreement. The two Arab officials on Monday told the Times of Israel on condition of anonymity. So that is how it went down. And, you know, the Biden people aren't really even disputing this. No, but there's a lot of consternation here in Washington.

Oh, absolutely. Because they're so upset that Trump is getting credit for the deal. No honest analysis can say that they had anything to do with the completion of it. I keep thinking about this. So, Brett McGurk, and a lot of people who are watching the show, they may not even know who he is. Brett McGurk has been involved in U.S. Middle East policy since I was a small child. He has worked for every U.S. president since George W. Bush. He was in Iraq.

He worked for the coalition. It's been at the scene of every Middle Eastern disaster that this country has gotten involved in. He was working for the Coalition Provisional Authority in 03 when I was in grade school. Has basically not left government service since. Living in Doha basically for the last two years. Trying to get a ceasefire deal. Steve Witkoff built the Fontainebleau Casino in Las Vegas. Okay, just so we're talking about here.

The guy who built the casino was able to close this deal in two months. And I'm like, okay, so either, you know, these foreign policy people are idiots, their bosses are, you know, just have no experience. Maybe the myth of like people who have no experience in government are actually better at government, all of the above. I mean, obviously, I mean, simplifying things. But how extraordinary is that? I mean, I think the obvious answer is they didn't want a deal. Because if you did, it was achievable. And, you know, people were mocked like myself for

saying like, no, if you want this to end, it will end, period. And, you know, there were all these people on, oh, you think he's just got a magical ceasefire button in the office or he could just pick up. Yeah, actually, I do. Yes, I do think that. I do think that if Joe Biden picked up the phone or one of his credible emissaries or Tony Blinken or Jake Sullivan or whoever the hell picked up the phone and said, we're done. It's over. We are not shipping any more weapons. You are going to wrap this up. You are going to accept this deal that Hamas has accepted and deal with the political fall. Yes, I do think it would have been over. And that has now been 100% proven correct.

Now, in terms of some of the remaining question marks, okay. Number one, I think the most obvious thing is like, what is Trump offering in exchange for this? And there's three things that people float. Number one is Saudi normalization. Number two is joining Israel in strike on Iran, which horrible, disastrous idea, terrible. Number three, which to me seems, and it may be all of these, maybe some combination of these, whatever,

maybe something else that we haven't even thought of. Number three, which was reported that Mary Madison, his major, major donor, wants him to allow annexation of the West Bank. There are already signs that Israel is ramping up, Dropside's done a great job reporting on increased incursions and brutality in the West Bank. Obviously, settlements have expanded there massively over actually every single Israeli government. So that seems a very likely outcome as well. So that's question number one. Question number two is this morning, new reporting, Netanyahu is now throwing sand in the gears, pumping the brakes once again, claiming that Hamas is reneging on the agreement. I mean, listen, that's probably bullshit. Hamas is saying, no, we're not.

They have agreed to this specific deal since May. So, you know, that they're backing out of it now, I highly, highly doubt. This is one of the things that we'll talk to Shael about today, which is, you know, the domestic situation, because Bibi is seeing his coalition kind of collapse. You know, the right wing, Ben Kavir and Smotrich in particular, very upset with this deal because it's it sort of reminds me, you know, not that they're totally analogous situations, but it sort of reminds me of when Biden pulls out of Afghanistan. Anytime you end a war, it's a mess. Yeah. And you have to reckon with the reality. You can no longer live in the fantasy of like,

oh, we're going to completely defeat Hamas and it's going to be, you know, the end of any Palestinian resistance. When you actually end a war and have a cessation of hostilities, you have to grapple with what the actual reality is and what, you know, in terms of their state of military goals, yes, they inflicted untold suffering and carnage on the Palestinian population, but they did not achieve the political goals that they set out. So you have to grapple with that. And, you know, the far, far right in Israel does not want to grapple with that and wants to continue the brutality and the carnage basically indefinitely. I mean, they're very upfront. One thing you have to give them is honesty that they want to completely resettle Gaza, completely push out the Palestinians who

live there. So his government is kind of, it's teetering. And so he's pumping the brakes and claiming that Hamas is reneging. So that's one thing to watch, whether this thing actually moves forward, whether there's a delay, et cetera, et cetera. Over the past six years of making my true crime podcast, Hell and Gone, I've learned one thing. No town is too small for murder. I'm Katherine Townsend. I've received hundreds of messages from people across the country begging for help with unsolved murders. I was calling about the murder of my husband at the cold case.

I've never found her. And it haunts me to this day. The murderer is still out there. Every week on Hell and Gone Murder Line, I dig into a new case, bringing the skills I've learned as a journalist and private investigator to ask the questions no one else is asking. Police really didn't care to even try. She was still somebody's mother.

She was still somebody's daughter. She was still somebody's daughter. She was still somebody's sister. There's so many questions that we've never got any kind of answers for. If you have a case you'd like me to look into, call the Hell and Gone Murder Line at 678-744-6145. Listen to Hell and Gone Murder Line on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. She was a decorated veteran, a Marine who saved her comrades, a hero.

She was stoic, modest, tough, someone who inspired people. Everyone thought they knew her, until they didn't. I remember sitting on her couch and asking her, is this real? Is this real? Is this real? Is this real? I just couldn't wrap my head around what kind of person would do that to another person that was getting treatment, that was, you know, dying. This is a story all about trust and about a woman named Sarah Kavanaugh. I've always been told I'm a really good listener, right? And I maximized that while I was lying.

Listen to Deep Cover, The Truth About Sarah on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. I think everything that might have dropped in 95 Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. the soundtrack of our lives. My favorite line on there was, my son and my daughter gonna be proud when they hear my old tapes. Now I'm curious, do they like rap along now? Yeah, because I bring him on tour with me and he's getting older now too. So his friends are starting to understand what that type of music is. And they're starting to be like, yo, your dad's like really the GOAT.

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The other thing is that people in the Bibi Netanyahu coalition, including Smotrich, are claiming that they have been promised that after that initial phase one, where some number of hostages are released, and I think it's what lasts for like 42 days, that they have been promised Israel will go back to fighting, will go back to the war. In which case, this is not a ceasefire. It's that quote unquote humanitarian pause, which we had so much discussion of early in the war. And troublingly, President Trump's incoming National Security Advisor Mike Waltz also made similar signals that that may also be the way that they are thinking about this deal in a recent interview.

Let's take a listen to his comments. From your perspective, if this deal goes through and we enter what's characterized as the first phase, does that effectively mean the war is over? Does a ceasefire mean that Israel's, its work is done in Gaza for the foreseeable future? Well, I certainly think Hamas would like to believe that, but we've been clear that Gaza has to be fully demilitarized. Hamas has to be destroyed to the point that it cannot reconstitute and that Israel has every right to fully protect itself. So, you know, all of those pieces, all of those objectives are still very much in place.

Look, I mean, October 7th was a terrible day. They put everybody in a terrible position, including the Palestinian people of Gaza, whom they regularly hide behind and are willing to sacrifice and have sacrificed for their own sick ends and objectives. And so we need to get our people out and then we need to achieve those objectives in this war. So he's asked there straight out, does this mean the end of the war? And he's basically like, no, we're going to, quote, unquote, demilitarize Gaza, which is, again, the maximalist rhetoric that the Netanyahu government

has been engaged in. But let me give the caveat, which is he didn't say, yeah, we're going to allow them to go back in. I am skeptical of how all this is going to play out. I think the most likely scenario is the one that you're saying, that the government, the BB-99 government will survive, that they will just simply have to go in after 42 days. All the caveats here. Already we have instances of U.S. pressure. The thing is that we understand about Trump is it's not just about the hostages. It's about chaos. He doesn't want to deal with a massive reignition of protest movement or of the seeming fall apart of his framework that he puts forward. All the rhetoric that they are using. Listen, we've heard all this crap before, right?

The Taliban will never govern Afghanistan until, yeah, you've got to cut some deals with the Taliban. We'll be like, oh, they've changed their stripes. We're dealing with the political party. I mean, the Arabs themselves has a long history of like, you have a Muslim brotherhood, then you have the political arm of it. And you just deal with them and you say that these are the people that are it. The terrorists, we're just going to ignore them. So there is wiggle room here, I think. Another thing is 42 days is a long time. All right. So that's a lot of people for people in Israel who have to ruminate on what's happening.

Do we really want to go back to this? How many, what was it? I think Ryan said this, 500 IDF soldiers who have been killed since that ceasefire deal

has been on the table. So if you're an Israeli family, you want your guys to go back into the brink. Their economy is teetering, by the way. You know, you have all these young men

who are in military service. There's a huge economic shortage, a labor shortage in Israel. They've got financial problems of their own. The war costs, what, hundreds of billions of shekels, like, per day or whatever. So if you put all this stuff together and you actually, you know, tamp things down, to restart it is going to require a lot. That's here. Then here in our domestic political situation, there are a lot of things that are going to happen. One of the reasons why that they don't necessarily want to do this is when those IDF soldiers pull out and people

start to go back in, now the camera's going to come out. Now the BBC crews are going to be able to go in. Now Clarissa Ward and Trey Yanks and all these guys are not going to be having IDF military escorts. They're going to be on the ground doing whatever they want to do. And now we're all, you know, mass grave, who knows what they're going to dig up the ground doing whatever they want to do. And now we're all, you know, masquerade. Who knows what they're going to dig up. This is one of the things that the Israelis are afraid of. Yeah. So when we get the full picture of all of this, will Trump really want to be in the Oval Office and allow, again, this chaos? This is put humanitarian things aside.

Do you want to see, you know, a full-on reignition of the conflict? And then, you know, look, 42 days is not just a long time for the Israelis. 42 days is a long time for Israel, for Hamas, for Palestinian Islamic Jihad. That's 42 days of stockpiling weapons, building IEDs, redoing battle plans. They get to go back into North Gaza. I wouldn't want to be an IDF soldier that has to go back into territory that you just walked out of that was allegedly secured. So there's a lot of things that could happen here, which may lead to implementation of phase two or some sort of new phase two agreement. I wouldn't count the Arabs out of this either. The UAE, the Saudis and others, they have got much better relationships with Trump than they ever did with the Biden administration.

They do not want to see this war continue. Remember also that there's, they have leverage on us as well through oil and others. Biden was never really able to pull any of this off. I mean, that's really what I can come down to. Like clearly the Biden people either didn't want a ceasefire deal or were just so inept and incompetent or unable to like see American power for what it was that they weren't able to get this done. And I mean, that's just, I can't get away from this. It's like, oh, America is a superpower. I always thought it was. It's like, it turns out whenever you do provide somebody like 98% of their political support and their weapons and all that, you can just tell them what to do. Yeah. You just be like, no, it's not happening. And then it won't happen.

No, that's why, I mean, I think they did not want a ceasefire deal. I mean, that's the conclusion that I've effectively come to because, I mean, they had every opportunity to secure one. And, you know, they have at least somebody with three brain cells to rub together to figure out that that was a possibility. I think all of the, oh, the tense conversations, blah, blah, blah. In fact, there's even reporting that Blinken, some of the comments that he made, actually undermined some of the negotiations that were ongoing. And, yeah, I think that was intentional. I think they did not really want a ceasefire deal, and that's why there was no ceasefire deal. Just to make a little bit of the counter case, well, here's what I'll say in response to you, Sagar, which is I think it's clear this will, whether the deal continues into phase two, it will come down to Trump. Because I think Bibi Netanyahu left his own devices, they're going back in. I mean,

he's basically promising, he is promising parts of his coalition, we're going back in, in an attempt to try to rescue his own political career. So, you know, what they're going to see over 42 days time is effectively Hamas retaking control of government. And for the Israeli right, that is not going to be an acceptable outcome. So I think there will be tremendous pressure on Bibi Netanyahu to go back in in some fashion. You know, is that the complete war that has been operable for most of this conflict post-October 7th? Is that more of the, you know, sort of typical, like, more limited, I mean, still horrible, but more limited, like, mowing the grass type of operations?

Is that retaking the Philadelphia corridor? Like, what does that look like? I don't know. But I think there will be, I think without Trump exercising significant pressure after that phase one, this war will restart. And so then it comes down to how he perceives his own interests and how he thinks about this deal, which is why it is troubling the comments here from Mike Walsh, because the other way Trump might look at this is, I get to say I got the hostages out, and there

will still be some hostages remaining, but the Americans will be out. And the women and children will be out. The elderly will be out. He can say, I got the hostages back. I got a deal where, you know, Biden was never able to. He's able to embarrass and humiliate Biden, which is something that I'm sure he enjoys. And you know what? Whatever motivates him to get some peace with the Palestinians, go for it. Go for it, right? But, you know, he's got other interests like Barry Madison and others in his coalition who very much want to see a return to these hostilities. You see, you know, it's interesting reading Ben Shapiro's analysis slash cope about this deal. He very much is looking at it this way of like, oh, we'll get some hostages out and then they're

going to be. Well, look, there's a lot of of wish casting out. Can I end with this before we get to Trita Parsi? If you guys want Trump to go in the direction, look, Donald Trump is never going to be the greatest friend to the Palestinian people. But let me tell you what Trump loves, being called a peacemaker. Give him credit for the deal. Go out there on social media, especially if you're a leftist, and be like, thank you, Donald Trump, for actually getting this done. You humiliated Joe Biden. Use this framing in particular. For anybody out there who is prominent, go on television.

Give Donald Trump credit for the deal. Because right now there's an entire Israeli right-wing cope by Ben Shapiro and others. Be like, no, no, no. Be like, but listen, you have to create political space to reward people for doing things that are good even if you don't like those people i'm gonna take it upon myself i've been trying i'm from my twitter account and others i'll be like this is great fantastic nobody send some mega hats to the palestinians send them mega hats i'm serious look you guys think i'm joking that is how donald trump will arrive at the political calculus of like you know know, I got a lot of credit for this. They

call me a peacemaker. It's a power. What did we always say? How powerful of a message it is. No war broke out while I was president. You can quibble with it if you want, but people liked it. You did the AOC Facebook group while I was out. What did all those people say? So again, leftists, especially people who are out there on the center, non-politically engaged folks, give Donald Trump credit, actually create some media buzz around this. And I guarantee you, if that gets in front of the people in the White House communication shop and others, they will print it out and show it to him. And now you've got two printouts in front of you instead of one from Ben Shapiro, which is just a criticism of the deal. I mean, I'm not usually this transparent about it, but like, I care so much.

I don't want this war to continue. It's just so- Let's end it. Like- It's obvious how he operates too. Yeah. Like, it's not hard to figure out,

you know, the way that his ego operates. I mean, this is part of why he pulls out TikTok. Who cares? Yeah. Because it's like, oh,

people there like me. Yeah, bingo. I like TikTok now. He's inviting the freaking TikTok dude to the inauguration. It is what it is. So take advantage of it.

Yeah, exactly. I think that's all so, so true. The one, just last note, because I thought this was hilarious. Tom Cotton, who's like a total psycho right-wing Zionist, hates the deal, of course. So rather than criticizing Trump,

he goes on Twitter and he's like, Joe Biden's surrender deal, blah, blah. It's like, dude, Joe Biden had nothing to do with this. So if you don't like it, there's one place to point your finger in. It has scrambled a lot of brains to see. And like I said, there's Bibi now pumping the brakes,

question marks about what was given, like what is the Palestinian bargain that was made here? What is Israel getting on the other side of this? Does it continue past phase one? A lot of questions, but I'm truly just, I'm so happy that at the very least, Palestinians in Gaza are going to get

some small respite after suffering for so, so long. So I, you know, I'm happy to see them having some reason for joy and celebration there in the streets. Absolutely. All right, let's get to our guest, Rita Parson. Over the past six years of making my true crime podcast, Hell and Gone, I've learned one thing. No town is too small for murder. I'm Katherine Townsend.

I've received hundreds of messages from people across the country begging for help with unsolved murders. I was calling about the murder of my husband at the cold case. They've never found her. And it haunts me to this day. The murderer is still out there.

Every week on Hell and Gone Murder Line, I dig into a new case, bringing the skills I've learned as a journalist and private investigator to ask the questions no one else is asking. Police really didn't care to even try. She was still somebody's mother. She was still somebody's daughter. She was still somebody's sister. There's so many questions that we've never gotten any kind of answers for. She was still somebody's mother. She was still somebody's daughter. She was still somebody's sister.

There's so many questions that we've never gotten any kind of answers for. If you have a case you'd like me to look into, call the Hell and Gone Murder Line at 678-744-6145. Listen to Hell and Gone Murder Line on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. She was a decorated veteran, a Marine who saved her comrades, a hero. She was stoic, modest, tough, someone who inspired people. Everyone thought they knew her, until they didn't. I remember sitting on her couch and asking her, is this real? Is this real? Is this real? Is this real?

I just couldn't wrap my head around what kind of person would do that to another person that was getting treatment, that was, you know, dying. This is a story all about trust and about a woman named Sarah Kavanaugh. I've always been told I'm a really good listener, right? And I maximized that while I was lying. Listen to Deep

Cover, The Truth About Sarah on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. I think everything that might have dropped in 95 has been wherever you get your podcasts. I think everything that might've dropped in 95 has been labeled the golden years of hip hop. It's Black Music Month, and We Need To Talk is tapping in.

I'm Nyla Simone, breaking down lyrics, amplifying voices, and digging into the culture that shaped the soundtrack of our lives. My favorite line on there was, my son and my daughter gonna be proud when they hear my old tapes. Now I'm curious, do they like rap along now? Yeah, Now, I'm curious. Do they, like, rap along now?

Yeah, because I bring him on tour with me. And he's getting older now, too. So his friends are starting to understand what that type of music is. And they're starting to be like, yo, your dad's, like, really the GOAT. Like, he's a legend. So he gets it. What does it mean to leave behind a music legacy for your family? It means a lot to me.

Just having a good catalog and just being able to make people feel good. Like that's what's really important and that's what stands out is that our music changes people's lives for the better.

So the fact that my kids get to benefit off of that, I'm really happy. Or my family in general. Let's talk about the music that moves us. To hear this and more on how music

and culture collide, listen to We Need to Talk from the Black Effect Podcast Network on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Very fortunate to be joined this morning by Dr. Teresa Parsi, of course, of the Quincy Institute for Responsible Statecraft. Always great to see you, sir. Good to see you, sir. Likewise. Thank you.

First, just your top line reaction to the contours of this deal and also, you know, your sentiment about whether it's going to be fully implemented, just phase one. We now see Bibi Netanyahu trying to make trouble here in the final days. Just give us your top line reactions. I mean, first of all, obviously, we should be very happy that this slaughter finally, hopefully, is coming to an end. But looking at not just the contours, but even the details of the deal, it's quite clear that this is really not particularly different from what already has been on the table for quite some time. And I think it really shows that President Biden could have done this very early on. Every day, he could have decided that he's going to put a stop to killing. And every day, he decided not to. And I think that's going to haunt the United States for some time, just as much as the Iraq war and unnecessary decisions there haunted the United

States and continues to haunt the United States. Now, when it comes to phase one, clearly the way that Bibi is trying to sell it at home is to say that this is just going to be phase one. But if you take a look at what happened in Lebanon, we saw a massive amount of violations of that ceasefire, but it was more lower level violence. The higher level violence did cease. And I suspect that we will see the same thing in Gaza. Now, the question I think that is really essential here is why did Trump decide that he wanted this? If it is because he wants to push for an expansion of the Abraham Accord,

more normalization between Israel and Saudi Arabia, then I don't see how it would be to his interest to see this only be implemented in stage one. Then he will likely want to see it fully implemented because the demands from the Saudi side, not only for an end to the violence, but also some semblance of a Palestinian state has significantly increased because of what Israel has done. So I think it very much depends on what Trump's calculations are in the long run. Right. So that's one of the things that we wanted to talk to you about, Dr. Parsi, is in terms of the lessons here for Donald Trump, but also for the prior administration, the ability to compel a deal so quickly tells us a lot about the ability of American power to be utilized when it wants to be.

So what can we learn from that going forward with the Israelis? And I know in your own study of our past relationship with Israel, when we have done this in the past. Well, I think the bottom line is this idea of some sort of a beer hug strategy was the original sin here. Because instead of actually pursuing U.S. interests, laying down firmly what we want and what we don't want, and if the Israelis want to go in a different direction, well, good luck to you, but you're not going to do it with our weapons. Instead, the Biden administration had a strategy of thinking, let's just say yes to everything the Israelis want. Let's blame every problem on Hamas, even when it's Israel's fault. Let's make sure that we veto every resolution at the UN.

And that miraculously will give us credibility so that the Israelis actually will listen to us when we say no, which we nevertheless almost never did anyways. Why did the United States need credibility? Did we start off from a point of no credibility with Israel, so we had to build up this credibility in order to be able to afford to say no? That is just completely preposterous. The United States had credibility, and the United States never used the leverage through the arms sales that we had in order to be able to compel Israel to move in a direction that was not only not violating international law and committing

war crimes, but also making sure that it didn't lead to something that would be bad for the United States. And one of the key things the administration itself said was that it did not want to see an escalation of the war in the region. Yet in their exit interviews, they brag about the fact that they never publicly criticized the Israelis for bombing Lebanon, for expanding the war. So I think the bottom line lesson is if you center your policy on American interests, you're going to get a much better outcome than if you essentially abdicate your responsibility to the American people and defer to foreign leaders, friends or foes. It does not matter. So, Dr. Parsi, we've just witnessed the world superpower that was the primary architect of the post-World War II international order oversee a slaughter of predominantly women, children, and the elderly

for over a year. I mean, what does that mean for the world moving forward? I think it's a disaster. And I think one of the things we have to keep in mind is that, yes, in the American tradition, though the United States played, as you pointed out, a critical role in creating the post-World War II security and international architecture, we nevertheless have been kind of dismissive of international law. And to a large extent, it's because we were so powerful, not only could we violate it, but we never really viewed it as being something that could infringe upon our, we would never allow it to infringe upon our sovereignty. Reality is that we are now moving into a multipolar world. In that multipolar world, the United States' relative power compared to what it was before is not going to be the same.

As a result, the ability of American power to constrain other countries, rivals of the United States, is going to be more limited than it was before. And it's not going to be able to be pervasive as it was before, which means that we actually will develop an interest in international law as an alternative path to be able to constrain the actions of rival states in a way that we, in a unipolar era, did not have the same interest or need for. And this is then very damaging to the United States because we have, under the Biden administration, who was supposed to correct everything Trump did wrong during his four years by exiting the Paris Agreement, the Iran deal, et cetera, et cetera, actually worked

tirelessly to hollow out international law, vetoing all of those UN resolutions. The one that they did accept, they then immediately turned around and said that it's not binding, which was completely legally ridiculous as well. We've seen their reactions to the ICC, to the ICJ, all of those different things. I understand from an immediate political interest, folks on the right and the left may not like, but in the future world where we are not going to be as powerful as we have been in the last few decades, we're actually going to need some of those constraints. I think that's a fantastic point. And just generally going forward, what does this mean now for U.S. policy in the Middle East? The last two years, if we zoom out, have been extraordinary,

not only with what's happening in Israel, we now have a completely new regime in Syria, of which, of course, Israel is also involved in. So what is the landscape that Donald Trump now has to deal with in the next four years? It's a completely different landscape. of which, of course, Israel is also involved in. So what is the landscape that Donald Trump now has to deal with in the next four years? It's a completely different landscape. On the one hand, as you pointed out, the Turks are in a very significant rising position because their allies, this al-Qaeda offshoot, has won in Syria and has taken over that country, which actually is interesting. You know, the Turks are now going to be much stronger rivals of the Iranians, but they're also bumping up against Israel in Syria. The Israelis have annexed even more

territory of the Syrian state. And the current Syrian leaders are trying to present a view of unifying Syria, being Syrian nationalists, which is very interesting, given that they came from al-Qaeda and al-Qaeda was a movement that viewed itself as universal, that rejected the very existence of these type of states, rejected the idea that there should be states of this kind because there should just be one Muslim entity and Ummah, essentially. But now they are trying to present themselves as Syrian nationalists. Well, how's that going to work out when the Israelis are not only keeping the Golan Heights, but they're actually taking additional Syrian territory? At some point, it's going to create tensions between Syria and Israel, which means that it will create more tensions between Turkey and Israel. And on the other hand, then you have the Turks wanting to defeat the Kurds in Syria that the U.S. has been supporting. And incidentally, it now seems likely that the Iranians are going to be supporting the Kurds further. And guess who else? The Israelis. So what you have is a massive

mess. And I think Trump's initial instinct when all of this started to unfold by saying this is not our fight, we should not be involved, it is the right instinct. And take a more passive role and not try to think that, you know, whoever wins in Syria is going to get some sort of a major price, because there isn't a major price. My last question for you, Dr. Parsons, there's been a lot of speculation about what Trump may have offered the Israelis in exchange for them agreeing to this deal that they've been rejecting now for months at this point. You mentioned one of those potential things, the Saudi normalization deal. Another thing that's been mentioned is West Bank annexation. And the third thing that's been

mentioned is joining with Israel in strikes against Iran. I'd love for you to weigh in on that third possibility, your assessment of the likelihood there and what that could potentially mean, because we know that Trump did have a very hawkish record vis-a-vis Israel in his first term. Vis-a-vis Iran, yeah. First of all, let's be clear. We don't know yet if actually anything was promised. It may very well have been that Trump's envoy told Netanyahu, enough is enough. You've had 15 months of these killings, and we don't want to have to deal with this mess any longer. So you have to put an end to it without necessarily making any promises. Now, Trump has himself on his social media suggested he's going to take advantage of this development and move

towards further integrating Israel into the region. That could actually be very good news, but it depends on how it's done. If it's just going to be an expansion of the Arama course, which in my view had several significant flaws, the first one being that it really shoved the Palestinians under the rug, expecting that they simply would not exist any longer or be a factor. And that was a major, major miscalculation because we saw October 7th, which to some extent actually was a result of the effort to completely try to push the Palestinians aside. The other thing was that the United States was giving massive concessions to these different states in order for them to normalize with Israel. And in the case of Saudi Arabia, what the Biden administration has been discussing is to give a security guarantee to these Saudis, meaning that the United States

would send its women and men off to die and kill for the Saudi dictatorship. This would deepen America's military involvement in the region beyond anything we have seen in the U.S.'s history in the Middle East. That would be not only a massive mistake, it would be completely contradictory to Trump's instincts and what he has been promised, which is to actually bring U.S. troops home from the Middle East and get less entangled in the conflicts of the region. If we actually offer the Saudis a security guarantee, we will get more entangled. Moreover, the Biden administration was even considering giving the Saudis nuclear technology, the same nuclear technology that the United States fought 20 years to prevent the Iranians from having. Now we're actually granting

it to a country that has said that it might build a bomb and whose track record in foreign policy is highly questionable, particularly mindful of its history with al-Qaeda. These are ridiculous, unthinkable concessions. If it is so that the Saudis and the Israelis want to normalize, then go ahead, normalize. Why should the United States not only give concessions, but commit itself to the security of these states in order for them to come to peace with each other. Yeah, well said. Great to see you, sir. Thank you for joining us. Thank you so much for having me. Over the past six years of making my true crime podcast, Hell and Gone, I've learned one thing.

No town is too small for murder. I'm Catherine Townsend. I've received hundreds of messages from people across the country begging for help with unsolved murders. I was calling about the murder of my husband at the cold case. They've never found her. And it haunts me to this day. The murderer is still out there. Every week on Hell and Gone Murder Line, I dig into a new case,

bringing the skills I've learned as a journalist and private investigator to ask the questions no one else is asking. Police really didn't care to even try. She was still somebody's mother. She was still somebody's daughter. She was still somebody's sister. There's so many questions that we've never gotten any kind of answers for. If you have a case you'd like me to look into,

call the Hell and Gone Murder Line at 678-744-6145. Listen to Hell and Gone Murder Line on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. She was a decorated veteran, a Marine who saved her comrades, a hero. She was stoic, modest, tough. Someone who inspired people. Everyone thought they knew her. Until they didn't. I remember sitting on her couch and asking her,

is this real? Is this real? Is this real? Is this real? I just couldn't wrap my head around what kind of person would do that to another person that was getting treatment that was, you know, dying. This is a story all about trust and about a woman named Sarah Kavanaugh. I've always been told I'm a really good listener, right? And I maximized that while I was lying. Listen to Deep Cover, The Truth About Sarah on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Black Music Month and We Need to Talk is tapping in. I'm Nyla Simone, breaking down lyrics, amplifying voices, and digging into the culture that shaped the soundtrack of our lives. My favorite line on there was,

my son and my daughter gonna be proud when they hear my old tapes. Now I'm curious, do they like rap along now? Yeah, because I bring him on tour with me and he's getting older now too. So his friends are starting to understand what that type of music is. And they're starting to be like, yo, your dad's like really the GOAT. Like, he's a legend. So he gets it. What does it mean to leave behind a music legacy for your family?

It means a lot to me. Just having a good catalog and just being able to make people feel good. Like, that's what's really important and that's what stands out, is that our music changes people's lives for the better. So the fact that my kids get to benefit off of that, I'm really happy. Or my family in general. Let's talk about the music that moves us. To hear this and more on how music and culture collide,

listen to We Need to Talk from the Black Effect Podcast Network on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. For more on the Israeli domestic political situation, we're fortunate to be joined this morning by Shael Ben-Ephraim. He is the host of a couple of podcasts with regard to Israel, Israel Explained, and also History in the Land of Israel. Great to see you, Shael. Good to see you. Thank you. Always a pleasure to be here. Yeah, of course. So let me go ahead and put guys A10 up on the screen to start to break down some

of the internal tensions within the Netanyahu coalition and some of the breakdown over this reported ceasefire deal. So Smotrich here says, quote, the deal is bad and dangerous for Israel's security. We'll remain in the government only if there is absolute certainty of a return to fighting with great intensity. So could you tell us some of the fault lines here within the Netanyahu coalition and whether he can actually survive politically moving forward with this ceasefire deal? Yeah, so this has been moving very fast. You know, if we'd had this interview yesterday, I'd be giving you a very different answer from what I'd be giving today. So, as we know, domestic Israeli

politics are one of the major reasons the previous attempt to reach a deal, the previous very serious attempt to reach a deal from May until August failed. And that's because Netanyahu was very reliant on two extreme right-wing parties, one run by Bezalel Smotrich and the other run by Itamar Ben-Kvir. And both of them are opponents of a deal now over the last few months netanyahu has made an effort to expand his coalition so that he has a little bit of cushion against their influence one of the major reasons

for that was so that he would have the room to be able to make a deal. And he did that by bringing in Gidon Saar's party. Gidon Saar was a former Likud minister who then became a member of the opposition, said he would never sit with Netanyahu and so on and so forth. And he was brought in. Likud also managed to bring in members of the Ben-Gvir party into the coalition, Amog Cohen and Idan Rol from Yair Lapid's opposition party as well. is he managed to get Smotrich to say that he would stay in the government if there's a deal while Benvir threatened to leave. But now there's been a lot of pressure on Smotrich, much more than he expected, to leave as well.

And now he's leaning towards leaving. So Thaddeus is in a lot of trouble because he can't lose both. He can only lose one, even though he's patted his coalition. Interesting. So we've seen a bit of a freakout inside of Israel. Can we put this next one, for example, up on the screen just to show the audience an example of what things look like inside. For example, here we have Ilan Levy, the biggest boost to global jihad will come from Hamas staging a victory parade amid the rubble. The free world is going to pay a terrible price for pressuring Israel to leave the Hamas regime

in power instead of pressuring Hamas and working to remove it. So there is certainly a constituency, like you said, inside of Israel that's pushing it back against this deal. How does that influence then Netanyahu's ability to stay in power, like you said, if he does lose two of these members, or even if he does manage to hang on, he's still got some 42 days more pressure to resume the war and to continue it. What will that look like? Yeah, so the plan that Netanyahu had was he will pass the deal and then improvise for 42 days and see what he can do. Now, there's a couple of things that could happen. One is he could have some kind of excuse to break the ceasefire. And Hamas usually don't adhere to ceasefires all that religiously, ironically, you know, considering their ideology. And Israel could find some pretext

for restarting the war over those 42 days, they hope. Or Netanyahu is hoping that Trump might give him some benefit that will allow him to keep the coalition. For example, annexing West Bank settlements is something I've heard talk about. Or attacking Iran, either allowing Israel to attack Iran, or even better from Netanyahu's perspective, attacking Iran himself using the U.S. So then if you get that, then you can say, well, I got these benefits in return for the ceasefire. I have all these achievements. And also now is a matter of national security.

We need to take out the Iranian nuclear program. So we need you to stay in the government. And so Smotrich and Netanyahu have been talking about those sorts of things. But Smotrich has been under so much pressure from his own party and from his own, like you said, constituency, that that deal is being frayed. So Netanyahu has been saying for a long time that he will be able to restart the war after the first phase, but that's not what the deal said. The deal said completely different. The deal says that there will be negotiations for a second phase and that it will be reached. And that's guaranteed by the mediators, which includes the United States. So this game that he's been trying to play

right now, he's kind of being forced by public opinion on the right to make a choice. And that's where he is right now. If he comes out and says, there's not going to be a second phase and we're going to restart the war, then there's really no reason for Hamas to agree to anything. Exactly. And Hamas also is causing, you know, problems now with how heavy the highest heavy hitting prisoners are going to be, how many people they've killed, how well known they are. And Hamas is also going to play all sorts of games during the ceasefire. And that's why Netanyahu is going to have a pretext if he wants to say Hamas had broken the ceasefire, Hamas are demanding too much and restart. So really, at this point, Netanyahu is going to have to choose. Does he want the wrath

of Trump or does he want his coalition to to collapse? Moldavich is putting him in that position. And that's why we're starting to see Netanyahu start to backtrack from the deal. Yeah, that's why we haven't seen Netanyahu come out and say we've reached a deal. I'm happy that everyone else involved has. Let me actually jump in on that because that is the latest reporting. His office put out a statement saying Hamas is reneging on the understandings and creating a last minute crisis that is preventing an agreement. So giving himself a pretext to potentially back out of the deal and lay the blame at the feet of Hamas. There's also the Jerusalem Post reporting that he's sort of playing fast and loose with some of the terms

of the deal. So he's saying, contrary to misleading reports, Israel's not withdrawing from the Philadelphia corridor. Israel will remain in phase A of the corridor for the entire 42-day period. That's different from the terms of the deal, as has been publicly reported. In addition, he's saying no end to the war until Hamas agrees to Israel, quote, achieving the war's objectives of destroying Hamas as a militant group, disarming Gaza, and deposing the local government.

There's very small likelihood Hamas would agree to a deal that includes requirements of their own destruction. So, you know, do you think that this deal even ultimately goes forward? What do you make of this last-minute squeamishness and the fact, as you said, that Bibi himself has not come out and said, hey, congratulations, we have a deal, we're moving forward with this? Yeah, so the real problem here, separating the normal, shall we say, Middle Eastern last-minute negotiation tactics, which are always like this, and the coalition crisis in Israel.

It's very hard to separate those two. There's a certain amount of brinkmanship that goes into the last minute of any hostage deal that looks a lot like what we're seeing now. And then there's also the internal political squabbling that has actually prevented previous deals. And to some extent, they also serve each other. The internal tensions also allow Israel to demand more and get it in the last minute from Hamas. So there's a little bit of that going on. But also it's important to note that Netanyahu is not exactly lying in what he's saying.

What he's doing is he's trying to pretend that there's no phase two. In phase one, Israel does remain in the Philadelphia corridor. In phase two, it removes itself from there. So what he's saying is he's pretending that only phase one exists and phase one doesn't, which also serves him in his negotiations with Smotrich, who says that he's willing to stay through phase one. So there's some improvisation here and pretense. And as for destruction of Hamas, that's not in the agreement, as you noted.

No one's going to agree to destroy themselves. And that's a game that he played last time when he scuttled it as well. He said that he's not going to stop until Hamas is destroyed. So it's very hard to separate between the two. So as for will the deal go forward, my guess is yes. I would have been much more optimistic yesterday. I think that it's a little bit out of his hands. I think that once everyone's announced it, once the sides have agreed, once Trump has put his prestige into it, if he breaks it, the price will be quite high.

His best chance for re-election might be to stay with Trump, stay with this deal, get as much as he can from Trump, improvise through the first stage, and hope that he can either get Hamas to break it in a way that can convince Trump, or that Trump will offer him enough so that he can come and say to the public, look at all that I achieved. And it's important to note that both Ben-Gurion and Smotrich are saying we're leaving the government, but we're not going to vote to topple it. And that the opposition, the left-wing opposition or, you know, such as it is, centrist, whatever, are saying that they will provide a safety net for Netanyahu.

So even if Ben-Gurion and some others leave the government, the government's not going to fall. Got it. At least not yet. They'll have a minority government, which is very weird in Israel, but it's possible. And then if he gets enough, he might be able to get someone else to come in and get a majority again.

So if I was him facing these two things, I would take the deal and try to get as much from Trump and then try to re as much from Trump and then try to reestablish my coalition with other parties or bring Ben Gira Smotrich back in. And I'm guessing that's what he's going to do. And so he's going to try to get as many concessions as he can, go to the deal, stay in the government. He'll survive because no one's going to topple him in the meantime because he has a safety net. And then he'll improvise and find a way to survive. Netanyahu always finds a way to survive.

Yeah. Yeah, that's a fair bet generally. Thank you so much. It's always so useful to have your analysis. We appreciate you joining us. We appreciate it, man. Thank you. Anytime.

Have a wonderful day. Thank you.