Call Me Back - with Dan Senor - BIDEN: "Don't!" / NASRALLAH: "I hear you." - emergency episode with Dr. Matthew Levitt

Episode Date: November 3, 2023

We just had a conversation with Dr. Matthew Levitt, an expert on Hassan Nasrallah and Hezbollah, getting his immediate reaction and analysis on Nasrallah’s first public address since the October 7 War. Matt is the director of the Program on Counterterrorism and Intelligence at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy. He served as deputy assistant secretary for intelligence and analysis at the U.S. Department of the Treasury. During his tenure at Treasury, he played a central role in efforts to protect the U.S. financial system from abuse and to deny terrorists, weapons proliferators, and other rogue actors the ability to finance threats to U.S. national security. He later served as a counterterrorism advisor to the special envoy for Middle East regional security. Previously, Matt was a counterterrorism intelligence analyst at the FBI, where he provided tactical and strategic analytical support for counterterrorism operations, focusing on fundraising and logistical support networks for Middle Eastern terrorist groups. He is the author of several books and monographs, including Hamas: Politics, Charity and Terrorism in the Service of Jihad (Yale University Press, 2006), Negotiating Under Fire: Preserving Peace Talks in the Face of Terror Attacks (Rowman & Littlefield, 2008), and Hezbollah: The Global Footprint of Lebanon's Party of God (Georgetown University Press, 2013). He is the host of the podcast series, Breaking Hezbollah's Golden Rule.

This is a special episode on Friday, November 3rd at 12.15 p.m. here in New York City, 6.15 p.m. in Israel. We are dropping this special episode with Dr. Matthew Levitt from the Washington Institute for Near East Policy. Matt was on this podcast about a week ago when he gave us a crash course on the history of Hezbollah. As our listeners know, Matt was with the FBI working on counterterrorism. He's with the U.S. Department of Treasury working on terrorism financing. Both those positions he worked on and studied quite a bit how terrorist organizations organize logistics and financing and a whole range of other projects, and they're organizing their terror campaigns.

As I said, he's now at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy. He's the author of a number of books, including one very important book on Hezbollah, and he's the host of a terrific podcast that I highly recommend and is extremely relevant now called Breaking Hezbollah's Golden Rule. Matt, thanks for hopping on on short notice, for calling me back. Always a pleasure. Okay, so we're going to keep this succinct, but hopefully very informative. I want to understand what happened.

So just to replay the tape, over the last few days, there was a lot of hype about a big speech that Hassan Nasrallah was going to deliver in Lebanon, the head of Hezbollah. Hezbollah's propaganda arm even released a video that was hyping the speech. It looked almost like an American-style political campaign ad about the buildup to the speech, this big speech, and then a lot of pregame setting up of the seats, the setting up of the stage, the setting up of the... There was just a lot of what you see, the pregame hype of a Super Bowl, and he delivers this speech, 9 a.m. U.S. New York time this morning, 3 p.m. at Lebanon time, and he says in this speech, and I'm quoting here, this is a campaign that has expanded to more than one arena. The campaign against the Zionists is the most important

religiously, morally, and humanly. So he calls the Hamas-Israel war the most important war religiously, morally, and humanly. So when I heard that, Matt, my immediate reaction is, this is him saying something big is about to happen on the northern front, what the Israelis fear the most, what the administration fears the most, is this erupts into a multi-front war and possibly a regional war. You listen to that statement, you think that's where he's going. And then you and I are both surprised that to walk down the ladder rather than walk up the ladder, he walks down the ladder from saying this is the most important war to what? What does he say? He says, we're still here. The fighting

that we're doing along the Lebanese-Israeli border, the blue line, is very, very important. Everybody else should get involved in this war. Other parts of the axis of resistance, the Iran proxies, Arabs should get involved. There should be an oil embargo. Everybody else should get involved in this war. Other parts of the axis of resistance, the Iran proxies, Arabs should get involved. There should be an oil embargo. Everybody else should do things. But ultimately, he says we're not going to do more. He implies at the end that depending on how things go in Gaza, things could get worse. He leaves out that threat. But at the end of the day, such a long speech, so much buildup. Everybody was anticipating what more is he going to do?

How is he going to go up the escalation ladder? And he doesn't. President Biden says, don't. And Nasrallah ultimately says, I hear you. And so what was the point of the speech? Why all the buildup? I mean, literally everyone I talked to in Washington, folks in the media I speak to, everyone was saying, the speech, the speech, what's going to happen to speech? What do we think about the speech? The speech, the Nasrallah speech was supposed to be this inflection point. He chose to build it up. He chose to raise the stakes and expectations.

So why, if he tended to say nothing? I think he'd have preferred to say nothing. But he was under tremendous pressure. All these memes flying around that the best, most ferocious thing that Hezbollah was doing was shooting at Israeli cell towers. In fact, over the past few weeks, there have been almost 90 attacks by Hezbollah and a few. That includes a few by Hamas and other groups in southern Lebanon with Hezbollah's permission and support targeting the Israelis. But so far, the number of casualties on the Israeli side has been very, very low. About 50, 5-0.

Hezbollah and a few other terrorists have been killed. It used to be that Hezbollah's deal was if you kill one of ours, we kill one of yours. Not happening yet. He felt he had to say something and be bold in support of Hamas. He was very clear that Hamas did great on October 7th. He laid out conspiracy theories that any Israelis who were killed were surely killed by Israeli soldiers just shooting the place up as if we don't have all the footage from Hamas's own GoPro cameras. He made it very, very clear this was a Palestinian thing. This wasn't us, Hezbollah. This wasn't Iran, which frankly, I think a lot of people are going to hear as, please don't shoot at us. But he laid out there, ultimately, depending on what you do,

we have more capabilities. We could still do more. I expect now that the northern front is going to continue basically as it is with Hezbollah only shooting about a mile into Israeli territory and almost solely targeting military targets. That could expand to up to three to five miles, but I don't see that happening yet. The fear that they go 10 to 40 miles in, which would be a full scale war and the Israelis would not tolerate for a second. I don't see that happening right now. At the end of the day, this is going to be seen by people here in the United States and especially by people in the region as a nothing burger. To what extent do you think the presence of US military assets in the region was a factor in

his decision to deliver a nothing burger? I think it wasn't the only factor. But when Hezbollah, Nasrallah himself, says several times, I'm not afraid of the U.S. and your forces in the Mediterranean, you need to understand what he's saying is, whoa, I see your forces in the Mediterranean. He did explicitly hark back to the 1980s Beirut bombings where Hezbollah targeted U.S. forces in the marine barracks, saying those people are still here, their children and grandchildren are still here.

We have ways to target those assets. But he understands both that Israel is serious and that if Nasrallah escalates, it's going to get very bad. And that should it ever happen that things turn and there's some type of existential threat to Israel, the United States is sitting right there. What Nasrallah did say was, Israel, if you think even once about trying to take this fight to Lebanon, no one will respond. Well, Israel's not planning to take that fight to Lebanon. They want to focus on dealing with Hamas in the south.

So he found ways to kind of flip the narrative and try and portray himself as protecting Lebanon against an onslaught from Israel that isn't coming. At a time when all of Lebanon was petrified that he was going to drag the country into a war known in Lebanon but him once. And so he found a way to kind of flip the narrative a little bit. What is the difference? The last time Israel and Lebanon were in a major war was 2006. What is different about Nasrallah's decision-making and equities that he's balancing today versus 2006? Because in 2006, he was ready to go into full war with Israel. So what is different now? The first is his own mea culpa after 2006. Yeah, he was very eager to go in in 2006. And he

thought he'd figured out a way to do this that would be short of a serious Israeli response. And afterwards, he said, if I'd only known what those Israelis would have done when I had my people kidnap Israeli soldiers from the Israeli side of the border. I wouldn't have done it. A. B. Both sides have much more significant capabilities today. Hezbollah does 150 to 200,000 rockets, but so do the Israelis. And Nasrallah is getting a front row seat into those capabilities right now as he watches what the Israelis are able to do in the Gaza Strip. And finally, Lebanon itself is experiencing a political and economic catastrophe. And at this time, nobody in Lebanon, except maybe Nasrallah himself, wants this war. What's the state of the Lebanon where Hezbollah sits, the Lebanese economy,

the Lebanese state of politics today relative to 2006? Well, we just marked a year with no presidency. There's complete stalemate within the Lebanese political system. Lebanon is still reeling from the aftershocks of the Beirut explosion. Hezbollah controls most of that port. It's believed that at least- Again, just to remind people, that explosion was not a military explosion. There was an accident that led to the explosion. Exactly right.

There was a massive amount of ammonium nitrate being stored at a part of the port controlled by Hezbollah. It was not being stored properly. It went off. It blew up a huge part of the city. Hezbollah is so concerned about how that investigation will go that they have thwarted the investigation at every turn. And the Lebanese economy is completely in the toilet. And so at a time when people are just so focused on getting by and getting through the day, the last thing in the world they want is for Hezbollah to start

a war that leads to an Israeli response that demolishes infrastructure, in large part because Hezbollah, like Hamas, has much of its military infrastructure hidden behind human shields in urban residential areas. Nobody wants that. And so Hezbollah is is deterred because of domestic issues within Lebanon as much as it is by the Israeli military and behind that the U.S. military, again, President Biden being really clear, if you're thinking about expanding this war, don't. So Nasrallah calls for an end to the war in Gaza, but yet makes clear to your point that he's not really willing to engage in it, even though he wants it to end. So the combination of, hey, I want this war to end, but I'm not going to do anything to try to make it end, or I'm not going to do anything to try to weaken Israel as it continues this fight.

What do you think the Israeli decision makers, the war cabinet's reaction to this speech is when they hear that? I think it's two things. Keep doing what they're doing? Yes, they will keep doing what they're doing because they feel they have no choice. But I think that there's a big side of relief. If Nisroel decided to go crazy cowboy, he could have. But I think that the Israelis also understand that this speech was basically saying that absent a triggering event, Hezbollah is not going to pursue a full scale war. But it's not clear if something else happens.

If it really seems like Hamas is going to be completely destroyed, that Hezbollah won't do something more. And so the Israelis are still concerned about how the northern border may play out. In the moment, they will have a free hand to do what they need to do in the south. Right now, if I read too much perhaps into Nasrallah's speech, I see Hezbollah and Iran watching, not really getting involved, sort of involved. Certainly Iran's involved to some degree, but they're not getting as engaged as one might have thought they would have. And they're sitting there watching as Israel systematically takes apart one of the most important instruments of Iran's global, regional global terror campaign, which is Hamas, get

completely wiped out. They're sitting there watching this chess piece get removed from the chessboard and are not willing to do anything about it. And I think the best thing for Israel to do now, to your point, to keep doing what they're doing, that it is very important for Iran and Hezbollah to see what happens when someone attempts to do to Israel what Hamas just did. That if they're just standing there, if Hezbollah and to some degree Iran are helpless, watching this happen, that's a pretty good outcome. I think people still need to be concerned because there are a few other things that Nusrella said. First of all, he was very praiseworthy of attacks by Shia militias in Syria and Iraq targeting US forces, this horizontal escalation you and I discussed

about a week ago. He also was very clear that ultimately he holds America responsible for all the ills in this decade, in this century and the past century, as he put it. And he said, America needs to be held accountable. And if I were a counterterrorism official in government now, I would be concerned that Hezbollah might be planning things not only along the blue line, but through its military capability, but elsewhere around the world through its terrorist capability. You mentioned my podcast this week, we got into Hezbollah's networks of sleeper cells here in the United States in the past few years. And I think this is something that authorities here are going to be very focused on and ratcheting

up. And finally, even along the blue line, the potential for miscalculation, for misperception could still lead Hezbollah to change its posture. If one rocket of the many rockets that the Israelis knocked out of the sky over the past few days made it through and hit the wrong type of a target where there happened to be some children. Things can change very fast. But in the moment, this speech, which was supposed to be a huge inflection point right now, proved not to be. And do you think that's how the other players, the quote unquote, other stakeholders in the region saw it, particularly in the Arab world? Do you think that's how the other players, the quote-unquote other stakeholders in the region saw it, particularly in the Arab world?

Do you think they looked at this speech? You and I are analyzing right now, and it seems like, huh. Keep in mind, in 2006, by the way, during the 2006 Israel-Lebanon war, Nasrallah was on TV almost every night. He was omnipresent in the Arab media and the pan-Arab media. He was everywhere, and he would make threats every night on television and then the next day he would usually actualize implement you know execute on those threats so here he was a lot of bluster but basically made clear he doesn't intend to get involved unless it's some fake but let's let's assume it's accurate that he's that he's

that he doesn't intend to get involved anytime soon. The Arab world was impressed with what Nasrallah did in 2006, that he would make these threats, he was everywhere, he seemed like the leader of this fight against the Zionists, and then he would deliver on them. What do you think they're looking at? They're watching him now, and they said, are they having the same reaction we're having, which is that's it? The people who support Iran and their proxies are surely disappointed. There's a video going on social media today of a guy throwing his shoe at the TV. The TV is showing Nasrallah speaking because he's so disappointed. Well beyond Israel, in Arab Sunni states throughout the region, people are breathing a sigh of relief. But again, I think that even just sticking to the current posture of multiple drone, including suicide drone, rocket mortar attacks across the border, you'll see a lot of activity up there. You'll see Israel take

casualties up there. Hezbollah will successfully have drawn a significant number of forces from the south to the northern border. There'll be things that Israel will be able to point to to say, no, seriously, we're playing our role in this. And our role in this is not to roll across the border and try and destroy Israel, in part because he knows he can't. He could inflict tremendous damage, but he could not destroy Israel. Our role here is to signify that this is a righteous war and that we're playing a role in it. And, you know, we will continue this as long as we can. So it's not going to be, you know, he's not stopping what he's doing. I would anticipate that he may even ratchet up a little bit.

But in terms of actually doing anything to kind of change the nature of this conflict or truly kicking off a regional war, that didn't happen. Okay, Matt, we will leave it there. We thank you for your quick turnaround. We'll post this episode right away, and I'm sure we'll be chasing you down to come back on in the next couple of weeks. But in the interim, your quick react and insight were extremely important. So thank you. My pleasure. Sorry about the phone call there. Don't worry about it. This is real world. Rockets fall, phones ring. Exactly. All right. Thanks, Matt. Take care. Thank you.