Morning Wire - The Geopolitics of Israel’s Fight Against Terrorism | Sunday Extra

Episode Date: October 15, 2023

William Ruger, President of the American Institute for Economic Research and Afghanistan war veteran, breaks down how the immoral attack on Israel and the resulting war might reshape the geopolitical landscape. Get the facts first on Morning Wire. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Coordinated attacks by Iran-backed Hamas terrorists have been met with a prompt and powerful response from Israel this week, while many questions remain to be answered. To what extent was Iran involved in the strikes? And what impact will the conflict have on Israel's relationships with other countries in the Middle East? In this episode, we talk with William Ruger, president of the American Institute for Economic Research about the geopolitical impact of the war. I'm Daily Wire, editor-in-chief John Bickley, with Georgia Howe. It's Sunday, October 15th, and this is an extra edition of Morning Wire. Joining us now is Will Ruger, President of the American Institute for Economic Research, a veteran of the Afghanistan War, and Trump's nominee to be ambassador to that country.

Well, thank you so much for joining us, and first thank you for your service. We saw a horrific attack on the civilians in Israel this last weekend by Hamas. What are your initial thoughts on why Hamas launched this coordinated attack on Israel now? Yeah, I mean, it's a complicated situation. and it has been for a long time. But what I would say is that there's a lot of changes happening in the Middle East, including going back to the Abraham Accords and then the possibility of normalization between Israel and Saudi Arabia.

And that clearly connects up to the kind of broader geostrategic competition in the region, bringing in not just issues related to Israel and the status of Palestinians, including in the Gaza Strip and in the West Bank, but also the relationship between Saudi Arabia and Iran and that competition that has been a longstanding feature of the geopolitics of the Middle East. Right. Can you expand on this how an improvement of the relationship between Israel and Saudi Arabia might impact Iran in particular? Yeah, I mean, clearly normalization of Israeli-Saudi relations would be an increased challenge for Iran

and something that they may not wish to see, particularly if there would be a security guarantee given to Saudi Arabia by the United States. So obviously some desire for that not to happen on the Iranian side. And also Iran uses proxies like Hezbollah and Hamas to project influence beyond its borders. And that's been a normal feature. And I say normal and not in the sense of being a good thing, but a consistent feature of what's been going on in the Middle East for years and years. Hezbollah actually receives more money from Iran than Hamas, according to most figures that I've seen, a lot more actually. So Hezbollah has been, I think, Iran's main proxy in the region. And Hamas, to a lesser extent, and again, there have been rifts between Hamas and

Iran in the past, especially over what's been happening in Syria. So it hasn't always been smooth sailing between Iran and Hamas. But clearly, there's a sense that at the least that there's been what the administration called a kind of broadly complicit relationship between Hamas and Iran, although in the case of these particular attacks, these haven't been confirmed. Right. The Biden administration has repeatedly said that, that we have seen the Wall Street Journal saying they have confirmation from various officials that Iran was heavily involved leading up to this attack, potentially coordinating it. Does the strike help? help Hamas or Iran in any way. Does this benefit them or does it hurt their positions in the region?

Well, I mean, one thing that I've been saying consistently since the, you know, atrocious and awful attacks by Hamas has been that it's actually not just immoral, but actually strategically foolish. You know, the reason for this is that when terrorist organizations or militants use civilian-centric targeting, right? They intentionally target. innocent non-combatants. This actually usually doesn't work. There's been a lot of research done by scholars, including Max Abrams at Northeastern, that have shown that this just is not strategically rational from the standpoint of trying to meet any type of kind of strategically political goals, political ends. And so it's foolish. And to the extent to which Iran is supporting Hamas,

then you could imagine it being foolish also for the Iranians because of the fact that it could backfire. This could lead to Hamas, as we're seeing already, Hamas being, if not eradicated, severely eroded in terms of its capability as an effective organization. So you can see that this actually could backfire. And that's one of the reasons why, again, it's easy to make the case that these things are immoral, that they're evil, they certainly are. but they're also strategically foolish. Well, when it comes to Hamas, perhaps there isn't much strategy here.

Their charter, their stated purpose for existing includes wiping out, obliterating, as they say, Israel. Now, the critics of the Biden administration say they made a massive error by releasing $6 billion in exchange for hostages to Iran that it could encourage more aggression from Iran. Is this a fair criticism? One of the things about the money is the administration has been trying to say that, of course, this money is kind of cordoned off. It can be used for food and humanitarian reasons. But people who have argued back against that narrative have said, look, money's fungible. And therefore, they would have more access to resources that they might otherwise have to use for other purposes. So I get the

arguments that are being made on both sides. I'm not sure how constructive that's going to be, because the real question isn't so much whether this freed up money or whatnot, but whether it's the right policy approach and whether it meets American national interests and the extent to which Iran is complicit in this. That's a question that has to be prior to the question of like, you know, where did they get the money? Do you see this conflict with Hamas leading to a much broader escalation? And could that impact the normalization efforts between Israel and other Middle Eastern countries? Again, as someone who appreciates and would like to see a normalization of relations between Israel and its neighbors, you would hope that if there's a good strategic

rationale for those relations to normalize, a good economic rationale, that you would see states try to keep those on track. But again, you can't ignore the fact that this is certainly going to impact the domestic politics of those states and the political space in which that normalization was happening is going to be changed. So, you know, that's just a reality that is going to be there and the question is whether this will temporarily challenge those normalization efforts or would actually have a long-term effect on that. And I think that, you know, as Yogi Berra said, prediction is really hard, especially about the future. I would say that in the Middle East, in particular, prediction is very challenging because, heck, if what were led to believe about

this attack is true, then even smart people who are focused on this and had a huge incentive for focusing on this got it wrong, right, in terms of this being an intelligence. failure. So again, prediction is hard. I mean, the one thing you could predict in the Middle East is that there's going to be trouble. The question is, is more or less, right? Final question. Is there anything about these attacks that you feel like is not being reported enough or discussed enough in political circles? Well, I think that, especially in the first day or two after something like this, I think it's most appropriate, especially as we, you know, kind of set and maintain norms for people to be.

saying like I have, which is, look, this is absolutely immoral. This type of targeting of innocent civilians should not have a place in political competition. And we should rightly show our kind of revulsion at it. And to blame Hamas, first and foremost, for this type of attack. And not to try to indulge, I think, too much into context. I don't think that's the right approach right out the get. Then when it comes to, I think, in the weeks and months ahead, I think now, then it will be the time to think about why are we seeing this, what are some of the challenges, how can we get on a path to greater justice and peace, and sometimes justice and peace are going to be intention, which is the case now where Israel, I think, rightfully should respond. But then the question is, is how do we

create a situation that might provide for greater peace and justice in the region? And I think a lot of the coverage that I've been seeing has rightly been on our moral revulsion, which is where it should be. You have seen people that have, I think, unfortunately, wanted to blame the victim here. And I think, again, Israeli-Palestinian relations are complicated. Israeli-Iranian relations are complicated, and there's a lot of nuance. But I think that we shouldn't lack kind of moral clarity about this particular activity that happened on Saturday. And I think that's where the focus should be.

Well said. Well, thank you for joining us. And again, thank you for your service. That was Will Ruger, president of the American Institute for Economic Research. And this has been an extra edition of Morning Wire.