Pod Save the World - Iran Attacks Israel

Episode Date: April 17, 2024

Tommy and Ben discuss Iran’s missile and drone attack on Israel and whether Israel will retaliate, Biden’s message of restraint to Prime Minister Netanyahu, the republicans calling for all out war with Iran, and what Iran’s strike means for efforts to end the war in Gaza and pass additional funding for Israel and Ukraine. They also talk about Ukrainian President Zelensky’s criticism of other countries’ willingness to shoot down Iranian missiles but not those from Russia, a grim anniversary for the civil war in Sudan, a mass stabbing in Australia, former US Ambassador Manuel Rocha pleading guilty to being a Cuban spy, and the arrival of Meghan Markle’s strawberry jam. Then Tommy talks with Middle East expert Khaled Elgindy about post-war reconstruction in Gaza, and what kind of political path forward could actually create a Palestinian state.Don't forget to vote for Pod Save the World for a Webby Award! For a closed-captioned version of this episode, click here. For a transcript of this episode, please email [e-mail] and include the name of the podcast.

Welcome to Pots Save the World. I'm Tommy Vitor. I'm Ben Rhodes. Ben, have you ever fallen asleep while being prosecuted like Donald Trump did? That suggests a level of comfort with the process that I don't think I could muster. Yeah, I've gotten a little fatigued during jury duty, but I was never the defendant in question. No, me either. Does sound like maybe it'd be boring in the jury selection press? Voidier, as they say.

BWaerb. Did you see the crib your enthusiasm where Larry David is just striking people in the jury pool then? No. He's like, number 20, he looks like a Fox News year. Get him out of here. Really? Yeah. I got to catch up on a lot of curve, including this season, by the way. Speaking of award-winning shows, though, Ben, we love doing this show. We love our audience. We want more people to find the show and listen to it. One way to help that happen is vote for us to win a Webby Award for Best News and Politics Podcasts. Voting closes on April 18th, so you don't have a lot of time. But if you go to vote.wobie awards.com, search for crooked media, and you can vote for us, and you can vote for some of crooked media's fun social shows. So do that.

Yeah, I mean, we are in heavy Webby season. We're begging. It's quite like Oscar season. We need your vote. We want your vote. And I have a plug, Tommy. I always forget to plug things. What do you got? I'm going to be in D.C. next week. For White House correspondence? No. Oh, no, that's later. No, for Georgetown Global Dialogues, actually.

Oh, even the real events of the year. So if you are at Worldo in D.C., and I know you're out there, Worldos in D.C. At 2 o'clock on April 22nd, I will be at Georgetown, speaking about foreign policy and the U.S. election with a pretty cool panel, so come check me out. Cool. All right. We got a great show today, Ben. We're going to cover this massive Iranian attack on Israel from over the weekend. what it means for the war in Gaza and supplemental funding bills in D.C. for a whole host of things, including Israel and Ukraine.

We're also going to talk about why Ukraine is frustrated by the U.S. response to the attack on Israel, a grim anniversary for Sudan, a violent attack on women in Australia. A State Department spy is sentenced, and then we'll have a little fun at the end. And then you're going to hear my interview with Khalid al-Gindi. He is a senior fellow and director of program on Palestine and the Palestinian-Israel Affairs at the Middle East Institute. He's a former advisor to the Palestinian side at the Annapolis talks. Super thoughtful guy. And what we did was talk about, okay, what happens when this war finally ends and reconstruction begins? And we have to figure out a political path forward for the Palestinians internally and also for a broader Middle East peace process.

Can't wait to hear that. Important talk. Smart guy. Smart guy. Good follow on X, too. Do you call it X? I refuse them not call it Twitter. I don't think I've ever done it before.

That's why I said X, you know. Just such a lame name. Yeah, it is lame. Why did he choose that? Okay, well, let's start with this Iranian attack on Israel from over the weekend. According to the Pentagon, Iran fired 100 ballistic missiles, 30 cruise missiles, and 150 explosive drones at Israel on Saturday. 99% of them were intercepted, and miraculously no one was killed, though a 7-year-old

girl was seriously wounded. A lot of the missiles and drones were shot down by Israeli missile defense systems like the Iron Dome, David Sling in the Arrow 3 system, which Ben, you probably remember, received billions of dollars of funding from the Obama administration. So for all the attacks you hear about Obama abandoning Israel, in fact, those investments save countless Israeli lives. But in addition to those systems, those missile defense systems, the Pentagon says U.S. fighters shot down 70 drones in U.S. warships and Patriot missile batteries in the region shot down about a half a dozen Iranian missiles. Israel also got support from the UK, France, Jordan, Saudi Arabia. This attack from Iran was a long

awaited response to Israel's assassination of several top members, the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps IRGC, and in an Iranian diplomatic facility in Syria. According to the Wall Street Journal, Iran actually briefed several Gulf countries on their attack plan days in advance, I guess to de-conflict their airspace, but notable. But that also gave Israel a lot of time to prepare to the point where President Biden was able to fly back from Delaware to the White House to be in the situation room for this all to go down. So since the attack, Biden has talked with Netanyahu. He did a call with the G7 leaders. He called the King of Jordan.

He called the squadron leaders that helped shoot down all these drones. We're now all waiting to see if Israel responds. Israel's defense minister told Lloyd Austin, the Secretary of Defense, that Israel has no choice but to respond, according to news reports. Netanyahu has reportedly requested a bunch of response. options from the IDF. So, Ben, the fact that these like Sunni Arab countries like Saudi Arabia and Jordan were part of a coalition defending Israel is fascinating to me. I know they hate Iran and have for a long time, but still it's shocking that they defended Israel to the point where, you know, these missiles were landing on Jordanian soil and potentially wounding Jordanians.

But also, we've seen that Biden's message to Bibi Netanyahu is basically take the win, don't escalate. It's not clear if he's going to follow that advice, but certainly they can kind of turn the dial up or down if they want. I suspect a cyber attack or a response on Iranian proxies in Syria, for example, might have a less inflammatory feel to it, whereas a direct strike on Iran could cause things to explode. But what are you looking for? And what did you make of that initial volley on Saturday night? I mean, I know we were texting back and forth, like pretty, pretty scary five hours to sit around and wait for those things to get into Israeli airspace. Yeah, I mean, it's a new, you know, a lot of new things have happened since October 7th. And this is definitely, you know, a new

dynamic where Iran is signaling they're willing to attack Israel from Iranian soil. We talked about the fact that Israel attacked the Iranian embassy compound in Damascus, sovereign Iranian territory. So that's the logic that the Iranians used to justify this attack as a reciprocal attack. It's interesting to me, like if Iran truly wanted to escalate into like a war with Israel, they did the opposite of that. you know, they didn't use the thousands of rockets that they've provided to Hizbel over the years that are very close to Israel and would, I think, be able to evade at least some of the air defense systems. They announced that they were doing this, briefed it. And honestly, if you're trying to like, you know, whether it's because of deliberate not wanting to escalate further or

whether they're incompetent, whatever the reason is, flying drones for several hours, over other countries in the direction of a country that you know has incredibly sophisticated air defense systems is kind of a strange way of going about trying to actually land a punch. Although the ballistic missiles and the cruise missiles were. The ballistic missiles and the cruise missiles, you know, I think are intended to kind of send a message, look at this capability we have. And actually, I think part of what we learned is just how good the air defense systems are. That, you know, even around having these ballistic missiles is not any guarantee that they can, again,

land that, I'm going to say land a punch, but I hate to like trivialize what is a very serious situation. So all that to say is Iran was clearly trying to calibrate in the kind of weird signaling of the Middle East where, well, we have to respond, but we don't want to escalate it further. They put it at a statement out like that you pointed my attention to do right away, Tommy, from the Iranian representative at the UN that immediately is like, okay, we're done. We're good. We're good. We're cool. We're cool. We're cool. You know, like, and so the whole thing was kind of strange in that it was a huge escalation. It was, you know, obviously an outrageous thing for them to do. Very dangerous for the Israeli people. Very thankful that they were able to shoot down

so much of this. And also, like, very calibrated by Iran to try to contain its own escalation, you know. So what happens now? Well, you know, in the kind of strange back and forth, you know, the balls in Israel's court. And I think it's worth saying, like, you don't need to swing at every pitch here. You know, like there's, if they, the options available to them, the escalatory option would be to launch an attack at Iranian soil, you know, so if they choose to bomb or any military facilities, or certainly or any nuclear facilities, anything in Iran, then I think Iran, in the kind of crazy logic of the Middle East would feel like then they need to respond in a bigger way than they did last time. And that's how you keep the escalation going. There are other options available.

One is not bombing something. Again, like my kids learn in kindergarten, like you don't always have to hit back. You can talk. You can talk. Diplomacy might work. But even like other pathways are available, you mentioned like a cyber option, something inside of Iran that's not that visible. But also like hitting these Iranian proxy forces. And I don't want to diminish that. But, you know, we've seen Israel take strikes against Iranian proxies in Lebanon and Syria and Iraq.

So there are different ways. There's also Iranian naval assets. Or sanctions? There's all kinds of things they can do. What the U.S. clearly does not want is Israel to hit Iran directly and then Iran's hitting back. And this war could escalate to Lebanon, Iraq, across the region. U.S. could get pulled in. Iran could shut down the Straits of Hormuz through which massive amounts of the global economy pass.

And all of a sudden there's huge global economic shocks, oil prices through the roof. risks the U.S. service numbers, that's what we don't want to have happened. Yeah, I mean, look, when Trump ordered the assassination of Qasem Soleimani, then the head of the IRGC, the Iranians responded by firing over a dozen ballistic missiles that U.S. forces at bases in the region miraculously, no one was killed, but 100 U.S. service members got traumatic brain injuries, but Trump, to his credit, left it there. Like in that case, too, the Iranians sent a message saying like, okay, this is it for us, we're done. They're like that weird kind of little guy in the school yard that runs up to the big bully and punches them the phase.

It's like, okay, it's over. Yeah, yeah. But, you know, it was effective at the time. Ben, but, you know, stepping back, like, I'm really glad the U.S. did all this, took all these steps to protect Israeli civilians and that no one was killed in these strikes. It was very frustrating to me, though, to immediately watch the conversation about the Iranian attack in Washington just completely omit the fact that this was the Iranians responding to Israel bombing the Iranian consulate in Damascus.

Like part of the conversation should be don't do that. You know what I mean? And like everyone in D.C. is always talking about deterrence and what it entails. But they never paused to think, I wonder if starting wars is maybe not the best way to prevent them. You know? Unless you think I'm kind of exaggerating or doing a straw man of a Republican, listen to this cut of Trump's former national security advisor, John Bolton, Senator Tom Cotton, and Congressman Rich McCormick from Georgia from various TV shows. The way to reestablish deterrence is not proportional. That's academic talk.

The way you establish deterrence is by telling your adversary, if you ever try that again, the price you will pay will be so much higher than any gain you think you can get, you shouldn't even think about it. I think Israel should be looking at this as an opportunity to destroy Iran's nuclear weapons program, which is the existential threat that Israel faces. President Biden is wrong telling Israel that they shouldn't respond. Imagine America getting 300 drugs. and missiles shot at our homeland and having a country telling us not to respond.

Now, it's up to Prime Minister Netyahu and his War Cabinet and ultimately the elected government and people of Israel about how and when they respond. It's hard to imagine this doesn't steal their resolve to finish the job against Tamas and Gaza. There's no commensurate response except for power. The only way to end the war is end it quickly. If you draw this out, it's going to have bad results, which take out their capability to produce drones, which take out their capability of producing the

income and we'd undercut the entire terror process around the world, whether it be the Houthis, the Hamas, Hezbollah, or Iran itself. Who's that good boy at the end? Rich McCormick, I'd never heard of me either. But apparently all of them didn't open a newspaper through the duration of the war on terror. Yeah, yeah. He didn't learn any lessons. We should spend just a minute on this because it's totally crazy.

And, yeah, John Bolden, you know, like principal architect or one of the architects of the Iraq War, really good track record. And actually a bit of a tell that he's like, this is an opportunity. for, like he literally sees getting attacked as an opportunity. Now we get to bomb more things, you know? And these are not inevitable choices. Like, again, to wind back the tape, like, there are consequences to pulling out of the Iran nuclear deal.

There are consequences to assassinating Qasem Soleimani. There are consequences to bombing an Iranian diplomatic facility. None of that means that Iran are good guys. Right. They were sympathizing with the Iranians. What we're saying is the logic of, like, picking fights with people and tearing up diplomatic agreements is you end up in wars with them. You don't always get to be the victim either. Yeah. The story doesn't start where you wanted to start. The thing about Washington's so crazy

is that the story literally for this whole thing started with the Iranian attack. We've been saying since October 7th that there's this risk of escalation. There's this increased tension across the region. The Middle East is going to be a tenderbox so long as this war is going on. Israel's policy in Gaza that a lot of people in Washington were upset about like a week ago, now nobody's talking about it, which, by the way, is one of the outcomes that maybe B.B. Nanyahu is okay with. We'll get to that. We'll get to that. And so this is an insane way of thinking.

And again, I think part of what's strange to me, Tommy, to bring politics into this a little bit is some of this is they are, John Bolton, he believes this. Like, you know, he's a true believer in that the next war is going to be the one that turns out well, you know. Yeah. And the architect of the maximum pressure strategy on Iran that was supposed to prevent all of this. They failed. All these goons that we just heard from, like criticized the Iran nuclear deal, which was, working in terms of constraining the Iran nuclear program. And then we've tried their maximum pressure thing for years. And it ends with Iran firing missiles at Israel. And they're closer to

getting a nuke than they were ever before. If Iran had fired missiles at Israel during the Iran nuclear deal, they would have, you know, gone ballistic. Their policy failed, right? This is where their policy leads to war. And the politics of this thing is some of this is like the reflexive, like, well, if I look tough on Iran, that's got a good politics. Did they not learn anything from Trump, who has actually been pretty good at triangulating off of this wing of the Republican Party and saying, like, I don't want to get into wars, you know? And again, I don't think that Trump's policies actually reflect that because some of things he did contribute to this situation. But if I'm Biden, I wouldn't be afraid of this stuff. I wouldn't either. Because Americans don't want to go to war with Iran. They don't want to be in a war with Iran. That is very clear. Donald Trump understands that, right? Yeah, which is why he didn't respond to that ballistic missile attack. And also globally, like, you're hearing voices.

is like the comments like Tom Cotton and John Bolton in Israel in their far right. You're also hearing them in the far right in the U.S. But internationally, like Rishi Sunak said to Parliament, the prime minister of the UK, we would urge them to take the win at this point. So he's echoing the Biden talking points to Israel. Yeah. Because in the exchange, right, they blew up an embassy and killed a bunch of RGC people and the Iranians fired a bunch of stuff and they all got shot down. So you know what? That's fine. Like just back off. Yeah, Macron, the president of France saying, we will do everything to avoid a conflagration, that is to say an escalation, the German foreign minister, Ana Baierbach. The right to self-defense means fending off an attack, she said. Retaliation

is not a category in international law. So the entire world is saying, take the win, cool your jets, we get these right-wing zealots in the U.S. and Israel demanding more, more, more. When I don't, you know, and you heard out of Israel, even from, you know, not just from Netanyahu or even the far right people, but from, I think, Benny Gans, like, well, we have to respond. Why? Like, I don't know why war, like more war is the answer to any question in foreign policy. Like, Israel has deterrence. They have nuclear weapons, you know. They have missile defenses. So you don't have to, like, pick a war to show that you'll be able to fight back. I mean, it's just not, the logic is out of joint here. I also wonder if, you know, this is like the cat's out of the bag. in terms of Israeli politics because, you know, they've been so hawkish in their, in their

rhetoric about Iran for years. The Israelis wake up and read in the newspaper about, you know, covert efforts to kill Iranian scientists and to take out their computer systems and centrifuges and things. So now it's like you're hearing a lot of Israeli voices on the street who blame Iran for what Hamas did on October 7th and they're demanding retribution and vengeance in a lot of ways. And part of that is like an understandable feeling, but it doesn't make it a smart policy. Yeah, yeah. Like you don't act on every feeling.

No, you do not. But as you mentioned, I mean, the war in Gaza is still raging. More aid may be getting into Gaza, but it's still insufficient. And Israeli protesters are still regularly blocking aid trucks from getting into Gaza for hours and hours at a time. We reached out to Melanie Ward, the CEO of an organization called Medical Aid for Palestinians, about her recent trip to Gaza. She was just there. Here is some of what she said about the aid process and what's getting in. When I was on the way, actually on the way back from Gaza, I saw some of the items that have been rejected by Israeli, quote, security, some of the humanitarian items. This included a whole lot of different kinds of medical equipment, such as an anaesthesia machine, an x-ray machine. It included first aid kits, bleach. It included a box of wooden crutches, a wheelchair. It included solar lamps and generators, which you need when there's no electricity and when people are displaced and, you know, taking shelter under pieces of plastic on the ground. You need these things when everything is in such a desperate state. I also saw their sleeping bags which had been rejected. They were rejected apparently because they were green.

And green is supposedly a military colour. So I don't know what kind of system stops displaced people from having access to a sleeping bag because it's the wrong color. But it's horrifying and this is where we are. And for all the talk, the situation on the ground remains disastrous. Melanie also told us, I mean, she's someone who reads the news about what's happening in Gaza all day, every day. She's in touch with her staff on the ground all day every day. She knows all the statistics, has read all the stories, but nothing, she said, can prepare you for actually seeing what it's like on the ground. the humanitarian situation is intolerable.

Yeah, and there's just no justification. I mean, Israel, pre-October 7th, in their blockade of Gaza for, you know, I don't know, 15 plus years now, they claim that they restrict stuff from getting in that has dual-use purposes. It could be used for military purpose. What, there was no military purpose for a sleeping bag or some crutches or anesthesia.

Like, just think of how sick it is to not allow anesthetic to get in. Like, just so what people can feel more pain or to not allow crutches in. I mean, what is the logic? What is the mindset of whoever is making that decision? Because it's fucked up, you know? And as David Miliband said to us, this is an international legal requirement. It's not a favor to let medical equipment in.

It is a legal obligation under international law to allow that kind of assistance to get in. And despite, you know, the promises that came out of that phone call with Netanyahu and Biden, clearly there's still these problems. Arwa Damon, who's a great reporter for CNN, wrote a first-person account of her recent visit to Gaza, and she talked about interviewing a doctor who told her a story about, I think it was a 10-year-old boy who died on the operating table, having his leg amputated without anesthesia. You know, it was such horrific pain that he just died. And there's just, and we've talked about this, Tommy, but international journalists have not

gotten in there. They're Palestinian journalists who've done a lot to bring this to people's attention. through social media or any platform you can find, a lot of died. I just think it's probably, again, worse than anybody can imagine once people get in there. Like we said, the body count's probably worse because people are under the rubble. And I think the backdrop of this Iran exchange is there's no end in sight to the war in Gaza. Right. I mean, I think we all, there's kind of been this assumption.

At some point there'll be a ceasefire. There'll be a deal for hostages. Well, the combination of, you know, Hamas, has been intransigent. Israel, you know, killed the children and grandchildren of one of the Hamas leaders are negotiating with. So that guy is probably not like a little more inclined. Might be a little more dug in now, yeah. The Iranians attacking in this back and forth probably hardens attitudes in Israel generally because there's, they obviously draw a linkage between, you know, Hamas and Iran as a financier of Hamas. They remain committed to this Roth

operation. And so I think we have to adjust our thinking to the reality that it's possible that this war goes through the summer, you know, that there's not necessarily like some, you know, we're not on the precipice of a ceasefire. And on top of that, I mean, there's reports today that Israel assassinated a senior Hezbollah commander in a strike in southern Lebanon and then Hezbollah is firing rockets in response. So again, like the lid could pop off that. There's violent clashes in the West Bank that are steadily increasing. Dozens of Israelis and Palestinians were hurt over the weekend in fighting after a missing 14-year-old Israeli boy was found dead. And Israeli settlers shot and killed two Palestinians in the West Bank on Monday alone.

The point is the war's not over. It's not getting better. Every day, the risk of escalation increases. But to your point, I mean, this Iran strike or attack on Israel seems to have stalled any momentum behind conditioning U.S. aid or using U.S. leverage to help end the war. Instead, we have Congress rushing more military funding to Israel. So Speaker Johnson wants to call votes on a whole bunch of new supplemental funding bills. According to a document obtained by PBS NewsHour, he wants a vote on one bill that provides $48 billion for Ukraine, another to provide $14 billion for Israel with no conditioning on that assistance.

2.4 billion for Red Sea operations, which I assume is like counter-huthy strike stuff. Yeah, and probably just the additional cost of having the U.S. military more posture than that. Carriers there and stuff. There's another bill or two maybe for like $6 billion for Indo-Pacific stuff. Some Taiwan money in there too. Democrats want a vote on sending at least $9 billion in humanitarian aid to Gaza, so obviously we'd support that. There might be a vote on a band on TikTok.

So it's very confusing. It's also not clear. A real Frankenstein. Yeah. And not clear Speaker Johnson is going to survive to get to a vote, speaking to Frankenstein, because he has right-wingerers like Marjorie Taylor Green. He has Tom Massey, both threatening to ask. oust him through the motion to vacate process. So Ben, I mean, I guess stepping back, like, how

worried are you that Gaza could become an afterthought in Washington in particular as everyone focuses on Iran? And like, again, am I a paranoid freak to wonder if part of Netanyahu's plan all along was to take that strike in Damascus, take out some I're G.C. generals and see if you could make this in Iran-Israel fight. I got to say that thought has been front of my mind for a few weeks now, you know, because he had to know if you bomb an Iranian embassy that they're going to do something in response. I mean, you know, he may not have known that they launch, you know, hundreds of drones and missiles at Israel, but he'd much rather the focus be on Iran in Washington, you know, than on Israel's operation in Gaza. And again, it really is absurd to me that, you know,

when Jose Andreas is mad at people in Washington, they suddenly want a condition aid and then a week later, it's like that's just memory hold, you know? And the reality is even if you're taking the position that what we don't want to withdraw military assistance to Israel in the wake of this attack, one of the things that's been on the table for a long time is suspending the delivery of offensive weapons, right? So you could maybe keep providing Iron Dome support, missile defense support, purely defensive weapons, but you don't need to give Israel a 2,000 pound bomb to defend itself against Iran. Like that's being, that's assistance to be used in an offensive military operation in Gaza, the kind of thing that is causing all these civilian casualties.

So there's just no logic to, to this shift other than the political conversation changed to Iran. It also says something pretty weird about the United States as a country. And again, this is on the Republicans, not, not this part is not on Joe Biden. That like, well, we'll sit for months on our hands in terms of providing. providing support to a country, Ukraine, defending itself, you know. But, you know, we'll rush this assistance out the door to Israel as they're carrying out this kind of open-ended thing in Gaza. Like, it just, I don't know, nobody comes out as looking great.

No, I want to get to Ukraine in one second. But one last thing on Israel. And we haven't talked about him much on the show because he's mostly just an anti-vaccine crank. But if you guys have liberal or leftist friends who are into a Robert F. Kennedy Jr.'s campaign for some reason, just make sure they search his views on Gaza because he is far more hawkish than Joe Biden. These are some quotes. So Robert RFK Jr. said that Israel, quote, does not have any choice except to eradicate Hamas. He denied that there was a siege on the civilian population in Gaza, even after the Israeli government announced it. Yeah. He said, quote, the Palestinian people are arguably. the most pampered people by international aid organizations in the history of the world.

That's a direct quote. I transcribed it myself. He opposes even a temporary ceasefire in Gaza. In 2023, he said he opposed Biden getting back into the Iran nuclear agreement and he regurgitated all the Trump lines about like pallets of cash type stuff, even though he supported the deal back in 2015. So this guy is just like a political hack who is apparently super hawkish on foreign policy and willing to call the Palestinian people who have been in a dire humanitarian situation for 15 years now pampered? Yeah, I mean, the core point you make

is that we're going to have a conversation, I'm sure, for the next few months about people who are, like, maybe dissatisfied, angry about Biden's Gaza policy and therefore want to vote for somebody else. I mean, I think there's a lot of reasons why, I mean, anybody listens to this podcast knows that you and I have had a lot of problems

with the Biden policy, but I frankly think that that's a bad idea. Just educate yourself on the other options. Just to look at the other, because an election is about choices, right? And this guy is not like a different option. I will say, interestingly, I wonder how much his views on this are,

and it doesn't justify the view, but, you know, a Palestinian assassinated his father, right? So I don't know anything. That's a very good point. I don't know what goes on in RFK Jr's head. You know. Lucky you. You don't want to know.

Yeah. You don't want to know. Because what's weird is he's, the only common threat, because I've heard him give interviews about foreign policy, and the only common threat is kind of, it's the same thing. It's like conspiracy theories. Yeah. And sometimes it's like so far left, you can't see it. Sometimes it's as far right, you can't see it.

Like, this is not the guy you want to launch your, you know, vote to. No. No. Two quick things before we go to break. One, if you're in L.A. on April 21st, POTS of America is going to be live at the festival of books with appearances by Hysteria's very own, Aaron Ryan, John Favreau, Dan, and me. Grab your tickets at crooked.com slash events. Come join us. Also, it's 2024, guys. This election is coming faster than any of us want. If you're not sure how to make an impact, go to Votesave

America's anxiety relief program. We will help you figure out the best way to get involved and to donate to grassroots organizations and down-ballot candidates who need it most at that exact moment. With your help, Votesave America has raised over $210,000 of recurring donations from over 4,700 donors just in March alone. That money goes to support amazing grassroots groups in states doing the real work, organizing, turning out voters, all the things we need to win. Let's keep the momentum going. Go to vote saveamerica.com to learn more and set up a recurring donation today. Paid for by Votesaveamerica.votesafeamerica.com, not authorized by any candidate or candidates committee. So let's get to your Ukraine point because the fact that the U.S. and other Western allies

directly interviewed to intercept these attacks on Israel, but did not do that for Ukraine, has not been lost on President Zelensky. He tweeted a long message that said in part, and these are quotes, the entire world witnessed allied action in the skies above Israel and neighboring countries. It demonstrated how truly effective unity in defending against terror can be when it is based on sufficient political will. Israel is not a NATO member, so no action such as triggering Article 5 was required. European skies could have received the same level of protection long ago if Ukraine had received similar full support from its partners in intercepting drones and missiles. Terror must be defeated completely and everywhere, not more in some places and less than others. It was part of a long

statement he put out. So, Ben, Ukraine's permanent representative to the UN said that Russia has fired a thousand missiles, 2,800 drones, and 7,000 guided aerial bombs at Ukraine since the start of the war. According to a report in Politico, Ukraine's success rate in shooting down Russian missiles and drones has gone from 90% to 46% more recently. They're just like running out of interceptors. The Washington Post reported that back in February, Vice President Kamala Harris told Zelensky to stop attacking Russian oil infrastructure because the Biden administration was worried it would jack up global energy prices. The post said that message did not go over well. And Ukraine instead doubled down on those attacks. So Ben, like Zelensky's anger here.

here, totally understandable. Totally understandable. It's also a fact that Russia has nukes that can hit the U.S. So the context is different. Iran does not, which, by the way, is why the JCPOA was a good idea to prevent Iran getting nuclear weapon. But what do you make of the argument from Zelensky here? And do you think it's likely to prod countries to do more to support him?

Or are you hearing anything out of Washington that gives you hope that supplemental funding bill for Ukraine might pass? I think that, you know, I am entirely sympathetic to Zelensky here. I don't think that the U.S. like, and we talked way back when about things like a U.S. enforced no-fly zone, the U.S. getting involved in a direct military confrontation with Russia, even in a defensive manner, is just, you know, that's a huge risk. It's intolerable escalation.

Job one for foreign policy is to not have World War III happen, you know. And so I understand the U.S. reticence there. But, big butt here, where I agree. Zolensky, why are we not providing far more air defense systems to the Ukrainians? It stands the reason that that's the kind of thing we should be dramatically ramping up in terms of our provision of the Ukrainians. I'm sure that some of that is in the sup. So again, that's not necessarily even a critique of Biden. That's a critique of Republicans holding this up. Why would you not want to get these people patriots and air defense systems and whatever

they need to shoot down drones? Like, we should be giving them all of that stuff. Because even if you're someone who's like, I'm a little uncomfortable kind of perpetuating the war on the front line that's just getting people killed, that's a good argument. You know, you can make an argument both ways on that because you can also say you have to fortify Ukraine, give them enough weapons so that they can be in a negotiation with Russia in a stronger position. Even if that's your view, though, you should want to give them these defensive systems. And so that's a no-brainer. And I do think there's something, there's an interesting frustration I've seen in Zelensky's messaging recently where he's willing to create. criticized the U.S. Yeah.

I mean, it's always been a bit, but I totally get it like, oh, Joe Biden, I get you don't want the oil prices a little higher in your election year. Really? We want to survive, you know? Yeah, that's tough. That's tough. And similarly, he's been willing to go after Republicans more, which takes a lot of guts because Trump is the guy holding up the supplemental.

And so Zelensky seems like he doesn't have a problem necessarily going there and calling out Republican intransigence, even though. that Republican intransigence is being, you know, mainly driven by someone who could be president. Yeah, it's got it's a really tough political situation to be in for him. And by the way, Foreign Affairs Magazine, it might have run today or this week, this really interesting piece about why and how the early peace talks between Ukraine and Russia broke down. These were the first weeks and months of the war. There were a lot of parties involved. There's a lot of different opinions on what happened and what broke down. But the gist seems to be that while various versions of

a draft agreement between the parties guaranteed that Ukraine wouldn't join NATO or have nuclear weapons. There was some language in there requiring the countries that were supposed to be the guarantors of this agreement to directly intervene if there was some sort of invasion so the U.S. would have to come to Ukraine's defense if Russia invaded, which I don't think most Western countries were ready to agree to. There was also the fact that the talks were, as the talks were ongoing the Russians withdrew from the northern vector of invasion, right? They withdrew from their attempt to invade from Belarus. That exposed all the war crimes that had happened in places like Buchat, it hardened opinion in Ukraine. And I think everybody just didn't trust Putin at that point

because obviously he had been saying, no, no, no, I'm not going to invade Ukraine. And then he did. But again, this is another area where you sort of alluded to this. Robert F. Kennedy Jr. is either a liar or living on a different planet. No, and this one, he's totally bad to crazy. As recently as March, he said Putin was withdrawing his troops when Biden sent Boris Johnson over to tear up this proposed peace agreement because Biden's real goal was to expand NATO into Ukraine. Like that is just nuts. And the opposite of that reporting, right? Because the U.S. was reticent to give that security guarantee. I think that it'll be very interesting to kind of learn the whole history of what happened in those early weeks and whether there truly was an opportunity.

to reach some kind of deal or whether it was just there were some talks and some formulations being passed back and forth. We don't know. But yeah, it's suffice to say it wasn't, you know, Boris Johnson killing, killing peace deals on behalf of, I mean, there was. Biden emissary Boris Johnson. Well, yeah, yeah. That didn't happen. I mean, I do think like we should, you know, I did what a day, a great podcast that, you know, people want a daily dose of cricket. And I got a great question, which is like, you know, hey, seems like World War III is uncomfortably close here, you know. And we need to take this seriously, right? You've got an actual war in Ukraine. You've got a war in the Middle East. That could escalate substantially. You've got, you know,

China could have Taiwan contingencies. We do need some diplomacy here, you know. And the one lesson I would take is it even in the hardest possible circumstances, like the early weeks, and I'm not suggesting, I don't know, I'm not suggesting the Biden team could have like pulled some diplomatic rabbit out of a hat. I'm just saying like, let's say something flers up in Taiwan. Like I hope it's not like a momentum towards conflict. It's like how do we get the hell out of this becoming a war? You know, like we need to start being really aggressive precisely because we are uncomfortably close to World War III. Now is the time to really be dialing up the diplomacy here. Yeah, both sides think that the only way to restore deterrence is one last attack. Yeah. It's not a great place to be. Yeah, everybody thinks they're going to have the last attack that restores deterrence. And sometimes the deterrence is just not having the war in the first place. Yeah, that'd be nice. Okay, Ben, let's turn to Sudan because Monday, April 15th marked a grim anniversary in Sudan. It's the one year anniversary of the Civil War. And with so much focus on Gaza and Ukraine, it is important to remember that one of the worst conflicts in the world is only getting worse. So some quick stats from the last year, according to

the United Nations humanitarian agencies. More than 8 million people have fled their homes. At least 14,000 people have been killed in Sudan. I'm sure that number is much higher because there's so little information getting in and out. 25 million people, roughly half the population of Sudan, require humanitarian assistance, and save the children warns that 230,000 more children, pregnant women, and new mothers could die in the coming months due to hunger. So this civil war broke out a year ago when two generals who were once allied began this bitter power struggle, that power struggle has evolved into a broader proxy war. So you have Sudan's military, which is commanded by General Abdul Fata al-Bernam. He is backed by Saudi Arabia, Turkey, Egypt, Ukraine, and Iran. Then you

have the paramilitary group, the rapid support forces or RSF. It's led by a general most commonly known as Hometti. He gets support and weapons from the UAE and from the Wagner mercenary group in Russia, our old buddies. On Monday, 58 countries at this conference in Paris pledged $2.1 billion in humanitarian aid to Sudan. That is just nowhere near enough. And as French President Emmanuel Macron noted, the humanitarian relief money raised by this conference is probably less than what's been spent by the various powers fighting the proxy war in Sudan already, so combined. We spoke with Jada Doyen-McKennah, the CEO of Mercy Corps, an organization that has been providing support in Sudan since 2004. Here's a clip of what she makes.

of this donor conference and its successes. After yesterday's international pledging conference, we are still facing a shortfall of approximately $2 billion to respond to the urgent needs of the Sudanese people and to provide life-sustaining essentials like food and shelter. The $2.1 billion that has been pledged represents just 20 cents per day for each person

in dire need of assistance. It is extremely concerning and quite frankly a moral outrage. that despite famine warnings, world leaders have pledged barely half of the funds needed to save lives. So the crisis in Sudan is also destabilizing neighboring countries like Chad, South Sudan, and Egypt, which have to manage these unsustainable refugee flows and build these huge camps for people. So, you know, first of all, shout out to Mercy Corps and these organizations for the lifesaving work they're doing. But Ben, I mean, a couple weeks back, we talked about Sudan, and I reached out to a buddy who was one of the leaders of the Save Darfur movement back in the early 2000.

just to say, like, is there anything similar happening? Is anyone standing up a similar organization to try to do something outside of government? And his answer was basically no. And while saved Darfur obviously didn't prevent the genocide from happening in Darfur, it at least was this global movement to raise awareness and force governments to respond and to take some sort of action. And now that's just, that doesn't even exist. And it just, you know, it left me wondering like, what happened?

How did this just completely fall apart? Yeah, I think it's because the breakdown, I mean, part of it's just like the world is crazier and there's more stuff going on and things that would normally get, you know, normally would have gotten attention in the 90s or early aughts, you know, are just getting drowned out. But another big piece of this is the degree to which the international order is collapsed. It doesn't really exist anymore. You know, you mentioned the nations providing support on both sides of this. like the whole world is like a, you know, series of proxy wars taking place. And, you know, back in the day, you know, even in the Obama years, like we dealt with Sudan, South Sudan through the UN Security Council.

Like, that's a joke now. Like, you can't get anything done through the UN Security Council because Russia and China and the U.S. don't agree on anything. And so then it becomes this kind of, you know, everybody backing their warlord. And again, I don't think you have, no, I don't think, I know you don't have a civil war like this in Sudan, absent these external powers like arming different sides. Oh, no doubt, yeah. And so that's the problem.

The problem is, sure, some of it's in Sudan, but if you could adjust the wiring of these countries providing a support, you could have a shot at ending this thing pretty quickly, you know? So that's the first point. And this is where you think we'd have some leverage, like to call the UAE and say, stop sending weapons to the RSF. Well, that's, yeah, that's a paramilitary force. And that's where the U.S. could focus more attention.

and there's a very good envoy and Tom Perriello now trying to do this. But and to the point about the UAE, like, guess who has $2 billion? You know, like if the UAE was spending that money trying to avert a famine, and ultimately it's in their interest because I don't think it helps to have this degree of mass suffering and disorder across all of North Africa, like we're seeing. That begets other problems. It begets insurgencies, terrorism, obviously above all famine and humanitarian suffering.

And again, you know, we just, talked about the U.S. trying to shovel, you know, $14 billion out the door in Israeli assistance. And I guarantee you couldn't squeeze probably a few hundred million dollars at the door for USCID for Sudan. I mean, we need different priorities, frankly. The world needs different priorities. America needs different priorities. And again, that's, you know, that's more about Congress than the Biden administration. That's just, you know, what you can get. Yeah. It's amazing what, uh, how quickly Congress will move to buy more weapons. Yeah. Yeah. It's very, very depressing.

Yeah. Okay, speaking of depressing stories, so sad one out of Australia, Ben, we're on Saturday in Bondi Junction in Sydney, one of the country's deadliest mass killings in decades took place when a man with a knife entered a shopping mall and stabbed 18 people, leaving six dead. All but two of the victims were women, including a nine-month-old baby girl. So this 40-year-old attacker reportedly had a long history of mental illness. Police commissioner Karen Webb was asked at the press conference if the attacker singled

out women to which she replied, quote, I think everyone's seeing that footage can see that for themselves. So these guys was just targeting women. One male, the one male victim who died was a security guard. He was working his first shift at the mall. And he lost his life while trying to intervene and save people. 24 hours before this attack, hundreds of people gathered for a rally just outside Melbourne, calling for action on violence against women. After months of high profile murders involving female victims, one activist who spoke at the rally provided some statistics regarding violence. against women in Australia. They were as follows. One in two women have experienced sexual harassment.

One in three women have experienced violence since the age of 15. One in four Australian women have experienced intimate partner violence since 15. One in five women in Australia have experienced sexual violence since the age of 15. So the father of the mall attacker contacted police when he heard the news.

And he had this to say to the media. I'm extremely sorry. I'm heartbreaking for you. Look, this is so horrendous. but I can't even explain it. You're trying to give me, to give you an intelligent conversation, I can't do it because I'm just devastated. I love my son.

I made myself a servant to my son when I found out he had a mental illness. I became his servant, I did everything because I love that boy. This is a parent's absolute nightmare when they have a trial with mental illness. That something like this would happen, and my heart goes out to the people our son has hurt. It's just devastating. So the attack finally ended when a female police officer named Amy Scott shot the attacker dead. So look, we just wanted to raise it to send some love to our listeners and friends in Australia because it's scary stuff.

And also just it's pretty dark man that like one of my initial thoughts when I heard this story was, thank God this didn't happen in America because that guy would have had a gun. Yeah, yeah. And it would have been even worse. I'm not saying like, you know what I mean? I'm just like glad Australia has actual gun laws to prevent this guy seemingly from getting one. Well, yeah, they have actually really strong gun laws, and that is really driven down gun violence. I mean, I mentioned you, Tommy, like I heard from some listeners in Australia about this violence against women piece of it.

And I did a similar dive into the kind of statistics, which are really jarring. And even if this guy has mental illness, and I can't get in someone's head in any case. But if you're in a society that is kind of too tolerant of this violence against women, you know, it does kind of open the door to people taking that to extremes, you know? Oh, yeah. And I think it raises the bar on societies like in Australia to really take a concerted across-the-board effort to try to get at the root causes of violence against women, which we've seen, by the way, in too many places.

Like you just talked about Australia. India's had all these problems over the years where you've seen periods. uprisings essentially, people being like, you know, their, they're awful sexual assaults that sometimes happen in public. The UK, there have been issues over the years of women feeling like there was a kind of normalization of people being harassed in the U.S. obviously. Even by police. But, yeah, police in the U.K., and obviously the U.S. has had, you know, the Me Too movement and all kinds. So I do think this is the most jarring reminder that, you know, that even in, I don't know,

relatively non-violent, you know, advanced democracies, you can't ignore, you can allow these kinds of issues to just fester. You know, I think violence against women is a really high indicator that someone might commit homicide. Yeah, yeah, exactly. Kill a spouse, kill a partner. There was also a really scary incident in Australia on Monday where there was a bishop at a church who was stabbed while getting a sermon. It was live streamed. Apparently it was a, the cop said it was a terrorist attack by a religious extremist, but I don't, didn't seem more than that. Yeah. Yeah, it seemed to be something to do with this particular church. But yeah, rough, you know.

Horrible, horrible. Two more quick things where we get the interview. So a quick update on a story we covered when it broke, which is a former U.S. ambassador named Manuel Rocha was sentenced to 15 years in prison on Friday. Rocha pleaded guilty to acting as a secret agent for the Cuban government for up to 40 years. He worked in top jobs at the State Department at the White House on the national security staff in the mid-90s. He was even the U.S. ambassador to Bolivia. so a very senior guy. Rocha's indictment says he was recruited by Cuban intelligence while

visiting Chile in 1973. So right after graduating from college. Yeah, so these Cuban Intel guys, they were playing the long game, man. He wasn't a citizen yet, I don't think. And he joined the State Department in 1981. So they got him early. So Rocha left the State Department in 2002. I watched the movie of this one. I would watch this movie too. He later worked as an advisor to U.S. Southern Command from like, I think, 06 to 2012. So again, he stayed in government, state. They'd focused on U.S. entities managed Cuba. He also apparently stayed loyal to the Cuban government because in 2022 and 2023, the FBI did this sting operation

where they sent someone undercover to contact Rocha, and he started bragging about his accomplishments and loyalty to Cuba. The Associated Press reported that a Cuban defector tipped off a former CIA officer about Rocha as far back as 2006, but it sounds like they just dropped the ball. So great job, Bush administration. It is not clear if Rocha is fully cooperating about all that he did and knows.

But man, like an infiltration, a double agent at that level really makes you wonder how much stuff just gets missed. Yeah, like how many more of these there are, you know. The limits of counterintelligence. It does. A lot of smoke and mirrors there. Like, it's interesting. So I'm going to nerd out here for a second because I've been doing some like research for this book. I'm working on that involves Martin Luther King, and it gets at when the intelligence community was

kind of set up, J. Agarulu lost out at first, right? Hoover is running the FBI. They create a CIA instead, so they create a different intelligence agency. But what Hoover got is counterintelligence, right? Like the basically loyalty investigations in the United States, security clearances, things like that. And Hoover used it to kind of create this massive power structure, right? Because you and I, like, have you had the experience of, like, having to meet FBI guys who ask you all these questions, And what's... Mindset to me, when we were detailing my drug use, how do you do that one? Yeah, yeah.

Well, the funny thing about it is... I was like, oh, my God. This is where the nerd out connects... This is the worst conversation of my life. Well, yeah, this is where the nerd out connects to the Cuban thing. Because, yeah, they ask you these dumb questions like, you know, have you ever been a member of a party, committed to the overthrow... Basically, are you communist, right? Which, and then they ask you if you've ever used drugs, right?

And if you're gay. And then they ask you about, yeah, if you had mental health. had sex with like foreigners and stuff, which guess what those questions are? They're like weird Jade Grew Hoover questions. Totally. Never mind. Trump's going to have a $500 million debt that someone's going to pay for him. It's amazing. It seems like a bigger deal. Yeah, no, it's amazing in reading this book that I'm like, oh, I always thought these questions are weird, but it's all because Jay over Hoover wanted to know who was sleeping with who, who was a communist, like who. There's just no rhyme or reason to it. The rhyme or reason was like the FBI wanted to have files

on everybody, right? And meanwhile, like if you had a real counterintelligence approach, you wouldn't get, because I had the same of the drug use, you know, well, where did you get the drugs? I'm like, it's fucking college, man. Like, it wasn't, like, I remember that, like, they kept asking me like, well, that, you know, seems like you did a bunch of marijuana. Like, where'd you get that from? I'm like, were you ever in a dorm, dude? Like, it's not a hard thing to get your hands on, you know?

They try to, like, do, like, a chain of custody with, like, every, like, you know, a bag of weed you've ever bought. But I ended up, like, giving them the name of, like, one of my really good friends in college. And a bunch of FBI guys was. His office? I did the same thing. And he was like, what the fuck, man? Why me?

I took it too seriously. Because I actually answered the questions. I remember my favorite was like somebody I was talking about it was like, you, I won't name who this person is because they're actually like a like. And he's like, you told the truth on your fucking form? Like nobody does that, you know? But like. I think the marijuana used thing I just wrote like the infinity sign.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. Oh, God. But I mean, again, like these, there's. There's these massive amounts. And it's also, again, no offense to the poor schlubs who have to go out and interview people like you meet. But it made me think, like, something like 1% of Americans have security clearances. It's a fucking jobs program, too. Because the amount of time these people are putting these pointless investigations.

It took like nine months. Yeah. And it's like we know. They were like interviewing my mom. We're not catching the actual, because guess who the counterintelligence threat isn't. It's not someone who smoked pot in high school. Or even someone who like subscribed to some. some fucking communist newspaper in college, right?

It's the person that is like, you know, dealing with foreign governments. O's money or has some weird allegiance. Yeah, like, so all this is to say our entire counterintelligence structure is fucked up and it's fucked up because it's rooted in this like peculiar sociopath, Jade Groover, who used it to like gather information on mass amounts of Americans. End of nerd out. No, that's really good. And like weirdos like James Angleton who were like specialized in counterintelligence.

and God knows if they harmed or hurt the country. A lot of people think hurt in the long run. They're these weirdos, too. If you want to get, you know, like Robert Hansen, member of the guy, like FBI guy who was passing all this stuff to the Russians. They're always like, when you learn about these people, they're usually like it's not that shocking. It's so obvious.

It's so obvious. They were making like $10 grand a year at the time, and they had like a $90,000 Porsche and nobody noticed. But, yeah, Hansen had like, and you had like some girlfriend that he would impress with all this. Like, and so if they were less busy cracking down basically on liberals, because, you know, who is more likely to smoke weed and, you know, engage in left-wing campus politics, like, they might actually catch the spies. Right. Apparently, Rocha, you know, sort of fooled everybody by assuming the identity of, like, a super hardline anti-communist guy to the point when he was in the U.S. ambassador to Bolivia, he seemed to overtly come out in opposition to the leftist candidate, then running for president, which, surprise, surprise, helped that.

guy win, right? So he pretended he was a right winger. So like there was all this sort of obvious kind of subterfuge happening. Because you, well, what of, I mean, this is why the Cubans are smart because they're like, oh, we could have our asset in Bolivia. The U.S. is so unpopular that this guy meddling in Bolivian affairs as an anti-communist is actually going to help the left one guy win, you know, it's the ultimate irony of the stupidity of American foreign policy and Latin America. Use our nonsense against us. Last thing, Ben, did you bring your royal correspondent hat to the office today? I mean, I can put it on.

Could you throw it on quick? Because I was actually reading some Danish world news. Oh, okay. Well, this isn't Danish. I have just a question for you. I just want to know if you saw that Megan Markle soft launched her lifestyle brands. Because you flagged for me, I think. There's somebody on our texting there.

The first product, she's apparently releasing some sort of strawberry jam from the American Riviera Orchard brand. It was sent to 50-5-0 total influencers. Each one is numbered. So when you Instagram it, you can see. Did you get one? I didn't, but I just don't understand why she's not doing like a reboot of suits or something. Like, why the jam?

I don't know why jam. I was hoping you had some insight there. Are they big jam fans? I mean, Brits are bidding the jam. I mean, but she's not, this, this, I don't know who's giving them advice. Yeah, I don't know about this one. Who's giving them advice on like the podcast is weird? I actually listened to the podcast.

And it was proof that like just because you're famous, I mean, you know, this is a hard job. You have to be willing to say stuff. You all think that this is easy. You and I, a lot of preparations into this. You got to be willing to tell embarrassing stories about your security clearance. So I'm going to drop my Danish royal thing because there's a great Washington Post story. Did you know that the defense attach for Denmark and Washington is like literally like the print, like the son of the queen of Denmark or the brother of the current king? No.

Like a Danish royal. And it gets more interesting. So the queen of Denmark. had two sons, the older son who was the crown prince and this guy. Then she announced that she was abdicating, but she also announced that she was stripping this guy's kids of their prince titles. Why? So now they're just counts and countesses. Oh, the horror. Seems kind of, and then this guy, they all like shot back. They're like, oh, we're really offended by that, which you might think they would be. And now he's in Washington as a defense attach. I knew none of this. So that's a sweet job.

Just saying you're a defense attache or any kind of attache. Yeah, yeah. That's got to get you open some doors. Wasn't, you know, an old friend of the pod, Caitlin Hayden's husband, Erlinger Erlinson, I think he was a defense attache for the Icelandic embassy? I think that's right. What a cool job to be the defense attache for Iceland. You're basically a modern Viking. Yeah, yeah, yeah. That guy had the look, too. Yeah, he was tall.

Tall, handsome. Yeah, tall handsome guy. Drink of water. This is a good test of Caitlin. There's probably a 0% chance that Caitlin listens this podcast, but we'll find out now. We'll find out. Well, by the way, if you didn't get one of the 50 influencer bottles of jam, according to the BBC, visitors to the gift shops in any royal palace can get

the Buckingham Palace strawberry preserve for three pounds 95 or the Windsor Castle fine-cut, Cévi-orange Marmalade for the same price. Is that why they're doing it? Maybe they just want to direct war. This is like a war, a jam war, you know? It's like an old-school. War the Jam's clover. By the way, you should watch Shogun if you haven't.

Alona pitched it to me. I watched the first two episodes. Great. It's like 1600s Japan, the Portuguese, the Brits. Great show. This is the second time I got that recommendation today. Quick plug to, I did the Escape Hatch podcast this morning with Jason Goldberg. Oh, yeah.

Used to be called DunePod. Yeah, yeah. You rewatch a movie and we did a hunt for Red October. Oh, great one. Which, by the way, ages quite well. Great movie. Check it out. Yeah.

But we somehow came up, Shogun. These guys were raving about Shogun. So that's my next one. I watched Ripley. Have you watched Ripley? I don't think so. It's like the talent of Mr. Ripley except the TV series of it. And it's cool.

Okay, cool. We're going to do a quick crazy Ivan. We come back. You will hear my interview with Kyle Del Gindi. We're going to talk about what happens after the war in Gaza stops and how you reconstruct the Gaza Strip and how you build a political process going forward. So stick around for that. My guest today is Khaled al-Gindi.

He is a senior fellow and director of program. on Palestine and the Palestinian-Israeli Affairs at the Middle East Institute. He's also the author of the excellent book, Blind Spot, America and the Palestinians from Balfour to Trump. Great to see you. Thank you for doing the show. Yeah, thanks for having me back. It has been six months of this nightmare of a war in Gaza.

Eventually, it will have to end. And, you know, as awful as the war has been, I think things will get even harder after. So we wanted to talk about that today. And just sort of get, you know, you've done a lot of great writing about this. But just want to get your sense of what will be required for reconstruction and governance going forward. It's hard to know really where to start on the question of reconstruction and governance. You know, in the past, whenever there have been wars long and short, you know, the shortest was maybe a few days. And then the longest was like 51 days before now.

So we've never seen anything like this in terms of the scale of destruction. I know the World Bank is putting the reconstruction figure at around 18.5 billion, which is, to me, sounds very, very modest. And I think it relates only to things like housing, because about 60 to 70% of the housing stock has been destroyed, or at least enough to be unlivable. So probably a safer estimate would be like $100 billion for everything, because you have to rebuild hospitals and roads and sewage lines and all kinds of infrastructure that was civilian infrastructure that was deliberately destroyed. And in the meantime, what happens, right? How does Gaza be a livable place?

So even if you could locate those resources, how do people live there? And my fear, and I think the fear of a lot of people, is that they won't. Over time, we'll see people, you know, maybe trickling out at first, but then eventually you might see a mass exodus over the next five to ten years because people need to educate their kids, people need work, people need hospital. hospitals. So I don't know. I don't know how you deal with the reconstruction part. That's on the technical side. On the political side, it's even harder because where the U.S. and the Europeans and maybe the Arab states are with regard to Gaza's reconstruction and rehabilitation is not at all where the Israeli government is. And so that huge gap is going to work in the favor of the parties that are on the ground,

namely the Israelis. The Israelis don't care about reconstruction. They don't care about anyone's security but their own. And so they're not looking at long-term governance in traditional terms. They're looking at who can we recruit now that serves our immediate interests, including so they don't even trust the humanitarian aid groups. And so they're looking to cultivate a different kind of leadership that is more parochial, you know, business leaders, heads of clans, maybe gangs and warlords at some point. And so we have two completely different visions for Gaza's short and medium term future.

And I don't know how those get reconciled. Let's turn to the political process you mentioned. I agree it does seem like that will be harder. I mean, you talked about there's this huge disconnect between what the United States is talking about, which is empowering the Palestinian authority and asking them to take the lead in Gaza. The Israelis, as you mentioned, don't like that plan. They want to go a different route. But there's also reports, more importantly, in my opinion, of tensions between Hamas and Fatah,

this will lead Palestinian parties. and it all calls into question how to find some sort of single unified Palestinian leadership that could take the lead on giving Palestinians a voice in these processes going forward, and a voice in Reconstruction. Are you seeing any process emerge or any leaders emerge that you think might kind of be the generation or process for which this political challenge gets sorted out? Sadly, I don't. I think there are huge gaps across the board between Israelis and the U.S., obviously, between Israelis and Palestinians, among Palestinians, probably within the two factions, within Fattah, there are different visions.

Within Hamas, you have different factions. You know, you have a leadership that is based outside of Gaza in Doha. You have obviously Yahyazinawa inside and his immediate circle of leadership. And you have others in the diaspora, in Lebanon, for example. So are they on the same page? It's not clear that they are. I think part of the problem has been the kind of zero-sum thinking on all sides. Obviously, when you have massive death, people kind of retreat to these very absolutist ideas and visions and zero sum.

Certainly that was true of the Israelis early on and Hamas as well. That's to be expected. I think what was missing was for a responsible third party actor to emerge to say who could not think in zero-sum terms and think in much more reasonable terms about what is feasible and what isn't and what's necessary and the United States should have been that party but but they weren't they sort of bought into the zero-sum calculations that the Israelis were were pushing out there and that is Hamas has to be completely destroyed as a military movement and politically as a governing force. That was never achievable, and it was always untenable.

And so I think it was quite reckless for the United States to buy into that early on, even though they've kind of hedged and moved away from that kind of rhetoric. But in a lot of ways, it's too late. Hamas is going to have to be incorporated into the Palestinian body politics. in one form or another. People will have to come to terms with that reality. If you cannot accept that reality, that is a recipe for endless war and death and destruction. So there's just things that we don't like that we have to accept in the world. And that is one of them. Yeah. I mean, look, even Channel 12 News and Israel reported that Israeli military intelligence assesses that

Hamas will exist as a guerrilla group, as a terrorist group after the war. So I think everyone agrees with what you're saying. Yeah, but it's more than just a guerrilla group, right? It's a political group. Well, it's an idea in resistance occupation, yeah. Yeah, and then they have an ideology and they have a base of, they have a constituency. You know, they have their support. And so, I mean, it's a political movement before it's even a military or a guerrilla movement.

Right. So you were an advisor to the Palestinian leadership. You were part of the Annapolis negotiations. you have probably heard a lot of empty rhetoric about the Middle East peace process from Western leaders. You've seen a lot of failed efforts. I mean, I'm asking you to overgeneralize here. But I'm just wondering, you know, clearly there is this underlying political problem that is driving the conflict, right?

We need to get to a place where there is a Palestinian state that is led by Palestinians where people have a home. And so that will require some sort of negotiations with hopefully will lead to a two-state solution. In the past, in broad strokes, what do you think the process? got wrong and are there things you think the US could do to help fix it going forward or anyone could do yeah there was a lot that that the US got wrong that's really kind of the as you know the the thrust of my book which is trying to answer the question of why wasn't the US able to be an effective mediator in this case whereas in other contexts it could you know the Balkans or Northern Ireland or and it has a lot to

do with the fact that, you know, the special relationship with Israel. U.S. officials, lawmakers, elected officials, administrations of both parties tend to look at the issue through a very Israel-centric lens. And if you, when you do that, certain things get filtered out. Things like the negative consequences of Israel's power, you know, look at, look at what's happening now. Another thing that gets filtered out is Palestinian politics. And like all groups, they have politics. And it's not just about who the prime minister is going to be. It is fundamentally about these different factions that have different visions for wanting to lead the Palestinian national movement. That was not a priority for U.S. officials. I mean, in fact, during the Bush administration,

when that split first happened between Hamas and Fetah, Palestinians were like, holy crap, this is, you know, our national movement has been fractured. The Bush administration saw it as a good thing. They said, this is an opportunity. Now we can move forward with the good Palestinians and sidelining and even pressuring and even making war on the bad Palestinians.

That just doesn't make sense, you know, to deal with two different sets of Palestinians as though, and then pretend that one was outside the peace process, right, Hamas, when in fact, they could clearly torpedo the process whenever they wanted and they did so quite often. The Biden administration today seems primarily focused on securing a normalization agreement between Israel and Saudi Arabia as part of, I guess, a broader regional peace effort. there's a bunch of reports on this. Some suggest that the U.S. would have to give Saudi Arabia a security guarantee.

There's others that suggest we would give them a nuclear energy infrastructure for some reason. And the Israelis, I think, would be asked to take meaningful steps towards the creation of a Palestinian state. I don't know exactly what that would entail. Hopefully it would be meaningful. But I think probably the price there went up since October 7th. I hear about all this effort being expended on this normalization agreement. And I wonder if it's the right path. It seems like a bit of a bank shot to me to get to a Palestinian state.

But what do you make of those efforts? Yeah, I think you're right. You know, bank shot's an interesting way to put it. I think it kind of underscores the extent to which the Palestinian issue is not a priority. Palestinian statehood isn't the goal, but normalization is the goal. And Palestinian statehood is one of the boxes that have to be checked in order to get to that. Right. You know, grand bargain. And so it's secondary in, in terms of, you know, resolving the Israel-Palestinian piece of that, which is really about Palestinian sovereignty and self-determination. They don't think

this administration appreciates kind of the core issues of the conflict, which isn't Hamas. The conflict didn't start on October 7th. Terrorism is not the root cause of this conflict. The root cause is the denial of millions of Palestinians the most basic rights that other humans are entitled to. I mean, the other thing you often hear kind of whispered in Washington policy circles, and not to sound too cynical here, but people will say, well, actually, you know, Israel's neighbors, other countries in the Gulf, like the Saudis, like Egypt, like the UAE, they publicly criticize Israel when they go after Hamas, but they quietly like it because they worry about the organization as well, maybe. it's a threat to some of the autocrats in the region. Is that fair? Is that accurate? Is that just the thing people in Washington believe?

I think it's true to an extent, but not true to the extent that folks in Washington want it to be true. And so it's a little of both. And I think it's less true every day, the longer this goes on. I can't imagine that the Egyptian regime is thrilled about having, a million people who are starved, bombarded, desperate on its borders. I don't see how Egyptian security and intelligence establishment would think this is a good thing. I don't think the regimes in Saudi or Egypt or other places in the region care all that much about Palestinian civilians.

But I do think that the publics in these Arab countries care a lot. And that's something that these regimes pay attention to. And that is, that's what at least allows them to say rhetorically, at least, that they're, that, you know, that they support the Palestinians and they're critical of Israel. The Trump era, I mean, back to these normalization agreements, the Trump era, Abraham Accord agreements where Israel signed normalization deals with Bahrain, Morocco, the UAE, Sudan. Those were often shorthanded in Western press as Middle East peace agreements. But again, the Palestinians were just an afterthought in those conversations. Usually, you know, in the case of the UAE, the U.A.E, the U.S. basically made it a huge arm sales deal to get

the two sides to normalize. What do you think the impact of those normalization deals was on the Middle East peace process that we all think about, which was efforts to create a Palestinian state? Yeah. I mean, I actually think they were at working at cross-eastern states. I mean, I actually think they were at cross-purposes. Pursuing normalization, and I would dispute even calling them peace treaties, as you said, these were countries that were not at war with Israel for them to make peace as such. Unlike Egypt and Jordan, their peace treaties with Israel, these were two countries that were, historically, at war with Israel. But the UAE, Morocco, I mean, these are completely different animals in terms of the nature of those agreements.

I do think that they were designed to kind of circumvent the Palestinian issue altogether. Netanyahu said it in so many words when the Abraham Accords were being signed. And we knew that that was also a priority for the Trump administration. So if the people who are conceiving it are telling you that this is a way to bypass the Palestinian issue, then we should take them at their word. And I do think that it undermined the goal of a Palestinian state because it reduced one of the last remaining incentives that Israel had to end its occupation, which is that being accepted and normalized in the region.

So if all the Arab states normalize with Israel, well, then what we have is pretty much a permanent Israeli occupation, also known as apartheid. So if you just take something to its logical end, that will tell you the impact that it has, and I think it's clear to everyone, that Saudi-Israel normalization deal in particular would mean, I think, the death knell of the two-state solution

if it's not already dead. Yeah. You have also written a lot about the need for accountability, one idea to create, you know, a process to get to some accountability for not just this war, but also past conflicts, is the idea of setting up some sort of truth and reconciliation commission. I think that's a smart idea. I also wonder, though, we're seeing this war empower more extreme voices on both sides in Israel. It's people like Ittmara Ben-Givir, it's Smotrich, the finance minister. And of course, you know, Hamas, I think probably is

increased its reputation in the region or at least shown itself to be an actor, whereas the Palestinian Authority is seen as kind of complacent and corrupt. What do you think it would take to get to that kind of process? The way the peace process functioned was because it was a U.S. mediated process and the U.S. Israel relationship was so close. It naturally favored Israeli needs, demands, narratives, and so forth, to the exclusion of those same things for Palestinians. And so you need a different approach that is much more balanced, that takes into account the needs of both sides, and pushing new ideas like truth and reconciliation, like mutual accountability. And one of the reasons the Oslo process has been such a failure is that it never had any

accountability mechanisms in place at all. There wasn't even kind of a verification process. Did each side meet their obligations by the deadline and if not, what are the consequences? They studiously avoided that. So you need that from the outside pushing in, but you also need to have credible leaders, and leaders who are willing to make bold moves and to reimagine their own future.

And we don't have that on either the Palestinian or the Israeli side. I tend to put the onus on the Palestinians in the sense that as the weakest party, they have the greatest stake and the most to lose in the absence of a resolution. And so it is incumbent on them, first and foremost, to have to kind of put their national movement back together and to establish a, cohesive unitary leadership of some kind, whether it's through reconciliation of Hamas and Fattah, or just that does away with them altogether and establishes some new leadership. That has to be a priority to have a credible Palestinian leader, leadership. Now, you also need to have a leadership on the Israeli side that is willing to make these kinds of concessions, right? If the leadership is focused only on maintaining the status quo forever, you know, that's not going to work.

So the status quo has to become costly for Israel in one form or other, politically, diplomatically, economically. That's the logic of the BDS movement. Nothing will change until Israel's calculations change. I guess if you were, you know, the National Security Advisor and you could kind of snap your fingers and make some calls over the next six months, what do you think you'd like to see President Biden do going forward to to get us to a better place, you know, not just in the short term, but long term? You mean, beyond an immediate ceasefire? Yeah, I mean, I think demanding an immediate ceasefire is like table stakes, right?

Yeah, yeah. I mean, that's the first step. I mean, I would like to see a recognition of the damage that was done and some accountability. I would like to see a halt on weapons transfers until certain actions were taken, whether it's on the humanitarian front, you know, allowing humanitarian aid to reach Gaza, but also Gaza's reconstruction and, you know, a much more concerted effort to encourage a Palestinian leadership that is unitary and cohesive, a kind of real politic acknowledgement. that Hamas will be a force in Palestinian politics and therefore there need to be smart ways of trying to neutralize its negative influences rather than just the hammer

because that's how we get to where we are. So I'd like to see a lot more nuance in the approach to internal Palestinian politics, a lot more accountability with regard to Israeli actions. And from there, I think the U.S. can start to rebuild its credibility that it has very, you know, that it's completely dismantled. Halli, thank you so much for joining the show. Again, the book is called Blindspot, America and the Palestinians from Balfour to Trump. An excellent read if you want to go deep on the policy process in the past and some of the failures and some hopefully ideas for how to move forward.

so thank you again. Yeah, thanks. Thanks for having me. Thanks again to Halllindy for joining the show. Thanks to Megan Markle for nothing. The number jam, yeah. 51 maybe coming our way. Thanks to those goons who like interviewed all of our college friends to find out of our drug use.

He was so horrified by me. I felt bad for these people having to spend all this time on my pretty boring, you know. It was humiliating. Yeah, sitting around, you know, listening to, like, jam band music, you know, in early aughts. They're like, where did you live in 1996? I'm like, my mom's house? How is this helping you? How is this protecting the secrets?

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