School of War - Ep 118: Michael Doran on Is Hamas Winning?

Episode Date: April 9, 2024

Michael Doran, Senior Fellow and Director of the Center for Peace and Security in the Middle East at the Hudson Institute and co-host of the podcast Counterbalance, joins the show to talk about the Israel-Hamas war and the broader regional competition with Iran. ▪️  Times      •      02:04 Introduction      •      04:01 Is Hamas winning?     •      10:29 Fighting the clocks     •      13:10 Defeat from the jaws of victory      •      18:24 An Iranian-American conflict     •      22:44 Managing decline      •      26:40 Lessons not learned     •      33:00 The Iranian nuclear umbrella Follow along  on Instagram Find a transcript of today’s episode on our School of War Substack

How is Israel's war against Hamas proceeding? And how do battlefield and diplomatic developments there fit into the broader regional competition with Iran? The Israelis took out a senior IRGC commander and his associates last week in a very significant strike in Damascus. But I'm pretty pessimistic about how things are going. Today, we bring Mike Duran back to the show to see if my pessimism is warranted. It is a prescription for war, this Iraqi invasion of Hawaii.

a date which will live in infamous. The bloody experience of Vietnam is to end in a stay on it. We continue to face a grave situation in Iran. The people who knock these buildings down. We shall fight on the beaches. We shall fight on the landing grounds. We shall fight in the fields and in the streets. We shall never surrender.

For maps, videos, and images, follow us on Instagram. And also feel free to follow me on Twitter at Aaron B. McLean. Hi, I'm Aaron McLean. Thanks for joining School of War. I'm delighted to welcome back to the show today. Mike Duran, he is Senior Fellow and Director, Center for Peace and Security in the Middle East at the Hudson Institute. He also has the distinction of being thus far the second most listened to guest in School of War history after only H.R. McMaster, our first guest, episode one. And the podcast pros, Mike, and you're a podcaster yourself, you have counterbalance at Hudson.

The podcast pros will tell you that your first episode always will have a kind of, you know, roll on advantage. It's just hard to defenestrate your first episode because when people come to your show, they'll naturally look at that, apparently. So I'm told. But you are in second place. Congratulations. Also, last thing I'll say, I think, and I think the math shows that you will, this episode that we are recording right now will be the episode that's up when School of War crosses the 1 million total downloads line. So you have become willingly or not, mostly not, a real piece of the School of War story. Thank you.

I'm completely willingly. Where does the title School of War come from? It makes me think of School of Rock. It's a, it has that echo. It's a reference to Thucydides. It's a reference to he is the best or most excellent who is trained in the severest school. I once read a Spartan King says that in Thucydides. I once read a great book on the art.

art of cross-examination. And the first rule of the art of cross-examination is never ask a question you don't know the answer to art. Because I ask you, where does that come from? You say Thucydides, and then I show the world that I don't know my Thucydides. It's not a quote. He doesn't say School of War. He says the severest school.

So the implication being war is a severe school that would teach us important things if we were to actually pay attention to it. That's the project of the podcast, is an attempt to pay attention to war. And unfortunately, as much fun as we are having here on the front end, my actual questions for you come from a place of deep pessimism, at least from where I sit. And I'm mostly curious about where you set as somebody who has followed and written brilliantly about the Middle East throughout your career. But we've had, you know, really an eventful week, mostly for the worst, as best as I can tell in the Israel, Hamas war. You had the World Central Kitchen incident, the blowback to that. In the United States, Biden apparently telling Netanyahu that he supports an immediate ceasefire.

You have the report just yesterday. This all happened so quickly just yesterday that the Israelis have pulled their maneuver units out of southern Gaza. They say that the official line is they've pulled it out to prepare for the final offensive in Rafa. I don't know if I believe that. And they say it has nothing to do with the American pressure. Nothing to do with the American pressure. Which is a pretty good sign that has a lot to do with the American pressure. So I have one big question for you, and we'll just kind of unpack it here over the course the next 30 minutes or so.

Is Hamas winning? Well, that is a great question. Is Hamas winning? Let's first define victory. And then because I don't think there's an easy answer to it. So let's dance around that a little bit. And so the defined victory. The Israelis defined victory as return of the hostages, destruction of Hamas as a military organization, destruction of Hamas as a military organization.

organization and destruction of Hamas as an organization capable of governing Gaza. So if we go by that metric, then we see what victory for Israel would mean. It would mean fulfilling all of those things. At this stage, it has not fulfilled any of them. But it's well on the way. All that stands between the Israelis and victory, as we have just defined it, is basically taking over Rafah. That's the, well, destroying it as a political organization may take longer,

but as a military organization, we have one more major. They got Hamas's four brigades, the Israelis tell us, in Rafah, and if Israel could take that, then it will destroy Hamas as a potent military organization. And by taking Rafak, then Israel will control the cross. from Egypt, which is the economic lifeline of the whole Gaza Strip. And as long as Hamas controls those, then it can control the distribution of aid and everything else. And it retains its ability to be the dominant political element in the strip.

But as you noted here with your opening description, the United States is putting enormous pressure on Israel not to go in to Rafek. And that's what I think where this pullout is all about. What does Hamas need to win? It just has to survive. If it survives and if it prevents Israel from achieving any of the aims that it has defined, then it then it wins. I think that's it's already it's already gained a lot from this operation.

For all that it has lost and has lost, you know, an enormous amount. But for all that it is lost, it's more popular on the West Bank now than ever before. If it survives as an organization capable of intimidating everyone else in the Gaza Strip, that I think that that is victory, the victory for it. Is it winning? I would say it had a good week. I'd say it had a very good week. You know, as well as anyone here on the School of War, that wars go through lots of ups and downs

and surprising things happen that nobody expects. So I would say too early to say, you know, to pronounce that it's really winning the war, but I would say that that total victory for the Israelis is still some distance from us. And the closer we get to November, the November presidential election, the more the American pressure on Israel is going to grow not to take Rafakh. So to me, it's an open question as to whether the Israelis are ever really going to get to. are going to get to Rafq anytime soon. Let me just add to that, though,

the domestic political pressure on any Israeli government to go to Rafah and to destroy Hamas is, I think, overwhelming. I think sooner or later the Israelis are going to get there, but exactly when that's going to happen is impossible to say. Well, this is the classic, you know, irresistible force and immovable object kind of problem, because I agree. And I, on your last point about Israeli political will, I mean, I was there in December.

I think it's hard if you don't go there to appreciate the, the nature, the intensity of public feeling on this question and related questions for that matter. Like Hasbelah in the North is another issue we could discuss. It's just hard to appreciate it from a distance. As bad as 10-7 seems even from a distance, it's just hard to realize how strongly, in my opinion, justifiably, they feel about the goals that they've set themselves. Nevertheless, it is no surprise to anyone that the clock of American toleration appears to be, if not out, you know, very close to out. And I remember, and I think we discussed when you came back on your extremely frequently downloaded episode six months ago. I mean, I was skeptical at the start of a large-scale ground operation in Gaza. and I was skeptical when B.B. said that the goal was the destruction of Hamas, not because I don't

sympathize with the goal, but because it seemed to me from a purely military standpoint that what is being contemplated there was going to take a lot of time. And by the way, you're not, you're not really going to, I mean, even to complete the military destruction, which be, let's say, define that is destroying these last four battalions in Rafa. And let's add killing Sinwar, ideally. That would be an ideal cherry on top. You could call that a kind of victory and a kind of destruction of the structure of Hamas as it had as it formed, you know, itself. And in the period since it took over Gaza, you still weren't going to destroy, you know, whatever would follow on an insurgent form as a must. You wouldn't destroy the ideology. Like that was not actually

accomplishable by IDF action, but fine. But even though the concrete goal of military destruction, that was going to take months and months. And here we are. I'm kind of amazed they've made it six months because the American political clock was only one of the clocks that mattered. There was the reservist service clock. By the way, it also appears to be about up.

There was a defense industrial base sort of resource issue that is intertwined with the American issue. There's an Israeli political clock. That clock looks to be about up. Yep. We have protests in the streets again. So how are you going to claim

that your goal is a destruction, of Hamas and then just proceed as though none of these clocks exist. And I worry that, you know, I basically agree, by the way, with the way in which you define how everyone looks at victory. I think that's right. But the burden is all on Israel in that conception. They have to get 100% of the way to their defined goal. And Hamas, if Hamas keeps them at 99% Hamas wins.

Right. And I am worried, Mike. I am worried. Yeah, I'm concerned as well. and I'm disappointed. I'm not surprised at all, but I'm disappointed by the Biden administration. Because it's one thing, you know,

people have compared this a lot to the second Lebanon war. I was in the White House working on the Middle East during the Second Lebanon War. And after a month, the American patients with the Israelis was wearing thin, for sure. I didn't love that then when our patients started to wear thin, but there was no credible. plan that the Israelis had about how they were actually going to defeat his

Bala. And the war was dragging on and we couldn't see that, okay, one more week, two more weeks and it's going to, the situation is going to be appreciably different than it is today. In this case, we see what the Israelis have done throughout Gaza. They have systematically dismantled all of these battalions. There are four battalions left. They're in Rafakh. If the Americans give a green light, the Israelis are going to go in and they're going to dismantle those battalions. So we are really only, you know, a matter of weeks away, I think very clearly. We know exactly what's going to happen. And we have no reason to believe that it's not going to happen.

And so the American, why has the American clock run out? I mean, I have my theories about this myself. But the Americans are stealing. defeat from the jaws of victory for no good strategic reason whatsoever. Is it going to make that much difference to Joe Biden's election hopes if the Israelis have two more weeks of war in Gaza? I don't think so. Yeah, well, I want to, my next question then is what is your theory? I mean, because I am of the view, as you are too, I'll phrase it my own way, that the

destruction of Hamas, even if, again, just from a purely prudential point of view, I was skeptical of six months ago. Nevertheless, subjectively in the American interest, for once, an Iranian proxy will have stepped too far and found out. In addition to that, I'm of the general view that it is better when our friend's interests are advanced and our enemy's interests are harmed. And this clearly would be an example of that. And by the way, it looks like you could actually accomplish it without starting a regional war, which I know is the great fear of the Biden administration. I am of the view, of course, that it should be less of a fear of theirs for reasons that we can discuss. So to me, this is objectively in the American interest. What is your

theory about the Biden administration's reasons for the actions it's taken? Well, I'll give you the theory in one line in just a second. But before I do that, let me just point out that you and I, Aaron, I think that we see the world very similarly. And we approach a problem like this from a similar point of view. That is to say, an ally is attacked by an enemy. Hamas is an enemy of the United States. It's an ally of Iran. It's a proxy of Iran. And so we say, what is the American interest? And we read the region as an American-led coalition against an Iranian-led coalition. And in Ukraine, we would look at Ukraine and we would say an American-led coalition against the Russian. I do not think that that is the way the Biden White House looks at any of these problems.

It thinks about, it starts from the point of view that the United States, I know, and like I said, I will get back to the answer and answer it very similar, very simply. But their starting point is the United States is not the leader of a coalition against Russia, against Iran, against China. They see the United States as the manager of the global system. And they see the Russian invasion of Ukraine or the Hamas's attack on Israel as a rogue actor acting against the system, acting out against the system. And the question they ask is, how do I put the system back into good repair? and how do I compel the rogue actor to become part of the system or operate,

maybe not directly in cooperation with the system, but operate less as a reduce the obstruction that that actor places to the system. So in less abstract terms, it was amazing when Putin went into Ukraine, how much the administration kept talking about trying to give Putin an off-ramp. So now they're trying to give Hamas. and off ramp. They have a solution in mind. Their solution that the administration has in mind this week is not victory for Israel, not victory for the American coalition. It's how do we, how do we,

how do we de-escalate the situation? And, you know, Israel has already shown that it, you know, it's caused a lot of pain to Hamas. You know, it's chastened it. So let's de-escalate now and get the system back into good working order. The key thing that happened last week, we mentioned the World Central Kitchen. The key thing is that the Israelis killed General Zahidi and Damascus on Monday on the same day. That led to fears of escalation in the White House between Israel and Iran, possibly a larger war that would suck the United States in.

Biden called up Netanyahu on Thursday. and read him the riot act and said, I want to ceasefire agreement. And now we have all the major parties are meeting in Cairo right now as you and I are speaking. And the Americans are using all the pressure that they can bring to bear on the Egyptians,

on the Qataris, on the Israelis, on everyone to bring this thing to an end so we can have a hostage for prisoners deal and to cease fire. And then they hope to extend that all the way to the election. they're really trying to bring the war to an end this week. The simple answer now, that was all the big long prelude in one sentence. This administration came into office wanting to reverse

Donald Trump's maximum pressure campaign against Iran. They thought that that was the grand strategic blunder of the century here, of the new century. And they have a vision of regional order in which the United States and Iran have a strategic understanding, an accommodation. They believe that the U.S. and Iran are not going to become partners, but they can enter into a mutual non-belligerency, agreement of mutual non-belligerence. And Gaza for them, Gaza for them is not an opportunity to really stick it to Iran, as it would be for you and me. they see it as a Gaza as something that was outside of the of the mutual non-belligerence that

they were working agreement that they were working on with Iran and they want to they want to tamp it down so they can get back to the business of of organizing the region in parallel with Iran. And if they succeed in bringing about the kind of ceasefire that you just described, that would be a victory for Hamas on the terms that you laid out at the start of our conversation on the assumption that it's extended out. As you and I, as you and I see that, yes. Yep. And then Hamas's defensive concept, which included the hostages. I mean, defensive concepts are not just literally your trenches and your machine guns and the tunnels. It's at a more grand strategic level, the hostages themselves. It's the international media

and the way in which incidents like the whole Jose Andres thing can be used. It's defensive concept will have worked. Well, it totally worked. Yeah. And, and, And the Iranians, you know, we, to keep our conversation, you know, within manageable bounds and so on, when I defined victory, I defined it just in Gaza. Yeah. In my, in my view, this conflict is objectively not an Israeli-Palestinian conflict or a war in Gaza. This war involves Hisbalah in the north. It involves the Houthis. It involves Iran's militias in Iraq and Syria.

And so it is, in a sense, an Israeli-Iranian war, but I actually think it's an Iranian-U-S war. It's the Iranian alliance system against the American. That's the proper way to frame it. So if we're going to ask, who's going to win that war? Who's going to win that war? I think that Iran is going to come out. If the United States continues to do what it's due,

which is to restrain its ally and allow Iran's proxy to survive, it's going to end up with the upper hand. Because it is already demonstrated to the world that it can, this is the first time it has orchestrated all elements of the Resistance Alliance, brought them, brought all of its proxies to work in parallel for against one other state in order to achieve a very clear, a very clear aim. It's disrupted international trade. and it's shown China that if China wants to go into time, for example, just to throw one out, you know,

the Iranians have hung their shingle out and said, hey, if you're going to have a war with Taiwan, and you want to move an aircraft carrier group or two of the United States into the Persian Gulf beforehand, and if you want to threaten global supply chains, we can help you with that. We've got the tool. I was asked a week ago, you know, if I thought Hamas was winning. And sort of like you, I said, you know, sort of too soon to say Israel still has a shot. But even if it, even if Israel did defeat Hamas according to the terms that you and I have been discussing, and that's where it stopped. If there was no action in the north, if the Red Sea remained closed, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera.

To me, it's actually much less of a close call in terms of whether Iran or the United States is coming out ahead. It's clearly Iran. Iran is clearly winning. I mean, winning, winning in a competitive sense. I mean, a world in which the Red Sea is substantially closed to commercial traffic and where this bunch of, you know, these rag-tag proxies are shooting at American naval vessels on a pretty regular basis in living to tell the tail again and again and again. I mean, I'm sorry.

And I'm kind of, I mean, I'm not shocked. I'm shocked, but I'm not shocked that this receives. as little attention as it does. That is objectively a world that is worse for America, an America's friend, and what America wants to see out of the world. And to your point about China, I've never understood the argument that America needs to retrench in the Middle East and retrench in Europe in order to be better prepared for the Pacific for reasons that we're watching play out right now

because it's never been clear to me how what the consequences of retrenchment would look like, how those would in any way help us in the Pacific, which I grant. I grant China is the greatest national security threat to the United States. I think it's obvious. But we are playing out. This is a bizarre situation in the Middle East where we actually haven't withdrawn from the Middle East. You know, sent comm's there. You know, we've got a lot of stuff.

We could surge assets to the region kind of anytime we want, you know, absent another major conflict. And yet because we're so afraid of escalation, we're so afraid of the Iranian threat, we're not actually getting any return on that investment. And we're watching what would happen in the Middle East as though we weren't there. Right. We're watching the region revert to a to a to or evolve, devolve, whatever, to a post-American order, even though it's not technically post-American. America is still around managing its own decline somehow. I couldn't agree with you more.

And we said we were going to deter the Houthis. What is basically a rag-tag militia compared to the United States of America? And we said we were going to deter it. And we failed to deter it. And now we say, oh, well. So instead of trying to deter the Houthis, seriously direct our forces to kill senior Houthi leaders, to kill the Iranian liaison officers that are supplying the Houthis, to shut down the Iranian supplies to the Houthis, to destroy the arsenals, what it would take to deter them.

Instead of doing that, also starting to support the anti-Houthi elements in Yemen who will do the work for us, right? This is a system that we dismantled in order to bring Iran into the system, into the regional security system. Instead of doing that, we say, well, we'll bring calm to the region by restraining our ally Israel and then the Houthis will stop. That's what they're thinking in the White House. I guarantee you. As Joe Biden sees it, and as his advisors see it, the question is, do we escalate against the Iranians and the Houthis in order to bring order to the region? Or do we restrain the Israelis? Because we want to have a quiet life for the election.

What do we do? And they've decided on restraining the Israelis. That's the answer to go. And the concept that it's very plausible when you lay out the Biden team worldview in the way in which they see themselves as managers, the system. and they have this ability to bring people back to the table and make them less roguish and so forth. Not to get too nerdy, though I did just attend an event where you were asking Senator Tom Cotton about German romanticism. So I know I know you can get nerdy. I'm sorry if that was off the record.

I don't know if Hudson keeps its romanticism debates off the record. Sorry. But it wasn't me who got nerdy. I just asked the question. I don't know anything about German romanticism. But the Biden concept that you just out. the regional strategy requires believing things about the, well, the Houthis as a minor part, but the Iranians is the major part that seem to me to be manifestly not true, namely that they

look at their region and understand their interests like we do, whereas that is to say that they would want what we would want. Of course, they want security for themselves and a certain degree of freedom, as we might imagine, any nation would want. But they, they're a revolutionary power. I'm going to make a series of assertions here. I'm curious to your feedback. They're a revolutionary power guided by a theocratic vision.

They have to live in the real world. They've been living in the real world for decades. And that requires certain compromises. Nevertheless, I'm kind of of the view that when they say they wish the Zionist entity were gone, that they mean it. And they mean it for very deeply rooted reasons that are not window dressing for domestic politics. They are an empire. They have an obvious imperial program that is not like the way that Marxists say that America is an empire because we sell a lot of Coca-Cola and Africa.

No, they're like an actual empire. Like they're seeking control in their region through traditional imperial techniques of proxies and subsidies and threats and, you know, everything that, you know, Caesar Augustus would understand perfectly well in his business with, you know, the Bithma, whoever. Right. And we sit down and we expect them to want peace and material gain like we Americans want peace and material gain. And that just strikes me as destined to fail. I mean, am I reading the Iranians correctly? You have been paying attention to them and for the matter paying attention to the Biden people in a deeper way than I have over the years. Yeah, I agree with all that.

The Iranians and the Russians, you know, I always, when I debate people about this stuff, I always say, here's a conversation that didn't take place in Tehran. When Qasem Soleimani said, I'm going to start, I'm going to start arming militias in Iraq to shoot EFPs at American soldiers. The Ali Khomeini, the Supreme Leader, didn't say, oh, what if the Americans escalate? We better not do that. We might make the... We might make... We better de-escalate.

They never talk like this. They never think this way. When they see us... And this has happened a couple times since I've been watching this closely, where we have... And one of them happened when I was in the White House. In 2006, we kind of by design,

kind of by accident, because there was a number of us who were all pushing in the same direction. And within about a month or maybe a few weeks, we put a carrier group in the Gulf. We got the first sanctions resolution through the United Nations, and then we started rounding up IRGC fighters all over Iraq, and including in the courtyard of one of our allies and Iraqi politician.

Anyway, they felt the hot breath of the Iranians in Tehran, the leaders in Tehran, they felt the hot breath of the United States on the back of their neck, which doesn't happen very often. And the fact of the matter is, Aaron, we're actually a very strong, a very powerful country. We just, we, we, we so often, you know, the right arm doesn't know what the left arm is doing and we're fighting with each other. And we don't, we don't, we don't focus on a single goal. But when, when American power is barreling down on you, economic, military, political and otherwise, it's scary. It really is, it really is scary.

And they, they totally, they went to ground in Iraq. They started floating ideas of, they started floating ideas of making concessions on their enrichment of uranium and so on. And how do we respond? Like, like Pavlov's dogs, you know, we, we said our, I don't want to go into who it was, but significant people in our system said, oh, well, let's sit down and negotiate with them. And I thought, no, no, we think, we, you just, we just had a lesson.

School of War. You just had a lesson in what makes these guys make concessions. And it's you got, you have got to break their nose. Punch him in the nose. Doesn't have to be all-out war.

Punch them in the nose. Show them that you mean business and then you'll get something out of them. But we so quickly, especially with the Iranians, we want to help them find the off-rab and teach them how to be good members of the system. It's remarkable.

No, there's this report just a few days ago that we were dangling, taking the Houthis off the terror list they recently been put back on if they stopped shooting at us. Perfect, perfect illustration. Right. Of the, like, bizarre inability that we have to learn these sort of obvious,

what seemed to me obvious lessons. The thing that we're, I mean, I have a lot of worries about the Middle East. I mean, about Israel. Sorry, I didn't argue. Please. Another thing I always say, and I really mean it when I said, didn't anybody ever beat these guys up on the, on the playground? Like, have you not, have you not experienced a bully in your own life?

and been taught the lesson that the guy actually likes it when you're hurt. Yeah. Yeah. Well, that's, I mean, at a deep level, again, not to get too nerdy, but the idea behind this podcast school of war, since you're the one who raised it, is that there is something about war that helps, that if you pay attention to it properly, certainly if you experience it, but you can experience, you know, violent conflict, as you point out in other contexts, though I think most American school kids don't anymore.

If you grow up in a nice middle-class suburb like I did, there were a lot of fights on the playground. Aren't bullies everywhere? Isn't that you? There are bullies everywhere, but yeah, I mean, and yes, I mean, that's true. But I think, you know, I remember my dad was named Angus McLean. And I always felt bad. Was he from Scotland?

His dad was. His dad was. He was first generation American. Fantastic. I love it. And his dad was also named Angus McLean and he was named Angus McLean. And I'm Aaron. And I was always like a little, I don't know.

I was annoyed. I was like you. I like you dad. and you seem cool and you love your dad and you're both Angus is why was I not. Angus, and he would say, you know, my dad was born in 1924 in a working class kind of outskirt of Cleveland. And he said, you know, I came home from the schoolyard every day, Aaron, with bloody knuckles because my name was Angus McLean.

I didn't want that for you. And I remember saying, you know, Dad, it's like 1995 in Fairfax County, Virginia. Like, first of all, we don't say schoolyard. Second of all, there aren't a lot of bloody knuckles around here. Like, there wasn't, there wasn't a lot of violence. And I do think, you know, people who grow up, the kinds of people who end up as, you know, the national security advisor to the president of the United States, not to call it any individuals here, you know, they tend to lead lives that don't expose them to these things. And at a deep level, what the project that this podcast is is to remind people that the battlefield is not a liberal place. The battlefield does not care about equality. It does not care about the fruits of freedom, all of which, by the way, I'm an American. I, I, I believe in political equality. I believe in the value of freedom.

I am on some deep level a liberal, but I have enough experience of the battlefield to know that there are deeper and darker things that work out there that liberals better keep in mind if they want to keep their own freedom preserved. And so that's just a nerdyer way of making your basic point, which is like, didn't you ever deal with this on the schoolyard?

Like the same logic does apply at the geopolitical level. And the thing that worries me the most about the Middle East, aside from the terrible dilemmas that the Israelis face with respect to Gaza. We haven't even talked about, Hezbollah, in the north, in the situation there. But all of this that we're discussing is occurring when Iran lacks a nuke. Right. What's going to happen when they get one?

And I use the word when now. Right. What is going to happen, Michael Duran? I'll tell you what's not going to happen. They're not going to have a conversation around Ali Khanini's desk and say, well, now that we got a nuke, let's de-escalate. Yeah. That's not going to happen. It means that it means that Hisvala is going to be operating against Israel and Hamas as well,

the Houthis, under an Iranian nuclear umbrella. Look, I guarantee you, we don't have, we haven't had anyone come out and say it clearly yet. But we're going to hear when the Biden administration is out of power and people start telling the stories, They're going to say, well, we had to restrain the Israelis because we were afraid that the Iranians would make a rush for a nuke. The Iranians are already getting from being a few steps away from having a device. They're already getting the benefits that they're going to have and that are going to grow when they get a device. This is obvious. So we should look at our own behavior and the own.

restraint that we're imposing on our only ally who is willing on its own to go and contest the Iranians. So if we, just as the Ukrainians are the ally that is fighting Russia so we don't have to do it. The Israelis are not dragging us into a conflict with Iran. They are, they can be a tool in our hand to weaken Iran so that we don't have to do it. And we're going to, instead of, instead of building them up so that they can help protect our position in the region, we're going to tear them down and make the Iranian stronger.

It makes no sense. Michael Duran, senior fellow at the Hudson Institute, director of the Center for Peace and Security. I left you depressed. What could I say? I started depressed. I was hoping you would disabuse me of the reasons for my depression. It hasn't exactly happened. But it has been a fascinating conversation.

I used to follow the as closely as I could. could all of the strategic discussions in al-Qaeda. And al-Qaeda, every time they suffered a terrible setback, they would always say to themselves, well, okay, this wasn't good, but the strategic picture has been clarified. So, Aaron, this last week wasn't good for our side, but the strategic picture has been clarified. Mike, thank you for being part of the School of War. project and I look forward to going on your podcast soon to get substantially nerdier than we've been today and talk about American Redgey.

I want to know how far away I am from being number one. How much, by how many numbers, by how many? A couple thousand. A couple thousand. Yeah, but that's a large number. So it's actually not as big a margin as that may sound. So let's ask, let's ask all of your listeners to go to go download the episode with me before this so that I can beat HR McMaster.

Deal, deal. After you listen to this, I can't remember the episode number. If you scroll down, it's just a few episodes back. It's October, October, six months ago. So come on, come on, listeners. Help me kick H.R. McMaster's ass. This is what I want. And check out counterbalance as well. Counterbalance, the fastest growing podcast in America. You're doubling every week? The whole question is, how are we counting fast? What's your definition of fast? Mike it's been a pleasure thank you so much thank you take care this is a nebulous media production find us wherever you get your podcasts