School of War - Ep 209: Jonathan Schanzer on the Israel-Iran Ceasefire

Episode Date: June 24, 2025

Jonathan Schanzer, executive director at FDD, joins the show to break down his time on the ground in Israel at the beginning of the war and what may come with the Israel-Iran ceasefire in place. ▪��� Times      •      01:27 Introduction     •      02:10 Extraction     •      05:50 Different       •      09:25 In the shelter     •      12:03 Damage taken           •      16:18 Stress     •      17:45 Getting out     •      24:57 Road ahead     •      30:40 Iranian risks     •      32:10 Hamas          Follow along on Instagram, X @schoolofwarpod, and YouTube @SchoolofWarPodcast Find a transcript of today’s episode on our School of War Substack

Here's the latest on the Iran-Israel war, which seems to have reached an inflection point with the ceasefire, announced yesterday evening that as of this morning seems to be holding. My guest, Jonathan Shanzer, the host of the FDD Morning Brief, was in Israel when the war began, and will walk us through the state of play and also reflect on the experience of being under ballistic missile fire himself. Let's get into it. It will live in infinity. The bloody experience of Vietnam is to end in a state. We continue to face the grave situation in France.

We shall fight on the beaches. We should fight on the landing ground. We shall fight in the fields and in the streets. We shall never surrender. For more, follow School of War on YouTube, Instagram, Substack, and Twitter. And feel free to follow me on Twitter at Aaron B. McLean. Hi, I'm Erin McLean. Thanks for joining School of War. I'm delighted to welcome back to the show, John Shanzer, the executive director at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies. John, you were in your last appearance, I believe one of, if not my actual first guests to talk about the Israel, Iran, Iran Axis, Samas, et cetera, war back in the fall of 2023. So I'm glad to have you back now.

Great to be with you. One of the reasons I wanted to talk with you, obviously you are your expert in all these things, and we are going to do a sort of roundup of where things stand. We're recording this on the afternoon of Tuesday, the 24th. So we had the ceasefire between Iran and Israel this morning. There was some drama, but things seemed to be, as of this moment, holding. We'll get into all of that. But one of the reasons why I wanted to talk to you was that you were in Israel with a delegation of Americans. When the shooting between Iran and Israel started just a couple weeks ago, you spent a lot of time down in the shelters, you had to extricate your group. Just tell us a little bit about the experience of being there when this all kicked off.

Sure. Well, first of all, great to be back with you, Aaron. So I arrived basically about 48 hours or so before the war kicked off and, you know, got to the hotel, took a nap, you know, went out to dinner with some friends, woke up the next day, had lunch with another friend, and then actually took a, right. into Tel Aviv from Jerusalem and took a meeting at Israel's Kiriyah at their Ministry of Defense. And met with a senior official and had this conversation where I said, you know, I'm watching these reports about American assets being moved out of the region that, you know, American diplomats and American service members are being moved from bases and consulates and embassies.

I said, any reason for me to be concerned? And the guy that I was talking to said, look, Bibi Netanyahu's son's getting married on Tuesday. Nothing's happening before that. Well, I called him back later and said thanks a lot in between visits to the bomb shelter. But I think these guys had ice water running through their veins. And I don't know if they knew what was coming, but I certainly didn't feel like I even got a glimpse. The only thing that I heard was that things had started to change in the U.S. and Israel had sort of a shared sense of a alarm. And that was eight, nine hours before the conflict erupted.

For me, when the war actually began, you know, we heard the sirens. I actually heard the siren out in the distance before my phone started to blare. They make sure that everybody's phone individually goes off as well when there's an emergency. I made my way to the stairwell, which is considered to be a safe space in the hotel. And my thinking was that this was another Houthi missile. And I've been in Israel plenty of times when Hamas rockets or Houthi missiles have come in. You know, the ballistic missiles from the Houthis are more dangerous than the Qasam rockets. Qasom rockets are, you know, they're not particularly dangerous.

You don't want to be in a place where they land. But, you know, it's sort of like hitting the lottery. You're probably not going to be the lucky one, so to speak. But as I was sitting there in the stairwell, sort of annoyed that I had to get up out of bed for, what was I was assuming was a Houthi missile. I started scrolling through my phone and reading the news in Hebrew and reading what the journalists were saying on X, and it became very clear to me immediately that this was something very, very different, something unlike anything I had experienced. And just to be clear, I've been in Israel during the outbreak of the second in Tefada.

I've been there during multiple rocket wars with Hamas. I seemed to have a knack for it, in fact. But this one I knew was different. And it really felt different for me because I was the head of this delegation. And usually that doesn't mean much. When you're the head of a delegation of young professionals coming to Israel, it just means that you got to give a couple of speeches and make some introductions and take care of folks if there's a small issue that needs to be dealt with at the staff level. But then I sort of began to think like, okay, I've got 18 people that don't actually work for us.

and that I'm responsible to right now, plus another four staff, and I'm going to need to figure out how to get us out of here safely if this thing drags on. And so that was sort of an early realization for me that this was going to be a very different kind of trip. So in what ways was it different from the experiences you've had in the past, presumably just the extent of it? But say more about that. Sure. I mean, you know, with previous Hamas rocket wars, and, you know, I've been at Ben-Gurion Airport when rockets are, I've been coming in. I've been on rooftop hotels of hotels when rockets have come into Jerusalem

or Tel Aviv. You know, and people just, they, you know, will casually just sort of get up from dinner or get out of line and go to a place that is considered safe. You know, you go to a safe room or you go to the stairwell. And it's usually pretty well directed. And everybody's so calm over there, right? I mean, it's unbelievable how the Israelis just take it all in stride. And you learn how to do it. If no one else is panicking around you, you kind of learn to do the same, right? And you almost become flipping about it. With this, it did feel different. I've never been under fire from, you know, multiple ballistic missiles. I had had two different one-offs from a previous visit earlier this year where, you know, the Houthis out of Yemen were, I think, fired two that week

while I was in Tel Aviv. And it was not, you know, when you see the interceptions, right? Israel has this arrow missile defense system. It has an excellent record of shooting down, hostile, incoming. And I just wasn't real nervous. But when you all of a sudden realize that you've got 200 ballistic missiles, the size of a bus with a ton of explosives in the warhead, and you start looking at the videos on the TV in your bomb shelter, and you're seeing buildings that are being destroyed. and you're seeing Israelis looking around dazed at what had happened to the neighborhoods that they were living in. You know, you begin to look at it a bit differently. And, you know, look, Jerusalem was safe.

And I will say that. You know, Jerusalem, I think, only sustained one or two hits during the, you know, four or five days that we were there as the war was raging. And, you know, I never really felt like I was in any personal danger. I was much more afraid for friends and family and colleagues that I knew were scattered in other parts of the country, specifically in and around Tel Aviv, which looked like it was really getting the brunt of it. Yeah, Tel Aviv got pretty hammered. I saw, you know, you visited the Kyria.

I definitely saw some footage of some stuff blowing up, you know, potentially in, certainly around the curia. I never got, I don't know if the Israelis actually released the details of that in the end. That was one of the first few nights. But, you know, it's funny. You talk about the sort of the spirit of Israelis with this stuff. I obviously sort of share your impressions. I've always liked being in Israel in part for this reason.

You know, it's a country where, you know, there is this kind of sense that there are a lot of people around here who, given their druthers, would kill you. And so you see people walking around with their, you know, rifles from their military service slung across their back and things like that. But there is this weird, you know, way in which the constant tension, but also the constant preparedness introduces this attitude of seeing things in for, portion. It's like the polar opposite of sort of fattish parenting in the United States, where you're going to create, you know, you want to protect your children from every possible, you know,

terrible thing or even thought of a terrible thing that could happen for them. And inevitably, we end up raising a generation of super anxious children who are unprepared to take on the world. It's like the opposite of that phenomenon. Like there are actual real problems out there. So you learn to prepare to deal with them as best you can. And actually, your attitude day to day when you're not dealing with, you know, life threats is you know, you have, you have natural ways of managing your anxiety. You have, you have a certain degree of suncroft. And it's funny because, you know, obviously the Israelis, for anybody who's been there, you know, they can be a little hot under the collar and they blow off their steam, you know, when you cut the line, you know, God forbid you do that

because they'll go bananas on you, right? But they sort of vent that stuff in, in very natural ways. And what was amazing to me, though, is, you know, we're down in the shelter. It's, I don't know, maybe 150 people crammed into this, you know, I mean, it was a large space, but not large enough. It's never large enough. You know, people are still on top of one another. And you're hearing everybody's conversations. And I mean, there was one guy I was ready to throttle. It was playing a guitar in the, in the shelter. Oh, definitely. Yeah, it was like that scene. I don't know if you remember that scene from Animal House where John Belushi, you know, yanks a guitar out of the guys. And you hand him over to the IRC. Right. But, you know, there's that scene where Belu's

she's smashing the guitar against the wall. I sort of had fantasies of that. But there was a, there was a family of Israelis with young kids and the kids were crying and, you know, and the parents are just sort of, they seem okay. I mean, and I can tell you, it didn't look fun, but they, they were rolling with it. There was another couple that had just gotten married. And this was their honeymoon and they're spending their honeymoon in the shelter. And, you know, again, you just get the sense of how these guys have just been rolling with it. And of course, they've been rolling with it now for a year and a half. It's been different fronts, different attacks. And, you know, we forget I was just watching a show in one of the comedy shows in Israel. I like to watch Israeli TV just to get a

sense of where the country is. And, you know, they're saying Israel's the only place in the world where a war breaks out in the middle of a war. That's a good line. Right. And they're just, and they're making jokes about it, right? Like, you know, hours after a ceasefire, a tenuous ceasefire kicks in, they're making jokes about it. And it's a remarkable testament to the culture there. Yeah, I mean, look, on the one hand, they're used to it. On the other hand, I mean, this was a particularly intense run, right, these 12 to 12 days of war. Yeah, the president has called them twice as good as the six-day war. It's a 12-day war. Yeah. But, you know, I'm curious, like, what level of sleep was possible during this period. I mean, this was a lot. And you did have,

you know, there are people in the United States, most of the people who are critics of Israel and rooting against Israel, frankly, and rooting for Iran, speculating that, like, this can only go so long. Like, the Israelis are just not used to this kind of punishment. They can't take this kind of thing. Look at these buildings getting hit in Tel Aviv and Haifa. Like, that was an argument that one heard, that one encountered. Yeah. You know, for me, I got to say, it wasn't simple. And I don't think I had it worse than anybody. I think maybe I even had it better because, again, I was in Jerusalem and Jerusalem was probably not going to get hit. I don't think the Islamic Republic wanted to hit what, you know, people called the third holiest site in Islam. And so I think they

were very careful about that. And I think I benefited from it. And I don't take that for granted. But that said, I didn't sleep very much because you are amped up, especially when you're, you know, you think of yourself as being responsible for other people. You know, I was trying not to look like I was worried about the group. But, you know, I was watching and I wanted to see how everybody else was doing. And, you know, and I also had, when I wasn't around them, I was also thinking about, okay, well, what, what should we do? Should we stay? Should we go? And I don't think anybody sleeps particularly well after a siren gets you out of bed and you have to run down 10 flights of stairs in order to get to a shelter and you wait there for a couple hours and you're seeing these

scenes. So I probably got about eight hours of sleep over six days, which that's new for me. I mean, I, you know, I had moments of sleep deprivation. This was by far, one of the toughest. You know, I, I, even, and even as I got on the plane home, I was thinking I'd sleep on the plane the entire, I was waking up every two hours because that's, you know, that's what my body had kind of gotten used to. So it's taken me a little while. I actually still feel like I got a little PTSD.

If I hear a big boom, I'm still a little jumpy, you know, and I think these are the sort of human things. But the thing that was the most inhuman, Aaron, was that as soon as I got home, Donald Trump started bombing Iran. I had to work around the clock again. I was just like, this is no rest for the weary here that, you know, Donald Trump could have just waited a couple days. But then again, you know, the Israelis attacked on day 61 of, you know, after that 60-day deadline that Trump had given them. And Donald Trump said that he was going to do it within two weeks and he did it within two days, you know, got to hand it to him for the expediency.

But yeah, I got to say, it is not a simple thing for humans to endure that kind of lack of. of sleep, I could feel my body chemistry change. And that was really odd. And again, I can only imagine what the people in Tel Aviv who are under more intense fire and they could feel and hear the booms, I could only imagine what that did. And I don't even think we've started to hear yet about the psychological impact of these 12 days on, you know, I mean, the Tel Avivari is the most populated in Israel. So you've got like a third of Israel. or something that have gone through this. And, you know, I hope everybody's getting the treatment and care that they deserve.

Well, you know, you talk about PTSD. I think there's a sort of, there's a distinction I would draw. I'm curious to know your thought on this. But people sort of throw the, throw the phrase post-traumatic stress disorder around. And look, I mean, it's a real thing. And I have friends who have struggled with it. But it's, I think it's actually not as common in its full form as people think it is. What is quite common and like totally normal and like totally normal and would be.

honestly kind of weird if it didn't happen to people like there be a lot of people out there with ice water in their veins is post-traumatic stress so just the PTSD which is just you know I was in a bad car accident when I was a kid we were rear-ended by a high tractor trailer we were lucky to survive my family and for years after that I remember my mother anytime she had to slam on the brakes in the car she had to stop suddenly for any reason she would kind of you could tell she was kind of freaking out a little bit just on top of what the situation required because her body like you said sort of body chemistry like her body was preparing her for what she had been taught to kind of expect in that moment. And, you know, my own experience is just deploying in the Marine Corps, like you come home,

and you're just tense, you're just tense, and you're wondering where you put your rifle, because all of a sudden you don't have your rifle with you, and you're just used to certain patterns or used to certain regular adrenaline rushes and adrenaline highs, and it just takes time for your body to come down for that. And then, luckily, for most people, you know, overwhelming majority of people, it does eventually, you know, sort of come back to the, to the mean. Like you just sort of get, you, you, you, you, your body adjusts to the new circumstances, more or less.

Right. And I think that's probably what's happening. You know, I do feel like for me personally, the adrenaline kicked back in as, as I, you know, as I, as I learned that Donald Trump had struck these three nuclear sites. And so, but it was a different kind of adrenaline, right? It was just more like, all right, I got to work hard, you know, and I got to, I got to be watching and analyzing and, you know, and being able to convey what's going on. But it was interesting because I've talked to some of the participants, you know, came back and they were, they were all saying

they were just moving slowly. They were, their bodies just were not, people just didn't feel like they could jump back into the swing of things. Although it's interesting. We have an employee here that was with us on the trip. She's unbelievable. She just went through herself right into, you know, working like it felt like 18, 20 hour days. And I think different people have different constitutions for this kind of stuff. And so I guess everybody reacts in their own way, but I do feel like I think everybody felt it one way or another over those of the course of the days that we were there. Last question on this side of things before we moved to a bit of a situation update. You had kind of a heroin or at least complicated way out. I mean,

you got everyone out while the shooting was still going on. Yeah. How did that work? Yeah, so initially we were trying to get a flight out from the, you know, from Ben-Gurian airport. And then we found out that the, you know, that the airspace was shut down. And as we're talking right now, I think the airspace is still shut down. There have been a few isolated flights coming in and out and they're trying to repatriate Israelis who are trying to get home. And that's sort of the amazing thing is, you know, you've got all these Israelis that are trying to get home. They want to be there. And then there are the foreign nationals who are like, you know, we didn't sign up for this.

And by the way, I think had I been given the opportunity, I probably would have wanted to stay just to be able to report from the ground. But it was different because I had this group and I needed to stay with them until the end. And so when the air option looked not great or at least not happening anytime soon, my next instinct was to look at Cyprus. Cyprus, you probably know, has this long history of taking in people during conflicts in the Middle East, you know, during the wars. In Lebanon, they've always had this sort of system of bringing people out. And I was expecting the Cypriots to do the same. But in the early days of this 12-day war, they didn't have a system yet. They didn't have a process.

I understand now there are some boats that have gone back and forth. They've taken some youth groups out of Israel and some others. But it didn't look like it was available to us as we were getting ready to get out. And so we kept waiting because Cyprus was, you know, the safest route would be. be air flights, the second safest would be Cyprus. And then after that, you start looking at Middle Eastern countries, there's two of them that are, they're not at war with Israel, but it's pretty frigid, cold peace. And there you're talking about Egypt and Jordan. And as I started doing the sort of research into where we could go and what the options were, the one thing that I heard

from all the extraction specialists was the most danger you're going to be in as you try to flee a war zone, as you try to get out of a war zone, is that it's that time in the car. It's that time in the bus. Because you're exposed. Rockets could be falling, missiles could be falling, and you don't have a shelter. You're mobile. And by the way, you're probably seeable from satellites. If somebody wanted to make an example of you, And by the way, also, if you're sitting at a border crossing, and you're not, you know, I mean, everybody's exposed at that border crossing, from lone wolf's attacks to bombings to whatever the case may be. And so as I talked to folks, people were saying you're not going to drive like four hours to the border with Egypt. That's not a possibility. So you got to go to Jordan. And they were saying that the best case was Allenby crossing.

This is the one where Palestinians and foreign diplomats typically go through. It was open to foreign nationals as well. And it took us less than an hour to get there from Jerusalem. We drove through parts of the West Bank. The folks that were taking us asked if it was okay for me. It was fine. I'd been there plenty of times, and I just didn't really want to draw attention to the fact we were going that way. But it felt like if they were telling me that was the best route, I'm trusting them.

I mean, I don't know. I'm in totally uncharted territory. here. We got to Jordan. It was easy enough getting through the Israeli side, and it was not particularly crowded. On the other side, we had a lot of waiting to do, A, to get picked up, and then we had to get processed. And, you know, I think that Jordanians looked at us like refugees, which is kind of a weird thing to say, right? Like, I'm, you know, I live in, you know, suburban Washington, D.C. I don't feel like a refugee, and I don't think anybody on that bus felt like one particularly. But I think that's how we reviewed.

And so it took a little while for them to process us. You know, you go to an airport, Aaron, and, you know, they already know all your information, right? They have your, they have all your flight information. They have your address. They have your phone number. They have your ID. They've checked you in.

When you show up sight unseen at a border, they've got questions. Right. Right. And they want to ask them. And as frustrating as it was, we had to ride it out. You know, the only thing I'll just say, we didn't spend a lot of time in Jordan before getting to Greece. And once we were in Greece, we were homebound. And I felt obviously much, like I could breathe much easier once we got to Greece. But what was fascinating to me was

that we heard sirens when we were in Jordan, when the Iranians were firing another volley and another volley at Israel, which, by the way, you know, when you still have that PTSD, as you call it, that'll wake you up, you know, even if it's just out in the distance. But the crazy is that in Jordan, they just go outside and take videos. They don't go down into the shelter. No one's really worried about a missile falling. There have been a few, by the way, that have fallen into Jordanian territory. Most of them have not fallen. They just keep going over. And so parents take their kids outside up on the roof of the hotel and they're catching video of this. And I don't think, I didn't get the sense that, you know, at least the ones that I saw,

I don't think people were cheering. It was just sort of a sight to behold. But, but, I didn't think, But it's amazing the difference between 100 miles during a war like this, you know, difference between being in Amman and in Jerusalem. So a lot of really interesting perspectives over the course of this trip. But suffice it to say, just in awe of the Israeli people who have endured a hell of a lot more. And, you know, just really happy that we got our group out. Well, I'm obviously thrilled you guys who are out and safe and well done to you, John, into the team who actually had to handle all the logistics of it. It was very well done under,

I'm sure, would sound like very stressful circumstances. Yeah, it wasn't easy, but, you know, could have been a lot worse. So here we are. I think we owe listeners our thoughts on where things might go from here. You know, you joked about how Trump trying to upset your Cheerios when you got back by launching this war right when you needed, or launching the American strikes, I should say, right when you needed arrest. The Israelis did the same thing to me. I interviewed your colleague, Mark Dubowitz a couple weeks ago, the afternoon before the night that they launched their strikes on Iran initially. We did this long interview, the whole upshot of which was the Israelis are surely going to wait for at least the weekend, at least till Sunday. So that interview

never saw the light of day. Alas, it's going to be forever on the cutting room floor is completely and immediately overcome by events. But we had, we have a ceasefire. It went into effect this morning. there was some drama right around the minutes that it went into effect. The president seemed pretty unhappy with both sides. Had some words for both very much to include Israel. Apparently spoke to Prime Minister Netanyahu on the plane. And there were a lot of things happened very quickly in a few hours this morning. But since then, things seem to be holding.

What is your, oh, the other fact I would say, the other, I think important fact is the president then said from Air Force One, he told the press. And if I get the exact words wrong here, that the spirit was, there's going to be no enrichment. In fact, I think he said explicitly no enrichment. Iran will not have enrichment, they're not going to have nuclear weapon. So I took that as a signal that nothing about what's happened in the last couple of weeks to include the American strikes, has softened the American diplomatic position, if anything, perhaps hardened it. So with that as preface, John, what do you see as the potential roads ahead here?

I think the Iranians have now seen that the president is not afraid to take action, and he doesn't need the Israelis to do it, right? I mean, the Israelis did a lot of the hard work leading up to those U.S. strikes, and those were strikes that only the U.S. could pull off because it was B-2s and mops. And, you know, these are platforms and weapons that the Israelis don't have. And it was only the United States that could do it. And I think the Iranians now understand exactly what will happen if they test the president again. And I think that's really important. But I think that the diplomacy that lies ahead is going to be crucial. I'd like to see the U.S. use more leverage right now, a lot more of it. We should be pushing very hard right now for

at least three things, maybe more. One is we need the Iranians to end their nuclear quest. That's for sure. And then there needs to be an understanding and an agreement and one that we can all live with because what we've had up until now is just really nuts. It, it, it, it, it, it, it, it, it, it, it, it, it, it, it, it, it, it, it, it, it, it, it's, it, it, it's, it, it's, it, it's, it's, it's, it's, to be, we need to be, we need to be, we need to think about that Iranian ballistic missile program. They were learning in real time. And I'm sure you were watching this, Aaron, that their aim was getting better, their ability to strike closer, if not to actually hit some of their targets. You know, the Iranians have learned. And we need to get a grip on this. Now, I understand that a

lot of their launchers have been destroyed and the Israelis were hunting and destroying a lot of the missile stores. But I still think that there's probably 1,000 or 1,500 of these ballistic missiles left. I don't know how great all of them are constructed. And I don't know what their ranges are or their payloads, that's for people that study this stuff and know far more than I do about it. But I think that that's a concern moving forward. Iran can threaten its neighbors. It can threaten Israel, can potentially threaten the United States. Ballistic missiles are no joke. We need to talk about proxies because the regime, you know, we keep talking about ending the nuclear program and we, you know, maybe we'll talk about ballistic missiles. The proxies are a huge problem.

Now, they've been defanged, almost all of them. But the Houthis are. still able to fire missiles at Israel. Hizbalah, you know, even though they've been quiet, they still are believed to have a third of their existing arsenal. So that's like 50,000 projectiles, give or take. Hamas is still hanging on, and I'll get to them in a second. You know, and then there's actually the big black box for me is these PMUs, the Hashda Shabi, that are in Iraq. They are the dog that didn't bark throughout all of this. But there's a lot of personnel and there's a lot of weaponry. And they're right on the Iranian border and the Iranians can smuggle all manner of weapons to them without really trying. And so I've got questions about what the

future of these proxies will be. We cannot allow them to grow again. We saw what happens when this ring of fire can be built around Israel and the threat that it can pose to the rest of the region. And then the last issue, which, you know, I think for Donald Trump and I think for all of us that would like to see an end to this whole ordeal. I think the regime needs to call upon Hamas to release those last 50 hostages. And by the way, not just the regime, but the Qataris, the Turks, right? These are the three patrons of Hamas. I think that after the beating that Iran just took, and after the beating that all these proxies have taken, and now with the fear that there could have been a much wider conflagration. This is the moment to try to wrap up as much of this as possible.

It doesn't mean that, you know, peace is going to break out in the region. But these are the probably, I guess, the four main issues that I'm concerned about right now as we think about the future. Well, you know, it's interesting, just sort of reacting to this information, not exactly in real time, but almost in real time, if I'm the Iranians, and based on what I've just witnessed from not only the Israelis, but the Americans, in the way in which President Trump, you know, credit. it to him, he really did hold the line. He held the line diplomatically, said Iran's not going to get a nuclear weapon, wanted no enrichment. There was a deal on the table that kind of sort of involves some enrichment for an interim period, but with an aim towards getting rid of it, which for the

Iranians was a deal they rejected. Then Israel took action, and then President Trump backed up that action, and he just repeated today when that action was done, they're not going to get a nuclear weapon and they're not going to have enrichment. So if there really is this shorter timeline than I think people would wish where potentially they could be up and running again and moving towards a weapon. You know, you might see them, you know, being delighted that only so little damage has been done. The other way to read that would be, well, this really puts the urgency on them to come up with some sort of deal that the Americans and the Israelis will accept. Because absolutely that deal, as you just pointed out, John, they're even weaker than they were two weeks ago. And as events have shown, they weren't that strong two weeks ago.

They weren't. And honestly, like, you know, you can imagine and another B2 run, you know, they're not cheap, but there's no real risk as far as we can see. There's risk, but if this guy could just interject, isn't it an amazing, John, like the, it's not just that we did the run, it's not just that it was successful and all the great, sort of there's the deception, the decoy flights to, you know, the Pacific and all it was all great.

Not even that we didn't take any hits or casualties. A single shot was not fired at our aircraft. Isn't that amazing? It's amazing. It truly is. Now, I think we should note here that there is still obviously some risk to American forces in the region. We saw that perfunctory missile volley at Al-Udade in Qatar. There are still concerns circulating out there about possible lone wolf-type attacks

or sleeper-sale type attacks here in the homeland. But overall, I think the regime has to understand the risk that they have put themselves in by allowing things to go this far. I'll be fascinated to see, you know, what the response is from the Iranian public, whether there's dissatisfaction and maybe some disarray within the ranks of the IRGC and some of the loyalists to the regime.

You know, I think we may be watching some new drama unfold inside Iran if things start to shake out the right way. Last question for you. You know, you're really a Hamas expert. You've written books on the subject. And that was the subject of our great episode some time ago now on the war in Gaza. There is a war in Gaza, per your joke that only in Israel does a war break out during another war.

And, you know, the conflict with Iran directly and then the conflict with one of Iran's proxies, Hamas, they obviously intersect and interact in some way. In what way? Like, how does any of this affect what's going on in Gaza? What's the road ahead there? Well, I mean, I think the first thing that I would just note here, is that Benjamin Netanyahu connected the dots for everybody in ways that they didn't want to connect them. And what I mean by that is, you know, this war broke out on October 7th and everybody was focused on Hamas and how evil Hamas was.

But immediately after that, we began to see Hezbollah get into the act. And then we saw the Houthis get into the act and militias in Iraq and Syria getting into the act. And then eventually, you know, we had, you know, the exchange of hostilities between Iran and, Israel, Islamic Republican Israel back in April and then in October. In other words, this has been a seven front war all the way through. And it was the Iranians, as we always say, they're the head of the octopus. They're at the epicenter of all of this. And Donald Trump and and Bibi Netanyahu finally made it very clear that this was the culmination of all of these different fronts that were being fought. And let me just point out the irony of the Iranians,

attacking Qatar, 600 plus days after this war broke out, because the Iranians and the Katarees are the two key sponsors of Hamas. And you know your war plan is not going well when one patron starts attacking the other. There was some rich irony that was going on over there. Things have definitely gone off the rails for both of Hamas's key patrons. And for me, the question really is, can Israel go back to Gaza and still have freedom of action, still not be encumbered by Western pressure, even American pressure? Can they go back and finish this thing off and do it in a way that they can kind of tie a boat and say, we're done? I don't know if they can. I don't know what more, to be honest, militarily Israel can do. They can continue to erode Hamas's forces, but those forces are

young men in track suits that learned how to fire an AK-47 six months ago. These are not the same well-trained Hamas forces that carried out the 10-7 attacks. Very few of those people are still around. What we need is the release of the hostages. And again, I think that, to me, feels like the big play here, that if the United States can really exert pressure right now on not just Iran, but the other patrons, Qatar and Turkey, and forced the end of this, I think is, walks away with a win, every one of these proxies, every one of these bad actors, they're weaker

as a result of the war that was just fought. Israel's tired, it's weary, but it's defiant as hell. I mean, I can tell you that. I picked that up loud and clear with the folks that I talked to. They were just not ready to take their foot off the gas because they still felt like they had unfinished business. But the biggest bit of unfinished business right now is the hostages. You know, look, could they still erode Hamas further? Yeah, I suppose they could, but look at that place. Everything that was used as a military asset for Hamas above ground has been destroyed. A lot of the underground infrastructure has been picked apart.

It's asymmetric urban warfare right now. And I think, as you know well, Aaron, those are things that, you know, they can drag on for a time and you do have to wonder at some point whether you've reached that point of diminishing returns. Now, I am not going to tell you that I think the answer is yes, but I do think that the Israelis have to be asking themselves about that as they consider whether they would end the war if the hostages came home. John Sanzer of the Foundation for Defense of Democracies is always a pleasure to have you on. Thank you so much. And great job on getting your people out safe. Thanks, Aaron. Great to be with you. This is a nebulous media production.

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