School of War - Ep 94: Jonathan Schanzer on the War in Israel & Hamas

Episode Date: October 17, 2023

Jonathan Schanzer, senior vice president for research at Foundation for Defense of Democracies, joins the show to talk about the state of the war in Israel, the history of Hamas and its campaign to eradicate the Jewish state, and Israel’s plans to end the cycle forever. ▪️ Times      •    01:41 Introduction      •    02:24 The situation today     •    04:55 Gaza’s terrain     •    09:27 Focusing on the north     •   12:51 Gaza in Arab politics     •    18:41 Iranian support     •    25:41 Walls can work both ways      •    29:00 Israeli objectives     •   35:56 Strategic goals and military means      •    41:38 Dancing to an Iranian tune      •    46:01 Working against the clock     •   49:06 Staying informed To read the WSJ article discussed today click here Follow along  on Instagram Find a transcript of today’s episode on our School of War Substack

In the aftermath of Hamas' terror rampage in southern Israel on the 7th of October, the war in Israel and the Gaza Strip is into its second week with airstrikes, pummeling Hamas targets, Israel continuing to suffer, fire and return, tensions that a simmer on the northern border with Lebanon and, well, with a lot more happening in addition to all that. Let's get into it with one of the best analysts in Washington, D.C., on Hamas and Gaza, specifically, John Shanzer, with whom we'll cover what's happening, what the history of Hamas and Israel Hamas confrontation looks like, and what's likely to happen next.

It is a prescription for war, this Iraqi invasion of Kuwait. December 7, 1941, a date which will live in infamous. The bloody experience of Vietnam is to end in a state of. We continue to face a grave situation in Iran. The people are not seen... We shall bite down the beaches. which will fight on the landing grounds, we shall fight in the fields and in the streets, which will 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 be joined today by Jonathan Shanzer, who is the Senior Vice President for Research at FDD, my colleague there. He is an expert on our subject today, which is Hamas and what's going on in Gaza. He's written numerous books, hundreds of articles. His most recent book was a history of the 2021 war, Gaza conflict 2021, Hamas, Israel, and 11 days of war.

John, thank you so much for joining the show. Pleasure, Aaron. Good to be with you. So I thought we would start with a quick update on where things stand in southern Israel and Gaza. I should say we are recording this about 24 hours out from when the episode will air on Tuesday morning, uncharacteristically early in the morning, I would say, for a school of air recording. I know you're a morning person, John. I've always admired and wanted to be a morning person.

In fact, one could see my military service as a rather over-elaborate attempts to become a morning person, but it didn't take. It didn't really stick. But I'm happy to be here with you. So if you wouldn't mind, what is the update as of Monday morning, October the 16th? Sure. Well, as of Monday morning, the Israelis had still not entered the Gaza script. They are talking about going in and they have been talking about going in. I think pressure is

mounting from the Israeli public to see that ground invasion. There is a real urgency right now. There are 199 families that have been informed that their loved ones have been taken hostage. So that is a spike in the number. And I think we're probably going to level off there somewhere thereabouts. But they want action. They want to see the IDF go in. They want to try to get back some of these hostages. I think from what we understand, there is a significant diplomatic push taking place in Doha. You've got to remember that's where we saw Secretary of State Anthony Blinken. He traveled through there. Then the foreign minister of Iran traveled through there. There are ongoing discussions, I think, to try to get these hostages released. I don't know. And I think this is going

to be an interesting question. Are they only trying to get out the Americans? Are they trying to get out everybody, are they trying to get out? The dual nationals, there are some potentially very ugly optics if they're only going for the dual nationals and then they end up moving a hundred or so, you know, let's call them pure Israelis in the hands of Hamas before this operation begins. But it looks like the epicenter of all of this is in Doha, which is really, it's so frustrating to watch because, of course, the Qataris are financial patrons. of Hamas. They are now plain arsonist and firefighter, but it appears that all eyes are on the Qataris and perhaps, I guess, the Iranians to make their decision about how this is all going

to shake out before a ground invasion begins. So let's step back for a little bit and talk about Gaza and talk about what's in Gaza and some of the history, I mean, especially since 2005, because there's kind of a pattern that's developed since 2005 that's obviously very relevant to what's going on now because in some ways everyone's trying to break the pattern. Hamas is trying tried to break the pattern with what it did and Israel in return is looking for things that end the pattern it seems to me. So maybe you know you keep one keeps hearing Gaza the Gaza Strip et cetera but it's it's fairly complex there's numerous communities there you know maybe kind of just walk us give us a little tour from from north to south you know Gaza city

and it's suburbs if you will and then and then take us south. What would we encounter if we were driving through Gaza? Well, you would encounter what is often described as one of the most densely populated places on Earth. It is a territory, most people just would describe it as a coastal enclave, which sounds a lot nicer than it is if you ever been to Gaza. It's on the Mediterranean coast, nestled between the Sinai Peninsula and Israel. It's roughly the size of Washington, D.C. 2.2 million people. And you know, you've got really one major city, and that's Gaza City. In the middle of Gaza City, you've got actually a hospital called Al-Shifa Hospital. And nestled beneath that is the Hamas nerve center. It is the command center of the organization. If that sounds outrageous,

it is. It is human shields par excellence. You can't get any more human shieldy than that in the that Hamas has constructed its military infrastructure. And I think this is what listeners need to be aware of is that it's extremely difficult at this point to separate out civilian targets from military targets. And this is ultimately what Israel is going to have to contend with and already is contending with that there are mosques that are housing missiles and rockets. There are schools that are, you know, right that abut, you know, military hardware that Hamas is using as it fires into Israel. But yes, the society is, it's complex. I mean, by the way, there are a lot of people who talk about, you know, the Palestinians as one. What's really interesting is you go to

Gaza, and it's admittedly been a few years since I've been in there. But you hear a different dialect. It sounds like the Egyptian dialect, which if memory serves, Aaron, you speak. And that stands in stark contrast to what you hear in the West Bank, which sounds a bit more like the Jordanian dialect. You have a population that is, I think, somewhere in the vicinity of 40 percent descendants of refugees from previous wars, which means they're on the take from the UN Relief and Works Agency. You have a lot of unemployment. You don't have a lot of natural resources. You've got a Hamas government that's been in place since 2007. when Hamas conquered the Gaza Strip by force in a brutal civil war that ousted the Palestinian Authority.

It is, you know, in some ways you could say it's sort of like a Palestinian Taliban in really in one important aspect. And that is you've got an Islamist group that took over. It has imposed Sharia law. It has imposed a very draconian form of rule. there is no way to challenge the current government, at least not yet. And I think that is getting to your point, exactly what the Israelis hope to do. They want to oust this government. And then comes the hard question of what happens to Gaza afterwards.

There will be a lot of rubble. There will be clans and families that have, you know, for decades, centuries, had a large amount of influence. But the real question is, who's got the sort of legitimacy, who's got the sort of legitimacy, who's got the means to govern when this is all said and done because there are big questions about whether the Palestinian Authority, which is now based in the West Bank only, whether they have the ability to project power into the Gaza Strip. And so lots of questions about the day after, but we know that the war itself has one

objective from Israel's perspective, and that is to, as you noted, completely break the paradigm to oust Hamas after, you know, what we're talking about here is 16 years of brutal rule that has led to multiple rounds of conflict. And just one more question on the physical situation. So Israel has called for civilians to evacuate essentially the northern part of the strip, the area in and around Gaza City. You have a southern part of the strip centered around Con Unis. Is this evacuation structured because the Hamas military, like the Qasan Brigade's military capabilities

are concentrated in the northern part of the strip? Or is it just, you know, people got to go somewhere and we're going to start in the north? Like, why is it that the north is the focus? Well, I think the goal first is to get everybody away from the cities in Israel that are potentially within range of rocket fire. The further south you get, I think, you know. know, the population centers become fewer. It's more of what they call the Gaza envelope, villages and towns. I think the goal is to first, you know, try to protect as many Israeli

citizens as possible. But then there's also the effort that is underway to try to get the residents of Gaza out of the Gaza Strip. They're pushing them from what I can tell toward the Rafa crossing, which is the crossing with Egypt. in the Sinai Peninsula, there is a fascinating debate and discussion underway. The Arab world does not want to allow for the facilitation of these refugees to leave Gaza. There is this sense of wanting to protect the Palestinian cause, even if it means the death of thousands of Palestinians. It's, I mean, it's incredibly cynical. And we've seen this, by the way, Aaron, since really, since 1948, 49, the first Palestinian-Israeli war, where the Arabs have tried to wield refugees,

Palestinian refugees, as a living symbol of the struggle against Israel. And there is this sense that if they capitulate on this and allow for Palestinians to leave the territory, well, then, you know, they've lost the larger narrative battle, if you will. And so, you know, we're actually watching Hamas try to block the exodus of, you know, what would be refugees. And we're seeing right now the Egyptians are saying we will only allow dual citizens that live in the Gaza Strip and hold foreign passports will allow them to leave, but no one else. And so we're looking potentially for the narrative, the sacrifice of thousands. Right. You made reference to a civil war in which, Hamas consolidated control, say a bit more about that, now that we've sort of mapped things

physically, about the political terrain. Obviously, Hamas is top dog and rules through fear and violence, according to a very strict Islamist and, as far as Israel is concerned, annihilationist regime. But it's not just that simple. There are other militant groups as well. There's the UN dimension, which you made reference to. And then, you know, they're just in the UN as a militant group. I'll let you speak to that.

Certainly not much in the way of militant groups, is it? And then, you know, sort of underneath this regime of terrorists and nitwits when it comes to some of the international organizations that are involved, you have the old Arab families. And you have, you know, I have never been to Gaza. I have spent time in other parts of the Arab world. I've spent time in another sort of, if you like, poor, you know, Islamic countries. and my experience was always that there was a kind of economic underground tied to family that was often determinative of politics in ways that were not immediately visible. So to the extent you can, just give us a little bit more color on the politics.

Sure. Well, first of all, I think it's important to know. Okay, Hamas was formed in the late 1980s in the shadow of the first intifada, which was a rather organic nationalist uprising that first sort of exploded. it onto the scene in the Gaza Strip and then spread to the West Bank. This was kind of the platform that the Palestinians used to agitate for independence after the Israelis conquered the West Bank and the Gaza Strip in the 1967, six-day war. So 20 years after the Israelis come in, established control, you begin to watch the sort of agitation at a grassroots level against the Israelis where they're saying, look, it's time for, you know, the Palestinian National Project to finally

have legs after years of kind of talk, there was a structure for it. Hamas comes onto the scene. They are immediately edged out of the picture by the Oslo peace process. Yasser Arafat, you may recall, the leader of the Palestinian Authority tries to create this peace process with the Israelis. By the way, he does it, you know, where he's based in Tunisia, he's trying to make himself relevant. And in the process, pushes Hamas out. And he crowns himself the leader of the Palestinian cause. They don't like that at all, and they don't like the peace process. And what happens is in the 1990s, as the peace process gains steam, they launch a brutal

campaign of suicide bombings designed to disrupt all of this, Arafat's leadership, the PLO's leadership, and the peace process that they oppose because they seek the annihilation of Israel. That all comes to a head in the year 2000. That's the second intifada. you have five years of total chaos, at which point the Israelis finally get control of both the West Bank and the Gaza Strip militarily. They, in fact, one way that they gain control is building a barrier around the entire Gaza Strip.

So two long borders, they put a fence, a barrier, you know, in some cases, moats. I mean, whatever can be done to prevent the infiltration of people seeking to do harm to Israel, they've got the Gaza Strip completely isolated and under siege, which is, of course, legal, pursuant to international law, but outrageous according to some. But Israel has done this to protect its own, which is, I think, easy to understand, but sometimes hard to stomach. And it's in 2005 that the story really begins, because that's when then Prime Minister Ariel Sharon under duress from the Bush administration says, okay, we're going to get out of the Gaza Strait. entirely, unilaterally, withdrawal. And the Palestinian Authority is still clinging to power there,

nominally controlled by Yasser Arafat, or by then, Arafat's gone. It's now Mahmah Makhud Abbas, but the Palestinian Authority itself is sort of clinging to power. Then comes the next blunder from the Bush administration. And, you know, if you're picking up on a theme here, I think, you know, there's a reason for it. Bush administration pushes for elections. and the Palestinian Authority, right in the aftermath of this long campaign, military campaign that has exhausted the Palestinian people. The Fata faction that rules the PLO is expected to win, but instead, Hamas wins in 2006. How a terrorist organization is welcomed into the electoral process, it's still shocking to me that that was allowed to occur. But what happens after that is,

you know, the U.S. and Israel and others dig in and say, wait a minute, Hamas. you can't run a government here, not when it's dependent on international aid, and not when it needs to, you know, live alongside Israel with the goal of a two-state solution. And so it all goes to hell in 2007. That's when that civil war erupts. Hamas takes over the Gaza Strip by force. Brutal civil war. I mean, people pushed from tall buildings to their death, shot in the legs and arms to ensure permanent disability, thousands of injuries. There is bad blood to this day between the Palestinian Authority and Hamas. And so what happens after that is Hamas gains full control. And what we've seen ever since are a series of wars that Hamas has launched against Israel, primarily through rockets, sometimes commandos and other means,

but one round in 2008, another one in 2012, 2014, 2021. And now, as you suggest, Hamas has tried to break this paradigm. where they've gotten, you know, I think we can be honest, they've gotten shellacked each time by a much better equipped, better trained Israeli army. But every time these wars have erupted for various periods of time, you know, sometimes for a month, sometimes for just a couple of days. But every time we've seen Hamas gain a little bit more strength, some more capabilities, all thanks, by the way, to the Islamic Republic of Iran. And maybe you can thank the Qataris and the Turks for their financial and diplomatic support. But the group has grown. And what we've seen now is an attempt to break out as a more powerful, let's call it a strategic threat,

as opposed to a tactical one to Israel. And Israel is having none of it. And the goal now from Israel's perspective is to just destroy what has been an annoy. and now something that is far more foreboding after the death of 1,300 people on what the Israelis from last week are calling Black Sabbath. Let me ask you what seems like a simple question, but I feel like your answer to it will be interesting. Why does Iran support Hamas?

Oh, it's the mutual aspiration, mutual dream of destroying the state of Israel. Can't remember. I mean, you know, Shiites and Sunnis don't get along, right? I mean, it's Tom and Jerry, Wiley Coyote, and the Roadrunner, right? I mean, they don't, they fight. Generally speaking, you see Shiites and Sunnis. You saw it in Iraq. You saw it in other places as well.

But when it comes to Muslim Brotherhood splinter groups that want to destroy Israel, and Hamas is exactly that, they find a lot of common ground. And so they've set aside whatever differences there are. Of course, there are other groups in the Gaza Strip also that are Hamas, or rather Iran-sponsored, Hamas allies. Islamic Jihad is another one. It's actually the precursor to Hamas. I mentioned Hamas was formed in 87, 888. Islamic Jihad was formed in 81, 82. By the way, Hezbollah formed in between there out of Lebanon. But this is a sort of a string of proxies operating around Israel, on Israel's borders. My colleague Mark Dubowitz, our colleague, Mark Dubowitz,

has talked about this Iranian strategy as the ring of fire, this attempt to encircle, Israel with violent armed groups that could potentially do quite a bit of damage, especially if they're activated all at once. And that's quite honestly what we're all watching, holding our breath, waiting to find out whether Iran activates all of its proxies in concert in response to Israel's ground invasion, which, you know, as of Monday morning, appeared very imminent. Right. And to me, and we'll get into this now, this seems to me to be, the fundamental kind of tension to hold in mind as we try to understand what's happening right now and understand the Israeli situation and the Israeli strategic picture, which is on the one hand,

you have this terrorist group, which has achieved a real level of sophistication, feel free to jump in here. But like the accounts of last Saturday, the 7th that I've read, the sort of higher end estimates of the number of terrorists who made it through into these communities, I mean, it's like on the line of a brigade-level assault. You know, there's something like a thousand people that screamed across that border. But was even more shocking is, I mean, the Israelis started airing photos of the cash of weapons that they confiscated from the dead and captured Hamas fighters. And, you know, we were looking potentially at EFPs. My colleagues from the Long War Journal identified what looked like EFPs,

explosively formed penetrators. This is the sort of stuff that we saw hitting our men and women. in uniform in Iraq and Afghanistan, obviously, you know, Iran's got its fingerprints all over that, but there's just a range of weaponry that we've not seen before potential cyber attack that precipitated all of this, which would again, you know, indicate a certain level of sophistication. So, yeah, you know, Hamas has grown in sophistication and its abilities. And that is, again, I think that's why the Israelis have said, you know, that's enough. Yeah. I heard from one Israeli that I talked to, I don't know, early on after the conflict erupted, and he basically said,

look, this was an organization we were willing to try to live alongside, but when they killed 1,300 people, they lost the right to exist. Yeah. Very just stark terms here. Yeah. So I actually heard numbers even higher than 1,000, but there's a lot of sort of literal fog of war around this. Maybe 1,000 is correct.

And, yeah, to your point, like, it takes no particular skill or training. It just takes a lot of absence of humanity to go around and murder and kidnap defenseless people. To, you know, break through that barrier in, you know, 20-some locations, you know, do the preparatory work of blinding sensors. You made reference to a cyber capability. And by the way, do something that's got in terms of everyone who has to be involved somehow in the support of it, you know, thousands of people involved to keep that actually a secret when presumably the Israeli is. defense and security establishment is in fact doing its best to watch Gaza is a testament to a level of capability that's that's striking and I think obviously took took everyone by surprise. Yeah, there was there was an information operation that was going on for probably a year,

maybe more, two years. I actually heard from an Israeli official pretty pretty damn high up in the system, literally two weeks before the attack, maybe even a little less, talking about how the head of Hamas in the Gaza Strip, Yaya Sinwar, was someone that the Israelis deemed as a pragmatist, and that he was looking to calm tensions in the Gaza Strip. Yes, Hamas was still trying to export violence to the West Bank, and they would cede that, but the thinking was that Gaza was like, to remain calm, that Hamas was likely deterred. And this was the group think, whereas the Israelis called it during the last major intelligence failure from the 1973-Yom Kippur War. This was their conceptia, their concept. And it was a concept that proved to be extremely dangerous and wrong.

Yeah. And then the other interesting, I read a fascinating article at this publication called Engelsberg Ideas by, I think she's a British analyst named Suzanne Rain. As a Gaza watch, I'm curious to know your response to this thesis, but her point was, while, you know, the way in which Gaza has been walled off lately for totally defensible and understandable reasons, plus the sort of the high-tech network of sensors and the way in which, you know, sort of the wall itself becomes or the fences as it were becomes very effective, that that barrier actually kind of works two ways, which is to say, sure, you can't really get out absent, you know, really sophisticated operation like the one we saw. You can't get out in sufficient force to do real damage. But it's also really hard to see in. And that's something I didn't appreciate. I just assumed prior to the 7th of October that the Israelis must be sort of listening and watching to everything of significance that happens in Gaza. Clearly, that was not the case. And it's actually downstream of the security concept itself that you build that kind of quote unquote wall. It's not

literally a wall, right? But it's more complicated than that. And you're going to have trouble seeing it. And that seems to be true. Yeah, I mean, I think there is some truth to it, although up until, you know, 10-7, I think the Israelis always felt that they had really good eyes and ears, a lot of listening devices, a lot of ways to penetrate Gaza. I mean, they sort of talk about under, you know, rocks and, you know, sort of almost at every corner, there are things that the Israelis have inserted into Gaza over the year. years that have enabled them to sustain, you know, and I've heard this term, total intelligence

dominance. And that is gone, right? I mean, that clearly did not happen here. It was an intelligence breakdown of failure. But there's another issue that I, you know, I've got a piece that hopefully will come out soon with our colleague Bill Rogio from the Long War Journal. You know, the Israelis certainly contained Hamas in many ways. The barrier was one, the Iron Dome missile defense system that shot down so many of those rockets, you know, 90 to 95 percent success rate during successive rounds of conflict. That's great, right, but it's all defensive, and it all helped Hamas sustain a safe haven. And as we learned on 9-11, you give a terrorist organization a safe haven, and it will grow stronger, right?

Al-Qaeda was operating inside the borders of Afghanistan, thanks to the Taliban government, and the longer we allowed them to stay there over the course of roughly five years, the stronger they became, the greater their capabilities, the more creative they got in their desire and ability to attack the United States. The Israelis, I think, didn't quite realize that this was the sort of blowback for their containment policy. it enabled Hamas to grow within those borders. And no, clearly, they couldn't see everything that was going on.

Yeah. So back to the point we jumped off from a few minutes ago. On the one hand, you have the Israel Hamas confrontation, which is now coming to its climax here, presumably in the days to come, presumably with a significant ground operation in at least the north part of the Gaza Strip, who knows, perhaps further south as well.

the objective of which, I'll ask you to frame it however you think best, but the objective of which is certainly more ambitious than objectives we've seen in previous Israeli ground incursions into Gaza for obvious reasons. And so sort of question one for you is, you know, tell us about that, tell us what you think the objective is. And then I also want us to explore this tension. So question two is, as that conflict between Israel and Gaza presumably continues to play out in the coming days, it is occurring within this broader context of, as you put it, the Iranian Ring of Fire, where Hamas is not only an organization with its own objectives and own identity and history, but it is part of a regional strategy as a proxy of Iran. And there are ways in which Israel's objectives with perspective, it's my opinion. I mean, you have your own taken out. There are ways. in which Israel's objectives with respect to Hamas are in tension with its interests in terms of dealing with the overall strategic situation in which Iran has placed it and very cleverly placed it over the course of the last few years. So question one, what's the Israeli objective in Gaza and question two, like talk a bit about how that plays into the broader contest with

Iran? Okay, so a lot to unpack here. The goal from Israel's perspective is simply the destruction, the dismantling of Hamas. Whereas prior conflicts, the goal was to weaken Hamas significantly, but to allow for the status quo to prevail. It's over. From Israel's perspective, this is done. And it means that it will be a much more bitter conflict. There's going to be a ground invasion, which, by the way, Prime Minister Benjamin Nizanayahu has historically been phobic about, right? Doesn't want, you know, in general, this is a guy that doesn't want to put boots on the ground, doesn't want to allow for the possibility of a quagmire. And there is that possibility, although I think that, you know, Israel has dropped the

gloves, as we would say. And I think they're going to be happy to pulverize Hamas infrastructure from above and to do so relentlessly until it feels safe to insert troops and then to drive out the Hamas leadership. And that's what we're going to see. And really, I think the extent of the destruction will depend on how willing Hamas is to fight to the bitter end. But this does feel like an endgame in Gaza. But it is actually the beginning of the game as far as the Islamic Republic is concerned. You got to remember, we're looking at assets that it's placed in Lebanon. And there you've got Hezbollah primarily, but actually Hamas and Islamic Jihad are operating there. They've got rocket stores. They've got fighters that have actually, I mean, there have been reports of Islamic

jihad infiltrating northern Israel by way of Lebanon. So you've got sort of proxies within proxies fighting against Israel. You've got the potential for the West Bank to erupt because a lot of these groups are also operating there right next to Israeli population centers. You've got Shia militias, as they call them, PMU's popular mobilization. units that are also based in Syria. They're there, or at least they have been there primarily to fight on behalf of the embattled Assad regime, but the Iranians have tried to place them closer and closer to the Israeli border. The Israelis have been striking there with regularity, taking out Iranian assets and Hezbollah assets and PMUs. But you can watch as Iran has

signaled the potential to, you know, force a broader regional war upon Israel, right? And Israel is doing everything that it can right now. And this is, I think, kind of the endgame for Israel and the end game for Iran. There's a question of whether Iran wants to try to launch a regional war right now, an attempted war of annihilation against Israel using all of its proxies, thousands upon thousands of rockets and missiles and Hezbollah even has some precision-guided munitions, some PGMs. You know, this is potentially a really horrible war. And then, and that's what Iran would like to see. And then there's what Israel wants, which is to completely deter Iran and Hezbollah and all these other groups in all of these other theaters, and to keep Gaza in isolation,

dispatch with this group, take one of Iran's pieces off the chessboard, and then begin to think about what the future holds for all of these other theaters. Whether Israel gets away with that, by the way, the help of the United States, you know, you're seeing the U.S., we've got naval assets stationed off of the coast of Gaza right now, where the United States is bearing its teeth at Iran. And you've heard the president and others, Lloyd Austin, our Secretary of Defense, they've all issued their statements to Iran saying, stay the hell out. Now, whether they listen, whether they are deterred, it's an interesting question. But if everybody has their way from the West, Israel gets to fight this war in isolation. Yeah.

So let's get into a couple of the things you just raised. The first thing that's worth exploring is this question of the risk of escalation, escalation potentially launched by the Iranians and whether or not it's deterrable. You know, it seems to me, I'll be uncharacteristically optimistic here for a second. The Iranians have, I mean, Khamene has a history of being deterred. That is to say he can be deterred. He's a cautious player. And, you know, if you look at Iranians dialing back their behavior in the Gulf, you know,

in the aftermath of Soleimani getting killed during the Trump administration. You know, it is possible to brush them back and have them cool it. Though, of course, no one knows whether or not that will work now. No one knows whether they actually believe the Biden administration's apparent commitment to deterrence. So that's a risk, right? That's a risk under which Israel is operating. And obviously, the demands that would be suddenly generated by the launch of a northern

war as it is committed to a very significant operation. It's going to be very taxing for all sorts of obvious reasons in Gaza. That's an enormous risk. And then in addition to the risk, and I'm curious to know where you are on this, I don't want to go so far onto Limba's to call it an inevitable tragedy. I'm not quite there. But I do think that there is a good chance that there is a significant mismatch between the stated strategic goal of ending Hamas

and the actual military capabilities of the IDF or indeed any military force. Barring, barring after a isolation and clearing of the entire strip, which is theoretically possible. And in fact, actually, that's the possible part, as difficult as that would be. A real political settlement, which could be an occupation,

which Israel ended that in, And excuse me, in 2005 for perfectly good and understandable reasons or some sort of international protectorate led by the UN, led by a concert of Paris, that all strikes me is pretty fanciful and full of its own shortcomings. And I mean, I certainly understand, you know, as it were, in Israeli sitting here saying, okay, shortcomings, fine. Tell me about the shortcomings of leaving Hamas there. And I get that.

I get the conundrum. but I've you know we've all seen anyone who's lived in America since 2001 has seen understandable endeavors launched that contain within them strategic mismatches between means and ends and I'm I'm worried I'm very I'm very worried and I'm curious and you should be yeah you should be I mean look the the goals of Israel are I think a bit more I mean it's funny that they're at once modest and and perhaps also an overreach, this idea that they can inoculate Israelis from further threat from Hamas. That's the goal, right? That's it. But what that means is the complete dismantling of a fairly

complex and actually somewhat secretive terrorist organization. Look, there are going to be a lot of things that the Israelis can do, like going around and trying to destroy the rocket capabilities. and there are something like 15,000 rockets in Hamas's possession, according to best estimates. Maybe actually it's more like 10 after the sheer number that they've fired into Israel so far since the conflict began. But, you know, they can destroy that. They can destroy the tunnels. They are likely, by the way, going to have to destroy a command center that is nestled underneath the El Shifa Hospital. And that's going to be, all of this is going to be tragic and painful and just really difficult.

to watch. But I think at the end of the day, this could be just mowing the lawn, but this lawn will not grow back for, and I think that may be really the end game here from Israel's perspective, but just to be clear, there's no guarantee that Hamas doesn't come back. There is the possibility of chaos that follows and, you know, worse groups could come in to fill the vacuum left by Hamas. There is the potential risk of Israel needing to take over the Gaza Strip, which it doesn't want to do. There is the risk of relying on the United Nations to try to build something in Gaza when it's all said and done. There is, you know, I mean, there are positive scenarios that we can look at. For example, you know, we've heard a lot about this normalization process between the Saudis and the

Israelis. I mean, if the Saudis say, look, we're going to foot the bill, we're going to rebuild Gaza, We're going to clear everything out, and we're going to, with, you know, I don't know, with the help of, I don't know, let's say private armies or whoever, right, to offer protection while they turn Gaza into something that is livable. You know, look, that would be a bold, perhaps overly ambitious project, but something that you might envision. But the real question is, what do you do with 2.2 million people? And this was the topic that Mark Dubowitz and I tried to tackle in the Wall Street Journal, a piece that just came out on Sunday evening, this idea of, you know, first, you know, Gazans need to be taken in by Egypt. There needs to be some kind of humanitarian corridor, and they are reticent right now for maybe

obvious reasons, taking in two million refugees or somewhere thereabouts. But then I think there also needs to be this question of, you know, can the U.S. and others within the international community, really force Hamas's enablers and financiers talking here about, you know, Iran, Qatar, Turkey, Malaysia, Algeria, Kuwait, countries that have been cheerleading, funding, or providing other support. Can they be forced to take responsibility for some of this refugee crisis, clear things out, and then allow for a rebuilding that would give Gaza at least half a chance to function. And then I would just add another layer of concern, and I'm curious your response.

So let's say some version of this happens. No matter what, and I'm kind of of the view that a much more intense mowing of the grass is probably the more likely of the various outcomes you just described. Maybe something more ambitious is possible. But let's, one way or the other, let's say that this incredibly intense conflict plays out more or less according to Israeli wishes operationally. It'll be intense. You know, urban combat is no joke. These tunnel systems and fortifications are no joke. It'll be real. It'll be on a scale different from what's come before. There will be real casualties.

There'll be real expenditures of munitions. There'll be a need for aid and support in addition to the deterrence. And let's say it ends reasonably well on operational terms, set aside the strategic question for a second. Really, I mean, Hamas then has been dealt with on some level, but the overall strategic picture in which all of this occurs, namely the Iranian constraints and sort of web of restraints in which the United States, obviously a friend of Israel, but there are ways in which, and this was a subject of my conversation during the last episode, with Mike Duran, who I know we actually both have differences with on some issues, But I think on the logic of Obama's Iran deal has been a phenomenal analyst, one of the best, really.

I mean, the United States has played in many ways an unhelpful role in the construction of some of these constraints around Israel. And none of that will have changed. None of that will have changed, but for the Hamas issue, Israel could well, for a period, be militarily weaker as a consequence of what it will have to do in Gaza. And it will still be staring down the barrel in the north. and it will still be dealing with Iranian group, Iranian backed groups in the West Bank. And okay, so fine, Klamine can sit there and he was deterred from playing his best cards this round. But this round all occurred according to his tune, all according to his, to his, the dance was to his music, even if it didn't get to his ultimate dance. That is definitely a, that's a scenario.

And that's the sort of negative take on it. And by the way, I don't disagree with that negative take. I mean, this was a war that was 100% fought on, not on Israel's terms. They were surprised. And that means that it was more on Iran's terms and Hamas. But I think there is maybe another way of interpreting these events. And that would be that, you know, this ring of fire, this concept, right? They've surrounded the king on the chess board.

And it could be that one of these pieces are taken off the board, right? Hamas could be dismantled and really have no prospects of reconstituting itself. And by the way, I think I should just noteier that Hamas is an organization that has a lot of external nodes. It's got leadership that's based in Qatar and Turkey and Malaysia and Iran and Lebanon and West Bank. My sense is that we're going to see a Munich-style assassination campaign when this is all said and done. It's not just the destruction of Hamas in the Gaza script, but all over. I think if you're a Hamas commander, maybe even a political figure, you are probably not long for this world. That is my guess.

And so when this is done, and it could be months before it's done, you're going to see the evisceration, utter evisceration of a group that once posed a threat to Israel and it's gone. And that's an asset that if all goes well, and it's a big if, but if all goes well, Iran loses one of its pieces. and it's deterred and its other proxies are deterred. That's if this goes well. And I'm not saying it will, but this would be the sort of positive outcome if there is to be one. But you got to remember also, you know, and I think to your point, Israel goes in on the ground. There are going to be surprises. There are going to be unpleasant surprises. I think Iran and Hamas planned this. There has to have been a phase two, and I think it is going to play out in a way that leads to a lot of body bags in Israel. There's already almost 300 soldiers that have been killed in all of the sort of opening phases of this war.

I think we're going to see a lot more. And so the question is, how does Israel look when it comes out of this? I do think that's a huge question because it will have an impact on Israel's deterrence moving forward. if it's able to operate cleanly and quickly and, you know, and deter Hisbalah and America appears to have threatened the very existence of the Islamic Republic, forcing them to retreat and to, you know, perhaps decide to fight another day. You know, these would be some of the positive things. But, you know, I think a big question is how bloody Israel is at the end of this, even if Iran is deterred and Hisbalah is deterred. And, you know, this is where I think the

tactical stuff on the ground in Gaza is going to start to play out. And this is really what I'm watching for. Yeah. And then there's the other dimension in terms of what Israel will be able to accomplish, which is if, you know, the game plan involves the requirement of the U.S. deterring Iran and Iran's proxies, well, that's a double-edged sword because that puts the United States in the driver's seat. The United States has other sources of leverage as well because they're, you know, we need interceptors for this to work, you know, other kinds of munitions. One, I mean, it's going to take weeks at a minimum. I would be shocked if the IDF could accomplish anything like what is talking about in less than a month.

Maybe they can. It's an impressive organization. But at some point, the, this is a crude term to use about this kind of thing, but the honeymoon period that we have sort of been in, in terms of international support for Israel, is going to start to diminish, especially when you're in there on the ground. And you really are seeing large numbers of civilian casualties. civilian casualties, which will, to be clear, be blood on the hands of Hamas, who not only have started this conflict, but are going to intentionally generate these scenarios. And of course, we already have them from the bombing campaign that's going on, but my point is not a novel point, it's going to get more intense and worse. And at some point, the clock could run out. The clock could run out

because the U.S. says the clock has run out. Yeah. And I do, but I do think, at least for now, it appears that the U.S. and Israel are aligned in the goal of destroying, dismantling Hamas. There's no, you know, there's no calls for, you know, proportional force. By the way, I don't know what proportional force looks like after a massacre of, you know, of 1300 people. Yeah, Israel doesn't want to murder, rape, and kidnap people. So it's going to decline to be proportional, I think. I think so. I, you know, this is, of course, what separates Hamas from Israel.

And you hear it right now from Israel's generals and commanders as they're rallying the troops and preparing for an invasion. But yeah, there is, I think, this open question of, you know, where, you know, the U.S. runs out of patience, starts calling for Israel to wrap things up. I do think that we're likely to see a bit more time. But, yeah, the moment that, you know, there is one terrible mistake on the battlefield, and of course there always will be in battles like this, especially with the kind of population. density that we're talking about with all of the human shields, you know, sort of challenges that Israel is going to have to deal with, just even the destruction of that Shiffa Hospital Command Center that I mentioned. I mean, the moment that that happens, which I believe will take place probably the moment before Israel puts boots on the ground in Gaza, that's going to start, you know,

that's going to elicit the howls of disapproval from the squad and from, you know, MSNBC and liberal media and college campuses and, you know, the pressure will build. And so, yeah, there'll be a timer, you know, and we won't know exactly how long that timer clicks for, but at some point, the Israelis are going to be told, you've got to get out. Now, I do think that there is, there will be an inherent tension at some point where the U.S. or the U.N. or the EU or whatever tells the Israelis, okay, you know, you made your point. And I think you're going to hear from the leadership, no, you know, we haven't made our point yet. We want nothing short of the evisceration of this group. And that's where, you know, you're going to see some tension. But I do think that

this, you know, it needs to be done carefully and it cannot be a bloodbath. But if the Israelis walk away having, you know, sort of finished the job and the U.S. was somehow able to contain Iran, then there is a modicum of deterrence that has been. been restored. This is, you know, the best outcome. The worst is a quagmire for Israel, and it yields to pressure from the United States. That's the, that's, and by the way, you could still see other proxies get into the game. But these are, I think, all of the sort of, you know, the different forks in the road here that we're watching for. Last question, and you've been very generous with your time. Thank you. It's been a real pleasure to watch the sunrise with you. What are you reading,

I mean, you're living, eating, and breathing this right now. What are you reading to stay abreast of the latest developments, both operationally, in terms of what's coming specifically in Gaza? You know, feel free to speak a bit more broadly as well. You can talk about what FDD is putting out, what you're producing, but also what are your inputs? Help us be smart like you. Sure. Well, I mean, the inputs for me, I mean, I've done, I've watched a lot of these conflicts already.

I mean, I've been through, you know, five different rounds and, you know, minor skirmish is I've got a Twitter feed that I watch in Hebrew and in Arabic. And you can actually, you can find it. I've got a list that I maintain on my ex formerly known as Twitter. And so it's about, I think, 187 different accounts that I'm constantly scrolling through and watching. And it's Israeli politicians and it's the IDF and it's, you know, reporters who are, you know, on the front, embedded, et cetera. So I'm watching that. I actually watch a lot of Israeli television. It's quite good during these conflicts because they broadcast 24-7 and they have, you know,

the alerts that come across the bottom of the screen and you're listening to incredibly smart Israeli analysts and former government officials. And it certainly helps to speak the language. I studied it in graduate school back in the late 1990s and somehow sustained the skill over the years. And you can actually, there are apps that you can pull on apps. There's channel 11, there's channel 12, 13, and 14. Each one has their own political flavor in different levels of analysis, but you can pick up a lot from that.

The IDF sustains a WhatsApp group where it provides real-time updates. And then there's the people that I've gotten to know across the whole region that I talk to. And then on top of that, there's the reading of, you know, what is officially coming out from, you know, the New York Times and the Washington Post and the Wall Street Journal and the Israeli newspapers and websites and the Arabic ones. It's your heads on a swivel during these things. You just need to keep listening. And, you know, it's really listening for nuance and changes in narrative is what I sort of feel like the trick is for me. You know, I, and I pick up this data from all over, and it's, you know, all of a sudden you pick up, oh, well, there's a hostage kind of diplomacy negotiation

going on in Qatar right now, and Blinkin's popping in and out of there. And so, is the foreign minister of Iran. And did they actually have contact or are they, you know, only working through interlocutors? And you've got to keep asking these questions to sort of get the story. It's never easy, but these are the inputs. John Shanzer, senior vice president for research at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies. Check out his piece in the Wall Street Journal out Sunday night. Follow him on Twitter. Don't try to do what he just described at home. There's a very disappointing answer in some ways. I thought you were going to say, you know, I read these two or three things. It's hard to replicate what you just laid out.

I really appreciate you making time. I don't sleep much. You don't look like you are right now. But thank you for keeping the rest of us informed. John, thank you. Thank you, Aaron. This is a nebulous media production. Find us wherever you get your podcasts.