The Daily Signal - A Top Hamas Leader Was Assassinated. What Happens Now?

Episode Date: August 1, 2024

President Joe Biden is, for all practical purposes, a lame-duck president, and that may embolden terrorists in the Middle East, Victoria Coates says. “Unfortunately, we're in this unprecedented situation, where it's almost not clear who the commander in chief of the United States is," says Coates, vice president of the Institute for National Security and Foreign Policy at The Heritage Foundation. “We haven't heard from the president. We haven't seen the president,” says Coates, who also served as deputy national security adviser in the Trump administration, adding that Biden has had “nothing on his schedule for days now.”  “Is the vice president essentially filling this role?” Coates asked. “It's not in her constitutional powers to do so, although she may be doing it in all practical ways. But my concern is, given that unprecedented flux and confusion, that the normal Iranian decision-making will be altered, and they might do something they wouldn't have tried even two months ago.”  In the wake of an airstrike that killed Hamas leader Ismail Haniyeh in Iran on Wednesday, Iran’s supreme leader, the Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, says revenge is Iran’s “duty.”  Iran’s Revolutionary Guard Corps also threatened Israel, claiming that the “Zionist regime will face a harsh and painful response from the powerful and huge resistance front, especially Islamic Iran.” The strike was carried out right after the Hamas leader attended the inauguration of Iran’s new president in Tehran, but this was not the only deadly strike in the Middle East this week.  Israel carried out a strike in Beirut on Tuesday, killing Fuad Shukr, a top Hezbollah leader. The U.S. also mounted a strike in Iraq that U.S. officials described as “self-defense.” With growing concerns over the strikes leading to possible severe escalation in the region, Coates joins “The Daily Signal Podcast” to discuss the likelihood of retaliatory strikes on Israel and the U.S.  Enjoy the show! Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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This Black Friday, you've got a whole month to catch all the exclusive offers waiting for you. See your local Nissan dealer or Nissan.ca for details. Conditions apply. This is the Daily Signal podcast for Thursday, August 1st. I'm Virginia Allen. Tension is high in the Middle East right now. Earlier this week, an airstrike killed a top Hamas leader. Israel is believed to be responsible for that strike, though they have not said one way or another. The strike was carried out right after that Hamas leader attended the inauguration of Iran's new president in Tehran.

Now the question is, will Iran retaliate against Israel? Israel. And this is not the only strike in the region this week. Israel also carried out a strike in Beirut on Hezbollah's leaders, and the U.S. also carried out a strike in Iraq that the U.S. officials describe as self-defense. Heritage Foundation Vice President of the Institute for National Security and Foreign Policy and the former deputy national security advisor to former President Donald Trump, Victoria Coates, joins us on today's show to explain and answer these questions and more. Stay tuned for our conversation. after this.

This is Rob Lewy from The Daily Signal. In today's media landscape, it's more important than ever to have a trusted source of news and conservative commentary. That's why we are asking for your support. Your donation helps us continue our mission of delivering accurate, factual reporting on the issues that matter most to you. Whether it's $5 or $500, every contribution makes a difference. Visit dailysignal.com slash donate to help us keep Americans informed and fight for

conservative values. The Daily Signal is your voice for the truth. We are joined now by foreign policy expert Victoria Coates. Victoria, thanks for being here. Of course, Virginia. So we woke up on Wednesday morning to some pretty significant news as we watch developments continue in the Middle East. Right now, we are looking at a situation where one of Hamas's key leaders has been killed, reportedly killed, and a strike in Iran. Israel has not claimed. Israel has not claimed. that they carried this out, but they also have not denied it. They are believed to be the ones behind the strike. Victoria, who exactly was this leader that was killed, this Hamas leader that was killed? Now, in Virginia, you're 100% correct. This is a seismant event for the Middle East

and really for the world, including the United States. So the deceased is Ismail Hanaya, who was the, quote unquote, political leader of Hamas. He was elected in the 2006 elections in Gaza that put Hamas in charge of the strip. He then left Gaza in 2017, joined the office in Qatar that Obama had asked the Qataris to host as a way for the then Obama administration to communicate with Hamas in a third-party site in Doha. And he has been the real visible face of Hamas around the world, has traveled freely, including to Tehran this week where he was to attend the inauguration of Iran's new president.

And we had video of him just hours before the strike, embracing the Supreme Leader, Khomeini, and, you know, beating openly with all of the Iranian officials. And so he's certainly not there on a good news mission. And what apparently happened is it was Israel and Israeli asked like an F-35 made here in the United States over Iraqi airspace was able to fire a targeted missile at a specific house in Tehran. And that's why this is really extraordinary. As you remember, in April, we had the unprecedented Iranian attack directly on Israel in retaliation for some other strikes the Israelis had done. in Lebanon and we had Iran openly attacking Israel for the first time. And before that, they've always used proxies. But we had this direct attack. And the Israelis wanted to respond very forcefully to it.

And I think an action very similar to what they carried out last night to express to Iran that this is not permissible. You can't do this. But unfortunately, in a very, I think, heated phone call, President Biden told Prime Minister Netanyahu, no, we will not be with you. If you do this, they then leaked that portion of the phone call to the press to make sure everybody knows the United States will not support you if you do something strong. And I believe the President's words were take the win. But what Israel took at that point was the fact that it was now okay from the perspective of the United States to attack Israel. And I think things have gotten so bad that they felt, especially after the attack on the Druze village, that murdered the 12 children

and injured 40 more while they were just playing soccer, that they had to do more. They had to send a stronger message. And so they executed this really extraordinary strike on Tehran. Well, and I think the question is now, not only are we going to see retaliation from specifically Hamas, but also from Iran, given the fact that this was carried out within, the strike was carried out within the Iranian capital, is there going to be retaliation? Well, they're probably chewing this over because I think the Iranians probably didn't think that the Israelis could execute this kind of a strike. I mean, this is really the Israelis saying, we can reach out and touch you, wherever you are. As such, it's reminiscent of the Soleimani strike in January of 2020.

But that strike was the United States in Baghdad. One expects the United States has these capabilities in Iraq where we have been for 20 years and have significant military assets. So that's not a huge shock, but for the Israelis to be able to carry out this kind of pinpoint strike from Iraqi airspace on the capital. And the Iranians have no way to prevent it. What that should do is really send that clear message to Iran. We're done. We're done. And I think it was very strategic in that You know, it was one person. It was the leadership of Hamas, which Israel has every right to go after. So it wasn't a mass casualty event like we saw in northern Israel.

You could call it proportionate. So the hope would be under normal circumstances that the Iranians, as they did after Soleimani, would kind of say, okay, we're done in this round. Unfortunately, we're in this unprecedented situation where it's almost not clear who the commander in chief. of the United States is. We haven't heard from the president. We haven't seen the president. He has nothing on his schedule for days now. And is the vice president essentially filling this role? It's not in her constitutional powers to do so, although she may be doing it on all practical ways. But my concern is given that unprecedented flux and confusion that the normal Iranian decision making will be altered and they might do something they wouldn't have tried even two

months ago. Wow. I wanted to ask you about that because you're right, we haven't heard from Biden. And there is a question mark of, okay, who is deciding the foreign policy right now from the White House? Do we have any indication on who that is? What are we hearing from Secretary Blinken? Well, Secretary Blinken hopefully said today that Vice President Harris's forte is foreign policy. Okay. That can give us lots of confidence. Sounds like a man who's trying to keep his job. But, you know, it's very unclear. And there seem to be regional fiefdoms. The person who's in my old job as the senior Middle East person, we called it a senior

director or they call it coordinator. Brett McGurk appears to be largely in charge of Middle East policy. But another character who's very much in the mix is the special presidential envoy for energy and climate, Amos Hochstein, who has been running around Lebanon. on trying to broker deals between Israel and Hezbollah. It's not clear why that would be in his particular portfolio. But those are what appear to be the power centers right now, at least for the Middle East, but that makes the whole thing so disjointed because it's not clear how they're coordinating with the Pentagon, for example. Is there going to be a U.S. portion of this?

Did the Israelis ask us for help? We just don't know any of this. And as I said, it just makes me think bad actors are using different calculus than what we're accustomed to. Where does this leave peace talks between Israel and Hamas and especially in thinking about the hostages that are still being held in Gaza? What are we looking at here now? Yeah. Unfortunately, I think, you know, the hostage talks will be tabled for the foreseeable future. Hopefully we will get back to that because that I think is the critical thing to talk to Hamas about. But at the same time, there's a reason Hamas suddenly. started spouting reason and potential concessions about six weeks ago and pleading with the United

States to intervene on their behalf and prevent those mean Israelis from actually finishing the job because Israel correctly ignored the Biden administration when they insisted that going into Rafa was going to cause, you know, World War III. They went into Rafa. They have broken down the last brigades that Hamas has there and are in the process of sort of mopping that up. and then going back and redoing some other missions in Gaza, particularly in Gaza City, which they did sort of subjugate early on in the war, but Hamas kind of regrows. And so to actually finish this, they need to go back and mop up a little bit.

After those earlier operations, and as former President Trump said, I mean, they want to do this as quickly as possible. They're not enjoying it by any stretch of the imagination. that they need the job to be done. And so, you know, I think that's why Hamas is suddenly saying, oh, you know, let's come to terms. Well, the terms are we when you lose to borrow Ronald Reagan's phase. And that's, I think, where the Israelis need to stand. That was very much Prime Minister's and Netanyahu's message last week to Congress is that this has become a very black and white proposition. There are not all the shades of gray that Kamala Harris likes to insist on, you know,

that there can be no sympathy for a Palestinian cause until they accept a loss in the war and come to terms. Well, and we're seeing this strike carried out after another strike from Israel, specifically in Beirut on Hezbollah leader, where a top leader of Hezbollah was killed. Will we see retaliation, do you think, from Hezbollah or Beirut in response to that strike? Obviously, that strike was carried out in response to that deadly attack on Israel that left 12 children and teens dead in northern Israel in the Golan Heights. So what happens now? Will Hezbollah see that as, okay, that was proper retaliation and now we're done? Or is this, okay, no, we're going to ramp up?

Well, again, it depends on what the Iranians think because they're the ones who are pulling the strings there. And it was a very important strike, Fawad Shuker, was the... second in command to Nasrallah for Hezbollah and he had been the head of their military operations for a long time was involved in the planning for example of the 1983 Beirut Marines barracks bombing that killed 241 American servicemen and women and so he has American blood on his hands there was a five million dollar rewards for justice that the Trump administration had placed on his head You're supposed to capture them, but if they get killed, you still get your $5 million.

And so this was somebody the United States very much wanted to get. And instead of, you know, decrying the strike, which is really what Secretary Blinken did, concerns about escalation, concerns about undermining his precious negotiations for peace with Hamas, you know, we should be writing them a thank you note. And, you know, they have just avenged American blood and taken, you know, a very, very dangerous designated terrorist off the planet. So I think it was an appropriate response to the Druze attack. Important to remember, those Israeli children were Arab Israelis. You know, they weren't Jews. And so, you know, you have Hezbollah in a way going after its own because

they have the gall to be happy, assimilated, successful Israeli citizens. And they, you know, they are not differentiating between anyone here. So the question is, How far does Iran want to push it? You know, they are in a somewhat perilous position politically with the death of President Raisi, the inauguration of the new president, the Supreme Leader's health in question, although that's been the case for 10 years, so you can't really predict based on that. But they have some real bad problems of their own, and they're also deeply concerned that Donald Trump might come back.

And I think it's not a coincidence that the Trump assassination plot, by Iran was, you know, was revealed in the days after the debate because I think they suddenly calculated that it was far more likely that he would come back and the maximum pressure campaign would come back and a tough American leader would come back who would have no time for their nonsense or their attacks on Israel and would stand strongly with Israel as he did during his first term in office. So I think, I think that again is going to be a question for the Iranians. Do they want to, you know, end this round, take a step back, let Israel finish it up in Gaza, you know, and then sort of see where we are in November? Or do they want to grab these couple of months

with disarray at the White House and push their luck? It's a very dangerous spot. Wow. Well, additionally, the U.S. this week carried out a strike in Iraq. What exactly was the U.S. targeting in Iraq and why? Well, we've had these, I think, over 200 attacks on, U.S. personnel and assets in the Middle East since the October 7th, Hamas attacks on Israel, which shows you in a macro sense that they don't differentiate between Israel and the United States. They don't care. We're the big Satan.

Israel's the little Satan. But we're both Satan in this scenario. And so, you know, that should be a signal to the administration that putting daylight between the United States and Israel only disadvantages us. it doesn't change their mindset one little bit. So we've had these endless attacks, and eventually they get so blatant and so brazen that the administration feels justified in taking what it takes, refers to as defensive maneuvers against the Iranian proxies, the popular mobilization forces in Iraq.

And that's what this was. It seems to have been de minimis. It's a little embarrassing compared to what the Israelis have pulled off in the last 48 hours that, you know, we're hitting buildings and whatnot, you know, to try to protect ourselves not to actually advance our cause. But it does show you how very bad things are, particularly in Iraq for the United States. Given the conflict of this week, just this week, what should America be looking at in terms of threat levels? Because I think we're obviously very focused on Israel and the possibility of further strikes, whether from Iran or

or from proxies being carried out on Israel, is the U.S. also a threat of similar attacks? Of course. I mean, heaven only knows what that has come up across our southern border and other immigration vulnerabilities that have not been stopped up by the Biden-Harris administration. And, you know, you can call her the immigration czar or the border czar or whatever, or you could simply call her the vice president of the United States, who has a duty to defend our sovereign border. but the Biden administration has just utterly failed to protect the American people from bad actors that could potentially be part of these ways of illegal immigration that they've been encouraging.

And we had three Palestinians scooped up in recent days that we happened to catch. But we know there have been Iranian nationals and others who have come across who could potentially have Hezbollah ties or in the case of those three Palestinians, Hamas ties, and that they could, be part of the groups that we're seeing marching in the streets of America, you know, threatening heritage guards when they came past our building last week, burning American flags in front of Union Station, you know, getting violent with the Capitol Police. You know, that could, you know, in an instant, because of who could be here in our country, unbeknownst to us now insignificant numbers, you know, that could become an attack on us. And I don't want to

alarm people, but this is why everyone has to be vigilant all the time. And we can't call these peaceful protests because they're not. From the Biden-Harris administration, we have seen, like we've talked about, some repeated calls for Israel to kind of rein in, pull back, play it safe. Given the escalation that we've just seen, do you imagine that that rhetoric could potentially change? And also given the fact that we're three months out from an election, do you think that that would also change rhetoric to where they might think, well, you know, we need to be a little more aggressive on the world stage right now. I don't think it's in their nature.

I don't think they want to do it. I think what they're going to see that's going to make them the most nervous are rises in oil prices. We saw about a $2 spike overnight, literally. Those increases are going to start to manifest at the pump at the worst possible moment during the August travel season. I think that's going to make them extremely nervous and very much just trying to tamp everything down. and they won't care that these messages of, you know, the United States is restraining Israel. We're slow walking ammunition. We're saying we won't stand with them.

That hasn't led to peace. That hasn't led to lower gas prices if that's all they care about. And that it's not going to work. It's not going to work now. So unfortunately, as I said, I don't think they're capable of changing course at this point. I think if they were any more forward-leaning, particularly the vice president, were any more forward-leaning on a pro-Israel stance, she would feel a real erosion in her base,

and it's not just Arab Americans, although that is a problem for them. More broadly, it's their youth voter bloc. It's the 18-to-30-year-olds that they have to have, countrywide, not just in Michigan, for her to get elected. And so, you know, I don't think she is capable of subjugating that political imperative

to do what is simply the right thing in terms of U.S. national security, which is support our ally Israel. Herod Foundation, Vice President of the Institute for National Security and Foreign Policy. Victoria, thanks for your time. Thank you very much for joining. Well, with that, that's going to do it for today's episode. Thanks so much for joining us here on the Daily Signal podcast. Be sure to hit that subscribe button so you never miss out on new shows,

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