The Dispatch Podcast - The Foreign Policy of a Second Trump Administration | Interview: Rich Goldberg

Episode Date: November 11, 2024

Jamie welcomes Rich Goldberg, a senior adviser at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies and former National Security Council staffer during the Trump administration, to discuss the future of U.S. foreign policy under President-Elect Donald Trump. Together, they explore key strategies, potential challenges, and the incoming administration’s approach to global diplomacy. The Agenda: —Iran as the sower of discord —The issue with the term “hostage diplomacy” —Making a deal with the Saudis —Should Israel or the U.S. take out Iran’s nuclear capabilities? —Putin back in international conferences? —Don’t ignore the energy policy shift The Dispatch Podcast is a production of The Dispatch, a digital media company covering politics, policy, and culture from a non-partisan, conservative perspective. To access all of The Dispatch’s offerings—including members-only newsletters, bonus podcast episodes, and weekly livestreams—click here. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Welcome to the Dispatch podcast. I'm Jamie Weinstein. My guest today is Rich Goldberg. He is a senior advisor at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies. He worked in the first Trump administration on the National Security Council focused on countering Iranian weapons amassed destruction. I've known him all the way back to when he was a foreign policy advisor for a congressman, then Senator Mark Kirk. I think you're going to find him interesting because he is someone who is in the world of the not a officially, but Trump's transition. He certainly knows the people in that world. And I'm trying to get a sense post the election of Donald Trump of what Donald Trump's policies will be like in different areas, particularly when there are competing strands within the Republican Party wanting to push him different ways. But I think you'll find him insightful on where he believes the Trump administration is going to go in several foreign policy areas. And what he would advise if he got a role in Second Trump administration. You might also notice some audio issues

in the beginning. It changes a little bit. I don't think you'll find them too bothersome. But without further ado, I give you Rich Goldberg. Rich Goldberg, welcome to the dispatch podcast. Great to be here. Rich, I'm glad. you were able to join us. I wanted to get somebody who had worked in the Trump administration

and after the election can help us maybe take a tour of the world and kind of figure out the change in policy that we might be seeing. So let's begin with Israel Gaza. Donald Trump had made some statements on the trail, threats to Hamas if they don't release hostages, but also comments that he hopes this wrapped up by the time he gets into office. What do you think we will see with Israel Gaza? I mean, I'll preface all of this by saying, obviously, I don't speak for the president-elect or his transition, which I'm not a part of at the moment. And so I would just say a lot of what I will say are based on his first four years in office,

his statements during his run for president, his statement since winning, and obviously just sort of understanding where his views have been in the past, where things stand today and advice, recommendations I personally might give to those who would be in a position to implement during a second Trump administration. So I think we have a pretty strong contrast in general on an approach to the Middle East and obviously to Israel in particular, not just in the context of, okay, what comes next in Gaza, what comes next for hostages or even zooming out more, but just in a fundamental approach to the region. Obviously, I think we had a paradigm shift under the Biden administration, which had started before October 7th trying to shift the narrative

back from Iran, the Islamic Republic of Iran being the primary source of instability, the primary threat to the region, and back towards the sort of decades-old mantra of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict being the major problem and challenge in the region. I think that led to the block of expansion of the Abraham Accords, complicated normalization with Saudi Arabia. We obviously saw a distancing of ties by the Biden administration with the Saudis early on, a tilting of balance back towards the Islamic Republic in trying to seek a renewal or rejoining or a 2.0 version of the Iran nuclear deal. All of those things remade the Middle East and made things a little more complicated for the United States. And of course, once October 7th,

around, that's all exploded. And I would say the seeds of October 7th being planted for the years leading up to it. So you have Donald Trump, four years in office, had a very different approach, saw Iran clearly as the sewer of discord of instability, fomenter of wars in the Middle East, proliferator of missiles on a quest at some point for nuclear weapons capability, funding all the terrorist groups you see around the Middle East firing weapons off today. The Houthis in Yemen at the end of the Trump administration were put on a formal terror list. Obviously, the maximum pressure campaign on Iran squeezed the regime of resources.

The budgets for its terror proxies went down. We saw reports of Hezbollah passing the can trying to get money because of the budget from the IRGC back in Tehran going down. And, of course, the opposite was true when you were in a period of relax. enforcement, what I called the maximum deference campaign of the Biden administration. You saw budgets for these terror groups go up. And in fact, in 2023, before October 7th, when we saw a surge in funding for Hamas triple its budget, supposedly from Iran, that coincided with a surge in Iranian oil exports to China and what appeared to be some sort of unacknowledged deal between the Biden administration and Iran. So I think Trump sees all this.

He knows and believes, you heard him on the campaign trail, talk about one of his great successes was the maximum pressure campaign. He's proud of the fact that he took out Qasem Soleimani, the terror chief of the Iranians of the IRGC Quds Force back in 2020. And therefore, he also sees, I think, rightly so, that that maximum pressure campaign of focusing on Iran is the threat of instability in the region, moving away from this broken record of the peacemaking industry of saying the Palestinian issue is key. bringing the Saudis, the Emirates of Iranians very close to the United States, achieved the Abraham Accords and remade the Middle East and the possibility of expanding that in the future. Now, it hasn't happened yet. There are a lot of intervening events over the last four years that complicate getting back to where Donald Trump was at the end of 2020. The Houthis are out of control, firing missiles and drones into the Red Sea, shutting down maritime traffic.

Iran has raced forward over the last four years with its nuclear program, now potentially working on elements of weaponization, not just the production of enriched uranium. At the same time, though, the Israelis have degraded not just Iran's terror proxies, taking out Hassan Nasrallah and decimating a lot of the strategic capabilities of Hezbollah in Lebanon, obviously decimating Hamas in Gaza, but now taking out the strategic air defenses and other peak strategic capabilities of the Iranians in just the last few weeks, we have perhaps an opportunity that Donald Trump can seize putting back his recipe of success of leaning into support for Israel, showing no distance between Washington

and Jerusalem, expediting military transfers so that Israel's enemies, which are typically our enemies, see that the United States is closing ranks. Perhaps some diplomatic pressure on key stakeholders in the region who have influence over the remaining people who are supposedly leading Hamas at this point. You think about the Qataris, obviously, a council of five Hamas members sitting in Doha, Qatar. A lot of leverage a new president can have. Probably a lot of anxiety that the Qataris have, not sure where Trump will come down on them. And so, again, opportunity there to exploit that anxiety if it can help deliver hostages back home, especially the five American citizens, if you're Donald Trump thinking about this.

The Turks and Erdogan, obviously, a supporter of Hamas. Yeah, I want to get into all of those in more detail, particularly Qatar and Iran. But interesting, I'm interested in the hostage situation. Obviously, I think everyone would want, and Trump would won as well, that image of what we saw in the Iranian hostage situation that after Reagan's elected, the Iranians give up the hostages that they have. Do you think there is a potential, given his threats, that Hamas would give up the hostages, you know, before he's even in office? Or is it at the point where all the leadership, much of the leadership in Hamas has been killed? And those that remain know that they're not

going to be, there's no, there's no safe haven for them, even if they give up the hostages without any negotiation. Well, I do think there is an opportunity to at least push reset on the strategy that clearly has failed for the last year from the Biden administration's point of view in its hostage diplomacy. The Biden administration approach was more or less to empower the Qataris, in other words, one of the primary sponsors of Hamas, to be the intermediary. So the mob's lawyer is running the negotiation, so to speak.

And, you know, you sort of push the Israelis to make more. and more concessions, you leak out that you're pushing the Israelis to make more concessions for your own domestic political needs. And that obviously weakens the Israelis vis-a-vis Hamas, Iran, Qatar, et cetera. The Qataris take a message, take an offer. They take it to Hamas. Hamas says, we want to make sure Qatar is okay with this. Katari said, yeah, we're okay with this. We reviewed this. It's good. Okay, we'll take it to the leadership. The leadership comes back saying, no, you know, we need more from the Israelis. The Qataris come back to the Americans and the Israelis and say, oh, it's just, you know, we really tried for you guys,

but Hamas, they're saying, no, they need more, and then you go back and say, okay, we'll offer this more. And the cycle just continues. Meanwhile, you're squeezing Israel, and obviously the Iranians are taking advantage by raining down missiles from Lebanon and from Yemen and from Iraq, and obviously, whatever, it's launching from its own territory. Now, Israel is trying to reset that calculus there on the Iranian part, that their military success is against Hezbollah, now against Iran, have removed that element of the pressure, but the fundamental negotiation is still rather broken, in my view. So what can Donald Trump do coming into office? You are correct in his first four years in office. He absolutely prioritized bringing American

citizens home who were held hostage. Robert O'Brien, obviously later became his national security advisor started as the hostage affairs envoy for the president. And there were several great successes during the course of the administration, not just with state actors, but non-state actors as well. And obviously, it was a policy change under the Obama years. We had been endorsing or quietly enabling the payment of ransom to get hostages home. That policy was stopped. Now, when you're dealing with a state actor, you can use various tools of pressure. You look for your various forms of leverage. It may end up being a hostage swap or a detainee swap, as we've seen in past. We did that with the Iranians during the first Trump administration. You've seen that done with the Russians.

There are sometimes you can be critical to deals. It's a good deal, bad deal. You try to get the best deal you can. You don't pay the ransom. Obviously, the Biden administration paid the six billion dollars to get five people out of Iran. When you deal with non-state actors, again, it depends on who the non-state actor is. Do they function as a state actor? Do they control territory? Do you have leverage over them in various ways? Or is the non-state actor dependent on a state actor or multiple state actors? And is that your point of leverage? And so I think it's very important to examine what is the state of Hamas today. My understanding is they're sort of bisected. The guerrilla remnants of Hamas as it stands today are bisected into northern.

Gaza and southern Gaza, two different commanders that may or may not actually be able to coordinate because Gaza has been severed by the Israeli defense forces into two. Do they talk to these five new council members in Doha? Do these people in Doha have any influence? If they have influence, they should be leveraged, which means you've got to leverage the Qataris. If they have no influence, then I don't know understand exactly why they still sit there comfortably in Doha at at all, they should be pushed to at least surrender publicly, be extradited to the United States or to Israel. Obviously, they are responsible for the murders of Americans and the hostage taking of Americans. So all the actors involved here, Iran, the Qataris, the Turks, the Egyptians

who obviously have leveraged from the Egyptian border, the Lebanese who have given safe haven to Hamas in Beirut, while still receiving checks from the U.S. government for its armed forces. all of these actors need to be on the table to examine who has leverage right now, who's communicating, what are our tools of pressure? Have we used any of them to date? My sense is we have not. Our tools of pressure have been used on Israel primarily and no one else. And then start leveraging anywhere you can. And I think that's exactly Donald Trump style. If those who hold an American citizen want to get parole, want to spare their laws. lives, you know, will not be part of whatever happens to people who are holding hostages

as part of a deal to give them up. That might be something the Israelis would entertain. It might be something we would entertain. But it's hard without really seeing the intelligence on being on the inside to know exactly how this would work. But tone matters coming in very clearly with the statements you heard at the Republican National Convention of, I want the Americans back or else. It should be a message not just to the sponsors of Hamas, but also to other state actors who continue to take Americans hostage. The Iranians have just taken another American dual citizen hostage. We've seen the Russians do this. The Chinese have done this. We need a complete reboot on how we handle the hostage taking of Americans in general because it should not

be viewed as quote unquote hostage diplomacy. I hate that term. What a weakness term. It should be viewed as warfare. It's gray zone warfare to take an American in this sort of manner for whatever strategic purpose you're leveraging them for or terrorism in the case of Hamas. And we have to respond accordingly. Let me ask you about Qatar. It's been one of the themes of the show. We had Jonathan Shongs around to talk about Qatar from FDD where you are. We had Dan Crenshaw many, many months ago on, and we asked him, is Qatar a friend or foe? And his answer was it's neither. We live in a big boy world, and America understands what Qatar is. It's a place where we can negotiate with the bad guys.

They deal with the bad guys, but we're able to go there and meet face-to-face with him. What do you view Qatar is? Is that a friend or foe, and how should United States policy change with them? Obviously, in the first Trump administration, there seemed to be competing factions within the Trump administration of how Qatar was viewed. How should Donald Trump view Qatar? How does he view Qatar? Yeah, if you take a look at the history of the first four years, public statements,

obviously there was up front early in the Trump administration, definitely an approach that was tough on the Qataris, asking them pretty important questions that was out in front. Frankly, the Obama administration in the Treasury Department had started declassifying and releasing information about the Qataris in their financing of radical Islamic organizations, offshoots of al-Qaeda, offshoots of ISIS, during the 2010s, there had been questions about what Al Jazeera was doing in its coverage. Obviously, those questions are amplified today as we learned about Al Jazeera reporters unmasked as Hamas terrorists on the battlefield in Gaza and all of that they've been pumping out since October 7th against the United States

and Israel. There's a lot of questions still on sort of what they do there. Obviously, that pressure early on from the Trump administration resulted in some key agreements on terror finance between the United States and Qatar that was negotiated by the Trump Treasury Department. A lot of that remains intact and has been implemented. And it is fully acknowledged that the United States tacitly allowed Qatar for many years to be the haven for Hamas. We did that for the Taliban as well, though the Taliban was never formally designated as an foreign terrorist organization, though they had the terror sanctions on them.

And so the Qataris have at least some leg to stand on to say, well, you allowed this to happen. You said this was okay for us to be the sponsor of Hamas and send them all this money. Some of us personally in our public life and in writing, you know, opposed these policies, didn't think this was a good idea. The Qataris seem to have been the sponsor ideologically and financially of the Muslim Brotherhood throughout the region. Al Jazeera has never really changed its stripes and remains highly problematic. A lot of people describe Qatar as a TV station with a country.

But, you know, I think that as the Trump administration comes in, the president met with Al-Tani during the campaign, expressed that it was a warm meeting, said nice things about Qatar. I expect that they will probably reach out if they haven't already to offer congratulations. I would make a recommendation that that's the call to say thank you. I look forward to wonderful relations with you, Cutter. But by the way, things have changed about Hamas. October 7th happened.

Americans have been killed. Americans are being held hostage. I have an expectation, and here it is. I hope that message is delivered. It would be an important one to deliver. And then there needs to be changes. fundamentally, why do we allow Qatar to still host and sponsor Hamas? That doesn't make a lot of sense. Hosting the Taliban when there was hope of some sort of a peace agreement with the Taliban

that would work out in our favor was a policy. Today, the Taliban have taken back Afghanistan, broke every agreement they ever made. They're abusing women of Afghanistan again today. They're closer than ever to al-Qaeda. That's not me talking. That's the United Nations talking. again, are we getting value out of empowering a supposed U.S. ally to cozy up to folks who are planning our destruction and to murder Americans? It doesn't seem like it to me. I understand that there's value in the relationship. There's an intelligence cooperation value.

Obviously, they host a large air base, though a lot of our strategic assets have been quietly repositioning over the last several years to reduce our dependency on the base. So I understand people saying it's complicated, maybe. I see the world, especially post-October 7th, in a pretty uncomplicated way, and that is, you know, hosting and sponsoring Hamas bad, cozying up to Al-Qaeda's friends and the Taliban, not so good. And if you want to continue hosting a U.S. base and having a very special status designated from the United States and a warm relationship, I think there's some reasonable expectations that we, can deliver in response. Well, let me ask you this about what some might see as uncomplicated, that post-October 7th should not be a pretext to start talking about a Palestinian state.

And you don't start, you don't get to advance based on one of the greatest horrors that we witnessed. On the other hand, Donald Trump has always talked about the Israeli-Palestinian deal as almost the ideal, if anyone can solve it, that would be the crem to the crem of all deals. He's a deal maker. You know, my next topic after this will be Saudi, the Saudi deal. adding on to the Abraham Accords with something was his greatest achievement, perhaps in foreign policy and getting the Saudis on board would be even a greater achievement? What they have been

saying is they want some path to a Palestinian state. Do you think that Donald Trump would push or try to achieve a Palestinian state after the defeat of Hamas? Well, as far as recognition of a Palestinian state or how you get to a Palestinian state or whether there should be a Palestinian state, there are four years to look at of a Trump record in this space. And there's a document that he approved that obviously Jared Kushner, Jason Greenblatt, and others worked on for a long time to show what a framework for some form of Palestinian self-governance would look like. Obviously, things continue to shift from October 7th. I'm not sure if people have looked back at that document and said,

okay, does everything make sense in a post-October 7th world? Certainly, number one, you don't want to reward Hamas and terrorism and incitement and radicalism by saying, great, you just massacred 1,200 people. So here's a state. That sounds like a terrible idea. Oh, and by the way, the people you would put in charge of the state have behaved and shown themselves to be like diet Hamas, like Hamas light since October 7th, celebrating, supporting the October 7th massacre, never condemning it. They themselves continue to pay for people to commit terrorist attacks against Israel to pay for Slay Program and the Palestinian Authority. The textbooks we talk about in Gaza were PA textbooks from Ramallah. So, you know, you add in UNRWA, which there had been some debate over, you know,

should the U.S. defund UNRWA. Is there a reform path for UNRWA? Where does UNRWA's role play in peace going forward? October 7th put any debate on that to bed. UNRWA is a core pillar of incitement and radicalism to raise an entire generation to commit October 7th. I mean, October 7th is a logical conclusion of an organization that tells people you're going to be refugees until you throw all the Jews into the sea and take your land back. I get the sense that you're probably a no on this. But do you think if it's the price of a Saudi deal? And as someone who Donald Trump has said many times that he believes that this is the deal of all deals, if you are a political leader, if that get this, it puts you on kind of the Mount Rushmer of

foreign policy statesmen. Do you think he, if that was the price of a Saudi deal, would try to, and he could only do his part? There's the Palestinian side, obviously, as well, and the Israeli side. Do you think he would, he would try to make a Palestinian state? See, I reject the premise only because I think we're viewing the conversation from where we sit today after how bungled this negotiation and framework looks because of how the Biden administration got us to this point. The Saudis are pushing for all kinds of demands on the Palestinian front, in my view,

because the Biden administration insisted on them being part of a negotiation. And then, of course, in the wake... That was before October 7th. In the wake of October 7th, obviously, it becomes all the more symbolic and political at that point. But remember how we got here.

There was a declaration by the Biden White House, by the president himself that he's going to make MBS radioactive. He pushes the Saudis away, pulls out our missile defense augmentation, the THAAd system that's now sitting in Israel. He pulls it out of Saudi Arabia despite missile threats from the Houthis. He pulls the Houthis off the terror list and tells the Saudis to go, pound sand, we don't need you. Obviously, it starts declaring war on our own energy sector and on anything carbon-based. and turns out, oh, oops, need oil when Russia invades Ukraine and starts cozying back to the Saudis, as the Saudis start pumping more oil, because, you know, non-American oil is okay in a crisis, so you know, got to keep the war on American oil, apparently.

But that's what happens. The Saudis are like, you want us to do what? After you've done what to us for two years? And you're pursuing a return to a nuclear deal and appeasing the Iranians? Like, what are we talking about here? The Saudis moved into a hedge against the United States, cozying up various strategic ways with the Chinese, at some point have to sue for peace with the Iranians and with the Houthis because of the lack of U.S. support. What happens to try to get the Saudis back from China's orbit, try to get the Saudis to agree to pump more oil for market stability, bring prices down? The Biden administration starts saying, okay, let's do a big deal and let's do the normalization thing.

and part of it will give you a defense treaty and we'll give you agreement for enrichment of uranium on your soil. And what happens next? Oh, the left wing, blank of the Democratic Party, senior Democrats who are anti-Saudi in the Senate, say, wait a second, we don't like the Saudis. NBS is a pariah.

We don't want this to happen. What are you doing to us, President Biden? We're not voting for this. We're going to only vote for this. if we see massive concessions from the Israelis on the Palestinians and a Palestinian state. But you don't think NBS is, the reporting I've read is that NBS, what he says, do I care about a Palestinian state? No. Do I need a Palestinian state based on what most Saudis would want in order to make this deal as the country that has host the Hage?

We need a Palestinian state a part of this deal, or at least a pathway. He says, yes, we need it. What does that look like? you know, how that materializes, what that looks like can be different things to different people. I mean, I'll accept, I mean, I won't comment anything that I know or don't know about, but I'll accept your premise that that's what MBS believes he needs or does need. What does a Palestinian state look like? What does a pathway to a Palestinian state look like within that framework?

What it is today during the Biden years is radically different than what it might have looked under the peace plan that was unveiled by the Kushner team four years ago. So I think we're going to have to figure out how to unwind this Gordian knot that's been created because clearly the Saudis can't be less pro-Palestinian than the Americans. So if the Biden White House wants to keep upping the ante, leaking out things, making more concession,

making more demands of the Israelis, the Saudis have to keep up. They can't be like, no, no, no, you're asking Israelis for too much on the Palestinians. We don't want to do that. at the same time, we are in a post-October 7th world. We have all of this toxicity that's been created. How are we going to unwind from that?

I think it's a challenge that people have to think creatively about. Obviously, once there is some sort of declaration, the major operations or whatever operations you're calling them in Gaza are done, that you've moved into a stabilization phase, a post-Hamas phase. There's Saudi-led Emirati-led investment going on, private security forces, whatever the post-Hamas Gaza finally looks like in a transitional phase, which maybe we're on the verge of, I hope so. Is that where you sort of start having some room to reset? I would say, you know what, why are we pushing this so fast right now

with very bad optics and bad symbolism, bad environment surrounding us? To me, it's like let the dust settle. Let's reset our policy in the Middle East. Let's reset our policy towards Iran. Let's bring the Saudis, the Emirates, the Bahrainis, back into our orbit. Let's do all the things right to ensure that they know we have their back from a security perspective. Let's do all the things right to squeeze the heck out of their arch-rival and the greatest security threat to the region Iran. Let's show the region we have Israel's back. Let's help all of these actors get to opposed to Gaza as quickly as possible. And then as you're sort of in that process, in that transition period, you've rebuilt trust, you've calmed things, you've tried to reboot stability and

peace in the region. Then you say, okay, what does the framework look like? What can we do? How does this all come together? What are the Saudis need for this to happen? What are the Israelis need for this to happen? It might not be possible in a month. It might not be possible in six months. But it will definitely be possible within a four-year period. It's unfortunate. It's been screwed up so, so dramatically over the last four years. But there is a way to get back here. We're trying to just force something to happen really fast. I know there are well-intentioned people out there who are pushing for a treaty, a vote in the Senate during the lame duck. Maybe it'll happen. I'll see. But if the Republicans hold the majority, you're going to have the majority of the U.S. Senate and can hold a vote

when they want, and they're going to have the President of the United States, their president saying, okay, here's the treaty, here's the package I've put together. And they have the Prime Minister of Israel, if it's Netanyahu, who Republicans generally like saying, okay, I support this package. You know, you're only going to need a dozen or so Democrats to go along. That seems very doable in that circumstance. So I'm not sure what the desperation is to get something done while Joe Biden is president and the Senate Democrats are still in charge, I understand there is value in having Democrats on the record recommitting to a U.S.-S.-Saudi relationship long-term after what happened at the beginning of the administration with Biden pushing them away with

Senate Democrats declaring MBS a pariah. I don't think that's a good enough reason to try to make a bad deal so quickly when the environment just doesn't allow for it. Let's talk Iran. Obviously, you've mentioned it several times there, the heart of the issue, the problem in the Middle East. My personal view has, if Israel's capable, they should take out Iran's nuclear capabilities because that's the number one threat to them. I also believe that America really should do it because it's a threat to them as well,

us as well, and we don't want a nuclear North Korea in the Middle East. My question to you is, one, based on your time in the National Security Council, do you believe Israel has the capability of taking out Iran's nuclear nuclear? capability. And two, assuming that when Donald Trump gets into office, that nuclear capability has not been taken out, do you think the U.S. or Donald Trump either should or would use military force to take out Iran's nuclear capability? Yeah. On your first question, I'll just say that, and I said this very publicly before Israel did what it did just a couple weeks ago inside of Iran when Iran had sent its second strategic ballistic missile attack towards Israel, this

year and everyone was contemplating what would Israel do? What is it capable of doing? You know, we can't deliver this kind of strike. Oh, it can't have an ongoing operation over the skies of Iran. It would have to be this or that. Therefore, these targets aren't available. All these leaks coming out. And, you know, my view then, my view now is anybody who tells you they know what Israel is or is not capable of is not telling you the truth. I believe there are just capabilities that the Israelis have been working on. They're very creative. You're outside the box. And the world does not know whether or not Israel has the ability to take out certain nuclear sites, particularly the ones that are deep underground, like we're talking

about Fordo, the underground, under Mountain Nuclear Enrichment Facility. At the same time, though, and this relates to the U.S. question, there may be reasons why the Israelis' their target set first. Certainly, even if you wanted to come back and go after more targets, you would want to take out air defense first and you'd want to degrade offensive missile capabilities. So the prioritization of the targets on the first round by the Israelis makes sense no matter what the objective is, whether you anticipate a second round or you just wanted to do the damage up front. But on the nuclear side, remember there's two key components here, aside from the missile program, on the nuclear side itself, that worries the Israelis and should

worry the United States very much. One is the stuff we see, the sites we know about. We're talking about sites that are declared at this point. The IA, the UN nuclear inspectors go there. That's how we know that they're making how much uranium they're making and what levels of purity they're enriching that uranium too. That's why we get worried. This is the threat that they want us to see for whatever reason, whether it's to extract concessions, make us worried, deter us, all these reasons. The second piece of it is the actual weaponization, and that's when they're building the bomb, you know, to prepare an actual test, to have a weapon that they will take this nuclear material, put it into, and something will go boom at some point. That should worry us much more

because it's not known, because you don't see the sites. You don't know who's working on it. you don't know how far they are, and it's very easy to conduct that work overtly. When the intelligence community in the last few months can no longer assess that Iran is not working on building the weapon, and we see leaks about that in the press saying it's because they're doing computer modeling to test their design, what they would build, would it work. This is serious stuff. Even the UN considers that weaponization work. It was written into that terrible flawed nuclear deal in Section T of the JCPOA as part of the definition of weaponization, what they're doing right now.

So they are now working on weaponization. Who's doing that? Where are they doing that? That becomes a question that's more interesting outside the realm of what the Israelis are going to strike with airplanes or with missiles and more in the realm of what might be happening on the covert side of Israeli operations, what they're watching, what the indications and warnings would be. detect the actual movement towards a breakout on the weaponization side. That's where we should be worried as well and be very, very, very focused. Now, I agree with you. In general, the U.S. has robust capabilities. If we decide the United States to take care of those big facilities, it'd obviously be a lot

easier of a job for the United States and for Israel. And now without strategic air defense, all the arguments, or at least a lot of the arguments in the Pentagon, have gone out the window for why we shouldn't do this. However, that's a decision for the President of the United States to make, and it's a very serious decision to consider and undertake. I will say one last thing. This goes for Iran and the nuclear extortion, and it goes for the Houthis as well. There cannot be nonstop leveraging of the United States, our time, our resources, our commitment to have to deal with nuclear extortion by Iran and a rag-tag terror group armed with below. ballistic missiles, bruised missiles and drones, disrupting maritime traffic in one of the

world's most important seaways. Both of those things are constraining our ability to focus on much larger long-term strategic threats to the United States, obviously in the Indo-Pacific. That has to be solved. The sooner you remove the largest existential leverage point the Iranians have towards us and reopen the Red Sea to maritime traffic, which will be a big signal to Xi Jinping, most importantly, I think you're able to get out from under this nonstop forces commitment, which is not sustainable, both on our naval forces and air forces, and start focusing on the much, much, much bigger long-term threats, which I know a lot of people want to. By the way, just saying you're going to prioritize China doesn't mean that Iran's gone and doesn't

still want to acquire a nuclear weapon. The Houthis aren't still firing into the Red Sea. You know, you can't just say, I'm going to treat this disease while this other disease kills me. You have to ensure that you have a defense posture and a foreign policy that is committed to defending the United States in our interests wherever they are threatened. If you want to be able to pivot and actually prioritize China, which I agree with long term, you have to do something quickly and decisively to remove the threats in the Middle East that keep distracting them. I'm going to ask you close to a few questions outside the Middle East. But before I get there, one last question on Iran. There obviously have been reports that the Iranians have targeted President Trump,

certainly have targeted people who were involved in Iran policy, not just targeted with sanctions, like I know that they have you, but also violently target them with attempted assassination. What should U.S. policy be towards somebody, a regime that is actively trying to kill leaders within the government, including a former president who will now be president again? What would you advise the policy be a president who gets back into office knowing that he has been targeted by Iran? Yeah, you can imagine that there's likely no love loss when a president-elect has actually almost been killed by a would-be assassin's bullet and has been briefed on multiple assassination plots unfolding against him by a state actor as well. This is not abstract. This is very real.

and something that I imagine he, on a personal level, feels. At the same time, he knows that he will be, once again, the commander-in-chief of the largest, most powerful military on earth, and that the Iranian regime certainly has to understand that as well. Now, that's for going after the king and missing, which should have obvious consequences. But you mentioned other people, Brian Hook, for instance, the former Special Envoy on Iran, who reportedly will be leading the State Department transition now, I think we should understand that targeting a man like that for assassination, forcing him and his family to live in 24-7 security, former Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, National Security Advisor formerly John Bolton, active assassination plots that have been intercepted by the FBI, attempts to kill American citizens on U.S. soil, kidnap them from U.S. soil because they are dissidents of the regime in Tehran.

you cannot allow that sort of open season on Americans like that from a state actor. There has to be a very clear message sent that if you are thinking about touching, if you try to kill an American like that, it is an act of war. It's what it is. And so these are big items. These are decisions for a president to make. Those of us who have opinions have opinions. But in my view, part of the problem we face here is,

been across the board. We have tolerated and really normalize the taking of Americans hostage. That has to end. We have now tolerated and sort of normalized assassination plots against Americans and American officials. That has to end as well. Let me ask you this outside of the Middle East. There are pluses and minuses. Perhaps you may see more pluses or all pluses to President Trump's or President Trump's foreign policy. What do you think the likelihood in the next four years? Obviously, President Trump says he wants to solve the Ukraine-Russia war that we will see Vladimir Putin once again at international conferences. Well, amazingly, Joe Biden is still president.

We are seeing the ability of the Russians to get themselves back into international conferences that the UN Secretary General even attends and endorses. So the world is not exactly so perfect as some would make you believe on Russia isolation of Putin, right now. Look at a sanctions policy since the invasion of Ukraine that is filled with holes. A lot of that due to the fact that we have so not just mismanaged, but declared war on American energy that we're afraid of actually enforcing sanctions and going after Russian energy in a very serious way, not just in the silly ways that we've done until now with price caps, et cetera. But in terms of personally isolating Putin the West, do you think that is over?

Do you think the idea of isolating Vladimir Putin is over in a time for engagement coming to G7 or G8 conferences will resume again? I don't know the answer to that question. What I do know is, again, going back to examining four years of Trump policy and what he has said publicly, there's no indication that that is going to happen, at least at this point. What I do know is the record was not one of Russia appeasement for four years. It was quite the opposite. It was Donald Trump, obviously, that ended the arms embargo of the Obama administration on Ukraine and started supporting other Eastern European allies more robustly. Trump got out of at least two major Cold War era treaties with Russia where Putin was violating them.

The Obama folks wouldn't do anything about it. Trump looked at these treaties saying, why are we still in these treaties if Putin can just violate them flagrantly to our disadvantage? You know, specifically, it was the Open Skies Treaty and the INF Intermediate Nuclear Forces Treaty. Both of those now in history under Trump, not under Biden or under Obama, you didn't allow, under Trump, but an extension the way that Biden did just coming into office of the New Start Nuclear Forces Treaty. That was an Obama era treaty back from 2010 because the cap on Russia was way too high. didn't make sense at the time in 2010, didn't make sense today. And it didn't include China in the treaty as its nuclear forces race ahead. There's other examples I can put on the table, but in general,

this was not an administration that was, you know, throwing candies at Vladimir Putin. Putin did not appreciate a lot of the policies of the Trump administration. We essentially, the Trump administration, broke the Obama reset policy with Russia and took things in a very different direction that the president was able to take advantage of in various ways throughout his term. So I think if you then see what he has said since, what he said in the campaign trail,

he said he wants to end the war in Ukraine, let's see the war end. He doesn't say exactly how. He doesn't say what that's going to look like, what the end state looks like, how you're going to get there. I think that's by design. He's keeping it very vague.

And Putin knows that Trump has a lot of leverage. He has levers on ways that he can increase support to Ukraine. He's going to have expanded levers with a change in domestic energy policy on sanctions targets and how he looks at economic pressure in the Russia sanctions campaign. He is going to have levers in other ways over Russia and international fora and other bilateral issues. So I'm not going to prejudge what's going to happen here. Clearly, President Zelensky is called. the president-elect, said it was a good conversation. I imagine it's possible you could see

Trump and Putin speak at some point as well. But if there's going to be some negotiation, one that ends in a way that is not favorable to Putin to allow him to feel confident that he can go for Kiev again, that he can invade another European nation, that he's actually in a box at the end of this, if that is the goal. And I think that would be a noble goal. while also bringing stability back and being able to focus on other world events, I think that the way you start that is probably a lot of the way

that you're seeing Trump do it now. There's many other hotspots from the world that didn't touch China, Taiwan, North Korea, the future of NATO. But let me close with this question. Small issues. Small issues. I think this one ties all together.

And I love your thoughts on what I wrote on Twitter, what I'm watching in this transition. I think there's two competing wings of the Trump. Trump coalition, Trump movement, almost irreconcilable when it comes to foreign policy. One I call the Pompeo wing. One is that called the Tucker Carlson wing. In fact, the Tucker Carlson wing thinks the Pompeo, the leader of the Pompeo wing,

Mike Pompeo, should be in jail, as he said on Joe Rogan for going after Julian Assange. My question to you is, do you see these competing wings? To me, I see the Pompeo wing having more power because they have institutionally, because they have figures that have served in positions and are capable of then serving in a higher position. The Tucker wing has people in his ear, Donald Trump's ear, including Tucker himself. Arguably, J.D. Vance is at least impartial of that wing. Don Jr. and him helped engineer getting J.D. Vance to the vice presidency. Do you see these different wings and how do you see this inner fight playing out?

I think in general, you can't ignore the fact that there are very differing views out there on foreign policy and defense policy among self-identified conservatives. You have this isolationist strand, which I don't think is the dominant part of the Republican Party or the conservative movement that maybe Tucker Carlson represents. And then you have the more strident, very hawkish elements of the conservative public party, which is probably more mainstream.

But if I were to say, like, what is conservatism? whether you're in a MAGA base or you're in a non-I don't know where you're calling all these words. If you're self-identified conservative, what's your general foreign policy view, which has really been reflected by Donald Trump, you know, regardless of what he might say as a campaign message here or there, it's peace through strength, which was written right into the RNC platform, which Donald Trump approved over the summer. It is being focused on outcome, more than just political messaging. Did you get results? Is our security situation improved? Is our economic situation improved by the policy? And in, I mean, there's a few issues,

maybe my personal views, my recommendations would have been different. Obviously, the president is the prerogative. He's the president. But in general, as I look over the world, and I don't categorize myself as an isolationist, I don't categorize myself as a neocon. I consider myself, just a traditional conservative who believes in the doctrine of peace through strength, the way that Trump approaches a lot of these issues makes sense to mainstream Republicans. And so is, you know, Tucker Carlton going to have a show and going to make all kinds of statements and call the president and say, you should give Kim Jong-un whatever he wants and you should, you know, give Putin whatever he wants and give the Ayatollah and Tehran whatever he

wants. And, you know, Maduro is a really good dude. You should get to know him better. Like, maybe, I don't know. I can't predict that. But in the end, I think the instincts of the president have always been, there's bad guys. We shouldn't be, you know, diluting ourselves that we can be the world police. But at the same time, we're not here to appease bad guys.

We're here to make the United States safer, more secure, and make sure those bad guys don't make moves on the United States and our interests. And how do we accomplish that without having major wars? If you look at the record, that's basically how Ronald Reagan looked at it as well. So I don't know how this is going to come out as far as the political ends of people saying that they own what, you know, Trump policy is. Tucker Carlson says he's the future of Republican foreign policy or somebody else says they're the future. There's one president. He makes the decisions. There's no labels.

It's the president of the state's the commander in chief. And he's going to take views from a lot of different people. And in the end, if he's smart, he's going to be results oriented of what is in our interest, what's going to make us safer, more secure, what's going to help the economy, which usually drives national security. interest. We didn't talk about one thing, and I touched on a little bit, do not ignore the energy policy shift that is coming. I think it is so fundamental, both to our economic security, but to our foreign policy, to give us so much more leverage and flexibility in all of these bad actors and give us more options on the table. If we actually move towards American dominance and energy, if the market sees a go signal, if prices come down because of it, there's a lot

flexibility there, and I think the president understands that very well. Any hope that you will enter the administration? Is that something you would like to do for a second time? You know, everyone, what's that that phrase, you know, serve it the pleasure of the president or whatever it is? I have no plans at the moment, but always making recommendations to whoever is in power that I think are best for our national security. And in the end, there's only one person who stands in the arena and puts their name on the ballot and has their name on the door and on the desk. And January 20th, it'll be Donald J. Trump. Well, please come back if you become National Security Advisor, Rich Goldberg.

Rich, thank you for joining the dispatch box. I'm going to be able to be.