The Duran Podcast - Biden White House Israel-Hamas war, diplomacy failure

Episode Date: November 2, 2023

Biden White House Israel-Hamas war, diplomacy failure

All right, Alexander, let's do an update on what is happening in the Middle East. And there was an interesting article from the New York Times. I'd like your thoughts on it. It said that with pressure from the Pentagon and the U.S. administration, Israel has scaled down the goals of their ground operation. I'm summarizing what the New York Times said, but that's pretty much it. The U.S. was alarmed that the ground operation was too broad, was trying to accomplish too much, and they wanted a new plan for the war. And it looks like the ground operation, instead of expanding, is now more narrowly focused,

which is what the U.S. was pushing the Israeli defense forces to do. What are your thoughts on that? It's very interesting how the Pentagon is approaching this ground operation with how they approached the counteroffensive in Ukraine, where it was probably the exact opposite. The Pentagon was telling Ukraine to accomplish this huge, goal, this huge task of splitting the Russian forces and getting to the sea of Azov and doing all of this in a matter of days. While in Israel, it seems like the Pentagon is telling the Israeli military

to not do too much and to remain very, very focused on very specific goals. What are your thoughts on the New York Times article? I think this New York Times article is extremely interesting and it may be extremely important as well because to be absolutely clear that was not plan what what what it is discussing what the new york times is talking about now is not plan a now we've had enough enough information coming from the middle east and indeed from comments made by u.s officials including by the way biden himself to get a sense of what plan a was plan a was to open the crossing points between Gaza and Egypt, get people to leave Gaza, go into Egypt, set up 10 cities in Sinai, get tents to, you know, house them. Then the Israelis would go into Gaza. There would be a massive bombing strikes

on Gaza, tunnels would be destroyed, bunkers would be destroyed, the Hamas fighters would be isolated and eliminated. And that was a plan. And by the way, it's clear that this was a plan that the US initially was supporting. And again, you know, you have to put the pieces together. But if you pass carefully the comments of US officials, people like Lincoln, people like Biden himself, they were basically signaling that they were supporting that plan. And if you take a step back and think about it, it is what we're talking about. here is an operation very similar in some respects in its grandiosity to the counter-offensive

that the Pentagon the administration basically forced upon Ukraine in the spring of summer this year so big operation now the fundamental difference what what eventually has caused this operation to be scaled down is that the political resistance was overwhelming. Last week, Biden spoke to MBS, and MBS made it absolutely clear as clear that Saudi Arabia was dead against this whole idea. And without the Saudis,

there was no chance that Egypt would be persuaded to go along with it. And of course, the Egyptians have been completely opposed to this whole idea right from the get-go. They don't want 2.3 million refugees from Gaza on their territory. They don't want people who are supportive of the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt, which the Egyptian government is opposed to on their territory. They don't want to be seen assisting in a displacement of population from Gaza, which Arab opinion would say was ceding more of historic Palestine to Israel.

So the Egyptians said absolutely, under no circumstances. No. And they were very rude. We discussed this. Al-Sisi, the Egyptian president, was incredibly rude to Blinken, when Blinken came and spoke to him, after Blinken had already been given a rough ride by the Saudis, including by MBS, the king of Jordan, the king of the president of the Palestinian Authority, the president of Egypt again refused to meet with. Biden and, as I said, Biden yesterday, I think it was yesterday, or the day before yesterday, finally spoke to Al-Sisi on the phone and basically told him this whole idea is called off. If you read the American readout, it's quite clear about this. So the result is that the population in Gaza remains within Gaza. So given that this is so, you have. to scale down the operation. You have to reduce its scale because you're not able to

just fight over in effect a deserted city. And at the same time, they do need to continue some kind of military operation in Gaza. Israel is committed to destroying Hamas. So is the United States. So they're doing a number of things. On the one hand, they are doing this in this incremental way that we are seeing. At the same time, they're trying to gain a grip, a very tight grip on the information flow. So we see attempts to disconnect the internet, anger with Elon Musk and Starlink and all that. Even though, I mean, I think this has been misunderstood because from my understanding of it, Elon Musk was simply talking about providing Starlink services to UN agencies.

And I mean, it was certainly not, you know, providing internet services across Gaza or anything like that. But anyway, tightening information control so that this operation, which in some places, I think it was the economist, I might be wrong there, are saying could last a whole year takes place out of sight so that, so that it carried out gradually,

but we don't get vast volumes of pictures coming out of Gaza, showing bombs, bombing sites and hospitals being bombed or hospitals perhaps being bombed. Let's all get into the weeds about that, all those are the kind of things. But anyway, no negative pictures coming out. The hope is that the whole thing becomes routine. People stop being quite so interested in it.

And eventually it drops off the news headlines and becomes a background story. So that the United States, which has just suffered another defeat in the General Assembly. We were talking about the fact that we were going to get to the General Assembly, the UN of General Assembly, eventually. We've seen the first resolution go there. it's passed calling for a ceasefire. Anyway, the hope is that by normalising this, by making it a kind of routine event, having it always there chattering in the background, but not on the front pages, that some of the diplomatic pressure will come off. So I think that is where we are

with the Gaza thing. I don't think it's going to work. I don't think this is a viable strategy myself, but I think this is plan B. Why do you not think it's a viable strategy? Why can't Israel? Here's a quick question. Why do you think this is not going to be a viable strategy? And why can't Israel do what the Russian military did in Syria or what they did in Mariupil, which is where they create the corridors?

I mean, you remember the beginning of Mariupil, where people were passing via corridors and they were checking them and, you know, looking for the tattoos. Oh, that, that whole time period. Why can't they do something like that? Yeah. And have the media report on it because it shows restraint, I guess. I mean, maybe we're past the point of restraint given everything that we've seen. Yes.

But because for two reasons, first of all, there is a difference in scale. I mean, Gaza is 10 times bigger than Maripal. I mean, Pariupol is a city of 270,000. Gaza is a city of 2.3 million. And so it's a difference in scale. Hamas is far larger. Allegedly it has 40,000 fighters. There's this huge tunnel network.

And Marupil took about, from memory, about two months to resolve. this we've been told might last a whole year that is an extremely long time and the other reason is of course that the politics are completely different the politics of Marupol and these places is that they're part of

their battles that are taking place in the context of a very very much bigger war in cities but Marupil and Bahmut and those places places, which are bear in mind in Russian-speaking areas and where, let's be careful what we say, a proportion of the population, perhaps a majority, are sympathetic to Russia. That is not the case in Gaza at all. In Gaza, this is a military operation conducted by Israel against an Arab-Palestinian Islamic city. And why is it not going to work? Because I think that there are enough people across

the Middle East in, you know, the Palestinian territories, in other Arab countries, in Iran, whose interests are to keep this thing alive, to keep this thing, you know, at center of attention. And I think that ultimately they will be able to succeed. They can always arrange events elsewhere in the Middle East on the Palestinian territories to ensure that this situation in Gaza remains at center of attention. And I think that this will also be true of various other agencies as well, even some of the humanitarian agencies. So far from being a strategy, you know, trying to dial it down in terms of publicity, prolonging it. My own view is that on the contrary, prolonging this over the course of a whole year actually is going to create more political problems than it's going to solve.

It's going to allow more time for the other side to organise and for them to put more pressure in the General Assembly, in the UN, where the real problems for the U.S. are now starting to happen. Yeah, but the alternative would be what, though, to go, to continue to do what they're doing, which is to just demolish the whole area? I mean, that's not, obviously, that's not a solution at all. No, no. And the images that have been getting out are quite horrific. Yes.

shocking for the world, I think, for the entire world, even the United States, even for citizens in the United States. I mean, we can see that this issue is even tearing apart the Democrat Party. Yes. I mean, even we're seeing splits in what we thought was an unbreakable unity in the Democrat Party. We're starting to see that they're even dividing on this issue because of what they've seen coming out of Gaza. I mean, um, yeah. Yeah. I, listening to you explain plan A, just listening to your explanation of plan A, it seems like they didn't really think plan A through, because if they were thinking that if they're

going to go hard into Gaza and then they're going to get these camps in Egypt, I think they really, really badly miscalculated, at least from a media optic side of things, it's, it's been horrific. So, I mean, my question is what, the slow approach is going to be bad? The fast approach is unacceptable. Well, indeed. And this is where we come back to the initial reaction to this event, because this is where I think fundamental mistakes were made. Because one way or the other, the Israel and the United States opted immediately for a military.

response. And I'm not saying by the way that there shouldn't have been a military response. A military response was undoubtedly inevitable and needed, given what Hamas did on the 7th of October. But they didn't balance that military response that they needed to take with a political one. Now, what should they have done? We're now past the point where this can happen. And it is fair to say that from this point on, all the options now start to become very difficult and very bad. But what should they have done? I'm going to make a number of suggestions. I think the first thing that needed to happen directly after the 7th of October is that Biden should have been working the phones, talking to all the Arab leaders.

I think that there was huge revulsion across the world at what Hamas did on the 7th of October. the first step, the absolute first step which should have been taken, is for the Israel and the United States and its allies, with the support of the Arab states, to have presented a resolution to the Security Council. That resolution should have called for Hamas to condemn, unequivocally what had happened on the 7th of October, and to hand over all of the people who were responsible.

That would have been the first step. when Hamas refused, as it would have been bound to do, we would have got further resolutions from the Security Council. Ultimately, a resolution under Chapter 7, saying that Hamas was a terrorist organisation, and threatening consequences to Hamas if he didn't immediately comply with the demands of the Security Council. And that would have caused splits.

That would have split Hamas, from the rest of the Palestinian leadership. It would have isolated Hamas internationally. It would have opened the door for action against Hamas and its various agencies around the world. And it would have created pressure within Gaza itself for a repudiation by people there of Hamas. And eventually you would have wanted to create splits

within the organisation and things of that kind. And of course, military action as well. You know, action to arrest Hamas officials, to refer them to the UN, to the International Criminal Court, that kind of thing. Now, it would have taken time. It would have been slow. But it would have eventually, I'm confident, have achieved things.

And, of course, by the way, I forgot to mention, unequivocal demands for the immediate release of hostages, all the hostages that Hamas should take. And again, that should have been defined as terrorism, demands that they release them. The US didn't do that, probably because... The exact opposite. They did the exact opposite.

They didn't take that approach. Just as, by the way, can I say back in September 2001, Again, there were diplomatic avenues that could have been followed, which weren't followed at that time. And they made exactly the same mistake. They immediately went for a military solution. They did not work with the global community. In this particular case, probably there would have been worries that if they did that, that might have opened up discussion. about the longer-term problems in the Middle East

that might have been caused from the global community for moves to start, you know, negotiations to resolve the Palestinian-Israeli issue. But the United States could have handled that if it had taken the approach that I'm discussing. But of course it didn't do that. We had Biden instead going to Israel, giving, you know, complete support to the Israelis as they went for this kind of military

operation. And that's why we find ourselves in the situation that we are in today. You have to think these things through. You have to work out what you're doing. You need, and, you know, I accept this is very difficult. I mean, I understand that what happened on the 7th of October was absolutely, you know, appalling, outrageous, terrible attacks on civilians, taking of hostages, all these gruesome, awful things. But it was intended to provoke a unilateral military response. And I personally think that letting yourself be provoked into doing what your adversary wants you to do, politically speaking is always a mistake.

You need always, in these situations, you need to act with the highest degree of discipline and you need to think through your plans, work out what they are, consult widely, talk to all the various experts, bring in the various experts of whom there are lots of them about the Middle East in the United States. I mean, you know, academics, people of that kind,

in London as well. Take, give yourself a week to think through what you're going to do, work the phones, talk to other world leaders, and then you will arrive at a much better solution. That wasn't what happened, and, well, as I said, we see ourselves in the situation we're in now. Everything you're describing to me is, could have been approached if you had just watched how how the Russians dealt with their situation on February 22nd, 23, 24, I forgot the exact day of the SMO.

You know, a lot of people mock the term special military operation. I mean, we sometimes, you know, okay, SMO. But, you know, there's a little bit of restraint and wisdom to how the Russians thought it out. And what you described is not, I mean, what we got is a declaration of war, right? And a lot of people, you know, when the Ukraine conflict broke out, a lot of people were saying, when is the Russian government going to declare war? When is this war? They never did and they never have. And I don't think they ever will.

No. Because they purposefully wanted to approach it in a different way. And everything that you described wasn't what you would have done, what you were describing, your suggestions, those seem like it, within the framework of a special military operation. You're not going to war. You're going to find certain people. You're going to arrest them. It's going to take time.

But your goal isn't to destroy, displace, demolish Gaza. Your goal is to deal with Hamas. Well, what, you know, you're going to say what I mean. It was a declaration of war. Then everything that happened. was and is happening is just catastrophic. Yeah. Where they could have taken a page from Putin and said, okay, I'm not saying we should compare

these conflicts. Yeah. It's apples to oranges, but I'm just saying they should have realized this could have had a different approach taken. Absolutely. I mean, what the Russians did on the 22nd of February is obviously they declared, in last year, they declared the SMO, but almost immediately, literally this following day, they agreed, they sat down with the Ukrainians and negotiated.

And they went on negotiating, if you remember, for two months, and they nearly came to an agreement. I mean, completely different. It was a completely different approach. And of course, as we know, the negotiations eventually collapsed. But the very fact that the Russians went through the process of negotiations and acted in what was seen as a measured way and went out of their way to say.

say we're not attacking infrastructure, we're not civilian infrastructure and all of those things. What they did was that it made it seem to most of the world that they were acting in a restrained and disciplined fashion. And of course there's been an enormous amount of... Water, electricity, food. Exactly. Nothing was destroyed. Exactly. Now, of course, there's been an enormous amount of criticism of that in Russia itself, by the way. But Putin, the government had the discipline to respond in that kind of way. Now, you're talking absolutely correctly because, of course, by in effect declaring war on Hamas, they are treating Hamas as a political and state actor, because that is what a war is,

whereas if they'd approached it differently, they could have approached it instead as a political, rather as a terrorist and criminal organization. And this was the mistake they made. Because now, of course, Hamas is able to say that they are leading the Palestinian resistance and that they are part of a war and that they're an army fighting a war. Whereas, as I said, if a different approach has been taken

right at the start, you could have said that they were a criminal organization which engages in terrorism and it needs to be treated not just by Israel but by the entire world including by the Palestinians themselves as a criminal

organization and a terrorist organization and isolated in that kind of way now had that happened obviously there would have been a lot of people in the Middle East on the Palestinian territories who would have been been resistant to that. But they would have been on the defensive politically. They would have been

on the defensive on the back foot. And I'm going to say straightforwardly, I think the big Arab countries, Saudi Arabia and Egypt, would have supported that position. I think had that approach been taken, the approach that I've described, you would have found that ultimately the Arab League would have supported it. Bear in mind that most Arab states detest the Muslim Brotherhood, which is ultimately the organisation to which Hamas is linked. The Egyptian government regards the Muslim Brotherhood as essentially a terrorist organisation in its midst. The Syrian government fought a prolonged war against the Muslim Brotherhood in Syria. We know all about that. The Saudis dislike the Muslim Brotherhood for all kinds of reasons.

It should not have been difficult, actually. You think about it in that way to mobilize Arab opinion and world opinion behind it. And of course, Putin himself has no truck with Islamic terrorists, as we know. He's fought them in the Caucasus, and he's fought them in Syria, and he's fought them in other places, and the Chinese have fought them as well. So, you know, if you work all of that, if you play a lot of that, if you play a lot of. on all of that effectively, then mobilising global opinion,

isolating Hamas, breaking down Hamas, because of course under that kind of pressure, you start to get inevitably dissensions and quarrels start to appear because parts of Hamas have been thinking of themselves as, you know,

civilian movement in control of the government of Gaza and all of that. If you get that kind of have moved. They lose the support of UN agencies. The UN, if it's a branded a criminal terrorist organisation, the UN would stop working with them. You could see how the pressure over time would have worked and would have started to achieve positive political outcomes for the United States and for Israel. I'm going to say that here, the fact that the wrong course was For me, the blame rests overwhelmingly with the Biden administration.

Given the realities in Israel, given what happened in Israel, you know, I can completely understand why Israel did what it did. I mean, you know, very difficult to see how Netanyahu and his ministers under that kind of pressure, you know, would have left to themselves taken a different course. But the United States has overwhelming influence in Israel. A strong, purposeful, intelligent administration would have come out publicly and said to the Israelis, no, don't go down this road. You must take this other approach.

It would have been supported within the Democratic Party, by the way, which is a good point that you're making. And you're correct, the Democratic Party is split. so is the Labour Party in Britain to an even greater extent now. We did a programme a few days ago about, you know, Starmer now looking like the Prime Minister. Suddenly he's looking less so because there's talk about shadow cabinet resignations because people are so upset about what's happening. So you would have had support around the world, support in the United States.

Also, had this other approach been taken. Biden told the Israelis reputedly, don't repeat the mistakes we made after 9-11. The reality is, Biden repeated the mistakes the US made after 9-11. He was the decision-maker that should have acted at that time. And I'm not even going to use the word restraint. I'm talking about discipline. take a disciplined approach to this problem. And he didn't do it.

He failed again. And he failed catastrophically. He had this catastrophic trip to the Middle East, which we did a whole program about. He's had this huge armada to the Middle East. I mean, I'm convinced, by the way, that they're still thinking about a war with Iran, despite everything. All of this, he made every conceivable mistake in this situation. And the blame and responsibility lies overwhelmingly with him. I was going to say the same exact thing that you're saying.

Look, labor is splitting, the Democrats are splitting, because the images are too much for people to handle. Yeah. Yes. People are shocked, outrage, furious, angry, sad. I mean, the images are horrific what is happening in God. I mean, it's, you can't argue that. Absolutely. Everything that people are seeing is shocking, shocking beyond belief.

And the blame 100% lies with Biden and the Biden White House. And you just, you said the two reasons why they messed up so bad on this. I think one of the reasons that you, that you highlighted is that maybe, no, definitely, we've talked about this many times. They don't have the diplomatic skill for this type of stuff. Let's face it, they just don't. They don't have Sergay-Lavrov. No. They don't have Wang Yi.

They don't have Jaisankar. They don't have these people. No. They have Blinking and Newland and Sullivan. Let's just be honest. They don't have people that can think like this. These people have one default position. And it's, you know, put your foot on the pedal and slam the car into the wall.

I mean, that's their default position. That's their answer to everything. Everything's a nail and they're the hammer. Exactly. So they couldn't think like what we're describing here, what you just described, this approach. And they couldn't advise Israel on this because it's just not in there. They're not capable of it. They don't have that skill set.

But the other reason is what you mentioned is that the other side of the Biden White House is the neocon side, the hardcore neocon side, that took advantage of this situation, that saw an opportunity instead of de-escalating, instead of trying to. to prevent a wider war, instead of trying to get the Arab states on your side, instead of trying to get Russia on your side, they said, well, this is our opportunity to finally take out Iran. We got it now. So let's connect Hamas to Iran, just like Iraq, just like al-Qaeda, they connected to Iraq somehow. There was no connection, but all of a sudden it was Saddam that took down the towers and everyone went along with it. They're doing the same. thing now. And they just, they took advantage and they're taking advantage of the situation in order to get to, to that war with Iran. And that's why they, they couldn't go down the

other path, which was clearly, clearly there. Yes, absolutely. Biden's trip was a disaster. Yes. Yes. You can't send Biden to do these things. He doesn't have the skill to do these things. No. Exactly. So, you know, we have a, we have a, we have. a situation in the Middle East, which is getting out of control. And as I said, I generally, truly do not believe that it is going to be possible to control the situation in the way that I think the Biden administration hopes for a year. And by the way, I mean, again, you know, the Israelis, no doubt themselves want to, you know, control the information flow from Gaza. But the people who want that most, again, are the Biden.

people because that is what they do. Ultimately, they're all about information flow and manipulating opinion and getting the right headlines and the right discussions and things of this kind. So, I mean, but this is too big a situation. It's a situation that far too many people are interested in for this to work. Yeah. This is a situation that could take this to to a world war. Yes. So obviously everyone's concerns. This touches everybody.

Yeah. So, yeah, the media headlines and optics. That's the way they think. Yes. Yes. And, yeah. They really messed up in a big, big way. All right.

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