Jonathan Schanzer joins us today to evaluate the fast-evolving conflict between Israel and Hezbollah and what Israel's aims and goals are. Also, why can't the Biden-Harris administration support its ally's efforts to end terrorist attacks against it from the north? Too hard? Give a listen.
The Commentary Magazine Podcast
Israel vs. Hezbollah: How's It Going?
Jonathan Schanzer joins us today to evaluate the fast-evolving conflict between Israel and Hezbollah and what Israel's aims and goals are. Also, why can't the Biden-Harris administration support its ally's efforts to end terrorist attacks against it from the north? Too hard? Give a listen.
- Broadcast on:
- 25 Sep 2024
- Audio Format:
- other
[music] Welcome to the commentary magazine daily podcast, today is Wednesday, September 25th, 2024. I am John Pothor. It's the editor of commentary magazine with me as always executive editor, a Greenwald High Abe. Hi, John. Senior editor, Seth Mandel. Hi, Seth. Hi, John. And join us today, commentary magazine contributing editor, big cheese, podcast, host, YouTube host for the foundation of the defense of democracies, Jonathan Shanser. Hi, Jonathan. Hi, John. Where Jonathan is in a Hilden Garden Inn in New Jersey, where the coffee is terrible. So we are going to try to cheer him up by just laying out a quick scenario about what's going on in Lebanon, which should make everybody accept Mehdi Hassan happy. So Israel starts out by exploding the pagers. Then people have to go from the pagers to the walkie talkies. So it explodes the walkie talkies. Then they have to meet in person since they can no longer communicate. They have to go to some central location. They must have said, you know, this is where we go if everything goes to hell. And they all go to a central location and Israel hits the central location and kills multiple Hezbollah leaders has been picking them off over the course of the last week. And according, at least to one thing that I heard on Dan Seymour's podcast with Nadav et al Israeli military commanders believe that they did more damage in six hours on Monday than they did in 34 days in Lebanon in 2006, hitting launchers, hitting rockets and that sort of thing, an amazingly successful operation so far. So Johnson Chans are as our resident expert on all things of these matters. Does this narrative that I have just laid out for you conform to reality? And are you part of the camp just to follow up that says, wow, this is going great. And they got a plan. They're going to get a run to get Hezbollah to pull back before any really major military operations have to happen. Or are you part of the they had to do this fast because the pager plan was was what had been exposed. And so they did it too fast and they've had they've had a lot of successes, but they have no plan and they don't know where to go now. And in the classic, I would say Jewish Jewish fashion are taking lemonade and turning them into lemons. So where do you come on this on this spectrum? I hate to say it, but I'm non binary here. I refuse to be pushed into into this binary choice. I think it's a combination of both. But first, I think we just need to set some terms, John, because we just talk about the pager operation. There's just so many creative ways of describing it. My favorite so far has been operation castration, but I'm open to other descriptions of that operation. It wasn't genius. It was apparently years in the making, the same with the with the walkie talkies. Obviously, the targets that Israel has been hitting, they're the result of pinpoint intelligence. A target bank that Israel has been collecting over the last two decades, which is, you know, no, this is nothing to sneeze at here. They have spent a long time studying his balla, studying where they keep their rockets, the rocket launchers, studying the top leaders, and they're slowly picking them apart. I will agree with you that I think this was done hastily. I think the pager operation was was thrust upon the Israelis because apparently someone began to realize that this that this operation was, in fact, something that was feasible. The Israelis were alerted to the fact that they either they were going to be discovered or that the zero days exploit with the pagers was about to be patched. It's not exactly clear what happened there, but the Israelis had to move quickly. Once they started to move quickly, you began to hear people in the Israeli security establishment say, okay, fine, that was good, but now what are you doing strategically? That was kind of the knock on the BB government for the first couple of days after the pagers started going boom, and then I think you begin to see that the rest of the establishment begin to scramble and realize, hey, they can't communicate. Hey, they are in panic. They're not even willing to pick up their cell phones because they're afraid that something might happen to them. This is the moment to strike and so we're seeing this wider operation take place. I think that it's going to set his balla back significantly. I think there's no way around that and I think that what you heard on Dan Senor's podcast is absolutely correct, but and here's where I need to sort of fall between the two camps that you've that you've laid out here. His balla still has 200,000 or so missiles and rockets and drones that they're able to fire into Israel. We saw a ballistic missile get fired into Israel overnight around midnight our time around 6 a.m. in Israel, but they're trying to hit the most side headquarters. Kibbut Tsar suffered a direct hit today and and I think there's a lot more where that came from. So, as I think as as productive as this has been, we can't lose sight of the fact that his balla is a formidable terrorist organization that is equal in power roughly to that of a mid-sized European country in terms of the the the armaments that they have in their possession and the and the skills that they have as well. So this is still going to be a tough slog. I think his balla is definitely licking its wounds. I think Iran is fearful of what could happen next knowing that they could be targeted with similar pinpoint intelligence driven operations. So the Israelis are re-establishing deterrence here bit by bit, but where we go from here a lot of questions still. So I was on the phone last night at midnight with my sister Ruthie Bloom, who many of you probably know as a commentator on matters in Israel lives in Tel Aviv. She had just come back from her hallway where she had that she had entered in the middle of the night having heard sirens that woke her up indicating that there was a an incoming. Here's what her report was her report was that you you she didn't she never she heard the sirens, but she never heard the boom, which is to say that when when Iron Dome goes up or or or not in this I in this case it was a ballistic missile probably wasn't Iron Dome. David slang that you know you wait to actually you can actually hear the interception if there's a significant interception she never heard it thus indicating to her that the missile was was really not in all that close to where she is geographically Israel does not wish anyone to know where these missiles land or are fired though and they tell people not to go outside and take you you know iPhone videos like Israelis are going to listen. They don't want to like help Hezbollah with its targeting that sort of thing, but not just there, but you know over the last couple of days, barrages all over the center of the country in the time you elsewhere and I think the most important salient detail for people who are listening is that the reserves are being called up very significantly. So I have a couple of family members who are men in their mid to late thirties who are being called up this weekend. They don't know where they're going. They don't know what they're doing presumably they're probably in logistical or replacement support, which is to say that they're going to move the active military north potentially to prepare for a ground assault on on Lebanon and they need people to take the jobs that they have to leave in the south or around around Hamas. So two questions arise from this. Is Israel now because of the complete what appears to be the almost complete degradation of Hamas's offensive capabilities? Is it now in does it have the luxury let us say of engaging in the second front war in Lebanon without degrading its role in trying to clean up and finish up the war in Gaza or is this a threat to the Gaza operation in your estimation? Look, I think and I wrote about this for commentary. I think it was September 12th. I think Hamas is largely a spent force. I want to say that we're not going to see fighting in Gaza because I think we're likely going to see some kind of low level insurgency that could go on for quite some time. Well, Israel tries to find the right combination of actors to help rebuild the place. There's going to be guys in tracksuits in AK-47s that are going to come out of the woodwork and they're going to be firing on Israeli soldiers. I think that's a foregone conclusion, but in terms of the hard fighting, the need for systems and large ground maneuvers and columns of tanks and things like that, I think we may be actually nearing the end here and again, the end of the hard fighting, not the end of the sort of smaller battles that I would suspect will last for quite some time. I'm hearing the same things about folks getting called up to the north. Here's where I am on the north right now. I think Israel faces two primary impediments and they're very interconnected. The first is whether Israel has the munitions that they need for a ground invasion. I hear different things from different people, but they need tank shells. They need small diameter bombs that they can use. They need mortars. They need the sorts of things that are needed for folks. After that, just a quick question is any of that a result of somebody, a country withholding anything. So that's the second thing that's interrelated and that's exactly it, right? What we're seeing right now is a Biden administration or let's just say a Biden-Harris administration, a White House that is extremely reticent. They have been very fearful of this war in the north. By the way, as have I, this is not a war that anybody should be looking forward to. I know there are a lot of people right now who are spiking the football in the end zone, talking about how great Israel is performing. But just remember, his ball's capabilities are still, they can still fire 4,000+ rockets a day into Israel, saturating Israeli airspace, forcing Israel to expend iron dome batteries. This is not a good thing. And then there's the other added complexity, which is the Biden administration doesn't want to hand over the 2,000-pound bombs that are going to be needed to destroy some of that Hezbollah infrastructure. They don't want Israel going on the offensive. You're really watching right now kind of a blitz at the UN and in the US media where Biden and Blinken and almost Hoxstein and others are telling the Israelis that they're the ones who are escalating. And I think the implied threat here is that we may see the US withhold whatever weapons we even have. And it's unclear what we can replenish and what we can't. I continue to hear different things there as well. But this is, I think, for me, the main concern is that if Israel does this and they're doing it against the wishes of the Biden administration heading into the throws of a US election season. And the Biden administration decides to make this an issue of, they're saying that Israel's escalating, which of course is just ridiculous when you consider that Hezbollah's been waging this war since October 8th. They've fired 8,000 missiles and UAVs and rockets into Israel. They've cleared 150,000-some people out of their homes in the northern communities. Israel has been remarkably patient. They have listened to the Biden administration. They have heated the warnings, but there came a moment whether it was precipitated by this zero-days capability that Israel had to use or lose or whether it was a decision that Hamas was sufficiently weakened, or maybe it was a decision based on Hezbollah's force posture, whatever it is. And I've heard lots of different reasons for why Israel has decided to push and to seize the initiative in the north. Whatever it is, I think the Israelis have shown remarkable patience here. And now my concern is whether the administration has any patience for Israel. So that's the geopolitical question that is raised by this moment in time, the history being contingent and the fact that the possible exposure of the zero-days capability led to a more precipitous beginning of this counter-offensive, which although we have to say, it's not really that precipitous, I mean, what's precipitous is the mass nature of what happened, obviously, Israel has been picking off Hezbollah leaders for the last two, not just Hamas leaders. We know about the Hania being assassinated in Tehran, but the deputy commander of Hezbollah is like the drummer in this is spinal tap. You do not want to be named the deputy commander of Hezbollah because three days later you will be dead. I think there have been four in the last two months. I'm not joking. It's like, no, no, pass this cup from my lips, please, because it appears that Israel has almost 100% penetration or can see inside Hezbollah knows where everybody is and seems to be able to make choices almost at will to do these targeted assassinations, and that's got to be scaring the, you know, the Allah out of them would be. And of course, that also has a powerful psychological component. Meanwhile, Israel is also ensuring that it does not face another front in its immediate geographical vicinity by mounting operations in the West Bank, which, again, we have more crocodile tear gushrying over Israel is leveling buildings in Janine. It's amazing. Israel has allowed Janine even to remain standing somehow, but nonetheless, Israel is leveling buildings in Janine. No, just just for the hell of it. If nothing else to do, they're not fighting in Gaza. They're not in Lebanon. They're just rolling, they're just rolling over buildings in Janine, like, like they really want to be in doing military operations in the West Bank right now. They're doing them obviously because they're trying to forestall another front, or they know that there are command control and communications connections between whoever is in the West Bank and whoever is in Lebanon. And they found out who's working for Hezbollah in the Palestinian Authority controlled West Bank, and they are taking them out as well. But we have this, you know, New York Times world in which any Israeli military action is seems to be directly targeted at a Palestinian baby, no matter where it is. There was, by the way, a fantastic piece of footage on Twitter, one of these famous pallywood things where the Palestinian set up videos to show the horrors of war. And this guy was holding his son who was dead. And you know, he was crying over his dead son. And then his dead son got an itch on his side and picked up his arm and started to scratch his stomach because it was itching, and the guy burst into laughter. I wish I, I'll see if I can find it and put it on my Twitter feed so people can see it. But I mean, that is, you know, classic, just defaulting to the classic Palestinian. That's the Palestinian version of stage parenting, right? We have toddlers and tiara's in America, the pallywood train. Well, at least this guy had the good sense to crack up at the carefully staged this. And then his son starts scratching himself. Okay. Nonetheless, as long as we're on, as we're on Gaza, I want to ask Jonathan a question here. Speculation about sinwars, whereabouts and condition and it's significance. Yeah. So first, I just want to tip my hat to John for making a spinal tap reference. Anytime we can do that in foreign policy, it's, it's just an added bonus. So this one goes to 11. Thank you. I would also, you know, I would just note just quickly before we pivot away from Lebanon, the killing of those Radwan forces the other day, the senior commanders of Radwan after the Bieber operations was a significant achievement for Israel because they'd been so afraid of another 10, 7 attack being mounted, a ground attack, right? With those, with those people gone, I think it does give Israel some breathing room and it's actually reduced the threat level, at least from the ground, which is significant. Can you stop for a second and describe what you're talking about with Radwan and the, and the, and the, and the potential ground invasion, what you're, where they would come in, what, what the idea is that they got out, they, they interfered with. So what you need to understand is on 10, seven, the Hamas Nukbab forces, as they're called. They were the ones that came in, they led the charge initially and they were trained by the Iranians in, you know, urban warfare, guerrilla warfare. And they had specific skill sets that enabled them to do what they did, you know, killing Israeli forces, killing and capturing Israeli civilians. The Radwan forces, I arguably are more, are superior to the Nukbab guys, right? These are guys that have been highly trained. They're considered to be, you know, I mean, really, truly special forces. They, they have tunnels that potentially sneak into Israel or near the entrance to the border with Israel. They have spots where they've already identified that they're going to cross over the border. They're going to breach the fence. And the idea was to literally go in and conquer Israeli towns in the north and plant that yellow Hezbollah flag. And it would be a disaster for Israel, that they would lose territory, sort of like what's already happened to some extent because they've just, they've lost it because people have left, but it's another thing to have Hezbollah there planting the flag and conquering territory making Israel fight to win it back. That was the plan. And from what I can tell, the Radwan forces are now in complete disarray. And that is a very good thing for Israel. That's an achievement here. It's not, you know, it's another battle one, not a, not a war one, but a battle one here in this long fight that Israel is going to have to wage. And as a result of that plus the walkie talkies and the pagers and the other targeted strikes, I would argue that Israel is right now living in Hassan Nasrallah's head rent free. I mean, he is just absolutely wonderful. Nasrallah is the head of, is the head of Hezbollah. Correct. The secretary general. Right. Yes. So that that's what's happening there. And I just think it's important that we understand what Israel has achieved. Then there's the question that Abras is, which is, has Israel achieved something else? And there, I don't know how to answer it. We've been hearing in the Israeli media for the last several days that Yahya Sinwar, the now consolidated chief of Hamas who took over both the political and military wings, such as they are after Ismail Haniya's killing in the heart of Tehran in a Mossad plot back in, in late July that, you know, he's been running Hamas from the tunnels of Gaza that he's underground and still trying to run the entire organization, you know, with minimal oxygen and no vitamin D. He apparently may have been targeted in an Israeli air strike. That was at least the intent. They thought they might have tried to get him. It's unclear whether they have gotten him, but as of a couple of days ago, we were hearing that he was in communicado from the other top people that were in his inner circle. Now in communicado for him is a bit strange because, you know, this is a guy that's not been using cell phones, he's not wanting, he doesn't want to use electrical electronic devices because he's afraid that the Israelis are going to be able to track him. So he's been apparently, you know, whispering things in people's ears and messages that will be sent onward. He's writing things down on paper for little notes that are going to be handed to others who can then share his thoughts with other Hamas leaders. So, you know, it's hard to know whether they got him or not, but apparently there's just been less evidence of communication or perhaps even no evidence of his communication, at least as of a few days ago. That story's kind of left the headlines. And so it could just be that, you know, it didn't amount to anything. I will just say that some of my best contacts in Israel have cast some doubt on this report. But look, don't, you know, I wouldn't dismiss it entirely. I think there's still a chance that they get him because they're fewer and fewer Hamas leaders to target right now. The Israelis are able to really focus their fire for the first time given the major achievements that they've notched on the Gaza battlefield. And in Lebanon, you know, something struck me about the other day watching Twitter, one was a series of tweets showing people fleeing the South, which is in contrast to Gaza where Hamas can actually prevent Palestinians from going anywhere, Hezbollah doesn't and can't and won't stop them from leaving South Lebanon or, you know, Beirut or the entire area. And the other was complaints about Hezbollah. Now people in Gaza complain about Hamas and stuff like that, too. But the combination of them struck me is, is Hezbollah, have they bitten off more than they can chew in terms of the local population Hamas has the local population in Gaza. Hendin, right? They also can't go to Egypt. They can't they have them under full control Hezbollah has its part of the state, but people are angry that Hezbollah would start a war and not protect them and not, you know, and they would have to flee or whatever. And also Lebanon is so sectarian that it makes a difference if you're Shiite or Sunni or not Muslim at all, right? And all of that's because of the power sharing thing. So my question is, is Hezbollah really have the domestic support to continue a fight of this size? I love this question. By the way, I hate your Yankees hat, but I love the question. Look, what I will just say is, is, look, maybe a couple of things to point out. Number one, Gaza was run like the Taliban, right? And I think people don't quite realize this that the truly autocratic nature, the repressive nature, the anti-Christian, anti-gay, anti everything, right? I mean, any any divergence from Sunni Orthodoxy was absolutely not just frowned upon, but oppressed by the Sunni Hamas regime. And so people lived in constant fear, you know, the people who were even suspected of collaborating with Israel, you know, as you, we've all seen, you know, they're tied to a rope and attached to a motorcycle and people dragged through the streets. You know, I mean, just a culture of fear that was instilled in Gaza over the course of, you know, of, you know, two decades almost. This is, you know, I think it's really hard to overstate what Hamas did to the people there. What you see in Lebanon is something quite different. There is still a liberal culture. You've got that Beirut cafe set, right? You've got liberals that are openly critical of Hezbollah and they want to live a normal life. And then there is this state within a state that is run by Hezbollah. And that is, there's no, there's no, there's no bringing that down, right? There's no way to actually undermine it. They are too strong. They're stronger than the Lebanese armed forces. They're stronger than this. There is no government. There is no state. Hezbollah has hollowed out the economy. They've hollowed out the politics, but the people are still there and they're grumpy. They remember 2006. They remember the billions of dollars of damage that Hezbollah wrought. They remember the thousands of people that were killed or injured as a result of a war that Hezbollah brought upon the people of Lebanon, brought upon themselves in the service of Iran. And that's not lost on anyone. People still remember the port blast from just a couple of years ago, which is largely believed to be a Hezbollah, you know, it was a Hezbollah problem that they were storing ammonium nitrate. And the whole thing went boom and destroyed, you know, city blocks of Beirut, the entire port of Beirut. So people are really still very unhappy about what is happening. And so there is, there are still these voices and you'll see them on TV. And it's not just the sort of sectarian thing, it's just a cultural thing within Lebanon. And it's a really interesting dichotomy. One of the things that we've been watching right now at FTD is this really interesting question of the casualties and the way that this war is going to be described in the media. And people are immediately jumping on this thing like, well, it's the Gaza ministry of health all over again when the Lebanese government starts reporting on the deaths or the casualties. And it's really interesting. The guy that is in charge of the ministry, the government entity that is supposed to be reporting, he's a Sunni guy who is reportedly anti his Bella. Does that mean we can trust him? Probably not. Does it mean that he's as corrupt as the Gaza health ministry? Also probably not, but we're in a, it's, it's, it's apples and oranges here. And we're going to, we're going to have to be dealing with a very different culture of people who are going to have their own grievances about this war. And yes, they're going to be blaming Israel without question. They're going to be pointing at Israel, Israeli aggression or atrocities, but they also know at the same time that this was brought upon them by his Bella. The question is how brave will they be about criticizing his Bella once this war starts or below any stresses? Let me take a break to tell everybody within the abbot of my voice about the competitive enterprise institutes, how the world works. This podcast featuring one of my close friends, favorite political commentators, unorthodox thinker, polymath, Kevin Williamson, each episode of how the world works. Kevin sits down with a notable guest to discuss the jobs they've had, why work matters and the role of work in our social lives after all work involves a lot more than paychecks cashed. So listen to how the world works wherever you listen to podcasts or visit cei.org/podcasts. All right, let's talk about the United States and its reaction to what's going on here. The United States position to aircraft carrier groups on the off the Lebanese shore in the aftermath of October 7th to work to ensure that Hezbollah did not begin a second front war against Israel in the north. One of the gestures that led many of us to praise and be grateful for the Biden administration's intervention in the war in the first six or seven weeks of the war seemed like a very, very useful thing of show force, show of support, show of an effort to create stability and to use the American projection of power to warn Iran against any recklessness that Iran might wish to pursue in relation to this unprecedented situation that Israel had fallen into. And here we are with seven weeks, six weeks left to go until the election and the candidate for president has one thing to say about the Middle East, which is we need a ceasefire deal to bring and bring the hostages home and create a Palestinian state. All three of these goals that have been stated in relation to the Gaza problem are, as we know, not really germane to the situation in the north. I suppose it would be great if a ceasefire could be achieved with Hezbollah. In fact, that is what Israel wants. Israel is not seeking to expand the war. Taking Israel's doing here is to get Hezbollah to back off, to go quiet, to calm down and to go away and to let Israelis come back to the north, whether that can be done without a greater degree of intervention is really the fundamental question facing Israel's military and political leadership that it can't be safe until Hezbollah is really in some sense, not really neutralized, it's too big, it's too strong, it's too powerful, it's too central to Iran's military structure for it to Evan, the way actually Hamas may be evanescing. But you can certainly reestablish deterrence by saying, we're here, we're not going anywhere. You stick your head up and you're a deputy commander of Hezbollah and you're going to be dead. And so maybe you don't want to really have a lot of commanders and you guys just like some of those missiles home or we're going to keep bombing the sites, we're not going to come in on the ground, all of that. So I don't know, they're still going to say ceasefire. And I suppose Israel will say, great, Amos Hoxie, go, you, I, you're a wonderful guy, Amos Hoxie, negotiator with Lebanon, go right ahead, go to Nasrallah, tell them what the terms are, the terms are, go away, you know, cover your missiles, take the warheads off the launchers, Israel's willing to stand down, believe me, they got other, they got, they got other troubles that they need to face. I suppose I could keep saying it, but let's say that that doesn't work. And it's October 15th and Israel feels like it has no choice because they keep firing ballistic missiles at Tel Aviv the way they did last night, that it actually has to go and enforce on the ground in order to disable the things that they can't get from the air, which is why they would go in on the ground. They don't want to like, they're not going to engage in, you know, hand-to-hand martial combat with Hezbollah fighters. That's not the model here. Is there any indication that the United States has a an understanding that it is in the US interest for Israel once again to actually prevail against Hezbollah? No, come on, I mean, really, seriously, I'm just asking, I'm just asking questions through me a softball and I bunted. But look, you know, the, the, take your time, Jonathan, think about it if you're not sure they're ready. Right. Right. But I mean, let's, I mean, first, let's just understand what's going on here. Iran is waging a seven-front war against Israel and, and their goal is nothing short of the eradication of Israel. They want to fully destroy Israel. Israel in response is actually, they want to destroy their, they haven't said it outwardly anyway, that they want to destroy Hezbollah or they want to, you know, conquer Lebanon. Right. What they want is they want to be able to live within the borders that they have in peace and security, they need Hezbollah to get out of southern Lebanon. They need to get all those missiles and rockets out. That's their war aim here. But if they continue to be pushed, then they're going to have to take more drastic action and that will mean potentially the dismantling of Hezbollah as we know it, just as we saw the dismantling of Hamas as we know it. This administration doesn't seem to understand even that. And I think it's very basic to understand here. If you listen to the rhetoric, if you see the, the, the sort of military formations, if you see Israel's responses and Iran's aggression and Hezbollah's aggression, you can see this quite clearly. This administration simply doesn't want to war now, right? It's too soon before the election. They don't like the optics of this. They don't like how this is going to play within the, the, the, the democratic base. The woke left, whatever it is that they're worried about, they're deeply concerned about how this could escalate and what it means if they end up supporting Israel, even though they think in their heart of hearts, understand that they have very little choice in the matter. But this is, look, I mean, we've talked about this before on, on this podcast. I mean, you know, they don't want Ukraine firing back into Russia because they're afraid of escalation. And this actually gets to a really good piece that my colleague, Ben I'm Ben Talablu wrote for the Hill the other day. This idea of de-escalation without deterrence, it's just simply not possible, not with the Iranian regime, not with Putin, probably not with China. You need to be able to demonstrate strength in order to be able to get to de-escalation. If you cannot deter and you cannot flex those muscles, bury your teeth, growl a little bit, and inspire even a little bit of fear with these malign actors, you're not going to get the de-escalation that you so desire. And then I think it's just this huge disconnect right now with the Biden administration. I think it's such an important point. It's similar to something I wrote recently in my piece about American policy in Ukraine. I think there's a fear in this administration and it's widespread, I think in democratic and republican circles now when it comes to foreign policy, which is it's they're not even just afraid of war or a verse to war. They're steering away from the very idea of clarity on foreign policy issues because that locks them into things that they have to stick to. That comes with consequences that they don't want to deal with. So there's this instinct to sort of throw up a fog and be kind of here and be kind of there and push for. And in some sense, Kamala Harris's ridiculous answers about this stuff is the perfect distillation of what they're really going on about. Can I just say Abe, I love that comment primarily because when Trump took office, the knock on him was that he was the first host policy president of the United States that he didn't actually need a policy that he could sort of model his way through and he could change things by tweet overnight and foreign policy would change. And look, there was something to that. But I don't see a whole lot of difference between that and operating in this weird gray zone, which is what we've been watching out of the Biden administration and the vice president right now where they refuse to take a particular position. No, they're not tweeting things overnight and changing anything. But what they're doing is they're leaving everything in doubt, right? We have no idea what it is that they plan to do to support their allies. We have no idea what they're going to do to challenge their enemies. They're just leaving everything open to interpretation from their supporters and their detractors. And this is, I think, a huge problem across the spectrum right now in American foreign policy. I think that we have to look at this in terms of a prefix. And that prefix are the two letters, D and E, D, right, D. Democratic parties policies domestically and internationally involve attaching the prefix to many different things, de-escalation, de-confliction. De-confliction is a term that is used to describe conflicts or moments of real confrontation between two parties in the domestic United States that, you know, could lead to some terrible two gangs, right? Cops and gangs in Chicago, something like that. What's needed is a de-confliction expert to come in and figure out how to turn down the temperature. How do you lower the temperature, de-conflict? No, what else is de-defund, defund the police, de-this, de-that. What is it, this is the withdrawal, D is withdrawing, D is pull back, pull back before things go too far. And as you say, the word deterrence, though it begins with the letters de, that is not the prefix. And in all of these cases, you are eliminating as a necessary adjunct to all efforts, to retard, to end violence, to restore order. You are avoiding the necessity of the stick, of the threat, of the, you don't do this and you're going to jail or you're going to get bombed or you're going to get overthrown or we're going to support your adversaries. And I think this is something that actually brings together the entirety of this democratic policy view relating to the very difficult questions that are raised by human nature and power imbalances and people who want to use force in whatever capacity to control or contain or whatever. And it is Kamala Harris, maybe the perfect post everything president for this worldview because she lived through no war, I mean she lived through the Iraq war, whatever, she did not grow up in a wartime footing, she does not come from a military family, she grew up in Canada, she, all of these qualities that she possesses that do not say to her as they say to Biden, as they in some ways they even said to Obama because Obama's policy on Iran was I'm going to go against deterrence, I'm, I'm, I am rejecting deterrence, I'm not like avoiding deterrence, I'm rejecting deterrence in favor of cooperation. And she has no policy except we're going to unilaterally try not to make trouble. And maybe that'll work to get you to make less trouble. Because if we don't make trouble and you don't make trouble and then maybe we can be friends or if we even if we can't be friends, at least we're not directly in conflict with each other. And therefore Israel is an incredible irritant to this worldview because it had, it attempted it tried it, it tried again, give it a shot, it's given it a shot here and there this deconfliction or whatever you might want to call it efforts with the Palestinians. And and it just can't do it can't afford it. And then when it lets its guard down September, October 7th happens. And so that the world of deconfliction and de-escalation, the fact that de-escalation is being used to describe a war or escalation, therefore requiring de-escalation is used to describe a war that has been going on for 11 and a half months, that Israel really only didn't get joined joined in last week. It's a little like Britain and the Nazis in the sense that Britain was sitting there and the Nazis, you know, started bombing London. And British did try to respond, I mean they went to France, didn't go well, eventually they did, but I mean it would be like saying, you know, when the British expeditionary for went to, went to France that it was escalating with France. There's, there's, there's even, I mean, there's been some reporting along those lines this week that suggests that, and maybe this is, you know, 12 dimensional chess type thinking, but that one of the reasons that Israel is not telling the United States about some of the things it's doing is not necessarily because it's worried about leaks, but because it, it strengthens their hand in a way that, you know, the US is supposed to be playing good cop, bad cop. The US is supposed to be saying, look, I deal with us, we're nice. I don't know how long I can hold off the rabid dog of the Zionist entity any longer. You know, these guys are going to, there's only so much I can do to stop them, but let's try to make peace or whatever. And the US isn't doing the good cop role. So Israel is forced to do things in a way that prove to its enemies that there's no one holding it back because the US doesn't even know about these things, right there. And there's, they're introducing the kind of Nixonian crazy man, right idea, which is that nobody knows what they're going to do next, literally. And that, you know, anyway, that's a suggestion that people have been making strategically recently. And I mean, I think there's, I think there's, I think there's something of that in Ukraine's going into a curse as well, without consulting the US beforehand. It's a very, you know, similar, similar thing because both countries are irritants to this worldview and that they can't afford not to have clarity. For them, that's, that's automatic extinction, especially as you see pain with the FBI. What if you could have a conversation with a serial killer? It is Monday, April 2nd, times approximately 1105. Sit in a room, cross the table, hear them tell the story of who they are, what they did, why they did it. Following will be a interview with Israel Keys. What if you could separate their truths from their lies and maybe hear something new that they've never told anyone? I'll give you two bodies. They're in big, black trash bags. From the team that brought you down the hill, the Delphi murders, this is Deviant, a show that explores the people who blow through society's boundaries. The ones beyond the margins. Our first story is real Keys. There is no one who knows me or who has ever known me, who knows anything about me, really. The only person who knows about kind of things I'm telling you is me. Hello Deviant, available June 25th, and listen on Apple, Spotify, Amazon Music, or any major streaming platform. I mean Zelensky at the UN yesterday said, "Russia can only be brought to the negotiating table by force." It's not that we don't want to go to the negotiating table. Obviously, this war will end in the way Ukraine wants it. If there is a negotiation with Russia, it's a question of when it happens, under what circumstances, under what conditions, and what brings Russia to the table. I think, John, I think it's great that we're bringing Russia and Ukraine into this. I think growing numbers of commentators that are beginning to realize that there's a growing problem around the world. You've got Russia and Ukraine, you've got Iran, and all of its proxies against Israel. You've got China potentially with Taiwan tensions between North and South Korea. There's a global conflict. I think it's obviously premature to say it's a world war, and I don't want to say world war, but let's just say things are worse right now than we've seen them in a while in terms of all these various conflicts. What is needed right now for the U.S. is to actually be unafraid to wield the credible threat of force. That is the only way that diplomacy works. It has to be backed up with the fear on the other side that the U.S. could escalate in and of itself. They can decide they want to turn up the pressure on some of these countries that they can as a result of their aggression. That is what has been missing from the Biden administration for the last three years. It was what was missing during the Obama years. The longer we limp along in this way, the more our enemies and adversaries are going to be emboldened that are going to be willing to take these sorts of risks. There's only one way to arrest that, and it is something that I think this administration is deeply ambivalent about. This dates back to Plato, and I'm not being pretentious here. In Plato's laws, Plato originated the philosophy that came to be known in Latin as Sea-Weese Pachampara Bellum. If you want to make peace, prepare for war brought forward into the 20th century by Ronald Reagan saying, "Trust but verify," right? You can have a, but you know, you need, you cannot- It's through superior firepower. Yeah. I cannot assume that peace is not the natural condition of human nature. War may not be the natural condition, but conflict or the desire to lord thing one over the other, and that all other worldviews are fantasy, and sometimes they're fantasy based on deep conviction that may be wrong headed, but is actually very passionate, certain type of pacifism, certain type of Christian pacifism, let's say. And then sometimes it's fantasy based on ostrich-like unwillingness to sort of look at the things in front of you and say, "Okay, well, I have these three choices, and I don't have a fourth, and I got to do one, two, or three," and each of them has an unappetizing element to it, and the question is, "What is the likelihood for the best outcome?" For me, or you can say, "No, I'm just going to bury my head in the sand," and hope everything goes well, and you know, that we are in the year 2024, and we have a presidential race in which I believe the leading candidate for president, the Democratic Party, or the leading candidate for president right now, if you're in the national polls, is likely unaware of the value or the historical integrity of the idea that you have to, if you want peace, you prepare for war, and that what's going on with Israel and Lebanon is actually preparation for war. That's even though people are dying, even though the pages went off, even though they're bombing and shelling the war system, this is preparation for war. This is not the war. This is the, "We can stop now. We are giving you a taste of how bad this can be for you. We can stop now." Take the off-ramp. That is what they're trying to say to Hezbollah right now. You're talking down from that tree. The off-ramp. It is weird that we have an administration that does not really understand that, and its idea is to tell the, you know, has been for six, seven, eight, nine months, has been to tell the Israelis to take an off-ramp, and the off-ramp was blown up. They can't go on that off-ramp. It collapsed like the bridge in Baltimore, and they can't drive across it anymore. They have to rebuild the off-ramp in order to take it. That means making sure that the people who blew it up in the first place can't set charges on it again and blow it up when they're standing on it a second time. Just to close the circle, having done this almost entire conversation on foreign policy, we should say that the other interesting--we haven't barely mentioned Iran--Donald Trump is now making explicit as part of his campaign in the last six weeks that not only has he been the subject of two assassination attempts, one of them, you know, very nearly successful, but that the administration acknowledges he's been briefed. We've been told they've reported that Iran is actively seeking his assassination. Nation of Iran is seeking the active assassination of the former president of the United States and current one of the two people who will be the next president of the United States. And I don't know if they're going to go face-to-face to something that Trump can make Harris answer for, but what are you going to do about the fact that Iran is targeting a foreign president and current presidential candidate? You guys have been screaming for eight years about this nonexistent plot to control Trump from Moscow? Fine. You could even believe that that plot exists. There is no ambiguity about the question of whether or not Iran is trying to assassinate Trump. So what are you going to do about it? Is a question that Kamala Harris needs to answer, because, you know, there are other ex-presidents. Now, I don't see why Iran would want to assassinate Barack Obama, but, you know, it could, could want to assassinate Biden, and other actors could want to do it. What on earth is going on here when one of the leading candidates is not engaging with the issue that one of the world's leading destabilizers and absolutely addicted to the use of extraterritorial force is targeting one of the leading figures in the United States? You know, John, I'll just add, it's not just, it's bad enough, of course, that they're targeting the, you know, 45th president in the United States, possibly the 47th. But then on top of that, we know from the director of the Office of National Intelligence from Avril Haynes that Iran has been sponsoring the chaos that we've been watching on campus. We know from various authorities within the U.S. government that Iran is engaging heavily in information operations and social media and beyond, they are trying to shape the political environment here in the United States. Not just through bumping off of one person, but through lots of other active measures that I think, at some point, you're right. I mean, it needs to be acknowledged. I think, you know, Trump came out with a statement, I guess it was this morning, where he made it very explicit what is going on, and I think that's going to mobilize at least parts of the country. But, yeah, why is it that we're not seeing the White House mobilize on this? Why is it that they're not pushing back, if anything right now, from what we heard the other day, from Rafael Grossi from the International Atomic Energy Association. It sounds like we're about to start negotiating with the Iranians all over again on their nuclear program. This is insanity here that we continue to engage rather than to punish, and that really is a lot of what's missing in that big picture that you've just started to sketch out. Well, I want to reassure you that we hear that Kamala Harris will be interviewed tonight by Stephanie Rule of MSNBC. Lately, who someone I like, I wait in some mind, and I think is a lovely person, lately engaged in a colloquy on Bill Maher's show with Brett Stevens, in which she objected to Brett saying it would really be helpful if Kamala Harris clarified her positions on things, saying, you know, this is not Nirvana. We're not Nirvana here. We got two candidates. Trump cannot be allowed to win. Don't say anything or advocate any position that might impede Kamala Harris's journey into the White House, and that is the interview tonight. So you know, I'm sure she's going to ask her a tough question about Iran that could really clarify things. I'm really, really hopeful that that is going to happen and that she will do her job as a journalist and help America to make this decision about its presidency next month or, you know, in six weeks, whatever, with some assurance that they have any least frickin clue what it is that she will do about anything. So -- Will she have a teleprompter in this interview? Yes, she had one with Oprah. That was a campaign event. There will be a teleprompter. The question is what questions will be before Stephanie Rule? Well, the answer to what the administration plans to do about the fact that they are our assassination plots against at least one American president, Iranian assassination plots, the answer is, "Oh, we're going to try to negotiate a nuclear deal." That's their way of dealing with the Iranian threat. That's what they think will work. That's one of the things that's really struck me about all this is that you're supposed to feel when there is, you know, unambiguously a desire on the part of a foreign actor to bring violence upon a leading figure in American politics. You're supposed to also react in a kind of instinctive patriotic way, which is like that's an attack on America sort of thing. You know, not like Trump often says, "Hey, they're coming after you, I'm just in the way," or whatever, about criticizing, you know, MAGA or some of his policy positions, which are, you know, that's ridiculous. But literally, if their foreign nation is trying to assassinate the former president and the current, you know, 50/50 shot at being the next president, that is something that is an attack on America, right? I mean, there should be a different feeling about all the swirling, you know, and hinting violence and attempted violence in the presidential campaign that should not just be about violence is bad and we should settle things at the ballot box, but, you know, we're under attack. The people who killed three servicemen and women in Jordan a couple of months ago, Americans that have been firing at Americans here and there and everywhere, are also trying, you know, also trying to kill the president and sort of creating this, you know, almost like competition-like, fought-well-like atmospheres for it, and you don't see that. You don't see the like, "Hey, that's an attack on America. That's like, you know, nobody can, only I can tease my siblings. You can't say that about my brother, but I can," sort of thing, and you don't really have that kind of shared defensiveness over what kind of, over this being an affront to America itself recently, and I find that to be a pretty dispiriting trend where it's like it matters what party or how bad somebody is, you know, to whether it gets the reaction that it's bad for an American president to be hunted. Well, you know, I wrote a blog post at commentary.org right after the second attempt called the assassination wish fulfillment, and I think this plays a role here, even though I don't think people really understand it. Much of the American elite and 10s of millions of people in the United States believe that Trump is a direct threat to the future of American democracy, and therefore, word news coming, that people may be attempting to stop him from achieving the end of returning to the presidency, does not ring as harshly on their ears as it might, and that this is a deep strain within human nature, which is, can someone rid me of this meddlesome priest? And once again, with all such things, you are in the monkey's paw, because if there's part of you that is soft pedaling or downplaying the threat, or it's almost encouraging us not to take this threat seriously, and the most catastrophic thing happens. You are opening the door to a different, not only changing history, potentially, but you are opening the door to a period of ugliness and danger that you cannot even imagine. And that in part has arisen because people talk about this contest between Trump and Harris in apocalyptic terms that would seem in some ways to justify morally in the darkest recesses of people's minds, actions against Trump that will prevent him from getting to the presidency no matter what they might be. And that is a thing when you start offering that monkey's paw bargain, or the genie offers you the genie, not not the dream of genie, genie, but the genie from a thousand and one nights from Shaharazad's tales, genie, the genie that offers you that that fulfills your wishes and makes everything 10,000 times worse by getting your wish fulfilled. That may be where we are here right now. Okay, so we've we've kept you long enough, Jonathan Chanser, you have 19 other things to do. You have your morning, you have your morning, podcat, what do you even call it? It's called the FTD morning brief, half hour, morning brief. Every Monday, Wednesday, Friday, half hour, you get all their news and move on with your life. It's video, it's audio, you know, it's for all I know, it's, you know, you can do, it's Braille, you can, you can, you can enter into it as a hologram, whatever. Very exciting. They're every morning for you, the FTD morning brief, and also you can find him in the pages of commentary on the commentary website as circumstances warrant. We won't be doing a recommendation today. So for Abe and Seth, I'm John Pugworts, keep the Kindle burning. [Music] (chimes)