The Decisions That Changed the Middle East Forever - Akbar Shahid Ahmed

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0:29C-Terms.

1:00By October 6, there was a real awareness that Palestinians as a whole, and specifically Hamas, felt really left out of that process of bringing Israel more into the region and building ties between Israel and other Arab states, specifically the Saudis. And so there were warnings coming in to Washington, to the White House, saying they feel that the deal you're trying to get, Biden administration officials just before this, and you had Jake Sullivan, the national security advisors say the region is calmer than it's been for two decades. They were presenting themselves as bringing in a period of new stability, all the while their own professionals, their own professionals saying, hey, this is leaving out this group.

1:37They might make a choice to react. Now, we also know from other reporting that the Israelis had intelligence, that Hamas had battle plans. And that's part of the factor, too, is there was a willful blindness from both the Netanyahu and Biden administrations on October 6th. Welcome to Open Book. I am your host, Anthony Scaramucci. Joining me today is Akbar Shahid Ahmed. Hopefully I pronounced that right, Akbar. He's an award-winning foreign affairs journalist. He's out with a new book called Crossing the Red Line, Biden, His Advisors, and Israel's War in Gaza. You know, I hear the red line, Akbar.

2:15I think of Barack Obama and Syria, but you're using the red line here as it relates to Joe Biden and tell me what the red line is there and what do you believe the administration did to allow Israel to cross that red line? Thanks for having me, Anthony. In the Biden era, that red line was what he set over the town of Rafa, which was me 2024. By that time, six months post-October 7th, you had 1.4 million Palestinians clustered into this one town, Right. We'd seen months of warfare by Israel in response to Hamas's attack and taking of hostages, violations of international law on their own. But what I argue in this book, drawing on nearly 175 infuse with officials across the State Department, diplomacy, White House, intelligence, humanitarian, the whole range.

3:08What I argue in the book, Anthony, is the Biden administration enabled Israel to have an excessive response. The kind of response that we've now seen obviously provoke a huge backlash in the US, have a huge human and moral cost among Palestinians. And that red line concept to me is so important because it shows two things. The president himself said, I don't want the Israelis to behave towards Rafa in this way. And then when they did, impose no consequences. So it was a message of total impunity. And building on what you point out with Obama, look, I come at this as someone who's reported on U.S.

3:45foreign policy for about 14 years, grew up on the receiving end of it in Pakistan, wanted to reflect its highest ideals, right? But so often American presidents will make these claims about red lines, human rights, international law, and it becomes empty, hollow talk, which has a real effect for human lives, but also for American power and influence. It's a fascinating book. I appreciate you writing it because I've learned a lot in the book. But a lot went wrong on October 7th. So let's start on October 6th. Because again, and I could be wrong about all this, but I got from the book and from my outside reading, Israel knows it has a problem with Hamas in the Gaza Strip.

4:32They're shooting Qasem rockets into Starot, other places. They're intercepting these rockets. They're trying to contain the violence. But they also tell the Qataris it's okay to fund Hamas, right? Because they're trying to figure out if there's a political solution here, right? So it's a very complicated story. And then it crosses over into violence. And so the Americans think, rightly or wrongly, what I mean about Americans is meaning the foreign policy gurus. they think that this had to do with the Abraham Accords. They think that there was a potential opportunity for the Saudis and others to recognize Israel.

5:11And since Hamas is sponsored by the Iranians, it triggered the October 7th attack. So I want you to tell me fact from fiction, and I want you to tell me the precursor story before we get into the red line activity. Yeah, so let's go to October 6th, right? By the point of October 6th, you've had Hamas be in control of Gaza now for about 16 years. As you rightly point out, as US officials themselves told me, one said to me, Netanyahu himself, Israeli Prime Minister, encouraged this policy of sort of sustaining the rule of Hamas. In part, U.S. officials assessed because he wanted to keep the Palestinian leadership severed.

5:56There's the Gaza Strip where Hamas was in control from 2007. There's the Occupied West Bank where the Palestinian Authority, backed by the U.S., is also in control. From Netanyahu's perspective, as you say, allowing the Qataris, Iran to a degree, others to support Hamas's rule, which was oppressive for Palestinians and, of course, violent towards Israelis, That was a policy choice that put off this question of Palestinian peace for many, many years. And Netanyahu kind of made the gamble that we can kind of sustain ourselves like this. There won't be a moment of immense violence like what we saw on October 7th.

6:31It was the wrong bet. American officials, through the Trump and Biden, and prior to that Obama administrations, allowed that policy to continue, right, and enabled it even while they had deep concerns. Then you bring into the picture the Abraham Accords and this kind of American approach of, can we get the Arab states to recognize Israel? Can we have a region that's more about money-making, economic progress, stability, not about these long-standing political differences? However, what a lot of my sources told me, Anthony, was by October 6th, there was a real awareness that Palestinians as a whole, and specifically Hamas, felt really left out of that process of bringing Israel more into the region and building ties between Israel and other Arab states, specifically the Saudis.

7:18And so there were warnings coming in to Washington, to the White House, saying, look, that could be an outburst of violence here, because they feel that the deal you're trying to get, Biden administration officials just before this, on October 2nd, you had Jake Sullivan, the national security advisor, say the region is calmer than it's been for two decades. They were presenting themselves as bringing in a period of new stability, all the while their own professionals, their own diplomats are saying, hey, this is leaving out this group. They might make a choice to react. Now, we also know from other reporting that the Israelis had intelligence, that Hamas had battle plans.

7:54And that's part of the factor too, is there was a willful blindness from both the Netanyahu and Biden administrations on October 6th. It's important. It's important to understand this part of it, right? And so why are the Israelis caught so off guard? It's a tremendous question. There's several aspects to this. The big one is, look, I've reported from Gaza, I've reported from Israel that errors crossing. Israeli border communities were aware of the risk, right? And were, again, saying we feel kind of vulnerable. Netanyahu had come in eight months prior to October 7th, bringing in the most far-right government in Israel's history and making choices like, for instance, moving a lot of weapons away from those border communities towards settler communities, which his far-right government is supporting in the West Bank.

8:45So these political narratives and choices become a factor too. And then there's a real breakdown within Israel's own democracies. that, again, the Biden administration was aware of, where Israeli military legal establishment was saying, we feel that Netanyahu's not only not listening to us, he's going for a power grab. We're concerned, but everything's become so politicized. We can't kind of get our warnings. Decision-making isn't happening in the way it should be. Okay. All right. So now we have the attack and Joe Biden flies to Israel, right? Doesn't he go to Israel? Very quickly, soon after, it's the Israelis' idea.

9:23He lands on the tarmac and it's exactly the footer-up that Netanyahu wanted. And this is where, again, Hamas initiated a spirit of violence with its choice to attack on October 7th. Biden's choice to give Netanyahu that kind of open support to choose to be a bear hug, rather than saying, I know who Netanyahu is, I've dealt with him, I also know many Israelis are wary, let's not enable this fully. he didn't choose that route. He instead chose to go there beyond a tarmac, embrace Netanyahu in front of the whole world. But, you know, we learn that Biden is trying to tell Netanyahu, please don't overreact.

10:01Don't make the mistake that the Americans make in Afghanistan and Iran. So, you know, again, I'm asking you for your personal opinion. It's in the book, but he does overreact, doesn't he? I think Netanyahu does overreact. Why does he overreact? Is it for his own political purposes? Is it something, is it the will of the Israeli people? What is it? Because I think he's hurt. I mean, listen, this is my opinion. I'll share it. I think he's hurt Israel's brand, you know, and they get very sensitive. Someone calls it a genocide. They flip out and they register complaints to their embassies with other governments and stuff like that.

10:39And again, I'm not calling it a genocide. I'm just saying, I think this hurt Israel's brand. And by the way, I saw the security tapes. I've watched the 45-minute IDF tape. And I find the actions that took place on October 7th absolutely despicable and atrocious. So I'm not here saying that we're in a war. Violent things happen in a war. But you tell me. Tell me your opinion of the whole thing. So based on what I got from, again, these U.S. officials I talked to, national security experts, But certainly the Israelis were going to react to what Hamas-Said fighters had chosen to do, right? There were mass atrocities committed that day.

11:19And importantly, there were 251 Israeli hostages, among them some American citizens, taken back to Gaza. So both the U.S. and the Israel had an onus to respond in some way. The debate that I chart inside the Biden administration, and this is the first time that a lot of this is out there for the public to assess and make their own judgment, is there were different ways to do this, right? By the time Biden embraced Netanyahu on the tarmac, the Israeli government had already said, we're cutting off all food and water to the Palestinians and Gaza, 2.2 million people, dependent on outside shipments.

11:54They had already said, we are going to go in, we're using military force, right? So pushing back on the idea of any diplomacy or deal-making, which could also happen with Hamas potentially, and ultimately was the way some of the hostages did come home. The Biden administration knew that the Israeli public had this sense of deep anger and a real shock of their sense of security. And that's why President Biden said things like, don't do what we did after Iraq and Afghanistan, after 9-11. It backfired on us. You got the rise of ISIS. You didn't lead to the end of Al-Qaeda in the world, by the way, 25 years into the war on terror.

12:33And there's still a huge risk of the same folks linked to 9-11. And all of that said, what the Biden administration didn't do is apply any real force or leverage to shape Israel's approach. So while they were saying, we want you to respect international law, we don't want you to overreact. We don't want this to produce this backlash that Anthony pointed out has happened globally to the perception of Israel in the US and internationally. so i you know akbar i'm gonna test something on you and i want you to either say i'm right or i'm wrong push back on me i feel october 7th i feel like the iranians sort of got what they wanted right they they expected israel to overreact or to act in the way that they did and they did exactly that and it did cause a negative pressure tension for israel and it did hurt israel standing globally.

13:26I mean, these are facts. If the Israelis are upset with me for saying that, I'm just pointing out the objective facts. But the flip side is I think it also triggered this Iranian war where the Israelis were pushing the Americans to attack Iran. And Donald Trump took the bait of that and attacked Iran. So I feel like all roads lead back to October 7th and all roads lead back to what you're writing about with the Biden administration. Had they handled this differently, we might be in a different outcome, right? So I'll endorse part of that and maybe push back on a little bit. I would say that the intelligence officials I talked to and other reporting have not found a direct Iranian link to the October 7th attack.

14:17Of course, the Iranians had supported Hamas prior to it and Palestinian Islamic Jihad, some of the other groups. The actual attack, there hasn't been proof that the Iranians necessarily directed it or even knew it was coming in that way. All of that said, certainly Hamas, I've interviewed the Hamas leadership, that's in the book too. I've interviewed several folks across Palestinian politics and affairs. Because Hamas expected the Israelis to lash out in a huge way and made the calculation that, in their view, that might be worthwhile because they wanted to upend regional affairs. I do think they thought the U.S.

14:55was going to, or they say they thought the U.S. was going to reign in Israel sooner. And that's where that Biden administration enabling, I will totally agree with you, the Biden administration enabling paved the way for Trump to work with Netanyahu, to take Netanyahu's argument that it was going to be easy to have a war in Iran and kind of enable what we've seen as our quagmire, right? The US and Israel being stuck in this regional situation. They don't want to be in and that doesn't benefit either of them strategically. The Biden administration, of course, also, you know, in that period, yes, they were very focused on defending Israel.

15:32And the Iranians did begin. They struck Israel in a way they never had before. But as I charted in the book, Anthony, there were several moments of escalation by Netanyahu and the Israelis, where the Biden administration let them do that and didn't impose consequences. So it wasn't that the Iranians were upping the ante in this moment. It was really Netanyahu again and again, striking the Iranians in Syria, then launching another attack, then killing people in Tehran, for instance, at the inauguration of that kind of president. So that's a trajectory that the Biden administration allowed. They also took credit saying we're helping the Israelis deal with the Iranian backlash without looking forward to say, oh, is this creating a sense that it might be too easy to take on Iran and for the U.S.

16:18and Israel to be aligned, which led to the Trump kind of policy we're seeing. Guys, thank you so much for listening and subscribing to Open Book. You know we've got 200 authors on this show. It's been a lot of fun for me, but I'm also an author now too. And I've got All the Wrong Moves available. Go to scaramucci.net backslash all the wrong moves. You can buy your copy today. It's a lot of fun and lots of commentary about what's gone on in the U.S. over the last three decades. What would you have done differently? differently, be the national security advisor for the Biden administration, and then give me some advice if you were also working for Donald Trump.

16:59What would you have done differently? I'll put the caveat. I'm a reporter. I'm not a policymaker. But I will say talking to policymakers in these rooms, in these discussions, who get how U.S. leverage works, people were trying to say, look, can we get the Israelis to, for instance, rein in their military campaign earlier, cut a deal with Hamas and try to move really quickly towards de-escalation, towards some kind of settlement that brings the hostages home, begins the rebuilding of Gaza, doesn't lead to the picture we have today, which is a picture of 60 % Israeli control of Gaza, no future for the 2 million Palestinians who are now displaced and in kind of mass starvation, and the continuation of the Israeli blockade on aid.

17:43I mean, I think a lot of people in the Biden era, humanitarian officials, I spoke with Samantha Power, for instance, the head of USAID, who talked about how you couldn't get a message through to the Israelis because you knew the Biden administration wasn't going to impose consequences. What I'd also point to for both the Biden team and the Trump team is a moment I really hinge on before crossing the red line, the title of my book, the World Central Kitchen killing. April 1st, 2024, I think a lot of us remember, the Israelis talked at a convoy belonging to WCKA group. Foreign passport holders killed.

18:22What happened after that is Biden picked up the phone and told that, Niahu, you have to change your approach or something will shift from our policy. And for a month, it did change. So a lot of the officials I talked to at that moment said, US leverage can work on Israel. And we, in fact, saw that with President Trump too, right? He was able to get them to a ceasefire in January. Didn't last very long. Also to a ceasefire in October. Also questionable. But it's what you do around that application of pressure. Listen, if you like or dislike Trump, you have to give him credit for pushing to get the 20 hostages freed.

18:57Absolutely. And now, right, he remains the person with the most influence over the Israelis. However, it's also about, and this is what I really tried in the book, having that kind of strategy around it, having that kind of commitment to American and international law, which people told me in the Biden administration wasn't happening. They were never able to reach a single conclusion that the Israelis had violated the law and, in fact, often prolonged State Department or White House discussions to avoid holding the Israelis accountable. And that's continued into the Trump era. But then if you're just going out and saying, do the ceasefire, okay, that'll lead to some improvement.

19:39But if you want a longer term improvement, you have to be talking about things like accountability. You have to be talking about a broader Israel-powered sign policy. Neither administration has wanted to listen to their own experts on this region or on U.S. and international law. I think it's very well said. And I guess the other thing I want to ask you, because you've wrote this book for a number of different reasons, but I see this book as something that would be at like the Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy in terms of a case study of what happens when you get some policies wrong. And so I guess the thing I would like to ask you is where do you think we are now going, okay?

20:21Whether it's a Democratic or a Republican administration, describe what you think the post-Gaza, post-Iran war relationship will be with Israel. That's certainly my hope, right, is that this is the kind of book that can be looked at for future policymakers. But I think a big part of that discussion begins with people taking responsibility from the Biden administration and from the Trump administration for the Iran war, which we haven't seen. We continue to see an effort to deflect responsibility. So if we're looking at a future policy, I think acknowledging that people like Jake Sullivan, people like Brett McGurk, Biden's Middle East advisor, who was also in the Trump administration, are trying to shape our policy conversation without acknowledging what they got wrong.

21:08I think that's a big part of the question because we haven't seen that kind of accountability, even for decisions like the invasion of Iraq in 2003. That pattern has to break. And I think when we look at now public sentiment towards Israel and Palestine, you've referenced this several times in this conversation, a lot of Americans, both Republicans and Democrats, and especially younger folks, are not comfortable with the U.S. relationship with Israel. Anyone who cares about peace in that region, who cares about Israel and its kind of future, I think has to be looking at that and saying, does that become a relationship of isolation or is there a mutually beneficial partnership that can still happen here that's based on, again, values, again, US law, international law?

21:50Can that relationship be salvaged? So if you look at Democrats and Republicans going forward, I think it's about looking at that question of, again, accountability for alleged war crimes. How are American weapons used? Because there's now a new conversation about cutting off military to Israel. Netanyahu himself has said maybe the Americans should stop funding our weaponry, but American weapons and bombs are still going to be bought by the Israelis. How they're used matters a lot. Talking about the specifics matters a lot. And I think ignoring that conversation is a really risky place to go for anyone who cares about the region because it really leads you towards more violence.

22:29Yeah. I mean, look, It's such a complicated thing. I mean, I guess the thing I got out of the book is that this stuff is super complicated. The U.S. now, this is hard for me to believe, but I always saw Israel as a democracy in the Middle East and the United States in a bipartisan way had universal public support for Israel. So the public opinion in the United States has changed, which is shocking to me given the 80-year history that we've had with the country. What are your thoughts on that? What do you think changed public opinion so drastically? And if you were advising the Israeli government, what would you say to them in terms of what they would need to think about vis-a-vis their relationship with the American public?

23:27It's remarkable it happened under President Biden, right, himself a lifelong open Zionist, proud supporter of Israel. I would argue he and his administration has sort of irreversibly changed the American relationship with Israel. You cannot go back to the place it was on October 6th because, again, American officials so denied the reality of what so many Americans were seeing in terms of U.S. complicity in mass violence toward Palestinians, a regional policy spiraling out of control, now a war with Iran. And so I think a big part of that conversation going forward is also just a little less hubris from Washington, from people at the White House and the State Department, when you look at where the American public is on this issue.

24:16A little more engagement, a little more willingness to engage with critics, because that, again, drives the public backlash we're seeing. I think you're seeing really interesting moves in Congress where people like Senator Chris Van Hollen in Maryland, some Republicans are talking about ways to apply U.S. war to Israel, bring that into a relationship to build back any credibility and support for that relationship. that's the kind of move I think is going to have to happen. And again, also an engagement with the Palestinian side, a recognition that while it is the US and Israel have had this sort of special relationship, there's deep empathy for Palestinians now.

24:54And there's a real sense among Americans of responsibility for what happens in Gaza, given the sense of fingerprints in its decimation. And so that kind of responsibility can't just be pushed off and ignored. I think that the Americans now, the perception of American power in the Middle East, both from the Sunni side and the Shia side of the Gulf, what's the perception of American power? I've been doing, you know, ongoing reporting beyond the book, right, talking to people throughout the Iran war. I just did a story covering how Persian Gulf states, so the richest countries, kind of these semi-majority countries you're talking about, Saudi Arabia, UAE, Qatar, they feel that their economic future has been shortchanged by their thought.

25:42I mean, it's not only a sense of how did you fail to reign in Netanyahu, it's also a sense of you've put us in tremendous danger, both because the Iran war has kind of diverted their attention and made it impossible to plan their futures, right? Any kind of post-oil future that they wanted to have. And because of a sense of they're so cautious with their publics. The perception of America now in a lot of the Muslim majority world, I grew up in Pakistan, and I talk to people back there very often, is irrevocably changed by Gaza. And again, a kind of reckoning with that is really important. And a reckoning linked to that with the Iran war, with the question of whether the US is making the right strategic and moral moves, is really important to kind of build back any of that trust.

26:31But right now, the perception is a sort of rudderless U.S. I also talk in the book about a broader perception, Anthony, not just in the Middle East, but Ukraine, for instance. U.S. support for Ukraine was hurt by the fact that other countries looked at what was happening in Gaza and said, we don't want to align with the U.S. and we don't believe it anymore in criticizing Russia and Ukraine or criticizing what's happening in Sudan anywhere else because look at what they're connected to. So there's a lot of kind of acknowledgement that has to happen, I think, to build back any of that faith. I would say if I had Blinken, Sullivan, and Biden in the room with us, how would they push back on what you wrote?

27:17Sure. You've had Sullivan come out now and say, I think the time is right now to put off weapons to Israel. You've had Blinken come out and say, we had to support the Israelis. They were traumatized. You can't imagine how traumatized they were. Biden, of course, is a longstanding supporter of Israel. I think he'd say, that's what I have to be president. Hunter Biden, interestingly, has come out and said, in retrospect, it was the wrong policy. But to all of those folks, what I'd see and what I think the book provides for the historical record and for future policymakers, whether it's Fletcher or wherever else, is they knew at the time.