For how long has Israel deceived the US?

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0:39Kim, hey, it's Olly Dugmore at The New Statesman. I can't wait to record a podcast with you. I want to talk about your book. I want to talk about Lebanon, not least because, you know, I was in Israel a couple of weeks ago and was up to the border, didn't go into the country itself. But, you know, I feel like there is this war. The IDF is, you know, the furthest they've been into the country. They've got Beaufort Castle looking over the Latani Valley. The furthest they've been there for 30 years. And whilst everyone in the UK is aware of what's happening in Gaza they're aware of what's happening in Iran.

1:07They might be aware of what's happening in Syria. I don't feel like the current situation in Lebanon gets anywhere near the attention that it probably should do. But I also want to talk to you about history. And I want to talk to you about how maybe parts of our current moment, we can trace them back to the 80s and what we can learn by thinking about that period of history. So, like I said, really looking forward to seeing you. Take it easy. Bye.

2:026 % of the country are now under occupation, obliterated, frankly. But it's important to also remember that we really feel stuck between Lebanon and Israel. And we can talk about that. And absolutely, we must talk about history because there is a reason why we are where we are today. And from my vantage point, it all started in Beirut in the 1980s with the Israeli invasion of 1982, that when the farthest into an Arab country ever besieged an Arab capital, so you're absolutely right. We must look at a history to understand the present. And who knows, maybe even find answers that will allow us to find a better way forward for the region and all of us.

2:43So really looking forward to this conversation. Thanks for reading my book. There's a lot to talk about. On the morning of the 18th of January 1984, Malcolm Kerr walked towards his office at the American University of Beirut. Two gunmen were waiting outside his door. They killed him there. Nobody has ever been convicted of the murder. Kerr was an American who spoke Arabic and felt Lebanese. He was an expert in inter-Arab relations and a staunch defender of academic neutrality. He'd spent months trying to find his missing friend and predecessor, who'd been kidnapped from the same campus. Neither his love for the place nor his politics kept him alive, because by then, in Beirut, some people had decided the best kind of American was a dead one.

3:31That phrase is the title of Kim Khattus' new book, The Best Kind of American. It's part murder investigation, part origin story for the wars convulsing the Middle East right now. Khattus traces the Middle East's current unceasing and constantly overlapping conflicts back two years before Kerr's murder and explains why the summer of 1982 in Lebanon was the beginning of America's undoing in the region. I'm Oli Dugmore and you're listening to The Exchange from the New Statesman. I hope you enjoy the conversation. Thank you for joining us on The Exchange. How are you? Great to be here. We're really glad to have you.

4:06We're going to talk about your book, The Best Kind of American, over your shoulder on the shelf there, who that is and what that means, as well as the conflict in the Middle East today, Lebanon's place in it. But before we get to those very substantive matters, I just want to say that what I'm about to ask you isn't substantive. I want to ask you about you. Tell me about your childhood growing up. You grew up in Beirut. Tell me about it. I did grow up in Beirut during the civil war that was raging from 1975 to 1990. And it really shaped me. It made me who I am. You know, living through war is nothing to be grateful for.

4:41I'm grateful I survived. I'm grateful all my family and loved ones survived. But I'm grateful for how I emerged from it and how it shaped me. It made me want to become a journalist. I pursued that career doggedly, much to my parents' chagrin, who had other plans for me. But they eventually agreed that I had made the right choice. I was a journalist for 20, 25 years. And over the last 10 years, I've become a full-time author because I wanted to expand more in my writing on the ideas I had. And what I love to do is connecting dots between events, between situations, between countries in history, because I felt really that that's what I was missing as a child also, trying to understand what it all meant.

5:24Why were we living in this war? Why did my father constantly say, oh, if America wanted it to end, it would be over tomorrow? So why wasn't it over tomorrow? Did America really want this war to continue? And there are searing images and moments from that childhood, which have also made me very aware that there are rarely good guys at the top across the board, right? I remember after the Israeli invasion of 1982, going to school early in the morning with my father, we lived very much on the front line, on the demarcation line between East Beirut and West Beirut, dominantly Christian, dominantly Muslim.

6:10We were smack in the middle. And I remember going to school one morning and Israeli tanks rolled up in the neighborhood. I was about five or six, but these are images that stay with you. And they rounded up some men and they blindfolded them and they tied their hands behind their back and they shoved them in the tank and they left. And I was frozen with my father and my sister is in the car. And as a child, you're like, what is going on? What does this mean? Why would anyone do that? But equally, I was, you know, deeply traumatized by Syrian occupation of Lebanon, something that people don't know very much about.

6:50And in particular, the moment of a very bloody Syrian invasion of the Christian enclave, which we were then living in by 1990. And it was a devastating invasion that saw Syrian soldiers loot and rape and kill their way across our areas. And it was the first time ever that I told my mother, I want to leave the country. We didn't. But it's become clear to me that on all sides, there are rarely good people fighting at the top. And so I'm very keen to always highlight the shortcomings and the need for accountability and an end to impunity. Maybe over the course of the conversation, we can kind of tease out that morality or lack thereof among political leaders in the book.

7:41And I think also what you've just said, there is a very compelling argument for people to understand and properly grapple with history as well. And it's important on our current moment. And the complexity of it. You can be on one side, but you shouldn't condone necessarily what the other side does. You have to be able to keep your standards about integrity and moral standards and apply them equally, including to your own side. Yeah, and possibly able to hold two contradicting thoughts in your head at the same time. Okay, so let's talk about the book then, which kind of does make this argument that these multiple, complex, often overlapping conflicts that are happening in the Middle East right now can be traced back to the murder of an American teacher in 1984.

8:26We'll talk about that, but first, can you give us some political context? I mean, you've already started to mention 1982. Perhaps maybe we should start with the American ambassador on his hilltop in 1982. I mean, let's start there. Sure. We'll start there with a slight rewind first to why are we even in 1982? Lebanon 1975 descends into a war, which some people call civil war, but which I call Lebanese war because there were so many outside parties involved from the US to Israel to the Syrian regime of Hafez al-Assad. But most importantly, Palestinian militants who were using Lebanon as a launch pad to launch rockets at Israel and from their perspective, liberate their lost homeland and return to Jerusalem.

9:20And in Lebanon, the country was divided between two camps, those who supported the Palestinian militants and the idea of a pan-Arab Palestinian cause. And the Palestinian supporters were leftists, secular, Marxists, communists. Islam was not yet part of that equation. And they were mostly Muslim factions, but not only. They had a lot of Christians on that side as well, including amongst Palestinians, of course. But opposing them were the Christian right-wing, sometimes fascist militias of Lebanon and political parties of Lebanon who could be described as sovereignists. They did not want to be embroiled in a war for Palestine, and they didn't want their country to become a launchpad for Palestine.

10:04And they allied themselves with the Israelis, which brings us to 1982. 1982 is when Israel decides it wants to put an end to the Palestinian presence in Lebanon and launches this invasion, which goes all the way up to Beirut, the farthest that Israel has ever invaded an Arab country. What follows is a two months long siege of an Arab capital, again, the first time it ever happens. But that moment that you refer to of the American ambassador sitting on his hilltop at his residence, overlooking the coastal road and the airport, is an anecdote which is still so relevant today, because the Israelis have told the Americans they're invading.

10:50They've gotten a wink and a nod from the Secretary of State. They've pretended that this invasion is only going to go 40 kilometers into the country, the range of these Palestinian rockets to secure northern Israel. They need to push the Palestinians back 40 kilometers. But of course, Ariel Sharon has much grander plans, which we can talk about in detail as well. And he's pushing all the way to Beirut. But they're still telling the Americans in Washington, no, no, no, no, we're just 40 kilometers. But the ambassador who was in Beirut, which is well beyond the 40 kilometer range, can see the tanks not only on the coast, but outside his doors, his doorstep.

11:28And he calls Washington and he says, you know, the Israelis are right there. I can see them. Like, no, no, no, no. We're being told that they're very far from Beirut. They're still close to the border. And then he sees the tanks right outside his door and he realizes they're about to set up camp and this strategic hilltop that overlooks Beirut. And he calls the operations center at the State Department and he says, Tel Aviv is lying to you. I can see the tanks outside my door. And the plaintive voice of this, you know, probably lowly official or secretary at the operations center responds again, no, no, no, but they're telling us they're nowhere near Beirut.

12:23And he flies into a rage. I'm the American ambassador. God damn it. I'm telling you, they're outside my door. Does anybody care? And it's such an interesting anecdote because during the Gaza war as well, we had these many moments where the Israelis would say something to Washington and other diplomats on the ground or within the State Department would be saying, no, that is not what is happening. But Israel's word trumped all criticism. And so I actually spoke to Ambassador Robert Dillon, who was in Beirut in 1982, during what was unfolding in Gaza. And he had tears in his eyes when he was telling me that story because he just thought, how are we here again?

13:10Sharan was the defense minister at the time. He went on to have a further career in Israeli politics. Can we just talk about, I mean, you mentioned the grander plan there. Tell us about it. But also, I am interested in this question of deception, and the extent to which it is deliberate, the extent to which it is an attempt to mislead Washington in that instance. Because it's entirely possible within the fog of war, right, that you say one thing on a diplomatic channel and then the battlefield changes and something else happens. But I don't... That's not what happened in 82. That's 60 kilometers a little bit more than that, isn't it?

13:52That's not what happened in 1982. I think Beirut is about 100 kilometers from the border, if I'm not mistaken. I should know my geography. An extra 60 is what I'm saying from the 14 days old. An extra 60, yes, or 100. Ariel Sharon knew what he was doing. He also lied to his own cabinet. But he had, again, a wink and a nod from the Prime Minister Menachem Begin. He had a wink and a nod from the Secretary of State, who at the time was Alexander Haig, who did wonder, you know, how could this work out for us? And they liked the idea of his grand plan, which involved going all the way to Beirut, cleaning up, euphemism for saturation bombings, besieging the city.

14:3817 ,000 people killed that summer in Lebanon, a number we forget, 30 ,000 injured. And Ariel Sharon was hoping for several things. One, that he would get rid of the Palestinians in Lebanon, which were a combination of militants, but also intellectuals, intelligentsia, cultural figures, poets, etc. But yes, absolutely also under the leadership of Yasir Arafat militants who had created a state within a state which completely undermined the Lebanese authority. And were also responsible for, you know, bloody massacres in Lebanon, in retaliation for, or, you know, as the beginning of tit for tat with Christian militias that were also guilty of many massacres.

15:26But Ariel Sharon wanted to get rid of the Palestinians, install a friendly president in Lebanon who would sign a peace agreement with Israel. And he wanted to kneecap the Syrian regime of Hafez al-Assad next door in Damascus, which was aligned with the Soviet Union. And he thought that by doing all of that and signing a separate peace deal with Lebanon that also would send these Palestinian militants into exile, he would do two things. He would bury the Palestinian cause forever, and he would bring about 30 years of Israeli supremacy. So that was the idea. And there is another moment in the book when the CIA chief hears concerns from people at the State Department, at the CIA, that American made bombs are killing civilians.

16:22And William Casey responds, I don't give an F about that. How do we turn this to our national security advantage? It all goes terribly wrong, of course. It is the summer where everything goes wrong for America. And we can, you know, unpack that. But I think that similarly to when Benjamin Netanyahu went to war against Iran in 2025, last year with a 12-day war, there is the sense in Israel that if you begin the war, even if the Americans have said, not really, we're not going to support you, we're not very on board, but okay, they will eventually come on board. And with the 1982 invasion, the Americans did not get involved in the war effort, but they sent in the Marines to ostensibly oversee the peace, the departure of the Palestinians, the withdrawal supposedly of the Israeli troops and the Syrian troops.

17:23But again, it all goes wrong because they're never quite able to put pressure in the right way on Israel to make it do what they wanted to do. And so with the war of 2025 and the 12-day war against Iran with Benjamin Netanyahu and Trump, the idea was also that initially President Trump said, no, we're not going to help you. We're not going to defend you. We're not going to participate. You're on your own. Don't do it. But the more Benjamin Netanyahu pushed, the more he was able to move Donald Trump until President Trump came on board. So some of it is deception, but some of it is just feeling confident that your ally will show up for you.

18:09Kim, am I just a sopping wet liberal for wanting my CIA director to care about American bombs killing civilians? I don't like, I don't, I'm skeptical at best of, you know, the stated Western position that the Cold War was about the triumph of democracy over totalitarianism and, you know, the West are the good guys and they're trying to spread these liberal values. And, you know, look at America's legacy in Latin America as just but one example of that, right? It's more than one. Or Asia. Yeah. Vietnam. All over the world. Absolutely right. But I don't know why there is still something in me that when you tell that story about the CIA director, I don't want to be so cynical as to think, well, he's the intelligence director and he deals in the hard reality of geopolitics and foreign affairs and war and assassination.

19:00He doesn't care. Should he not care about that? No, he should care because it turns out that not caring about American bombs killing civilians does not turn out very well for American security interests. And I think that is something that the Democrats need to think about today as well, as they, you know, take over the Senate and Congress or as they become, you know, the dominant majority. And that is why they were able to achieve this blue tsunami, blue landslide, because it turns out that war does not serve American interests when America doesn't have a strategy. And it didn't have a strategy in 1982, and it didn't really have a proper strategy this time.

19:48You know, we can talk about what Democrats need to think about as they oppose the war, which is a great thing to do because nobody wants war, including the Middle East, except perhaps Benjamin Netanyahu. And to some extent, the Islamic Republic, because it serves their interests as well, up until the moment where they're on the you know, inflection point of potentially losing or caving in. But war doesn't serve, you know, anyone's interest, certainly not the people of the Middle East. But Democrats also need to think about what is their policy then on Iran. It cannot be just no war, because now we are where we are, and allowing Iran to feel victorious and leaving the people of the region, especially the Iranians, facing a revanchist, vengeful, victorious Islamic Republic regime is also quite scary.

20:42So if you care about the people of the region, if you don't want them to be killed by bombs, American-made bombs, you should also care about the consequences of suddenly saying, you know, we're out of here, which has happened a lot with America as well. Yeah, I should flag to listeners that you and I are speaking the day after the midterms where we have seen this extraordinary string of results coming in from across America. And I do want to talk more about the present moment. But I did tell people that we were going to talk about Malcolm Kerr. So let's do that now. What did the American University represent?

21:17You know, what did it mean? And before we talk about Kerr, why was the acting president of the American University kidnapped? that? 1982 is really the origin story of the US-Iran-Israel confrontation turning violent. Of course, we had the Islamic Republic hostage taking in 1979 that lasted for 440 days, 52 Americans taken hostage. And that was the beginning of the break in relations between America and Iran. But in Lebanon, that standoff turns violent. When the Israelis invade in 1982, just as their tanks are rolling across the border into Lebanon, the Islamic Republic sends hundreds of Iranian fighters to Syria and onwards to Lebanon to go fight the enemy, their enemy, Israel.

22:11Eventually, they'll set up a group called Hezbollah, their most successful export, a proxy militia that serves Iran's interest in fighting Israel and America. So already you have Israel and Iran showing up on the shores of the Mediterranean. And into that show up the U.S. Marines in the summer of 1982 as well to, as I said, oversee the departure of the Palestinians. And in their perspective, they think they'll also be overseeing the departure of the Israelis and the Syrian troops. That does not happen. What does happen is that Iran and the regime of Haftz al-Assad in Damascus begin a campaign to thwart America and Israel.

22:55And we will see kidnappings and bombings of the U.S. Marines, of the U.S. Embassy. Why does the acting president of the American University of Beirut get kidnapped? Because just before that, four Iranians are kidnapped by Lebanese Christian militias for reasons that are intriguing, which readers will discover as they read the book, to try to free the four Iranians. Groups, individuals affiliated with Iran or sympathetic to Iran in Lebanon, kidnap an American, a high value hostage. And this hostage taking playbook is also born in Beirut, and it will continue for years and will be taken up by the Islamic Republic within Iran itself.

23:41So David Dodge is kidnapped and held some partly in Damascus and partly in Iran for a year. And that's why eventually, I think, Malcolm Kerr is also in danger. Malcolm Kerr, president of the American University of Beirut, appointed just before the invasion is stuck in America, as he tries to figure out how to come to Lebanon in the middle of all this upheaval. And when he arrives in Lebanon, he's of course having to lead the American University of Beirut. He's having to lead a campus in the middle of a war surrounded by Israeli soldiers. And he's trying to find his friend, David Dodge. Why was he murdered?

24:28Malcolm Kerr was the best kind of American, the kind of American who could not stand the idea that American made bombs were falling on his beloved city. he spoke Arabic he was born in Lebanon to American parents who had worked with the Near East Relief Association agency rather helping Armenians during World War I who were faced with slaughter by the Turks and the Ottomans they'd come to Lebanon they were teaching at the American University of Beirut which has been established first as the Syrian Protestant College by American missionaries So again, the best that America had to offer to the Middle East.

25:10And Malcolm was in that tradition of service to his country, the ideals of his country, but also to a region that he loved. And the question of why he was killed is really important because it helps us understand what went wrong for America in the Middle East. He was assassinated outside his office on campus on January 18 of 1984 by two gunmen. So we are now in 1984, post the kidnapping of David Dodge, where post the U.S. embassy bombing, which is claimed by a group called the Islamic Jihad affiliated to Iran and Syria, post the devastating U.S. Marine barracks bombing in October of 83. And so then Malcolm gets assassinated and his friends can't believe it because why would you assassinate someone like him, the best kind of American that comes to the Middle East?

26:04Except that, of course, by then there were those who thought that the best kind of American was a dead American. And so what is interesting to me is that several reasons, several things. Malcolm's love for the region and his sympathy for the Palestinian cause did not protect him from those who thought that America as an enemy only had to be a certain image and he did not fit that image and so he was not convenient but why kill him why not trade him for things that the hostage takers later who took multiple American hostages were trading for, why not hold him hostage? I think it's because, as I reveal in the book, he had become aware of too many details of these new groupings that were operating in Lebanon under Iranian direction and Syrian direction.

27:06So he was somebody who had to be gotten rid of. Who benefited then from his murder? Who most benefited from it? Sadly, no one. Because I don't think Malcolm was a threat to anyone. There are many people who lost because he was murdered, but no one benefited. I can't really see what purpose it actually served to the assassins to kill him. They may have worried that he knew too much, that he would reveal things that they didn't want revealed. And again, I need to be clear, he didn't know anything that wasn't known to most people who were, you know, analysts of the region, who had contacts, who spoke to people around them on campus or diplomats, etc.

27:59I think that his assassins were probably worried that he was revealing the nuances of what he had understood about the situation to American diplomats or to, you know, Arab diplomats. I think also they would have been worried that he would have stepped up as a negotiator and a respected negotiator once the hostage crisis started in Lebanon because we're after his murder we enter a dark seven eight years in Lebanon of hijackings and hostage takings would he have been taken hostage would they have gotten rid of him at a later date once they realized that he was turning into a respected negotiator I don't know but they chose to eliminate him early on.

28:52You've alluded to it throughout your answers now, but I just, I'd like to be explicit in this moment. You know, a lot of people will have forgotten about this murder and you spent years on one cold case. I mean, why? His family had already found out a lot about who, and they had taken the Islamic Republic to court in the United States after Congress passed legislation that allowed families that were victims of terror to sue state sponsors of terror in court. But they still didn't understand the why. And Anne Kerr, Malcolm's widow, emailed me in 2020 when she read my last book, Black Wave, which covers some of the same period, but with a different focus, to ask me if I'd found anything new about Malcolm's assassination.

29:49And that really stayed with me because it made me realize several things. One, there was still so much about the 1980s that we did not understand that had not been explored. I was stunned that after all these years, Anne, who's become a friend, still had questions, you know, why and who exactly and like on the ground and what did it mean? But three, it just made me really think about the impunity of it all, the lack of accountability. Yes, they took Iran to court, but there was no one in the dock. And similarly, from other murders in Lebanon and assassinations and hijackings and hostage takings, and in fact, the whole of Lebanon's civil war, complete impunity.

30:37There's an amnesty law in place since 1990 in Lebanon. So everything has been forgiven. The warlords forgave themselves and then became the peacemakers and donned a suit and became the ministers and speaker of the House in Lebanon. But the impunity is at all levels because, you know, the CIA, William Casey, the man that we were just talking about, got into some kind of agreement with local actors on the ground in Lebanon to set up a car bomb in the heart of the southern suburbs of Beirut that killed scores of people and injured scores of people in an effort to kill the spiritual leader of Hezbollah.

31:24at the time. No one was ever taken to court for this. No one has ever paid for this. No one has, you know, there's been no accountability for it. And now with, you know, with Israel, you know, Gaza, the invasion of Lebanon, the continued bombings of southern Lebanon, there's no accountability. And impunity seeps into the foundation of your being of the state, whether it's Lebanon or Israel or Iran or the United States. The full title of the book, The Best Kind of American Murder, War and America's Undoing in the Middle East. What is the moment that you're pinpointing as that undoing in the Middle East?

32:08When is it? 1982. It's really the moment where I think the United States loses most, if not all of its luster in the face of a lot of Lebanese and people in the region. And then there's, you know, a continuation with, you know, the Iraqi invasion, the US invasion of Iraq in 2003 and, you know, America's support for Israel during its onslaught against Gaza, which of course comes after the massacre of October 7, which was, you know, deeply traumatic for Israel, for Israeli Jews, for Jews around the world. And I understand that. But you're hearing today, Israeli former commanders, former officials, former prime ministers who are denouncing the disproportionate way in which Israel has reacted.

33:19And, you know, Benjamin Netanyahu has left, has put, has engulfed Israelis into a dark tunnel of war and trauma. Nobody wants to live like that forever, but it It has become almost the sort of the new security doctrine in Israel, whether it's Netanyahu or Garanti Eisencott or others, that the only way to defend Israel is to be in a war all the time, to have these buffer zones around Israel's borders that are uninhabitable, that are all rubble. I just don't think that is the way forward. And I think we have two major obstacles, in the Middle East for moving on in a more positive, prosperous way without being Pollyannish.

34:11I grew up in a war. I know all about how difficult it is to get back to peace. But we cannot move forward in this region without addressing the Palestinian issue and the Palestinian cause and finding a way to get to this elusive Palestinian state. And for Israelis to understand that and the fact that with that comes 54 Arab and Muslim countries who have said openly and in public, we are willing to guarantee Israel's security in exchange for credible steps towards a Palestinian state. I think that message is not reaching enough Israelis. Maybe it will now. But equally, I also think we cannot move forward in this region with the leadership of the Islamic republic as it is today.

35:00I don't know if they are able to change their behavior. I doubt it. They have a very well thought through playbook. I don't know whether they eventually cave under economic pressure or under pressure of their own people. But Iran's role in the region has been devastating for its own people, for Yemen, for Syria, for Lebanon, and for Iraq. So there are these two poles to the issues that we're dealing with that are also very much interconnected and we cannot look at only one or the other. We're going to take a quick break now. If you're enjoying this episode, please do subscribe wherever you get your podcasts and leave a comment letting us know who else you'd like to hear on the exchange.

35:43Stay with us. We will be back after this.

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36:34This is so simple now, this is so awesome later. Or sell fast now and pop the champagne later. Cash Now More Later, now available nationwide. Start your offer at opendoor.com slash ACAST. Profits calculated after fees and costs, eligibility and offer price may vary.

37:16more broadly towards Israel, whether it made the prospect of peace more or less likely. And I was so struck by, I don't want to say it's, maybe it's a lack of empathy. Actually, I think very often it's a lack of information because so often when I would say the word Gaza to Israelis, and I'm speaking to analysts, very senior people in the government, regular citizens in the street, so often they were still, when you said the word Gaza, they are still at October 7th. What has happened since, and sometimes it's because they haven't seen it because it literally isn't represented in the Israeli media.

37:55No one wants to... We live in the information age. Everybody can see everything. This is true because, you know, you've got Angelina Jolie, right, posting before and after pictures on her Instagram of what Gaza used to look like and what it does look like. And so there is actually a degree of willful ignorance or blindness to the suffering that's happening there and it just had this question hanging over me which is the one i'm still grappling with and it's the one i'm writing a feature about it's the one i'm going to write about which is you know what prospect is there for peace or reconciliation if you have two groups of people two societies you know the israelis are deeply traumatized by what happened on october 7th clearly the palestinians are deeply traumatized by More than 70 ,000 of them being killed in the onslaught that's followed, 20 ,000 of those people being children.

38:39And how you find some degree of diplomatic reconciliation between two groups of people. And I think you've seen it in the Israeli election. I mean, maybe one day we'll get Palestinian elections. Who knows? Yeah, let's not forget the faults on the Palestinian side for sure. And I just, I'm genuinely slightly terrified about the political direction of travel that's taking place in Israel right now. Because as you've just mentioned, okay, an election's been fought. To what extent was there discussion of education policy, of the economy? Well, broadly speaking, no, there are three main issues. The primary one was security, and it's the wars that we've been talking about.

39:20The second one is Netanyahu himself. you know is do you vote for the block that he is in or is it do you vote for the block that's not and then the third one is the the orthodox community that exists within israel and i'm this doesn't end in a question kim so i'm just going i'm gonna throw you you can you can reply to what i've just said but that's kind of how i've been thinking about the modern moment and i do i we can talk about well maybe we should talk about it now but i was just what i what i wanted to ask you about which has absolutely no connection to the statement i've just just made was I felt like the world we're talking about has this class of, in the 80s, Americans, whether they're analysts, academics, people in the region who understood the region intimately.

40:04And actually, I wonder whether that class of people still exists today. people who actually have the intimate understanding of the political sentiments and broad feeling of Palestinians, Israelis, Lebanese, the Iranian regime. Let me try to unpack all of that. Yeah, I appreciate it. I've spoken for a long time, so I'm sorry. No, no, no, because I have a lot to say. I'll try to be succinct. On the issue of Americans understanding the Middle East, you know, we could make an argument they didn't understand the Middle East back in 1982. Otherwise, they would never have agreed to an Israeli invasion and think, wow, that sounds like a great plan.

40:41Yeah, let's go with Ariel Sharon and see where that brings us. But there were more people who understood the region, like Malcolm Kerr, who were Arabists, but who were being dismissed, like Ambassador Dillon in Beirut warning about Israeli tanks, as in his words, they were being dismissed as, oh, this is just more of this Arab stuff. And today, I think you could, you know, look at the relationship with Saudi Arabia, with the UAE, and think, you know, there is a lot of, you know, back and forth and connections and understanding. But we often miss the idea about what is in each country's interest.

41:23You know, what is in America's interest is not necessarily what is in Saudi Arabia's interest. We may project or leaders may project their vision onto other countries and think, well, this is what would be great for them. But that's not how people in the region see it or vice versa. I mean, we sit in Lebanon or in Riyadh, think, well, why doesn't America do X, Y, or Z? It would be great for them and for us, but it doesn't translate like that. So I don't think it's a question of fewer people understanding the region. I think it's a question of often, you know, misconceptions about what will work out and often also unintended consequences.

42:10And, you know, to go back to what we've been discussing, the United States's inability to restrain its allies, whether it's Israel or whether it's the UAE or sometimes even Saudi Arabia initially with the war against Yemen. Although, of course, now the Saudis are saying, We told you that the Houthis were a terrible threat. They're now blocking international shipping and bombing our airports. We told you so. So it's often these misunderstandings. But where do we go from here and where do we draw hope? Empathy is so important. I'm so happy that you mentioned that word because my book opens with a sentence from Malcolm Kerr.

42:52the mark of a truly civilized man is empathy. And people in the Trump administration can poo-poo that as not enough testosterone. But that is honestly so important in foreign policy, in everything, in your day-to-day life. It is not a sign of weakness. I'm sorry. It's a sign of strength and of moral strength. The other thing that I will say is quoting Malcolm's son, Steve Kerr, who's a famous NBA basketball coach with the Golden State Warriors. But he's very involved in the fight against gun violence in the United States for obvious reasons, or perhaps not so obvious in the sense that his father was killed and assassinated by gunmen in a war.

43:38And gun violence in the United States is, of course, very different. But the impact and the trauma of an assassination, of a murder with a bullet, that violence stays in you forever. And I've seen it with, unfortunately, other friends who've had their relatives assassinated. And I asked Steve while I was researching the book, how do you keep going on this? Like, it seems hopeless, you know, trying to fight, you know, guns in America. And he says, you know, it's about incremental victories. You have to keep at it, incremental victories until the political tides turn. And then you've readied the ground and you've sown the seeds and hopefully there's a momentum.

44:23I don't know yet whether we're at this momentum with the blue wave in the United States, with the Arab parties doing so well in Israel. It could be. I don't know yet. You know, the next few months are going to be volatile, dangerous. The tide could turn one way or another, or rather, we could continue on the negative tide with more war, with, you know, more strong men figuring out how to foolproof their gains against the advances of Democrats, etc. We're looking at a summit between Xi Jinping and Vladimir Putin, potentially, and Trump all together. What will that lead to? But we cannot give up.

45:10Really, we cannot give up, especially for us in the region. I live in Beirut. it's a very difficult situation but I also take a lot of hope from people who are continuing to speak up about peace again without being Pollyannish but imagine the world we would live in if no one were speaking about peace right that would be terrible it would be even worse than where we are today and I honestly and truly believe that there are people in Israel in Iran in Lebanon, in Damascus, in Saudi Arabia, in the US, everywhere, who believe in finding common ground and who have more in common with each other across borders than with some of the more radical elements of their own societies.

45:56You know, I think of Maoz Inan, an Israeli whose parents were killed on October 7th, and how he has found common ground with Aziz Abu Sara, a Palestinian whose brother was killed under torture or following torture in Israeli jails, and how they've come together and are speaking about peace and wrote a book together about peace. Yes, we can dismiss them as, you know, naive, but where would we be without them? And maybe they will turn the tide and we will be talking in a year or two about how great it was that they were there to begin that journey for all of us. And there are people like them in Beirut, in Iran and everywhere.

46:41And so we must maintain that hope and work for it and not give up because we've had some setbacks that are considerable, but we cannot give up. Kim, I'm so grateful that you said that kindness is a strength because it's one of the fundamental things I believe. And, you know, you alluded to it, masculinity, right, with your remarks about testosterone, but I think it's so true. I think a strong man is a kind man and there's been a complete lack of that. Similarly, I think there's been a complete lack of understanding of history and that wars have unintended consequences. The West could look to the last time they deposed an Iranian leader and Mossadegh and how that panned out for the revolution that followed.

47:18And now we are with the death of Khomeini. Look, we've run out of time. I'm so grateful for your efforts, your insight, your intelligence, putting the book together, but also making the time to speak to us. Kim, thank you so much. Thanks for having me, Oli. You've been listening to The Exchange from The New Statesman with me, Oli Dougmore, and my guest, Kim Kutas. The podcast will be back next week.

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