America’s Two-State Delusion

24:00If you go back again, moving forward a few months after the attacks to those, say, early months of 2024, before we were truly in election period, what could have happened in that moment that you think would have gotten to a ceasefire? I mean, again, if you play that counterfactual, what do you think was possible in that? Yeah, so first, I mean, it's the quote you just recited where we say, if you pursue a policy, it fails. You keep pursuing and you keep saying that it's going to work. That's what happened, right? They kept saying the ceasefire is around the corner, even though each time they felt it was going to happen.

24:30It just didn't happen because, you know, for whatever reason, I think we know the reasons mainly. No, I think early on the U.S. should have taken the position that it was insisting on a ceasefire. And I understand the kind of argument about the hostages. But I think it was pretty clear early on that military pressure was not going to get the hostages out. And I also think that you cannot justify the perpetuation of a war that, again, without, you know, whatever, however you want to describe it, of this kind of war, even if it were associated with the legitimate goal of trying to get the hostages out, A, it wasn't achieving that, but B, nothing could justify the kind of war that Israel was waging.

25:09So I think early on, the U.S. should have taken that position that they insisted on a ceasefire and that they would use the leverage. There's different kinds of leverage, but the most obvious one is stopping to provide the weapons without which the war could not continue. So I've said this before, but it is sort of part of the seed is to say we're working tirelessly for a ceasefire when you continue to provide the weapons that ensure that the fire will not cease. There's an argument you hear from Prime Minister Netanyahu's government and supporters of the Israeli approach that goes roughly, look, all of you critics on the outside told us we had to stop this war.

25:46There was no way to get Hamas to concede. And in fact, what we saw is with enough pressure and enough Israeli military success, we got Hamas to give up the hostages in ways that people said they wouldn't to agree to terms of disarmament. We'll see whether that happens, obviously, but at least the declared willingness to disarm to some degree and to get something quite close to an Israeli victory here. And there's kind of a triumphalist narrative. What do you make of that argument? My first answer would be, I don't think that the ends justify the means when these are the means, right? So let's sort of put that aside that, you know, I try and try in the book to put ourselves in different shoes.

26:23It's hard for me to put myself in the shoes of people who believe that killing so many civilians have nothing to do with what was going on was the right way to wage war. Again, at a minimum, war crimes, I think others have used far harsher words. But then the other point is, you hear different accounts, right, about whether a ceasefire was achievable on terms that were not that far from these earlier. Yes, I'm sure Israel is particularly, or the government is pleased that it still controls 53 % of Gaza, even as the ceasefire is in effect. But that really justifies the continuation of the war and the loss of the lives of some hostages, but mainly the suffering of the people of Gaza.

26:59To that extent, it just, I mean, for me, those two things, you can't even put them on the same plane. So maybe Israel will not have achieved as much of its objectives. It would have gotten the hostages out early on. Even the Biden administration said it, I forget it, what month, that Israel had achieved the goal of making sure that Hamas could not perpetuate on October 7th again. They had basically militarily had been defeated. It didn't mean that the movement was eradicated. They're not eradicated now. We know that. So, no, that's not an argument that I think holds much water. There's a great line in the piece.

27:32You're not, this was written before the ceasefire, so it's not in reference to this, but it seems to describe the Trump approach very well, where you write, power is the ability to stretch one's capacity beyond its objective measure and direct the behavior of others. Watching Trump eventually put pressure on Netanyahu, it seems to embody that principle in some ways. What do you make of Trump getting the ceasefire now? Was it some degree of exhaustion on the part of both sides of the war? Was there some uniquely Trumpian touch? What's the lesson of that? There's a lot we could say with President Trump.

28:01Maybe we will. But just to answer your specific narrow question, I think it's a combination. Sure, the circumstances were more favorable to cease fire. I think the idea of the Israeli defense forces had been exhausted. I mean, yes, they could achieve more, but it wasn't really going to change anything materially for them. There was a lot of international pressure, isolation of Israel. I think the prime minister also didn't want to go to elections with the hostages still being held by Hamas and the war still ongoing. And I think Hamas itself was under a lot of pressure, mainly from Turkey and those that they count on Turkey and Qatar, but also probably to some extent from their own people.

28:40And then at some point, I think Hamas made the determination that holding on the hostages was no longer an asset, if it ever was. It became a burden. I mean, clearly, holding the hostages, contrary to what I assume was Hamas's calculation, did not in any way restrain Israel's military attacks. So I think all of that was true. The attack, the Doha strike by Israel, I think, also energized Gulf countries and the U.S. But at the end of the day, I mean, you have to give that much credit to President Trump. And I could criticize his approach to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict all day long. but he was prepared to do or was able to achieve what the Biden administration was not, which is essentially to tell the parties, Hamas through Turkey and Qatar mainly, but also through direct involvement, which is already a break from the past.

29:25No American president even dreamt of having a direct discussion with Hamas. We now know the Trump administration did at very senior levels. And second, to tell Netanyahu at some point, enough is enough. You're isolated. This is going to end. And again, that came after months of the Trump administration giving basically full latitude to the Israeli government to wage the war and to use famine as an instrument of war. So this is not sort of certainly not uncritical praise. But if this ceasefire holds, again, you have to give credit to the unorthodox ways that President Trump has approached policy.

29:59And even in the book, it was before we knew much of this, but we said the perception among some Palestinians and many Arabs was, at least with Trump, we know what we're going to get. It's going to be crazy sometimes. It's going to be against our interest, but it's going to be, it won't have some of the hypocrisy, duplicity, faux outrage of the Biden administration. It's going to be real, genuine cynicism, and that might be a breath of fresh air. We'll be back after a short break. What if you could explore places in the news like a reporter does? I'm Nicholas Wood, a former journalist with the New York Times and BBC.

30:39And 16 years ago, I created the travel company Political Tours. Our small groups are led by top correspondents around the world. In the next few months, we're off to Mexico, followed by South Africa, Japan and the French presidential elections. Come and join us. Go to politicaltours.com. That's politicaltours.com.

31:47That's ForeignAffairs.com slash J-U-L-Y.

31:57Now, back to my conversation with Rob Malley. You, when you were running the Middle East program at International Crisis Group, a great organization, we run a lot of crisis group authors and love to run their work, met with Hamas. What is your assessment of their own thinking and their strategy at this point? How do they see this picture and how do they see the path forward to the extent that you can understand it? So first, I mean, I have to, as you say, as part of the International Crisis Group, I think. A long time ago, I realized. Yeah, it was absolutely our mission to talk to all parties in conflict.

32:30So I think that was the right thing to do, and I still believe in it. But second, I would say, you know, I think I was aware of the fact that when, as an American Westerner, who had served in relatively high-level positions in U.S. administrations, I know that they were sort of shaping what they were telling me, right? So I'm not going to say that anything they said to me, I took it at face value. But I do think that they had a short and a long-term view. And the short-term view was, is there some way to reach some kind of quiet stability so that we could govern Gaza and expand our authority in Gaza and challenge Fatah, the other branch of the national movement, for supremacy over the West Bank and Gaza?

33:11This is going back to 2007, 2008, something like that. Yeah, but I think it's always been part of their mind. And then the longer term, they do have this vision of doing away with the Jewish state. I think where they are now is, if I try to interpret, I think they feel like clearly they've suffered military blows. I suspect that many Palestinians, particularly many Gazans, are going to hold them to account. So I think they felt it was important to bring this to an end at some point, but they're still standing. And for them, given the might that Israel exercised to try to defeat them, to be able to still stand and to be at this point still all things considered the most powerful Palestinian entity in Gaza by some distance, you know, that's important for them.

33:54So they've maintained sort of that brand. They've maintained their steadfastness. They could say, we didn't surrender. We didn't buckle. And for them, that's important. And we see they're operating with harsh measures to try to reimpose their authority in Gaza. They understand, I suspect they understand that something is going to have to change because the movement itself is going to find it very hard to survive in its current shape, both because of domestic and international pressure. But again, in terms of their assessment, I think they might say, you know, we got some prisoners out, which is important.

34:24That was the main objective of October 7th. We got prisoners out and we could say that we stood fast. I'll leave it to the Palestinians. They'll be the ultimate judges of whether that justified October 7th, given that, yes, Hamas knew they were going to provoke Israel and they had a plan to provoke Israel, but they had no plan to deal with the inevitable consequence of the provocation. How do you assess the prospects of peace at this point? If you look at the ceasefire or let's say the ceasefire holding and at least a situation that is better than where it was a month ago, do you anticipate that will hold?

35:02As you see the 20 points of the Trump plan, do you see prospects for making progress on any of those at this point? I mean, so many reasons to be cynical and to be skeptical. The vagueness of the plan, the ambiguities, the fact that there is no arbiter to measure or neutral arbiter to measure violations and no body you could go to that you could count on to redress those violations we've already seen. I mean, in the days following the ceasefire, the president and his senior officials, their rhetoric about how they judge the situation has been really dizzying, right? At one point when Hamas kills people in Gaza, the president says that that's justified, kind of justified the same way we take care of gangs in Chicago.

35:42I'm not really quoting him exactly, but to paraphrase. Then he says if they continue down this path, somebody's going to disarm them. Maybe it would be the U.S., maybe somebody else. Then saying, well, they're not in full control. It may be these rogue elements. And then again saying if they don't disarm, they're going to be eradicated. So who knows with this administration whether they will stick to it, what position they'll take, and whether they'll put pressure on both parties, not just on Hamas. But I think it is conceivable that the ceasefire will hold because I do think that neither Israel nor Hamas right now have an interest in a full-fledged resumption of hostilities.

36:19I think it's going to be a very uneven ceasefire. Again, we've already seen it. I think at bottom, there still is this incompatibility between Israel's vision, which is that it can strike at will any evidence of Hamas' emergence or assertion of its power. I think, and it feels like that's something we'll continue doing. And on Hamas' part, vision, as I was saying earlier, that they need to reassert their authority, not their rule, but their authority over Gaza. And they're not prepared to give that up. And so that obviously the clash will come over the issue of disarming. It will come over the issue of whether Israel retains this overall ability to strike at will whenever it feels like it needs or wants to.

36:58So, yes, I think you could have a fragile ceasefire. There are the other elements, you know, the release of hostages, prisoners, the influx of humanitarian assistance. Hopefully all that happens. I think when you get to the next stage, which is disarming Hamas fully, introduction of international stabilization force, Israeli withdrawal to the periphery, that's a much different kettle of fish, which is going to require the U.S. to be on it. And again, to be prepared to call both sides out if they're violating the deal. Just, again, just seeing the first few days after the ceasefire, it is odd that some American officials have said, very senior ones, that they don't consider that Hamas had violated the deal when there was this incident in southern Gaza.

37:40And yet there was no calling out the Israelis for retaliating for what may not have been a violation of the deal. So they're going to have to be much more on the case and put pressure, again, equally on both sides, on Hamas directly or through Qatar and Turkey and on Israel directly. And then maybe we'll see some progress on those other elements. I think if you think of it in concentric circles, first the ceasefire and the release of hostages and prisoners, next the longer term governance of Gaza, the international stabilization force, this government council, this board of peace and Israeli withdrawal and the storming of Hamas, And the next one, which is sort of peace between Israel and Palestinians, I'm not even going to get there.

38:18I think the further you get on those concentric circles, the lesser the likelihood that it's going to be achieved. If we're avoiding the easy cynicism you refer to, do you see formulas for governance in Gaza and Palestinian leadership reform and security in Gaza that you see as viable? I mean, viable? Yes, realistic. I don't know. Again, it's hard for me to imagine that Hamas is going to agree to be disarmed. Maybe it's a matter of definition, what weapons they have to give up, what do they give up to? I mean, maybe there's a ways around that. But for Hamas to no longer be an armed movement, that would be basically going back on everything that they've stood for since their founding.

38:56And they would become sort of the very kind of movement that they've denounced from their origins. So hard for me to see that. Hard for me to see Israel agreeing that they would be a genuine sort of, if it's an international force that is there as a buffer between Israel and Gaza. Hard for me to see Israel agreeing to sort of subcontract what it considers its security requirements to an outside body. So it's hard for me to see it. Is it possible that you'd have some version of that where there is greater international role? Arabs and Gulf countries step up. There's some technocratic government.

39:30It's something that Hamas has said that he would agree to. But Israel continues to kind of treat Gaza the way it treats parts of the West Bank. It could go in at will. And Hamas refuses to disarm. Maybe there's something there, which again is an unstable equilibrium, but it's something that it could at least contemplate. There's another triumphalist narrative you hear from the Israeli government and supporters of the Israeli government when it comes to activities in the region. In the days and weeks and months after October 7th, there was a degree of restraining Israel when it came to going after Hezbollah in the north.

40:06There's been a degree of restraining Israel when it came to going after Iran for some time. The Israelis now say, look, we went after Hezbollah and decimated it considerably. we attacked Iran with some American help, whether we've, you know, massively set back the nuclear program, that's a separate question, but there wasn't, you know, calamity did not ensue and the Iranians are still willing to talk and still dealing with IEA. And, you know, it's not appreciably worse, at least in this moment than, than it was previously, you wrote a piece in Foreign Affairs warning against Middle East triumphalism.

40:37So I can imagine you will not fully buy that narrative, but there does seem to be more, more evidence, more substance of that than the Gaza triumphalism. Yeah, so I've thought about this in terms of sort of currency conversion. I think if you think of Israel, the Palestinians in the US, all three of them have a problem of currency conversion. Israel today is more powerful regionally in terms of military power, possibly than it's ever been. And you just mentioned the theaters in which it can operate at will. And so it is probably more powerful than it has ever been or as powerful as ever been. And yet it is more as isolated.

41:13and ostracized in the world as it's ever been. And so it hasn't been able to convert its military might into political diplomatic assets. The Palestinians, in terms of their national cause, international support, again, seldom seen, right? On the streets of the US, Rome, Paris, London, throughout the global South, the support for the Palestinian cause is as strong as I could recall it ever being. And yet the Palestinian national movement is about as weak as it's ever been. Leaderless, both Fata and Hamas are in crisis. They're divided, but there's also, neither one of them seems to be able to offer their people anything of substance.

41:52And the Palestinian people are adrift. And again, as they were perhaps, as we say in the book, the closest is after the Nakba, the catastrophe of 1948. So again, they haven't been able, they have not found a way to convert their massive international support into any political dividends on the ground. And the US has now a US president, President Trump, who's defied the laws of political gravity. He could basically do whatever he wants. The Republicans won't criticize him, even if he does something completely taboo from an inconsistent, incompatible with Republican orthodoxy. He gets away with anything.

42:25He has this sort of ability to sort of defy all laws, real laws and the laws of political gravity. And yet, we've rarely seen a U.S. administration that really doesn't exactly know where it wants to go. I mean, you can listen to them. They speak of peace. They don't know what it means. They don't really know what their vision is for Israelis and Palestinians. So they haven't been able to convert the president's real assets into a plan on the ground that actually makes sense. So all three parties have this discrepancy between assets, which they can't convert into real benefit. And so I think your question had to do with the Israelis, but I think it's true for all three parties.

43:00And it's a very intriguing and paradoxical situation right now. Can they translate all of these three, their assets into something that is more tangible and that they could really explode on the ground. I mean, that's really what we'll have to find out in the coming months and years, but there's this incapacity at this point to do so. The Israelis say that for all of the outpouring of the program during the war in Gaza from populations in Europe and the US and the global South and parts of the Arab world, by and large, the relationships with Gulf governments continued that they've, you know, have not seen a lot of criticism in private from, you know, senior Gulf officials.

43:43I'm sure you talked to plenty of those officials. You know, I've heard them say, look, we're not so unhappy about what Israel is doing to Hamas, and we're grateful for what they've done against Hezbollah and Iran and Assad and Syria. And the Israelis say, look, ultimately, the anger is going to pass, and we think that those relations will be solid and in fact grow. You think that's too - I don't know. I mean, so I'd make a distinction between public opinion and government opinion. public opinion and in the US in particular, I think there has been a real shift. I don't know how permanent it is.

44:14I don't know how deep it is, but certainly I teach on a campus now. I think it's clear that the younger generation today sees the world and this part of the world and America's role in this part of the world so differently from anything I've experienced in the past, certainly from when I was a kid, but even from years past. So I think that's something that if I weren't Israeli official, I would take seriously and look at some of the boycott movements in Europe, talking about Eurovision or talking about the football soccer cup. I mean, these are things that would have been unthinkable not long ago.

44:45In terms of government, yes, you're right. And I think if I were a Palestinian, I would say, what will it take for Arab governments to take real measures against Israel? Again, from their perspective, a genocide isn't enough. I mean, so you're absolutely right that in that sense, Israel could take satisfaction in the fact that governments by and large, although recently some European governments have ordered, you know, no more arms transfers. So even that, there's some cracks. But no, I wouldn't deny that there's a gap between government feelings, official feelings here and elsewhere, and public opinion.

45:17But public opinion matters. And then it does sometimes slip into anti-Semitism, which is something that Israelis, but everyone should worry about. So I don't think it's a comfortable time for Israel right now in terms of its international reputation. I think a question is whether that changes when the war ends, as it seems to be the case, and when you have a different Israeli government? At that point, do people sort of, even public opinion say, okay, now we're back to an Israel we're more familiar with? I'm not so sure. I just don't know. Again, it's hard to judge, but the attitudes that I sense among some young people is really calling into question, more broadly, Israeli policies in the West Bank and Gaza.

45:53And you could imagine that official policy changing will be a lagging indicator of that change in public opinion. It could come later. You had the Iran portfolio for the first couple years of the Biden administration, probably not one you were thrilled to have for many of those months. As you look at the Iranian nuclear program now, you'd also worked as the senior White House official on the Middle East and the Obama administration on the JCPI, the Iran deal originally. As you assess the Iran nuclear problem now, where do you see it? In what ways are we in worse shape, better shape? What do you worry about when you look at the months and years ahead?

46:25I mean, I think it's undeniable that the Israeli and American strikes have set back Iran's nuclear program considerably. I mean, I'm not sure how many centrifuges they have left, if any. They do have apparently the 400 and some kilograms of 60 % enriched uranium somewhere buried on the ground. And there's all the uncertainty of the fact that we don't know what's going on because the International Atomic Energy Agency is no longer able to inspect. But it's a significantly degraded nuclear program, no doubt about it. And I think it's something that Iran has to reconsider about its entire strategy.

47:03It's also in a position where it would be very hard for Iran to decide to reconstitute its program knowing how penetrated they were by Israel. I mean, this is something, again, that they're going to have to, you know, any meeting between high-level Iranian officials, whoever's alive has to wonder why the other person is alive and vice versa, right? Are they somehow, were they the mole? Now, just in terms of the pure mathematics of the nuclear program. You know, if you consider that on the eve of the war, and this is sort of from public statements that officials and intelligence community and others have been experts have been saying, that Iran was about three to nine months away from being able to get a nuclear weapon if they had decided that they wanted to.

47:45After all the destruction, Israeli strikes, U.S. strikes on Fordow, etc., I think a fair assessment is that Iran is about three to nine months away from that nuclear weapon if they want to get one. Now, the caveat, again, is I think they are so penetrated that they'd be very, very, very reluctant to start. Maybe they think they're not being that bit with the IEA, the International Atomic Energy Agency, not there, they could get away with more. But so, you know, the problem hasn't been resolved. I think the Supreme Leader keeps saying, we will decide what we do with our nuclear program. If we want to reconstitute it, we will.

48:18So it hasn't been resolved. But certainly, Iran does not have, to use an expression of President Trump, like it doesn't have the cars it once did. It just doesn't have that capacity to leverage its nuclear program the way it did before. And that's why, even though I could see the outlines of a potential deal between the US and Iran, maybe, one of the problems is Iran has very few assets left. The assets it has is the 400 kilograms of 60 % enriched uranium and the fact that there is sort of no transparency. Those are the only two things that really can give up. And so they're not going to give it up for nothing.

48:52They're not going to tell the world, okay, here's our, here's, take our 60 % in rich uranium, come inspect, because then they have nothing left to bargain with. From the U.S. perspective, that's not that much. They're not going to pay a huge price for just those two things. So there really is a gap between what Iran holds and what it wants to get out of it and how the U.S. assesses it, which is why the U.S., I think, in any negotiation is going to ask for more. It's going to ask for something on the missile program or support for, you know, allied militant groups, which I think Iran, particularly because it has felt so vulnerable on the security front, is going to be extremely reluctant to give up.

49:26So again, I could see the contours of a deal where Iran could say, for example, we're not giving up on a right to enrich, but we're not going to start tomorrow. Our program has been destroyed. There may be risks because of radiation. So it's going to take us time. And in the meantime, we'll suspend and we could reach a deal with the US and maybe that suspension goes on forever. So they save face and the U.S. doesn't ask them to give up the right to enrich. And then maybe over years, you build some kind of consortium that is not where enrichment resumes or not, international consortium. So you could see that in exchange for sanctions relief.

50:00And even there, I could imagine President Trump would go beyond where President Obama and certainly President Biden were prepared to go and say, we're going to lift some of the primary embargo. Because President Trump will say, you know, the nuclear deal that President Obama negotiated, he'd say, what kind of morons were they? They'd reach a deal where Iran gets benefits, the world gets benefits because they could trade with Iran, and we get none because we've maintained our primary embargo. So I think he would say, no, if we're going to do a deal now, we're going to invest and we're going to trade, which is something that could be attractive to Iran.

50:32So again, I could imagine that, not like the two-state solution. I mean, I could see that outcome. I don't have the pathway. I think it's more realistic than a two-state solution. But that for me is the challenge. How do you get to that outcome, which I think you could have gotten before the 12-day war? I think it was achievable. Maybe harder now in some ways, but I don't rule it out. There was an expectation from most outside observers at the beginning of the Biden administration when you were going back into government that the US and Iran would be back in the nuclear deal and JCPOA pretty quickly.

50:59I think some of that was associated with you because you'd been part of that negotiation the first time around. So it seemed intuitive that you would be back to it. What happened as you kind of assessed that period? Obviously, there's an Iranian side to this, too. But as you look at U.S. decision making, why did we end up not getting back in? And was that a mistake? Two people who told me not to take this job were my wife and my mother. I probably should have listened to them. But so, you know, what I, you know, looking back, I think my headline would be in order to get a deal, which I maybe didn't fully realize at the time, you needed at least one of these two people, President Biden, Supreme Leader Khamenei, to really want the deal.

51:36Neither one really wanted it for their own reason. I think for President Biden, this was, you know, he never really, I think his heart was not really in the JCPOA. I think he felt that it was, you know, why should the US pay a price for Iran not getting a nuclear weapon? And also, now that this was a view that he and other of his advisors held, yeah, we didn't like the sanctions that President Trump imposed. But now that we have them, why not use them to get a better deal, right? So I think he was sort of lukewarm. I think the Supreme Leader was extremely lukewarm as well because he felt we were betrayed once.

52:08It's sort of like Lucy and the football. How many times are we going to be betrayed by the U.S.? We reach a deal with President Biden, and then if President Trump is elected, they're going to tear it up again. So I think it was both of them could see maybe they could live with it, but neither was that eager for one. And so that led at the beginning of the Biden administration to a very slow walk by the U.S. You know, I was in favor of trying to move more quickly and to tell Iran, we're prepared to go back into the JCPOA to lift the sanctions that President Trump reimposed if you go back to the old constraints.

52:41And I think we should have moved quickly when President Rouhani was still president of the president with whom we had reached the first deal was still in office. Which is a matter of a few months, right? Just a few months, right, right. The elections were that, I forget if in June or something, and we came into office late January. And we slow walked it and we started asking for more, a longer, stronger deal. By the time we took a more, what I would call a more realistic position, the Iranians were, then they played hard to get and they were slow rolling. Now, what I don't know, and I want to be very honest here, I don't know whether, if in fact, they'd followed my advice and moved quickly, whether Iran really would have agreed because they raised several questions, one of which was, what guarantees do we have that your successor is not going to leave this deal?

53:25And we had to answer, and we did this with the Europeans because the Iranians wouldn't meet with us directly. We had to answer, there are no guarantees, right? We can't guarantee anything. All we could say is, during the years, the Biden administration will be in office. You will get the benefits of sanctions relief. We'll get the benefits of your nuclear program being rolled back significantly. Beyond that, we don't have the constitutional means of binding our successor. And we never could answer that question. There were other issues that they kept raising that we couldn't address either. So I don't know whether Iran would have simply kept asking for more and the process would have gone on.

53:59So, you know, maybe it was naive to think a deal could have been struck. But again, I think the way we approached it, A, guaranteed that we lost precious time. And B, I think also strengthened the position of those in Iran who were skeptical of the US saying they're all the same. They just want to trick us. But there was just one more point. I think there was a time, it was in August 2022, when a deal really was at hand. It was proposed by the European Union, but it was supported not just by the European Union and the three European countries, the UK, France and Germany, also by Russia and China and by us.

54:33I truly believe at that point that we could do it. And then the Iranians raised extraneous requests at the last minute. And that's where I sort of wonder, were they ever prepared to cross that line? I think we mishandled it, but I'm not sure that the mishandling was responsible for the lack of a deal. As you step back and look at the regional picture that is starting to emerge from all of these dynamics, it's quite an interesting place for Middle Eastern order where you have Gulf governments more interested in rapprochement with Tehran than they were certainly when you were negotiating the nuclear deal the first time around.

55:06You have Israeli power in the region, new relationships between Gulf governments and the Israeli government, but also a high degree of suspicion and skepticism. How do you understand the order that's taking shape? And is there a stable arrangement here? Are there risks that you think are underappreciated? I'm curious how you make sense of this. I'm really in the middle of a complete rejiggering of the puzzle. I mean, you've mentioned a number of the new elements. There's also some relationships that seem to be completely at loggerheads between Egypt and Qatar, between Egypt and Turkey, between Saudi Arabia and Turkey and Qatar.

55:41And the relationship that seemed to be the strongest between the UAE and Saudi Arabia seems to be the one that is creating the most trouble. as you say, yes, there's rapprochement with Iran. There's also the Abraham Accords, which may well expand in the coming months or years. But that's coupled with what I hear from Gulf countries, which is, yes, we were opposed to Iranian hegemony, not because it was Iranian, but because it was hegemonic. But that means that we're not happy with any hegemon, not an Israeli hegemon either. And so they also are wondering, how do you make sure that Israel doesn't go too crazy?

56:16At the same time, we know that they were continuing to cooperate on security matters with Israel in the middle of, you know, after October 7th until, you know, very recently, probably still now. So it's a very, it's a picture that I think we can't see clearly yet, but it does mean that a lot of pieces that are up in the air that can land anywhere and with, you know, adroit diplomacy may land in the right place. And, you know, I don't want to, again, I could spend a lot of time criticizing the Trump administration, but they do like making deals. And they do have a way of, you know, part of the parties they're dealing with in the Gulf also like to make deals that are based on money and transactions and commerce.

56:54And so it is possible that they managed to do things that others were not. I saw today that they now their new ambition is to reach peace between Algeria and Morocco, which is something I've been interested in for decades. If they could do that, which is for me, you know, I've never been able to really see how they reconcile for domestic reasons. That's a completely different issue. But again, it's possible that in this case, the unorthodoxy and some of what is most, I don't know about repellent, but distasteful about the administration, which is the combination of private finance, money, corruption, diplomacy, that it may work.

57:32Now, do those deals, are they sustainable or not? Who knows? but they may work at least in the short term to expand commercial relations between states. And that, again, would just be a new element of this emerging puzzle. And so that you have the Gulf balancing between Iran and Israel with the U.S. kind of occasionally stepping in to shore things up. Is that the kind of optimistic picture here? Yeah, but also, again, as I said, and it's interesting how much the President Trump talks about Iran, has been speaking about Iran recently. It's clearly on his mind whether he has this image of Iran as a country that is important enough that he needs to strike a deal with it or for his Nobel Peace Prize ambitions, whatever it is, he speaks about it almost impervious to the pronouncements by Iranians, which are often extremely dismissive of him.

58:17So again, if the US reaches a deal with Iran, that also fundamentally changes the picture in ways that could then, who knows where that leads, right? So at this point, I wouldn't say I'm optimistic or pessimistic. I'm just curious about where this goes, because it is a different form of diplomacy, if that's the word, where taboos are shattered almost daily. And you could see Israeli-Saudi normalization as part of that? It's not off the table, to your mind? It's not off the table. No, I think it's in some ways a matter of timing. I think for Mohammed bin Salman, I think this is something that the Biden administration took too long to appreciate if they did appreciate it.

58:54Yes, he was telling the Americans, I'm still interested. Why wouldn't he say that, right? I mean, he wants to keep them hungry and want to keep catering to his demands. But the thought that somebody who has the ambition of being the head of the Arab Muslim world, take the leadership position, that at a time when most of his and the region and the Muslim world's public opinion sees what Israel is doing as a genocide, that that's, or even right in the wake of it, that now he would normalize. So I don't, I think it's a card that he's going to keep saying that he's being prepared to play at some point, he will play it because I don't think that he feels it's not an ideological issue for him, right?

59:32I mean, people who've heard him speak about the Palestinian cause wouldn't say that he's, you know, the reincarnation of Yasser Arafat. He has a very jaundiced view of the Palestinians. But I think he has come to the position where he does have that ambition. Saudi Arabia can play that role because it doesn't really have too many competitors right now. But it does mean that it has to be careful not to jump the gun and normalize with a country that is reviled by so much of Arab and Muslim public opinion. And he has a domestic politics. He has a domestic politics. He knows how to deal with it in ways that are not always the prettiest.

1:00:07But I think it goes beyond that. It's just public opinion writ large. And I think he does now have this ambition. Iran is not as much of a threat. Who else is there in the region? Maybe Turkey, who could aspire to that role, but Turkey has its own disadvantages, not being an Arab country. So, you know, I suspect that he is playing the long game and the long game means certainly not immediate normalization. I want to close by going back to the subject at the heart of your book and your recent foreign affairs pieces, which is, of course, the U.S. approach to the Israeli-Palestinian issue. There was a piece that we published over the summer by Mira Rapp Hooper and Rebecca Lissner arguing that we need a zero based review of all American foreign policies.

1:00:46And I wonder how you would kind of approach a zero-based review of U.S. policy towards Israel? If we look at what our real interests here are, how we should think about them, how would you define those interests and how would you craft a new policy to reflect them? So, I mean, I like the instinct that says we need to rethink all our policy. That certainly was the instinct that drove what we wrote in the book. Listen, I mean, there's all kinds of interests that one could identify in our relationship with Israel. I would say sort of at bottom, we need to think about what serves the U.S. in the region and more broadly, what serves the U.S.

1:01:19in terms of the reputational cost that it has when it aligns itself with policies. And again, I'm thinking of the war in Gaza in particular that are viewed as unacceptable by so many, by large swaths of the world. And it just makes it more difficult for the U.S. to argue about anything, Ukraine in particular, when it seems to have such a double standard. It's not a matter of breaking with Israel, but understanding that Israel, like any other country, has its own interests and we should have ours. And that means that when Israel is pursuing policies that we think are going to hurt our interests, whether it's vis-a-vis the Palestinians, vis-a-vis Iran, vis-a-vis Lebanon, Syria, whatever, that we need to make clear that our support has its limits.

1:01:57So it doesn't mean abandoning Israel, but it means treating it more normally as we treat other countries. Maybe there's a history and a special relationship that for now with Israel is not going to be challenged. But the bottom line should be, is this something that is harmful to U.S. interests? And that has not always been the criteria that's been selected. Do you worry about the coming debate in the Democratic Party about this issue? Do you see risks? Do you see prospects for kind of new paradigm that you would find more productive? So certainly there's been an evolution. I mean, when you see people who traditionally have been viewed as very, very supportive of Israel, openly considering, contemplating, you know, withholding weapons, conditioning weapons sales, that's something new.

1:02:46And we see this happening increasingly with increasing frequency. And I think for some of them, it's conviction. For others, it's just they could sense where the party or the base of the party is going. I think the real question for the Democratic Party is going to be what I was raising earlier. What happens to this quote-unquote reassessment when the war is over and you have an Israeli government, which is either led by Netanyahu, but without Smotrish and Ben-Gavir, the most right-wing elements of his government, or that is led by somebody else like Naftali Bennett or someone who is not viewed as, however you want to call it, as the current government.

1:03:20What happens then? Does the bulk of the Democratic Party decide, again, we're relieved? Do they feel relief? And do they say, we can now go back to business as usual, which means, you know, you tap Israel a little bit on the wrist when settlement construction continues, but you don't really make it a key issue. Do you criticize softly, but you embrace publicly? Or is there something that is deeper? And I don't have an answer to that. I really don't know. It's what you were saying earlier. I think there'll be some of the Democratic base that's going to be in favor of a more thorough rethink of the relationship.

1:03:58But others will say the problem we had was with Netanyahu or with this version of Netanyahu, sort of the Chuck Schumer speech, which was all directed by Netanyahu, which I think was misguided. This war was not Netanyahu's war, as we explain in the book. But I don't know where that ends and also, you know, what the politics will give. I think it's going to be a real debate in the Democratic Party. And the question is, does it become a litmus test almost in the same order as one's position on the Iraq War was? Is this the dividing line for the primary in 2028? And all that, I think, is still unknown.

1:04:31You know, Democratic voters are going to vote on a whole host of issues. For some, this is going to be one of the top three issues. For others, it's going to be number 10 or 20. They're going to think about health care. They're going to think about democracy. They're going to think about whatever else. And so even though they feel strong about this, they're not going to vote for a candidate based on his or her position on this issue. For others, as I say, it will be. And I think the debate, you know, I'm all in favor of the debate. So I'm not something I worry about. I think that the Democratic Party needs to have a debate.

1:04:57I think the margins of that debate are going to be much broader than they have been in the past. And that's a healthy thing. And let it rip. Rob, thank you so much for doing this today. Both the essay drawn from the book, the book itself are a very rare combination of trenchant policy analysis and quite kind of lyrical, evocative writing. So I recommend that people read the Foreign Affairs essay first and then go on to the book from there. But thank you so much for doing whatever order they want. Thanks. Thanks so much for having me. Thank you for listening. You can find the articles that we discussed on today's show at foreignaffairs.com.

1:05:34This episode of the Foreign Affairs Interview was produced by Ben Metzner, Rose Kohler, Elise Burr, and Kanesh Therroer. Our audio engineer is Todd Yeager. Original music is by Robin Hilton. Special thanks as well to Irina Hogan. Make sure you subscribe to the show wherever you listen to podcasts. And if you like what you heard, please take a minute to rate and review it. We release a new show every Thursday. Thanks again for tuning in.

1:06:16We hope you enjoyed this episode of the Foreign Affairs interview. Don't forget to visit foreignaffairs.com slash spotlight to sign up for Dan Kurtz-Valen's free weekly newsletter featuring more of the clear-headed analysis that you enjoy here on the podcast. Sign up today at foreignaffairs.com slash spotlight.