‘In the War Room’ After Six Months of Conflict with Iran

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0:17From the opinion pages of The Wall Street Journal, this is Potomac Watch. The Iran war is now six months old and has settled into something of a stalemate. The blockade against Iranian ports and sanctions is squeezing the regime economically, but Iran still poses a threat to oil and oil products flowing through the Strait of Hormuz. Meanwhile, Israel has throughout the conflict and before been America's stalwart ally in this conflict and going back to October 7th, 2023 and the Hamas massacre. How does the U.S.-Israel alliance stand up today, given the turmoil of the last two years, three years, really?

1:00Welcome to Potomac Watch. That's our question for today on the Daily Wall Street Journal podcast. I'm Paul Gigo, and today my guest is Wall Street Journal editorial board member Elliot Kaufman. Listeners know him from his appearances here. But today I want to talk to him about his new book with the noted Israeli journalist Yonah Jeremy Bob. Their book is called In the War Room, the inside story of Israel's fight against Hamas and the Iranian access out this week. Elliot, welcome. Congratulations on the book. Thank you so much. So you say you're advertising the inside story. Okay. You wrote a piece for us that's an excerpt from the book about the fierce debate that took place in Israel in the war cabinet after the October 7th massacre between the prime minister Netanyahu and defense minister Gallant.

1:55Whether to go after Hamas first, Hamas of course being the massacring terrorist group, or Hezbollah in Lebanon, which threatened Israel from the north. Tell us a little bit about that dispute. Well, there have been several books already about the October 7th attack itself. What this book does is tell that inside story of what happened next. What about the war that followed? And so immediately, you would think Israel would have to respond to Hamas. Hamas attacked it, as you said, out of Gaza, massacred 1 ,200 people, took over 250 hostages, of course, send the troops into Gaza. And yet, Gallant, the defense minister, and most of Israel's top generals advocated a different path.

2:47Going after Hezbollah. They said, Hezbollah is looming in the north, 150 ,000 missiles in its arsenal. What Gallant argued internally in the war room was Hezbollah is just waiting for us to send all of our troops south toward Gaza. And as soon as we commit to that, it's going to launch its full-fledged assault on us. Hezbollah had on October 8th joined in in support of Hamas, but only in a small way, we can say, you know, a few hundred missiles, but not 100 ,000 missiles. And Netanyahu was more cautious. He was the dove in this debate. And this is what I think people do not understand. Because of Netanyahu's image in the West, especially, what they miss is that for the first many months of the war, he was actually the dove in the war cabinet.

3:46The others there along with him, Gallant and Gantz were more forceful on a number of issues. On this one, Netanyahu's point of view was, we have just taken a massive blow. Our army was taken by surprise and did not perform as it should have, to say the least. Our intelligence was totally off. Therefore, can we now, just four days later, take an incredible risk by opening up an even larger front in the North, starting that war, by the way, against the very strong wishes of President Biden and the Biden administration? So the Biden administration was saying to the Israeli government, do not open the second front.

4:35We will support you if you respond in Gaza against Hamas, but not if you open a second front. Was it that explicit? It was not yet that explicit, but they were very clear. They opposed this and they thought it was a bad idea. And in fact, what was most interesting is that Netanyahu, knowing that, of course, President Biden and his staff, Jake Sullivan, Anthony Blinken, would be against any sort of escalation, he actually used that internally to say, the Americans won't let us, you know, they'll be totally against us. We can't. We can't. And so I think his view in this instance was that Israel needed that diplomatic capital with the U.S.

5:21It needed munitions. It needed ultimately to focus on one intensive front at a time. All right. So at least from hindsight, in retrospect, it looks like that was a good judgment by Netanyahu in the sense that they did prosecute the war first against Hamas in Gaza. And the fear that Galant and Gantz had that Hezbollah would unleash a wholesale attack from the north did not happen. Now, they bombed pretty consistently some of the northern parts of Israel to the extent that Israel had to evacuate. The whole population there. I don't know how many people, 70 ,000, 100 ,000, something like that, which is a considerable hardship and ultimately led to Israel feeling it needed to respond to Hezbollah.

6:11But was Netanyahu right in that initial instance? I think he was initially. It was simply too great of a risk, too many other variables. As we know, the IDF ended up running quite low on munitions very quickly in Gaza. If it had done that right away in Lebanon, would it even have been able to turn toward Gaza? And yet what I think is most interesting is that the Biden administration's stance on the north, Hezbollah, never changed. It never wavered. Their message to Israel, even 10 months later, 10 months of failed negotiations and diplomacy was, don't escalate. Do not do anything to make this any worse.

6:58Don't expand the war, basically. And what we found is that the Biden administration's advice consistently from day one was to restrain Israel, tone down its response on every front, on Gaza, on Lebanon, on Iran, of course, consistently telling Israel to accommodate itself to really worse and worse strategic situations. Now, of course, the Biden administration, Elliot, would respond and say, hey, we helped restrain Hezbollah. We sent American naval ships into the eastern Mediterranean as a symbol of deterrence. And in fact, that probably helped deter Hezbollah. Is that correct? It's absolutely right.

7:45And in fact, Prime Minister Netanyahu on October 7th asked for that aircraft carrier to be sent, one of his very first things. And yet Hezbollah was still firing on Israel for 10, 11 months with no end in sight. And until the very week that Israel finally blew that open in the Northern Front with the exploding pagers, sabotage, the strike on Nasrallah, a really incredible sequence, which in the war room, we detail and show how it happened, all the arguments internally in Israel's war room. But even that very week, the Biden administration was saying, do not do this. And in fact, it occasioned some of the most difficult phone calls of the entire war between Lloyd Austin at the Pentagon and Israel's Yoav Ghalad.

8:36So in the end, Israel felt it had to strike Hezbollah. It couldn't exist with Hezbollah being able to depopulate big chunks of northern Israel and, of course, retaining their missiles. So you had that extraordinary pager operation, which debilitated a couple of thousand of Hezbollah operatives, captains, leaders. And then the attack on Nasrallah took him out. And then the attack by Iran directly on Israel, which again, Biden sent American ships and anti-missile defenses to protect Israel. And I think only two or three got through and maybe some of those had been the breakup of the missiles intercepted.

9:21So again, the U.S. helped Israel. And as I recall, So Netanyahu wanted to respond directly to attacking Israel, but Biden said, take the win. You didn't do a lot of damage. Don't escalate again. And Israel didn't at that time, right? In the initial instance. Israel insisted that it had to respond in some way, but in a token way at first. This is the first Iranian April, 2024 attack. There would subsequently be another one, October 24. And the US advice was the same. We'll protect you on defense, but do not retaliate, take the win. And it was that second time, October 2024, that Israel's war room came up with the idea of taking out crucial Iranian air defenses, which meant really leaving Iran's nuclear program undefended, opening the door to that future strike, which was many, many months and really many years in the making.

10:30But what this war ended up doing, not by any large plan at the start, but really muddling through, was it steadily, one by one, removed the layers of defense for Iran's nuclear program. And so that started with Hezbollah. That 150 ,000 missile arsenal was supposed to be the insurance option for Iran's nuclear program. That is, if Israel would ever strike, it would be inundated immediately and you would have buildings, towers toppling in Tel Aviv. That was taken out by Israel. Next, Iranian air defenses taken out by Israel, all of it preparing for the very successful 12-day war with Iran. Which was in June of 2025.

11:23We're going to take a break, and when we come back, we'll have more with Elliot Kaufman, the author of the new book, In the War Room, the inside story of Israel's fight against Hamas and the Iranian axis. Congress has talked about permitting reform for decades. Now it's time to actually do it and secure our affordable energy future. Pass permitting reform now. Paid for by the American Petroleum Institute.

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12:37Welcome back. I'm here with Elliot Kaufman, Wall Street Journal editorial board member and the author of a new book, In the War Room. Seems to me, politically, first talk about inside Israel. Seems to be that there is, despite the ferocious argument over tactics, when to strike, whom to strike first, how to do it. There was a general agreement that the adversaries had to be addressed and had to be attacked, that Iran was really the main source for all of its threats. That is, Iran supported Hezbollah, Iran supported Hamas, Iran supported the Houthis, and Iran was creating problems in Syria and that Israel had to attack the source.

13:23Is there any disagreement on that inside the cabinet? No, there wasn't. Because I think the overall sense in the war room, but also in the country, was we can't live this way any longer. That is, we can't have Hamas running a jihadist statelet right on our border. Hezbollah in control of Southern Lebanon and that threat looming over Israel, making the North of Israel uninhabitable, as we've said, and Iran controlling all the fronts at the same time. And so this wasn't always appreciated by US policy makers. I think what people don't know necessarily is that even right after October 7th, President Biden sent the leading American generals to Israel, to counsel Israel, do not launch a ground invasion of Gaza.

14:25And so they didn't want a big strike north in Lebanon, but they also didn't want a ground invasion of Gaza. Now, this wasn't a threat. This wasn't, you can't do it, but it was advice, do not do it. And it was stalling tactics. What was the logic of that? I mean, we've often said that if Mexico, say, sent a operatives into El Paso and killed 1 ,200 Americans, we would not be counseling restraint. We would be unleashing hell on Mexico. Why did the Biden administration think it was prudent to tell Israel not to respond to the massacre and the brutal massacre? We've seen so much of it on video, Eli, and I know you've looked at these things personally.

15:15They're terrible of innocent Israeli civilians. What's the logic behind Biden's calculus? So what Biden advocated instead of a ground invasion was airstrikes and special forces raids. And the logic was this, Israel, you are going to lose in Gaza, not only in the court of public opinion, which could be foreseen, but also on the ground. Because Hamas was dug in. Hamas had dug in for more than 15 years preparing this, setting up a death trap. And actually, Netanyahu took this threat very seriously, which is why Israel waited to invade Gaza until October 27th. That is three weeks after the October 7th attack, Israeli troops just sat there by the border waiting because Netanyahu was so fearful and had to be convinced that they weren't walking into a death trap right there in Gaza.

16:21Remember, the IDF didn't even have a plan for this kind of full invasion ready on the shelf. There was nothing there. So they had to adjust an old plan, update it for the current army. And then Netanyahu said, well, we should train our troops on the plan first, spend some time so it isn't a total disaster. And what he told President Biden, as we write in the war room is airstrikes, special forces raids. We've already done that four times in previous Gaza wars, and that's what led us here. So we have to do something more substantial. We have to go into the tunnels. We have to clear out the tunnels.

16:59We can't let the Hamas hide in mosques and schools and churches. We have to find a way to get them out. And that meant a land invasion, and it meant clearing out big chunks of Gaza in separate stages to clear out the terrorists and find them. And that has proceeded in stages. I remember the big showdown. You wrote about this at the time over whether or not the city of Rafa should be cleared. That's a major, had been a major Hamas stronghold in the south of Gaza. And the Biden administration, again, counsel don't do it. Most of the press in this country said it'll be a catastrophe. But Israel managed to clear that city pretty easily of civilians and limit civilian casualties and then move in with the troops.

17:51And that ended up being one of the biggest successes on the Gaza front. Because even though Hamas has not been destroyed and still rules over 50 % of the Strip and all the people in the Gaza Strip, it has lost its southern arm smuggling route. Rafa was the key for Hamas to be able to resupply as much as it wanted whenever it wanted. By Sinai and Egypt. It can't do that anymore. Right. All right. We are going to take another break. When we come back, we'll talk about who might win the Israeli elections that are coming up in October when we come back. Congress has talked about permitting reform for decades.

18:35Now it's time to actually do it and secure our affordable energy future. Pass permitting reform now. Paid for by the American Petroleum Institute.

18:48Don't forget, you can reach the latest episode of Potomac Watch anytime. Just ask your smart speaker. Play the Opinion Potomac Watch podcast. That is, play the Opinion Potomac Watch podcast. From the opinion pages of the Wall Street Journal, This is Potomac Watch. Welcome back. I'm Paul Gigo here on the Wall Street Journal Potomac Watch podcast. And I'm here with Elliot Kaufman, author of the new book, In the War Room. Now, I think the question, though, is if you're looking at the general perception of how Israel has conducted itself and its view, the view of Israel and the world and its diplomatic associations, it has really paid a price for the Gaza operation.

19:34even as well as it has been handled by historic analogy to other anti-terrorist operations in urban areas. Mosul, for example, in Iraq, or the U.S. in World War II. The casualties have been historically lighter. John Spencer of West Point has made this point very clearly. Nonetheless, Israel, there have been civilian casualties. There have been mistakes in bombing. And Israel has paid a real price for this diplomatically. Even in the U.S., elements, I mean, the Democratic Party is moving in a very hostile way against Israel. A big chunk of the party now is almost, I mean, it's very pro-Palestinian, but almost in many, in some way, pro-Hamas.

20:21I mean, they won't say that overtly, but they'll say, well, we understand why they did it. That's the argument they make. So they'd be put in a kind of moral equivalence between Israel and Hamas. And in the Republican Party. There's a wing now that is also anti-Israel. I guess the question is, in your view and in the war room, what's the Israeli view of that hostility, emerging hostility, and could it have been avoided? It is the greatest Israeli fear right now that the hostility is a sea change and that it could be permanent. Now, we don't know that. And so part of the difficult task here in the book is measuring up the military and strategic achievements against those diplomatic costs, which will last and which will prove ephemeral.

21:14It's really too soon to say right now. And yet, could it have been avoided? I think the length of the war contributed mightily to just how great these diplomatic costs are and just how great the suffering was in Gaza. And so something about that slow grinding pace of the war, constant pauses before deciding whether to carry on and continue further, none of that helped. And yet, if you look at the reaction right after October 7th. We like to remember it as the whole world was on Israel's side and then Israel sort of lost them by going too far at some point. And yet the entire pro Palestine movement, its leadership in the US celebrated on October 7th.

22:11And you have, for instance, the leading pro-Palestine activist group, Students for Justice in Palestine, its national organization on October 8th, sending out to all of its campus chapters, glory to our resistance. All of its resistance is legitimate, they said. You have the, you know, Democratic Socialists of America, now the rising force in the Democratic Party, sponsoring rallies for right after October 7th, along with pro-Hamas and communist groups. And so that hardline wing was there from the start. And I think it was able to succeed in the public discourse by systematically covering up Hamas, by not even mentioning it.

23:00And so speaking, for instance, as if this was a war of Israeli aggression, mentioning casualty figures without even bothering to include how many of the dead were Hamas terrorists, speaking as if there weren't massive Hamas bases discovered in and underneath hospitals. But all of that, all of that is true. On the other hand, that's a reality that Israel has to deal with. That's right. And it needs American support desperately. It doesn't need European support as much, but it wouldn't mind it. You know, in a place like the United Nations, the UK imposing sanctions on Israel for settlements, allegedly for settlements, but really it's sanctions on all of Israel in a de facto way.

23:46That doesn't help Israel. And yet we've got a peace process in place, so-called, in Gaza. President Trump has midwifed with his negotiators, and they're trying to get Hamas to disarm, but Hamas is not disarming. But we have to see where that goes. You know, that would be an enormous accomplishment if they would disarm, and you could get some new money and a new governance. But the truth is that since the early 2000s, when Israel left Gaza and then Hamas won the election, Hamas just kills anybody who dares to speak up and say, we need to pursue modus vivendi with Israel, or we need peace relations.

24:28So you can't be too optimistic about that. That's right. And I would say, whenever Israel has to fight a war in Gaza, for instance, it is going to lose in the court of public opinion, structurally, because Hamas is fighting from and underneath its own cities in order to get that kind of public reaction in the West. And Israel knows this, and it has to account for that. And so the mission, I think, is to fight in such a way that Israel doesn't have to constantly fight again every couple of years and pay this sort of devastating diplomatic price again. And when Israelis look at this front by front, they can say Hamas has been smashed.

25:24Its leadership killed. It's lost half of Gaza and its main arm smuggling route. Hezbollah smashed. Its arsenal is nothing like what it was. Greatly diminished. It has been kicked out of southern Lebanon in a meaningful way. Israel has a buffer. That directly led to Syria's Assad regime falling, which was the sort of crucial supply hub of the entire Iranian access. And Iran's nuclear program, while not fully solved, is now in rubble. And so there are massive security achievements here for Israel. Israelis are greatly relieved by this on all these fronts, and yet they see looming, looming pressure and now have to find a way out of it while at the same time making sure those security achievements do not slip away.

26:24What is going to happen in the Israeli elections here coming in October? Netanyahu's prime ministership is on the line. Could he be ousted as PM? He could be. He absolutely could be. And the likely victor, if you would have to bet, although I would say it still is not clear, would be Gadi Eisenkot, who was an observer in the war room for part of this war when he joined from the opposition and then left. And he was actually the earliest to suggest ending the war in Gaza. He was ready to do so even after that very first hostage deal in November of 2023. He thought Israel should not continue fighting in southern Gaza.

27:11Northern Gaza was sufficient so as to avoid many of those diplomatic costs. Now, this was also before any of the real successes in Lebanon, in Iran. So you would have had an entirely different strategic picture. But he has been able to say, with a great deal of justice, Netanyahu failed on October 7th, 2023. There's no question about that. The hostages, in the end, more than most people had thought were returned. But after how long? And you had more than 40 of them murdered in captivity. And so he has a real case to make on all these questions. It's going to be very close, but he's ahead at the moment.

27:58Netanyahu is? Gadi Eisenkott is. Eisenkott is, that coalition. One quick thing I can share, a funny story. Gadi Eisenkott's top aide, expected to be his chief of staff, actually bet me a beer in Tel Aviv that Israel would never invade Rafa. It would never do it. And if it did do it, it wouldn't matter anyway. So a nice tidbit there. I think you should order an expensive beer. You know, just thinking about this from a democratic point of view, when a nation is attacked, democracies will unite to protect itself. Often they'll pick a wartime leader who they have experience with. I think about Churchill, for example, in the UK in World War II, but also here Netanyahu.

28:46Okay. Okay. But then when the wars have wound down or at the current moment where we're in a respite here on the multi-front challenges to Israel, and they've really achieved significant gains, the voters can step back and say, okay, now let's look at what happened on October 7th and hold Netanyahu accountable for not deterring that terrible massacre, really the worst since the Holocaust, when you think about it. All right, Elliot Kaufman, thanks for being here. He is the author of In the War Room, a new book with his Israeli co-author, Yonah Jeremy Bob, called The Inside Story, Israel's Fight Against Hamas and the Iranian Axis.

29:30Thanks very much, Elliot. Thank you. All right. We're going to leave it there for today. And remember, we're here every day on Potomac Watch.