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Iran in the Crosshairs: Former Senior U.S. Iran Negotiator Robert Malley on Trump’s Threats to Bomb
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Sa. It. Foreign.
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I'm Jeremy Scahill from Drop site news dropsitenews.com it is Thursday, February 19th. This is a special drop site live stream because of the grave situation that is unfolding right now in the Middle east with the US Threatening to bomb Iran. In a moment, I'm going to be joined by a special guest, Robert Malley, who served under three US Presidential administrations as a top Middle east advisor. He was Also the lead US negotiator in the 2015 Iran nuclear deal under President Barack Obama. And right now, as we speak, there is an utterly massive buildup of US Military assets in the Middle East. The Islamic holy month of Ramadan has just kicked off. And of course, the threats that the US Is now making to potentially wage a war against Iran come not even a full year after the US and Israel launched a 12 day massive bombing campaign against Iran that killed more than 1,000 people. And as this is playing out, there is officially diplomacy taking place. Earlier in February, the US had indirect talks in the Sultanate of Oman with Iranian diplomats. And then they had another round of talks just days ago in Geneva, Switzerland. Both sides came out and officially sort of expressed something resembling cautious optimism. The Iranians have said that, and the US as well has said that the ball is now in Iran's court. And Iran has said that they're drafting some sort of a document to create a framework for discussions. At issue here is that the United States and Israel both have said that any deal is not just about the nuclear issue. Of course, Iran is saying that it has a right to have a civilian nuclear program. The Trump administration is demanding very aggressive terms about all of Iran's nuclear capacity, not just issues that would relate to potential nuclear weapons. But Trump and Netanyahu both have indicated that they want Iran to have a massive reduction in its conventional ballistic missile capacity. That is Iran's primary deterrent, its primary weapon. And the Iranians have said that that's not going to be on the table. Also, the US And Israel have said that they want Iran to end its support for regional armed resistance groups. Iran has said that that also is not going to be on the table. There's a lot of reporting indicating that right now Donald Trump is leaning in the direction of launching military strikes against Iran. I spoke to sources, some of whom have indicated that, you know, they see possibly 80 to 90% likelihood that strikes happen in the coming weeks. And it's important to remember that when the US and Israel did launch those 12 days of bombing last June, there were supposedly negotiations going on The Iranians understood that they were waiting for another round with the US in these negotiations and then bam, the United States and Israel started bombing. So, you know, we are on standby here to see what may happen. Is this another case where the Iranians believe that there is some kind of good faith process unfolding and then the United States is going to launch a stealth attack? We don't know at this point, but we're very, very honored to have a guest who can help us sift through a lot of this. That is Rob Malley. He is right now a senior fellow and lecturer at the Yale Jackson School of Global Affairs. He's also the author of a really important book that couldn't be more timely given what we're watching unfold in Gaz and in the West Bank. We'll talk about also this so called Board of Peace later. But the book that Rob co wrote with Hussein Aga is called Tomorrow is Yesterday. Life, Death and the Pursuit of Peace in Israel, Palestine. I've seen several of Rob's speeches about the book and some interviews. I really recommend that people pick that up. Rob is one of the sanest voices right now assessing American policy on a range of issues, both Iran and what's happening right now in Gaza and the occupied West Bank. Rob was a senior Middle east advisor in the Clinton administration. He was the lead nuclear negotiator in the Obama administration. That of course secured what was known as the jcpoa, the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action. That's the Iran nuclear deal that Trump then subsequently ripped up. And then most recently, in terms of his government service, he served in the Biden administration as a special envoy for Iran. He was also previously the CEO of the International Crisis Group. Rob Malley, thanks so much for being with us here.
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Thanks for having me.
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So Rob, I want to begin by what we're seeing right now by, you know, certainly this is the largest buildup and a larger buildup than there was last summer when the US and Israel launched those 12 days of intensive bombing. By some accounts, this is the biggest military buildup that the US has engaged in since the 2003 invasion and occupation of Iraq. Top Trump administration officials, allies of the administration, like, you know, Republican Senator Lindsey Graham have said you don't amass this kind of force just to flex muscle, that the, you know, the financial cost and other costs would be so great that it is basically the writing is on the wall that there's going to be at least some form of an attack, if not a massive blitzkrieg attack on Iran. What's your sense of where things stand right now.
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Yeah, Jeremy. So it's hard to disagree with what you just said. I mean, it is, I think, undeniably the largest mobilization of American forces since the 2003 war. And as you say, as others have said, it's hard to imagine mobilizing such a force simply as a matter of putting pressure on Iran. So maybe there's some negotiated outcome that the president imagines which would avert the possibility of war. I can't imagine that there's anything that's realistically in America's mind today, in the administration's mind today, that Iran would accept. So, barring something unforeseen, it's hard to see anything but a massive military campaign against Iran. Illegal, unlawful, unjustified, all of that goes without saying. My only caveat is this is a president who's shown that he can be quite unpredictable. I would not have predicted this if you'd asked me two years ago, a year ago. So who knows? He has this capacity to paint any situation as a stellar success on his part. So maybe he reaches a deal and he says it was thanks to this military mobilization. But at this point, I'm not particularly optimistic.
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You know, one of the things I've heard from sources in talking over the past month is that part of the strategy being discussed within the administration is that they're putting this ultimatum on the table. It's not necessarily playing out in public this way, but what I understand is that Trump's people are basically saying to the Iranians, we're not just going to deal with nuclear here. This has to involve ballistic missile capacity. It has to involve your support or alliances with armed resistance groups like Ansar Allah, the Houthis in Yemen, Hezbollah in Lebanon. You know, they continue to say Hamas and Islamic Jihad, though. You know, it's been basically, it's locked down. There isn't. And especially with the overthrow of Assad in Syria, there isn't really any, you know, strategic way for the Iranians to, you know, to be involved directly in Palestine right now. But be that as it may, the Iranians have said these are red lines and they're not going to accept this. So it seems like what's happening is that Trump is issuing an ultimatum. They know that there is almost zero chance the Iranians are going to take it, and then they're going to bomb them. I mean, that's. That's really what I'm hearing from inside sources.
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Again, you know, everything seems to be pointing in that direction. It is odd. I Mean, the Iranians are saying something else. They're saying that the Americans have agreed that this would only be about nuclear and that the issue there is, is it zero enrichment, or does Iran retain, at least in principle, the right to enrich? But it's a. It's a moving target with the Trump administration. President says one thing, his secretary of state says another thing, his vice president says a third. And the negotiators may be something saying something completely different. Now, this could be a matter of cacophony and the fact that the president changes his mind every day, or it could be, as you are suggesting, a kabuki game of sorts where the negotiators say one thing not always clear, you can't really pin them down. And meanwhile, this massive armada has been mobilized because the president, the US Wasn't in a position to strike two weeks ago, a week ago. Now they seem to be, or we're only days away from them having all the firepower they feel they need to protect themselves and to inflict maximum damage on Iran. So it's just so hard to read because of the indiscipline, whether it's deliberate or not, of this administration, clearly, even zero enrichment. I mean, I could think of creative ways of overcoming that problem. But if you add in ballistic missiles, if you add in the regional alliances and maybe even the domestic stance, because at some point, let's not forget this whole started when the president said help is on its way, when the Iranian regime was slaughtering its people during the recent unrest or demonstrations by the Iranians. So who knows what's on the table, who knows what's in his mind, and who knows what's going to unfold?
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You've sat across the table from Iranian negotiators and are deeply familiar with how they approach, well, how they approach the U.S. i mean, Trump is not a conventional character, to say the least. So, you know, the caveat here with whatever Rob is going to say is that, you know, and Rob just acknowledged it himself. We're not dealing with predictable characters here in the form of this president, but give us a sense, as best as you can understand it. I know you're not on the inside anymore, but what's your sense of how the Iranians are approaching this? Given the erratic nature of Trump, given what just happened in Venezuela, given the open sort of embrace of imperial American history in terms of this strand of Trumpism right now, where he's openly saying, I want to take down these governments, change these regimes, what's your sense of how the Iranians are approaching this situation,
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so I could try to approximate how they would have thought about it, absent some of what you just said. I think that in their mind they wanted to drag the talks up, but preserve their, their essential, their own red lines, which is the right to enrich, even if they're prepared to suspend it for some amount of time. Preservation of the other means of deterrence, you know, more transparency to allow the International Atomic Energy Organization Agency to come back into Iran, maybe even turn over or dilute. I assume they would have to do that, the 400kg of highly enriched uranium that, that they still have. So I, I assume that was their goal and they were trying to get as much as they could and to tell the, the President through, through Witkoff and, and, and Kushner, we're also open to business. You know, you want to invest in our oil sector, you want to get some money out of this. They thought that they had Trump's number. And if you read the way the Iranian negotiators speak or tweet or X, whatever it's called, they really try to mimic Trump's language. I think they thought at some point that they, they could deal with him. I think what's happened, what happened in the 12 day war, everything else that you mentioned, what happened in Venezuela, what may be happening in Cuba, I think it has sort of heightened their fear that all of this is just a ruse again, and it doesn't really matter what's put on the table. What matters is what's just sort of building up just on their, on their shore. So I don't know how they're approaching it now. I suspect they're hoping that maybe something can come out of this, that again, they could both entice him by this notion that they'll be making a lot more money through oil and other means, sort of what happened in some respects with Venezuela, while at the same time using this time to send the message to the Americans, if you attack, there's going to be a retaliation and it's going to be bloody and it's going to be long and it's going to be costly. I suspect that's their mindset now, and that the people in Tehran are preparing for war even as the negotiators are desperately trying to find some way to reach an acceptable deal.
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Can you talk about the way that Iran has responded over the past two plus years when it has been attacked by either Israel or in the case of the US Israeli bombing campaign last summer? Because Iran doesn't just launch A bunch of ballistic missiles and try to hit whatever they can hit. They're calibrating these strikes. There's back channel choreography that takes place with the United States and the Iranian very clearly have tried to not kill large numbers of Israeli civilians and have tried to not kill American military personnel while still giving the appearance of a robust response. And you know, some of what I think we saw in the 12 Day War was that the Iranians did show, albeit limited, a capacity to defeat Iron Dome and other, you know, defensive weapons systems that the US and Israel have in the region. And I think one of the, you know, concerns of US war planners is if they push the button to 11 and they, and they do this on a larger scale, there could actually be larger scale casualties at the hands of Iranian counterstrikes. But talk about that strategy of the Iranians up until now, which they're saying they're not going to do anymore. They're not going to choreograph any of this, but talk about why they've done it and what that looks like.
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Yeah, so I think that's largely right. Again, I'm not, I don't, I don't know the inside information. Some American sources tell me that in fact they, the Americans, Israelis were lucky by the, they didn't know how many of the missiles they'd be able to intercept. So the, the casualty number could have been much higher than it was is what I'm led to understand. I, I suspect you're also right that the Iranians did not want to cross a line that would have led to massive, massive, even more massive retaliation by the United States and Israel, which would have been the case if there had been a mass casualty event. So I think you're right. They do try to calibrate it. It's not always easy. This is not an exact science. A missile could be stopped or it could get through the target could be the one they intend or could be a different one. So it's always a risky endeavor. But broadly speaking, I do think what they were trying to do is send a message, we have firepower, we can respond, but within limits because they didn't want to invite the kind of sort of regime threatening retaliation that might have come about in this case. I mean, again, it's hard to say depending on if the US strikes what it is. If it's a strike that is massive but still doesn't destabilize the regime and doesn't give them the sense that this is pursuing a toppling of the regime strategy, they might respond more robustly than they have in the past, but still be aware of the fact that they don't want to cross a line which would be a point of no return. Now, if their interpretation is that the strikes are intended to destabilize the regime and perhaps even topple it, assuming that's possible, then I think we're in a different environment where any sense of constraint on the Iranian part would be far more limited. But again, one thing to bear in mind is the difference in military power. Of course, it's completely disproportionate. The escalatory dominance is clearly on the American side, and I think the Iranians know that. And for them, victory in this kind of confrontation could be simply living to fight another day, maintaining the regime, maintaining the political authority in place, and saying, we survived, you struck us. We're still here.
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Can you, can you, Rob, given, given all the work you've done on this issue, can, can you explain what, what is actually at the core of the nuclear issue? Like, what is the reality of, of this situation? Because when I go back and I look at U.S. national intelligence estimates, they've consistently agreed that. And you, you're the expert, so you correct me if I'm wrong, that basically since the end of 2003, that the Iranians, you know, basically had halted their nuclear weapons program. And, and, you know, Tulsi Gabbard, the Director of National Intelligence, got in trouble very early on in Trumpland this time because she basically stated what the current intelligence looked like. And yet there's always these pots and pans being banged about. The Iranians are going to get a nuclear bomb. And of course, a lot of this is driven by Netanyahu. But can you, even if it's maybe a little bit technical, can you walk us through what the actual issue is as you see it, given your background in negotiating that deal in 2015?
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Yeah. So, first of all, you're absolutely right. That's been the consistent position of US Intelligence since the. I forget, what year was they declining classified or they made public their finding that the military effort had ended 2003 in the wake of the Iraq War. Now, yeah, it does get a bit complicated. I do think, at least the last I've heard, as you say from Tulsi Gabbard, is that they have not changed that assessment. There's not an active military program. Now, we know that some efforts can be dual use. You can pursue one line of effort that could help you if you wanted to weaponize. And so it's not always easy to Say, but I don't think that that assessment has changed. I think at the heart of this, and a lot of this is, you know, we could try to understand the justification or the motivation for it. It is true that if you have, if you enrich uranium to 90%, which there are very few civilian civil justifications for it, Iran claims that there's has no limitation on how, how much you can enrich. If you enrich at 90%, then you have the capacity to use that enriched uranium. If you could also build the missile capacity to transport it, you could weaponize it. It could be used for, for, for, for a nuclear weapon. They have not enriched at that level. They're still at the highest, they've enriched other than in one episode which they claim was accidental, up to 60%. And so because again, there's no, really, there's no justification for civilian purpose given Iran's technology for that 60%. The suspicion is they were hedging, they were trying to create the kind of infrastructure so that if they made the decision to seek a bomb, they could do it within six months, a year, year and a half. The assessments vary. And secondly, and I think this is self evident, they were using it as bargaining chip. You know, the sanctions have been, have increased, their enrichment capacity has increased and they're telling the Americans, you want one to reduce, the other is going to have to be reduced. Now this becomes a vicious cycle and it just obviously exacerbates the, the fears of both sides. So, you know, that's been Iran's position. They still have maintained that there's this religious fatwa against acquiring a nuclear weapon. More than that, there is the intelligence, U.S. intelligence assessments. But they do have this latent capacity that if they wanted to, they could, they could try to dash for a bomb. You know, before the 12 Day War, I think the assessments were that it would take them about six months to a year, maybe six months and nine months to get to that point. I'm not sure that's changed all that much. But you know, I think at this point both the Israelis and Americans would know if Iran had made that decision. Clearly, Israel has penetrated Iran's services to the point where it would be very hard for Iran to hide that. So I don't think there's any fear now that they're about to dash to a bomb. But you mentioned Israel. They would like to make sure that Iran is never in that position. It's, it doesn't have any missile capacity, doesn't have any nuclear capacity, and that it can treat Iran, the way it's treated other countries in the region as countries that it can strike at will.
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You know, I understand that Trump has been telling people for some time, and I base this on talking to people with some degree of access to internal deliberations right now, that he is sort of obsessed with the idea that he wants to go down in history as the president that takes down the Islamic revolution in Iran. And, you know, there is a lot of pushing for that within his administration and also, you know, from the Israelis. And, you know, that, that seems to be one of the drivers here. And the way it was put to me yesterday was if the, if he gets the Iranians to capitulate, particularly on the issue of the ballistic missiles, he doesn't need to actually bomb them because they won't, they'll cease to be an actual country anymore that can defend themselves, and it will weaken them tremendously. Nonetheless, that, that's highly unlikely for the Iranians to do talk about that dynamic because we're, we're seeing this is a very different tone than Trump won in Trump's first administration. You know, he, he was, you know, characterizing John Bolton as a fanatical lunatic on, on the issue of Iran. You know, and Bolton is a well known neocon, and there was a lot of consternation over the decision of whether to kill Qasem Soleimani at the Baghdad airport. And Trump ultimately did authorize that. But now it's like, you know, Dulles has risen from his grave in the early days of the CIA and injected into his blood into Trump's body because Trump's talking openly like an imperialist.
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So first, I want to sort of add something to the last question you asked. You know, part of what I do, whether it's in whatever profession I am, I try to put myself in other people's shoes. Whether they're comfortable or not. I put myself in the Iranian leadership's shoes. You know, they, I think in their dream, if they could get a nuclear weapon tomorrow, they probably would. They've seen what happened to Iraq, no nuclear weapon. They get invaded. They see what happened to Libya, they gave up the nuclear program, they get invaded. They look at North Korea, nuclear weapon, no invasion. So I think from their perspective, if they could sort of snap their fingers and get a bomb, they would. I think the Supreme Leader and others have been aware of the fact that, that the moment of maximum danger is between the time you decide to get a bomb and the time you get it, because that's when you invite military action from Israel or the United States. So I get it that that's why they have not, they're not prepared to completely give it up. But at this point, again, just concluding the last question, I don't think they've made that decision precisely because of the danger that it invites. Now to what you say now, again, it's sort of Trump psychoanalysis, which is very difficult for me to do. Yes. He not only it's not just different from Trump won, it's different from how he campaigned. It's different from what he has said at the beginning of this administration. It's at the beginning of this administration that he continued to go after Bolton. He continues to say the Iraq war, the stupidest thing that the US has done may not have been his view right at the time, but it's quickly became it. And so he does seem to be allergic to long term military campaigns. The military successes that he likes to point to are the killing of assassination of Qasem Soleimani, the strike against Fordo nuclear site in Iran and the operation in Venezuela. Those were quick. You strike, he claims success. He loves that. That plays to his ego. It plays to his sense that he does what others can't do and doesn't entail too many risks. In this case, if it is the kind of operation that this kind of military mobilization signals, it's not a one and done. It's not we're going to strike and then we're out of there. It's a long term campaign. And that does seem to be different from the kind of predatory, you know, he has transactional diplomacy, he almost has transactional military strikes. I'm just going to do something, get something out of it and claim historic success and then move on. I don't know how he does it in this case. And that is some, that's sort of head scratching because I had assumed, yes, he might try to kill the Supreme Leader, he might try to kill elements of the leadership and maybe that's still what's in his mind and you need a lot of firepower to do that. But this is a mobilization that suggests a more long term campaign with a risk of Iranian retaliation. That's different. Now maybe he's just been emboldened by some of what he views as his successes and he now thinks he will go down in history as the man who got rid of an anti American regime in Venezuela, an anti American regime in Tehran and maybe an anti American regime in Havana. That could be at this point that he just sees a list of trophies and that's just one more that he wants. And he thinks that he'll be a historic figure if he realizes it. And I'm sure there are people around him who are telling him this regime is brittle. Look at the protests. Clearly it is deeply, deeply, deeply unpopular. There's no doubt about it. You could give the push that will make it collapse or at least change to the degree that it will no longer be anti American and will be open for, for our business.
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You know, I spoke yesterday to Yasmin Al Gamal, who was a planner in the Pentagon on, you know, primarily on Syria and Lebanon policy under President Obama. And, you know, I also spoke to Daniel Davis, who very nearly was named to the Trump administration. He was going to be the chief officer in charge of preparing the presidential daily briefing. And his Tulsi Gabbard withdrew him from consideration because of protests not only from US Lawmakers, but also pro Israel groups that were upset that he had criticized Israel, spoken out against the Gaza war, and also had come out against future military action on Iran. So his nomination was pulled. And they were saying that, you know, in the case of Daniel Davis, he's been talking to people who are on the inside and he's saying that, you know, the handful of sane people that he feels are in this administration still are in anguish and feel like if they say anything that descents from the party line that they're going to get canned from the administration. You could also say, well, then they should do it on principle. But that's a different discussion. But he's saying that he's hearing that and that also that there's like he's hearing delusional talk that they're talking about, you know, a Libya scenario where, you know, the US Uses massive air power and then they have people on the ground that are going to rise up. What Yasmin Al Gamal is saying is, you know, that there is no people on the ground to rise up in that capacity. And if you compare it, for instance, to Syria, you had a civil war with multiple armed actors, some of which received substantial military assistance from the CIA and other countries in the region. And you had a huge diaspora, you know, sort of configuration, talking about what a post Assad Syria looks like in Iran, you don't have that. You have the wacky cult from the mek. You have Pahlavi, you know, the shah's son, who, you know, despite the fact that he gets promoted a lot in Western media, does not have a massive base of support. And there isn't that kind of ground element there. But I want to just read you something that Yasmin said, because she said that if she were in the Pentagon right now, the option that they would be looking at is something that is akin to the strategy in Venezuela. She didn't mean they're going to kidnap or try to kidnap the supreme leader or, you know, the president of Iran, but something else. And this is what she said. You skim off the minimum required at the top and you keep as much of it as possible in place, and then it becomes a pliant regime. It's exactly what's happened in Venezuela. If I were sitting at the Pentagon thinking, how do we do this and not risk a country of 90 million just being a failed state, essentially, I think what you, you would try to plan for is you'd look at what assets are we going to take out, what people in personnel are we going to take out, who are we going to keep, what intelligence assets, largely Israeli, are we going to activate in order to send the messages that we need to send to the remnants of the regime? And how are we going to turn this around quickly so we don't leave a vacuum open? So what she's essentially saying is also similar to what General Jay Garner said when the US went into Iraq in 2003. Don't try to do whole cloth de Ba' Athi vacation, Don't smash the society into a million pieces, lop off the top of the regime, try to make a deal with the next echelon down. If they don't do it, you kill them and you keep going until you get a deal. Now, Yasmina Gamal is not advocating that. What she was saying is this is the kind of discussion that would be taking place in the Pentagon. Curious what you think about that.
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Yeah. So I could imagine. Very, I can imagine that's the kind of thought that that's, that's crossing their minds. Absolutely. Again, if the goal is, I don't, frankly, and I know a lot of Iranians, probably, I mean, it's, it's maybe hard to hear, but probably are hoping for an American intervention. By the way, we heard this before the Iraq war. Some Iraqis were so fed up with a, you know, tyrannical regime and with the sanctions and the conditions on the ground that they thought nothing could be worse and they were hoping for an American intervention. We saw what happened.
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And now Saddam's popularity is higher than ever.
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So, so I could imagine. So listen, I'm, I don't know what the, what the, you know, I'm Not. I haven't been to Iran. I don't know. I can't really make an assessment of what the situation is. And again, I'm just saying I could imagine that the Iranians who, who believe that, I'm saying. But from an American perspective, the notion that this could work out the way you and Jasmine described does seem to be delusional. This is not like Venezuela. This is a. It's not. I mean, I don't even like the term regime, but whatever it is, is a system that has deep roots and it is not gonna. It doesn't. I can't imagine they would just give it up that way. But that could be the thought. And maybe they're hearing from Iranians. Yeah, this will work. But the last thing on the president's mind is sort of the democratic, open Iran. Again, there's some Iranians who may hope that an American intervention would lead to that. They need to be quickly to understand that's not at all the president's objective. So he could live precisely with the outcome. You just described what I said earlier, he wants a regime that is not going to be an American, which with, he can do business. And if that means, you know, just pick your figurehead, somebody who comes into power and agrees to do that, he won't have another thought for the people of Iran whose help he said he was, who he claimed he was going to try help to help. So, yeah, that could be one of the ideas that's in his mind. I suspect that he's not deeply sort of looking at the strategy and the tactics, but some, if somebody tells him by doing this, at a minimum, we're going to destabilize the regime and maybe we could get these other people to come up and who want to strike a deal with us, because what other option do they have? He may say, go for it.
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Yeah. And, you know, the Iranian perspective and what we understand from what the Iranians are saying on a military level, it's different than what the diplomats are saying. Although the foreign minister has repeated some of this. The Iranians are saying that we are not going to hold back this time and that, you know, because of the assets, the naval assets that we have, our ability to wage asymmetric warfare against larger military ships, the fact that there is oil infrastructure in the region that is owned or operated by the US and its allies, that is quite vulnerable because you have so many military bases, because you have so many soldiers, we. We are going to have the ability to inflict damage to. Trump has not presided over a mass casualty incident of American personnel before. We don't know how he would respond if that happens. You know, Fawad Izadi, an Iranian professor who is close to the Iranian government, told me recently that he's heard discussion of a target of trying to kill 500American soldiers in the event of any kind of a large scale attack and says that the previous leadership of some military units that were more in the restraint camp in Iran are gone and that the replacements have a very different perspective on things. So we could see, Rob, even if the US does succeed in a massive blitzkrieg at the onset, they incapacitate a bunch of offensive capabilities. We could see the Iranians really hit hard in a way that blows the Americans away on a psychological level and that Trump hasn't had to deal with before.
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So it's possible again, I don't know. I assume that the Americans are trying to prepare for all of those. If it did happen, I assume that President Trump response would be, you know, even more maybe, maybe I'm wrong, but even more enraged and even more brutal than anything one could imagine. But I want to sort of make a point that I should have made from the outset. Yeah, we could think that it would have a catastrophic implications, maybe it even ends well. The point is it is illegal, it's unlawful, it's unjustified. I know, I think it's important to state that because we could, you know, if somebody, somebody could maybe even come up with a case of minimum American risk and maybe a good outcome and good outcome from an American point of view. But there's absolutely no justification for this. There's no threat today that Iran, imminent threat that Iran poses to the U.S. there's been no congressional debate, there's been no discussion. So I know that people want to jump right away to think of what the consequences would be, but one of the consequences would be a flagrant violation of international and domestic law for a purpose that, by the way, the Trump administration can't even articulate. Earlier conversation Is it about nuclear bombs? Is it about ballistic missiles? Is it about zero enrichment? Is about help is on its way. We don't know what it's about because it seems to be a military operation in search of a, of a cause.
- [35:51]
B
Rob, we only have a couple minutes left, but I do want to ask you about Trump convening this so called, you know, it's a spuriously named entity, the Board of Peace, and they're moving full, you know, speed ahead with the ceremonies. But the reality on the ground is that Israel is continuing to systematically violate the terms of the October agreement. They've killed more than 600 Palestinians since the agreement supposedly came into effect. The Israelis are saying that Trump told them that he's going to give Hamas 60 days for a total disarmament. Netanyahu the other day said that means all AK47s leave Gaza. The Palestinian side, the negotiators, did not sign any disarmament agreement. They signed a very limited agreement on a ceasefire, exchange of captives and the resumption of life essentials into the Strip and then the first phases of Israeli withdrawal. But Trump's moving full steam ahead with his so called peace board. They have a Palestinian committee that has not been allowed to even enter Gaza yet that is supposedly going to be in charge of governance, taking over from Hamas's governing authority. How do you see what we're looking at right now? Because it seems like the Israelis are intent on ensuring that at least the entire west of Gaza never become a livable space as long as there isn't full blown capitulation of the Palestinian liberation cause, not just Hamas disarmament.
- [37:19]
A
Yeah. And first of all, I'm grateful that we're having this conversation now because I was watching the Board of Peace and everything that was going with it and all of the praise for President Trump and his vision, and I'm very glad that I could turn that off to turn to you, because it was really indigestible. Yeah. And by the way, I would point out, you know, for all the participants in that Board of Peace and some of whom are leaders who believe actually in peace, to sit there with President Trump, having to listen to him, knowing that a war may be being waged against Iran any day now, that must not be too easy for them. But, you know, they chose to be there. But turning to Gaza, I think, you know, you're right, this is the goal here, is certainly not to, you know, get gathered to be normal and for the Palestinians to be able to live a normal political life in which they can struggle and they could seek the achievement of their rights at mo at best. This is going to be a form of, you know, continued, continued occupation in one form or another. And, you know, people have spoken about the, the gazification of the West Bank. There's also west ific, West Bankification of Gaza in the sense that Gaza will be run by some kind of technocratic government that will have very limited powers and Israel will find, will be able to enter at will to be able to take care of any security problem, real or imaginary. Imminent or long term. So, you know, it's hard to know how even this situation will evolve. Even in the best case, it's a bad case for the Palestinians for all the reasons that you laid out. But I would say, you know, sometimes you listen to American officials and they seem to say, well, we understand that Hamas won't disarm, at least not right away. They could keep their personal weapons. Then they say something different. So who knows what they have in mind. Certainly from Israel's perspective, they could always hold that out and say, well, you promised full disarmament. We didn't get it. So we're not going to move our troops and we're not going to lift, you know, we're not going to improve the conditions of those, the vast, vast, vast majority of Palestinians who are still living on the, on the western side of the Strip. So, you know, Hussein and I had said this when, when the so called ceasefire deal had been reached, that for Palestinians, this is going to be a transition at best from utter hell to mere nightmare. Now, I take a nightmare over hell and I'm not sitting here. It's easy for me to be as critical as you and I can be about this so called ceasefire and the Trump plan. Now, Palestinians in Gaza at least are not suffering the very, very worst of the slaughter that they were suffering a few months ago. So, you know, we have to acknowledge that. And I can understand that for some Gazans, this, they'll take this. But in terms of what this effort represents, longer term, whether it gets fully implemented or not, and it won't get fully implemented. It is a vision of the Palestinian question that is reduced to humanitarian cause. Right? How many trucks are going to get in? How many trucks are not going to get in? Can they move? Can they not move? Devoid of all politics and devoid of any means of politics. And that's where, you know, when you look at some of the plans that Jared Kushner described for South Rafah, whatever the area where they're going to try to rebuild, it will be completely under the surveillance of the Israelis and probably of the Americans. And so there would be no possibility of any form of organization. And that is a. So it's a deeply depoliticized view of the Palestinians, which, you know, Palestinians find very hard to accept. And because they'll find it very hard to accept, Israel will seize that as justification to continue its campaign.
- [40:58]
B
Rob Malley is a senior fellow and lecturer at the Yale Jackson School of Global affairs. Longtime top U.S. diplomat on the Middle East. Served under three presidents, most recently, he was President Joe Biden's special envoy to Iran. Before that, under President Obama, Rob was the lead negotiator in the Iran nuclear deal that Donald Trump then ripped up when he took office. And again, just to plug Rob's book, the timing of it is really, really important. It's called Tomorrow Is Yesterday, Life, Death and the Pursuit of Peace in Israel, Palestine. He wrote that book with Hussein Aga. Rob Malley, thanks so much for joining us.
- [41:38]
A
Thank you, Jeremy. I'll just specify I was a lead negotiator. I won't take that away from Secretary Kerry and Wendy Sherman. But thank you anyway. And it really was pleasure talking to you.
- [41:49]
B
All right, thanks so much, Rob. And that does it for this special live stream. Make sure to continue checking back@dropsitenews.com for more news. And I'll just plug once again our feed on the social media site X. I know some people have controversial opinions about X, but we have a phenomenal team of people that basically are running a 24.7newswire. And we also try to summarize everything from the day in our daily news update that you can subscribe to for free@dropsitenews.com on behalf of the whole team at Dropsite, I want to thank you very much for all of your support. If you can afford it, become a paid subscriber. We don't pay wall anything, but we do ask people who have a little bit of extra change to pitch in. It's the main way that we fund our journalism. I'm Jeremy Scahill. Thanks so much for being with.
- [42:43]
A
Sam sa.