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Trump’s Plan to Remake the Middle East | Kamran Bokhari
01:03:43
In of Hidden Forces, Demetri Kofinas speaks with geopolitical analyst and forecaster Kamran Bokhari about Trump’s 20-point Gaza peace plan and the new security order taking shape in the Middle East. Kamran first appeared on Hidden Forces in the...
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A
What's up everybody? My name is Demeter Kofinas and you're listening to Hidden Forces, a podcast that inspires investors, entrepreneurs and everyday citizens to challenge consensus narratives and learn how to think critically about the systems of power shaping our world. My guest on this episode of Hidden Forces is geopolitical analyst and forecaster Kamran Bahari. Kamran is the Senior Director at the New Lines Institute for Strategy and Policy and has served at the U.S. state Department and is the senior consultant with the World Bank. He first came on this podcast in the days after the October 7th attacks to help us understand the wider war taking place between the U.S. israel and Iran at a time when few were talking about it, and how Hamas's attacks.
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Could serve as a catalyst for the.
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Remaking of the modern Middle East. In his subsequent appearances, he has provided us with important context for understanding US Israeli and Iranian strategic aims and limitations and the interests and constraints of other states in the region, including Saudi Arabia, Syria and Turkey. For all intents and purposes, Israel has won its war against the Islamic Republic of Iran, having decimated both its conventional and unconventional forces and revealed it to its proxies, affiliates and supporters in the region and even to its own people as a weak and tottering power. With the initiation of the Trump administration's recently announced 20 point peace plan and the cessation of hostilities in the Gaza Strip, we may be seeing the beginning of a new security order taking shape in the Middle east, one that relies more on regional stakeholders, allowing the United States to reduce its direct exposure and the commitment of US Forces while still maintaining influence over the region's politics. Kamara and I spend the first hour of our conversation today recapping the Middle East's transformation over the last two years. We revisit Israel's systematic campaign against Hezbollah's leadership, the subsequent collapse of the Assad regime, and the consequences of US Strategic strikes on Iran's nuclear facilities. We also discussed the diplomatic fallout of Israel's most recent attacks in Qatar, Prime Minister Netanyahu's subsequent apology call from the White House, and Washington's push for an international stabilization force in Gaza led by regional stakeholders. The second hour turns to what a new regional security architecture could look like, and how US Strategy is shifting from direct management to burden sharing among regional.
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Powers like Turkey, Saudi Arabia and Israel.
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We then explore the practical consequences of this new security arrangement for Gaza, including a discussion about an Arab Muslim stabilization force, governance over Palestinian territories and a long reconstruction financed by Gulf international donors, while level setting expectations for the constitution of an independent Palestinian political entity over the next decade, we assess which country most stands to gain from Iran's retreat and the decimation of its proxies, and close with a frank discussion about America's polarized media ecosystem and the strong anti Israeli and antisemitic sentiments being expressed on both the American left and right. If you want access to all of this conversation, go to HiddenForces IO, subscribe and join our Premium feed, which you can listen to on your mobile device using your favorite podcast app. Just like you're listening to this episode right now. If you want to join in on the conversation and become a member of the Hidden Forces Genius community, which includes Q and A calls with guests, discounted.
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Access to third party research and analysis, and in person events like our intimate.
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Dinners and weekend retreats. You can also do that on our.
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Subscriber page and if you still have.
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Questions, feel free to send an email to infoiddenforcesio and I or someone from our team will get right back to you. And with that, please enjoy this timely and important conversation with my guest, Kamran Behari.
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B
Kamran Behary, welcome back to Hidden Forces.
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C
Thanks so much, Demetri. It's great to be back. It's always a pleasure to be with you on the show.
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B
It's great having you on, Kamran. We do these conversations every so often. We stay in touch all the time. You and I text now. We've become, I'd say we've become friends over the years and so the WhatsApp channel is always open. I always hit you up when I have questions, especially as they relate to the Middle East. But not only to the Middle East. But most of today's conversation is going to have to do with the Middle east, prompted by the recent initiated peace discussions between Israel and the Arab neighbors and part of this coalition to try to stabilize the situation in Gaza and maybe developing new security order in the Middle East. You were first on this podcast two years ago. In fact, it was, I believe it was October 13th that we recorded an episode less than a week after the October 7th attacks, and we released it immediately. So it was about a week after the attacks that we released the episode and everyone was understandably at that time focused on the attacks in Israel by Hamas and expected Israeli apprisals and countermeasures. And so the focus was really the Israeli Palestinian conflict, which has been going on for decades, as you know. But you told a very different story in that episode, one that began and ended with Iran. This is a narrative arc that we followed through multiple subsequent appearances of yours on the podcast as Israel has relentlessly prosecuted its war against Iran, its proxies and its affiliates across the Middle east and inside Iran's own borders. Before we get into today's conversation about the ongoing peace negotiations and this very important, I think, larger frame of a potential new security order in the Middle east and what that means for US Policy in the region, how it fits into the Trump doctrine of becoming more of an offshore balancer than actually being directly involved, whether it's the NATO theater, whether it's Asia, whether it's the Middle East. I'd love to do a recap of the key points or key moments in this conflict and how the region has been transformed over the last two years. Maybe the best opening question to ask you is, can you just remind us, because even I, we were talking about this earlier. Even I have forgotten just how much things have changed in the last year. Where did things stand in the Middle east, specifically with respect to Israel's place in it on October 6th?
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C
Great starting point, Demetri. And look, it simply put, the Middle east on October 6th was a very different region than what it is today, than what it became over the course of the past two years. What we had was the big event or the main event or the main driver at the time were the negotiations between Saudi Arabia and Israel. Both Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu gave media interviews, I would say, like a couple of weeks before the attacks on October 7, saying that we're very close to reaching an agreement, a normalization agreement in keeping with the framework that The Trump administration 1.0 had laid out in the form of the Abraham Accords. It was one thing for the United Arab Emirates, Bahrain, Morocco and Sudan to join the Abraham Accords, but the real prize was getting Saudi Arabia to do that. And we were moving towards that. And there was this idea that I think the stumbling block was, and if I'm paraphrasing the crown prince accurately, is that he said he needed something for the Palestinians from the Israeli prime minister. And then that was sort of the level of conversation that was sort of where the discussion was. Obviously, everything got torpedoed with the attacks. And as I said at the time when I first came on your show two years ago, you know, this was done purposefully by Hamas, because if it didn't, then it would become strategically, you know, inert, if you will, for a lack of better term. Likewise, the entire agenda of Iran for the region would have been hit by a big blow so it was imperative that they, from their point of view, that they derailed this process and they successfully did. So. What came from that is, obviously, this was the largest, if you will, assault, terrorist assault on Israel in history. 250 people abducted, some 1,200 dead. I mean, the scale and the size of the attack and the MO used was nothing like what we've seen before. So Israel responded in a very, very aggressive manner. And so you have that. And I would say by the time 2023 ended, the story had kind of started to shift to, okay, Hamas did the attack, but then you have thousands of Palestinians getting killed. And that created an international uproar, or began to create an international uproar. And as months rolled on, as 2024 moved along, we had that death toll increase. And this was huge pressure on the then Biden administration to try and get a ceasefire. There was some ceasefire, and I don't recall the exact dates, I would say somewhere in March, roughly, there was a temporary ceasefire in exchange for release of some of the hostages. And then that ceasefire broke down. And by the time, if you will, spring rolled on, actually moved beyond spring into the summer, the war had become much more wider. And what's interesting is that the media and everybody else who was talking about it kept saying, hey, something needs to be done about this conflict in Gaza because it threatens to spill into a regional war. People were saying that, not realizing that we had a regional war going on. By April, Israel had struck the Iranian Embassy in Damascus, where, you know, several top Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps commanders, regional commanders for Syria and the Levant, were having a meeting and they were killed. And so that then prompted the first ever direct missile drone barrage on the part of Iran against Israel. That was the first time Iran directly assaulted and that we entered a new paradigm. The whole idea of the proxies that Iran would act by proxy and not get itself directly involved militarily in a conventional kinetic sense that we left that world behind. And so you see then this escalation. Now, meanwhile, Israel also saw that, you know, there is a coordinated attempt on the part of Iran. So October 7, you have the Hamas attack. October 8, you have Hezbollah begin to fire missiles on northern Israel. And it led to several thousand tens of thousands of people depopulating the northern areas in Israel. And that was an unacceptable military situation for Israel. So Israel had to go after Hezbollah while it was still going after Hamas. So the war was already widening. And then within a few weeks, I'm going to guess, I'm going to say by November early November of 2023, you had the Houthis start to strike or interdict international shipping in the Red Sea in response or in solidarity with Hamas and the Palestinian people. So you have a multi front war picking up and then you have Israel and the IDF conducting strikes in Syria. And if I'm not wrong, and if I recall correctly, there were a few strikes in Iraq as well on pro Iranian Shiite militias there. But we saw that now the war became direct. And I think, if I recall correctly, by the summer, we had a situation where Israel had penetrated the entire network of the top leadership of Hezbollah. We had the pager, walkie, talkie attacks, and that really rattled Hezbollah. And then there were successive waves of airstrikes on senior, multiple levels of senior military and political leadership. By the fall, the top leader of Hezbollah, Hassan Nasrallah, who'd led the group since the 90s, he was killed in an Israeli airstrike along with others, his successor as well. And so this war is expanding. And then of course, Iran sends another barrage of, you know, round two of that airstrike or the missile and drone barrage against Israel. When Hezbollah was falling, I mean, I remember writing something, I say, maybe in May or June, I wrote a piece saying that if Hezbollah is weakening, and it was becoming clear that they were on the defensive now, they were no longer on the offensive. Then I said that, well, this has implications for the Assad regime. And I predicted, I think it was again May or June, I wrote in a piece that, hey, look, if Hezbollah is forced to look inward, it cannot support the Assad regime. And what will happen is the rebels, you know, the Sunni rebels against the Syrian regime who are ensconced in the northwestern province of Idlib, backed by Turkey, would begin to move against the regime. Because they're looking at this as a historic opportunity. And lo and behold, that's exactly what happened after Nasrallah's death. And by December, you know, I would say 9th or 8th of December, you literally saw the collapse of the Assad regime. And of course, you know, there were retaliatory strikes by Israel, limited on Iran in late 2024. But the Assad regime falling was a complete game changer. Iran's influence in the Levant had collapsed and Turkey was filling the vacuum. And that brought Turkey and Israel at loggerheads over the future of Syria. Fast forward to June of this year. You had the direct war between Israel And Iran, the 12 day war in early June, during which there was one particular operation in which the United States took out the Fordeaux and Natanz facilities, the nuclear facilities with strategic bombers. And so what you now have to sum it all up is Iran's influence is gone. It's limited now to the, you know, it's on the defensive even in Iraq with its, you know, Shiite proxies, both political parties and the government and militias. And to the Houthis. And the Houthis suffered as well, although their capabilities have not been significantly degraded, at least that's what the evidence suggests. But Turkey is now playing a big role. In the meantime, Saudi Arabia has come to the fore and we, we saw the recognition of the government led by Ahmad Al Shara, who's the new president of Syria and formerly head of the Syrian branch of Al Qaeda. We had the President go to Saudi Arabia, meet with the Crown Prince, meet with the Turkish leader, meet with the Qatri Amir and uae, and during which he also met with the Syrian leader as well. So we're now seeing the makings of a new architecture. But the war wasn't ending. Gaza was still in a battle space. And that was the struggle of how do you secure the hostages and at the same time bring an end to the war? Because that's the imperative of the president. And then finally, in just the last few weeks, we had that. And in between we also had the unprecedented, I would call one off airstrike by Israel on Qatar where they tried to target the political leadership of Hamas. So it's been a tumultuous two years and this region is, you know, there was no order to begin with. There's always been an imbalance of power in the region. But right now the Trump administration is trying to bring together as part of this 20 point plan for an architecture not just for Gaza, but also a balance of power mechanism. Because the US Imperative is to retrench and leave regional security and stability primary role to the regional stakeholders.
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B
Man, what a great synopsis. So I want to actually dig into some of the things you said there, some of which I'd totally forgotten about. I literally forgot that the United States bombed those two nuclear facilities. So I want to ask you.
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C
So much happened, man, you can't.
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B
I know, dude. So much, so much happened. So let's start at the end of what you said and kind of walk backwards. The attack on Qatar, was that an important moment that contributed to this recent push for peace? That, in other words, when the Israelis took the initiative to attack Hamas representatives or negotiators in another sovereign country in the Middle east, that that sort of led to a diplomatic crisis. And Washington ended up pushing Israel and Netanyahu to come to the table and begin to work towards some kind of resolution.
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C
I would say so. I would say that. That one can argue that the Netanyahu government overplayed its hand. A, it was not successful in taking out the political leadership. B, it created an extremely difficult situation for the United States, where Israel is an ally, and so is Qatar. The regional headquarters of U.S. central Command, the Combatant Command for the Middle east and south and Central Asia is in Qatar at Al Uday Air Base. And so this was a really tight or, if you will, awkward situation for the United States. But I think what the White House did was turn this sort of moment of crisis into an opportunity. It provided the President with the leverage to press the Netanyahu government that, hey, look, this has to end and it can't continue, and we need you to agree to a settlement, if you will. The question was, okay, will the hostages be returned? And then, of course, if you're Qatar, you just can't go back to the table, back to the mediation after the attack. So what was necessary was some sort of a concession from Israel. And we saw that in the form of the phone call that the Israeli prime minister made from the White House sitting next to the president. And there were photographs of the President holding the phone while the Prime Minister of Israel was reading from a paper. And he was on the phone and, you know, offering his apology to the Qatari leadership, the Emir of Qatar, Sheikh Tamim. And so the Qataris, you know, got part of what they wanted, but it was insufficient. So their point of view is, we don't need just an apology. We need a bit more. And that bit more, I think, really aligned with what the President of the United States wanted, which is an end to the conflict. Because after that, the big question was that, okay, for everybody is that, hey, if Qatar can be struck by Israel, so who's next? The Turks are wondering whether we're next. The Saudis are wondering. And mind you, the Saudis took that opportunity to roll out something that they had already been working on, which is the strategic mutual defense agreement with Pakistan, where an attack on one is an attack on both. And they each agreed to come to the aid in the event of an external aggression. So you see all these things happening, and from the President's point of view, this isn't getting dicey. Here I am trying to build, put out the fire in Gaza, bring an end to the war there. I'm trying to bring an end to the war in Ukraine not having much luck. Midterms are coming, my polls are sliding, this can't continue. And so I think that attack on Qatar provided the President with the leverage to basically force Netanyahu's hand and say, you've come as far as you could. After this, I had to speculate. The conversation was as follows, that look, you've defeated Hamas, you've defeated Hezbollah, the Assad regime is gone, Iran has been weakened, its nuclear program has been set back. You've achieved a lot. You know, you reached the peak and now you're in danger of basically weakening your position. And the first mistake is the attack on Qatar. So stop it right here. And it will become very difficult because if you notice in the United States, it's not just the, the support base of the Democrats or the people on the left and the far left who are screaming out against, you know, what's been happening in Gaza. You also have a split within the Republican Party, particularly the MAGA base, where people are questioning this support for Israel. So the President is under pressure. You know, this is becoming intolerable. This isn't something like a war at a distance. This is affecting the United States, particularly the President. So he has to step in. And I think what he did is he skillfully maneuvered and basically got his negotiators, Steve Witkoff and his son in law, Jared Kushner, to on one hand deal with Hamas and on the other hand focus on the. I think he personally focused on dealing with the Israeli Prime Minister. So that's where we, I think he brought up this thing. But it wasn't just, it isn't a bilateral or a three way thing because you had seven or eight Arab Muslim countries also involved. The Turks and the Saudis are the big stakeholders. But you also saw six other countries come together before he announced the 20 point plan. And those include countries as far out as Azerbaijan, Pakistan and Indonesia, which now, according to the reports, are going to be the ones contributing the most forces to this international stabilization Force that's going to provide for security as the IDF begins to withdraw from large parts of Gaza and as Hamas stands down. In fact, it will be the job of this task force to make sure there's DDR, disarmament, demobilization and reintegration of those fighters to the extent that it is possible. In other words, disarming Hamas is also a responsibility for the international stabilization force.
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B
All right, so I just want to highlight something you said about the anti Jewish, anti Israel and in some corners anti Semitic sentiment that has percolated in American society, not just on the American left, but on the American right. I think that's something that's worth exploring at some point in this conversation, if we have time. I still want to get to a few things you said in your opening summation. Let's just talk about the attacks on the nuclear facilities real quick. At the time that this happened, I feel like the immediate consensus was that this was really just for show. There wasn't much that the United States could do by just bombing those facilities to prevent progress on nuclear development within Iran. At this point, is that narrative still true? What do we know about how effective those attacks were in setting back Iran's nuclear program? And where do things stand? Because I haven't heard much talk at all about Iranian nuclear ambitions since then.
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C
So you've raised a really good question, because we have to talk about Iran. We have to talk about how Iran has been affected both in terms of its ability to project power and influence in the region, but also in terms of the domestic situation with this regime. But let's begin with its sort of nuclear capabilities. I would say by all accounts, it does seem that the nuclear program between the Israeli strikes, now mind you, that initially the Israelis struck at Israeli at air defenses. It did not target the nuclear facilities in the initial days of the assault, but it targeted senior leadership, IRGC largely and took out probably in the first 24 to 36 hours. It took out most of the key figures of the irgc.
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B
Aggressive bombing, including bombing apartment buildings within Tehran.
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C
Exactly. Precision bombing. That really took out. They had really, really slick intelligence. And so that was extraordinary intelligence capability that was demonstrated. They also took out nuclear scientists, but they didn't touch nuclear facilities. But that came much later. And I forget what date was. It was 12 days. I want to guess it was probably like the seventh or the eighth day when they actually began that. And that was coordinated with the United States in the sense that the Israelis didn't have the capability, the strategic bomber capability to take out the main facility in Fordo, which was hundreds of feet underneath a mountain. And so it required a capability, you know, the Massive Ordnance Penetrator munition and of course, strategic bombing capability that Israel did not have. So you saw, I think it was like seven B2s that flew from Missouri covertly and struck the three facilities, the Fordeau, the big one, Natanz, and then I think Isfahan as well. So we saw that. And I think what has happened is that the known facilities have been seriously degraded and destroyed. The question is, what do we not know about does Iran have some facilities that are not known facilities because they've been added for a long time and we can't assume at all that they don't have some other facilities that the world is not aware of. And so Israel has the best intelligence as it is demonstrated through this 12 day war and before. But you know, you could have excellent intelligence and still not have, and still not know the whole nuclear sector of Iran fully mapped out. It's not possible. And the United States intelligence isn't as good as the Israeli intelligence. So there's always this question, but this was an incredible move on the part of the president to use a very targeted precision bombing using the strategic bombers. Basically this administration showed that what was deemed as anathema, the unthinkable, is possible. And you go in, you do not get involved in a war. You go in, you strike, you come out and it's over with. So this was feared by successive administrations, even though they threatened going all the way back to the Bush administration, then Obama, and Even under Trump 1.0 that was being threatened. But we didn't see the administration at the time, the president, moving towards that sort of decision. And then of course, the Biden administration didn't want to do it either. So this was incredible. What it did is it had a psychological effect on the regime that even if you have facilities that are not known to the world, do you really want to take the chance and let's say you had a capability to do a test of some sort, a small test where you test a device and you basically join the North Korean club where you now have a bomb of sorts, a bomb making capability of sorts. You don't have a delivery system, but you have a bomb making capability. That's what a nuclear test does. If you do that, does that make you the target of another wave of attacks? Is it worth doing that? At a time when the regime is going through a very difficult transition at home, Its leadership, the people who are calling the shots, the irgc, has been severely degraded and the rise of the regular armed forces versus the irgc. So you're in an unprecedented undiscovered country. Do you really want to do that? I think that's the message that is going to stay with the Iranians because they can't assume that the worst is over, that now after this war, we're not going to be a target of future attacks. They can't assume that. And I think that's part of the holdup in the negotiations that have been taking place. Since the end of the war, you get hints in the media about, hey, there are talks taking place. And then you also get some evidence to say that they're not making progress. The President of the United States, speaking in the Israeli Parliament just a few days ago, said he wants to make a deal with Iran and he's working on it, but we don't really know that. But from the Iranian point of view, you now have a situation where the 12 day war, you had lost your proxies and the Proxy Network In 2024, in 2025, you had an assault on your own country. After all of that, I think that this has weakened Iran to where it now has no choice but to reach some form of an understanding settlement with the United States to reduce tensions and move away from further potential conflict.
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B
Man, this is so fascinating. One of the things that's fascinating is what's happened to Iran. So during the Obama administration, part of the Obama doctrine was summed up as don't do stupid stuff. I think actually Obama said that in an interview with Jeffrey Goldberg during the Atlantic or something like that. I think that's where it came out. Trump has not taken that approach. Trump has been much more of a gambler. And it seems that those gambles have largely worked out. And in the case of Iran, it seems, and tell me if you agree with this. It seems that one of the major important changes in the Middle east vis a vis the US And Israeli relationship to Iran is that Iran itself has altered its risk calculus. It has altered its conception of what it can continue to get away with and has become much more risk averse in the last two years. Is that an accurate statement?
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C
It is. And I would sort of take that even further. I would say that the Israeli military action and the strategic bombing of the nuclear facilities on the part of the United States, in addition to the loss of its regional proxy network, has really accelerated what was already going on inside Iran. I wrote a report for the New Lines Institute about evolutionary regime change in Iran, and this was published in April of 2024. That the theocracy is giving way to military rule. And the military rule also has a question mark because there are two militaries. So how does the IRGC and the regular armed forces, they get along? You and I have talked about this in detail in the past and. But I think that process has been accelerated. I think these losses have accelerated that. So, for example, it's something to actually examine in detail and no one person can do it is the decision of the Israelis to limit its targeting of military leadership to the IRGC and not the regular armed forces. It's almost as if they knew of this rift and they sort of weakened one side, enabling the other to come to the fore, taking advantage of a national crisis to come to the fore. So I think that that has reshaped Iran from the inside. So there have been so many things that we deemed unthinkable over the decades. As far as the Middle east, as chaotic as the Middle east has always been, there were certain things that were deemed unthinkable. Nobody thought Hezbollah would be neutralized. Nobody thought the Assad regime would fall, especially after it won the Civil War in 2016. And nobody thought that Iran would be attacked, its nuclear facilities would be decimated, its leadership would be decimated. And nobody thought that Hamas would have been militarily weakened. So many unthinkables have happened. I mean, even the Houthi behavior and the US and allied strikes on Yemen and the Israeli strikes on Yemen, that are, by the way, long distance for a small country, a small air force compared to the United States. So there are many unthinkables that have come to pass. And one of them is what is going to happen to Iran. Iran is now in a very difficult position where it needs to get to the other side of an internal transition that was happening regardless of the regional conflict and the war with Israel and the bombing of the nuclear facilities by the United States. So now that process has been further complicated. And from what I'm hearing is that there are efforts to front load the succession. In other words, you don't wait for the supreme leader to physically die and then move, you know, appoint a successor. They're trying to do it ahead of time because they're worried about unintended consequences and domestic unrest. I mean, you have to understand, the public is. Until Iran got attacked, the public always thought that they hated the regime. A good majority of the people hated the regime, but they always thought that this regime was powerful. What destroyed that perception was the way in which the Israelis came in and for 12 days literally had air superiority over Iran's skies and they were attacking at impunity with the other side not being able to do much other than sending in missiles and drones to strike at Israel that did not have that were qualitatively inferior in a military sense. So that really reshaped the calculus, or at least the public perception that, oh my God, this regime isn't that tough anymore, or some would say it was never, and we were under an illusion. And then there is Even amongst the support base of the regime, there are those who are now questioning this entire strategy, led by the irgc, of focusing so heavily on the region while keeping the political economy at home in dismal conditions. And people are now questioning why did we spend all this money only to get attacked? So this is a failure of strategy. It's an indictment of the leadership and the regime and its stakeholders are worried. Even the regular armed forces, who do not see eye to eye on many things with the IRGC and the clergy, they are also worried now that we've been left this mess to deal with, how do we shepherd this Islamic Republic to the other side, where we get to the other side in one piece and not have any further destabilization of the country.
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B
So is it fair to say that, first of all, I don't know if we can pick one strategic victory that the Israelis had, but is it fair to say that the strategic victory against Hezbollah, including the beeper and walkie talkie attacks, was the most significant in degrading Iranian power? And I have a follow up to that question, but would you answer yes to that question?
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C
Absolutely. Because for the longest time the worry of Israeli strategic planners was that if you go after Iran directly, Iran has a gun pointed to your head called Hezbollah. You have to neutralize Hezbollah before you go after Iran directly. And it was a question of Israeli capabilities in terms of how much capability do they have to wage war at that distance. And so the first order of business was get rid of Hezbollah. Hezbollah neutralized, then set off a chain reaction. Assad fell, and then the Israelis realized, now we have the ability to go in and take the war to the Iranian home front.
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B
So the follow up question is how much did the last two years, and in particular Israeli actions supported by the United States degrade Iranian power? And how much did they just expose that Iran was largely a paper tiger? Because I was thinking about this question before I asked it, and my initial impulse was to say it largely exposed Iran as a paper tiger. But then that really diminishes the significance of some of these strategic victories, like the victory against Hezbollah. So how would you answer that question? How much of this was just exposing that Iran really never was as powerful as we all thought. And that fake it till you make it sort of collapsed. And all of a sudden the alliance structure fell apart and all of that projected power, which was just built on false expectations, collapsed. And how much of it was actually real power projection capabilities were degraded, in some cases destroyed. And that's why Iran is in the condition it's in today.
- [38:13]
C
So look, what was the whole purpose? What was the rationale behind creating this large proxy network? The reality was that conventionally, Iran was a paper tiger. Iran did not have offensive conventional military capabilities. To project power, you need an air force. They did not have an air force. They were under sanctions. Nobody sold them weapons. They had some jets that they purchased from Russia, but it wasn't a whole lot. They developed ballistic and cruise missile capability, but they were never tested before this conflict. And nobody knew there. Even many of them were not very accurate. In other words, it's not conventionally. Yes, it was a paper tiger. And in order to sort of mask that reality, if you will, camouflage that reality and work around it, the Iranians built this proxy network that they would project power through militias in Iraq, through Hezbollah, through the Houthis, through Hamas, through the Assad regime, and through their own presence, you know, with advisors and a certain limited number of fighters. And, I mean, the whole civil war in Syria allowed the Iranians to essentially turn that country into a vassal state for the Islamic Republic. So in that sense, those were real capabilities, because if you can attack Israel, and We've seen the 2006 war between Israel and Hezbollah, it ended in a stalemate. And, you know, who gave Hezbollah all these capabilities? It was the Iranians, of course, you know, enabled by the Syrian regime. But you get my point, that these were real capabilities. Hamas's capabilities also, to a very large extent, came from Iran. The Houthis are at a distance, but they still can strike from time to time. And you don't want them to sort of enterprise to continue to develop these capabilities over time. And Houthis become another Hezbollah only at the intersection of the Arabian and Red Sea. And so there is that. And then you have this Shia dominated state in Iraq where you have literally an army of militias. So some people have called it thousands of Hezbollahs inside Iraq. So these capabilities were real, and they were threatening. They were not as threatening to the United States, they were threatening to Saudi Arabia, they were threatening to the uae, and most importantly, they were threatening to Israel. So those capabilities were real. Having eliminated those capabilities, then, what remained was the paper tiger. Do you see what I'm trying to say?
- [41:04]
B
Yeah, no, I do. And actually, the way I would describe it and thinking this through, because this doesn't just apply to Israel and Iran and the Middle East. I think it applies to the world writ large, especially as it pertains to the United States as having been the once global hegemon. And now, having entered a world that is more multipolar, it seems that risk tolerances in general have changed and in so doing, established new realities. Because Israel's risk tolerance changed after October 7, the Israeli leadership basically took the position that we're no longer willing to accept this threat. Living with this threat is something we're no longer willing to deal with. And so we're going to confront it head on and we're going to establish a new equilibrium. And I think that that is something that we have seen not just in the Middle east, we've seen it also in the case of Russia's decision to invade Ukraine. And I think we're going to continue to see it as we move from a previous global security order and equilibrium to a new one. I think that's part of the story. So following on that, and if we put aside for a moment the costs that the Israelis themselves have endured over the last two years, would they have been better off, in Your view, if October 7 had never happened and relations with Saudi Arabia had been normalized? If we continue to go along the path towards forming what Netanyahu called, I think, in September at the UN Was it where he said this, that he was on the verge of an historic peace and the Israelis and the Saudis did normalize relations, would the Israelis have been better off, or would the Islamic Republic, Hamas, Hezbollah, always have been a thorn in the side of regional stability and would have inevitably needed to have been dealt with? And so actually the Israelis are not just better off, but actually they did the rest of the countries in the Middle East a favor as well as a result of the October 7 attacks.
- [42:56]
C
That is an excellent question, and I think that the answer is a bit complicated. So let's play both scenarios out and let's say that October 7th never happened. So if you game that out and assuming everything else was remained constant, you would reach a deal with Saudi Arabia that would have potentially brought in other countries as well. So then you have allies as Israel, you know, you have Saudi, you would have had Pakistan. I know that the Azerbaijanis want to be, and I've written on this part of the Abraham Accords as well. The Kazakhs wanted to be part of the Abraham Accord. The Indonesians. There would have been some sort of normalization of relationship with Turkey, even though they have full diplomatic relations. But their relations have become hostile, at least since the late 2000s. And so this would have been one sort of, if you will, strategic atmosphere in the region. But does it address the problem that the actual military threats that Israel had. So Hamas would still be there. Okay, there's no war, they're there. There is still Hezbollah, The Iranians are intact. Assad regime is still there, the Houthis are there. And so this entire architecture is there. So I think that at some point it was inevitable.
- [44:30]
B
It would have been built on an unstable foundation. The foundation would not have been addressed.
- [44:35]
C
Exactly. So that's great having that Abraham Accord with Saudi Arabia and including other countries in it in the broader Muslim world. But it doesn't solve the immediate problem because Iran is still there. Mind you that I just said earlier that the collapse of the Assad regime is huge because it basically pushed out the Iranians from Syria and allowed the Turks to come in. Had this not happened, the Turks would have been at the margins of Syria along the northwest, which presents a new.
- [45:10]
B
Problem for the Israelis.
- [45:11]
C
It's a new problem for the Israelis. But we're talking about the old problem that now no longer exists. But in that timeline, had October 7th not happened, you would still, I would argue, would have had to deal with this at some point in time. Now let's talk about the current timeline, the real one. In the real one, you're done with it. But there's a cost that Israel has incurred. It has made the Abraham Accords far more difficult. I mean, the president himself acknowledged that when he went to Saudi Arabia and said, you know, I would love for you to join the Abraham Accords. In fact, he recently said it again, like last week.
- [45:49]
B
Can we just for a moment, can we just put some tangible boundaries around what we mean when we say the Abraham Accords? What would it mean to have been part of the Abraham Accords that is meaningfully different from what we're going to end up getting as a result of this current peace process?
- [46:01]
C
An excellent question. You read my mind. And I was going there. So let me finish my thought and get to that point. So it's an astute observation, Dimitri. So now going Back to Pre 10-7- Reality is not possible. In other words, Saudi Arabia, now that the war has ended, cannot just simply after a brief period of cooling off period, go back and talk to the Israelis and pick up the pieces where they left off on October 6th. So that's not happening because the death toll and devastation and displacement of Palestinians and just the sort of, the whole international mood has shifted. There's just no way that the Saudis can do that. And so that's the cost that Israel has incurred. So it is defeated. And I wrote a piece, I think it was in October, November, actually of 2023, called Israel's Pyrrhic Victory or some such title where I said that it will win the military, you know, conflict, but it would come at a high cost. I predicted it. And that's exactly what has happened, is that you have emerged as the preeminent military power capable of projecting force well beyond your borders, you being Israel. But what you've lost is, and this is something not, this is not my opinion. This is something that the President of the United States has articulated as well as most recently in an interview with the Daily Caller where he has said that Israel has won militarily, but it's lost the world. I'm paraphrasing here, but this is what the President said. So there is that cost of going down this route. Now, let me come to your other.
- [47:41]
B
Point, which, by the way, I genuinely question how meaningful that actually is. Like, I have been of the mind that while the outrage and the popular opinion and backlash against Israel has been very real, my limited time on this earth has taught me that that kind of stuff doesn't necessarily have lasting consequences, that tangible changes on the ground and dynamics of power are far more important.
- [48:07]
C
I agree with you generally, but I would also add that we've never seen this level of support for a Palestinian state from the West. So you have Canada, uk, France and Australia all saying that we, it's symbolic, but it's still something.
- [48:33]
B
Right. But that's not necessarily bad for Israel.
- [48:36]
C
Well, it depends who you talk to in Israel. Okay. It's a complicated thing. I think that what has happened is that we've seen that. And then of course, what matters for Israel is the, the mood in the United States. And as we discussed earlier, the mood on a bipartisan level has turned against Israel because of.
- [48:56]
B
Yeah, big time. Big time. And that's actually something I definitely want to explore in the second hour.
- [49:00]
C
You know, for those who follow, you know, the Tucker Carlson's of the world, the Marjorie Green Taylors, I mean, these are people you would not expect to be so critical of Israel. And obviously they are framing it from an America first point of view that, hey, what's in it for us? But you know, you add that to other viewpoints on the right, then you go to the left, you go to the far left, and you add all of that up, you aggregate it so there is a sizable population. And in fact, I think there are some polls out there that say well above 60% of people have an unfavorable view of what Israel did in Gaza that is a cost. And this is something that many Israelis have vocalized. You see articles in Foreign affairs and you see people like Tom Friedman in the New York Times talk about this endlessly. And so this is also something that is there. But your point taken that the ground realities matter.
- [50:02]
B
I think it also there's a Venn diagram overlap between the immigration conversation and conversations about what does it mean to be an American and what's in America's interests and the anti Israel, anti Jewish, anti Zionist, anti Semitic coalition that has emerged. But we'll get into that in the second hour. So go ahead with your answer. Kamaran.
- [50:23]
C
Look, if you are being pressed to allow for a Palestinian state, it is a strategic problem for you. The strategic problem is as follows. And today it's Israel because Israel controls that piece of geopolitical real estate that is called Israel and historically it's called Palestine. But it's a very narrow strip of land. And you know, you can get from going from east to west or the other way around, you get from one side of Israel at its widest width in like 2 hours or so, maybe a little under. And so what October 7th did is basically heighten that concern, reinforce that view that we are vulnerable, we don't have strategic depth and the west bank is another issue. And we can get into the details of that and discuss. What I'm trying to say is this makes the two state solution very, very difficult. And this is a, you know, last I checked and you know, maybe the polls are going to shift now that the war has come to an end and the hostages have been released. But there is a clear majority of people in Israel who are apprehensive about a Palestinian state, to say the least. And then there are those who are deeply opposed for ideological reasons, for strategic reasons and whatnot. But at the very least, there are a large number of people who agree that a Palestinian state, because Hamas is militarily weakened, politically weakened, but is a social movement, it's still out there and it can regrow, it can regenerate itself. You have Fatah and in the west bank and the Palestinian Authority that's also not reliable. And then everything that has happened in Gaza has left scars on the Palestinians. How they manifest in public attitudes towards Israel is something on the minds of Israeli national security planners. So what I'm trying to say is that it's unlikely that we're going to see sort of like a two state solution, even though there is growing pressure anytime soon. Now, I'm not making sort of a categorical forecast here. But I'm just saying for the foreseeable future. Now, coming to the point of what happens with this timeline. So now you have an Arab Muslim task force which will include the Saudis, which will include the Turks. I read today in the Times of Israel just before I came on your show that Egypt is officially going to lead this international stabilization force and other countries will be contributing forces. And so this force will be working with the idf. So the Egyptians and the Jordanians have diplomatic relations with Israel. They have a history of dealing with the Israelis. So this isn't new for them. But for countries like Saudi Arabia, for countries like Pakistan, and there's a question mark, I mean, I saw somewhere as well that the Israelis are not comfortable with having Turkish troops in Gaza. And Joe, regardless of what the permutation and combination looks like, the Saudis and the Pakistanis, hence the Saudi mutual defense agreement that they signed, are going to be working with the idf. You can't have a task force called the ISF catering for security in Gaza and not working and coordinating with the idf. So what it does is it creates a working relationship. Now, I'm assuming many things, things don't go wrong, they don't shoot at each other, et cetera, et cetera. No untoward incident happens. But if this plan is to work, then at some point at the end of that process, you will have a de facto sort of normalized, for all intents and purposes, relationship. You just won't have an Abraham Accord. And therefore that Abraham accord, as you said earlier, becomes kind of like moot because on the ground, you are working with the Israelis. Yeah.
- [54:12]
B
So we have a lot to get to in the second hour. So I want to move us into it. But I have one. Please answer this as succinctly as you can. One very quick question. And that has to do with what we know about Israeli sentiment with respect to the, generally speaking, the Palestinians. But obviously the big issue is what to do with the Palestinians in Gaza. What percentage, percentage of Israelis would you say, based on what you've seen, polling? I know there's been polling here and there's a lot of also anecdotal evidence, just from speaking to Israelis, what percentage of Israelis would actually want, in their ideal scenario, to see the ethnic cleansing of Gaza and would not really be content with anything other than that?
- [54:58]
C
I would say that that is still a minority.
- [55:03]
B
But how much of a minority?
- [55:04]
C
Because it's difficult to put a number on.
- [55:05]
B
It seems that the attacks on October 7th two years ago dramatically increased the number of Israelis that basically wanted a final solution, that they were tired of dealing with Palestinians on their borders and they were very quick to dehumanize them and to do whatever it took, including turning away to see them just go, go into the sea, go to Egypt, go wherever, die, but just no longer be there.
- [55:33]
C
Look, that's difficult to gauge with any degree of accuracy. So what do we have? What pieces of evidence do we have to be able to gauge that? Again, it's not going to be perfect. So let's just start from the far right. The far right, and there are a bunch of parties over there that are part of this coalition and their broader ecosystem in society obviously would like to expel the Palestinians and claim Gaza for themselves and settle it and populate it. Okay, so let's start from that side and let's work our way towards the middle and then to the left. We also know another piece of evidence that what we do know for a fact is that, and this is one of the reasons why one of the pressure points on the Prime Minister of Israel, to which he agreed, because of which he agreed to the President on this deal, is that he has had a rift, an increasing rift with his security establishment. The head of the idf, the head of the Mossad, are both unreported to have disagreed on many things. So the head of the idf, this is a man who he appointed because his predecessor, it wasn't working out with him. So the guy who he appointed came back and had the same problem with the Prime Minister, which is that, do you want us to impose military rule in Gaza? What will that take? And there were some estimates and some reports being thrown out that it could run into the billions annually to basically impose military rule because you can't push them into the sea. That's just sort of one of those things. People say it's not really possible.
- [57:08]
B
It's physically impossible. You'd have to have bulldozers and bulldozing people into the sea. They're not going to go into the sea.
- [57:14]
C
And you're assuming nobody's going to come stop you, okay? And there are now consequences for that. And then the other option is to push these people into Egypt and Egypt doesn't want them. Egypt has made a very clear, categorically, very defiantly said, look, we're not going to allow for this. We're not going to stand for this. And then the President of the United States has said, we're not going to see an occupation of Gaza, we're not going to see an annexation of the West Bank.
- [57:39]
B
So starvation pretty much, and people dying because they can't find enough food.
- [57:43]
C
And obviously this peace plan also addresses that problem. But the Israeli military, the Israeli security forces, that security sector, the intelligence community, is the one that has to make it happen. If this is a desire on the part of a large number of Israeli voters, then who will do it? It will be the security forces. The security forces know how difficult it is. They don't want any part of this. Okay? There are professionals, you know, officers and bureaucrats and whatnot. They are civil servants and military officers who have to make it happen. They're not ideological in that sense necessarily, as the voter or as the political leadership is. And so they are far more pragmatic about this reality that, yeah, we don't want a Palestinian state, we all agree, because that's a threat. We want to neutralize Hamas. But this is overkill. And this is in the current climate where the world has turned, the public mood in the world has turned against Israel. Criticism is at an all time high. You don't want to do this. So I'm looking at these pieces of evidence and I'm saying, and I'm not counting the left yet, and I don't know how many people are still on the left and how many people are in the center. Pragmatic people in the center. So I'm going by these anecdotal pieces of evidence and saying, or bits and pieces, not anecdotal, but bits and pieces. And trying to put the puzzle together. And to me it seems like, yes, there are a lot of people who don't want a Palestinian state. Ideally, they would not want to have this problem. But the people who are supporting, who are actively supporting that, let's just get rid of the Palestinians. I still think they're a minority. I could be wrong.
- [59:32]
B
No, I mean, it's a good point. And the other sort of relevant question, but I'm not going to ask it for you, Kamara, because I should know better than to ask you for a simple answer. Because I wanted a quick answer. We ended up going for 10 minutes. The question that follows from that is how much was this really just a kind of emotional bloodlust, revenge response? And how much of it was a sober decision that we can sort of solve the problem in Gaza through ethical cleansing? That's not a question for you to answer. I'm going to throw out some topics that I want to address in the second hour and maybe there are a couple other ones that I missed or that we'll get into one is I really want to dig into what this new security order could look like. I mean this to me is the biggest story of all. And when I say this new security order, I mean the new security architecture. America's role in the region. Which powers are the biggest winners out of this? In other words, who actually has benefited the most from Israel's war with Iran? I don't know that it's Israel. It could be Turkey. And so to have a conversation really about what does that mean? What does the future of the Middle east look like from that perspective? Is it also ultimately in America's best interest or not? It certainly could turn out to be an incredible boon for the United States if in fact the new stable order can develop there led by countries that are, if not American allies, certainly amenable to American interests and to American power. I don't know to what degree we'll have a chance or we should even dec discuss what life in Gaza looks like. That's I think in some sense pretty obvious just from the pictures. And beyond that it's hard for us to empathize. But to the extent that it's relevant to this larger conversation about whether or not we can actually achieve peace once and for all between the Israelis and the Palestinians and some kind of semi autonomous or autonomous Palestinian state, I think that would be an interesting conversation to have. I think this is not so much a topic but I think it's a framing that I want people to keep in mind as we move into the second hour. My hope is that from this conversation and from other conversations we've had on the show, Kamran, but especially this one, people can finally disabuse themselves of this framework that lots of people have had in their heads for decades, which is that one of the central framings of power and conflict in the Middle east is religious Jews versus Arabs. And I think what we're seeing in this new security architecture and this potential for peace is actually much more conventional. Notions of national interests are going to be playing a role here. And you can see that in the Saudis willingness to do business with the Israelis and so on. And then the last thing is the rise of the anti Israel, anti Jewish, anti Zionist and anti Semitic coalition and what that means for not just American politics but but also for the long term viability of the Israeli US relationship and how much the Israelis can actually bank on the Americans on a go forward to help secure their situation in the Middle east and also use that as leverage in their relationship with other countries and non state actors. For anyone new to the program, Hidden Forces is listener supportive. We don't accept advertisers or commercial sponsors. The entire show is funded from top to bottom by listeners like you. If you want Access to the second hour of today's conversation with Kamran, head over to HiddenForces IO, subscribe and sign up to one of our three content tiers. All subscribers gain access to our Premium feed, which you can use to listen to the rest of today's conversation on your mobile device using your favorite podcast app. Just like you're listening to this episode right now. Kamran, stick around. We're going to move the second hour of our conversation onto the Premium feed.
- [63:09]
A
If you want to listen in on the rest of today's conversation, head over to HiddenForces IO, subscribe and join our Premium feed. If you want to join in on.
- [63:19]
B
The conversation and become a member of.
- [63:21]
A
The Hidden Forces Genius community, you can also do that through our subscriber page. Today's episode was produced by me and edited by Stylianos Nicolaou. For more episodes, you can check out our website at hiddenforces IO, you can follow me on Twitter at kofinas and you can email me at infoiddenforcesio. As always, thanks for listening. We'll see you next time.