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- [00:04]
John Podhoretz
Hope for the best, expect the worst Some preacher pain, some diapers, the way of knowing which way it's going Hope for the best, Expect the worst, Hope for the best welcome to the Commentary Magazine daily Podcast. Today is Tuesday, December 10, 2024, although we are recording this Monday night, December 9, 2024, an important proviso because we are going to be discussing extraordinarily breaking news and who knows what will happen between the time we record this and the time you listen to it. So don't start complaining that we didn't talk about the thing that happened at 8am on Tuesday because we are doing this at 8pm on Monday. Just so you understand the time shift issue here and also just so I can take another second to thank you all for contributing to our year end fundraising drive here@comMENTARY.org where we support the podcast, the magazine, the blog, as our nonprofit 501c3 comes the end of the year. And we really rely on you, our listeners, our readers, our fans to keep the lights on and to keep us blathering in your ear, which we are now going to do for quite a while. And there are only three of us today aside. Along with me, one of course is our senior editor, Seth Mandel. Hi Seth.
- [01:41]
Seth Mandel
Hi John.
- [01:42]
John Podhoretz
And the other is a Commentary contributing editor, big cheese and poobah at the foundation for Defense of Democracies and host of FDD's Morning Meeting. This of course is Jonathan Schanzer. Hi Jonathan.
- [01:57]
Jonathan Schanzer
Hi Jonathan.
- [01:59]
John Podhoretz
Jonathan, I think it's fair for me to say that we delayed having a serious conversation about what happened in Syria on Monday's podcast because we wanted to wait to hear from you. A man who has forgotten more about the conflicts in Syria and Lebanon and the war between the wars and Iraq and ISIS and Iran and the Houthis and the Persian Gulf and the Red Sea and the Sinai and Gaza than most people have ever known about anything. So I'm happy to have you with us. You wrote a brilliant blog post about what is going on on Sunday night, which I think still very much stands, although nothing has really changed. I mean the statues are down, Assad is in Moscow. 52 years of 1 of the most barbaric regimes the world has ever seen has been extirpated. And I wouldn't describe you as doing the happy dance of joy in response to what you might think is an unambiguously happy occasion in a world rid that has been rid of this pestilence scourge, genocidal chemical weapons, using nuclear weapons, developing monstrosity that has been burning a cancerous hole in the middle of the Middle east since the British pulled out in the late 1940s. So. But you're not happy. I mean, maybe you're a little happy, but you're not happy happy?
- [03:51]
Jonathan Schanzer
No, I'm not happy happy. I think that the Middle east may have gotten just a tad safer because the Iranian Shiite crescent, the ring of fire that the Iranians have tried to execute surrounding Israel is collapsing. Right. This has been a really bad few months for the Iranians and for that I'm very happy. Look at the last couple of months. And Hamas is on its teetering on full on collapse. Hezbollah is a lot weaker. Iran is lacking its air defenses and can no longer construct ballistic missiles. And now the Assad regime is gone. So it's been a terrible year. Oh, and by the way, Donald Trump's about to come into office and they really don't like him either and we expect to see maximum pressure put on them. So yeah, the Iranians are having a very bad, no good year and next year is probably going to get worse. But now here's the problem. The group that just overran Syria, they're Al Qaeda. They used to be known as the Nusra Front. They changed their name, I think it was in 2016. It was a facelift that was promoted by the Qatari regime. They're now known as Hayat Tahrir Al Sham or hts. They're the primary actor that now controls the entire country of Syria. There are other smaller factions, Uzbeks and Turkmenistanis and other garden variety jihadists by the way. Still a couple of ISIS guys running around over there. These guys are not good. Right. This is not a good replacement for the genocidal maniac that was just jettisoned from Syria. And the patrons of HTS really make me worry. The patrons are Qatar and Turkey. Qatar and Turkey are two major patrons of Hamas. They're two major patrons of Al Qaeda. They have both worked with the Iranian regime and helped the Iranian regime. They have actually at times both helped isis. I mean, Turkey even facilitated the movement of troops and money on behalf of ISIS at its peak. The foreign minister of Turkey right now, who Tony Blinken, just called to talk about positive, constructive things that could take place in the Middle east, did that on Sunday night here. This was the guy that actually made the first investments in HTs when it was the Nusra Front. I mean, we're dealing with a bunch of really bad actors. We could still see things steered to a soft Landing. But this is the Middle east, after all. And when I see actors like this, I get a little nervous.
- [06:41]
John Podhoretz
So the order of battle in Syria for people who, you know, don't serve, you know, no one studies geography anymore. People don't look at maps. So Syria is.
- [06:55]
Jonathan Schanzer
Except Kamala Harris.
- [06:57]
John Podhoretz
She looked at the maps and they were all bad, and everything was bad.
- [07:01]
Jonathan Schanzer
Yeah.
- [07:01]
Seth Mandel
So Syria is between HTS and BTS and NSync.
- [07:06]
John Podhoretz
And Syria is like Tennessee with a sea attached to it. There's the Mediterranean, meaning it is a country that touches a lot of different borders on a lot of different countries. Right. So it borders on Iraq, borders on Lebanon, borders on Israel, borders on. So it's sitting there.
- [07:33]
Jonathan Schanzer
Yep.
- [07:34]
John Podhoretz
Jordan. It's sitting there kind of in the middle of everything. But it has very little in the way of natural resources. It is poor, not rich. It is a transshipment point and valuable to people as a means of moving things from one place to another, including the Hajj. How Muslim pilgrims get to Mecca is like, down through the Levant from Turkey. And it has been valuable to Iran now for many decades as a way of Iran projecting its power by sending things through Syria, across into Lebanon, giving them to Hezbollah to control Lebanon and threaten Israel and then get whatever they can get into Gaza using Hezbollah by water. Who the hell knows? Okay. So it's sitting there as a kind of strategically interesting place that has no particular value of its own. Like, no one's going, I need Syria. I must have Syria, or I will die. You know, it's not Helen of Troy. It's like the garbage dump that you need on your. You know, if you know, to a land, it's like your landfill and your highway. And that's sort of what it is. And that's one of the reasons that it's always been in a very weird position strategically for the United States, which has spent 50 years on and off having these delusional fantasies that if they could just get the Syrians kind of either to settle down or look at things honestly and understand that we're a better bet than other people are and leave the Israelis alone and whatever. Warren Christopher, Bill Clinton, Secretary of state, famously took 18 trips, I believe was the number sat in the anteroom of Bashar Al Assad's father, Hafez, while he was Secretary of State in Clinton's first term, cooling his heels, the Secretary of State of the United States, based on some idea that it could really be helpful if America could somehow develop an alliance with this S hole country. And here it is.
- [10:12]
Seth Mandel
Just to be clear, we have long passed what we see as the parallels with Tennessee.
- [10:19]
John Podhoretz
Yes. It's like if Tennessee were bad. And Tennessee, of course, is really, really a wonderful place. And I love Tennessee. Okay, so then flash forward to the Arab Spring and all the changes there. And there. Oh, there's a whole lot. By the way, it's funny. It's fun to read Syrian history, Right? There was the time when Syria and Egypt became one country for a while. That was fun. They were like a thousand miles apart. They became one country, and then it was like, wait a minute, it was.
- [10:55]
Jonathan Schanzer
Like crack for the Arab world.
- [10:57]
John Podhoretz
They loved that. That was a big one. Syria, it would be like, you know, if, let's say Tennessee and Kansas became one state. I mean, it's. Anyway, okay, so there's a lot of, like, ludicrous hijinks involving Syria. And then Arab Spring happens, a lot of ferment, unrest in the Middle East, 2010, 2011, and the Syrian people say, we might want a slice of this. And, boy, did the world change very, very, very seriously in the five or six years after that moment. Use of chemical weapons against his own people, massive migration that Europe is still dealing with the destabilizing effects of 10 years after it happened. Right. I mean, 5 billion Syrians left Syria. Most of them went to Europe. Europe has been trying to digest them, deal with the effects of it ever since. Continuing civil war. Half a million people dead in the civil war. Barack Obama arguably be ushering in a period of horrible US Foreign policy by saying, do not use chemical weapons against your own people. That's my red line. And then he did it, and then we didn't do anything. And then the Russians say, no, no, it's okay. We'll take care of it. Fine. And Obama goes, great, you take care of it. Well, great. What a great idea. Let's bring the Russians, enemies of the United States, antagonists of our foreign policy, dead straight back into the Middle east, from which they'd effectively been expelled after 1991. Sure. You come in, you get to be a big player here, too, now. So Syria is nothing but trouble. It's nothing but garbage. It's nothing but lunacy and Narskeit. And now it's fallen. And you're just going to tell me that it's going to get worse?
- [13:02]
Jonathan Schanzer
Well, I'm not going to tell you that it's going to get worse. But what I would say is this is not the moment for everybody to be uncorking the champagne and doing the happy dance. As you said, this is one bad actor followed by a different bad actor. Now, I mean, I think what's important to note here is that, okay, we're looking at a debt loss for the Iranian regime. I would actually also argue, you said this, is that Syria is a transit point. You're 100% right. And it's been this crucial transit point for the arming of Hezbollah, primarily. Right. This is how Hezbollah got 200,000 rockets in its arsenal in the 18 years since the 2006 civil war, or war with Israel, rather. And so this has been the way where precision guided munitions were coming across the border. And I've written a lot about that for commentary in what we call the war between wars. The Israelis trying to destroy these lethal precision guided munitions also coming across the border by way of Syria. The cash that Hezbollah has traditionally dispersed to its fighters and to its supporters also comes across this border. So if this border has collapsed, then, and I think it has, I think the Shia militias that were facilitating this on the Syrian side are now gone. The Hezbollah fighters that were in Syria, also gone. The Iranian diplomats, I put in air quotes, the military advisors that were there, they're all gone. The embassies closed down. We're looking at a net loss for Hezbollah and Iran. And that is unequivocally a very positive thing. But what is coming to replace it is a bunch of now Sunni jihadists. Now, some people are going to say, oh, well, look, Turkey, they're a NATO ally, and Qatar, they're a major non NATO ally, and we like them. And Israel, by the way, has relations with both countries. They've got formal relations with Turkey and informal relations with the Qataris. And, you know, how bad could that be? Well, okay, here's how bad it could be. Look at Gaza, because the Qataris and the Turks were sponsors of Hamas. And look at what happened on October 7th. So if you're saying that things are gonna be safe, if everything's gonna be that, you're telling me that everything's gonna be okay now that Assad's gone, you're asking the wrong guy.
- [15:27]
John Podhoretz
Okay? I'm not gonna say that. Seth is certainly not gonna say that. Let's try to move to one to talk about a geopolitical positive. Seth points out in a really excellent piece that he put up on the blog Monday afternoon, early Monday evening, that if you look at the grand scope of the relations in the nations of the Middle east again after, basically, after the pullout of the British and the formation of all of the new nations of 1948 and beyond, aside from Egypt, which is already always there, and Saudi Arabia, which was there too before. Real countries, real countries. But Israel, Jordan, Lebanon, as it stands now, Syria, Iraq also was a real country. But that the countries that have figured out a way to live with Israel, for them, not for Israel, not for the good of the planet, not for American foreign policy, security, but for them being not in a belligerent relationship to Israel has been an extraordinary positive, given what has happened to all the countries that have remained in a completely belligerent, rejectionist attitude and aspect toward Israel from 1972 onward. And Syria was, weirdly enough, a little bit kind of in this place, right? That is, it was a transship in point. Stuff went to Hezbollah from Iran through Syria. But the border with Syria, the Golan Heights, the area that Syria and Israel had in common, that Israel had its single most difficult military experience in the course of its wars till October 7, that the pacification of the Golan Heights, Syria basically saying, we don't want trouble with you. You leave us alone, we'll leave you alone. And with the exception of bombing the nuclear reactor in 2007, a very important moment that Israel took out the Syrian nuclear reactor, the aborting nuclear reactor, that was largely, has largely been the relationship. The war between the wars that you write about for Commentary is really a war between Israel and Iran and Hezbollah. Syria is just the plot of land. That is the point that things are traveling through. So Seth makes this point that rationally, this is a moment when some of these countries could take a hard look and say, you know what, it's really better just to not be in brigis with Israel. We can focus on other stuff. We don't have to worry about going to war with them. Israel left the Sinai in pretty good shape and Egypt made hay out of the Sinai with a lot of the equipment and materials and roads and things that Israel built there. Some of the same stuff could happen. Just leave Israel alone. Israel is now giving you a big opportunity to move beyond this. And look what happened to the main antagonist to Israel, Iran.
- [19:02]
Jonathan Schanzer
Yeah, and that's actually where I'd want to pick up. That's actually where I want to pick this up. Because I think that not only have we seen sort of a shellacking of the Iranian axis, right? I mean, just a spanking all around in the way that I've already described. I mean, I do, by the way, still believe that there's still trouble brewing in Yemen and in the west bank because of Iran's ability to foment more violence through its proxies fighting Israel to the last Arab, as it were. And these are the two areas where I think we still see Arab populations that are going to be willing to tangle with Israel on behalf of Iran. But here's actually a really interesting wrinkle. One of the wrinkles that I've been exploring that I don't think has gotten a lot of attention and that is that, look, we all know that the Arab states, right, the Saudis, the Emiratis, the Bahrainis to some extent, even the Egyptians and the Jordanians, we know that they don't like Iran. And we know that when Israel starts defeating Iran, they're quietly cheering and high fiving each other in the halls of the Arab League. They're smiling, right? They wanted to see this. And I actually do think that Israel's victories on the battlefield could lead to additional normalization agreements. They just needed to see that Israel had the wherewithal. And they also, by the way, needed to see that the US alliance with Israel was going to hold, which was actually more shaky than Israel's performance on the battlefield. But now there's this other wrinkle, which is that there is only one other actor in the Muslim world that these royalist countries truly hate and that is the Muslim Brotherhood. The Muslim Brotherhood is the thing that they want to purge from Saudi Arabia, from the uae. If you remember when all of the Arab states went against QATAR Back in 2017, they put an embargo on the Qataris. They it was a full blown battle that year and it went on for several years beyond that. It was because the Qataris were the key sponsor of the Muslim Brotherhood. They refused to allow this admixture of nationalism and Islamism to infect their countries. They see it as poison. And the two countries that are, that have just taken over effectively in Syria are the key sponsors of the Muslim Brotherhood around the region. Qatar and Turkey are the big proponents. So now what they're looking at, when all these countries look around the region, they say, okay, Iran, you're weak, you got beaten by the Israelis and you're probably not coming back anytime soon. And now we're really nervous about the way the Muslim Brotherhood is witnessing a resurgence. And by the way, we're worried that it might, you know, infect Egypt, it might infect Morocco. We need to be on the right side of this. I actually think this could be another big step for normalization. It could be a big boost for normalization. And I think that's gone overlooked so far.
- [22:08]
Seth Mandel
Okay, and what about on the other. And on the other side? Is there. One of the concerns I see people raising is that now you have to watch Iran carefully and be prepared in case they want to make a mad dash toward the bomb because everything else felt, literally everything fell apart and now they're just kind of like curled up in a fetal position. And you know, and May. And do we have. Does the west understand that May, you know, that a very weakened Iran can be stopped from getting there if it tries to scurry across the finish line, but that it has to be done? Right. I mean, it feels like not a heavy lift to stop anything Iran does at this time. If you're the US and the UK and France, if you want to stop Iran doing anything, you could stop them from crossing the street. Is there any danger that like some people fall asleep at the wheel, get too comfortable with the situation?
- [23:15]
Jonathan Schanzer
Yes. I mean, look, we have a president.
- [23:17]
Seth Mandel
Who'S like not been awake for a while.
- [23:19]
Jonathan Schanzer
I was going to say that's kind of the first, the first concern is just how alert the President is. But I mean, I think, look, there is. The Iranians are, I mean, I don't know if they're in a fetal position, but they're a mess, right? And we know that they're a mess and we know that they're very vulnerable. The skies over Iran are naked. Those S300 systems that Israel took out back in late October, they are not operational to the best of my understanding right now and are not likely to be anytime soon. So that means that Israel could fly over at any point and bomb some more. My understanding is that the Israelis have promised the Biden administration that they won't do that. However, there is also an understanding that they need to watch the nuclear program like hawks, except the US Is not really interested in. I mean, I got to say, the Biden administration looks like bystanders throughout all of this.
- [24:09]
John Podhoretz
Right.
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Jonathan Schanzer
We've just witnessed history, right? The fall of the Assad regime, a five decade long rule in Syria. And you know, if you saw that some of the speeches delivered by the President, by some of his advisors, it doesn't look like they have any idea of what's going on. I mean, I've heard from friends that they weren't even taking classified briefings as the, as the regime was collapsing. I mean, it's just absolutely bizarre. I think, by the way, that we're blind in Syria in terms of intelligence. I don't think we had any inkling of what was going to come. So we don't look particularly sharp here right now. And it does make you. It raises the question of whether the administration is going to be on top of Iran itself as it wrestles with the fallout from all of this. I do think that as they look at that weakness, they have the stench of weakness on them right now. The Iranians do. And that does account for a lot in the Middle East. I'm sure they're thinking, how do we look strong? How do we gain that mojo back? Right. And they could be for through a dash to a bomb. The Israelis are watching the iaea. I wouldn't give a lot of promise there. I think they're kind of a clown car act right now. Grossi is not up to the task. The administration here is not really up to the task. The Brits, the French, do I really think they're going to be the ones to call out the Iranians in the next five weeks? I think there's a real danger. How much stock would I put in Iran going nuclear now? I think there's a half decent chance, primarily because if they don't do it now and they do it when Trump's in power, I think they know that there's going to be more hell to pay. And so this might be the window, and that window is closing fast. That is why people are concerned. My colleague Mark Dubowitz at FDD has been talking about this till he's blue in the face that, that this has always been the goal of the regime and this is probably their best chance.
- [26:09]
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- [28:30]
John Podhoretz
Okay, I'm now going to ditch the commentary crushing morosity slogan and take some issue with the portrait that you have just laid out. What is significant about what happened in Syria in the past week is that it's not just that Iran has had a bad couple of months, that Iran, you know, just took another blow after a bunch of blows and all of that. It is that somebody said, let's just see what happens when we put our finger on this building. We're just going to, we're just going to. I'm just going to tap this building, see what happens and the entire building collapses. It was like the Syrian rebels who have made no advances of any really significant note, you know, over the course of the last five years though they're there. Suddenly it was like, oh, okay, we can just move forward. There's no one to stop us. Hezbollah has been fatally compromised. Syria doesn't have an army to speak of. Apparently Iran's not interested. I think we're just going to walk into B, we're going to walk into Damascus first. We're going to stop in the city where Hafez AL Assad killed 40,000 people in 1982 in five minutes in the single worst massacre the world had ever seen up to that time. We're going to take that without firing a shot. Then we're going to move on, take another city, then Another one, then we're going to be in Damascus and he's gone in four or five days. What this says to me is that Iran is finished. I mean, finished. I don't mean they're on their back foot. Maybe they can. They can spin the centrifuges and fordo and get that, you know, get that uranium up to 80% and really load it onto. I mean, they have been exposed as a geopolitical paper tiger by Israel being able to assassinate the head of Hamas in an apartment in Tehran as a military paper tiger by having their entire air defenses taken out and two major strikes against Israel coming with absolutely no effect. They've been exposed as a strategic paper tiger because, again, I still don't understand what happened. But Israel used some weapon no one even knew. Israel had to take out a facility in Iran that Iran didn't know anybody even knew that they had. And there are two things that are left. There's a nuclear program in two sites. Israel destroyed the third site, which apparently it was allowed to do under the understanding of international law because Iran never declared it as a nuclear site. So it's gone there.
- [31:30]
Jonathan Schanzer
Yeah.
- [31:31]
John Podhoretz
Thank you. Yes. Yeah, there are two sites left. Israel has a lot of other things it has to deal with, including making sure that the free arms and weapons and chemical weaponry and factories inside Syria that Assad was using against his own people are eliminated so they can't be turned toward Israel, which apparently is what has been happening over the last 48 to 72 hours. But, I mean, man, if the Israelis don't go after the nuclear sites between now and January 20th, I'm going to be very surprised. And what's more, is America going to participate? I don't know. But. Okay, if you're not watching our video, Jonathan is squinting at me in disbelief. Look, you don't get a shot like this.
- [32:25]
Jonathan Schanzer
Ever get you in disbelief. I am just casting doubt on this notion that the Biden administration would take action at this moment.
- [32:34]
John Podhoretz
I say the Biden administration.
- [32:37]
Jonathan Schanzer
Well, you're saying maybe the US should do this with Israel.
- [32:42]
John Podhoretz
I think. I think that the United States should have done this with or without Israel 15 years ago. So.
- [32:51]
Jonathan Schanzer
Right. And I think that whenever it's fine after they took out those air defenses back in late October, I think they should have done it then. And the fact that, you know, the Iranians have just been sitting there completely undefended for as long as they have is, as I think you would say, John, it's a shonda. This should not be happening. Right. You have the ability now to take out these nuclear sites if the US were to help. Right, Because Israel can't do it all on their own.
- [33:19]
John Podhoretz
Right.
- [33:19]
Jonathan Schanzer
We're going to need the B2 bombers with the 30,000 pound bombs, the, you know, the massive ordinance penetrators and everything else. So there are a few things that the Israelis would need from the US to do part of the job. The rest they could do on their own. And the skies are just, I mean this is a meatball over the plate.
- [33:37]
Seth Mandel
And the only people who still, the only, the only nuclear scientists who still work at the nuclear sites in Iran are all Israeli probably at this point.
- [33:49]
Jonathan Schanzer
Right. But let me actually just say one other thing though because you know, talking about paper tigers I think, look, so Iran's, you know, obviously taken a beating. The other country that's taken a serious beating here and you devoted a minute or two talking about them. At the top of this show, John, is Russia. I mean Russia, it just got its. Took his hand into it as well. They've just had to beat a hasty retreat out of Syria. They no longer can project power. They've got this massive base in the port city of Tartus that they've been building up this warm water port and right now they've got nobody there. And they're going to have to beg the Turks to be able to go back and either take the ships out of there or, I don't know, I mean, maybe just have the Turks hold these ships hostage in, you know, wasn't.
- [34:43]
Seth Mandel
It Russia, weren't the air defenses that Israel took out in Iran weren't those Russian made and delivered also?
- [34:49]
Jonathan Schanzer
This is what I wanted to say. To add insult to injury, the S3 hundreds don't work. The Israelis have shown the entire world that buying Russian arms is a loser's bet. Right. And so what does, what do the Russians have right now? They have the war that they're gonna have to keep fighting in Ukraine because they started it and now they have to finish it. And I'm not saying that it's gonna end badly for them there. I think things are generally going the right way. But man, do they not look really terrific either right now. So when we take a look at that global axis of aggressors, we've got two big losers right now and they're the ones that initiated a lot of this. So it's fascinating to watch. And again, I don't wanna give anybody the sen sense that I don't think good things happen this.
- [35:36]
John Podhoretz
No, I do think they have we have an incoming president in 41 days who was targeted for assassination by the regime in Tehran. He hasn't said it. The Biden administration said they know that they are trying to kill him. We still don't know what motivated the shooter. And Butler. We don't know what's going on. We don't know if there are still plots afoot. I assume they can prevent the worst from happening. Trump has a very deep incentive to participate in an effort to destroy Iran's economic and military capacity as he maybe.
- [36:28]
Jonathan Schanzer
Even to bring down the regime, which would be a welcome change.
- [36:31]
John Podhoretz
Right. He. They targeted him. They, you know, are hold. They are the patrons of the people who are still holding Americans hostage in Gaza. He has demanded that the hostages be released from Gaza before he takes office or there will be hell to pay. What is the hell to be paid? The hell to be paid is Fordo goes boom. Natanz goes boom. There's what hell is there to pay left in Gaza to pay? That is a threat. There's a threat to the Iranians. He has made a direct threat to the Iranians. One hopes that the threat works and that something doesn't happen to the hostages that makes this trigger. That triggers this. That's. We have reason to hope that maybe something is happening that will end this horrendous suffering and bring this moment to a close. But.
- [37:35]
Jonathan Schanzer
And I will say, John, that if you've been watching the news out of Gaza, which most people have not, over the last couple of days, we have actually seen indications that Hamas is asking its allies in Gaza, the kind of, you know, the group of five or six terror organizations that, you know, make up that alliance in Gaza. It has asked them to collect information on the remaining hostages, those 100 hostages who's dead, who's alive, you know, who is who, who they can produce. They're apparently talking about a list of people that they're willing to hand over in a deal. It's the first time we've seen any serious indication of that right now. And I think that's a positive. But again, I just want everybody to remember that the people that are going to be doing this, the people that would be facilitating this deal, they are the same people that have just funded the jihadi takeover in Syria. Right? We are dealing with people who are both arsonists and firefighter, and they're dangerous people to deal with. And I don't think the Biden administration understands who they're dealing with. And, you know, I mean, I do think that there are people in the Trump administration that understand that the Qataris Turks are bad news, but the question is whether they're willing to do anything about it. And these are the questions that I think we all have over the next 41 days.
- [39:09]
John Podhoretz
Well, a lot of these I think are knock on questions because if we're talking about resolving what has gone on directly in Israel since October 7 with Gaza, with Hezbollah, with the Houthi, with Iran, right. This is all very close to being resolvable. And the question is, do you go to the 95th percentile and stop or if you're Trump and if there are voices in his ear that are not strictly isolationist that could say to him this is a once in a century opportunity. Iran has been an enemy of the United States for 46 years. It took hostages, killed a million people in the Iran Iraq war. It killed 1,000Americans in Iraq during the Iraq war. It has done nothing but evil. It's naked, it's exposed, it has no capacity to strike back. What does Frankie Five Angels say to Michael when they're in the hotel room? Let's hit him while we have the muscle. Don't let them loot, don't let them out. Yeah, take them down.
- [40:35]
Jonathan Schanzer
And it's important.
- [40:39]
Seth Mandel
If you took out the nuclear sites, the whole thing is over. And this is what you have to help American get through American officials heads, which is like there's no blowback, there's nothing left. Right. There's literally possibly have is the ability to make a nuke. If you delete that tomorrow, it's all, everything they have is gone. They can't hit anybody.
- [41:07]
Jonathan Schanzer
Right.
- [41:08]
Seth Mandel
Not just the US But Israel or anybody.
- [41:10]
Jonathan Schanzer
They become a gas station with a half an army. Right?
- [41:14]
John Podhoretz
It's you saying that you don't get. Look, when people like my dad and others went to George W. Bush in 2007, 2008, said take out the Iranian sites and Bush said it's too risky. Right now we're fighting in Iraq. We need to protect our troops in Iraq. We can't put targets on them. That's what's going to happen. You know, we need to, we have to focus on one thing at a time. We're still in Afghanistan. We can't do it. Right. Okay, that's an arguable proposition. I think they made a mistake. I think that was a huge opportunity, a missed opportunity. And we've seen 15 years of effects as a result of not doing what we could have done at that moment. Particularly even with Obama coming in early 2009 and the Purple revolution, making it clear how weak the regime was on its own didn't happen. Now, as Seth said, there are no consequences. Now, are there going to be unforeseen events as a result of what happens? Yes. We have no idea what anything is going to look like in 2027. But if I had said to you on October 8th that right now, on December 10th, after 3500 murders and injuries, Hamas terrorists running rampant through the south of Israel and uncontrolled and Hezbollah starting to fire from the north, that 14 months later, Hamas would be destroyed, 4,000 Hezbollah people would have had their hands blown off in 12 seconds. The entire senior leadership of Hezbollah murdered or killed or taken out, assassinated in a neighborhood in Beirut, assassinations in Iran taking out of Iraq. Everything that has happened. Was that even remotely. Could anyone have put that on a bingo card?
- [43:16]
Jonathan Schanzer
No. No. And John, I mean, just to be clear, I mean, I think there were moments where we were all wondering whether Israel was going to be able to get through this in one piece. I mean, it really looked dicey as all of those seven fronts became active. And, you know, Israel looked like it was getting ground down in a war of attrition, fighting on Iran's terms, not on its own. And, you know, I think with an.
- [43:41]
John Podhoretz
American administration losing spine, losing heart, politically craven.
- [43:47]
Jonathan Schanzer
Yep.
- [43:47]
John Podhoretz
Having to ban that relationship on the.
- [43:49]
Jonathan Schanzer
Other side, and the Israelis have an insane opportunity, a truly once in, you know, a millennium type of opportunity, and the United States and the United States both. And it is, it's remarkable. And it's a turning of the tide in the great power competition that we've been watching, right. The US Looked weak and the US Looked like it was indecisive. And here's a moment where we can seize the initiative, defeat enemies, and begin to restore some faith in the US Led world order if the US Is willing to do it. So now the question is, do we see any action in the next 41 days? Do the Israelis just hold off? I mean, I do think, by the way, the world owes the Israelis a, you know, a vote of gratitude for everything that they've done. You know, they've been fighting a world war with one hand tied behind their back because of what the Biden administration has not allowed them to do. And they've been doing it on behalf of humanity here. So now all of a sudden, things start to shake out the right way. And, you know, the question is, in these 41 days, would the Biden administration, such as it is, be willing to take some of the actions that you described. And if not, will the people coming in, some of these incredible people that Trump has assembled, Mike Waltz, Marco Rubio, Elise Stefanik, these are some serious people that I think have the will to do this. By the way, I'll just say in the same breath, thoughts and prayers to Tulsi Gabbard, who's got to be devastated about what's just happened over the last couple of days.
- [45:20]
John Podhoretz
She offered him the spirit of Aloha. What if he had taken it? Let's be fair to her. She said, stop doing all these mean things. Come to Maui. We'll take you to Mama's fish house in paella. You'll have a wonderful meal. Everything will be great. He didn't take her up on it. And now look where he is, in an apartment with Edward Snowden. I mean, you know, he should have listened to her.
- [45:46]
Seth Mandel
But I want to say, like the. Also like to expand on one of the things that you just said, though, about Israel and, you know, the world owing it a debt and all this other stuff, you know, somebody mentioned, I think it was Adam Rubenstein at the Free Press interviewed Dexter Filkins and asked him about Syria, what comes next, and all this other stuff. Dexter Filkins said, you know, longtime foreign correspondent in the Middle East, Dexter Filkins said that this happened because of Israel and Ukraine. And there's no denying it, right? So essentially, for all the people who were worried about getting drawn into a war in Ukraine, right, against Russia, I'm not sending my, we're not sending our kids to fight and die in the Donbass. And, you know, whatever all this stuff, the two countries did it without needing that, Israel and Ukraine. And so the humiliations that happened weren't superpower enforced humiliations. They were the little guy enforced humiliations, right? Israel was attacked on seven fronts and Iran just like fell apart, right? Like a house of cards. Russia, you start to think, man, imagine if we had really tried to help Ukraine win at the beginning. But, you know, I mean, that's, that's a. Well, that, well, that's, that's another thing to think about because I think that is going to haunt a lot of people in the back of their heads, rightfully so. But like they, Russia, if Russia could defeat Ukraine in a war, then they would have done it, and they didn't, right? Because they can't. So these big countries, Russia, Iran, these client states of China, which is seen as America's big competition, our being the U.S. our client states, beat the snot out of the larger Supposedly more fearsome client states of Beijing. Does that mean anything to China? It has to, right?
- [47:54]
Jonathan Schanzer
I'm sure they've got to be looking right now and wondering about the unintended consequences of wars that their allies and proxies have started. But by the way, I'll just also note, talking about unintended consequences of proxies, you know, if you had asked me that Yaya Sinwar's decision to invade Israel on October 7 would have yielded this disaster for Iran. I mean, that was not on my bingo card. I still marvel at the chain of events that he has unleashed and, well, I hope he's burning in hell thinking about it right now. But to some extent, I guess he's done the world a favor, right? I mean, he just triggered a chain of events that have brought the Islamic Republic to its knees to such an.
- [48:40]
Seth Mandel
Extent that George Galloway is going around saying, you know, it's starting to look like October 7th was a Mossad inside.
- [48:46]
John Podhoretz
Job, was a false flag. Yeah, right. I think.
- [48:51]
Seth Mandel
Whose idea was this?
- [48:53]
John Podhoretz
Yeah, I mean, look, there's a much larger, grander point to be made. To be made. And so I'm going to make it in two minutes because, you know, it's something that people should write, you know, works of history for 100 years based on it. So I'm just going to say it in two minutes and then we can move on. Since Karl Marx, there's been this idea that history is the working of giant impersonal forces making change, irrespective of human choice. Machine. A kind of machine. History as a machine. This entire story of the last 14 months, and indeed the entire story of the last 20 years, in many ways in relation to all of this, is a story that tells exactly the opposite. History is contingent on human action and luck and bad decision making. What if Israel hadn't cured Yaya Sinmore's brain cancer in jail in 2007? What if Yaya Sinwar's name being on the hostage list of 1027 hostages to be traded for Yilad Shalit in 2011. What if somebody at the Mosad had said, no, you can have a. You can have 1,026, but he's staying and he'd stayed. What if there had been a blizzard on January 6, 2021? What if there hadn't been a mudstorm in February 2022 that bogged down the Russian tanks on their way to Kiev? What if somebody else had been Prime Minister of Israel on October 7? What if somebody else hadn't stood up to Biden in December, January, February or March. What if Nasrallah hadn't gone to Tehran? What if the Qataris had kicked everybody out? Everything that has happened here is the result of decisions that individual people have made. Some of them were terrible, horrible, horrible world historical mistakes. Sinwar being the biggest of the world historical mistake makers, maybe, you know, of our lifetime. But Israel had to do the right things in response to what happened to it, including toward the United States, very painfully, in order to get to this moment. And you tell me that settler colonialism runs things or that, you know, this is the result of post of, you know, neoliberal economics having a terrible effect on X, Y and Z or whatever. That is not the story here. The story here is a classic story of individual leaders and people facing challenges and either rising to them and overcoming them and besting them with nations that are able to do the bidding, able to do it. I think that's part of the reason I brought the story of how Syria just collapsed. The minute the rebels started to move, Syria collapsed. Natan Sharansky appeared at our roast last month and he said, we are all agog at the bravery and glory of our young Israeli men and women in arms because to be completely honest, we didn't know if they had it in them. We genuinely did not know if they had it in them. We hadn't fought a war like this in years. You know, maybe they've gone soft. We've all gone soft, you know, all listening to music and dancing and raves and things like that. We didn't know. And we had it and we did it and they did it. And what incentive does anyone in Iran have to defend Iran if Iran faces now an existential threat to itself or to the melocracy? Is there a person in Iran who wants to stand up and defend that government? There wasn't a person in Syria who was willing to stand up and defend the Syrian government.
- [53:17]
Seth Mandel
Right.
- [53:18]
John Podhoretz
There's not a person in Lebanon willing to stand up and defend the Lebanese government. I mean, so that's when I say, like, we are. The world is a different place from what it was on a. It's a more tragic place. People are, you know, people are dead. A horrible war was fought. 60,000 Israelis are still not back in their homes. There are 100 people living in the most horrible possible circumstances you can ever possibly imagine. And yet everything has changed. And so that's why I wanted to start with the don't get too happy about Syria. No one should ever be happy about Syria. Syria is not a place that engenders happiness. Except when Syrian Jews left and went to Israel and made lives for themselves there and here in Berlin and elsewhere and deal, New Jersey, thank you. Exactly. So, but, you know, Syria is a veil of tears, and there's no reason to expect otherwise. But, you know, it's time to step back and say again, are we going to take this free shot? I think it's pretty clear the Biden administration's not taking a free shot at anything except, you know, resume finder.com you know, or, you know, job monster or whatever, which is too bad because maybe they could, like, go out in a little bit of a blaze of glory, but as they have no glory, then they have no blaze, there's nothing for them to go out to. And I'm going to remind you what I mentioned earlier when I mentioned yesterday on yesterday's podcast, which is that we had a president of the United States yesterday come out and say, we want the release of our hostage, Austin Tice. We believe he's alive and we just need proof that he's alive. And then he left the podium, went to the door, opened the door, and someone said, how are you going to get him out? And Biden said, get who out? So that's who's president for the next 41 days. So I don't hold out much hope that this is the person who is going to lead the country to the aim that we should all have, which is the destruction of, you know, Iran's nuclear sites. But 41 days to go, that's, by.
- [55:48]
Seth Mandel
The way, that's a very, that is a very Hanukkah themed way to sum this all up also, because it's very, it's a very Jewish thing to go from darkness to light, right? And Hanukkah, we light the new, the newest candle first every night. We position the candles right to left. We light from left to right because we focus on the new light to show that there's more immediately to show that there's more light tonight than there was yesterday. And then the next day there's more light, and then the next day there's more light. It's a very Jewish idea to talk about this as, you know, going from that darkness to light.
- [56:27]
John Podhoretz
But we're going to be vigilant and Jonathan Schanzer is going to be here to keep us vigilant and not to get overly sanguine about, you know, a glorious new future in the Middle East. You know, it's a graveyard of dreams and has been for a thousand years. And there's no reason to think that it's going to improve that much. But we're really glad to have you there to guide us through the graveyard.
- [56:55]
Jonathan Schanzer
Always a pleasure.
- [56:56]
John Podhoretz
Yes. I think we're going to skip the recommends today and just leave you with that image of the candles burning on Hanukkah, which doesn't happen, by the way, for another couple of weeks, I think, actually.
- [57:09]
Unknown Speaker
Right.
- [57:10]
John Podhoretz
Yeah. So it's a late Hanukkah this year, and who knows what kind of. Who knows? Maybe we'll be maybe we'll be getting some, you know, maybe some oil is going to burn for eight nights there down by the down by the shipping terminals. So, Jonathan, thanks again. So for Jonathan Schanzer and Seth Mandel and John Pod Horitz, keep the candle burning.