← Tom Bilyeu's Impact Theory
Tom Bilyeu's Impact Theory
It's Bigger Than Nukes: America’s Hidden Strategy - The Method Behind Trump’s Chaotic Foreign Policies | Eli Lake
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Tom
If my teenager starts calling me Leslie,
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Tom
Just when it seemed like the never ending pattern of violence would repeat forever in the Middle East, Trump shocked the world by dropping more explosive tonnage on Iran's nuclear program than America dropped on Hiroshima or Nagasaki. While it is far too early to know if this will bring peace or more chaos, it is clear that this is a pivotal moment in Middle Eastern history. And joining me today to unpack the likely outcomes of this critical turning point is Free Press columnist and host of the Breaking History podcast, Eli Lake. We discuss whether Trump is an Israeli puppet, whether Iran actually had a nuclear breakthrough, or if there is something more nefarious going on and what all of this means for America and and Trump's America Inc. Strap in because this is a wild time to be alive. What do you think about the people who seem very convinced that all of the US Just dances to Israel's tune that Trump is working with Netanyahu? Yeah. Where does that stem from? And do you think there's any truth to it?
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Eli Lake
It's a canard, but it goes back to, you know, centuries. This is a classic anti Semitic trope that Jews are not loyal citizens. This was a huge part of the Dreyfus affair in France that inspired Theodore Herzl to come up with Zionism itself. And then in the modern context, since the state of Israel was born in 1948, there has always been this view that Israel somehow manipulating things it depending. I mean if we had another person on here who wanted to make that argument, I could probably go through fact by fact about how they got the argument wrong. But here's just I mean we don't even need to do that. On Tuesday morning, Trump went out to the reporters and I think he put on Truth Social. He said, I don't know if Elijah curse. He said, Iran and Israel have been fighting and they don't know what the f they're doing. And then he demanded that Netanyahu turn the planes around that were planning a bombing mission over Iran. That doesn't look like a puppet to me. He looks like Trump's calling the shots. And then as for this idea that it's the Israelis that are injecting the intelligence and so forth, it is a conspiracy theory. The truth of the matter is that if you just look at this objectively, we've seen the demonstration that the Israeli Mossad has extraordinary intelligence and penetration of the Iranian regime. We've also seen the demonstration over tragically decades. Now that the United States intelligence community, in my view, is too big, gets big questions wrong. As somebody who's covered it very closely, I know of at least twice in the last 20 years that American spy networks in Iran have been rolled up by the Iranian regime. So it asks you to lead. The question is that on the one hand, did Israel share information with the United States? Of course they did. The United States is Israel's most important ally. Allies share intelligence. That's normal. The question that I would ask is, why would you trust the American assessment on Iran over Israel, which just demonstrated they have this place wired? It strikes me that just using the razor of Occam, that Israel's intelligence probably be better. And then there's a lot of sharing that we don't know about, because intelligence world exists in the shadows for a reason. But I would imagine that a lot of information that Israel is sharing is verified through electronic sources by the Americans. Just to kind of give you a little bit of a background on this, the US Is better than anyone in the history of the world in terms of technical collection, meaning our ability to hoover up stuff on the Internet or even in the air in terms of wireless is unsurpassed. We have the ability to kind of basically probably tap anyone's, listen to any conversations we want, read anyone's email that we want. It's extraordinary. What we're not as good at and the Israelis, I think are much better at is what's called human sourcing, getting agents to turn to work for you. It's a nasty business. The Israelis are very good at that. The Soviets used to be excellent at that. The Russians are quite good. The Chinese are quite good. The U.S. i think, is less. We do it, but we're not as good.
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Tom
Iran seemed to go from side dish to main dish really fast. Do you think that something just clicked over from their capability to build a nuclear weapon or was this we knocked out the air defense and so it's just opportunistic?
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Eli Lake
Well, it's a couple things. I think you have to look at the proxy strategy as part of the nuclear strategy, which is to say what the proxies were when they were intact because Israel decimated them before this strike as part of the October 7th war. But what you'd have to say is that if the Iranians were to get a nuke, it would have provided a kind of nuclear umbrella for these forward positioned militias. So Israel was in a strategically perilous situation. You could argue on October 7th, horrific attack from Hamas. It's not clear whether the supreme leader of Iran or the late generals of the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps knew that this was in the works. There was a meeting in Lebanon with a very senior Revolutionary Guard court official. They, the Israelis put this intelligent out a few intelligence out a few months ago which showed that there was a sort of discussion about it. I think the Iranians wanted to have more of a coordinate attack. The Hamas went through with it anyway. But in terms of culpability, Hamas in many ways is sustained through Iran. It's part of this proxy network. So that's one element of how the Iranian nuclear program is related to that. The other is that it's the line of defense in some ways, or at least it was hoped to have been the line of defense for Iran if there was this day that eventually came where the Israelis would attack the nuclear program. So the response would be like, are you sure you want to do that? Because Hezbollah had more than 100,000 rockets. The Hamas had their own capabilities. So an attack on Iran would bring these attacks again from the proxies. So if you think about October 7th, the Israelis are caught unaware as one of the worst days in the history of Israel, the history really of the Jewish people, worst killings of Jews since the Holocaust. And since then, Israel has systematically gone after those proxy networks, including the Houthis. The Houthis are still standing, but every single one of them is now pretty much gone. After Israel killed the leader of Hezbollah, Hassan Nasrallah in the fall of 2024, the Iranians launched a barrage of ballistic missiles, largely successfully defended by Israel. Israel responded by a daring attack that took out Iran's sophisticated air defense systems. So they were left vulnerable in the country. That was the window of opportunity. And then you add to that, and I should say, in the fog of war we don't know. But Benjamin Netanyahu, the prime minister of Israel and the Israelis themselves claim that they saw recently unprecedented steps to the last piece of the puzzle, which is to put either the uranium in the actual warhead or finish the warhead design so that they were getting to that place where the Iranians could have a nuclear weapon whenever they wanted. Again, to me, I think the casus belli was established on October 7 even before. So it's not an Iraq war situation where you're going to worry about the intelligence. But the, the extent of the Iranian program was such especially and their activities enriching to 60%. There's no peaceful purpose for that. That's left for energy. That tells us that they had a weapons program and they were just sort of inching closer and closer to the goal line.
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Tom
Now, do you think in the fullness of time as we to find out whether they actually did make some big leap forward or this was, like you said, just written in stone from the time that October 7th happened. Do you think it's going to matter to public opinion about this attack?
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Eli Lake
No, I actually think that. I mean, I again, nobody has seen the intelligence except for the Israelis. And I suppose the American part of Trump and Netanyahu perhaps have seen the intelligence and their top intel people and military people. But what matters in this case is success. I mean, I think that we wouldn't have had a huge debate in America 20 years ago about the weapons of mass destruction in Iraq if the post. This is a point that Jonah Goldberg made recently, but I think he's right. If we'd stabilize the country and there wasn't an insurgency and Saddam Hussein had fallen and Iraq was largely pacified and rebuilding, I don't think it really would have mattered much if you would have found the stocks of weapons of mass destruction. It's only when the war becomes a slog and sucks the United States into a kind of, you know, nation building stabilization effort that obviously lasted years and years and years. That's when, you know, you're looking for like, okay, well, why did we get into this war? What's going on? I think what we're going to find out and we're starting to see, I mean, it's early days, but the Israelis kind of came out with a statement about their damage assessment. I think we're going to find out that the Iranian program has been set back by years. That will be a success. The United States didn't get dragged into a long, drawn out occupation of Iran. There wasn't the nightmare scenario where the regime precipitously fell, toppled too soon, and then there's anarchy on the ground and there's nuclear materials and so forth. There will be some negotiations. We'll see how those go. But I think you'll see this as largely a successful war.
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Tom
What's going to be the criteria by which they determine whether this was success or not?
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Eli Lake
I think the success criteria is that the Iranian program from soup to nuts from not just the enrichment facilities, which we all talk about, but like the factories where they built the centrifuges, the places where they turned the enriched uranium into the metal they need, you know, to sort of, you know, fuel a bomb or reactors and things like that. All of the different pieces. You look at all of the scientists who've been taken out in the first few hours of the war, that's accumulated kind of intellectual capacity. If it turns out that the Iranians. It's just too daunting a task, or they're several years away, I think that will be the success. But then in a way, it's not fully a success, I think, until there's an organic. I mean, this is sort of separate from the war, but I think it's related, which is that this is a regime that would be best left in the dustbin of history. And the ideal way to transition out of that regime would be for the kind of democratic uprising that we saw at the end of the Cold War in Eastern Europe, or for that matter, in 2000 with Slobona Milosevic in Serbia after he tried to steal an election. So if we can see an organic democratic transition, it's got to be organic, meaning it's got to come from the Iranian people, and it's got to lead to some sort of democratic outcome. And I think that's very much in the cards. The Iranians have had five national uprisings since 2017. Before that, there was 2009 and the Green movement. Every few years, the Iranian people remind us that the majority of them despise their leaders. So in my view, that there is a strategy, not so much for the Trump administration or for foreign governments, but for people to. Very similar to what we had in the 1980s with the solidarity movement in Poland, where lots of people supported the Polish kind of aspirations to govern themselves and not be a satellite of the Soviet Union. I think we have an opportunity in Iran. My dream, I'm not saying anybody can listen, is that if all of the sort of misplaced solidarity on college campuses in the west for Hamas after October 7, instead was kind of focused on the Iranian people, that would be wonderful. But it's, and, and it's not just, you know, thoughts and prayers. There are things like Elon Musk can do. Like Elon Musk, there is Starlink that can defeat Internet censorship in Iran. But the software that's necessary or the actual phones themselves to have Starlink on your phone is not really in Iran. Let's flood Iran with Starlink phones.
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Tom
Do not go anywhere. We'll be right back with more from Eli Lake.
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Tom
All right, we're back. Let's get into it. If the devastation is as Trump certainly would have us believe and these facilities have really been decimated and they see it up close, do you think this increases the likelihood that there is a democratic uprising?
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Eli Lake
I would say that historically there was a massive bombing campaign in Kosovo before the uprising in Serbia. But this is a humiliation for a regime. And you have to look at it from the perspective of the Iranians. The Iranian regime, the Islamic revolution gave us kind of Islamic tyranny. They call themselves an Islamic republic. It's not really a republic. It's a tyrannical system. And the system is very much infused with an almost end times belief in the hand of God. So that God is favoring this regime and that it has the momentum on its side. This is a demonstration that, I mean, to put it in those terms, that maybe God does not love this regime. I think the Iranian people are over and done with it. The Iranian people are. I mean, I've been to Iran once, but I would just say Iranian people, they, they just want to move on. And I think they would like to live in a kind of normal, modern country and to work it out themselves. There have been examples of kind of, you know, constitutionalism in Iranian history, recent history, I should say. They're not destined to live under a dictator. But what it means is for the mid level people in the regime, the apparats, the, you know, maybe the below brigadier general in the basiji, which is their kind of internal militia force or their anti riot police, people like that who on the one hand, have to know that they are despised by most of their neighbors. And now you have evidence that the grand plan isn't working. And by the way, that has been the message, really, I would say since the daring operations in Lebanon against Hezbollah, the killing of Nasrallah and the top Hezbollah leadership, there has been a kind of just momentum on the Israeli side. And at a certain point, there's been no real response. And like, you know, I think the most telling thing that we saw in Trump's statements and tweets or truth social posts was when he said, I want to thank Iran for informing us before their attack on Qatar. I mean, that exposes that this was just theatrical, it wasn't a serious attack. So the regime will try to sort of say, oh, we survived, we won. That's their narrative. I have to think that nobody even in the inner circle is going to believe that. And then you've got a very old Supreme Leader, he's 86 years old, Ayatollah Al Khamenei. He is now trying to get his son to be sort of to be the next supreme leader, because he may not have many years left, many months left. Who knows? I don't think that's going to go down very well. So there could be a real fight over succession that divides the elites and the leadership. There you have the sort of opportunity. But the key thing to watch here is, and this is true, by the way, not just in Iran, it's true in every single example of successful people powered revolutions, which is, will the, you know, will the, will the police officer, Will the, will the national, you know, will the. Will the army guy follow the order to shoot at the peaceful demonstrators? And that is something that nobody. I can't know from the outside. You can't know. But I would say that this humiliation of the regime maybe gets us closer to that. It's, it's almost like you have to assume you got to put yourself in the mindset of somebody saying, do I really want to be the one who's going to have the blood on my hands yet again? Do I want to follow this out? Are those incentives worth it to me? And there's a strategy, obviously, for the insurgents, the democrats, in this particular situation. They have to create a space where they're welcoming of the defectors, if you will, from the regime. But I have reason to believe that there are Iranians who understand that. But we also have to understand the regime has been utterly brutal when it comes to suppressing these sporadic but increasingly frequent Kind of democratic uprisings and just evidence of disgust with how they're being governed. It's corrupt, they're isolated, they're endangered. There's a drinking water crisis in Iran right now. There have been bank collapses. And meanwhile, you know, it's a powerful message. If you look at the luxury apartments that were where the Iranian generals were sleeping that the Israelis gotten at first, the Israelis made sure to put out the video of that. Most Iranians don't live that well. So these are things and we'll have to see again, it cannot be, you know, the CIA or the Mossad pulling the strings. You can't have a guy on a white horse coming in like the son of the late Sa Reza Pahlavi, although I think he means well and there might be a role for him or Mariam Rajavi, who lives in Paris. It has to come from the Iranian people. But I do think that there's an opportunity and I think that there's something that the west and the. And the people who care about this can do. That's, to me, that would be the full victory.
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Tom
Speaking of the west, what do you think of the division that's growing in the. Right. So you've got some people that just feel absolutely betrayed by Trump getting us involved in what they see as another war. They seem absolutely unconvinced that Iran was about to have a nuclear weapon. You've got Tulsi Gabbard saying sort of cryptically, but they don't have nuclear capabilities. They have not authorized the bomb. Like, what are we doing?
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Eli Lake
I actually think that there it will be insignificant. First of all, the intervention in Iran, which was. I mean, if you think about it, it was one bombing mission demonstrating new weaponry. Like What? It lasted 45 minutes and then they were on their way home. The second thing is that we didn't get sucked into World War iii, a regional war, or a regime change, nation building war. I don't think any of that was a possibility with Trump as the president. And frankly, I don't think even if you had President John McCain, Wolfowitz Neocon, it would have been a possibility. Because America is a different place in 2025 than it was in 2003. There's an interesting discussion as to why in 2003 we thought that we could do anything in the world and build nations in the Middle East. I was around back then. I was a junior State Department correspondent for upi and I later worked for the New York Sun. But, you know, I believed it. I'll cop to that. But we don't think that anymore because in part because of the experience of Afghanistan and Iraq. So anyway, what we have is a situation where I think it was a short, successful war. President Trump is the leader of the movement and things are going to move on. And the problem for the Tulsi Gabbard, Tucker Carlson crowd is they predicted that this would lead to utter catastrophe and they oversold the negative consequences of this. And I think in that sense, they may lose some credibility because their predictions didn't come true. But I also think that it'll be fairly easy to simply say that we were against Iraq and Afghanistan style wars, but these kind of wars are okay or these kind of wars are different. And so I don't expect there to be a kind of permanent split. It may be impossible at this point in terms of the administration for Tulsi Gabbard to stay in the administration because the president has said now openly, I think twice, that he doesn't care what his director of national intelligence thinks. And by the way, if that is the case, he shouldn't be the national intelligence director of national Intelligence. But, you know, it's an unconventional administration, so we'll see what happens. But I just don't, I just don't see this as being a major split. I think that there was a big split before and Trump did what he said he was going to do, but he's been saying it for 10 years. Iran can't have a nuclear weapon. Yeah.
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Tom
I was going to say, though, that that's the drum that he beats. And so I, I'm not sure that this is going to blow over as readily as maybe you do, because if Trump was saying they can't have a nuclear weapon, and then if the debate becomes, but show me the evidence that they were, that something happened that upgraded the threat to like an imminent threat. And I have a feeling they're going to have a hard time doing that. I think the real answer is this was opportunistic, that Israel had taken out their air cover, that we could finally go in and do it, that we could force them back to the table. I think, I think the way that this is going to play out in the near future is Trump is going to be looked at as somebody who said we have an opportunity. I told them they had 60 days. They didn't come to the table. Now people know that I'm for real. And when I look at the world through a realpolitik lens, I'm like, yeah, that makes sense. That honestly, from a real politics standpoint is probably what he should do so that people know that he's not playing around. But the words we were told was that this was a. Suddenly something had happened. We have intelligence this is now an imminent threat. And I have a feeling that's going to remain thin.
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Eli Lake
I hear you, but I just think that these things, I think we'll see, but I just think it's not going to be like a gotcha. I think that, you know, nothing succeeds like success is a kind of, is a cliche. But this was pretty successful military operation.
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Tom
What do you think the odds are that Iran actually doesn't fire either directly or through a proxy? Because I think they've already kicked the IAEA out and said, no, we're still going to do this.
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Eli Lake
I expect there will be some sort of negotiations. Iranians are over a barrel, though. I mean, at any point Trump can say, okay, boys, tell the Israelis to go back in. The Israelis have an air corridor. It's remarkable to me. I mean, let me just take a moment to kind of marvel at this fact. The new leader of Syria is a former member of Al Qaeda in Iraq and was an absolute, at one point in his, you know, interesting journey, was a dedicated, anti American religious fanatic jihadist. And he was asked, do you have any problems with the Israelis using Syrian airspace? And he said, nope, fine with me. Now, there's a reason for that. And it's because he was drawn into the Syrian Civil War of the 2010s, and the drivers of the worst cruelty, the worst war crimes in Syria in that time was the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps and their proxy militia, Hezbollah. The Sunni jihadists, on the other hand, while Israel certainly didn't, you know, I mean, obviously there are theological major distinctions there, but the Israelis built a field hospital over the Syrian border that was open to the partisans who were fighting in that civil war as a kind of humanitarian gesture. That what's interesting to me is that this guy who, you know, has the background that he does, he is not interested in a fight with Israel. He has far. He is far more interested in defanging Iran. And that goes, by the way, if you look at the statements from Saudi Arabia, from the Gulf states, they initially criticized it. They're covering their bets. These are cautious monarchies. But then war is over. They're all, it's nothing but praise for Israel. That's a sea change in the region. And it, I think it will be very good for the Trump. The first term Trump foreign policy success, known as the Abraham Accords, which saw normalization of relationships between Sudan, United Arab Emirates, Morocco. I might be leaving a few out, but there's a chance you could get the big dog, Saudi Arabia, to finally recognize what they had been have for nearly 80 years called the Zionist entity. That's enormous, Tom. So in that respect, I just think that Iran is in an impossible position. The other thing to notice, by the way, Israel attacks Iran, where was Russia? Iran provides Russia with the drones that are, you know, aimed at apartment buildings and hospitals and other civilian targets in Ukraine. Where was the Chinese? Where was the remnants of its proxies like Hezbollah?
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Tom
Do you think that Russia is just too bogged down in what they're doing?
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Eli Lake
Yeah, part of it is that the Russians were bogged down, but part of it is that the kind of axis of China, North Korea, Russia, Iran is not an alliance based on shared values. It's not an alliance based on shared history. It's a little bit like the Five Families. You know, I mean, when the FBI is about to crack down on the mafia, the Five Families will occasionally work together. They try to work together, but then, you know, every few years there's a. There's a gang war. And so they don't. The Iranians learned also they don't have any real friends. The Iranians tried to get, you know, the UN Security Council to jump into action. You know, the chancellor of Germany, who has been so critical of Israel in the Gaza war, came out with a statement saying that Israel's doing the world's dirty work. So what's interesting here is that the Iranians are totally alone and no air defenses. They have no ability to stop the Israelis. The Israelis obviously have a kind of unprecedented world, historic level of intelligence penetration of the Iranian regime. It's crazy how many of their leaders, their military leaders are about to take out. So this is an interesting moment because it's not to say that they're not going to be on a boat in the Pacific and you dictate the terms of surrender, but it's. The negotiations now are something like that. It's not the position that Iran was in when they were negotiating the nuclear deal with, you know, what was known as the P5 plus one. That that was part of Obama's big legacy. It's not the position they were even in, you know, two weeks ago when they were, you know, meeting with Steve Witkoff. It's a very different world for them right now. So they're going to have to accept the terms because at any given moment, Trump can say, all right, well, if you're if you're not going to play ball, then I'll unleash. You know, I'll unleash the big dog.
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Tom
Bear with us because we'll be right back with Eli Lake.
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- [31:12]
Tom
All right, we're back. Let's get into it. As the American public, I start asking myself, okay, wait, why are we going so hard at Iran? So you stop them from having nuclear weapons? If, like, if I'm to believe that everything has been demolished, there's going to be years and years and years. At some point this just starts to feel like you're saying, I told you to come to the table, you're not coming to the table and I'm bigger than you and so I'm going to keep smashing you until you come to the table. And I do think at some point, even if, I mean, look at the way that public opinion is turned on Israel, at some point, if you just keep smashing them, people go, wait, why are we doing this even if we don't have boots on the ground?
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Eli Lake
Well, okay, that's a fair point. But I would argue that there are a couple of things that are really good about it. The first thing is, is that if Iran did go nuclear, or it went to the precipice of nuclear, which is basically the same thing, then there will be a proliferation cascade effect. Saudi, Egypt, Turkey, most analysts believe would go nuclear as well. So then you have five, counting Israel, which is an undeclared program, nuclear powers in the most volatile region on earth. And that increases exponentially the chance of a nuclear exchange, which we've managed to avoid since 1940. Five, almost miraculously. Second of all, contrary to some of the sloppier commentary that I've read on the anti war side, Iran has lots of American blood on its hands and it doesn't go bad. It's not ancient history. It's not just the Marine barracks bombing in 1983, not just Khobar Towers in the 1990s, it's the Iraq war, then the Afghanistan war. They were providing insurgents with the roadside bombs known as IEDs that were maiming and killing lots of our soldiers. It's the fact that they're, I mean, this is not a, you know, intel fakery as Tucker Carlson recently has implied. The Justice Department under Joe Biden, the same Justice Department that wanted to arrest Trump and indict Trump, has two men in custody that they have formally charged in an unsealed indictment with trying to murder Donald Trump on behalf of the Iranians. So that they have taken to a kind of strategy of supporting assassinations in our country. Masih Alani Ajad, the great Iranian women's rights activist who now lives in America, was also on that hit list, as was the former National Security Advisor John Bolton, former Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, even lower level officials like, you know, one of Pompeo's advisors, Brian Hook, also on this list. This is, these were, oh, you can all check them. These are, you know, this is not, again, this is not, sources say these were statements from the Biden administration. So this is, this is a rogue state in every sense of the term. It's the leading state sponsor of terrorism.
- [34:22]
Tom
So I'm going to lay out what I'll call my own internal conspiracy theory and you check me and tell me where I become. So the way that I see this, I think that if everything moves forward swimmingly right now and Iran just engages and says, look, we don't want to get bombed again, let's just placate, get Trump out of office. Let's buy ourselves three and a half years. Great. Everything will go swimmingly. If, however, they keep down the road of pushing back, trying to exit out, kicking IAEA out and making all kinds of saber rattling noises about, you know, we're going to continue with our nuclear program, then I think Trump would have, he would have to really get the American public on board. And I don't think he's going to be able to do that without something happening either to our servicemen. So if they bombed one of our bases, that would give him the COVID that he needs. If there really is a sleeper cell here in America, and they trigger off or if there's a false fl. I don't want to get too conspiratorial, but you know, those are sort of the options, I think, where you could get the American people back on board with this. And my thinking is the reason that Trump is so hell bent for this is that. So I've gone to the Middle east and I've been to Saudi, I've been to Kuwait, I've been to the uae. And man, as an entrepreneur, when you land there, you're just like they are doing something right. You're walking through the airport, it feels like it's a seven star luxury hotel. It's bananas. You can just feel the money everywhere. They're making huge investments into architecture, infrastructure. It just, it feels like a country that has a sense of where it's headed. I think America's lost a lot of its own self sense of pride and so we're pulling ourselves apart. They have a sense of what they have to accomplish. They know they have to get out from a reliance on oil. Trump sees an opportunity. These guys clearly have the capital. He's looking at it like, almost like a vc where it's like, well, I'm America Inc. I want you to come invest a bunch of that money in America Inc. But I've got to get all of you guys to chill out and stop blowing each other up. Seems like our biggest problem here is Iran. Let's chill them out so that we can then get the Abraham Accords to spread across the region. And so he's got a reason to hammer Iran into submission, but it's not the reason that he puts forward. And so I think he's going to find himself stuck in this position of like, man, for the love of God, will you guys just calm down so that we can get economic prosperity sweeping across the nation? Which is why I think he's so silent, too supportive of what? I have a feeling you're not going to like this. But ethnic cleansing of Gaza, where it's just literally carpet bombing. And if I'm like, okay, I've got to get that leveled out so that there's calm there, so that Israel, who's clearly an economic powerhouse, they can do their thing, get Iran to calm down so that we can get Abraham Accords all across the Middle east and now this area that has like, I'll call it a 20 year clock to modernize and get off of reliance on oil and into a modern, probably financial based economy. I don't know if you know, Ray Dalio is, but I met him in the uae and he was like, basically, Abu Dhabi is the future of investments. And it's just like all the pieces start coming into place and I'm like, huh? With a realist lens on again, this just feels like, oh, I get why you've got to make Iran the Iran problem and the Hamas problem go away. So it'll be interesting to see how it plays out. How crazy did all of that sound?
- [38:00]
Eli Lake
Well, you know, Tom, some of that makes a lot of sense. I mean, you and I disagree on Ethan ethnic cleansing, but I'll just concede up front on Gaza that I'm sure that there were mistakes and decisions that Israel made that led to more civilians being killed, although I do think that they were an impossible situation given the way that Hamas fights. And we should maybe bracket that for later in the conversation or maybe another episode. But let's just talk about the big part of what you said, which is, all right, we've got these economic titans in the Gulf. They're trying to get off the oil, and we want them to invest in America. That doesn't strike me as a conspiracy theory. That strikes me as smart American policy. That is, if we can get billions of dollars invested into the American economy, which Lord knows we need, and we can start modernizing our infrastructure maybe because of that investment or whatever it is, and everybody can make money, that seems like it's pretty good for Americans. Second of all, I do think that you have to look at the Iran threat is not just a threat to the region, it's a threat to America. And I think Iran with a nuclear weapon would have been just a security nightmare and for the reasons that we talked about earlier. So that was a good thing. And then finally, third, I don't know if America needs to go back. I mean, it's a very specific ask, which is the underground fortresses of Natanz, Fordo and an Isfahan required a weapon that only America had, which was 33,000 tons or whatever it was that could penetrate deep into the earth to get to these underground fortresses. We will have to see whether this was successful. Lots of analysts are saying that, but the early. I think based on what the Israelis said today, they were successful. And so the rest of this is like I just look at Israel's capabilities. So will Americans care if Israel has to go back and take out more targets in Iran and it's not US capable GIs the Iranians again, they attacked the Al Air base in Qatar, but they told us ahead of time they didn't hit anything. You know what I mean? It was purely symbolic. So the Iranians to a certain extent, understood they didn't want to tempt the tiger. And I'm just saying that right now the reality is very different for Iran. They don't have a lot of options, so they're focused right now on regime survival. The sad news is kind of getting back to our first part of the conversation. They've arrested something like 700 people. They've already killed 24 people internally. Right. So they're trying their best to prevent that democratic transition. And I think that's extremely important. But I also don't think that that's really for Trump to decide. That's, again, Iranian people are in the lead. I think that we can.
- [41:16]
Tom
Trump doesn't seem interested in meddling, to be honest.
- [41:19]
Eli Lake
No, he's not interested. But that's kind of maybe a good thing, because what you don't want is to discredit. I mean, the Iranian people have to be the authors of their own story. You know what I mean? I want the Iranian people to take their country back, but I realize it's for the Iranian people to lead, so we have to support them. So I see your point. Like, he's trying to take care of this threat to stability in the region, and the hope is that these prosperous and wealthy countries might invest in the United States. I don't think that that's something that he would try to cover up. I think it would be something that, I mean, if he could run again, I mean, this is a separate question. I don't think he can, but he. Sometimes there's no way he might.
- [42:07]
Tom
Without a constitutional amendment and without taping my mouth shut, there's no way.
- [42:14]
Eli Lake
I think that that's what. What you just laid out is something that would be politically popular, not just with MAGA fans. I think it would be politically popular with Americans. I think Americans would look at it and saying, okay, you. You defanged an enemy of the United States. You've set back their nuclear ambitions for a while. We'll see. We'll see. If it really is only a few months and we start to see them doing it again, then that'll be reassessed. But again, I think it's. It's going to be. The program was really significantly damaged, and you've now opened up space where you've. You've made peace between Saudi Arabia and Israel, and now the Saudis and the Emiratis and others are going to invest in the United States. It Strikes me as just like, you know, so much winging, we're going to get sick and tired of the winning, you know what I mean? All that seems pretty good to me. So, you know, I think that the downside would be if we found out that they had more secret sites that even the Israelis didn't know about. The Iranians become defiant. Perhaps Khamenei keels over or he's pushed aside and then the new supreme leader or the new people in charge are even crazier.
- [43:34]
Tom
And they talk to me a little bit about that. Crazy. Because the, when I, the more I look at the Middle east and admittedly, you know, whatever, a couple years ago this wasn't even really on my radar. But the more that I look at the Middle east, the more what I see is, and take mbs, who's for my money, sort of the most extreme in terms of how rapidly he's trying to pull Saudi Arabia into the 21st century.
- [43:59]
Eli Lake
Dom, I am so glad that you said that. You're coming from an entrepreneurial background, right?
- [44:06]
Tom
Yes.
- [44:07]
Eli Lake
You've been to Saudi.
- [44:09]
Tom
Yes.
- [44:10]
Eli Lake
So you've seen. I mean I've covered the Middle east for a long time. The Saudi Arabia after 911 was a Janus faced ally. What I mean by that is that we had military assets there, we had an alliance with them going back to FDR in the 1930s, but they also exported the most poisonous and extreme jihadist Islamic ideology abroad, including, by the way, in America even. So what MBS has done is something, it started before him, but what he's done as the crown prince is he has really turned Saudi Arabia around. Saudi Arabia now is no longer in the jihad exporting business, it's in the counter jihad business. Ditto for the United Arab Emirates. The only country, by the way, that's still Janus faced in that regard is Qatar. And that's another story. But all of the other Gulf kingdoms, all of these other Gulf states have turned it around on this. That was our number one issue. Besides Pakistan, which is a separate problem after 911 these countries are finally doing it for themselves and they're reaping the reward with this economic boom. So I'm so glad that you mentioned that because as you probably remember wasn't so long ago that there's a, there's a dark side of mbs which is he had a contributor to the Washington Post murdered in Ankara or Istanbul in Turkey and that was exposed by the Turks and the Democratic Party in particular. Trump was the president then wanted to basically cut off relations with Saudi Arabia, I am so grateful they didn't succeed. Even though what I think he did to Jamal Khashoggi was a heinous crime.
- [46:07]
Tom
Heinous.
- [46:09]
Eli Lake
So I guess what I'm saying is what I appreciated about your comment there, because I know you knew about that. It shows that geopolitics is not a morality tale. It's not an allegory, it's not a heroic journey. There are usually choices between bad and worse. And sometimes you kind of have to live with, this guy did some very bad things to his domestic political opponents. But he is finally doing what we have pleaded with the Saudis for generations to do, which is to get out of this kind of jihad export business.
- [46:51]
Tom
Yeah. I mean, this is where I get fascinated with the other side of what you do with the Breaking History podcast. As a student of history, but sort of a late comer to history, man, you look back in history at our own nation and you just see a never ending string of tragedy and horrors. So it's like, to some extent, it's like, what's your goal? Where are you trying to get to? I definitely look at this all through a very realist lens. I think Trump does as well, and I think he's misunderstood because people are grappling, trying to find like ideology and what you're going to see. I think if you map Trump as somebody who looks at everything as a business deal to be done, trying to bring prosperity back to America in, in no uncertain terms, in ways that help him and in ways that help him that make me deeply uncomfortable. But nonetheless, again, not saying I agree with anything, just looking at, okay, how's this playing out? What's the North Star going to these countries, making sure that you're participating in the wealth party, like that suddenly you can make sense of the way that he moves. So looking at the Middle east as that, as this future hub of certainly investment, I think wherever you find the hub of investment, you're going to find the hub of innovation. And I can feel the energy, the psychological, cultural energy draining out of America and rushing into the Middle East. Surprisingly enough, nobody was more surprised than me. I'm very interested to see what happens to China. That's like my personal. And when I see all of that, I'm like, yeah, we have to do something to ensure that America does not slide down the totem pole, which, from where I'm sitting, we are very much in risk of doing.
- [48:38]
Eli Lake
But in a sense, just a counter. I mean, I, I, first of all, I share your concern. I Think we have deep institutional problems. I think we have a politics that doesn't work. I think we have a real crisis in our universities where there's a kind of bourgeois radicalism that kind of has really crippled in many ways the humanities, at least in our universities.
- [49:05]
Tom
Are you paying attention to the New York mayoral race?
- [49:08]
Eli Lake
Oh, God, don't get me started.
- [49:10]
Tom
I'm trying to get you started.
- [49:11]
Eli Lake
Yeah, well, I mean, that's a real challenge. I think that all of his ideas are. Well, they've been tried and they've failed. As a Jew and a Zionist, I don't like his spin on global intifada and things like that. But leaving that aside, I mean the idea that you're going to have a mayor, first of all, the mayor doesn't have the ability to do a rent freeze that he's promising, so good luck with that. But every economic, every economist looks at rent freezes and says all you're doing is you're shrinking the availability of apartments. You know what I mean? Like, all you're doing is you're shrinking the supply. And there's obviously great demand in New York. You want city run, state run grocery stores. I mean, I don't want that. I don't think Americans really want that. So that, yeah, I mean, I'm super, you know, I, yes, that's, that's a problem. So I see your, I share your concern. On the other hand, I don't know, America's a really big country. I've been to Austin, Texas and I see a lot of innovation. In some ways I think Austin might be the kind of beneficiary of people fleeing the Bay Area in Silicon Valley because of the crazy things are happening in California and the dysfunction of their state government. But I do think in a way these things are interconnected. America like to have a 12 day war that so far looks like a big win for America and Israel to demonstrate that we can kind of do and Israel can do what might seem like science fiction, that is a boost to our prestige, it's a boost to our value. And I would just say this because it's something I disagreed with. Trump and his Middle east in what? In his speeches in Saudi. Yes, it's a great thing to look at Dubai and Abu Dhabi and Riyadh and to marvel at how these cities, you're right, the airports feel like seven star hotels. That's a great line and they deserve some credit. But one of the reasons why they were able to have the space to invest in their economies that way and to turn their countries around is because they didn't have to deal with the prospect. Because America fought isis, America took out the instability and the drivers of instability. More importantly, I would say had America not used its air force to destroy the ISIS Caliphate in the mid 2000 teens, which was started by Obama, but really finished by Trump, do you think that there would be this economic miracle we're seeing in the Gulf? I don't think. I think you would have seen a spread of this extremist kind of terrorism. And, you know, and I think that dealing with Iran and the threat that Iran posed, particularly on the nuclear side, opens up more space because Iran was an enemy of the Gulf countries at the end of the day as well. So those things are kind of locked together. But I also want to just emphasize and agree with you that we need to turn our own country around so we can have some of that innovation and get that spirit back. I'm, at the end of the day, an optimist about America. I think we've had. I mean, you talk about history, we had a really rough run from the late 60s to, like, the early 80s. We had a tough 15 years, but we managed to sort of get out of that. And then we had all of the benefits of the Internet and the personal computer and all the things that sort of we take for granted today. So, again, I remain an optimist in America in that regard, But I also am a realistic, optimistic, and I'm appreciative that you sort of see it and you're not just satisfied with mediocrity. You're not dissatisfied with inefficiency, not just satisfied with, like, stagnation. That's very important.
- [53:20]
Tom
Yeah, definitely not that. Now, going back to the. I see an idea playing out in the Middle east that I would love to get your color on. And the idea goes like this. You have different factions of Muslims themselves that are trying to modernize. And just as Christianity has changed over time, the Muslim religion feels like it's going in two different directions. You've got people that are recognizing the future is going to be economic. It's going to be financial investments. They've got to be a place that the whole world feels comfortable making investments and coming in. And they're going to feel safe. And then you have what I'll call more fundamentalists, more extremists, for sure. And they're not focused on life in the here and now. They're focused on martyrdom and the life hereafter.
- [54:10]
Eli Lake
And.
- [54:11]
Tom
And my. When I first started looking at what was going on in Gaza. I just kept saying, look, I don't understand what's going on well enough, but I will just tell you this. If you have a population that does not care about their kids lives being economically better than their life in the here and now, and their kids kids lives being even better than theirs, you will have this problem. If people feel like the fast track to a good life when you're living in squalor is like you can, you know, get on the, the fast pass by going in suicide bombing or getting yourself killed, you're gonna have a problem. And so somehow some way it feels like there's like this is gonna sound so stupid and forgive me, but you need a version of the Pope who is going to help people navigate an update of the religion where they have religious credibility. But they're saying, I mean essentially like God is saying this. And so I don't know how we get to that. But it feels like you're gonna have a hard time stamping out through violence. Not that it's impossible, but you can have a hard time stamping out through violence the notion of Jihad. You're, you're, I think, going to need some sort of leading a way through religious scholarship to help people into a modern perspective.
- [55:38]
Eli Lake
That's a very shrewd point. I know a little bit about this. Again, I'm Jewish, but I'm a journalist and I've covered the Middle east for a while. Shia religion has something like that. You have Grand Ayatollahs in Shiism and the sort of seat of this Shia religion is in Najaf and Karbala in Iraq. And in fact, the Grand Ayatollah of Iran as supreme leader is not as high ranking a religious authority as the leaders of, of, of, of the Grand Ayatollahs in Najaf and Karbala. So in Shia, which is a, which is a minority of the Muslim faith, you sort of have something like maybe a kind of Pope like system. Although it's certainly not the same in Sunni Islam. You don't have anything quite like that. And you do have the ability of like, you know, anyone can kind of say if you're an imam, this is what I see as the way now what you're talking about with the ideology behind Hamas, it's sometimes known as political Islam, the modern version of it comes out of Egypt and particularly a figure named Hassan Al Bana. And that was this view that the reason why these Arab Middle Eastern Muslim states have fallen behind. And this starts at the beginning of the 20th century. So you had a rough, you know, most of the Arab world was. Were colonies then either part of the Ottoman Empire or later the British or the French, you know, depending on what part of the Middle east you were talking about. But the reason why, you know, we were once, you know, a world conquering empire under Muhammad, where Islam spread as far as Afghanistan, you know, to the east and to Spain and even parts of France to the west, is because we have forsaken. We. We're no longer, you know, organizing our societies politically based on Islamic law. So that's why it's called political Islam. So this has been a powerful idea and is a powerful idea that is built that's sort of based in this notion of like looking around and saying, why did we. Kind of getting back to our earlier conversation, why did we stagnate? Why did we fall behind while the rest of the world sort of surpassed us? And this was the answer. Well, you might look at the operations against Iran because Iran is, you know, modern Iran. The shah falls in 1979 in Islamic Revolution, and they are implementing the Shia version of this. Muslim Brotherhood or political Islam. We saw the caliphate for ISIS try this. For a period of time, Sudan was run by a figure named Tarabi, who also sort of talked about these things. For the most part, all of these movements have failed. Al Qaeda has failed, ISIS has failed, and Iran is now failing. And eventually, perhaps the way to get to what you're talking about is for a new set of thinkers to say, for 120 years we've tried political Islam and it's brought nothing but war and misery. So let's try something else. So eventually ideas matter and this and, and, and you, you know, there's a kind of cliche. You can't kill an idea with bullets and bombs. Well, you kind of can, you know, I mean.
- [59:12]
Tom
Agreed.
- [59:13]
Eli Lake
You know what I'm saying? I mean, like, there are people in America today who call themselves neo Nazis, but let's be honest, National Socialism was defeated in a war. There is still an emperor in Japan, but people do not worship the emperor in Japan the way they did, you know, before the end of World War II. So only time will tell. But this is such a humiliating defeat for the, really the leading Islamist or political Islamic power on the planet that was interested in, you know, creating these little statelets, whether it's the Houthis, Hezbollah, Hamas, what do they have all in common. Some are Shia, some are Sunni, but they all kind of are political Islamists. And hey, how's it working out for you? I mean, the leadership of Hamas, gone. Hassan Nasrallah, the leadership of Hezbollah, gone. The Houthis at the very beginning of the war suffered a pretty significant blow. Gone. Not all of them, but I'm saying the point is that they have been losing. And at a certain point that will have to create the space for some new ideas to come through. And I don't know what that's going to look like. You hit the nail on the head in that it is a religious issue and you need to have these religious leaders and they're out there. That's the other thing that there are. There are different shades of Islamist theologians and people in revered institutions like Al Azhar Mosque and universities in Cairo. I spent a lot of time, I lived in Cairo for a year and a half that have a very different view of things. But now you're sort of seeing that we're seeing in real time that these ideas don't work. And so the hope is that you demoralize the fanatics and that you create the space for someone to say there is another way. Which gets back to the other point you were making, which is that MBS is a Muslim. He's a religious man. I don't think you could question his piety in some ways in his personal life per se, but he's not a jihadist. And look at Saudi Arabia. You've been there, it's turned around. Look at Abu Dhabi, look at Dubai. In some ways, those are the sort of examples that you hold up and you say there is another way. And that's how you sort of deal with the ideological intellectual poisoning. I think that is represented by this ideology.
- [61:48]
Tom
Did you look at all into Epstein?
- [61:52]
Eli Lake
I'm very intrigued by Epstein. I must say that I didn't believe the story that he killed himself in the jail. But I'm intrigued by the fact.
- [62:03]
Tom
That makes two of us.
- [62:05]
Eli Lake
Yeah, but I'm intrigued by the fact that Dan Bongino, who I know devoted a lot of time when he was a radio host to this issue. He's the deputy director of the FBI. And he said, hey, I've looked at it. Cash Patel said he looked at it. I mean, I don't see why Cash Patel or Dan Bongino would cover it up. Maybe we'll find out that they did cover it up. I just don't see that they would cover it up. I think, by the way, on the, on the Epstein stuff, because I think I know where you might be going with that. Is it true that Intelligence Services, not just Israel, but let's just. Let's be real intelligence services. This is. In the world intelligence engage in what they call honey traps, which is to have information that. Compromising information on individuals to use against you in order to blackmail somebody to do their bidding. That is a sad fact of life. That's something that happens. Lots of intelligence services do that kind of thing.
- [62:58]
Tom
So crazy.
- [63:01]
Eli Lake
I have not seen persuasive evidence that Epstein's island, with all the underage girls and everything like that was really a front for the Mossad or. And somebody. By the way. I've seen it both ways. I've seen the CIA and Mossad. I don't know that. That. I don't know that. I. And again, let's just use Occam's razor again, Tom. And I don't know where you are in this, but it seems more likely that powerful men, people who would be friends with Epstein, wealthy men, ex presidents like Bill Clinton and. Or. Or Sean Combs or whoever, like the idea of kind of, you know, sex with young women. That's been true about. For a long time. I think Epstein clearly was a sex, you know, was. Had a voracious sexual appetite. He had gazillions of dollars. And this is what he liked to do. And what. It could just very well be that here's a guy who was doing the kind of thing that you. You know, I mean, going back to before the Roman Empire, you know, powerful men, this is what they do. Didn't necessarily mean that they were doing it in order to kind of have blackmail information on people. Again, I haven't seen that. What I've seen is some connections between Ghislaine Maxwell and I guess her father, you know, but that. That's not proof to me, though.
- [64:36]
Tom
This just seems. And look, I get it. This is one of the conspiracies that I indulge in. I try not to indulge in conspiracies very often, but this one just seems too perfect. It's like, hey, guys, don't worry, we got it. Files coming out. Yep, yep, no worries. Oh, sorry. No file for you. Hey, we're gonna be releasing that video. We just gotta clean it up. Just real quick, like. Clean it up? What are you talking about?
- [64:59]
Eli Lake
Release video as it is with you. But, like, why do you think so nuts. What's in it for Bongino and Patel?
- [65:05]
Tom
Oh, nothing. I don't think. I think for that train route.
- [65:09]
Eli Lake
You know what I'm saying?
- [65:10]
Tom
Why would they go along with it? Okay, so pure Conjecture. I have no idea that this is true. Think of me as a science fiction writer right now, absolutely making something up. But it would go something like this. I was. I start out as just a person who really is idealistic. I'm working in the government, and suddenly I'm being attacked. Then when I'm asked to be the person that comes in and like, really, hey, do something for your country. Come in and do it. And you think, oh, my God, okay, this is going to be a lot. But, you know, you don't say no. Like, when your country calls, you go in. So they both go in. And then the men in black suits that Putin keeps talking about telling everybody, you. You want to know why policy never changes? Because it's not the president that runs the country. It's men in black suits that come up and say, listen, this is how things really go.
- [65:58]
Eli Lake
And they come in and they're like, before. You don't think Trump's the decider.
- [66:03]
Tom
Well, here's the really bad news. Given how long Trump was friends with Epstein. Oh, buddy, can I just. I have a really hard time believing that that is not going to be in some way, shape or form, very inconvenient for him.
- [66:16]
Eli Lake
Hold on, slow down, slow down. Donald Trump had everything and the kitchen sink thrown at him. He was sued by multiple women for rape. He was accused by former heads of our own intelligence services of being a Russian asset. This is somebody who I think is immune to coercion in that regard. So what I'm saying is that I can't imagine there'd be anything on the Epstein stuff, the Epstein files, that would be even worse than what Trump has already been accused of and nearly, by the way, lost his freedom for so. And his fortune for.
- [67:00]
Tom
When I look at that, I say there's something fishy about the Epstein file and that I could easily see to your point about powerful men just going to powerful men, and that this is every side of the aisle, every which way but loose. And so there's just. Nobody wants this thing to get out there. It just seems impossible. Just release everything. Yeah, I'll remain sort of playful.
- [67:28]
Eli Lake
I'm all for releasing everything. I think the evidence now tells us that Lee Harvey Oswald acted alone, but I still want to release all the stuff from the CIA. I did a whole podcast episode on that, which is pretty good.
- [67:43]
Tom
They did release everything, right?
- [67:44]
Eli Lake
They pretty much have. I mean, but what I'm saying is I was in favor of that disclosure because I just think it's our history. We have a right to it and better to kind of let it all out. I mean, unfortunately, I mean, that's a whole separate conversation about Kennedy. Even though in the end, I. I don't believe there was a conspiracy. I just think that the government response to it was so duplicitous that I understand why lots of people don't believe the official version of the Warren Report. And I think to a certain extent, with Jeffrey Epstein, he clearly got favorable treatment initially from these legal allegations until, by the way. Until he didn't. Right. But for years. I mean, like, he had. That. He had a sweetheart deal in Florida and everything like that. But the explanation for that is not that the deep state was protecting an asset. The explanation I see is that, oh, well, what does it tell us? It tells us something we already knew, that wealthy, privileged people have a different standard of justice than the rest of us. You see what I'm saying? That we knew. I could have told you that from the O.J. trial. Right. I mean, like, that's just how it is. That's why people pay a lot of money for the best lawyers. It's why, you know, it's why people donate to politicians. But I think there's a difference between control and, like, a system that we have where there's a lot of people who can buy influence, but doesn't mean it's not the same as control. But that's not. I don't want to dismiss where you're coming from, though, because we have a vast national intelligence bureaucracy, a vast national security state. I don't think it's the same as a deep state, but I do think that it's something that is overweening and needs more accountability. And we have to maybe rethink in
- [69:43]
Tom
some ways, given that Israel is still not done with Hamas. How do they wrap that up? How do they decide? Like, we've now got everybody or whatever. And then.
- [69:56]
Eli Lake
Yeah.
- [69:57]
Tom
What do you make of how the public opinion has turned against them?
- [70:03]
Eli Lake
Well, I mean, it depends on what segment of the public opinion. Certainly younger people. Certainly.
- [70:10]
Tom
And that's what I mean.
- [70:11]
Eli Lake
Yeah. Largely universities have. I. I mean, I think it's been turning Even before October 7th. I. I certainly hope that there's a. They're close to getting the hostages back, which I think is sort of the remaining issue. But the real issue is that you can't have a remnant of Hamas still be in charge of Gaza. That's a red line. But I do think that Israeli elections. I don't think most Israelis want to reoccupy Gaza, I don't think it's a territorial expansion. I think that there are some Israelis who are in the cabinet, like Ben GVIR and Smotrick, who have a fantasy, but it's a fantasy that Jews can settle in Gaza and so forth. I think there's going to have to be a huge kind of reconstruction of Gaza, but that reconstruction has to happen under a different leadership than Hamas. But I also think that we're fairly close. And I have, even though there are these tragic stories of Palestinians waiting for food to be delivered by this new kind of humanitarian effort, I think it's called the Gaza Humanitarian foundation. The Israelis and I think Americans, contractors have set up. To me, that is a ray of hope. And I think Hamas has been attacking these things and trying to do what they can to sabotage it, because I think that removes the last bit of leverage that Hamas has over the population. I think the population in Gaza, we've seen some flickers of this, are absolutely furious with the decisions that were made by their leaders that plunged them into war. Hamas started the war with October 7th. I don't see how anybody could have expected the Israelis wouldn't respond with overwhelming force, which is what they did. I hate that the war has dragged on because it's been terrible for Palestinian civilians. I am not of the view that no one in Gaza is innocent. I think there are a lot of people who are innocent. I think the Gazans are double victims of Hamas and Israeli bombardment. And it's a, it's a tragedy. But I also kind of begin to see the light at the end of the tunnel. And I think that the victory in this 12 day war is a big part of that. I mean, if there's any rational actors left in the remnants of Hamas leadership, they should be looking around at this point and saying to themselves, what are we fighting for? And that's, that's, that's hopefully where we're, where we're headed.
- [72:36]
Tom
I love it. Eli man, I can't thank you enough for taking the time. Where can people follow you?
- [72:42]
Eli Lake
Well, make sure to subscribe to Breaking History. It's a great podcast and read me at the Free Press. I'm a columnist there and I am also contributing editor, Commentary magazine.
- [72:58]
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