How Far Away Is a Ceasefire? An Update on Gaza and the Rafah Invasion | Ian Bremmer

Helen Walters: On Tuesday, May 7, Israeli tanks entered Rafah

in southern Gaza,

as part of a military operation to rid the city of Hamas fighters

and infrastructure.

The invasion had long been anticipated,

with much fear for the 1.2 million Palestinians

estimated to be sheltering in the area.

It feels like a pivotal moment in an ongoing war

and humanitarian crisis,

so we thought we would try to get a deeper sense of what is going on

and what we should be paying attention to.

I am delighted to be joined once more by Ian Bremmer,

president and founder of political risk research

and consulting firm Eurasia Group,

and my conspirator in this "TED Explains the World" series.

Even though Ian has a terrible voice right now --

Ian Bremmer: A terrible voice, a terrible voice.

I mean, I sound so non-Ian-like, it's horrible.

HW: You sound really terrible.

But the good news is that the insight and the wisdom will flow all the same.

So thank you so much for being here, Ian, and welcome.

IB: Thank you Helen, good to see you.

HW: OK, so can you lay it out for us?

Share your perspective of what is going on right now.

And crucially, what are we not seeing or appreciating in this moment?

IB: Well, look,

so much of this conflict has been about the fact that the two antagonists,

the Israeli government and Hamas,

have virtually no alignment,

no overlap in what they're trying to accomplish.

And it’s very hard to come to a sustainable peace,

or even a ceasefire that can last for anything,

when that's true.

I mean, the perspective of the Israelis,

and I’m not just talking about the war cabinet,

but the whole Israeli population --

and there have been some that have been protesting

and demanding that, you know,

the Israeli government accept the Hamas ceasefire --

most from the right, the center and the left

want Hamas destroyed.

They want the leadership of Hamas brought to justice,

either killed or captured.

They want the military capabilities of Hamas destroyed

beyond an ability to continue to launch rockets against Israel,

irrespective of Israeli defense.

And they want the fighters,

some 30 to 40,000 estimated Hamas fighters, to be gone.

And they're not close to that military outcome yet.

Hamas, of course, is trying to find a way to continue to fight

and to represent their ideology and their aspirations

for control of territory that they believe belongs to the Palestinians.

And of course, they don't recognize the right of Israel to exist.

So, I mean, even negotiating with a terrorist organization

is something that we don't, in normal times,

think a lot about doing.

That is what the Americans, the Egyptians, the Qataris

have tried to facilitate over the past months.

But the reality is that while everybody else in the world

wants the fighting to be over,

the two groups that are actually fighting don't share common interests.

They don't.

And no one has been forced to cry uncle.

I mean, Hamas just obviously hasn't faced enough damage

that they feel like they have no alternative

but to accept what is being offered to them by the Israelis.

And the Israeli government,

despite the isolation they're feeling,

and, you know, with even President Biden

now suspending a small number of offensive weapons,

which he was incredibly reluctant to even talk about as a possibility

just a couple months ago, he's now doing it.

And the Saudis coming out and saying,

warning Israel to stop what the Saudis are calling a genocide

against the Palestinian people.

That is a big step for a country

that's preparing to normalize relations with Israel.

Despite all of that,

Israel does not feel the need that they have to change

and give more to the negotiating process.

And that's why,

despite the ultimatums that have been given

consistently by the United States not to go into Rafah, they've gone in.

And to be fair, they haven't,

at this moment, you and I talking,

they haven't gone all the way in.

They've done more than dip a toe.

There are significant airstrikes.

There are tanks that have rolled into some of it.

They have given evacuation flyers,

and they're moving a lot of the territory out of big parts of Rafah.

But you would not call this a full-on ground invasion.

And at this point, the Americans have not said

that the Israelis have breached the red line,

of which there is one.

What the Americans will do if they proceed is an open question.

And so we're, you know, we're in a bit of a gray zone.

A lot of the Middle East operates in gray zones in conflict all the time.

But this is very dangerous, both for the region

and more broadly.

And I think it’s a good time

to be talking about what's at stake here.

HW: So it's interesting that you say that Hamas doesn't feel like they have,

I don't know if you put it "suffered enough,"

but, you know, 35,000 Palestinians have died in this conflict.

What do you think will bring Hamas to the table in some meaningful way?

IB: Look, I mean, their leaders,

some of their leaders have lost a lot of their families.

That's true.

My understanding is that the military leader of Hamas

has actually had the over 30 members of his family killed.

You know, so clearly, there's a level of personal suffering.

And while ideology is driving them

in ways that is hard for you and I to imagine,

it is hard to say it's driving them blindly.

You have to believe that there are other things

that are also weighing on their decisions,

like the wellbeing of their families,

and like their ability to continue to live and fight another day.

Now, I'm sure that that's a part of the reason

they don't want to give up the hostages,

not just because there aren't that many left alive for them to give up.

And of course,

that has been a wrinkle in the negotiations over the past weeks

as well as the Israelis have learned

that the first tranche of hostages that were going to be released

weren't all going to be alive.

I mean, you know, no one's going to accept that bait and switch in Israel.

And also,

the fact that the only way that Hamas is protecting their leaders,

in all likelihood,

is because they're deep under Rafah

in tunnels with those hostages.

So, you know, one of the ways that you get them out

is if there is a possibility of safe passage.

I mean, I remember when you and I were talking about Prigozhin,

Yevgeny Prigozhin,

who was, you know, marching to Moscow,

and he was in an absolutely no-win situation.

And yet he was willing to cut a deal with Putin

that gave him another few months of life on this Earth

and allowed, you know, his lieutenants

and some of his advisors to continue with their contracts and their jobs.

You and I both knew that he was dead man walking.

So, I mean, part of the question is Hamas has gotten themselves,

in terms of their leadership,

into an incredibly impossible position.

They will be marked, no matter where they are,

for death by the Israelis,

by the Americans, by many others,

for the rest of their lives.

That hardens their position.

It makes it harder to negotiate with them.

But even then, if things get too impossible for them,

they might be willing to accept an exit clause,

to get out

for a third, undisclosed country for a period of time.

And I've got to tell you,

most of the world would accept that

if it meant that we could have an end of Hamas in Gaza,

an end of the fighting in Gaza.

But again, at this point, you know, what we're negotiating over right now,

and Bill Burns, the director of the CIA,

who has been the adult from the United States,

riding herd on these negotiations,

him going to Israel

is the last opportunity to get a deal done,

to get any time of ceasefire

and back away from full-on onslaught of Rafah

that will cause many thousands more civilian deaths,

much more famine and hardship for the other Palestinians living in Gaza,

and much more retaliation from the axis of resistance

and more broadly, across the Middle East.

So he's going there.

But what we're talking about, even if he is successful,

is not a permanent ceasefire.

And I think it's almost impossible to get this Israeli government,

and particularly its prime minister and his far-right coalition,

off of the idea

that they still have unfinished military business on the ground in Gaza,

and they may delay it for a month or six weeks,

but they are not going to delay it indefinitely.

That is not in the cards, in my view.

HW: So you mean a full-scale invasion of Rafah is still on the cards?

IB: I do, I absolutely believe that.

Now, what is defined by full-scale invasion?

It's interesting.

The Americans have never told the Israelis

that they oppose a full-scale invasion.

They haven't said that. They haven't.

You'd think they'd say that, they hadn't said that.

They've said that they want guarantees

that the Palestinian civilians living in Rafah,

over a million, as you say, 1.2 million,

have a safe haven,

have an ability to evacuate,

that the Americans consider a hold water.

And -- that's number one --

number two,

that adequate humanitarian aid is able to get in to Gaza,

across the territory,

to allow the Palestinians to continue to survive

in anything that looks like life.

And as of right now,

neither of those two conditions have been upheld.

You know, and so if the Israelis --

and the Americans have made that very clear as of today.

So if the Israelis were to persist with a full-on invasion,

absent those conditions,

the Americans would be forced

to what, suspend,

cut off offensive weaponry.

Make the Israelis buy it on the market,

reduce their ability to actually continue a fight for more than a few weeks

the way they would like to in Rafah.

That is what the Americans are trying to say to Israel right now.

But it is not the case.

I mean, I feel like, well, if we don't get a ceasefire,

a temporary ceasefire,

what is likely to happen

is that the Israelis will evacuate more people,

non-military-age men, right?

But others and they can't force them,

they're not ordering them,

but they're flying leaflets and they're saying,

get out and we'll give you safe passage for a period of time, a couple days,

four days, whatever it is.

And they'll let in more humanitarian aid,

some of which is no longer, frankly, in their control.

They've said an American private security company

is going to be given control of the border

that they've just taken over at Rafah.

That's new, that's the last 24 hours.

And they've also, of course, allowed,

though they don't formally occupy it,

so it's not really up to Israel to allow it,

the United States to build this pier

to allow goods to get shipped in,

which might be open in the next few days even

to allow some additional aid in.

I think that those things will happen.

Israel will say that they’ve met American demands,

and then they’ll do full-on invasion.

I think that is the plan right now, absolutely,

short of Bill Burns being successful when he gets to Israel.

HW: How do you rate his chances?

IB: If it was anybody but him, they'd be really low.

He's well-respected by all sides.

He really is.

He wouldn't be going if he didn't have a serious plan.

He's not going for window dressing.

He's not going to show that the Americans are giving their all.

He believes there's a way through.

I have a lot of respect for Bill.

So, I mean, I'd like to say it's at least a coin flip.

I think they're still really talking.

They're still really engaging.

But let's also keep in mind, Helen, a couple of things here.

First, talking to Hamas is hard.

Getting messages to the military leadership,

just one message back and forth,

can frequently take one to two weeks by the Qataris.

So between the time that they have said something

and when you are responding to them,

frequently, the facts on the ground change.

And that makes it a lot harder to get to a deal.

And that's how the Americans have,

earlier, a couple of months ago, said,

yeah, we think a deal is about to happen.

And then, you know, you hear back from Hamas

and it turns out life is different than you thought.

And Biden's being a lot more careful,

more cautious this time around than he was a couple of months ago,

everybody has noticed.

Also, the fact that if Netanyahu

gives too much up in a deal,

he will lose his right-wing government, and then he’ll fall.

And this is a government who have ministers,

in a sitting government,

who have called for genocide against the Palestinians, right?

I mean, publicly, who have said Gaza should be leveled,

full ethnic cleansing, they should be occupying it.

You know, these are ministers of the Israeli government.

They are not members of the war cabinet, thankfully.

So they don't have control over the war in Gaza.

But they are indispensable to Netanyahu maintaining his power.

And so he is being pushed.

I mean, I have no doubt that Bibi will find a way, you know,

to come to terms with the deal

if he can survive politically with that deal.

But if he can't, he'll throw it away.

And so, that's where we are right now.

It's hard to work with Hamas,

it's hard to work with this Israeli war cabinet because of the leadership.

And that's just to get a temporary deal of a few weeks,

which everyone will see as an incredibly improbable win.

Like we are at the brink right now.

And I would consider it, you know, a big breath of fresh air.

Oil prices will go down,

we will have a cessation of attacks in the Red Sea by the Houthis

for as long as the ceasefire is going on.

There’ll be huge shuttle diplomacy to talk about next steps,

Palestinian leadership, governance, all of these things.

But the reality is, we'll still only be looking at a temporary ceasefire,

with Hamas holding on to a smaller number of hostages,

each of whom mean a lot more to Hamas's survival, right?

And the Israelis being pushed harder and harder to say,

"What are you doing to get them out?"

And what are you doing to end Hamas?

So I don't think this gets easier,

even if we manage to pull a rabbit out of a hat

with these negotiations,

these last- ditch negotiations.

HW: How do you rate Netanyahu's chances of surviving as the leader?

IB: I mean, you know, he has survived longer,

over many administrations,

than almost any of his detractors would have expected.

So his survival skills are quite something.

His political instincts,

his ability to play higher-stakes poker than you are willing to

and push all of his chips in.

Does it repeatedly.

There's no question that Bibi thinks

he's got a better chance with his coalition

if he can make it through the US election and Trump wins.

Not because Trump loves Bibi, he doesn't.

Trump doesn't trust Netanyahu.

Didn't like, really didn't like the fact

that Netanyahu, who promised to be there with the Americans

when the US was going to assassinate Qasem Soleimani

and then a week beforehand pulled out.

Also really didn’t like that Netanyahu immediately called Biden

to congratulate him after the election.

Said, "I'm ready to work with you."

Trump couldn't stand those things.

Trump remembers those things, talks about it.

But Trump on Israel supports the far-right position.

And Trump's advisers, foreign-policy advisers around the Middle East,

support that position.

This is the guy that recognized Israel's ownership of the Golan Heights.

He's the guy that moved the embassy, the US embassy, to Jerusalem.

He didn't have a problem with expanded settlements in the West Bank.

I mean, so a lot of places where Biden is strongly pro-zionist

but is more of a centrist

in terms of who he supports in the Israeli political spectrum,

you know, Trump would support the far-right

that Bibi has as his lifeline.

It’s Likud, right-wing party, center right,

and it's the far-right coalition.

That's it.

So I think that Netanyahu thinks that if he sticks around,

there can be other things on the table,

that can allow him to be a leader for longer.

But he has to stick around.

At this point,

I think it’s more likely than not that he’s still prime minister

come November.

Because even if you have a no-confidence vote,

and you force a new election,

it's three months from when that happens to the election.

And, you know, we had this big, I'm sure we'll talk about this,

but we had this big fight between the Israelis

and the Iranians,

that made Netanyahu look like more of a patriot.

He had been responsible for October 7.

That's his legacy.

Then he's responsible for Israel with allies

defending itself against unprecedented Iranian strike

without a single Israeli casualty.

So I think he's bought himself more time by virtue of how this war has gone,

and how the war has expanded

and also how he's managed to keep his own coalition on side.

So, yeah, I think if you made me bet,

I think he's got at least another six months in him at this point.

HW: So the mention of Iran, I think is, is really important.

As you mentioned, like in April,

we saw Iran launched hundreds of drones and missiles

onto Israel in response to an Israeli attack.

And I think there was real kind of,

everyone holding their breath to see how that actually shook out.

Do you think that Iran will respond to this attack on Rafah,

or do you think that they're going to get involved in any bigger way

at this moment?

IB: Not directly, but indirectly.

But, you know, here's a really interesting point, Helen.

You know, the Israelis have had a common practice

of killing IRGC members when they can find them

in other parts of the Middle East,

not in Iran itself.

They've had major cyber attacks in Iran

against their nuclear program.

They’ve assassinated nuclear scientists, right?

I mean, there have been all sorts of Israeli attacks

against core Iranian interests.

It's fairly clear from what happened just a few weeks ago,

the Iranian response to an Israeli attack

against an Iranian consular building,

basically part of the Iranian embassy,

which Iran considered an attack on its own territory,

the 300-plus missiles and drones against Israel.

And they said, "You do this again, this is going to be much worse."

So the stakes for the status quo ante

policy of Israel have gotten a lot higher.

Next time Israel is thinking about,

"OK, it's time to go after Iran's nuclear program again,"

the potential for that to become a war -- much higher.

So let's break down two different parts of this.

First, let's look at what happened between Israel and Iran.

Then let's look at what the Iranians are doing going forward.

First, what happened?

So the Israelis,

who have been on the receiving end

of attacks from all of these Iranian proxies across the region,

and Iran gives the money and weaponry and training and intelligence.

So then the Israelis see this target in Damascus.

The IRGC, Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps, their head for Syria.

And so they send missiles in.

They blow up the building,

they kill him and some other officers.

And so then the Iranians,

on the one hand, they clearly don't want a war,

so they tell the Turks and Iraqis in advance,

"Here's what we're planning on doing,"

They wait a week.

The messages get to the Americans.

"Just going to attack military targets,

not going to attack any civilians.

This isn't about the United States.

We don't want the US involved."

Then they send the weapons over.

While the weapons are in, you know, in transit,

the Iranian mission to the UN says,

"Hey, this is all we're doing.

It's in response to what the Israelis did.

We consider this now closed."

That all sounds pretty good.

Sounds de-escalatory, tit for tat.

Except, they sent over 300 missiles and drones.

And I will tell you that no one in the Biden administration,

in the Pentagon, in the White House,

no one thought that that was going to happen.

They thought that was such a larger response from Iran.

I mean, if you wanted to just hit Israel to show that this is serious,

you send 20, 30 drones, whatever,

you know they're going to knock them down.

You send over 300, the intention is for a bunch of them to get through.

The intention is to blow up a major Israeli base,

to kill Israeli military men and women.

If that had happened,

the ability of the United States

to contain the Israeli response to something symbolic

would have been very, very challenging.

In other words,

we might right now be in an Iran-Israel war

that the Americans got sucked into.

The Straits of Hormuz would have been disrupted.

Iran also boarded an Israeli-linked ship just outside the Straits of Hormuz,

right before they sent those weapons,

showing "this is where this can go

if this gets really ugly."

That's 150-dollar oil.

That's Trump is the next president, right?

That's a that's a major war in the Middle East

that the Americans are actively fighting with allies.

Horrible situation.

I don't think it was likely,

but the Iranians were prepared to risk that,

at least to a limited degree.

And that's something that everyone in the region now understands.

And the Israelis understand it, too.

OK, so that's what just happened.

Fortunately, that's in the rear-view mirror.

Going forward,

if this attack on Rafah goes ahead, either in the coming days

because there’s no agreement on the hostages,

or in the coming weeks

because there is an agreement and then it's over

and they haven't extended it,

then you're going to see

the Iranians continuing to provide all sorts of support

for these so-called axis of resistance members

who the US considers to be terrorist organizations.

They don't recognize the right to Israel to exist.

They're going to be engaging in strikes on shipping,

on warships and military targets of the US and the UK,

and also against Israel.

And the Israelis are likely to make strikes against Iran

as a consequence going forward.

So we could very easily have a repeat of what we just saw

between Israel and Iran.

But with that deterrence having failed,

we're now at a new point of escalation,

more dangerous than it was last time around.

Got to do more to show that you're serious, right?

Also, final point, in case that wasn't enough,

you've got over 100,000 Israelis

that have been evacuated from the north of the country,

evacuated because at the beginning of the war, they were concerned

that Hezbollah was going to continue to send missiles against them

and make them unsafe and kill them.

So they're out.

But there's a lot of pressure to get them back in,

especially by September, start of the school year.

The only way you get them back

is if you either have a peace plan that's agreed to,

which we don't have,

or you've taken some actions against Hezbollah.

Now, most of the conversations I've had with Israeli leadership

and even with some centrist members of outside of the Israeli government,

is that action needs to be taken against Hezbollah.

And if it's a two-front war, it's a two-front war.

It's one of the reasons they don't want to have a lot of troops in Gaza.

Most of them have pulled back

because they have to defend themselves against Hezbollah.

So if the only way you get your 100,000 citizens back

to their homes

is you need to start striking Hezbollah to a more serious degree.

Hezbollah is by far the most important ally of Iran in the region.

They're the ones the Iranians would do much more to defend.

So that's another proximate way

that we get from the war that we have right now

to something that could expand and bring the Iranians in.

There's just a lot of vectors of instability

as we look over the coming months.

HW: Is there any genuinely credible path to a two-state solution,

or to peace in the region any time soon?

IB: I think there's absolutely a credible path.

I just don't know that it's any time soon.

I mean, the credible path is you have a Palestinian Authority

that appoints a technocratic government for Gaza,

Palestinians who have worked in multilateral organizations

and understand what it means to actually build an economy.

Those people exist.

And there are certainly people

that could run a Palestinian Authority in Gaza,

some of them are in the Emirates and Egypt.

There are, you know, the ones in jail in Israel.

I mean, there are possibilities, right?

And then the military,

the security would be funded by the Gulf states, maybe the US,

with a lot of the physical security provided, probably, by Egypt.

Maybe a little with Jordan, maybe some others, right?

Maybe the UN would get involved.

That's feasible.

And there's been a lot of conversations involving the Gulf states

around precisely that.

And some of the conversations,

even in the Bahrain Peace Conference,

that was the precursor to the Abraham Accords under Trump,

discussed that.

So, I mean, these solutions exist.

But, Helen, over the last seven months, you know,

October 7 has radicalized a generation of Israelis

against the solution like that.

Not all of them, but a majority, a majority.

A two-state solution is no longer something

that anybody in Israel with a big party wants to run on,

because it's very unpopular in Israel,

particularly among Israeli Jews.

Israeli Arabs, different story.

Israeli Jews strongly oppose a two-state solution right now.

Then you've got the Palestinians, and not just in Gaza,

but in the occupied territories, the West Bank,

where much more land has been taken illegally over the past months.

I mean, Netanyahu appointed a member of the far right

to be in charge of demolitions in the West Bank.

They're taking more land, more Palestinians are fighting,

more Palestinians are getting killed,

fighting against settlers, also fighting with the IDF.

So we're farther from a two-state solution,

even in the West Bank, you know.

And then, of course, we have the animosity from Palestinians

who are refugees, living without full rights

in Jordan or in Lebanon.

You know, you put all of that together,

and this is an incredibly, an incredibly difficult path

to get from here to there.

I mean, look, the Saudis are holding out,

"We will normalize relations with Israel,

even as we say, you're committing a genocide."

When's the last time you've had a country say,

"We're going to normalize relations with you.

You're committing a genocide, but we're prepared to do it,

just stop

and let's have a defined path for a new state for the Palestinians

that you will recognize.

And then we'll do it."

And the Americans have spent a lot of time with the Saudis

working on what that plan would be.

And I think you could get that through

with a new defense pact

that would pass Democrats and Republicans in Congress.

But you have to have Israeli normalization.

That means you have to have a Palestinian state.

Helen, there is much more support for a Palestinian state today

around the world,

than there was when you and I were talking about this last time.

When October 7 happened,

it was in part the result of years and years and years

of everybody talking about Palestinian need

for self-autonomy and determination,

and no one actually doing it.

We now have a lot more people recognizing talk is cheap.

This is causing a real problem.

We need a Palestinian state.

But I mean, if the people that are fighting the war

have inclinations against each other

that preclude any such possibility,

you asked me at the beginning, why don't we have a deal?

We don't have a deal because there's not overlap

between Hamas and the war cabinet.

Why don't we have a two-state solution pathway?

Because the Palestinian people and the Israeli people

have gotten further apart.

Despite all of this pain, because of all of this pain.

HW: It is so painful.

There is so much pain everywhere.

What's interesting, too, I think,

is that the global response to this has been so divided itself.

There is so much anger at Israel

for what people are seeing that is happening to the Palestinians,

the death and the destruction of Gaza and the pictures that we see.

The support for Israel that I think materialized after October 7

does in some ways seem to have evaporated on a global, kind of, basis.

But I'm wondering if the rise of anti-Semitism

and the rise of the kind of angry rhetoric

that we see rolling out and playing out across the world

is playing into any of the factors on the ground

and with the leadership who are actually making the decision?

What is your response to that?

And how are you seeing this type of strife that is happening around the world

actually impact anything that's happening on the ground?

IB: I mean, of course, we're seeing a rise in anti-Semitism,

which frankly predated October 7.

Those numbers were going up in Europe and the United States before that.

And it's gotten worse.

And I think a lot of that has been just the polarization

and the misinformation in society,

the extremism that is carried algorithmically through social media.

I mean, things that you and I talk about,

that's getting worse.

And, you know, you mentioned that there was, you know,

an outpouring of support for Israel after October 7.

And that's true.

And we saw big demonstrations, massive in Germany,

in the United States and elsewhere.

But there was still a lot of anti-Semitism.

And, you know, even in the early days, if you were an Israeli Jew,

you felt like there wasn't as much support as you would think.

There was a lot more sympathy for the Hamas position,

even as they just carried out the most brutal atrocities

we'd seen against Jews since the Holocaust.

And, you know, Joe Biden, on Holocaust Memorial Day,

Remembrance Day came out and, you know,

seven months after, reminded people of that,

that the hostages are still there.

These atrocities were still committed.

The people that were responsible for those atrocities,

that carried them out, that ordered them,

they're still commanding their forces.

And that's clearly not acceptable, right?

I mean, the Americans didn't consider that acceptable after 9/11.

No country that had that brutality against them

would consider that acceptable.

But it's also true that, more broadly,

there is --

Israel today is in a very isolated place.

Almost the entire --

When Hamas accepted the plan that was offered by the Egyptians

and the Qataris

and the Israelis said no,

pretty much the entire world was in the Hamas negotiating position.

And that's not good for Israel.

Now, has that really made a difference to the people

engaging in the substance of this conflict and potential resolution?

No.

And has it led to any major attacks?

No. Not yet.

I mean, look, the major terrorist attack that we've seen

since you and I have spoken to each other,

an Islamist extremist attack was in Moscow,

for some Tajiks that were attached to ISIS-K.

And the reason it was Moscow is because, you know,

Putin is a big friend and ally of Assad in Syria

and helped to take ISIS out of the territory

that had been their caliphate.

Now, that was a while ago.

But it takes a terrorist organization a long time

to organize a spectacular attack.

You know, everyone's trying to get them.

They need to operate under the radar with a lot of anonymity,

and they don't have a lot of resources.

A lot of them aren't very capable.

So, I fear that the fact

that we haven't seen anything yet

is just because there hasn't been enough time

for those plans to manifest.

I mean, certainly US and allied intelligence believes

that we are going to see a generational change in support for anti-Israel

and anti-US Islamist extremist terror

because of what has transpired in the last seven months

on the ground in Gaza.

I absolutely expect that.

I hope that the amount of effort and resource

that has been put into combating that post-9/11

will enable us to prevent it, or at least the vast majority of it.

But, you know, I don't know how lucky I feel.

HW: Well, that is depressing, thank you.

So what are you watching for next?

What should we be looking out for?

What are the signals that we should be looking for

that something new and interesting and big is happening

that we should be paying attention to?

IB: Well, first of all, what we talked about,

a few of those in the region,

we want to watch very carefully

what comes out of Bill Burns's trip to Israel,

if there's going to be a short-term agreement, that's what it is.

And/or if more time is bought, in terms of a Rafah attack,

full-bore Rafah attack.

And we want to watch how many,

how much the Israelis move on the other precursors,

humanitarian aid and the evacuations because then they've checked the boxes,

they can go in, right?

So it's the American perspective,

it's the Israeli perspective.

That's what we want to watch.

Assuming Rafah happens,

we want to watch very, very carefully

all of the attacks from the Houthis.

Because they've been expanding,

they just threatened the Mediterranean for the first time,

they also struck a ship in the Indian Ocean for the first time

using ballistic missiles.

Clearly, that's a problem.

They're attacking a lot of American warships,

while the Iranian-supported proxies in Syria and Iraq have stopped,

ever since the three servicemen and women were killed in Jordan

a few months ago.

The Americans brushed them back pretty hard, and that that stopped,

but the Houthis are still hitting the Americans.

And if they were to blow up a warship

or kill a bunch of American servicemen and women,

I think that would clearly lead to an escalation.

Finally, in the region, we want to watch the Hezbollah,

northern Israel front,

the Lebanon front.

And as we get closer to the fall,

what are the Israelis preparing to do on that?

Don't fall asleep on that.

But beyond the region, well,

the one thing we haven't talked about is the US election,

because Biden is in no man's land on this issue, right?

I mean, you have a very --

very few Americans consider Gaza the issue they're going to vote on.

But this makes Biden look weak.

He has been telling his top ally in the Middle East,

“You must let humanitarian aid in.

You must do more to protect the civilians.

You must protect journalists.

You must protect aid workers.

Do not dare go into Rafah.

You must support a two-state solution.”

And the Israeli prime minister has told Biden,

the president of the most powerful country in the world,

who is an enormous supporter of his country,

has told him talk to the hand.

Talk to the hand.

And has even told him, you know,

on Holocaust remembrance,

the eve of Holocaust remembrance

that the Israelis have to only count on themselves,

can't count on any other countries around the world.

After everything the Americans did to defend Israel with the Iranian strikes,

despite the opposition of, like,

almost every country in the world to what Israel is doing right now.

And the American vetoes at the Security Council, I mean,

everything the US is doing to stand up to Israel and Netanyahu, at least,

I mean, it may work in Israel.

It certainly works for his coalition.

But in the United States, in an election year, it's insane.

And so Biden is in damage-control mode,

and this is hurting him.

And this war, I think that Netanyahu is still going to be there in November,

and I fear the war is still going to be going on.

And if it's still going on in the summer and in the fall, I mean,

the students are going to go home, they graduate.

And I mean, I'm doing the Columbia SIPA graduation ceremony,

I'm their speaker on Monday.

That's going to be a very different speech

than I expected when they originally asked me to give it.

So I'm going to go and do my best for the students.

But they'll all go away.

But then come August, we've got the convention in Chicago,

which is fraught with incredible symbolism

and a lot of anger

and certainly will be a place where, you know,

professional agitators will show up to make this look bad for the Dems.

And then after that, I mean,

if this war is still going on when campus gets back in place, August, September,

you know, these universities are going to be lit.

It's going to be a serious, serious problem for Biden.

The kids are not alright.

And in an election that is tight with a small number of swing states,

and that counts on people coming out

and being supportive of the incumbent,

Biden is in serious danger of losing critical votes on this issue.

HW: Obviously, there's no quick fix for Biden,

but what do you think he should do?

IB: Look, I think Biden should have

come out very, very strongly against Netanyahu

and with Israel on day one after October 7.

Which, by the way, is the position of the overwhelming majority

of the Israeli people.

You know, I mean, give direct interviews

to the JPost and Haaretz

and say, you know,

how the Israeli prime minister failed his people, right?

I mean, in other words, really put your thumb on the scale,

which would have, you know, it would have been painful,

but Bibi would have done it to Biden, would have been happy to, right?

And Biden's not that kind of a guy.

But when you're playing against that sort of person,

that's what you need to do.

And the United States doesn't just support Israel.

It also supports Israeli democracy,

which Netanyahu is an enemy of, right?

That's what he needed to do.

And he could have absolutely done just as much to provide the support

you know, get the money to the Palestinians.

There’s aid going in.

But also get military support to the Israelis,

redouble the American defense support

so that the Israelis can make sure

that they can deal with incoming missiles and rockets.

You can do both of those things at the same time.

A final thing is, I think Biden should have talked a lot more

about the American hostages in the early days.

And I don't know, I'm not privy

to whether the Americans seriously considered a raid,

but I’d like to believe -- from day one,

they were saying the Israelis are in charge of the hostages.

The Israelis are in charge of the hostages.

You've got American citizens that are hostages.

I don't know why the Israelis should be in charge of those hostages.

I think that's either a joint raid

or the Americans go in and do it themselves.

But I would have wanted Biden on top of that.

And it's not that Biden wasn't,

it's not that Biden refused that,

a lot of people were coming to him with that advice.

Biden's 81.

And I just don't think he's willing to be as decisive,

as assertive on these issues as he was 10, 15, 20 years ago.

I'm hearing a lot more of like, "Yeah, yeah, that sounds interesting.

Let's think about that."

As opposed to being decisive on the issue.

And this is one where Biden being too cautious,

too late, too slow

in articulating a position that he has gotten to.

He has now actually,

you know, suspended some of this military aid,

but you don't want to wait until,

you know, after the World Central Kitchen debacle.

This was happening before to lots of aid workers,

they just weren't Americans.

But it was happening.

I mean, they've been incensed

with what the Israeli prime minister has been doing

and the war cabinet for months now,

but they've been very careful.

I agree that your allies,

you should talk to privately differently

than you talk to publicly.

And that the US policy towards something that the Israelis do when it's wrong,

shouldn't be the same as when the Russians do something that's wrong

because they're your ally, I get that.

But this is beyond the pale for the Israeli PM,

and I think he thinks he can walk all over the United States right now.

And that's not a good position to be in.

HW: Ian, it is always a pleasure to talk to you

despite the toughness of the conversations.

I'm so glad your voice held out.

Thank you so much for being here, and we will see you again soon.

IB: Let's hope for the best on these negotiations.

Let’s hope that we at least get some good news

and stop some of this fighting for a period of time,

get some of this aid in.

But either way, I'm sure you and I will be talking again soon.

HW: Thanks, Ian.