The Cost Benefit Analysis of the War with Iran Transcript

Disclaimer: This transcript is an edited version version of a transcript created using AI technology and may not reflect 100% accuracy.

The video can be found here.

Sarah: Okay. Good afternoon in the States, and good evening here in Israel.

The war between Israel and Hamas is now 635 days old, and there are really earth-shattering, developing news on that front. The Islamic Republic of Iran is now, it seems like, in survival mode. We saw massive bombings of Fordow, Natanz, and Isfahan nuclear facilities just last week, yet we know that the Ayatollah community is still in place, and that the secret police in Iran is rounding up suspected Mossad agents, particularly in Iran’s beleaguered Jewish community. We also know that within Iran, the Islamic Republic is maintaining tight surveillance and control over dissent through censorship and arrests. One of the most senior imams in Iran and closest aides to Khomeini, Makarem Shirazi, just issued a fatwa against President Donald Trump.

Here to discuss this and many more stories, including what has been going on very recently in Gaza, what is happening with the prime minister and his trial, and what is happening with the negotiations that President Trump is involved with Israel and Gaza is one of the nicest people that I know, and that’s Alex Traiman. Alex and I have known each other for many, many years when he first came out with his prescient and really brilliant movie, Iranium, back in 2011.

Iranium discusses the danger posed to the entire free world by an Iranian nuclear bomb, and now, it looked like they would have had several until the events of the last several weeks.

Alex is the CEO and Jerusalem Bureau Chief of the Jewish News Syndicate and is host of the Jerusalem Minute. He’s a seasoned Israeli journalist, documentary filmmaker, and startup consultant, and an expert on Israeli politics and US-Israel relations. He’s interviewed top political figures within Israel, including Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, who seems to like him very much, National Security Advisor Ron Dermer, many American senators and national security officials, and he has appeared on major networks like the BBC, Bloomberg, CBS, NBC, Fox, I-24, and Newsmax, among others. He’s a former NCAA champion fencer, be careful of him, and a Yeshiva University Sports Hall of Fame member. He made Aliyah back in 2004 and lives here in Jerusalem with his beautiful wife and five children. Alex, it is really a profound pleasure to have you once again on our webinar.

Alex Traiman: Thanks, Sarah. You could have given the whole history of my childhood over there.

Sarah: Well, I think you’re one of the gems and one of the most astute political analysts on the scene today.

On June 24, you wrote that the war between Israel and the Islamic Republic of Iran could not have been waged without President Donald Trump in office, yet Israel’s actions in Operation Rising Lion cleared the skies in Iran, allowing the Americans to act. Why do you believe that this is firmly the case?

Alex: Well, thanks Sarah, and thanks, everybody.

Without the Trump administration, you wouldn’t have had Israel able to restock its weapons supplies. We remember that the Biden administration had announced that they were withholding shipments of 2,000-pound bombs. Now, those were not the only shipments that the Biden administration withheld. We know that they withheld many shipments, but when you look, specifically, at the 2,000-pound bombs, which the Biden administration said that they didn’t want Israel to use in Rafah and Gaza, Israel didn’t need to use such bombs in Rafah or Gaza. They were literally able to detonate buildings with combat engineers, blowing them up with old-fashioned dynamite, but the 2,000-pound bombs are the type that Israel dropped thousands of inside Iran. Without the weapons supply, that wouldn’t have happened. We know that the Biden administration was leaking plans that Israel had to the press for many years, specifically with the goal of preventing the surprise attack. We saw that Israel desperately benefited. They very much benefited from the element of surprise. They had the green light to do that. Surely, even if Israel did have a Plan B for taking out the Fordow nuclear reactor, Plan A was Operation Midnight Hammer, where the United States came in and dropped the 12 GBU-57 Massive Ordnance, penetrating 30,000-pound bunker busters on the facility and blew it to smithereens. That was obviously the easiest way to take out that facility and, really, to fully crush Iran’s nuclear weapons program.

Sarah: Without the American intervention and their GBU-57 Massive Ordnance Penetrators and B-2 bombs, do you think we would still be fighting the war with Iran today?

Alex: Yeah, I actually think that the United States was key in getting to a ceasefire, as well, because Iran now understood they’re not only fighting against Israel. I think it would have been a significant embarrassment, an even worse embarrassment, for Iran to give in to a ceasefire if they were only fighting against Israel. Iran was prepared to just continue launching barrages of ballistic missiles at Israel as long as it took, but once they understood that they’re also fighting the United States and President Trump stating very clearly that there were many more targets on the list if the Iranians were going to retaliate, I think that pushed the Iranian regime to literally beg the Trump administration to negotiate the ceasefire.

At the same time, I think that Israel was very happy to go into the ceasefire for a few reasons. Number 1 is we talked about the goal of regime change. Regime change can’t happen from the air. That’s very important. It has to come from within the country. They have to rise up. They have to take out their leadership on their own, because you don’t want to get stuck in any kind of a regime building, and you want the Iranian people to be responsible for picking who their regime will be or who their regime will not be. At the same time, Israel succeeded in its two major goals of taking out the nuclear facilities and taking also out the Iranian ballistic missile production capabilities and significantly reducing the launch capabilities. Once Israel felt that it had accomplished those goals and that the operation by all accounts went much more successfully than the Israelis had assessed they would or predicted that they could, at the outset, they were very happy to close the 12-day operation with a stunning success.

Sarah: It looks to both you and to me that Iran virtually begged for ceasefire, yet the regime remains in place. We know that Israel eliminated at least 14 nuclear scientists and 30 members, at least, of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps and their military. What’s to prevent Iran from reaching out to a group of North Korean or Pakistani scientists in order to rebuild?

Alex: Nothing. There’s nothing that prevented them from doing that prior to the attack. We had always assessed. Even at the time when we came out with Iranium back in 2011, that it was possible that Iran already possessed some deliverable nuclear weapon. It’s not only the ability to make a program. You don’t even have to get the scientists, you can get a weapon. There’s different ways of delivering nuclear weapons and producing nuclear weapons. How many nuclear weapons do you need to change the face of the planet? There’s definitely a big threat, but in terms of Iran’s own ability now to produce nuclear weapons, and we’re not talking about a single deliverable nuclear weapon, we’re talking about a whole stable of nuclear weapons, I think that Iran’s chances for that have been put back to zero. They’ll have to start all over again.

Sarah: Right. What do you believe remains of the late Qasem Soleimani’s Ring of Fire theory of building terrorist proxies surrounding Israel? What’s your assessment to the remaining power of Hezbollah, Hamas, and the Houthis?

Alex: Well, that was probably the biggest accomplishment that led to the Operation Rising Lion. Iran’s strategy of deterrence to prevent Israel from attacking its nuclear facilities was this ring of fire that it had established around Israel, Hamas in Gaza, Hezbollah in southern Lebanon, the Houthis with their ballistic missiles in Yemen. Apparently, according to the prime minister’s narrative, Hamas jumped the gun, and Hezbollah didn’t really come in the way, perhaps, the plans had between all the terror proxies had been laid out. Had Hezbollah attacked Israel the same way Hamas did on October 7 with a cross-border raid with missiles raining all over Israeli society, Israel could have lost tens of thousands of people. The damage would have been immense, but Hamas apparently jumped the gun, and it allowed Israel to attack Hamas first, isolate them, then deal with Hezbollah. By all accounts, maybe the war against Hezbollah was even more successful than the war in Gaza, in terms of filing down their capacity to fire missiles at something like 75 to 80 percent of their capacity. They were pushed back many miles beyond the Israeli border away from out of southern Lebanon. The Houthis have been hit very hard, as well. They’re still firing.

Just yesterday, we ran to bomb shelters here in Jerusalem and elsewhere along the country when they sent a singular ballistic missile that was intercepted overhead. I think that there’s a good possibility that we might see a renewed offensive against the Houthis in Yemen. We know that Israel’s already struck against the airport in Sanaa, against the Hodeidah port, against some of the oil facilities that are there, and we know that the United States also attacked over a thousand targets in Yemen over a span of several weeks, in retaliation for the Houthis’ attacks against US naval vessels and the interruption of commercial shipping through the Red Sea. Meanwhile, commercial ships are still not going through the Red Sea the way they were before October 7, and the Houthis continue to fire missiles at Israel.

We might see now, following the success of Israel’s air campaign against Iran, and now, we all understand what Israel is capable of doing, that there might be a new offensive against the Houthis in Yemen.

Sarah: Do you think that this operation has put to rest the failures of October 7? Do you think this is a new chapter where Israel’s neighbors will regard Israel as a real force to reckon with, especially with the combined military and intelligence force of the United States?

Alex: Well, I don’t think anything covers up the failure of October 7. The failure of October 7 is a failure that runs very deep, and it runs much deeper than, let’s say, the hours before, or even the days before October 7. It’s a failure of thinking. It goes all the way back to the withdrawal of Israeli citizens from Gaza and the entire military from Gaza in 2005. It goes back to the Abraham Accords and the idea that we just don’t take our enemies seriously. We don’t believe that they’ll do what they say they will do, even as they are making the preparations to do what they say right before our very eyes. Those are mistakes that, on the one hand, will never be forgiven. Yet, on the other hand, if Hamas hadn’t done it, you wouldn’t have this war that now has really changed the face of the entire Middle East, and like you said before, this entire ring of fire, which has destabilized the entire region, it’s not just Iran and it’s not just these terror organizations. Iran has destabilized Iraq, it destabilized Syria, it destabilized Lebanon, it destabilized Gaza, it destabilized Yemen, the Houthis that attacked the Saudis. They’re trying to destabilize Jordan, they’re trying to destabilize Judea and Samaria. Israel pivoted from the failure of October 7 into the opportunity of October 8, which was to remove this entire terror octopus, first filing down the tentacles of the octopus and now striking at the head of the octopus. What that does is it really opens up the region for the potential of normalization, for the potential of peace. Obviously, this isn’t potential. This doesn’t make, all of a sudden, everybody who lives in the region, a Jew loving, a philosemite, all of a sudden. That’s not the case.

Certainly, we see that one of the reasons why Hamas said that they attacked on October 7 and Iran got involved in this war was to prevent the normalization between Israel and Saudi Arabia, which had been talked about for many months before then. Now that Iran really doesn’t have a veto anymore through their terror proxies, then I think that we’re potentially going to see the rapid expansion of the Abraham Accords, but not only between Israel and Saudi Arabia, which had already been in discussions, but now with Hezbollah no longer in the picture, with Bashar Al-Assad in Syria no longer in the picture, without any Syrian military infrastructure because Israel destroyed all of that in the days after Assad’s fall. You might even see Syria or Lebanon join into the accords. Quite frankly, if the Iranian people can do what it takes to overthrow this Islamic Republic, I wouldn’t even be surprised to see Iran normalize relations with Israel.

Even outside the Middle East, you can see normalization agreements taking place with other countries like Kazakhstan and even, potentially, Indonesia, Malaysia. We don’t know exactly where all of these conversations stand right now, but it seems as though there’s distinct possibility of Israel normalizing with many Muslim-majority countries. What’s really interesting about that is that previous US Administrations thought it was impossible on the one that this could happen. They stated as much. They didn’t do what it would take to make these normalization agreements happen. Secondly, and perhaps more important, they were trying to isolate Israel, particularly in Western Europe and, really, around the entire world for that matter. Here, now, if you see that these Muslim majority countries, including Saudi Arabia, which is the seat of Islam, Sunni Islam would come and normalize relations with Israel, and they say, “Look, we don’t have any problem with Israel, then why would the Western Europeans and others have a problem with Israel?” It really flips the entire narrative of the paradigm of isolating Israel on its head.

Sarah: Right. Getting back to Hezbollah in Lebanon, what do you know? I know you’ve written a lot about this, about the side letter that the United States signed, in terms of Hezbollah’s actions against Israel

Alex: Well, we know that when Israel and Hezbollah entered into the ceasefire agreement, that there was a lot of Israelis that were concerned about and saying, “Hey, you’re on the offensive. Hezbollah is on their heels. You’ve taken out 70, 80 percent of their missile firing capability. Why are you stopping? Keep going.” As you mentioned, there’s an important side letter here, which states that any movement inside southern Lebanon that indicates that Hezbollah is violating the terms of the ceasefire, that Israel can strike. You see that Israel has continued to strike inside southern Lebanon even after the ceasefire. Hezbollah is not doing anything about it, and the Lebanese army is allowing Israel to do it because, quite frankly, finishing the job and ensuring that there will be a lasting peace between Israel and Hezbollah is good, is in the interest of all of Lebanon. Even as Israel was attacking Iran over 12 days, Israel was striking inside southern Lebanon, but you didn’t see Hezbollah fire even one missile, not one missile at Israel the entire period. Hezbollah has been deterred, and Israel has been able to act as it needs. If there will be some kind of formal ceasefire agreement, even with Iran and the United States and Israel, I believe that Israel would, again, seek similar guarantees that if they see the Iranians making any moves towards renewed ballistic missile production, if they start moving missile launchers in a way that indicates that they might start firing, and if they start rebuilding their nuclear program or start moving enriched uranium towards some kind of a crude dirty bomb or something like that, you’re going to see Israel strike very fast, because, quite frankly, everybody can see right now that Israel’s military doctrine has changed.

Sarah: Exactly. As you know, President Trump has just proposed a 60-day ceasefire with Hamas. I’ve been reading reports today that Hamas has rejected it again, once again, and Israel has accepted it. If they do finally accept a ceasefire, what do you believe that Trump will be offering Hamas for them to ever agree to the terms of a ceasefire? What would the ramifications of this be in terms of stability with Gaza?

Alex: Well, first and foremost, I think that Israel is getting ready to wind down this war. I think they’re much more willing to wind down the attacks, and that’s why Israel, really, for the first time, has signaled that at the end of a 60-day ceasefire, the goal would be to negotiate towards the end of the war, something that they were not saying in previous rounds of ceasefire discussion. Israel obviously wants to get back the remaining hostages.

Even when I had interviewed Ron Dermer in February of 2024, just a few months, maybe five months into the war, we talked about what an endgame could look like, and he talked about a grand negotiation deal, whereby you would see the permitted exile of Hamas leadership and the return of the hostages in exchange for an end of fighting. It’s not clear if Hamas will accept it. There’s two parties standing negotiation. The only card that Hamas holds today is the hostages, and they can continue to hold all of Israel’s hostage by maintaining the captivity of the 20 to 22 living hostages plus the 30 additional bodies that they’re holding. These sickos took bodies that they had slaughtered on October 7 because they know how valuable that is to Israel and to Jews, that they want those bodies back for proper burial.

I believe that, unfortunately, we’re likely to see Israel release many terrorists from Israeli jails and return them to Palestinian authority-controlled territories in a prisoner swap in exchange for the hostages, as they’ve already agreed to do on multiple occasions during this war, so I don’t think this time would be any different. If Hamas leaves, then what you could see is an investment into the rebuilding of the Gaza Strip. As long as Hamas remains in control, you’re not going to see any investment into the Gaza Strip.

The question is going to be what do the Gazan people want? Are they sick of Hamas? I would suggest that even if they supported Hamas and even if they supported the attacks on October 7, they can all now clearly see that Hamas did not deliver the goods, didn’t deliver the dream that the Gazans all imagined or hoped for. Again, even if they’re fully anti-Semitic at this point, they could still find major flaws with Hamas’ strategy and their ability to deliver, and maybe they will force Hamas out. I think Israel doesn’t really want anymore to hunt down every last Hamas operative with a gun because it will take a long time to do that. If Hamas terrorists are hiding among the civilian population, it will take many more months in continuing to move civilians in and out of the way and facilitating the delivery of the humanitarian aid, and I think that Israel feels like they’ve already taken out all the Hamas senior leadership, most of the mid-level leadership of Hamas. They reduced all the rocket capacity, they’ve destroyed much of the tunnel network, and they’ve also flattened most of Gaza because Hamas had booby-trapped all of Gaza, and so now it’s flattened. In terms of military victory, the military victory is already there. The remaining piece is whether they can get back the hostages.

Sarah: Right, which is, as you know, a very divisive, polarizing issue here in Israel.

Alex: I don’t think it’s that divisive. I think everybody wants the hostages back at this point.

Sarah: We all do, right. With you and I running into our [inaudible] with our families yesterday and the Houthis starting in again to shoot missiles at Israel, how do you believe Israel should respond to the Houthis?

Alex: Well, you have this difficult situation here where, as you saw in Lebanon, you saw in Iran that these missile launchers are on trucks, and they can pop up from here and they can pop up from there. Israel doesn’t really have the same type of deep intelligence that they had in Lebanon and as we saw they had in Iran, in Yemen. This is not a place that, really, before this war, that Israel had focused much attention on because it didn’t really seem like Yemen was a direct threat to Israel. Now, I’m assuming that over the last several months, almost two years, that the Israeli intelligence is better. Until now, Israel has opted for the big blasts, hitting at the national infrastructure. I think you could see Israel do that again. They could really penalize Yemen dramatically for the attacks of the Houthis. I would say that Israel might have the ability to blow Yemen back into the Dark Ages, but maybe some people would say they’re already living in the Dark Ages. It’s not a well-developed country, but I think that Israel cannot continue to allow the Houthis to fire. At the same time, I know that there’s an assessment among Israeli leadership that if the war in Gaza comes to an end, that there’s the belief that the Houthis will stop firing ballistic missiles at Israel.

Sarah: Yeah. You recently wrote a brilliant article about what has been going on with the corruption trials against Prime Minister Netanyahu and what President Trump has written on true social. Can you explain to our audience why you think it’s appropriate for the president of the United States to get involved in a domestic political affair when Israel has their own laws on the books that differ greatly from American law?

Alex: Sure. I think all Israelis would agree that it would be better if presidents did not interfere in Israel’s domestic political affairs. The thing is that President Trump is not the first president to interfere in political affairs. Secondly, Trump’s “interference” is supporting the democratically-elected prime minister of the country.

Now, dating all the way back to Bill Clinton, Clinton was very public about it. I wrote about this years ago that Bill Clinton had acknowledged that he did everything in his power to make sure that Shimon Peres defeated Netanyahu in ’93 when Netanyahu first got into office and Netanyahu won that election. Clinton, again, put a lot of resources into trying to get Netanyahu defeated by Ehud Barak, which happened just a few years later in ’99. We know that Barack Obama had State Department funds pumped into the V-15 movement, which was specifically developed to aid now, the president, Isaac “Bougie”Herzog, who then was the head of the Labor Party, who was running against Netanyahu. Netanyahu survived that attempt. Also, Obama sent over all of his main political consultants. Even today, you see that Netanyahu’s challengers are using the same political consultants that have been supporting the Clintons and Obamas and Bidens, like the Bennison Group and others, coming over here to try to get Netanyahu unseated.

We remember what happened in the beginning of the first months of the war when Biden’s surrogates were leaking information to the press about how angry Biden was with Netanyahu and how fed up he was. You had Hillary Clinton, former Secretary of State and Democratic nominee for president, saying Netanyahu’s got to go. Chuck Schumer from the floor of the Senate, the one who calls himself “the [inaudible]” on a play on his name, Schumer, as the guardian of the Jewish people, the guardian who could never oppose the JCPOA-Iran nuclear deal and always pushes for a two-state solution, this guardian, openly from the four of the Senate, said that Israel needs to hold the new elections, that Israelis can pick, once again, who they want to be their prime minister, even though we were just a year and a half after a very definitive victory by Prime Minister Netanyahu over his challengers.

We saw how Clinton, Obama, Biden, they are constantly working to try to get Netanyahu out of office, and so Trump is returning the favor. For all those people, by the way, that were doubting whether President Trump was with us, and I think even you and I discussed this several weeks ago [crosstalk] doubts about where the president was with regard to support for Israel and support for the prime minister, the Operation Midnight Hammer, that should have put the nail in that coffin on that idea.

Sarah: I have to admit, Alex, you were right and I was wrong there.

Alex: Certainly, I think we see very clearly that the president not only supports Netanyahu to the fullest degree, but believes that Israel is safer and more secure with Netanyahu as the prime minister right now.

Now, remember also that all the allegations about these trials were always dropped right before elections, okay? The first announcement that Netanyahu was being investigated for fraud and breach of trust, this all came right before an election, weeks before an election, and then Netanyahu won that election. Even though the parliament blocked him from forming the government, then they went to another election, and right before the election, “Oh, by the way, we’re going to indict the prime minister.” All the while, they’re leaking evidence illegally to the press with conversations that are never supposed to be going to the press, that were supposed to be evidence to demonstrate that Netanyahu was involved in breach of trust and fraud. Now, during these trials, by the way, which all came about from blackmailing state witnesses, using evidence that in America would be called “fruit of the poisonous tree”, which would be inadmissible in a court of law in the United States, even with blackmailing the state witnesses, even with using inadmissible evidence, the court, on three separate occasions, told the prosecution to change their charge sheet against the prime minister in the middle of the trial. That’s a ground for a mistrial in the United States. After the prosecution made their case in what they consider the most serious charge, in which they were accusing the prime minister of bribery, the court told the prosecution after their lengthy presentation, which lasted months, they said, “You don’t have a case for bribery.” The prosecution’s answer, instead of saying, “Okay, well, we’ll drop the charges,” was to say, “No.” During the defense’s presentation, then you will see that the prime minister is guilty, which doesn’t make any sense at all. These trials would have been not admitted to court in the United States. If they got to court, they would have been thrown out of court on multiple occasions, and yet this circus, the court is forcing the prime minister to testify in his trial while he’s serving as the head of state, while he’s the head of state during a war. The president is basically saying, “Enough is enough already. We’re trying to get some things done over here, and you’re hamstringing your democratically-elected prime minister, so we called on the president to part in the prime minister or for them to drop the case.” We’ll see if that happens.

Sarah: Well, knowing that the president had run against Prime Minister Netanyahu before, do you think this is likely to happen?

Alex: I don’t think so. We can see the prosecution continue to double down, but it’s really rich to see the responses of the legal system and the opposition, which are saying, “How can the president interfere? We love Trump, but he’s gone too far,” or, “How cynical is Netanyahu that he’s using his relationship with the president or using the threat of national security issues or using the promise of Abraham Accords’ normalization agreements as a lever to convince the court to drop the case?” I don’t suppose that the court would do it, but if they did do it at this point, I think it would put to bed what I believe has been a very nasty chapter in Israel’s political history that span now more than five years with all these consecutive elections and would put Netanyahu in place to be able to focus on finishing out his policy agenda and doing it quickly, and then maybe you’ll see Netanyahu pivot out of the Prime Minister’s chair.

Sarah: Right. I think you quoted Jim Jordan, the chair of the Judiciary Committee, and Brian Mast, the chair of the Foreign Relations Committee, who said, “USAID and the State Department have even provided direct support to Hamas and other terrorist groups.” This is not you. This is Jim Jordan and Brian Mast, members of Congress. They said, “Between 2007 and 2024, USAID and the State Department transferred at least $122 million to NGOs linked to designated terrorist organizations. Many of these groups have openly expressed anti-Semitic rhetoric and incited violence against Jews.” It is so obvious that there have been certain political biases within previous American administrations that have really tried to demonize and undermine the survival and the existence of the Jewish state. It’s very crazy that… and I think right now, President Trump has just proposed some legislation to make sure Israel does get the Massive Ordinance {enetrators and the bunker buster bombs, which is going to be wonderful, in case Israel needs them for future wars, which is [crosstalk]

Alex: Yeah, absolutely. I think that the president’s doing everything that he can to correct the misdeeds of his predecessors, both with regard to strengthening Israel’s enemies, which Trump’s predecessors did, and Trump is now also really trying to change the entire face of the region with the Abraham Accords. Fortunately, he’s also helping Israel restock its supplies, which obviously dwindled down to very low levels in a war that’s lasted almost two years.I think that it’s important that he’s doing that right now, but I also think it’s very important that Israel very quickly continue to ramp up their own capabilities to develop weapons of all kinds, specifically what you need for air defenses and also the bombs that you’re putting inside the airplanes, because I don’t think there’s any guarantee that Israel is going to have another president to work with who’s going to be as friendly as President Trump. That’s whether the next president is some progressive Democrat. We saw Kamala Harris, she could have, was as progressive as you could get, and none of this would have been possible if Harris was in office. I don’t suppose that whoever the Democrats nominate next will be any less progressive, but also, after Trump’s term, you might see that the presidency or that the Republican candidate is part of this isolationist camp, which is also now rapidly proving itself to be anti-Israel for all the wrong reasons, by the way, but the results are the same. I think that there’s a unique window of opportunity here that both President Trump and Prime Minister Netanyahu recognize, which is to defeat the terrorists once and for all, to normalize relations with as many Muslim majority nations as possible, as quickly as possible, and to restock Israel’s weapons supplies so that if Israel does find itself in another war in the near or distant future, that it has what it needs to fend off attacks while, at the same time, developing the capabilities to produce those weapons on their own.

Sarah: Right. We saw that the Gulf countries during this war were predictably silent. I know that they did not want to alienate the street, yet I’m sure that under the table, they’re applauding Israel’s actions because they are petrified of Iran, of the Islamic Republic, as we have heard.

Alex: It wasn’t just appeasing the street as much as it was also making sure that Iran didn’t target those countries with ballistic missile strikes during the war. They were, sort of, hedging their bets, but we know that the Saudis and others have been telling Israel and telling the president of the United States that they want Israel and the United States to defeat the terrorists in the region. They believe that the region is much calmer without Iran and their terror proxies there.

Now, the question will be, if these normalization agreements are signed, will, then, the leadership in Saudi Arabia and elsewhere begin to change the rhetoric and begin to say, “Hey, okay. We know what we said before. Now, we’ve normalized with Israel, and we did that because we believe that there’s tremendous benefits of being involved in economic and security relationships with the state of Israel, and Israel is not so bad, and we can’t defeat them. We need, as a people, to embrace Israel’s position in the Middle East.” If they do that, it’ll be something that Egypt and Jordan have not done, even after the peace agreements that were signed between those countries. I think Israel should be looking to Saudi Arabia and should be demanding that Saudi Arabia provide that type of leadership not before a normalization agreement is signed, but certainly after a normalization agreement gets signed.

Sarah: Right. These countries are inherently paternalistic. The people do not want to go to jail. These are dictatorships. They are not open Jeffersonian democracies, and people do not want to demonstrate on the street against any accord that they would sign with Israel. They go along with it, and I know when the first Abraham Accords were signed, the United Arab Emirates and Bahrain were very keen to showcase Israeli products in the stores, and everybody seemed to go along with it. It’s a very different kind of society than the kind of the super societies that we live in within Israel and the United States. What do you think the implications are of this victory in terms of Russia, that’s war in Ukraine, and China and the amount of economic Belt and Road Initiative [inaudible] developed here in the Middle East?

Alex: First of all, the Russia-China axis has just lost one of their the pawns on their chessboard, which is Iran. Iran was providing weapons assistance to Russia, and that doesn’t exist anymore. I think the Chinese are still hoping to be beneficiaries of Iranian oil, and it should be noted that Israel did not destroy Iran’s oil-producing capabilities, in part I think because President Trump doesn’t want to see the price of oil skyrocket. That would be bad for the American economy. Also, I think If Israel and America had done that, then you’re not really giving the Iranian people a chance to rebuild their economy if they do go ahead and overthrow their regime. Now, that said, what this does is if the region turns quiet and stable and you see these normalization agreements get signed, then the president gets to rapidly advance his economic plan, which includes the development of this IMEC corridor, which is the India-Middle East Corridor, which would see trade routes that begin in India going through the Middle East, including Saudi Arabia, and coming up into Israel, and with then, you would see high-powered electricity and, potentially, pipelines going from Israel to Cyprus, and then on to Italy, and possibly even extending to France, which is meant to be an alternative trade route to the Chinese Belt and Road Initiative, that would basically give a possibility to bypass the choke point of the Suez Canal, which the Houthis have effectively blocked. This is definitely a rbig part of the president’s economic vision, and that’s a big reason why the Saudis and others are willing to stomach normalization with Israel, because they understand the economic implications of developing this IMEC corridor.

Sarah: Wonderful. What do you think is in store for Prime Minister Netanyahu when he meets with President Trump next week? You’re probably invited along as you have been in the past. [crosstalk]

Alex: The Prime Minister’s office, I’m still waiting for the tender for journalists [crosstalk]

Sarah: I’m sure you’re going to be invited along again.

Alex: Hope to join if invited. I think, in part, and maybe the entirety of the trip, will be a victory lap. For Trump and Netanyahu, they have something incredible to celebrate, but then, there are all kinds of rumors now that are circulating about a race towards some kind of normalization, whether that’s a full normalization or security arrangements either between Israel and Syria, between Israel and Lebanon, maybe some three-country arrangement, and potentially, also, some kind of a signing of a normalization agreement between Israel and Saudi Arabia. There’s a lot of speculation about what it could be. I’m taking a modest view that it could just be to celebrate what happened in Iran and then, also, obviously, conversations about ending the war in Gaza, potential conversations about trying to set back the Houthis so that they can no longer threaten Israel or shipping routes or Saudi Arabia or Yemen, for that matter. There’s still a lot to talk about.

Sarah: Yeah, beautiful. Speaking of a new Abraham Accords, Abraham Accords scaled up with other countries, do you think a peace with Syria and Saudi Arabia could endure for generations, or do you think this will be…

Alex: It remains to be seen. I think with any agreements, they’re really only worth the value of the paper that they’re printed on. You see that it’s very dependent on who remains in charge in any given place. The peace agreement between Egypt and Israel, it’s always been a sort of a cold peace, but it was a cold and stable peace as long as Hosni Mubarak was the president of Egypt. The president of the United States, at the time, Barack Obama, and Hillary Clinton, Secretary of State, they removed their support from Mubarak during the Arab Spring. They basically endorsed Mohamed Morsi, the head of the Muslim Brotherhood. We saw the immediate violation of Egyptian commitments under the peace agreement, and then, El-Sisi took the country over, essentially, in a coup, and while that did stabilize the situation for Israel and the relationship improved over what it was during the short tenure of Mohamed Morsi, Israel is very worried about violations of the peace treaty even now and the build-up of military force in the Sinai Peninsula, including tanks, including also ballistic missiles that are pointed at Israel and Sinai. These are gross violations of the peace treaty, and I know that Israel is very concerned about what’s going on over there.

As long as MBS is in Saudi Arabia, if there’s an agreement, I think he’s very forward-looking, and you would see the peace agreement, I think, flourish. If, for some reason, he was no longer in power and a more extreme government comes to bear, then I don’t think that you should count on the terms of that agreement being met.

In Syria, the situation is a little bit different. You have an extremist that’s the head of the Syrian government, al-Sharaa, who goes by the nom de guerre, al-Julani. He has affiliations to al-Qaeda, and he’s now the head of Syria. They’ve brutally massacred Christians, Druze, Kurds, Alawites in Syria, been many people killed there just since the downfall of Bashar Assad. Economically, he’s desperate, and so the President of the United States is hedging with Syria that if he brings them into the fold of the United States, into the fold of Saudi Arabia, that perhaps they will follow suit with the Saudis, who have modernized and westernized their approach. I don’t want to say that they’re now, all of a sudden, boldly democratic beacons of human rights. They’re not, but in terms of where they were 20 years ago, Saudi Arabia is looking a lot more moderate today than they did before and certainly pro-western and pro-American, and so President Trump’s hoping that by releasing sanctions on Syria, that he can bring Syria into that fold. He has a lot of leverage over al-Sharaa for releasing those sanctions, which would strengthen his hold on his own country. Meanwhile, there’s no military in Syria. Israel took out all of the military infrastructure that existed under the Assad regime, so al-Sharaa has no capabilities to attack Israel at this point, even if he wants to. Therefore, because he wants American money, because he can’t fight Israel, even if he wanted to right now, and he’s seen what Israel’s just done to Hezbollah and to southern Lebanon and to Gaza and to Iran, he knows what Israel could do to his country.

That’s peace through strength. That’s the model. When your neighbors understand that they will be obliterated by you if they start up with you, that’s when you can have peace. That’s what I think is… but that doesn’t mean that it’s a peace forever. The way peace works in any of these Muslim majority countries is that as long as there’s no ambiguity as to who’s the stronger player, you can have peace. The second there’s a little bit of ambiguity as to who could be stronger, then that’s a recipe for war.

Sarah: Exactly. Looking back at these 32 years since the signing of the Oslo Accords, with all of the history that you have lived through, that you and I have lived through, with the various wars we’ve been through, with October 7, 2023, what do you think the most important lesson is for Israel to take away from all of this?

Alex: Oh, there’s so many lessons. Number 1 is don’t underestimate the motivations or the capabilities of your enemies. If they say that they’re going to attack you, believe them. That’s number 1. Number 2, we imported master terrorists that had been exiled from multiple countries and believed that… the whole war between Israel and Lebanon in the 80s, the point of that war was to get Yasser Arafat exiled from Lebanon, and then he was sent to Tunisia. In the 90s, we said, “Well, let’s bring back this exiled arch terrorist, and then we’ll have peace with the Palestinians.” It was insanity. Maybe the first lesson should be stop acting like insane idiots, and stop empowering our enemies, and stop telling our enemies that we’ll give them our land, which is our biblical inheritance. I’m hoping that the pages turn, but I also know that Israel has established a new doctrine in this war, which is the moment that you see that your enemies are mobilizing militarily, you strike. You strike before. You strike preemptively, as we did with Iran. You don’t wait. You don’t hope that they’re not going to attack. You don’t hope that they’re deterred. You ensure that they don’t have the capability to attack.

Sarah: Brilliant. Okay. Before we leave, I want to put in a plug for JNS.org. JNS does amazing quality reporting, writing, journalism under Alex Traiman, who is the CEO and Jerusalem Bureau Chief of JNS. You should really try to support them. They’re doing an excellent job.

Also, please, if you can try your best to support Ameyt[?]. We are on Capitol Hill every single day, even when I am in Israel, and we are fighting the good fight. We always have. Alex knows me very well. We’ve been doing this since the beginning days of ASLA[?] since the Gaza withdrawal, 2005. We’ve always been on the right side of these issues, and together with JNS.org, I think we make a really mighty team, and I’m always delighted to be able to interview Alex, who is just a brilliant policy analyst and spokesman. Thanks so much for everyone’s support.

Alex: Thanks, Sarah, and continue to do the great work you’re doing. You guys are always punching way above your weight, and I think you said it right, there’s so many Jewish organizations out there who have been afraid to challenge the issues head-on when they needed, and you guys have been right, time and again, on the policy prescriptions that would strengthen the State of Israel, weaken Israel’s enemies, and protect the Jewish people. Just keep continuing to do what you’re doing, and obviously, whoever’s out there that’s following your work, they should definitely reach into their pockets and support your continued operations.

Sarah: Thank you, Alex. You should also continue to support JNS.org. Thank you so much. [crosstalk] Okay, you take care. Bye, buddy.

Alex: Thanks.

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