Matthew Levitt
What to Expect after the Targeted Killing of Hezbollah and Hamas Leaders

Matthew Levitt | What to Expect after the Targeted Killing of Hezbollah and Hamas Leaders

- Matthew, welcome back to Lockdown University. It’s actually, we so appreciate you giving up your time and really spending an hour with us. I know that you must be extremely busy at this very difficult and challenging time. And so, tonight we’re going to talk about what to expect after the targeted killing of Hezbollah and the Hamas leaders. And I know that our audience are eagerly awaiting to hear from you, so I’m going to hand it over to you. Thank you very much.

• Thanks, Wendy.

• Thank you.

• I’d like to say it’s a pleasure to be back, but, we only do this when the world seems to be at crisis. So, it’s nice to be back. I wish it were under different circumstances. A few weeks ago, I was in Israel, my third trip since October 7th. The first two were focused on the south, visiting communities that were massacred and Nova Festival site and things like that. This last trip I went north. It took a little bit of finagling to convince the proper authorities to let me go because I wanted to go to a closed military zone, otherwise known as Metula, which many of you I’m sure have visited in the past in the far north of the Israeli Galil, sticking like a finger into Lebanon, surrounded 270 degrees by Lebanese territory. And now to get up there, you have to travel across multiple checkpoints, multiple barriers intended to prevent Hezbollah rocketeers from firing Kornet anti-tank guided missiles into civilian vehicles. And when you get into Matula itself, it literally is a closed military zone. And I had to move around in a flak jacket and helmet with very, very strict instructions of where I could step and where I could not to avoid snake rallies. We’ll get back to that in a moment. But since my trip, we found ourselves in a little bit of escalatory spiral. You’ll hear lots of people wondering why Israel is escalating by virtue of killing a senior Hezbollah militant Commander, Fuad Shukr. And by killing the head of Hamas over all, Ismail Haniyeh in Tehran. I have to say, I take issue with the phraseology of Israel escalating. It’s not like Israel has not been under attack for nearly 10 months now by Iran and its proxies. These actors, Iran and its proxies, seem to believe that it is logical for them to be able to attack Israel on a daily basis, and that Israel will do nothing back in return. And I think that’s the most important thing that Israel has done in the past few weeks. It’s not even completely yet reasserted deterrence. Israeli deterrence is going to have a ways to go before we can really say that it’s been reasserted. And before Israeli civilians will believe that it has been asserted the extent to which on this last trip, it was driven home for me.

How Israelis across the political spectrum are no longer willing to take certainly not Israeli political, but even military security intelligence, security guarantees at face value. That is a significant change. Fuad Shukr was assassinated in Beirut in a very targeted attack, an explosive vice through a window that killed him when apparently he was visiting his mistress, which I should note is a trend with Hezbollah operatives. This is, as by my count, at least the fourth, very, very senior Hezbollah operative whose undoing came by virtue of his inability to be faithful to his wife. He was both the head of Hezbollah’s overall militia, taking order directly from Hassan Nasrallah, the head of Hezbollah, and sitting on Hezbollah’s Jihad Council. He was the person responsible for all of Hezbollah’s most kind of high-tech strategic weapons systems, including the precision-guided missiles, the drones, et cetera. And at least by virtue of that, was believed by Israel to be one of the people ultimately responsible for the Hezbollah rocket attack that hit a soccer field and playground in Israeli controlled Golan territory in a Druze community of Majdal Shams. Now, I don’t actually think that Hezbollah was targeting that soccer field. But, when you are saving your precision-guided missiles, and you are firing on a daily basis, either the anti-tank guided missiles or what we call dumb missiles, missiles that go a little bit farther, but you aim them at a community, maybe it hits somewhere near there. It was only a matter of time before Hezbollah ended up missing and hitting something bad by mistake.

We almost had this a few months ago, didn’t get a whole lot of press, but a few months ago, Hezbollah fired a missile at Safed, which is where Israel’s Northern Command is located. I was there two and a half weeks ago, and it didn’t hit Israel’s Northern Command. It veered off and landed in the parking lot of an Israeli civilian hospital. Now, it didn’t even go off. It was a dud. But imagine if it had gone off. Imagine if, God forbid, it had gone off not in the parking lot, but as a direct hit in the building. Now, we would’ve been having a very different conversation. Not now, but two months ago. Then two days later, Israel had the opportunity to kill Ismail Haniyeh in Tehran. And that has multiple levels of significance. You’ll hear Ismail Haniyeh referred to as a moderate. You’ll hear him referred to as the key negotiator. How can we possibly expect Hamas to continue to negotiate in good faith if the Israelis are killing their negotiators and the people who are, you know, at least for Hamas, the most moderate? Again, there’s just no factual basis for this. Haniyeh was no moderate. Haniyeh is one of the Hamas leaders who got up there and blood curling language right after October 7th saying how many times more they’re going to do it again. How every one of those deaths was legitimate, et cetera, et cetera. Really, really horrible stuff. Videotaped offering prayers of thanks right after October 7th happened. Nor was he the key figure. The only person who matters here is Yahya Hassan Sinwar, the Hamas leader in Gaza. And frankly, he and Haniyeh didn’t get along so well. That’s why Haniyeh, who was living in Gaza for many, many years left. It was very uncomfortable for him, even though he is, was the overall head of Hamas, to be in the same space as Yahya Hassan Sinwar who was the head of Hamas in Gaza, when clearly, he was not the one calling the shots in Gaza.

So, he left and has been splitting his time between Qatar and Turkey, mostly travelling to Iran from time to time. But, he’s not the guy who actually matters. Now for Iran, this is a very, very serious problem. Not the loss of Haniyeh per se, though the loss of Haniyeh coming right after the loss of Fuad Shukr and Hezbollah, is significant for Hezbollah, mostly because both of these individuals, one is a military operative for Hezbollah. One is the quote unquote political operative for Hamas. We’re among Iran’s closest point persons for each organisation. So, Iran has lost kind of key interlocutors with each of the organisations. Within Hamas, this is creating a leadership crisis by the way. The person who is the acting chief right now is Khaled Mashal. He used to be the Secretary General once before, but he had a break with Iran. He tried to reorient Hamas away from Iran and towards Gulf States trying to get Gulf states to give Hamas states sponsorship. And he failed in both regards. He did not get the Gulf States to give him state sponsorship. In fact, they moved away from Hamas and he did not get the group to break away from Iran. But, the Iranians have not forgotten. And I cannot imagine that Khaled Mashal is going to survive as the actual new leader of Hamas once they hold their elections. But for Iran, the fact that this was done in Tehran when people were there for the inauguration of the new president, right after the former president died in a helicopter crash, the former president who was widely believed to be the person, the supreme leader, was, you know, preparing to be the next supreme leader. Not just Tehran, not just two hours after the inauguration, but in an IRGC and Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps safe house.

It’s why the Iranians have been so quick to dismiss the New York Times reporting that purportedly the Israelis carried out this attack with an explosive that they had planted in the IRGC safe house sometime before. The Iranians are insisting this was some kind of munition launched from a drone or a fighter craft. That would be bad enough. But, the idea that somehow the Israelis themselves or through some sources of theirs were able to penetrate into the inner sanctum of the IRGC for the Iranians is not conceivable. Mostly because they are afraid of the domestic repercussions. They don’t want to be seen as weak. They don’t want people to think that actually they can be penetrated. They understand that the overwhelming number of Iranians are youth who are not fundamentalists and don’t have much nice things to say about the revolutionary regime. It’s why they’ve become so aggressive in cracking down on dissidents and journalists saying things they don’t want to be said about them, not only at home but around the world. So, we have to expect that there is going to be as early as today, maybe in the next 48 hours, probably pretty soon, some type of retaliation by Iran and its proxies against these in response to these combined Israeli actions. I can’t imagine that Iran will not do things itself. Remember that Iran kind of broke the ice on this already when it fired some 300 projectiles in mid-April, April 13th, 14th. Ballistic missiles that go straight up and straight down and went from Iran to Israel in about 18 to 20 minutes. Low altitude cruise missiles that go at about the speed of an aeroplane, commercial aeroplane. And drones that go at about the speed of a car on the interstate, 60, 70 miles per hour.

These are all coming at different angles, at different heights from different points at different speeds. It was a very, very significant success in mid-April when US Central Command and Israel together with some others, but mostly the US and Israel, shot down almost all of these projectiles minus the ones that kind of went up and went down, just failed. Iran actually hit more targets than Iraq that night than it did in Israel. But, it’s already broken the ice on this. And so, we have to anticipate now that Iran is going to do something along the same lines, whether it’ll be as many projectiles, fewer, we don’t know. On the one hand, they learned what some of our capabilities are. On the other hand, they also learned what some of the limitations of their capabilities are. Like I said, many of these munitions didn’t make it very far. They landed in Iran, they landed in Iraq. Many of these were shot down. Perhaps they shoot fewer munitions from Iran, but mostly ballistic missiles that can more reliably go the distance and could do more damage. I would assume that they have Hezbollah fire more rockets of more types of further distance into Israel than they did last time. But, Hezbollah did very, very little actually, and shot short range rockets into Northern Israel and not much more than that. Here, Hezbollah has its own interest in responding to Israel’s assassination of one of their most senior people.

And so, they’re likely to be much more willing to play a larger role in this. And that we should also expect some number of munitions to be fired by the Houthis from Yemen, by Iraqi Shia militants in Iraq and in Syria. No one knows what’s going to happen. No one knows how bad it’s going to be or if it’s going to be much like April 13th, 14th, where it was a very, very serious, very, very serious attack. But, one which at the end of the day, Israel and the United States together were able to almost entirely fend off. This time we have to assume that there would be more casualties. Hopefully not many. We’re just going to have to wait and see. The Israelis seem fairly confident that they’re going to be able to withstand most of this. The question is, do Iran and its proxies do something that is so egregious that the Israelis feel they have to respond? Do Iran and its proxies get luckier this time than they did last time? And hits some particular apartment building and cause many casualties which would force Israel to feel it has to respond. Does this enter an escalatory spiral? Or is this something that will be a response as it will absorb it? Maybe do something small back, but it won’t be opening up into a larger warp. I am cautiously optimistic that that will be the case, that we will not spiral into a wider warp. And I feel that way because the factors that have mitigated against Iran and Hezbollah in particular widening out this conflict over the last almost 10 months, still stay. So, I see no situation which Iran and Hezbollah do not respond to the assassinations of people of this calibre in locations as sensitive as a Hezbollah stronghold in Beirut and an IRGC safe house in Tehran. But, neither wants full scale war at the moment. Frankly, neither does Israel. From Hezbollah’s part, there are two main issues here that are mitigating against, its broadening this out into a larger war. The first is that Lebanon has been suffering from a massive, massive economic crisis for a few years now. A political one too, but that’s not the main thing.

The main thing is the economic one. People are really suffering, right? People have a small number of hours of electricity a day. Life is very, very hard right now in Lebanon. Hard enough that basically nobody in Lebanon wants full scale war. Everybody understands. They look and they see what happened in Gaza. They remember that before the war started, Hezbollah and Israel were kind of issuing threats to one another, almost like two little children in the sandbox. No, I’m going to send you back to the Stone Age. No, I’m going to send you back to the Stone Age. They believe it. They look at what happened at Northern and Central Gaza. They believe it. They do not want the kind of destruction that a war Hezbollah might start with Israel could bring for Lebanon. And Hezbollah understands that this time around, unlike the last war in 2006, many people are going to blame Hezbollah if it happens because Hezbollah is clearly drawing Lebanon into this world. There wasn’t a conflict in the north. Before the IDF even went into Gaza on October 8th, Hezbollah started shelling Israel, not in defence of Palestinians, but in solidarity with Hamas. And if you look at the polling numbers, Lebanese understands. And Hezbollah is sensitive to that. The second reason Hezbollah is wary of opening up into a full scale war with Israel, and a nice segue to Iran is that Iran wants most of the Hezbollah’s rockets.

They want that powder kept dry and they want that powder kept dry because they see Hezbollah’s rockets as the best deterrence against an Israeli or any other attack against their nuclear programme, which they have ratcheted up into very, very significant stages over the last nine months. They also see that Hezbollah rockets as the best second strike capability they have against Israel in the event that Israel or the United States or anybody else targets their nuclear programme. And their nuclear programme is much more important to them, frankly, than striking as much damage against Israel as they can right now. For Iran’s perspective, Iran is very happy to fight to the last Arab. They’re happy to fight to the last non-Persian Shia proxy Shia militants from Afghanistan, from Pakistan. But, they do not want war coming to their borders. A one-off where they shoot a bunch of rockets at Israel, Israel shoots a bunch of rockets back, that’s fine. But, they do not want actual war spreading to Iran. A regional war and the rest of the Arab world that doesn’t cross their borders, fine. There are proxies taking some big hits, even that, fine. But the Iranians do not want war coming to their border, not only because they understand that Israel’s quite capable and that the United States in particular is pledged to help Israel defend itself. But also because again, as I said about the nature of this assassination in Tehran, a war that crosses Iran’s borders opens Iran up to vulnerabilities at home. And this, they are very, very wary of.

From Israel’s perspective, the truth be told, Israel does not want this to expand into full scale war either, simply because they understand that a war with Hezbollah, in particular, will be like no war Israel has ever fought before. You know, a lot of Israelis said to me with, you know, dark humour that, “Like all of our past wars with Hezbollah,” they said, “we are fighting in a security zone, only this time it’s not in Lebanon, it’s in Israel.” Israelis understand that Hezbollah has been shooting almost some 6,000 to 7,000 rockets over the past, almost 10 months at Israel. They have the capability to shoot 1500 to 2000 rockets a day at Israel. They can overwhelm even the four tier Israeli missile defence system with a whole lot of dumb rockets enabling some of their precision-guided missiles to get through. So, in a war with Hezbollah, you have to anticipate the power grid gets hit, desalinization plants get hit, chemical storage facilities get hit. Key military installations get hit. It gets very bad very, very quickly. Now, the Israeli plan that they’ve talked about quite publicly, they say they have the capability to knock out most of Hezbollah’s rockets in 72 hours. I would love to believe that’s true. Having just come back from Israel, I can tell you, no one there is banking on that. That’s a post October 7th reality, right? They told us that we were safe in the South. They told us Hamas could never get through. They told us Hamas prioritise their governance structure and they were not going to do anything. We’re not taking anybody’s word for it anymore. It’s a really significant basis of trust and faith that Israelis have in their leadership right now. And I have to be honest, and I don’t say this in a partisan way, especially so long as Netanyahu remains in power.

So, let’s say for argument’s sake that we get through the next few days and it’s okay, whatever okay, passes for okay. Not too many people are killed or injured. It doesn’t escalate into a spiral of regional war. What happens next? Well, I do not believe that the assassination of Haniyeh means that the negotiations over applause in the South, a hostage for prisoner swap is dead in the water. I understand Hamas is angry. I understand that it’s going to take them a little bit of time. But at the end of the day, there are factors that were pushing Hamas for its own reasons to want this pause and factors pushing Israel, pushing Prime Minister Netanyahu as well. And those also, those mitigating factors also remain in place. From Hamas’ perspective, Hamas has been able to carry on fighting for so long, mostly because it still had a way to resupply itself with weapons and cash. And that was through Egypt. That was through tunnels that still existed under the Philadelphi corridor, which is the line, the border between Gaza and Egypt. And it’s now been about a couple of months since the Israelis walked right around Gaza, went to the bottom where the Israeli Gaza Egyptian border meets and went right up that border and took control of the entire Philadelphia corridor. They’ve shut down many, many tunnels. They’ve even discovered one over this past weekend that was three metres tall, large enough for an armoured personnel carrier to drive through. You may have seen the pictures.

What this means now is that Hamas is no longer able to resupply itself with weapons. Israel’s done a very, very good job of destroying Hezbollah, I’m sorry, Hamas’ military industrial complex. It’s stores, it’s caches of weapons, it’s lates and labs where it was building and manufacturing bullets and rockets. And it’s not just weapons, it’s actual cash. Now, Hamas is still able to steal humanitarian goods. But if Hamas wants money, it needs cash. Gaza is a liquid cash economy. There’s no credit cards, no credit in the Gaza Strip. When Hamas sends money into its supporters in the Gaza Strip. It’s not sending a check. It’s not sending a bank transfer. It’s not sending a wad of bills. It’s going through a money exchanger, a hawaladar. And so, if I want to send money from me to Wendy, I’ll go to my local hawaladar, I’ll give ‘em a thousand dollars, a $10 fee on top. I’ll give 'em a code. And I’ll say, send this to your hawaladar where Wendy is. And my friend Wendy’s going to come and she’s going to give you the password, which is orange juice. And when she gives the right password, you give that thousand dollars minus the $10 fee. And that’s what works. And eventually, you know, the hawaladar where Wendy is, is going to need to send money over here and their books will bounce. But, no money actually moves. Well, this only works if the hawaladar, the money exchanger where Wendy is actually has, you know, drawers full of cash to hand out. If there’s no cash coming in, in this liquid cash economy, there’s no cash to hand out and no one’s going to take an IOU.

So, Hamas is experiencing some very, very significant pain in terms of a lack of weapons, lack of ammunition, and a lack of cash. Can’t buy people off and it can’t fight so long as it’s being strangled this way. Now, it took a few weeks after the Israelis took control of the Philadelphi corridor 'cause they had, you know, stockpiles. But now, they’ve run those down and Hamas is feeling the pain. And at the end of the day, it’s Sinwar who’s making these decisions? Not Haniyeh or anybody else outside of Gaza. And from Israel’s perspective, well, I’ve explained to you already why Israel doesn’t want full-scale war with Lebanon. And Lebanon, I’m sorry, with Hezbollah, and Hezbollah’s Secretary General, Hassan Nasrallah, has done something quite shrew. He is made very, very clear that he will not stop firing at Israel until there is a ceasefire in the south. There was a ceasefire and a hostage exchange many months ago and when that happened, he kept his word. And so long as that ceasefire was in place, he did not fire at Israel. What he said now is, Yahya Hassan Sinwar, Hamas leader in Gaza, he’s the guy who decides if there’s a ceasefire. And he’s the guy who therefore decides if there will be a cessation of Hezbollah fire into Israel. “That’s the only thing that’ll stop me firing into Israel,” he has said. From Netanyahu’s perspective, he does not want the war with Hezbollah to escalate. He desperately wants to be able to return the 60,000 plus Israelis who have been displaced from the north back to their homes.

And so, this puts pressure on him, not to mention the pressure of the fact that the hostages do not have time. Already come out quite painfully, of course, that a good number of the hostages are known or presumed to be dead. And those who are still alive are not in good condition. And so, there is a tremendous amount of pressure to get this done, and secure the release of as many of the hostages as possible. I do believe, not tomorrow or the next day, but that we will get back to that point in the not too distant future, if we can get past this immediate point of tension over maybe retaliation for the Israeli assassinations. The last thing I’ll say is this, and I’ll open it up to the Q&A. Even if there is a hostage exchange, even if that leads to Hezbollah stopping to fire rockets into Israel, that doesn’t mean that we are out of the woods and have avoided a war with Hezbollah. The reason is that Hezbollah has not one but two major things that threaten Israel. The first of the rockets and that right now is everybody’s focus because it was the rockets that were fired at Majdal Shams that killed the Israeli Druve’s children that let Israel to target the Hezbollah operative. And it’s all rockets right now. But the civilians in the north have made it very, very clear. They will not go back to their homes even if the rockets stop, so long as they are afraid that Hezbollah in the north might carry out an October 7th style cross-border raid targeting their communities. And they’re not making this fear up because this was actually a Hezbollah ply. The big surprise was that Hamas carried it out in the south for over 8, 10 years I’ve been going to the northern border in Israel. Every year.

And every year I get briefed by Israel’s northern command on Hezbollah has a plan to storm across the border above ground, below ground, in the air. Kill as many people as possible, take as many hostages as possible, kill as many first responders as possible. This was the Hezbollah plot and Hezbollah’s capabilities, not only in terms of their rockets, but in terms of their ground forces, which are much better trained, much better armed than Hamas forces. That poses a significant threat. And so, Israel’s been very, very clear. Either Hamas redeploys its forces 10 kilometres from the border, which is the outer range of the Kornet anti-tank missile. But also, was the range needed to have a little bit of a buffer zone that people are going to start storming at the border, you’ll have some warning. Or they say, the Israelis say, they’ll force has blood to be redeployed from the border. Now, the Israelis have effectively cleared about five kilometres from the border. There are still Hezbollah guys right there up at the border, but they’re locals who live in these towns. And they don’t have the capability to surprise anybody right now 'cause the Israelis have so many forces deployed up at the border right now. But that’s now. On October 7th and 8th, they did not. On October 7th and 8th, there were about 600 IDF personnel across the entire northern border, not all of whom were combat soldiers. And the extremely scary reality is that if Hezbollah had decided to storm across the border from the north, right after Hamas stormed across the border from the south, the IDF would only have been able to deploy and catch up to them around Haifa. It would have been devastating. It wouldn’t push them back, but it would have been devastating.

And the Israelis who live up there who’ve been displaced will not go back and they will not take any security officials. Take my word for it, unless there is some fix to this problem. And I don’t know that Amos Hochstein, the US diplomat, is going to be successful in convincing Hezbollah that they, you know, they really do need to redeploy 10 kilometres from the border and leave no one south other than those maybe, Hezbollah members who actually live there and that’s their homes, but won’t be seen, but wouldn’t be seen under the deal walking around with their weapons. Mind you, under UN Security Council resolution 1701, which came in the wake of the last Hezbollah Israel war in 2006, Hezbollah forces are not supposed to be anywhere in the south at all. They’re supposed to be deployed only north of the Litani River, and they’re not supposed to have any weapons in the south. That was just never enforced, never enforced. Hezbollah resupplied many, many times over the amount of weapons and the kind of weapons, sophistication of weapons that they have. It’s much more so now than they had before. So, the second thing is going to be, does Hezbollah redeploy? Or does Israel feel the need to redeploy them forcefully? And can Israel do that in a way that falls short of full scale war? I’ve met with some Israeli military officials who believe they can. I am not convinced.

And then finally, if we’re able to get to a point where the Israelis feel comfortable going back north to their homes. If we are able to deal with the situation where Hezbollah is mostly redeployed to about 10 kilometres, still doesn’t resolve the issue of Hezbollah’s rockets. And at the end of the day, I think that the Israelis are looking for a two to three year hiatus, let their reservists go home, they’re exhausted. Let them get back to their lives for a little bit of time. Let the IDF plan very, very carefully. Let the IDF restock its munitions so that in two to three years they can do what has to be done to take out Hezbollah’s missile capability. And I can’t tell you for sure if that’s going to happen. Right now, the Israeli feeling across the political spectrum is, and I heard it a million times. We can no longer live with a gun to our head, not from the south, not from the north. The time when we listen to our own leaders who say, yeah, yeah, yeah, they’re stockpiling munitions, but we can deal that, we can deter them. No one believes them. That said, if people do go back to their homes, if there is calm after all this fighting, human nature is going to be, just buy me some calm again. And I can actually see some people saying, listen, do me a favour, just let me have the calm. Not everybody’s going to say that. And I still think it more likely that in two to three years, that’s going to end up being another war of some sort to try and address the huge number of sophisticated rockets that the international community, we all Israel tolerated Hezbollah collecting since 2006. So we have a lot of work cut out for us. There’s a lot of things here and I know a lot of people have concerns. So, let me stop it right here and open it up to Q&A. And if it’s okay with you all, I’ll open up the Q&A and I will just go through the questions. If you have a question, please feel free to put it in the Q&A. We got a whole bunch that have come up already.

Q&A and Comments:

Q: First, in your opinion, would or will Israel target Iranian oil fields in or their nuclear facilities and retaliation?

A: I assume it’s Israel. It doesn’t say Israel. So again, I think that Israel will retaliate if they have to. It depends on what the nature of the strike is. But, I don’t think that they’re going to want to do more than has to be done because they’re hoping to keep this from escalating and spiralling into something larger. Hitting an running oil fields is messy. It doesn’t actually destroy them. And I have to say, I just cannot stress enough, a lot of people fixate on the idea of a military strike runs nuclear facilities. And if push comes to shove, it’ll probably happen. But people need to understand all that does is delay. Doesn’t stop it. Doesn’t destroy it. We don’t know where all of Iran’s nuclear facilities are. We do know where some of them are and we understand that we can’t necessarily destroy them because they’re so well protected deep, deep, deep under mountains with Iranian cement. Iran is earthquake prone. And many, many years ago developed some of the hardest, strongest cement in the world. You know, if it becomes necessary to hit their nuclear programme to prevent them from getting the nuclear weapon in the immediate, I believe there are some who might do that. When the Israelis responded to the Iranian airstrikes in April, they were brilliant. They had very, very limited response. But it was very, very targeted. If anybody thought they couldn’t go to the distance, they think differently now. If anybody thought they couldn’t get through the Russian air defence systems, they think differently now. If anybody thought they couldn’t destroy some of the more sophisticated Russian air defence systems protecting one of those key nuclear installations, they now know that can happen too. And if they can hit the radar, once they hit the radar, they can hit the facility. I don’t know that that’s what people are going to want. I think in the moment, people are going to want to try and deescalate them.

I’m under the impression that the word peace has no equivalent in Arabic. It’s the same in Arabic as it is in Hebrew, Shalom or Salaam. There are plenty of Arabs who want peace. I know many of them. I need to remind people our think tank, the Washington Institute, not me personally, we commissioned a very, very sophisticated poll in the Gaza Strip. And it needs to be sophisticated if you’re going to do it in places like the Gaza Strip. US State Department says it’s reliable. The Israeli Shin Bet, their version of the FBI says it’s reliable. This was done in July, several months before the October 7th attack. And that poll revealed that 70, just over 70% of Gazans were sick of Hamas. Wanted Hamas out. Wanted Hamas government over. Wanted Hamas to have to relinquish its arms and did not support Hamas targeting Israel. And they were so desperate that for all of the Palestinian authorities, failures, and corruption, they wanted the Palestinian authority for lack of anybody else to come in and rule the Gaza Strip. Now, if you look at more recent polls, they’re going to be very, very different. If bombs are dropping on your head, you’d say things differently too. I remind people in the west all the time, if you were to poll me or you right now on anything, and then poll us again in a week, we’d almost certainly have the same opinion. If you live in a place where there’s tremendous insecurity, you don’t have that luxury. So yes, there is a word for peace in Arab.

Q: What happened to proportional response?

A: Well, I’m not quite sure what to make of that question. There are lots of different ways to understand proportion. Proportional doesn’t mean that Hamas kills 1200 Israelis and therefore Israel can go ahead and kill 1200 Palestinian civilians. But, it does mean that Israel has the right to destroy Hamas’ military capability. Many people argue that what Israel has done is not proportional because so many people have died. And many people will say in response, what else would you have them do? It’s Hamas that built tunnels for its operatives and not a single bomb shelter for its civilians. It’s Hamas that literally says it needs the blood of Palestinians to flow, to get public opinion. And fires the Israel from under and between populated areas. At the end of the day, Iran is going to respond in a way that from it’s perspective is going to give it back its pride. I don’t think that it’s going to be a one-off. I think that the direct frontal attack will be a one-off. And then, we’re likely to see more active international terrorism of the type that Iran have increased significantly over the past year or so, with Iranian external operations, abductions, assassinations, et cetera. I’m actually launching a almost three year research study on Wednesday. An event we’re doing here online at the Washington Institute where I’ve built a data set of Iranian external operations since 1979, and I put it into an interactive map and timeline, which will be available as of Wednesday on our website. Feel free to check it out at washingtoninstitute.org. And I think that the Iranians will try and what they sense will be proportional to trying target Israeli diplomats, et cetera. From the Iranian perspective, it’s not just a, “You killed one person, we’ll kill one person”. You know, Israel from their perspective really shamed them and had a tremendous penetration. And the reality is that most actors don’t limit themselves to an exactly proportional response.

Q: Is it true that some advisors in the Biden Administration are pro-Iran?

A: There is a tremendous amount of garbage in particular about Phil Gordon, who’s the Chief Middle East Advisor to the Vice President, who I know personally. I disagree with him on some things, but he is a fantastic person. A very, very, very dedicated American. And has no sympathies, no sympathies for Iran. And you’ll see that the type of places that report this are places that are extremely, extremely partisan. There was an issue with a couple of people who were hired and had been involved in like track two thing. And I know some of these people. They’re good people. I think they made a big mistake. I do not believe for a moment that the, any significant number of people in the Biden Administration are pro-Iran. There are a few people in the administration who I think are soft on Iran. There are a few people in the administration, one in particular, who I think has a very questionable background. But, I do not think the Biden Administration is pro-Iran or that has been soft on Iran per se. I think a lot of people forget that whether the JCPOA, the Iran deal, was the best thing in the world or not. The idea behind it was to stop Iran from getting a nuclear capability. And I think that in the end of the day, my advice to the Trump Administration at the time had been, I understand all your concerns about Tehran deal. I share most of them, not all, but most of them. My recommendation is to enforce the hell out of this deal, which will get you much farther than pulling out of the deal. And I explained why that was the case and they did not listen to me and to others who were making this. It wasn’t just this point, not just me. Unfortunately, I was right. And by pulling out, we enabled Iran to get closer to where they are today.

Q: Is the development of fifth column in Iran with help of Mossad and CIA wishful thinking?

A: Look, overall it is. These efforts definitely are happening. Somehow, the Mossad got somebody to be able to get into an IRGC safe house, guest house, and plant explosives basically, you know, in furniture and the wall. That does seem to have been what happened. The problem is the Iranians are very, very sensitive to revolution because they’re a revolution itself. Their government itself was revolutionary. And so, they are extremely paranoid, and they are, they spend most of their time cracking down on any type of descent. And so, they won’t catch every time the, you know, Mossad, you know, tries to kill somebody or blow someone up in Iran. But, they’re actually quite good at preventing grassroots descent, and they’re willing to crack skulls to do it. So, there have been lots and lots of people over decades now who believed if you could just send enough money into Iran so people could afford not to go to work. You could go out to the street and protest. You’d have a revolution in Iran and I’ve never bought it.

Q: How long can the economy in Israel keep going in the present circumstances with current levels of reserve duty?

A: That’s an excellent question. I’m not an economist. I’ve met with economists about this. The Israeli economy can sputter along. It’s taking big hits but it can sputter along and is managing. I don’t know if there’s an outer limit. But so far, I think it has amazed people at how well it is doing under the circumstances.

Q: What is the relationship between other Arab states and Iran, Israel, Hamas, and Hezbollah?

A: Look, I think it’s really important to mention here that, the events of the past almost 10 months and certainly since the Iranian rocket attack on Israel in April, which ended up with Iran landing more rockets in Iraq than in Israel because they fell short. Some in Jordan because they fell short. Rockets going over the temple, Mount Haram al-Sharif, the third most holiest site in Islam, just as easily could have been hit. We had at least two Sunni Gulf states actively participate in the effort to shoot down Iranian munitions, not just allowing things to happen over their airspace. I think there’s never been a greater commercial, A, for the fact that moderate Sunni states and non-Shia states, including Israel, have a joint interest in being able to push back against Iranian regional hegemony. And for the absolute desperate need for, and proven now as of April capability of a regional air defence system. So, I’m not naive and I’m not thinking that, you know, Israeli Saudi normalisation will be back on the table by Wednesday. But I do think that it will be back on the table. Now, I do think that the Saudis are going to very, very, very seriously demand an absolute commitment to actions that will begin to lead, to pave a path towards a two-state solution. I think they really do understand more than others that calling for a two-state solution tomorrow, the European country is calling to recognising the state of Palestine today is preposterous.

I am still a two-state solution person, but it’s not happening this year or next year or the next 10 years, maybe 20. But, to do things that could actually put us back on that path, the Saudis are going to truly demand that. And it will be absolutely in Israel’s interest in order to be able to have true normalised relations with the Sunni Gulf States. And I think that that will happen. I really do. I think that that absolutely is one of the main reasons why Hamas chose to do what it did when it did. It was already planning this. But I think that Saudi-Israel normalisation is what pushed them over the end. You know, if I knew what kind of agents Israel had in Iran, I wouldn’t tell you, but I don’t. Could Israel be responsible for the Iranian president’s helicopter crash? I doubt it. They have old helicopters. They made a bad decision. Is it possible? Anything’s possible, but don’t expect it.

Q: Will Turkey back Iran?

A: Look, Turkey’s been doing things for Iran for quite some time. Helping in advance sanctions, for example. And Turkey did just come out saying that they’re going to some vague reference to, you know, militarily helping the Palestinians. That’s not going to happen. But Erdogan, President Erdogan in Turkey, has double, triple, quadrupled down on his Muslim brotherhood, Islamist tendencies because he feels it works for his base. This is primarily about Turkish domestic politics and about positioning himself as a leading defender of Palestinians in the Muslim world. Turkey is in some ways getting closer to Iran because it is another of those countries that has engaged in illicit actions and has been sanctioned. But Turkey is also wary of being kicked out of NATO. Turkey wants a close relationship with the United States. It’ll be very interesting to continue watching Turkey in the months to come.

Q: Are there any positive outcomes for Israel from the recent assassinations?

A: And yes, that there are. I’m not one of these people who will tell you that every bad guy should be assassinated or that that would be an effective policy that can give you a long list of people the Israelis have assassinated that were bad ideas and boomerang. Both of these assassinations, I think, were worth doing. Fuad Shukr, in the case of Hezbollah, was absolutely a critical cog. He’s one of the original founders of Hezbollah. You can look online at washingtoninstitute.org if you’re interested in seeing the piece I wrote on him last week. Killing him, he is not someone who’s going to be easily replaced. Nor is this happening in a vacuum. It’s coming in the hills of some 400 Hezbollah operatives killed in the Southern Lebanon over the past few months, including several very senior commanders. And at the end of the day, 400 pinholes begins to make a fairly sizable hole on its own. And then, think of a sweater, you then start pulling at the thread that is Fuad Shukr. And this is doing some significant damage to Hezbollah’s capabilities. It doesn’t mean that they won’t be able to fire rockets or deploy their forces, but it means they’re losing some very significant command and control capabilities. And they lost one of their most important interlocutors with Iran. Hamas is going to have a very interesting leadership crisis right now.

There’s no clear person that can take over for Haniyeh. Neither of his deputies are prepared. They really want someone who has strong ties to Gaza. The only guy who fits that category is Moussa Abu Marzouk, who used to be the Deputy Secretary General. He hasn’t been back to Gaza in years and years and years and years. He probably has spent more time in the United States than he has in Gaza in the past many decades ‘cause he lived here for some time. As I mentioned, Khaled Mashal, the person who’s the acting chief right now, he had a real falling out with Iran. There’re not going to allow him to be the next guy. And I still believe that it’s likely that Yahya Hassan Sinwar in Gaza is not long for this world. So, I think that these will have a benefit if you are undermining the leadership and the capabilities of groups that are dedicated to your destruction. They are no panacea.

Q: Which government, Harris versus Trump, would be more beneficial to Israel?

A: I’m not going to answer that question. I work in nonpartisan think tank. I will tell you, and I worked in Republican and Democratic Administrations. I will tell you that I feel strongly that those people have been really critical of the Biden administration towards Israel, that is misplaced. I’ve spoken to very, very senior Israeli military leadership on the issue of what exactly was the US withholding from Israel and why. And I’ll just say that a whole lot of hay has been made out of a whole lot of nothing. And the people who say that’s not my assessment, that’s the assessment of extremely senior IDF officials. And I believe that one of the reasons Hezbollah didn’t go to war with Israel right away is because we sent two aircraft carrier groups to the Mediterranean, which is unheard of. We moved the munitions Israel needed to Israel immediately and made our stockpiles that we maintain of our own stuff in Israel available to them immediately. We did things that you can’t really quantify, like, you know, some of those ships in those aircraft carrier groups are all about radars. That point when Israel was facing threats from seven different fronts, and their systems were likely very overloaded. We provided tremendous booster capability to radar systems.

I’m thrilled actually, again, not as a partisan person. I worked in Bush Administration, with what the Biden administration has done. I’d like to think that this is a nonpartisan issue at the core of each party. I’m not as concerned about the issue of Israel so much as I’m concerned a little bit about some of President Trump’s positions on isolationism and what that might mean. So, I can’t tell you who’d be better. I can tell you that in the moment the United States has had Israel’s back. Secretary of Defence just yesterday made very, very clear, we’ve moved more naval assets and fighter jets into the region just over the past few days. The head of Central Command, US Central Command just arrived in Israel. I’m pleased with that.

Q: Why did Egypt, which is hostile to the Muslim brotherhood, allow such large supply to Mossad?

A: It’s a great question. We don’t really know the answer. We have been told the base all of the tunnels have been shut. It is possible that the Egyptians believe that they were all shut. It’s possible with the Egyptians, in an effort to have fewer problems in Sinai, where they had had a very, very heavy hand for a long time, especially as they were trying to combat the ISIS affiliate in the Sinai. That once that was done, maybe they tried to kind of lift their foot off the pedal a little bit and have a less heavy hand. And maybe that provided an opportunity for Hamas and smugglers on both sides of the border to be able to dig new tunnels. We don’t really know. Egyptians are extremely sensitive to this saying, even just yesterday, that any rumours that there were additional tunnels as just that it’s rumours. There’s been no evidence. Israelis can present a thousand tunnels a day, which, of course, is an exaggeration. But, they’ll say there’s no evidence. We don’t know exactly what happened. Someone was bought off, what have you. I can tell you I did a study a few months ago before October 7th, looking into increased smuggling across Israel’s borders, not through Gaza. Across the Egypt Israel border south of Gaza, and across the Israel Jordan border. Most of the smuggling across the Jordan border is guns going into the West Bank and to Israeli organised crime. Most of the smuggling from Egypt is drugs. And there are extremely organised, dangerous, entrenched smuggling families, crime families in Jordan, in Israel, in the Palestinian Territories in Egypt. Mostly, but not only tied to Bedouin tribes that they’re all a part of, that span these geographic borders. And given the uptick in smuggling of drugs and guns that we’ve seen across those other Israeli borders, perhaps we shouldn’t be so surprised that the smugglers were also doing things into Gaza, which arguably probably has fewer counter smuggling capabilities. I’ll take one more question. Then I see Wendy’s got her hand up.

Q: So, how much do the 200 miles of underground tunnels play in the part of the two-state solution?

A: So look, the underground tunnels, and I think at this point it’s more than 200 miles. I think they’ve been saying it’s something like 600 kilometres. I remember when Israelis told me, Matt, you don’t understand. Forget the tunnels dug into Egypt for smuggling. Forget the tunnels that they tried to dig into Israel to attack. There are at least 150 kilometres tunnels just within the Gaza Strip. Now, we find out it’s many times more than that. Those tunnels are going to have to be dealt with. They’re not a part of, they’re not a part against the two-state solution. They’re just a part of reasserting stability in Gaza. It’s the very bad guys who dug these tunnels for their own selfish purposes. They were not there to benefit Palestinians. They certainly were not there to benefit peace or stability of any kind. Again, Hamas dug tunnels for its operatives and not a single shelter for its citizens. Hamas’ calculus going into this was, and I feel dirty letting the words pass my lips, but it’s not my words. You can Google it. You can see multiple Hamas people giving variations of this spiel that they need the blood of Palestinians to flow to get public opinion. Right? That was their goal. All right, I realised that we skipped lots of questions. I got to as many as we could in the time we had. Wendy.

• Yeah, Matthew, I just wanted to say thank you for a truly excellent presentation. You’ve given us your time. I mean, it’s really, as we know, very serious situation and we, all of us, appreciate the effort that you’ve gone to and you know, we look forward to hearing back from you in the next couple of weeks. So, I just want to stay on behalf of all of us, a huge, huge appreciation. Thank you for a very informative and brilliant presentation. Much, much appreciated.