Yahya Sinwar Rests in Pieces
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Yahya Sinwar is dead. He was, of course, the leader of Hamas, the architect of the October 7 invasion of Israel and the barbaric pogrom that followed the largest massacre of Jewish people since the Holocaust. Sinwar has the blood of many Americans on his hands and was designated as a terrorist by the U.S.,

For Israel, this was a significant battle won in a long and multi-front war. And lest you forget, behind Hamas, Hezbollah, the Houthi rebels in Yemen, Palestine in Islamic Jihad, on the West Bank, and Shia militias in Syria and Iraq are the rulers of Iran, oppressors of the Iranian people for 45 years and counting.

To discuss all this and think about where events go from here, we're joined by Mark Dubowitz, FDD's Chief Executive Officer, John Schanzer, FDD's Senior Vice President for Research, and FDD Research Fellow Hussein Abdul Hussein. I'm Cliff May, and I'm glad you're joining this conversation here on Foreign Policy.

Let's start with what we know about how Senoir's career and life came to an end. All right, John, I know all of you have been in touch with various sources there. Who wants to just recap? People probably know by now, but recapitulate. I'll start, and I think Mark has some fascinating details that I think he'll want to add. But the initial reports that I got this morning was that the IDF had no idea who they struck. Right.

Um, it was actually probably we're recording this on Thursday just to be full. It was actually probably Wednesday that this happened, not Thursday because they had to examine the bodies and somebody said, this guy looks awful familiar to me. So the news, the news came out, uh, somewhere around 10 o'clock Eastern. Okay. On Thursday. Um, exactly when it happened, not clear to me, but what, uh,

I quickly began to ascertain was that, uh, they didn't know that it was basically garden variety terrorists that had poked their head out of a building. Um, and the, uh, that you had grunts walking around with their, you know, with their M 16s, they call in a tank strike. How did they even know that this guy's meeting there were, you know, it wasn't just the guys in garden clubbers, armed people, um, and so they call in a tank strike, apparently two rounds, uh,

Take care of the building. Building collapses on the people. They start combing through the rubble after sending a drone in to immediately assess whether there was any threat. Once the coast was clear, they go in and they start picking through the rubble and they see a man that looks a bit familiar.

signature gap between his teeth, big dumbo ears, the sorts of things that have been caricatured by the Israelis over the course of the last 13 months. And slowly but surely, the news began to trickle out into the Israeli media that they may have gotten him. And then I guess what, about two hours later, after the initial reports came out, that's when we began to see confirmation. Slowly but surely, the celebrations began on the streets of Israel.

Why would he be out of the tunnel? And why would he be out of the tunnel without hostages in tow? Is there a theory about that? Well, Cliff, it's a great question because there have been multiple occasions where the Israelis had located Sinaloa and had called off strikes against him because he was surrounded by hostages. But I guess people...

either make mistakes or need fresh air or decide to go visit friends. And I mean, we've actually seen a pattern of this. I mean, Fuad Chakra, who is the Hezbollah commander who was taken out by Israel, responsible for the 1983 Marine barracks bombings and the strikes against our embassies, supposedly was visiting his mistress.

when the Israelis located him. Mohammad Daif, who was a top Hamas military commander, I guess second to Sinwar, the Israelis had tried to take him out multiple times, had failed. And he was one of the most hunted men in Gaza with incredible security protection. He too needed some fresh air and decided that he wanted to visit one of his colleagues who was taken out in an Israeli airstrike.

Nasrallah himself, again, hunted man. And after the Pager incident and after the radio incident, decided he needed to call a meeting of his top commanders.

But he thought he was safe in that bunker. It was like nine stories below ground. Yeah. Reinforced concrete. Yeah. Yeah. But the Israelis, he should have known that the Israelis have that capability to penetrate and take him out. So I think people make mistakes. People have certain urges for fresh air or mistresses. And Israel is waiting. And John's right. I mean, I just want to add to this is –

It was a lucky strike because you had these soldiers on the ground and a little bit more color of it. Well, who are these soldiers? Well, supposedly the soldier that identified and took him out was a 19-year-old in a sergeant's training course. He'd been serving for nine months in the IDF. He was in a brigade comprised of secular Israeli soldiers who were fighting. And this is unusual, ultra-Orthodox soldiers.

He's part of a unit, actually, that President Biden tried to sanction a number of months ago because of accusations that this unit was involved in human rights violations.

So there's a little bit of poetic justice and certainly symbolism for a mixed secular ultra-Orthodox unit to have been involved in taking out one of the world's most dangerous terrorists. And as John said, I mean, these were just ordinary soldiers on patrol. But by the way, it's not just luck. It's the fact that they were there and they were on the ground and wouldn't have been there if the Israelis had listened to Vice President Harris or President Biden. Several things I want to go through here.

I know there's some fog of war. You say the one who took them out, but was it the one who noticed they were there, the one who called in the tank strike, the one who was in the tank? It's not quite sure. Yeah. I mean, John's probably hearing things that I'm not hearing because he's following Israeli media very closely. But whether it was a tank shell or whether it was an M-16 round,

Um, not clear, but they were obviously involved in a significant way. Are they calling it in? Yeah. Okay. Listen, just want to get as close as we can. Again, we're within hours of it. We're saying you were telling me just before we came into the studio, there were IDs found, including IDs of UNRWA officers.

I don't know, being the UN force that has been hand-in-glove with Hamas for a very long time. It's another story, but an important one. But your information is that these were probably fake IDs, not real IDs, right? Yeah, well, the issue here is that this is a template that all these holier-than-thou organizations have used to attack Israel over the past 13 months. The classic three people in civilian clothing go into a residential house.

And of course, the Israelis are going after them and they kill them. And had this person not been Senoir, everyone would be shouting civilians with UNRWA IDs in a residential house. This must be genocide. But this is Senoir. So this proves that Israel is not really just randomly killing people and not randomly going after UNRWA quote unquote teachers.

They know these people. They're engaging them in battle. And these people are behaving as combat people. Otherwise, you know, these kids, the Israeli idea, wouldn't be, you know, firing back at Senuar or going after him. And it's interesting where this took place in Gaza. I think a lot of people for a long time thought that Senuar would be in Khan Yunus because that's where he's from. But it turns out he was in Rafah.

And I've seen the maps, so I know where Rafa is. Have you seen the maps, Jeff? Apparently not. But I particularly because, look, I'm joking here. You know the joke. I studied the maps. I studied the maps. Right. And because the Biden administration said, don't go into Rafa and delayed the entry into Rafa. Don't go during Ramadan. It's a time of peace, but not for these people. It's not right. So Rafa's, it's been a flashpoint in this war.

As the Israelis were preparing to enter Rafah, this is the southernmost town right on the border with the Sinai Peninsula. This was back in March. You first had the administration come out and say, you cannot go into Rafah during the entire month of Ramadan. You have to stop fighting. And so the Israelis agreed. And then...

And then Ramadan ends and it's April. And the Israelis have been sitting there for a month, just holding their positions, by the way, taking fire from Hamas throughout. So in other words, the Israelis decide to stop fighting. Hamas didn't decide to stop fighting. So they had their progress slowed.

Then the Israelis say, well, now we're going to go in. And the administration says, no, no, no, you're going to have a humanitarian crisis on your hands. You can't do this. Meanwhile, the Egyptians are apoplectic saying you can't be on our border. Of course, there's nothing wrong with the Israelis. That's not a violation of the Camp David Accords to be on that border. So the Israelis held again. And it wasn't until late spring, early summer, the Israelis slowly begin to assert control over Rafah.

What that's done is, first of all, they found a bunch of tunnels that snaked into the Sinai Peninsula. It appears that the Israelis have cut off some of the supply lines, maybe the last remaining supply lines for Hamas, which is crucial to the war effort. Then we see that there are actually a number of terrorists that have been killed there. One of the last fighting brigades were based there. 23 out of 24 have been destroyed. The primary one has been right there. The Israelis have been fighting with them.

But then we've seen hostages found, recovered there, hostages killed, including the American, Hirsch Goldberg, Poland. And so Raf has been a flashpoint throughout all of this. And so to find that SINWAR was there after the administration told the Israelis not to be fighting there, after the Egyptians told them that they couldn't be there, there's a certain justice here. The Israelis held their ground and they've

clearly turned the tide of the war and where they did it is just so significant. They did it in a place where the administration was admonishing them repeatedly, excoriating them for operating in this place, which they had every right to be in. Cliff, can I just add to that? John's exactly right. Condemning them, admonishing them, but also threatening to cut off the supply of

critical munitions and systems. This has been a real flashpoint. I would add as well, this wasn't just months ago they were threatening over Rafah. It was literally days ago that the administration came out again and threatened the Israelis again that they would cut off key munitions. You've got an ally in the middle of a war fighting deadly enemies of both Israel and the United States. The administration for at least seven, eight months during this war

has been threatening the Israelis at really critical times to cut off the supply of weapons. I mean, that's a message that the United States should not be sending to our allies and certainly not sending a message to our enemies. I saw the State Department, Matthew Miller, the spokesman, said that over the past few weeks there has been no negotiations because SINWAR has refused to negotiate. There's been no path to ending this war because of SINWAR.

Well, that's good. That's right. I have to say, I never believed for a minute all the talk that Senoir was just this close to making a deal. We were, you know, we're going to get the hostages out. We just have to make up a little bit of a bridging, what do they call it? A bridging proposal. A bridging proposal because I, I,

My understanding of his psychology was he was going to fight and see if he could get a multi-front war that would do what he wants, which is to exterminate Israel and Israelis. But give him credit where credit's due. But that he would die a martyr and as many Gazans would die as martyrs as he thought necessary or were necessary in order to achieve that goal. That there was no way he was going to say, you know what?

There's a win-win here. You know what? There's a compromise. You know what? There's a diplomatic solution. That to me strikes me as American and European diplomats who lack the imagination to understand people who want more than a better 401k and a good healthcare plan.

Yeah, absolutely. And I think the bridge you're talking about, in Senoir's mind, was a bridge back to October 6th. So he gave me back the strip, I'll give you back whatever you want. But also-

He would always keep some. He wasn't going to let all the hostages out if the Israelis said, we're getting out of this trip and it's yours again, even if they said that. He certainly thought of the hostages as his insurance to stay and rule. But the point here is that both of them, Sinwar and Nasrallah, the whole premise of their war is that to tell Israel, you cannot impose your will on us using military power. And we see that's now changing.

You know, if eventually Israel manages to get the hostages out now that Sinwar is gone,

- Not sure that that will happen, of course. - But that's the trajectory. If eventually they manage to get the Israelis of the north back with or without a deal with Hezbollah, then that's the whole premise of their war, that we can extract a prize, that we can force Israel to do what we want, and there's nothing that the Israeli military can do to change that. - Can I just add something really quickly? I'm not sure that Sinawar wanted to die a martyr. I think Sinawar's goal was to emerge

from the tunnels, right? And while, you know, Gaza has been ruined and he's been responsible for the deaths of tens of thousands of Palestinians by using them as human shields,

He can say, I'm still standing and I've emerged victorious. And then he becomes the hero of Gaza, the hero of the Palestinian cause, and perhaps the hero of the radical Islamist cause. And by the way, it's a great point because in these wars, the metric for winning is surviving.

And that's always been right. Every time Hamas has lived to fight another day in the multiple rounds, the five rounds of war that we've seen since 2008, the metric for victory is we're still here. You can get trounced on the battlefield, but if you still come out waving your flag and, you know, chanting slogans, Islamist and nationalist slogans, you are the hero. And that has always been the way that Hamas has operated. But now I think it's safe to say, you know, look,

I still think there's some fighting left. I think there's probably still going to be a low lever level insurgency in Gaza. We'll still see, you know, young men picking up AK 47s wearing track suits and coming out and trying to kill Israelis. But the leadership is eviscerated, right? I mean, uh, you know, Mark talked about Muhammad Dave, uh, but there's also, um,

Marwan Issa, his deputy. Yeah, Mahmoud Davis killed. He was a military commander. Correct. But also Salah Arori, who we've talked about on this podcast before, who's a hybrid, you know, political and military leader who was killed in Lebanon on January 2nd. You have, obviously, Haniyeh killed. There's like...

maybe three recognizable names left in this org chart right now. There's 23 out of 24 brigades destroyed. All of the above ground infrastructure has been just ravaged. 100% of the tunnels have been mapped. 15% of them have been destroyed.

15%. 15%. That's not a lot. No, no, but at key junctures. And again, it's mapped. They now know what they're looking for. And they're not going to be resupplied. You can only stay in those tunnels so long. Correct. And, you know. They also don't have oxygen coming down to the deeper ones unless they have, you know, generators. Yeah, yeah. I mean, look, bottom line is Hamas is in bad shape. I don't want to say that it's 100% done, but they are 99% out of shape.

And that means, you know, that Israel ground out a tactical victory in Gaza and they're now moving on to some of these strategic battles elsewhere in the region. Yeah, go ahead. Sorry. Just to John's point on survival, today's Al Jazeera coverage has this clear. Oh, yeah, yeah. One of it was Senwar talking about his death. The other was about Hamas ambushing the Israeli troops and killing them. So there are

Hamas or Hezbollah? Hamas. So what they're trying to say was that, okay, you killed Sinwar, but the war goes on. So that was their whole point, you know? So survival is what they're trying to prove that now after Sinwar is gone. Well, two things. One is, look, I think we believe the war goes on. I also believe, and maybe I'm wrong, that Sinwar was...

A talented terrorist, the way Nasrallah was a talented terrorist, the way Qasem Soleimani was a talented terrorist. I don't think, you know, necessarily, you know, the two steps below him, there's somebody ready to do as capable as he has been in order to do that. And I think that's important. But and particularly, here's what I want to get to. In Gaza, as far as we know, there isn't somebody capable.

ready to take his place who says, hey, I'm trained, I'm tanned, I'm ready to go. There is one. In Gaza itself. Okay, go ahead. His name is Mohamed Senwar. Oh, the brother. It's his brother. His brother has been running the war for Yahya for the last year. He's lesser known. In fact, not a lot of people have even done profiles on him. I wrote something for commentary early on when I learned about his role, but he does not have the

Um, the same kind of personality, this same leadership profile. But equally ruthless, eh, John? Oh, absolutely ruthless. I mean, you know, and he, and he, and he trained under his brother who's, you know, um, not, not the guy that you want to be your mentor if you're, you know, trying to be a humanitarian. This guy is truly thinking, uh, I'm sure about fighting on in his brother's name. I just am not sure that there's much left.

of Hamas to direct. If you only have one brigade left and even that one has been beat up significantly. And that's in Rafah, that's in the south. I believe it's in the south. I mean, I don't have the latest on that, but you know, Mohammed Sinwar is not the guy that's going to revive Hamas. Cliff, there is somebody else, an important Hamas leader. He sits in Doha. Right, I was going to get to that. He lives in a six-star hotel. He's worth about $4 billion, money that he has stolen.

from the international community, money that was supposed to be for Palestinian aid. And I think there's a real opportunity here with Khalid Mashan. And I know John's been tweeting about this and others have been talking about this. I mean, here's the opportunity to go to the Qataris and make it very clear.

So supposedly you were supposed to be our major non-NATO ally. Joe Biden designated him as such at the beginning of the Biden administration. Supposedly you're going to help us actually as an interlocutor for Hamas. We know that you've been hosting Hamas officials. You've been funding Hamas. And yet you've really done nothing in these negotiations to help us with Hamas. So you have a choice. Either you get Khalil Mashal to surrender.

or we will demand his extradition to the United States, and he will stand trial. Not just surrender himself, but surrender as a leader of Hamas. Correct. We surrender now, release. He should order the hostages released by whoever's left. Preferably on Al Jazeera. Preferably on Al Jazeera. Right. Just so everybody understands, Al Jazeera is owned by the Qataris, and it is their propaganda medium of choice. But here's the choice. You surrender while the hostages are returned.

Prime Minister Netanyahu just came out a couple hours ago and offered immunity to anybody in Hamas that lays down their weapons and helps return the hostages.

You can make that offer to Khalid Mashal. He can keep his $4 billion and continue staying in his hotel in Doha. Or the United States is going to demand that the Qatari's extradite him. And we will use leverage over the Qatari's that we never use and must use. He can come to the United States and be indicted and then convicted for killing Americans. And he can spend the rest of his life in a maximum security prison. Or Mr. Mashal, Mossad will hunt you down and they will kill you.

And I'm going to tell you, maybe this will be controversial. I think Mossad should kill Mashal in Qatar. I mean, I know everyone talks about the diplomatic blowback, and I'm sure the Biden or Harris administrations will be very upset. But do you know what? After October 7th,

Right. All bets are off. And this is a guy that has, along with Sinoir and Def and others, has been responsible for the deaths of thousands of Americans, Israelis, and by the way, tens of thousands of Palestinians. So either you go to jail or we kill you or you help us release the hostages and lay down the arms and then you can live in a nice hotel for the rest of your life. I'll just add, I fully agree. I'll just say this, that, um,

Meshul was actually passed over for leadership after Haniyeh was killed. Right. Went to Sinoir instead. He got two jobs. And I don't want to say that Hamas is democratic, but they had a sure council discussion and ultimately elected Hamas.

uh, Senwar as a combined leader. He was the governor of Gaza, such as it is. Um, he was the military man in charge of all the fighting and he was the political leader. He became everything all at once. No time for hobbies. Exactly. Exactly.

From tunnels, by the way. Also, you know, not getting a whole lot of vitamin D. And so what was interesting is that Mashal was passed over. He was the heir apparent. He actually was the previous Politburo chief for Hamas.

And then he got passed over to take that job again, even though he's in Doha, they could have split, you know, kind of responsibilities. And so he was sidelined. He was spurned by Hamas's leadership. And so what does he do to make himself relevant? A couple of days after Haniyeh is killed, he comes out and he starts calling for renewed suicide bombings against Israelis.

We haven't seen a campaign like that since the second Intifada, which was brutal and gruesome. And it really earned Hamas the reputation of being this really horrific terrorist organization. So this is the man that they may now consider to be the next leader of Hamas, the man who just a few weeks ago called for the renewal of suicide bombings. This cannot happen.

from the soil of an American ally, a major non-NATO ally at that. This administration has handled Qatar with kid gloves, Mark is absolutely correct. For a year, we could have forced the Qataris to hand over the leadership that was there, including Haniyeh, including Mashal, including Hossein Badran as the international spokesman for Hamas.

We have not asked them to do anything. Instead, what we've done is we've invited them to be the brokers of a ceasefire agreement, despite the fact that they host these guys, host their headquarters, give them $30 million a month. This is an insane arrangement. If there was ever a moment for the Biden administration to step in and break this up, it's right now. It ends the Gaza war. It might even end the rest of the war if we just flex a little bit of muscle, use the leverage that we have. Yeah, and stop blowing wet kisses to the people.

to the Qataris. I mean, every Biden administration press release or readout from a conversation with the Qataris, it sounds like the Qataris are our closest ally. I mean, you would expect this call with the Brits or with the Australians. But literally, as John said, I mean, they're responsible not just for providing civilian aids to Hamas, but they were using cutouts to provide money

the assistance of the Iranians to the military wing of Hamas. This is not something that's been publicly reported, something that is known by those of us who've been following this closely. As John said, it is long past the time that we exercise leverage. We have an air force base there that protects the Qataris, 330,000 Qataris who are incredibly rich, who are spending

tens of billions of dollars in one of those massive influence campaigns in the United States. We protect them from their enemies. We have leverage. And we could simply just say to the Qataris, you do what we say, or we're moving the Air Force base to an ally that'll appreciate us. And they will then be undefended. And then they can deal with the enemies of the Middle East on their own. But you mentioned just a few minutes ago that the American administration

threaten the Israelis. You either do a better job of getting food aid in and distributing it, that should be your priority in Gaza, or else we're going to begin to curtail support.

Now, Qatar was made by the Biden administration a major non-NATO ally. Surely, I think it should have happened before now that we should have taken them by the collar and said, here's what we expect of you. And there'll be serious ramifications if you don't do what we need you to do to help us with this. But at this point, why not say now?

We really mean it. You have to take this guy out of his hotel room, put him in a chair and tell him that he has to surrender. You expect him to on the behalf of Hamas, that he must order, order anybody in Hamas who has hostages, including American hostages, five or seven. I forget the number. What do you think?

They must release them forthwith on order of the leader of Hamas and do it now. And again, if not, there must be serious consequences for him and serious consequences for Qatar. I mean, first of all, say to Mashal, we'll honor the American request for extradition. Shal, you're going to America to stand trial. You're going to end up spending the rest of your life not in a luxury suite, but in a maximum security prison. Second is, we will green light.

to Mossad to come kill you in Doha. So you step up or you're going to meet the same end as your buddy, Sinwar. And to the Qataris, I mean, John and I have looked at this for years, hey, John. I mean, besides moving Al Udeid Air Force Base,

The Qatari, as John said, are a major financier of terrorism. Yes. Right? Maybe one of the largest in the world. So we could designate them a state sponsor of terrorism, which would have enormous implications for their ability to move money around the world and continue to move billions of dollars in the United States as they buy off terrorism.

politicians, lobby groups, law firms. And in Europe. Universities, Europe as well. A lot, yeah. Cultural institutions, sports institutions. So from major influence operations with billions of dollars, you'll be like the Islamic Republic of Iran, not able to move your money through the swift banking system. We have leverage, but we don't use that leverage against the Qataris. And they play both sides. And at the end of the day, let's remember, this is the Muslim Brotherhood.

These aren't the Qatari royals. This is the Muslim Brotherhood in Doha financing and spreading radical Islamist ideologies in Europe, in the United States that are radicalizing Muslims around the world and are a threat to moderate Muslims most of all. Yeah, and it's interesting. I mean, we see their fingerprints on what's happening on campus. We see their fingerprints on the media campaign that has been waged against Israel and the United States recently.

Whenever the White House is supportive of Israel, which is intermittent, but a lot of the intermittency is as a result of this media campaign. But I'm actually I want to actually want to ask Hussein something directly. Mark mentioned earlier the possibility of taking out somebody like Mashal Mossad, taking him out in Qatar.

I'm curious. I mean, I've long believed that a little bit of blood on the carpet in Qatar would go a long way, that that would be the moment they'd say, nope, not doing this anymore. We don't want any part of this because we want bankers here. We want businesses here. We don't want this kind of messy stuff. We've allowed them to host terrorists online.

and not have to pay a price. Is that the way to get them to stop? Or are there other levers? I mean, you studied the Qataris. I'm just curious, what gets them to stop this fight? Yeah, and if you could comment on, you don't get to host the World Cup and host terrorists. You get to choose. Well, absolutely. But I don't think we even need blood on the carpet. We need to stop issuing statements that thank the Qataris. Mm-hmm.

And even without Israel involved in this, when there were rumors that the US might strike Iran during the April Iranian attack on Israel, they issued a statement saying that

that the US can't use this air base to strike Iran. And we're thinking, okay, so what's the use of this air base if Qatar is calling the shots and deciding where we strike? - Yeah, it's not their air base, it's our air base. - Exactly, so even at that low level of just saying, okay, you have to stop and you have to listen, we're not doing that. We're just issuing statements. Now, if they don't as we go up the ladder, then maybe some blood on the carpet would help. But we're not there yet. We're not even on that pathway or that trajectory.

I've seen some reports saying, I don't know how right they are, that because Hezbollah has been decapitated essentially in Lebanon, you have Iranian, by which I mean IRGC, Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps commanders, who are essentially taking the resources that Hezbollah has and they are acting as the commanders. In other words, I would argue to begin with that

The Islamic Republic of Iran is an imperialist state. They've made a colony out of Lebanon.

They'd like to control it at a little bit of a distance. That's not unusual with imperialists. But they may have sent those from the metropole. Okay, you better take these resources to fight the Israelis because we don't have any. First of all, do you think that's true? Second of all, it's probably easier for them to do that in Lebanon with Hezbollah than if they wanted to do that with Hamas. They might want to, but it's probably harder for them to send a commander into Gaza

Gaza from the IRGC, from the Quds Force to manage that. How do you agree? Of course, it's easy in Lebanon. And what we've seen is that a couple of the oligarchs who try to sense how it might feel like if they speak against Hezbollah, not going all the way, just putting out a feeler. And lo and behold, a few days after that, the Iranian foreign minister himself landed in Beirut, Arakchi.

And he overruled what they were saying. He said, we're not untying from Gaza.

And then a week after that, the speaker of Iranian parliament, Qalibaf also, and by the way, Qalibaf, the speaker, is an RGC pilot. He piloted his plane from Tehran to Beirut. And I was told in Lebanon that the reason he did that was that the Israelis were monitoring and turning back all planes that are coming from Iran to Lebanon with arms on them. So the reason he was flying this, it probably had

all the cash. Hezbollah now needs cash. The parties of Hezbollah who were displaced can't pay rent in other areas. And Hezbollah doesn't have the money. So the Iranians are getting the money. So this gives you an idea, and all of this is public. This gives you the idea that the Iranians are now directly managing Hezbollah stuff in the absence of all the leadership that Israel has taken now. I think the Israelis welcome this. I think the opportunity to kill these IRGC commanders outside of Iran

is a great opportunity for Mossad and for the Israeli Air Force. You may remember, Cliff, over the past number of months, the Israelis have struck senior IRGC commanders in Damascus. And the regime has responded by pulling the IRGC out of the Levant back to Tehran. So if Hussein is right and they're back on the ground there,

This is a much easier option for the Israelis than flying 1,800 miles to Tehran with the Biden administration telling them not to touch IRGC leadership inside Iran. This is an opportunity to strike at them inside Beirut or inside Lebanon in general, where the Israelis have demonstrated they've got exquisite intelligence on who's moving where and who is who. So if you're

Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei in Tehran, you're sitting down right now. Do I look that old? Older than you probably did a year ago, I would say. You're sitting around with your deputies and you're saying, okay, guys, what do we do now? Should we hit...

the Israelis again right now because we have to, are we, should we back off a little bit? Shall we negotiate a new bogus JCPOA with the Americans? Well, you think the Israelis are going to hit us? I know Biden has tried to protect us. Can't hit nuclear sites, can't hit military sites, making it the botanical gardens, I guess. What, what, you know, where do you,

What is he being advised and what are his choices? And do you have any percentage on what he decides to do? I know this is a hard question. Yeah. Look, I mean, I obviously, I don't, I don't know all my, my contacts in the IRGC dried up years ago, but he gave them to me. Have fun with those.

Um, look, I mean, I have to say, though, that everything that we're hearing is that the the Iranians have been in defensive crouch for the last couple of weeks preparing, bracing themselves for the attack that the Israelis are at least under the impression that they were going to launch. Now, I will say it's been like watching paint dry as we've waited for the Israelis to finally respond to those 181 ballistic missiles. That response is long overdue. But for them to start to move assets into position for a strike against Israel strikes me as

Difficult.

I think right now. I think they're still thinking about how to defend their own skies. I think they're nervous about what the Israelis are going to unveil. I think they're looking at the Israelis are probably hacking the heck out of them right now. They're inside their systems. We know the Israelis just stole a bunch of information from their nuclear program, has yet to be released into the wild. Who knows what that's going to do? I think these guys are nervous right now. And I think that an attack by...

by the regime itself would be a mistake. But don't forget that on the day that we learn about Sinwar's death, five Israeli soldiers killed in Lebanon, seven injured. The fighting continues elsewhere. The Iranians don't necessarily need to respond directly. They've got...

six fronts that are hot right now. The Israelis are still feeling like they're under siege. The Iranians are still waging the war that I think they believe is in their strategic interest. So the question now is, can the Israelis press the advantage, knock out one front, maybe knock out another, clear the way for attacks against the regime itself? They need to stick to their game while the Iranians stick to theirs. Cliff, can I pick up on that thread? Because I think, I don't know what Ali Khamenei thinks. I mean, I've spent 20 years trying to figure out

This man, and he's a brilliant strategist and a ruthless dictator, and he's the longest serving dictator in the Middle East. He didn't survive the Iranian Game of Thrones internally without being- Right. He's been there since 1989. He's only the second supreme leader of that revolutionary regime. What I worry about is Joe Biden once again saying to the Israelis after the killing of Senwar,

Take the win. Take the win. Take the win. We know that there's been an immense amount of pressure put on Prime Minister Netanyahu by Biden and his team to limit the strikes against Iran after the October 1st firing, as John said, of the 181 ballistic missiles. I think that that pressure is going to mount. I think there's going to be even more pressure to limit the retaliation.

And we already know that Biden has publicly taken nuclear sites off the table, oil sites off the table. I mean, how many other sites is he going to take off the table? How many other targets will be off the table after the death of Sinwar? So this administration's instinct is not to...

double down the pressure after the Israelis successfully do what they do, taking out Nasrallah, taking out Sinwar, taking out Def, the pagers, these brilliant operations. Their instinct is not to say, well, Israel, you got to double down and we got your back. Their instinct is to say, well, first of all, we objected to what you did. We try to block what you did. You didn't tell us that you were going to do it. And now that you've done it and it's been a success,

Take the win. Take the win. And so I worry this is going to limit the Israeli retaliatory options over the coming couple of weeks. But just to be clear, there is no win.

Israel to take. I mean, they earned this win on the battlefield. Again, it was maybe a little bit of dumb luck, but I think it was also persistence. It was fighting against the advice of the White House and just sticking to their ground game. And it's been a grind. But there is no win here other than one tactical battlefield victory that might be translated into one front being neutralized. The rest of the war grinds on.

Iran is continuing to fight Israel on six other fronts. There is no taking a win. I mean, if that's how they frame it, it's insane because, I mean, let's just unpack this for a minute. A win for Israel, a diplomatic win would be you have this complete surrender of Hamas. You have the handing over of the hostages. You have Hezbollah withdrawing north of the Latani River. You have Iran dismantling its militias in places like Iraq and Syria and Yemen. And

And an end of conflict agreement. And stopping this nuclear weapons program. Yes. Right. Right. The odds of that happening are probably about as good as me being the starting center for the Sixers this year. And so the Sixers really, really are pathetic. You might have a chance. Even then. Even then. Actually, they made some good trades in the offseason. But the point being is this war is not stopping.

Right. And so there is no win to take. And that's what I think drives me so crazy about this mentality that like, oh, well, you just did something good for yourself. Now stop fighting when there's a broader war that's going on. Yeah. And there's diplomatic opportunities here, Cliff. I mean, I think we need to impress upon our Israeli friends that

that there is an opportunity, right? There's an opportunity to potentially completely dismantle Hamas' military and governance capabilities. The Israelis have done that on their own. I think we're close to that. But then there's an opportunity for a day-after plan. There's an opportunity to work with the Americans, with the Emiratis,

to reconstruct Gaza, to ensure- But Mosh has to be totally incapacitated. That's got to be clear. I'm not sure that was clear to the Biden administration. Maybe now with Senora's death it is. I don't know. I think there's going to be a big diplomatic push, a lot of pressure on the Israelis on the day after plan. I think the Israelis have their own day after plan. I think the State Department is currently house divided. There's a big fight between-

the NEA and Blinken's team on what day after looks like. But nevertheless, I mean, I think the important thing is diplomatic opportunity. There may be diplomatic opportunity in the North to finally enforce two UN Security Council resolutions, 1559 and 1701, which is not only to push Hezbollah to the Latani, but to dismantle them.

as a military force, right? That is what the Security Council demands. Now, the fact of the matter is, is you don't get to diplomatic victories without coercion. Unfortunately, our administration doesn't believe in coercive diplomacy. They believe in diplomacy, which basically means- Capitulation. Well, I was going to be a little more polite, but-

But it was going to be like- That's what Schultz said, basically. Well, yeah. I mean, if you don't cast the shadow of power across the negotiating table, then- Diplomacy is a euphemism for capitulation. There it is. So Secretary Schultz understood coercive diplomacy. I hope our administration does too. But the coercion has been brought by the Israelis. Yeah. And now it's an opportunity for the United States to match Israel's coercive capabilities with some-

effective diplomacy to try and bring a political solution that's going to secure Israel. And you know, you could say, I just throw this out to you to play with too. I used to think the United Nations was useless. I now realize that I was being much too generous.

No, no, absolutely. I agree. But to go back to diplomacy, I think what the Biden administration has been doing is that they offer diplomacy to Israel, not to the other guys. So they tell Israel, this is diplomacy and we're saving you from your own self. Don't do what we did in the war on terrorism. They're not offering the Lebanese diplomacy saying, look, you want to finish the war the easier way and save yourselves, then take diplomacy. Otherwise, the Israeli will really finish it on their own terms and beat you.

And the same thing applies to Hamas. So diplomacy here is not being offered to the Lebanese. Look, you either take war or diplomacy. It's being offered to the Israelis. So now take the win. Now sit back. Now, you know, this is the best offer that you'll get. Now this is the best outcome that you'll get whether in Lebanon or with the Iranians. So I think this is the main fault. And for the Lebanese and the moderate Palestinians, of course, there are

moderate Palestinians who might step up if they see this course. Well, let's talk about the moderate Palestinians for a second because Sinwar used to be in an Israeli jail. He was in an Israeli jail not for killing Israelis but for killing moderate Palestinians. And by the way, it's also interesting, in the Israeli jail, he would have died if they hadn't given him medical treatment. They opened his head and saved his brain.

now from a tumor. Now he's had a, the doctor gave him another headache and a different, I think you know this, but the doctor saved him. The doctor's nephew, I believe was killed on October 7th.

By Senoir and Hamas. And the doctor who saved him said, it's my job as a doctor to save him, but this is not somebody who is reformable, who will ever feel grateful, who will ever say, you know what, the Israelis saved me, we should peacefully coexist. That would happen. And I'm not sure people recognize this too. Going back at least to 1948.

moderate Palestinians who said, you know, we can get along with the Israelis. It's not a problem. We can figure this out. They were eliminated by Hamas and before that by other radical Palestinian groups. I mean, it's very dangerous as a Palestinian to stand up in a soapbox and say,

Let's pursue peace. Now, it seems to me that it's a possibility in Gaza to have that, but only when they're not afraid that Hamas is going to kill them. We've seen, again, the media does not like to show this, but if you look carefully on social media, you'll see Palestinians getting beaten for criticizing and dragged through the streets.

for criticizing Hamas, Hamas stealing the aid coming in, taking it themselves or reselling it. So it's not going to be easy to find those kinds of Palestinians. And there are also gangs and criminal groups. Not easy to reconstruct Gaza at this point. To get it back to where it was, by the way, on October 6th, and I got to say, it was not such a bad place. You can see, there are people now who were showing the pictures of what it looked like

It looked like a lot of the Middle East and better than a lot of the Middle East because there's a Mediterranean seaside. - You know, of course it's not easy for these waters to come out, but we have to always give them the option for them to come out. And we have to show them that we're consistent about this option. What happened with these Palestinians or the Lebanese is that whenever we invite them to revolt against Hezbollah or Assad or anyone,

midway through we change our minds and then we go back to de-escalation and they find themselves just stuck in a fight with others. So Hariri, for example, the prime minister that Hezbollah killed in Lebanon, his idea was to go all the way, go for peace with Israel. And Nasrallah is on the record saying that.

And they killed him. So the issue here is that what we should do as the US, if we want diplomacy to work, we should keep this option there and viable and encourage anyone who wants to take it to take it. If they don't, that's on them. You can always take the horse to the river, but you can never force it to drink. So it's there. If they take it, okay, then they stop the war. I don't think they're doing this.

I don't think there's ever going to be a peaceful, independent Palestinian state living side by side with Israel, no matter how many Palestinian martyrs there are, as long as the Islamic Republic of Iran remains in power. Khamenei cannot allow it. Cliff, you know this. You've studied Iran. You've been in Iran. You were there during the revolution. For Khamenei to see a peaceful Palestinian state would be not only antithetical, it would be hostile.

to the revolutionary dogma. So he will do everything possible to ensure that Palestine turns into a Hamas-controlled Gaza, a Hezbollah-controlled Lebanon, a Houthi-controlled Yemen, a Shiite militia-controlled Iraq, right, John? I mean, you've been studying this. You wrote the book on this. Yeah, I mean, but by the way, I mean, he's not stopping with the places that he already has a modicum of control. Right. I mean, right now, he's trying to radicalize Jordan. He's trying to flood it with fighters and weapons and cash. And I mean, he's...

eyeing Jordan as the next place to collapse, where we will install maybe some kind of Hezbollah or Hamas-like entity. He still has designs on the entire region. And that's why this is a long war. This is imperialism. This is settler colonialism. Well, that's the thing. When they talk about the axis of resistance, I'm not sure that they're the resistors anymore. Oh, of course they're not. That's a euphemism. I think it's pretty much the Israelis are, they're the only ones resisting right now. They're the axis of aggressors. Yeah.

No, exactly. The Middle East version. Yes, that's right. Let me just add to the two-state issue that the Palestinian Authority, they've been lobbying the Saudis for recognition as a state, saying that this is the first step toward a two-state solution. This morning, we saw that the first thing that they did after winning a seat on the General Assembly was that the Palestinian Authority wants to kick Israel out of the UN. So this doesn't look like two-state. This looks like our state replaces your state.

No, I don't see how as long as the Islamic Republic of Iran has its hegemonic, its imperialist ambitions to dominate the Middle East, as long as it's

War cry, its slogan is, as it's been since 79, death to Israel, death to America. There's no way there can be a peaceful Palestinian state coexisting next to Israel. They won't allow it, as you say. They'll be in Jordan. They'll be everywhere. I mean, again, all the mosquitoes and all the crocodiles are coming out of one swamp, and it's right there in Tehran. By the way, this isn't a number of think tank experts speculating on Khamenei's

strategic designs. I mean, all you have to do is follow what the Supreme Leader says. I mean, Cliff, we Westerners really just don't like to believe what our enemies say, right? We think they're playing to a domestic constituency. Well, they can't really mean it. And by the way, if we just flood them with cash and give them sanctions relief, we'll turn the hard men of Tehran into responsible global stakeholders. Well, we tried that with the Chinese Communist Party. Big failure. We tried that with Vladimir Putin.

big failure. And the fact of the matter is we don't respect the fact that these are men of ideas. They're men of ideologies. They're men of radical theologies. And they're not interested in being, I think, the material girls. The world is not filled with material girls. The world's not filled with material girls. They're interested in power and domination and in winning. And I think we Westerners are no longer interested in winning. The only country interested in winning

Today in the West is Israel. I think the Ukrainians also are putting up a brave fight. And I think it's one of the reasons that the West resents Israel and elements of the Republican Party, I think, resent the Ukrainians because they're demonstrating the willingness to win.

and fight in their own defense. Refuse to be dominated, refuse to be exterminated or refuse to be dominated. Yeah. And I think the Western inclination is, look, if you would just concede, if you would just compromise, if you would just resort to diplomacy, well, we could avoid all of this escalation and war. We could at least have peace in our times. And our enemies see it the exact opposite way. They see this as an opportunity to escalate. I think, was it Lenin who said, right, I push forward when I feel mush.

I keep moving. When I feel steel, I back up. I mean, I'm paraphrasing. And that's exactly what the Islamic Republic of Iran does. And that's what its terror armies do as well. They finally met steel today with the death of Sinwar. Anything else anybody wants to add? No. I think we're good for today. Very interesting conversation. Lots of developments are going to follow over the days ahead. No rest for the weary and no rest for the wicked.

Thank you, Mark. Thank you. Thank you, John. Thank you to all of you who have been with us for this conversation here today on Foreign Policy. Thank you for listening to this episode of Foreign Policy. If you enjoyed the show, please rate us, preferably with five stars. Ratings and reviews help give us visibility and the opportunity to reach more people who seek to understand the most critical national security and foreign policy issues. Also, make sure to subscribe so you never miss an episode.

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