Evening Edition: The US Investigates Leak Of Israeli Plans To Attack Iran
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I'm Will Kane. I'm Dana Perino. I'm Greg Jarrett. And this is the Fox News Rundown. Monday, October 21st, 2024. I'm Eben Brown. Just how did the U.S. let leak Israeli intelligence and plans?

And how will that affect an already strained relationship between the Biden administration and the Netanyahu wartime government? Track down the number of people who had access to these documents and images, who clicked on them the day before they got transmitted to the Iranian telegram channel. That is all very knowable. And figure that out fast and hold people to account. This is the Fox News Rundown Evening Edition. ♪

From the Fox News Podcasts Network, subscribe and listen to the Trey Gowdy Podcast. Former federal prosecutor and four-term U.S. congressman from South Carolina brings you a one-of-a-kind podcast. Subscribe and listen now by going to foxnewspodcasts.com.

Israel seems more than ever poised to strike and strike hard at its greatest and most existential foe, the Islamic Republic of Iran, which long has been the puppet master of the Middle East's marionette show of terrorism and war. But did some of what Israel knows or is planning get leaked to the Iranian officials by none other than us, the U.S.?

Certain classified documents shared by the Israelis with the Pentagon turned up on a social media channel operated by entities close to the Islamic rulers in Iran on the platform Telegram. That leak comes as the Israelis are arguably ignoring U.S. admonitions to not proceed further against Iran and its proxies.

In fact, it's been weeks worth of major accomplishments for Israel on that front, from the killing of Hamas leader Ismail Haniya, allegedly by Israeli intelligence in Tehran, to the Hezbollah pagers, to the killing of Hezbollah's leader Hassan Nasrallah in Lebanon, to deflecting Iranian missiles, and to the killing of terror kingpin Yahya Sinwar in the Gazan city of Rafah. The landscape of the Middle East is now decidedly

Senoir had sort of built up this mystique, this persona that he was like a ghost, that he could strike Israel in ways Israel hadn't anticipated. That was very much the message of October 7th. Victoria Coates served President Trump as his deputy national security advisor. She's now vice president for national security and foreign policy at the Heritage Foundation. From a lot of very, I think,

in-depth Wall Street Journal reporting, we know from some stories over the summer that he really had the idea for October 7th after the 2021 Gaza war when Iron Dome so effectively shot down so many of Hamas's projectiles that he wanted to do something different, that there were efforts to try to eliminate him during that war. They failed. And then they've been on this obvious campaign since October 7th to try to catch him.

And I think what has happened really since the prime minister's July visit to Washington was a real sense that the gloves are off with Israel. I don't know whether it was what he heard from Vice President Harris or what he heard from former President Trump or a combination of the two. But certainly the tactics in Israel seem to have changed pretty dramatically since then and what would have been unthinkable.

Because if you take out Sinwar, you know, who's going to do it? Who's going to lead in Gaza? And historically, the answer has been that if there isn't an alternative, then you can't take out the current leadership. That calculus really seems to have changed. Leaving Sinwar in power would not have been something I think Israel wanted. This was not a partner in peace. Oh, absolutely not. But if there is being the...

argument has been better a partner than no partner at all. And I think what has changed is Israel is now saying, actually, we will deal with no partner at all rather than deal with these people, particularly after October 7th. But that is new, even from what the calculus was when the first Trump administration was in office. It seems to change the calculus for the Biden administration or what may be left of it.

at this point, because we now have the Secretary of State, Antony Blinken, heading to the Middle East. Israel's forward motion now is not just in Gaza. It is in Lebanon. It is elsewhere. It is looking at Iran. There seems to be this desire, at least that is spoken, to de-escalate, de-escalate, de-escalate.

Israel has not really gone along with that, especially not in the past month. They have escalated on what they consider to be on purpose and with goals in mind. Oh, absolutely. And what they've been hearing is don't, don't, don't, which is the Biden administration's favorite strategy. And it didn't work on Vladimir Putin.

and it's not working on Israel, that don't go into Rafah was their argument. And if they hadn't gone into Rafah, Yahya Sinwar would still be alive. And the other thing that's come out of all of this is that Sinwar was emboldened, particularly in the March-April timeframe, to reject what were very advantageous hostage deals.

For him, that would have been good from a Hamas perspective because Israel was so frantic to get the hostages out. But because he saw the pressure growing from the Biden administration against the Netanyahu government, that he thought he could get a better deal. So you think about it. I mean, who could have come out now six months ago? Would, you know, Hirsch Goldberg Poland still be alive?

if that hadn't been the case. And it shows you how dangerous it is to have differences between Israel and the United States play out in the press. Those differences, how do they overcome those differences? You know, the Secretary of State, like I said, is headed to the Middle East,

there has been some reporting this morning that Israel has laid forth its conditions for a ceasefire now in Lebanon. And that is to say, we want control of, we meaning Israel, want control of Lebanese airspace. And we want to make sure that we have a troop presence in southern Lebanon, that southern third of Lebanon below the Latani River. Is Israel just making these stipulations knowing that these are non-starters for Lebanon? Well, I don't

I don't know is the short answer. I mean, Israel is certainly taking unprecedented actions in Lebanon. And one of the things we saw over the weekend was they're attacking some financial institutions, which normally would be considered civilian targets, so not something Israel would go after. But these are banks that Hezbollah has controlled. It's one of the ways they've eaten their way into Lebanese society to control the medical sector.

community to control the distribution of groceries, to control, in this case, financial institutions. So the real lifeblood of the country has been completely infected by Hamas. And I think what you're seeing from Israel is a refusal to play by the traditional rules that you don't strike these things because you might harm, you know, everyday Lebanese people who put their finances in those institutions. Well, I think what Israel's been saying for the last two months is no longer.

And so, you know, you've had two months to reorganize your affairs and we're going after these things. And if the Lebanese people realize that they are going to be not just Hezbollah, but they are going to be, you know, really even further degraded from where they are now by an ongoing conflict, you know, they have various means to take things into their own hands and say, "Okay, we accept Israel's terms. Make this stop."

And so I think this is a real shift, though, a little bit like what we saw from the prime minister after Senwar was eliminated, more kind of dictating terms than trying to negotiate a ceasefire. At what point do the other Arab leaders turn away from the Hezbollahs and the like and say, we're done with you? When does the...

the legitimate, as we call it, Lebanese government do that? When does Bashar al-Assad in Syria have a change of heart with regard to his relationship with Iran? They're all watching this, especially in Lebanon, obviously. They're all watching this play out. It is not playing out the way Iran promised them it would play out.

quite the opposite. No. Now, unfortunately, actors like Assad in Syria, he really doesn't have another option. Even though he's been allowed back into the Arab League, he's not getting any support from countries like Saudi Arabia, the Emirates, Bahrain, Kuwait, even Egypt. And so he doesn't really have an alternative. He's kind of nailed to his perch, as it were.

And in terms of Lebanon, until you have the Lebanese people take control

affairs into their own hands. I've seen nothing coming out of the quote-unquote legitimate Lebanese government that gives me any confidence they're going to take any significant steps here. Victoria Coates with the Heritage Foundation used to be Deputy National Security Advisor for President Trump. We are discussing the effects of killing Yahya Sinwar in Gaza and how it reshapes the region and what happened with Israeli intelligence apparently leaked by the

Pentagon on the Fox News Rundown Evening Edition. Please like and subscribe. We'll have more straight ahead. You've mentioned earlier this daylight that has been appearing at random times between Israel and the United States and the ramifications of that. And I think that was further somehow illustrated over this past week with this leak that that

Israel's plans that the at least the ones that the Americans knew about had been leaked to Iran or in ways Iran could get that information. Sounds disastrous. It seems almost embarrassing for us, the United States. Here's the question you can't answer. Why did it happen? Unfortunately, I think I think it happened because trust has been so thoroughly eroded. And I would actually go back

A couple more years to the Obama administration when President Obama at the beginning of his first term openly said the no daylight policy between the George W. Bush administration and Israel did not result in peace. And, you know, Condoleezza Rice at the end of the Bush administration tried mightily to get to a peace deal. It did not work.

So Obama's approach was no daylight doesn't work. It doesn't bring peace. So I am going to air my my differences openly. And I think that has been the mantra of the Biden-Harris administration as well. And what that does is embolden folks throughout the administration, even at lower levels, to kind of take things into their own hands. And it looks like that's what happened here. And it's

It's information about not really a battle plan for Israel. It's information about the kind of assets they were gathering that was leaked. But it all is highly classified. And this can be tracked. And so I think the one thing left to the Biden administration that would

could do some degree of repair with Israel is a very thorough, very quick investigation of this. Track down the number of people who had access to these documents and images, who clicked on them the day before they got transmitted to the Iranian telegram channel. And that is all very knowable.

figure that out fast and hold people to account. When you say knowable, does that trace back to, again, you may not have an answer to this, but does this trace back to somewhere upper echelon in the Defense Department, the State Department, or does this trace back to the bureaucratic cubicle farms that exist, that we're faceless people who work in these policy offices but still have access to this kind of information?

Well, but that's what's very trackable. So it looks like DOD from everything I've heard that it is coming out of defense. And so what you can tell, these classified documents have digital footprints. So you know that it was Joe Smith in cubicle 42A in whatever ring of the Pentagon you care to pick, that he clicked on it. And wow, Joe Smith printed it, which

which means Joe Smith could put it in a file folder, walk into a public space and take a picture of it with a cell phone and transmit it that way. So you start to narrow the pool of people who are accessing. And then, you know, the printing is usually the really important

the really damning thing that there's no reason to print these documents anymore, really, unless you're going into, say, an NSC meeting. But that wasn't the case with this. I mean, this is serious, right? I mean, this is classified information. We've seen what happens to other people

who have worked at the Pentagon that have leaked classified information over these past couple of years. They've been caught. They're being prosecuted. I imagine the same would happen here. I mean, one certainly would hope so. And it's the one thing that, as I said, I think could restore some Israeli confidence, you know, in this in this relationship. Victoria Coates, former deputy national security adviser to President Trump.

And you're also now the vice president of the National Security and Foreign Policy at the Heritage Foundation. Thank you so much for being with us on the Fox News Rundown Evening Edition. Of course. Happy to do it.

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From the Fox News Podcasts Network, subscribe and listen to the Trey Gowdy Podcast. Former federal prosecutor and four-term U.S. Congressman from South Carolina brings you a one-of-a-kind podcast. Subscribe and listen now by going to foxnewspodcasts.com.