Turmoil in the Middle East

DAN KURTZ-PHELAN

Two weeks ago, there was reason to think that the Middle East was becoming more stable than it had been for years. Washington was pushing for normalization between Israel and Saudi Arabia as one piece of a broader attempt to reduce the U.S. role in the region and focus on other priorities. Hamas’s attack on Israel on October 7 shattered those hopes.

But there had long been signs that all was not well—that key assumptions underlying U.S. strategy were on shaky ground. In the months before the attacks, Suzanne Maloney and Marc Lynch saw the lights flashing red. Both worried that another crisis was coming.

Marc and Suzanne, thank you so much for joining me and for the excellent pieces you’ve both done for Foreign Affairs in recent days. 

SUZANNE MALONEY

Great to be here.

MARC LYNCH

Thanks for having us, Dan.

DAN KURTZ-PHELAN

So, if we’d been recording this literally 11 days ago—it’s now Tuesday, October 17—we’d be dissecting very different dynamics in the Middle East, as most observers understood them. It seemed like, in the eyes of many, the region was achieving a kind of equilibrium—an unlovely one with a lot of unpleasant aspects, but certainly something that looked more stable than what we’d seen in years before. But one of the reasons I wanted to have the two of you on is that I think you were both skeptical of the durability of equilibrium and the sustainability of de-escalation, though for very different reasons. 

Marc, you have written a piece for us called “An Invasion of Gaza Would be a Disaster for Israel,” which we will get to, but you have also written a slew of essays in the past few years that looked at some of the underlying dynamics that, to you, were cause for concern. You wrote “Israel’s One-State Reality” with a few co-authors in the spring, which caused a lot of controversy and debate. And before that, a piece that I’ve gone back to in recent days called “The Arab Uprisings Never Ended,” which suggests that the authoritarian stability was an illusion. And Suzanne, your most recent piece is called “The End of America’s Exit Strategy in the Middle East,” which gets at a lot of this. But I’ve also gone back to a piece that you wrote earlier this year called “A Plan B for Iran.”

I want to start by talking a bit about that regional context leading up to what happened on October 7. And we can start, I think, by giving some credence to that widespread view that didn’t look so idiotic a couple of weeks ago. 

Suzanne, you call this an exit strategy from the Middle East for the United States. What was that exit strategy, and what were the signs that it was working? You were, of course, skeptical, but there was reason to think, as you note in your piece, that it could have worked. There was a chance, at least.

SUZANNE MALONEY

Yeah, the theory of the case is a completely reasonable one, which is that the United States has other priorities. This has been a challenge for many years. As we know, the Obama administration talked about a pivot to Asia. The Trump administration highlighted the importance of China in its own national security strategy documents. The Biden administration, I think, was determined to make good on the need to focus on what it has described as the pacing challenge of China, as well as the urgent threat that emerged after the Russian invasion of Ukraine. So I think they’ve been very focused and trying to prioritize where they spend both U.S. time and treasure. 

Obviously, there’s a domestic political component to this, which is that the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan had become deeply unpopular among the American people. They had been used as political fodder in the campaign for the presidency, and it was very clear that another Republican candidate would and will use those kinds of neo-isolationist sentiments among the American people, in frustration over what they perceive to be too great a focus on people who live very far away from the United States, and that sense of disconnect from international security. 

So I think that the administration was correct in its diagnosis of the political challenges they faced at home; of the significance of the challenges they faced on the international stage. But I do think that there were some misjudgments in the way that they attempted to implement the strategy. We can all go back to the withdrawal from Afghanistan, which I think no one would suggest was effected in a way that served American national security interests terribly well. 

And I think what we’ve seen over the course of that time since has been a little bit of a fumbling for the exit, really. The president has made trips to the Middle East, both to Saudi Arabia and Israel, and I think that that cemented the possibility of some kind of a different alignment of the regional powers that would enable the United States to take a step back, to revert to what we used to call offshore balancing, and to put greater emphasis on the region for defending itself and maintaining its own security. Again, completely reasonable theory of the case. But in practice, I think it ran up against both the inherent possibilities of conflict within and between states that we all have talked an awful lot about. 

People have been warning for many years that there was going to be an explosion among the Palestinians because of the conditions that they were living under. And I think it also misjudged the incentive structure for other players, the spoilers in the region, who could see this alignment coming, who could see what the United States was trying to do and how it might effectively empower some of their most powerful adversaries, and saw every reason to try to spoil it. 

DAN KURTZ-PHELAN

I want to come back to Iran in a moment. But Marc, could you first elaborate on a couple of elements of what Suzanne just laid out? First, how did normalization between Israel and Arab states, with Saudi Arabia being the big prize, ostensibly serve that exit strategy, to use Suzanne’s term? And second, to elaborate a bit on the Israeli-Palestinian dimension of this—there was, I think, a sense that as unethical and problematic for many people on the ground as the status quo had been, there was a sense that it wasn’t going to change a whole lot for the better or for the worse, at least not in such dramatic fashion.

MARC LYNCH

Just before I come back to your question, I want to take up your initial provocation about, you know, was this stupid? And I would say the answer is no—that at the regional level, there were real signs of de-escalation that were very real. They might not have been enduring, but they were real. 

You had four years of a cold war between Qatar and Turkey on the one side, and the United Arab Emirates and Saudi Arabia on the other hand, which were resolved in an amicable fashion a few days after Biden took over from Trump. That had knockdown effects all over the region because that conflict was fueling a lot of what was happening in Yemen and Libya and Syria and elsewhere around the region. So you had a kind of reconciliation and a rapprochement among the regional powers, which was actually having a stabilizing effect on a lot of the active conflicts around the region. 

Meanwhile, you had Saudi Arabia, which realized under [Crown Prince] Mohammed bin Salman that its more provocative foreign policies around the region weren’t working. And the Abqaiq attack on the oil refineries—and the lack of an American response—put the fear of God into them that they were going to be ground zero if there was any more regional escalation. So they began limited outreach toward Iran to try and calm down what was, at the time, escalating in dangerous ways, which had spillover effects in Yemen and also around the Gulf. 

And then finally, you had the United States, under both Trump and Biden, nurturing these normalization agreements between Israel and the Arab states. I had never quite understood the obsession with that. I think that there was a radical overestimation of its benefits and, as we’ve seen, an under-appreciation of the risks. But it made sense in that broader context of de-escalation, where you could have, not, perhaps, a stable and permanent regional security architecture, but something a whole lot more manageable than we had over the post-2011 decade of the new era of disorder. This looked a lot better than what we had, say, 5 or 10 years ago. 

But as Suzanne hinted, there were a number of easily seen obstacles to this which were basically kind of whistling past the graveyard. We kind of wanted to assume them away. One of them was that we were relying on these authoritarian regimes, which in many ways were the cause of the problems rather than their solution. So, in a sense, what we got was that the conflicts were frozen but not resolved in all kinds of ways. And the ongoing repression and economic mismanagement of many of these regimes—especially, say, in Egypt or Tunisia—were generating more and more pressure from below. 

So that’s a regional context where the leaders were de-escalating regionally in part because they were trying to handle the domestic problems, but the domestic problems were getting worse and worse and worse. And the United States basically had zero interest in any of this—no discussion of democracy, human rights, reform, nothing. We just wanted to work with these autocrats and try to get the regional, top-down part put together. 

And then finally Palestine, which—everyone could see this was coming. I can’t tell you how many times when, in briefings and discussions and articles that I wrote, I kept saying, “How are the Abraham Accords going to hold up when we start seeing large numbers of dead Palestinians turning up on the Al Jazeera screens and on social media?” And it’s one thing for the UAE to normalize at a time when that’s not happening. But Palestine has not gone away as an issue for Arabs and for Arab regimes or publics. 

And some kind of explosion was inevitable given not just, as you said, the status quo, but the steady escalation of actions by settlers backed by this radical right-wing government in Jerusalem, as we saw in 2021 across the West Bank, and this steady, under-the-radar process of the appropriation of land, the dispossession of Palestinians from their villages. This was like actively pouring gas onto a fire that most people just simply wanted to ignore. 

So we had American officials—very well-intentioned officials—shuttling back and forth between Riyadh and Israel trying to broker this agreement. And meanwhile, the fires beneath them were steadily rising, and they just wanted to assume it away. And as we see now, that just wasn’t possible.

DAN KURTZ-PHELAN

Suzanne, do you share Marc’s sense that the benefits of normalization between Israel and Saudi Arabia were oversold?

SUZANNE MALONEY

I’m not sure that they were oversold. I think that this is a region in which normalization—normalcy among the states of the region—would be a hugely welcome improvement over the sort of frozen conflict that has in many ways just devastated both the people of the region but also held back so much potential opportunity. So, I think that it is a reasonable attempt to try to think through a different future for the Middle East. I do think that the potential downsides and the risks of hinging American policy on this very big bet were not fully appreciated, or at least they hadn’t been built in; there hadn’t been an insurance policy built in. 

In particular, the Biden administration was very much focused on China and trying to ensure that we were able to keep the Saudis, and potentially other Gulf states, a little further out of the orbit of Chinese security and economic influence by bringing them closer to the United States, reinforcing what had always been a traditional and very much unwritten expectation that the United States would be the primary defender of the security of the region. And I think that that was, again, the larger picture rather than the immediate concerns about the potential for conflict in the Middle East. 

DAN KURTZ-PHELAN

Suzanne, let’s stick with you to talk about one of the spoilers that you alluded to, and that’s Iran. You could have made a case—again, a few weeks ago—that, while Iran was sitting very close to nuclear breakout and there was plenty of regional instability that flowed from its own policies, things looked less risky on that front than they had at least in the previous few years. You were skeptical that Iran would play along with all this. How did that play out, and what is your sense of Iran’s role? 

SUZANNE MALONEY

I think there was a good-faith effort on the part of the administration to think through the Iran piece of the puzzle here. Essentially, I think the plan was really to buy them off—buy them off through these agreements that would commit the Iranians to at least stepping back from the brink on the nuclear program; to release some of the Americans that they have held unjustly for many years; and to refrain from some of the more aggressive activities in the Gulf against tanker traffic and against American interests, allies and assets across the Middle East, which, of course, is one of the many ways that Iran seeks to have influence essentially by provocation. 

So there was a set of diplomatic initiatives underway that did culminate with the release of five Americans in September and the transfer of $6 billion that had been held in an escrow account—essentially, funds that were revenues from Iranian oil exports that they had no access to because of American sanctions. That money was made available to the Iranians by putting it in a Qatari bank with the assumption that the Qataris would help us ensure that those funds would only be spent on humanitarian purposes. I think that was always a slightly difficult bargain to stomach because of the expectation that the Qataris could play a meaningful role in overseeing Iranian transactions, that the funds wouldn’t offset the Iranian ability to shift money elsewhere and to double down on some of their support for their proxies across the region. And, of course, it was a moral hazard because it meant that every single Western traveler to Iran then had a $1 billion price tag on their head. 

So, I think it was always a questionable approach to managing the Iran challenge. And fundamentally, whenever you have unwritten bargains, especially with a state that is deeply adversarial, the expectation that they can really be upheld, that they are going to be durable in the face of changing events, really just strains credulity. So, I think this was the wrong approach. And I think that what we’ve seen come to fruition is the Iranian effort to try to ensure that the region doesn’t change in a way that is favorable to American interests—because, in effect, chaos serves Iranian interests. 

You asked about what the Iranian role in these latest attacks has been. We don’t know with any degree of certainty at this point. There has been press reporting that the Iranians were deeply and directly involved with the plot itself. There have also been some questions about the validity of those press reports. I think it’s very fair to say that the Iranians are extensively engaged with Hamas in every way. And that extends to both strategy and operations; they’re one of the most important funders for Hamas. They provide an enormous array of material assistance, particularly in the form of rockets and missile technology. They’re involved with training directly from the Iranian Revolutionary Guards. 

But also, what I think is notable is that Hamas, over the course of the past decade, has become a key component of this broader integration of transnational Shia militias that the Iranians mobilized to help defend Bashar al-Assad. And that created an infrastructure that has enabled the sharing of technology, the sharing of lessons learned. And I think it has upgraded the skills and capabilities of some of the lesser players in the Iranian portfolio of proxies—whether it’s Hamas, whether it’s the Houthis in Yemen, they have all benefited from the ability to coordinate and learn from one another. 

And the key player in all of this, of course, is Hezbollah, which looms very large in the current conflict—and in many ways was established by Iran, has an organic relationship on every level with Iran. That gives Iran an enormous ability to play a role in shaping how this crisis plays out. 

DAN KURTZ-PHELAN

So Hamas, though not itself a Shia group, effectively has a kind of honorary role in the Shia axis?

SUZANNE MALONEY

Absolutely. It’s part of this axis of resistance that the Iranians talk about quite publicly, and there’s an enormous amount of public direct engagement with the leadership of both the movement and the Iranian state. There’s no effort to hide the close coordination between them.

DAN KURTZ-PHELAN

Marc, what do we know now about Hamas’s motivations—both the timing of this attack, the brutality of it, the scale of atrocities that seems to have gone beyond anything the group has done before? Also, its objectives; what did it hope to achieve strategically by launching this kind of attack on such a scale?

MARC LYNCH

Again, as Suzanne said, I think that we have to start by acknowledging that we don’t really know. There’s reporting out there, there’s interviews. And at this point, it seems that there was a small group of Hamas commanders who were kind of in on the mission—and others who are often interviewed in the media who perhaps didn't know at all what was about to happen. So we have to be really careful about not just what’s being reported, but who is saying what and what they were actually in a position to know at the time. 

I would just say in a broader context that Suzanne is completely right about the way that Hamas has become increasingly integrated within Iran’s proxy network and its vehicles and means of projecting its regional influence. But Hamas isn’t Hezbollah; it’s not the Houthis, and it’s not something that was created by the Iranians. It had a long pre-existing presence in Gaza and a set of interests that are rooted in two things. One is maintaining its rule and control over Gaza itself. The second is its ambition to become the leader of the Palestinian national movement. And both of those things are very important. 

Where the Houthis or Hezbollah, as Shia actors within the resistance axis, have no place else to go—if they want support, then Iran is the only place they’re going to get it—because of the sectarian dynamics of the region. Hamas isn't in that position. Like the PLO before it, it is, in a sense, able to reach out and get support from Qatar, from Saudi Arabia, if Saudi Arabia is willing to provide it. There’s a lot of money out there on the Sunni side, and that gets tied into these politics of political Islam that have torn the region apart over the last decade. The UAE, of course, is deeply hostile to anything that looks Islamist. Saudi Arabia is in an ambiguous transitional moment. Qatar and Turkey are available. 

My point is simply that if you’re Hamas, you are certainly benefiting from Iranian training, support, material, and the like—but you do have options. And you have a strategy that is not reducible to Iran’s strategy. It aligns sometimes, and sometimes it doesn’t. 

If you’re Hamas… again, I don’t know why they launched this attack in this particular time and place, or the specifics of the attack plan. But I can say what they’re looking at in Palestine circa October 6 of this year—they’re looking at a Palestinian Authority which has completely lost its legitimacy and its function. If you’re trying to be the leader of the Palestinian national movement, the moment is opportune for some kind of bid to take leadership of that. Abu Mazen and the PA are simply unable to deliver any kind of governance—not just governance around the level of economy and daily life, but they can do nothing about the steady encroachments on Palestinian land. And the population across the West Bank is being completely ignored by the United States amid this diplomacy and normalization efforts on Israel and Saudi Arabia. So there’s a political vacuum in the West Bank combined with radically deteriorating conditions. 

And I think a lot of us remember 2021, remember the clashes in East Jerusalem—in Sheikh Jarrah—which then spread into the mixed cities of Israel. And then Hamas intervenes with firing rockets, and gets into one of these episodic crises. And I think a lot of us on the outside look at this as a Hamas miscalculation. People in the West Bank were protesting, like, “We don’t want your help. Go away. We want this to be about Jerusalem, not about Hamas.” And I think there was a somewhat dismissive view of this as an irrational act. 

From everything I’ve heard from Gaza, people in Hamas saw this as a success. They saw that as saying that they were the only ones who were able to act in the defense of Palestine, that they imposed costs on Israel. And to them, this tells them that, in a sense, force works—and that it is a useful contrast for them against a completely helpless Palestinian Authority, and this idea of trying to appeal to this increasingly desperate Palestinian public. 

In terms of the attack itself—I mean, the sheer horror, the brutality of what they did once they broke through the security perimeter and started rampaging through the kibbutzim and the villages and carrying out all of these horrible atrocities. That’s not the sort of thing that is likely to win them support as some kind of authentic or legitimate leader of the Palestinian national movement. 

That, from our perspective, seems like a fundamental flaw in the plan, which is if you’re trying to say, we’re effective and you’re not, and breaking through the security perimeter and scaring Israel is a good thing, carrying out these unbelievably horrible atrocities would seem to be counterproductive. But I do think that there’s this notion of this psychological impact, with attempts to maximize the psychological effects of breaking out. And that’s why I think they weren’t hiding these videos; they were publicizing them. They were trying to spread this fear. And this is very different from anything we’ve really seen from them before. It seems like a genuinely new strategy. 

I’ve also heard from some people that this might have been kind of an unexpected success; the whole catastrophic success narrative, that they simply didn’t expect there to be no IDF response after they broke through the perimeter, and they were rampaging free. They had expected to make a statement by breaching the wall and then be stopped, and suddenly there was just completely open space between them and these kibbutzim and the villages—in part because so much of the IDF was committed to the West Bank to protect the settlers as they were rampaging through the West Bank. So there was a security vacuum that they encountered. 

So it’s hard for me at this point—I’m sure other evidence will emerge as things go on—it’s hard for me at this point to be absolutely certain that this was the plan, as opposed to simply breaching the perimeter, dealing a psychological shock, and then resetting a new status quo, which might have been a very different world from the one we live in right now. I imagine we’re going to be reconstructing that day on October 7 for a long time. 

DAN KURTZ-PHELAN

Marc, let me let me stick with you to talk a bit about the Israeli response as we see it so far. As we’re having this conversation, the Israelis have not yet launched a major ground invasion of Gaza—though it certainly looks like they’re gearing up to, just given the number of forces that they’ve amassed on the edge of Gaza. 

Your piece a few days ago was one of several that have been published that have warned against the kind of response that Israel seems to be intent on inflicting on Gaza and on Hamas in the days ahead. You warn that it will likely backfire and serve Hamas’ goals rather than undermine them. What is your case against the kind of massive ground invasion that Israel seems to be preparing for, and what do you think Israel is trying to achieve?

MARC LYNCH

When Israel was attacked like that, there was zero possibility that they were not going to respond with a massive retaliation. It’s hardwired into Israel’s security DNA that when they are attacked, they respond with massive, disproportionate force. This has been a key and a core and well-articulated part of their security doctrine for basically the entire existence of the state; that wasn’t going to change now. 

And I don’t think anybody who knows Israelis or has been following the Israeli media would miss the sheer extent of the psychological trauma and anger and despair and grief that Israelis experienced on October 7. I mean, this was not just another rocket barrage. This was an intimate attack inside of Israel proper—not in the occupied territories—and with a complete failure of the security forces to protect them. There’s a tremendous rage among the public—against the government for its security failures, against Netanyahu personally. And then, of course, against Hamas, and a deep desire for revenge. And that’s the political environment within which the Israeli government is going to be formulating its plans. 

So, there is a strategic objective; I think they have a rationality behind it. But we also don’t want to miss the sheer emotional and political valence of all of this. There had to be a response, from the Israeli perspective, and it had to be overwhelming, and it had to be commensurate with the psychological shock which Israelis had experienced. I think Hamas fully expected that and was well-prepared for both the bombardment and blockade, which have happened, but also for the ground invasion, which, as you say, appears to be imminent.

I would say that we’ve seen some interesting signs over the last couple of days, and who knows how this is going to play out. But I think in those initial days, the United States gave Israel full license to do whatever it wanted and did everything possible to push back against any criticism of its methods, whether blockade, or bombardment, or anything else. You saw Biden’s very personal and emotional response to this. And it was a consistent message across the administration that Israel has a right to respond, and we’re going to try and line everyone up behind them and back them to the hilt. 

Then—it’s not just my piece that was published; there were a lot of pieces that were published. But also the leaders of almost every human rights organization, relief organizations, international organizations, the major NGOs—everybody starts coming out saying this is going to be a disaster, this is horrible, this is a blatant violation of international humanitarian law, there are massive war crimes being committed here. This is a political problem for you [the United States], a moral problem for you, a strategic problem for you. You’re never going to be able to get support within the region for your plans while Israel is carrying out these kinds of atrocities. 

And you’ve seen a notable shift in American messaging over the last four or five days pushing in the direction of saying—you’ve seen Tony Blinken recently saying, “What separates us from the terrorists is that we respect the law,” and going back to a lot of the language that they used in Ukraine about trying to go back to defending the rules-based order and trying to convince Israel that what they're doing is counterproductive. And you’ve seen them pushing to allow for humanitarian aid, the opening of the Rafah crossing, and things like that, which has been a really noticeable change in the messaging. 

But the biggest wild card in all of this is what's happening in the West Bank, where the settlers have not only continued but have actually accelerated their rampage—and there have been, at last count, 55 Palestinians killed by settlers in the last week. And this government, because the national unity government that was formed didn’t get rid of the extremist figures, they’re still giving them a green light and military protection to do this. And that seems to me to be the variable that is least under the control of the United States. 

We can pressure Israel on the humanitarian side, we can try and get a humanitarian corridor, try and pressure Egypt to allow some kind of a border crossing, let some people out through Rafah; you can threaten Hezbollah, you can threaten Iran—but you can’t really control the individual settlers in the West Bank if they have continued green light from the Israeli government. Everyone is focused right now on Hezbollah, correctly, but they should be focused on Jerusalem. What would happen if there was a major explosion on the Temple Mount/Al-Aqsa complex? If things suddenly spiral very quickly in the West Bank, that becomes completely out of control. It’s not the sort of thing the U.S. is able to handle. 

DAN KURTZ-PHELAN

And the risk there, just to put a fine point on it, is a kind of third intifada emanating from the West Bank that would add a whole new layer of complexity to this.

MARC LYNCH

Exactly. But it’s also one in which, once Jerusalem comes into play, that basically makes it extraordinarily difficult for Saudi Arabia or for any of the Arab countries to play a moderating role. It puts tremendous pressure on those governments. Public opinion is already inflamed, and at one level, atrocities from Gaza are horrifying but baked into what people expect. But I think we’ve seen repeatedly in the history of Israeli-Palestinian relations that Jerusalem is something very different in terms of the emotions, the passions, and the energies that turmoil there can unleash.

DAN KURTZ-PHELAN 

Suzanne, I want to get your sense of the risks of war escalating regionally. But first, I’d be curious to get your assessment of regional responses thus far—how Arab governments have responded in the past ten days, what you make of U.S. diplomacy in Saudi Arabia. And Secretary Blinken was in Doha before Saudi Arabia, so there’s a complicated regional dimension to this. How do you assess what’s going on thus far?

SUZANNE MALONEY

I think, from the outset, the administration has been looking for a formula that would enable the Israelis to do what they need to do—to respond effectively to what is obviously an unprecedented situation, but to do it in a way that does not then drag both the country and the region into a war of very unpredictable consequences. And so much of that diplomacy has been behind the scenes from the beginning. Now, we can see with Secretary Blinken’s movements around the region and the extensive amount of shuttling that he’s doing between capitals that the administration at least is gaining some traction in trying to identify a path forward. 

I still don’t quite know what that path forward looks like, because what we’re hearing from both Jordan and Egypt is that they’re not prepared to take refugees from Gaza. And when we think about how to manage the humanitarian consequences of some kind of an Israeli incursion directly into Gaza, that is one of the potential ways to try to preclude some of the worst consequences.

From the Israeli side, I think whatever happens, the Hamas leadership will be decapitated. That is non-negotiable. And it may not happen today or tomorrow; it may play out over the course of many weeks and months. The challenge, of course, is who comes next—and how do you manage Gaza, with two million Palestinians plus, without some kind of an indigenous leadership that is prepared to be responsible. And I don’t think there’s any reason to believe that any component of Hamas can be responsible. But at the same time, it’s not clear. 

I think it would be quite problematic if the Israelis tried to reimpose a direct occupation again. And the Israelis know that better than anyone—it’s just that there are no good options here. And I think that’s probably the story of the Middle East: that we have big challenges and no good options, either for the United States or some of its partners who are trying to prevent the region from sliding back into a very dangerous situation. 

DAN KURTZ-PHELAN 

Suzanne, how worried are you about regional escalation at this point? And what triggers are you particularly focused on that might lead to not just the odd Israeli strike in Syria, or something happening in a kind of skirmish over the northern border, but something that could escalate into a much scarier extent?

SUZANNE MALONEY

Well, we benefit from considerable experience here in the sense that both the Israelis and Hezbollah and the Iranians have found many ways to hit at one another over the years in a calibrated way. And thus far, that calibration appears to be holding. Either Hamas in southern Lebanon or Hezbollah have launched strikes against Israel from the north; the Israelis have responded; Hezbollah has responded in a way that makes it clear that it is trying to avoid an escalation. That, I think, is a huge net positive. The fact that the Israelis are striking Iranian presence, as well as other facilities that would benefit the Iranians in Syria, again, I think is a net positive because it enables the Israelis to send a signal to Iran to stand back without provoking escalation because there have been those tit-for-tat attacks over many years that have never spiraled into something more dangerous. 

I think the rhetoric is very overheated. We’ve heard the Iranians promise that they will get involved; both the foreign minister and the supreme leader and others are using bellicose language as a way of projecting power and influence. I think the Iranians are far more savvy than that. They are going to try to stay out of this if at all possible. But one wrong move—that pulls Hezbollah in. And that is, of course, the greatest fear on the part of the Israelis, and I think legitimately so. 

I take Marc’s point about the potential for a third intifada, and that changes this conflict in ways that are almost unimaginable. But the capabilities of Hezbollah as an adversary for Israel are significant and would change the conflict in a way that would be very difficult for the Israelis to manage single-handedly. And we’ve seen the presence of now two battle carrier groups in the eastern Mediterranean. The expectation that there are Marines ready that could be deployed if necessary—again, when we started this discussion 10 days ago about what would be within the realm of the possible, that would have been unimaginable. 

DAN KURTZ-PHELAN 

Marc, I wanted to go back to one point you alluded to earlier, and that’s the views of Arab publics when it comes to what may unfold in Gaza and the civilian casualties and humanitarian costs for Palestinians, and to what extent that constrains policy of Arab governments.

I’ve been struck when, in recent months, you have asked both Israeli and U.S. senior officials who bring up the Palestinians in talks about normalization—it’s always the Americans. The Saudis, in their telling, have never really particularly seen the Palestinian cause as an important one in those talks. Are there constraints when it comes to public reaction? What kind of role will public opinion play, even though these are authoritarian governments? 

MARC LYNCH

There’s a long, long trajectory of wanting to downplay the Palestinian issue, especially among the leaderships of the Arab world. And repeatedly, when some kind of crisis breaks out, everyone then gets surprised when they find out that Arab publics actually do still care about Palestine, and that they get extremely upset and they get rallies, marches, that sort of thing. As you say, these are autocratic regimes. They generally are not responsive to public opinion. And especially in the aftermath of 2011, they’re actually really afraid of any form of large-scale mass mobilization. 

In the old days, it was a standard ploy by Arab regimes to not allow any kind of protests about domestic affairs—but they’re perfectly happy to let the crowds go out and protest about Palestine. Right; let them go and chant about Palestine, because that means they’re not protesting against corruption, unemployment, repression, all those things at home. This was a standard thing that, for example, the Mubarak regime did all the time. But that option isn’t really there now, because now these regimes are afraid of any kind of public mobilization—because what 2011 taught them is that anything can metastasize from something small and local into something really big. 

Arab leaders are not going to sacrifice themselves for Palestine. They don’t care enough. There might be a few of them who care, but they’re not going to base policy on that. 

But they are highly attuned to their own political survival, both regionally and domestically. They want to stay in power. So they watch this stuff extremely carefully. And when you have these really mobilized publics, and you have these images on Al Jazeera, and you have social media, you have the labor unions and the professional associations all wanting to get out there and protest—that threatens them in all kinds of ways. They do not want people on the streets, even if it’s something about Palestine.

These are actually existential regime security fears. So I think they’re going to be a little bit more attentive to things that are riling their people up now than they would have been in the past. Even the most repressive regimes, such as Sisi’s regime in Egypt—they don’t feel confident. They don’t feel secure. They’re presiding over absolutely disastrous economies, they’ve pulverized civil society, there are no mechanisms by which to ease the pressures within society. And now you throw this on top of it. That scares them.

DAN KURTZ-PHELAN 

With the enormous caveat that much depends on exactly how the Israeli actions in Gaza unfold and on regional reactions in the days ahead, I want to draw both of you out on some of the forward-looking policy considerations for the United States especially. 

Suzanne, let me start with you on the regional dimensions of this. Is there a way to continue a path toward normalization or de-escalation that would reflect some of the lessons that have come out of this crisis? One of the vivid images from American diplomacy in recent days is the visit of Secretary Blinken to Saudi Arabia. The visit happened, but he was reportedly left waiting all night for Crown Prince Mohamed bin Salman to see him, which seems like a sign of a very different place for the United States than would have been the case a decade or two ago. What should U.S. policy be trying to do to set the stage for a more sustainable path toward de-escalation?

SUZANNE MALONEY

If anything, there may be an opportunity—once we get past what is likely to be a protracted and unpredictable crisis—to put back the pieces of a broader normalization approach. But it would have to be one, I think under any conceivable circumstances, that had a very substantial and meaningful place for concessions to the Palestinians that actually built a more positive future. Because I think the lesson for those governments that were looking toward some kind of a different relationship with Israel is that it has to be one that can’t be undercut by these kinds of explosions. If it’s going to be durable, if it’s going to be meaningful, if it’s going to enable them to break out of what has been a fundamental drag on both their economies and on the regional situation, then it’s really got to be something that does not leave the Palestinians behind.

DAN KURTZ-PHELAN 

Marc, to close, it would be great if you could focus on the Palestinian dimension of this. If one of the lessons, as you both said, is that the Palestinian issue can’t just be wished away or ignored as part of this regional stabilization or de-escalation, what should the administration do to put it on a better path? Is there a chance after this to reinitiate some kind of peace process? What do you imagine is possible? 

MARC LYNCH

I think a lot of this depends on once we get past this crisis. But a lot also depends on how we get past this crisis and what’s done in the interim. Obviously, I think it’s important that nobody listens to the voices that say, “Let’s take this to Iran and go there.” That goes without saying. 

But on the Palestinian side, one of the big things happening right now is this humanitarian corridor out of Gaza, and the pressure on Egypt to open the crossing and allow Palestinian civilians to leave and take up residence in the Sinai. And for every Palestinian that I’ve spoken to or read or listened to, they all think the exact same thing: that this is another nakba, that this is another attempt by Israel to solve the Palestinian problem by expelling them, creating a new refugee crisis; that once they leave, they’ll never be allowed home. 

I think that the administration officials have started to understand this, and now they’re asking for guarantees that [the Palestinians] will be allowed to return home. No Palestinian will trust those commitments. There’s just a general belief that if you leave Israel, you will never be allowed to return. That’s been the lesson since 1948. And I think that’s deeply wired into Palestinian DNA, politics, identity, culture, and everything else. 

The idea that the way to go about getting rid of Gaza is by temporarily depopulating the Gaza Strip of civilians is a really misguided one. And it’s one that really triggers a lot of the worst fears of Palestinians—I think, correctly. I don’t think that Israel would allow them to return, regardless of what they say at the time. So that’s going to be a key trigger point, looking for what kind of Palestinian future there might be after all of this goes on. 

In terms of going back to a peace process—we wrote the “One State Reality” piece, it’s just not there. There’s absolutely no basis for negotiations towards a two-state solution. There’s nobody to negotiate for it, no support for it either on the Palestinian side or the Israeli side. And all of the momentum is towards this increasing recognition of everything in Mandatory Palestine as part of a single political entity of one kind or another, with different degrees of Israeli domination and control. And that’s not going to change in the aftermath of this. If anything, it’s going to become even more evident as Israel takes more direct control over Gaza and is more actively involved in whatever follows from the attempt to decapitate Hamas. 

And meanwhile, as the settlers continue to grab more and more land in the West Bank, there’s going to be great pressure coming from the settlers and from the extremists in the government to push for even more, to try and annex parts of the West Bank to try and make their play. And again, that’s something where the administration can and should put some real effort into saying, “This is not the time for that,” trying to restrain that. But if that happens, again, things look very different. If we end up with this attempt to depopulate the West Bank along with Gaza, then we’re in a very different world. This would be a full-on nakba. So, we need to prevent that from happening to the best of our ability. 

I think we shouldn’t put any real confidence in the Palestinian Authority or Abu Mazen. Their time has passed. They command no respect or legitimacy among Palestinians. Their helplessness in the face of all of this has been really manifest and obvious. 

If you want to have any kind of positive spin and a positive vision for the future, we’re going to be looking at some form of Palestinian political renewal over the next 5 to 10 years. It’s inevitable: the PA is collapsing, one way or the other; Hamas’s role in Gaza is not going to be what it was before. That new political horizon can be one which is clear and unfettered Israeli domination, which is going to be a recipe for ongoing conflicts and crises, as we’ve had right now. Or they can transition to something more positive, and try to figure out ways to give Palestinians some kind of meaningful representation, participation, and control over their own destinies. I see almost no moves in that direction at the moment. But that’s the only way that we’re ultimately going to be able to get out of this perennial cycle of crises and conflict.

DAN KURTZ-PHELAN 

Well, I know we will look to both of you to pick up these questions and this analysis as things unfold. Thank you for joining me today and for the fantastic pieces you’ve both done in the immediate aftermath of the October 7 attacks. They remain quite illuminating and insightful, so thank you for that. And we will have you both back at some point as things develop.

MARC LYNCH

Thank you, Dan.

SUZANNE MALONEY

Thanks so much, Dan.