Ambassador Michael Oren Explains the Israel/Hamas Hostage Negotiations | Real Talk | PragerU

how can Israel in full Consciousness release these terrorists knowing they're going to go back and be terrorists that they will kill far more than 33 Israelis the answer is something that is profoundly almost untranslated Israeli it is a part of our national resilience Ambassador it sounds like you are facing contradictory goals no country in history certainly not this country ever faced moral strategic dilemmas that we face today what about the rest of the hostages what's the conversation about them this is going to be the greatest test of our resilience as a people and we are the most resilient people on Earth but we have our limits too do you think this deal would not have happened without Donald Trump Ambassador Michael Orin thanks for sitting down with me again always Mr always good to be with you so these are very very tense times for those of you in Israel and we would love to hear a better explanation of what is happening with the hostage negotiations between Israel and Hamas so maybe we can just start by you explaining what what are the terms of the deal as they stand right now okay the cold terms of the deal are these 42 days ceasefire uh release of 33 hostages with the hope that most of them are alive the assumption is some of them are not withdrawal Israel forces to certain areas of Gaza away from what's known as the narim corridor which divides North and South the return of uh Palestinian displaced people from the South to the north the release of Palestinian terrorist prisoners from Israeli jails some are talking as much as 1300 and numbers of them who have Israeli blood on their hand they have killed people they're terrorist serving uh life sentences there other Provisions but that's the basic deal that's the basic deal is that what you said they're going to release 1300 terrorists in exchange for 33 hostages and it breaks down different for every female hostage release 5050 Palestinian terrorists get released so that's the that's the calculus here that's in the first stage if the first stage succeeds the ceasefire holds you go into a second stage now there'd be another say 60 hostages that will remain in captivity again dead and alive um the second stage calls for further Israeli withdrawals uh further return of Palestinian displaced peoples to their homes and other Provisions have to do with Israel's ability to mount surveillance flights uh curtailing all of that the Third phase is the end of the war is withdraws completely from the Gaza Strip with the possible exception of a buffer of several uh 100 yards along the former border between Israel and Gaza that border a certain Israeli presence along what's known as the Philadelphia route which divides um Sinai under Egypt from Gaza and that's the route to under that route that was the route through which hamus had had smuggled vast amounts of armaments prior to October 7th uh 200 23 but basically the end of the war and what that means the end of the war means in theory that there'll be a day after scenario that day after scenario is a point of disagreement between the current Israeli government and certain the Biden Administration we have to see what the the Trump Administration is going to say because the Biden Administration was very insistent that the Palestinian Authority Under Mahmud abas would play a very Central role in the post-war governance and demilitarization of Gaza the Israeli government has rejected that saying there's really not much difference between the Palestinian Authority and Hamas I'll tell you as someone who has looked at the education systems of both Hamas and the Palestinian Authority that there is actually no difference and that the Palestinian Authority yes in theory disavows Terror but it it seeks to delegitimize Israel and international courts and denies us the right to exist Den eyes our history entirely there is no Jewish history there was never a first temple never a second temple according to the Palestinian Authority it's all made up history talk about our fabricated history and that in 2005 when Israel withdrew from the Gaza Strip palestin Authority took over the Gaza Strip and had a tremendous amount of backing from the US military there was a whole US military delegation known as the Dayton delegation that trained the Palestinian Authority and they held up against Hamas for about three days three days yes in 2007 and uh they're overthrown so you are saying that even if the Palestinian Authority comes in instead of Hamas the likelihood of them staying is very slim well based on history you could say they're going to come in again they're going to have all this backing from the international Community but when Hamas comes out of the tunnels and Hamas came out of the tunnels today they are parading through the streets of Gaza and celebrating today they are not defeated so they feel like this deal is good for them they think it's victory why in a way it is certainly it's victory because Hamas doesn't care about the destruction of Gaza hamus couldn't care less about Palestinian civilian deaths in fact it likes Palestinian civilian deaths because it's through those deaths that they can Bank on International pressure against Israel so the more Palestinian civilians die the more pressure gets on Israel to let Hamas live they also how should I say this sort of politely they love Rubble they love debris because victimhood is what they're about and so when they come out of their tunnels and they look at the moonscape of Gaza for them for us it looks like a victory for them it looks like a defeat for them but for them it looks like a victory we are standing on top of the rubble I was in government uh for years in Israel one horrible day back in 2017 the Prime Minister called me into his office and and said I bad news for you uh you're going to be in charge of Gaza so I did a crash course on Gaza and one of my first visits was to visit the the southern command of the Israeli internal security service the shabbach a gentleman there named mayor Ben Shabbat who later became the National Security adviser uh gave me a briefing and the briefing began with a slideshow and I'll never forget this he showed me a slide of ismal hania the late former political head of Hamas who met his end uh through Israeli demolition in Teran um and he was standing on top a pile of rubble in the Gaza Strip and he was making a v sign and may Ben Shaban says is that a victory pose or defeat pose and being you know a nice former Jewish boy from New Jersey I said well defeat POS you're standing on a pile of rubble he says no no no that's a victory pose for Hamas cuz Hamas has only to win Hamas only has not to lose and that's a sign of Victory Standing On Top of the rubble means the Israelis did all this and I'm still standing I win that is what we're witnessing today the victory pose Ambassador we mentioned the 33 hostages that are maybe going to be released they may be dead they may be alive but my recollection is that there are close to maybe over 90 hostages what about the rest of the hostages so Israel is going to release 1300 terrorists and return for 33 hostages but there are still many more hostages as what's the conversation about them it's more Palestinians terrorist release from our jails it's more Israeli withdrawals from the Gaza Strip it's also a provision of increasing numbers increasing amounts of humanitarian Aid to come into Gaza and keep in mind Hamas is going to acquire about 60% of that agid so that's actually that's actually a subsidy for for for Hamas understand this and this is so difficult for American audiences to understand what hostages mean for the state of Israel and the best example I can give you was a conversation that occurred uh in October only days after the War Began between two of my children my my daughter uh Leah who is a combat veteran for the Golan Golani Brigade says to me you know Dad I don't care who wins the war as far as we're concerned we lost the war on October 7th Israel has one duty and one duty only and that is to redeem the hostages because if we failed to do that I will not be able to send my children to the Army a covenant will be broken yeah her brother who's also a combat veteran who's actually wounded by Hamas in battle said yeah but if we don't destroy Hamas you won't have an army to send your kids to they're both right and that argument goes on inside every single one of us inside one of us so a very compelling counter AR would be how can Israel release terrorists who are going to back to commit terrorism Yahya sinir the head of Hamas up to recently The Mastermind of October 7th was released in the galad Shalit hostage exchange deal of 2011 we exchanged 1,27 terrorists for one Israeli soldier very popular in Israel at the time how can Israel in full Consciousness release these terrorists knowing that they will kill far more than 33 Israelis then the 33 Israelis were going to get back back how can Israelis in full conscience agree to withdrawal of Israeli troops when we know that Hamas is still a formable military force they're still shelling Israeli border communities they're still killing Israeli soldiers I see five soldiers last week from my my son's former unit um how can we do this and the answer is something that is profoundly intimately almost untranslated Israeli which is the notion that the understanding that if our soldiers our civilians fall captive to the enemy the state will do everything in power to redeem them it is a part of our national resilience and yes we may be facing these terrorists in the future I almost guarantee we will be facing they're probably even more radicalized now sure they're educated in Israeli jail so just parenthetically there was one I was in the office in Washington during the galad shalik deal there was one Palestinian terrorist who refused to be released for Israeli jails because he had completed his ma that's unbelievable what oh and and then Senor senoir received Medical Care in Israeli jail L we we saved his andia's daughter all right we we we do these things we are the Jewish State and let's forget let's not forget we are the Jewish state which makes us we're very peculiar in this way and so Israelis will say yes we're going to face greater terrorism in the future from these people but as a society by retrieving our hostages we'll be much better and stronger en able to meet that challenge if we fail to re to redeem the hostages we'll be weaker even though we may fa face a much weaker Hamas so there is no good choice here it is it is a choice between the lesser of two massively nightmar scenarios right and there's been no his no country in history certainly not this country the state of Israel that has ever faced moral strategic dilemmas that we face today Ambassador it sounds like you are facing in some ways contradictory goals because you have two goals one is to end the war by eliminating Hamas right a terrorist group that wants to annihilate the state of Israel and you have another goal which is to bring the hostages back and in order to bring the hostages back you have to release hundreds and hundreds of terrorists that are telling you that they're going to come back and create commit these crimes again and and very likely try to take additional hostages and certainly more those terrorists in our jails have killed Israelis um two of my friends uh who have lost loved ones one a brother one a father are devastated today because the people who killed the loved ones are getting out it's Scott free they and they're going to get a hero's welcome coming home so I think what this does to the National morale there there's no end to the horrors here Marissa just aren't how are Israelis is grappling with with this cuz it it they would know it's an additional threat to them when you're releasing these terrorists right they they would be I I I'm sure their hearts are broken over the hostages and they want to bring them home and I am sure they're also experiencing incredible amount of fear that the people that you've captured are now going to go and be released into call a fear i' call uncertainty it's a certainty they're going to go back and be terrorists of course they are yes and I wrote an article for the Free Press last week and this was the premise it made some ripples which was our initial goal which was to destroy Hamas total victory over Hamas and total Redemption of the hostages were from day one from October 7th we're mutually exclusive we couldn't do both and our working assumption was that the only way to get the hostages back on the way to reconcile these two goals was by increasing military pressure on Hamas one squeezed hamus would relinquish hostages but it wasn't true it turned out that the more pressure we put on Hamas hamus didn't didn't release the hostages Hamas shot the hostages so think about monsters okay so oh this is psychological Terror every type of Terror and all of Israel is waiting to see what happens to the beus kids right fear and Ariel the two youngest we don't know whether they come out of an ambulance or out of a box we don't know this is going to tear Israeli Society apart and this is going to be the greatest test of our resilience as a people and we are the most resilient people on Earth but we have our we have our limits too and it's have all sorts of ramications for Israel politics I think that the Israel farri may be very much strengthened by this and um and what would that mean what does a a a strong far-right Israeli government what does that look like what are they asking many things with the question impact our ability to expand the Abraham Accords because the Saudis are being very expressed and saying you want peace with us but you have to discuss uh a pathway to a Palestinian State a p word we don't discuss the creation of a Palestinian state but you have to discuss the pathway these parties will never agree to discuss the pathway it will in very likely involve conflicts with the with the Trump Administration now I think you we can't say with any certainty about President Trump's policies um other to say that they're different than V's policy here in this case the Biden people and the Trump people cooperated very very closely they became actually friends in forcing Hamas on one side and is and Israel on the other Benjamin Nal on the other side to agree to us to this deal and I don't know if n would have agreed to this deal without that type of pressure do you think this deal would not have happened without Donald Trump becoming president unlikely so this deal is is better for Israel it's still a bad deal but is it better for Israel or better for the Palestinians or better for the Hamas all I can say is right now it's better for Hamas it's better for Hamas and one of the things I wrote in the the Free Press deals this is the price we pay for the failure of October 7th we all understood there was a price to be paid we weren't getting away from this for free and by the way we're just at the beginning of paying the price because there has to be a national introspection and a and a and a and a a comeuppance the people who are responsible for the failures of October 7th are going to have to that responsibility how do you define Israel's failure of October 2nd the Army didn't show up we didn't predict it 252 Israelis were dragged in captivity because the Army didn't show up because the Army didn't predict there was you know what we know there was a meeting of high ranking officers at 3:00 in the morning of October 7th and no one even no one even declared a state of emergency there were helicopters that were supposed to be in the air they weren't in the air they're multiple failures they they are serial failures and they're conceptual failures and I was in government and I was witness the conceptual fies the conceptual fies were the hamus could be paid off the hamus wasn't interested in uh a frontal confrontation with the state of Israel you pay them off for the Qatari money you let 20,000 Palestinian workers into Gaza into Israel you give hamus something to lose um that was the conception the conception also was that hamus wasn't wasn't logistically militarily capable of mounting and October 7th type um Invasion his b was so all of our intelligence prowess was aimed at hisbah we knew everything about hisbah we knew where Hassan the head of of of of of his bu we knew where he was having lunch on Tuesday where he was having lunch on Wednesday and what he was having for lunch we did not know anything about Hess we didn't invest in it we just thought eh you dis missed them you know they're they're a bunch of Keystone terrorists and all wrong okay so there there's a price to be paid for that miscalculation but there's also cases of simple negligence like very severe negligence and um officer couldn't be reached on the phone we don't know yet there hasn't been that investigation now the IDF is investigating itself but there hasn't been a state investigation and prime minister n and his government we want a governmental investigation and not a state intervention I don't think the People Israel agree to that we're going to have to heal there's a tremendous healing process here and that can only begin with a serious investigation of what went wrong on October 7th I mentioned that Israeli Society is very resilient we are the 12200 people killed on October 7th in America would be the equivalent of about 44,000 Americans can you imagine 44,000 Americans being killed in a single morning 911 many times over many times over and you 911 was an attack by a foreign entity on American soil but this was an invasion this was a potentially existential situation which could have led to multiple invasions on multiple fronts just a miracle that hisb didn't act in the same way it it literally was an existential situation we could have ended our lives we all could have been massacred but his Earth is also very forgiving and it will look at the officers look at the politicians in this way and say if they come out and say listen we we failed you we failed you I'm taking the personal responsibility for this I'm going to resign some Israelis say it shouldn't end it should actually end in court Marshals and people should do prison time for this Israelis I hear Israeli officials yes no not official Israeli citizens are saying you know my daughter was killed because of this negligence I'm not happy this guy just losing his job I want him to lose his freedom but they're saying that the Israeli officials should be tried I hear this often not every I don't know how widespread this but I hear it often and you can understand you know if if if you had a daughter and you have children who were serving along that board in that day and never re received an order to be on alert or when they called in and said there's a break to the gate and the Army doesn't show up and then later these terrorists came in and raped them and eviscerated them and burnt their bodies beyond recognition you might be seeking a little bit of justice for your daughter not just someone loses their job and goes to work for a defense company so it this is kind of it's very visceral what I'm saying very rough yeah that's true but we have to go through this process we're at the beginning of this Mera we're not we're not we're not even at the beginning of the end and it's been a year and a half I think about the bius kids every single day those little toddlers yeah you know and we don't know how they're coming back but let me give you the good news because this has been a very hard conversation and there is very good news you know I spent I'm a military historian by training I've taught American universities uh my father was a career officer in the US military I spent a lot of time visiting American bases including West Point and it's interesting what they study about Israel at West Point they do not disc they do not studied the sixth day war as you know I did for the Prager you I did this whole series on Israel's Wars you figur the sixth day war was our most outstanding Victory no they disc they just they studied the Yum kipa War of 1973 which in a very American fashion began with a surprise attack Pearl Harbor type attack for Sumpter type of attack Israel turned it around and it was a great military Victory because at the end of the war both Cairo and Damascus the countries that attacked us with within artillery range of Israeli guns but that's not why they study it they study it because during the war the Israel Defense Forces did what was deemed widely redeemed impossible we changed our military Doctrine in the middle of combat and in this war we didn't change our military Doctrine once we changed our military Doctrine dozens of times during the war the Israeli Army in Gaza encountered a military challenge unlike any encountered by any army in history in history the biggest battles fought by the United States in the Iraq War were in mosul and fujia in both battles the US military encountered 5,000 armed terrorists in a city was largely abandoned with almost no tunnel structure the Israeli army goes into Gaza encounters 30,000 terrorists fighting behind a population of 2 and a half million which have almost Nowhere to Run densely built up and fighting not just above ground but below ground in 450 miles of tunnels nothing like it in history and Israel forces wi they win and not they win but in total contrast to everything you hear on American television Israeli forces achieve a onetoone combatant to civilian fatality rate they talking about 40,000 47,000 Palestinian dead Israel killed 20,000 5 to 6,000 died of natural causes over the course of 15 months and several thousand were killed by the 12% of th Palestinian rockets that fell short you deduct all that from the 47,000 even assuming the 47,000 is Right which of course it isn't but even assuming it is you've got one to one no Army history ever came close to that the United States fought in Iraq and Afghanistan at the very least it was nine civilians to every combat and killed get no credit for that now that's just in Gaza how about Lebanon how about Lebanon when we were facing what everyone thought was the most powerful military force in the Middle East that within a several weeks the Israeli Army took out 80% of their rocket capacity that's his Linz his b took out almost all of their leadership with This brilliant pager of walkie-talkie operation sent planes to um airplanes to execute 85 bombing ROMs on Hassan's headquarters and cut through 60 ft of concrete to kill him and kill his entire leadership the htis in leban in in in Yemen is really if planes fly 2,000 kilometers to bomb them refueling in midair and they do it twice uh against Iran a retaliation for Irani and Ballistic attacks against us knock out all Iran's air defenses including the most advanced Soviet Russian systems in the world the s300 and doesn't lose a single airplane now tell me they're not going to discuss they're not going to study this at West Point for 50 years of course they are there's never been anything like it militarily militarily and as excruciating as our losses have been in this war among our soldiers it is a third of what we lost in three weeks of the yipper war in 1973 and a population that back then a quarter of what it is now okay we've also been able to keep our fatalities relatively relatively low um they're going be studying this militarily and and that military victory has had all sorts of geopolitical ramifications Syria falls apart yeah can you explain Syria a little bit and how do you believe that's going to impact the entire region is there a chance that Lebanon Syria would join the Abraham Accords we have to see if there's ever going to be a Syria remember Syria historically there's no country called Syria it's a European invention of World War I like Iraq that's what the Turks are saying as well right it is but they're right now the Europeans sat around Mr Sykes of the British foreign office sat around with Mr Pico of the Kor and they decided in April 1916 to create a place called Syria they created a place called Iraq and then they said to the people of these areas okay you're not a member of this tribe a matter of this clan now you're a Syrian you're not a matter of this clan you're not a matter of this tribe now you're an Iraqi guess what and uh these states were always held together by a preponderance of central force and once the central force was weakened they unraveled all right and we saw it happen in Iraq when Saddam Hussein went down and now we've seen after the fall of the Assad regime it's happening in Syria it unravels unraveled it's yet to be seen whether the U the Tak organization that led the revolt against assads they are they those Central for forces that are going to keep Syria together or will Syria break up into ethnic areas you know the alawites along the coast and the Drews up in the mountain the Christians along the Lebanese border sunnis different places which wouldn't be a bad outcome for the state of Israel the Syrian state has only existed to threaten its neighbors you can't think of anything good that has come out of Syria being Syria right and it wouldn't be a bad thing is this Israel has also another military achievement was completely eliminating the Syrian Army oh my like within 3 days who thought we any army could do that we sunk the Navy what do the syrians want I mean especially this the Christian syrians Living there who knows I think they may my different things you're going to see Bloodshed there you're already seeing Bloodshed there and there's going to be a fight over the future of Syria where it holds aart where it holds together breaks apart um I think from Israel's perspective that a Syria that is not a a threat a state that can threaten its neighbors is is not just in Israel's interest but it's in everyone's interest now the other geopolitical ramifications is that now hisbah which was supplied by Iran over Syria Withers on the vine can't get resupplied the Russians get a bloat because the Russians were in Syria and that's that's the blood of them Iran is weakened weakened weakened and it was weakened before they have no electricity their schools are closed their factories are closed we helped a little bit we blew up some pipelines and Fa um but everything could change which brings us back to where we are today in Washington what's going to be the Trump administration's position toward this a couple nights ago in Israel I had a conversation with the outgoing American ambassador uh Jack Lou and I've known Jack for many years he's a person of great integrity of have high respect for him he was the former white house chief of staff he was a former treasury secretor secretary former Chief of the uh federal budget office I mean he's got a a record Stellar Stellar record Harvard Harvard Harvard great guy but he represented the bid Administration he worked for theond administration they had policies which were at variance with our policies and I asked him one question which I think was the the key question he I referred to an interview which secretary of state blinkin had with the New York Times sever week before you may have looked at at the interview and uh secretary blinkin repeatedly said the goal of the administration in this war was to redeem the hostages to end the war end the fighting and to ensure that another October 7th didn't happen again he said this several times it wasn't new I've heard him say this and I said to Ambassador Lou did it ever occur to you in the administration that the goal of War shouldn't be all of those things but the goal of the war should be to win the war that the state of Israel and the people of Israel as part of the West sharing your value was fighting against enemies that are antithetical to everything you stand for an axis of of of resistance that was aligned with China and Russia that this was a historic geopolitical opportunity to change the game after many Americans set backs not the least of which of Afghanistan and didn't have an answer I ask myself now is this Administration into winning because there's something to be one here and everything can change everything can change just let be clear winning the war means eradicating Hamas or Israel capturing Gaza what does winning the war Mean winning the wars can mean many things it be degrading his ball to the point where the Lebanese people can take their state back uh winning the war against Hamas means it's more difficult because again you get you put much too much pressure on Hamas they execute the hostages because the greatest degree you keep degrading Hamas and you keep trying to get the hostages back that's an ongoing situation but the big win is taking down the Irani regim head of the snake take down the head of the snake you're dealing with the hoodies you're dealing with hisb you're dealing with the militias in Iraq and and Syria you're dealing a big blow and is is there a sense that there's something to be won here because Israeli government has the Israel people the army of Israel a People's Army and this is a statistic that I've Ed frequently but bear with me 365 Israeli reservist reported for Duty people left their homes these were high-tech amies Wen kids off the street many of them served the whole 460 days of this war um I was in the military last summer and I was with people who had served since October 7th wow 365,000 Israelis is the equivalent of 20 million Americans that's 4 million Americans more than fought in all of World War II you don't have a country in the world like this you have an ally that is you can't measure the value of that Ally do we do everything that that America likes do we wage this the way everything that the Biden Administration wanted no though for the life of me I don't know what they were expecting I don't know but okay leave that aside they weren't thrilled you have been given a strategic advantage that beyond the wildest imagination of a many American policy maker are you going to take advantage of it are you going to try to hamstring it Ambassador a year year and a half almost after October 7th this war has been going on you talk about the resources that Israel has put into it is Hamas less lethal today than it was in the beginning and and what do you believe is the progress that has been made if the ceasefire and all the phases actually work out which I'm curious what are the chances that they will work out if if they do work out what does what does the near future look like and what does the long-term future look like so let's assume the the doubtful that Hamas keeps the ceasefire Hamas has never keeped the ceasefire there was a ceasefire in place in October 7th there was a ceasefire that following November that they broke they what do they generally do to break the ceasefire what they do is there's going to be a couple rockets on stero there'll be an ambush of an Israeli Patrol and homos so say it's not us it's some other Breakaway faction that's how they do it not us and the world will say h why break up a ceasefire just for a couple of rockets it'll be very hard for Israel to resume that fighting even if the majority of Israeli people were behind it especially if there's still hostages there and there will be hostages there let's assume be highly doubtful that Hamas actually gives us back all the hostages because at the end of the day they're going to say hey we don't know where these people are there's going to be a certain number and they're going to leave us D they are terrorists for they deal with emotional psychological Terror ter that's why they won't give the names of the people who are alive and dead that's why they won't tell us about the fate of the beus children because they know the impact on isra society it's what they're about these are monsters so let's assume again the highly doubtful they keep the ceas we go the entire three months we get back all the hostages and then we go back the question is are we back to October 6th Hamas will will emerge from the h tunnels and even if there's some day after scenario where there are contingents from the UAE from Egypt going in there and and and rebuilding there even if you take the pales the authority and sck them there Hamas is going to come out of those tunnels and kill them and I've been around too long to see too many peace peacekeeping forces leave the minute there's actually a peace to keep they work very well when there's no peace to keep right they leave and uh all you have to do is knock off a couple of these soldiers and they say you know we're not willing to die for Gaza and they leave and as I mentioned Palestinian authorities survived about three days back in 20067 so there you have it um there's no quick fix Israel has to have an ongoing military intervention in Gaza we cannot Outsource as much as we'd like to we cannot Outsource our fundamental security what do you think president Trump and the US should do in the event that Hamas breaks the ceasefire agreement let us resume the fighting I hope that's the case because again it's going to be the degree to which they Beast this these fire and the degree to which they take responsibility for it I almost guarantee you they won't um and there will be violations the violations is going on Lebanon now and when we respond to those violations we get we get condemned for violating the ceasefire and we see the other day we blew up a truck that was carrying Munitions into Southern Lebanon for hisbah and nickb doesn't understand that that's a violation of the Seas far they're trying to get away with it and that they win twice because they win by getting the trying to smuggle the weapons in if they smuggle the weapons in it's great if they don't get blown up we get we get condemned for violating the ceas far do you do you think that this would be a reason for America to get sucked into a Middle East war and get involved in a war that has nothing to do with us here in the United States well I have three problems with you say okay first of all um America has been involved in the war I kept on I kept on I do a lot of television and kept on hearing oh we're probably get involved in a regional intagent we're going to get involved in there's going to be a regional war is going to break I got really bad news for you there is a regional War okay it involves Yemen blocking shipping international shipping off the mandb Straits it involves Iran firing 700 ballistic missiles at an American Ally it involves Iranian back militias in Syria and Iraq and Jordan shooting some 200 times rocket attacks against American bases what is that but a regional conflict I ask you right and that's just the beginning of it holding American hostages killing 40 Americans on on October 7th is that not is America not involved in this conflict uh if you if you think you're not you're living in some some State called laa okay that's one two where America to get more deeply entangled it' be Tangled against what Iran has no ability to make war against United States Iran does not have an Air Force Iran does not have a tank force IR has Rockets it's got terrorist uh operatives but Iran is the world's largest sponsor of terrorism anyway oh no Iran's going to have more terror Iran tried to assassinate me down the street here when I was Ambassador along with a Saudi Ambassador right in the middle of Washington DC they had no compunction about that as you see I they didn't succeed okay um that's Iran so what does it mean for America America America has fleets of B1 B2 and B52 bombers that bomb a 50 50,000 ft and drop a 30,000 PB bomb that can penetrate anything the Iranians have that's nuclear and underground and the Iran has actually nothing that can shoot at those planes they bomb with impunity it wasn't mean war in the Middle East and third the third part I disagree was it has nothing to do with the United States oh boy it has everything to do with the United States because a if you think the Middle East Middle East is not here it's coming to a neighborhood near you and if we haven't learned this again and again most recently in New Orleans the Middle East is here and the global theater is just that it's a global theory if America displays weakness in the Middle East in Afghanistan for example Bad actors let's take a random example of Mr Putin decide that this is the time to invade Ukraine because America's weak and by showing muscle in Iran or in the Middle East you'll be defending Taiwan and you'll be defending Europe against Russia and there is a lot of criticism of the military industrial complex the concept that the United States starts Wars because we have lobbyists here who are invested in Military and weapons and I'm curious what is your reaction to that it's it's a big conversation online that America is funding both sides of the war and that lobbyists from the military-industrial conflicts are financially benefiting from these ongoing wars in the Middle East well arms manufacturers benefit from war okay this is this has gone on for about 10,000 years in human history whether you're making you know Flint arrows or making f-35s you're going to if you're making arms you're going to Advantage from war that doesn't mean to actually start the war or promote the wars I see no evidence here that that's the case and there's also a downside to this and the Russians have learned this in in a very way one of the aspects of this War uh that has been underappreciated U for Curious Reasons by the Biden Administration was the fact that in every encounter in the war in the Middle East between American Arms and Russian arms American Arms have proven vastly Superior that's is in a message to markets around the world the big arms markets today why would you would you buy an a used 300 system for Mr Putin because they don't work and this was supposed to be the most advanced anti aircraft system in the world they didn't work they didn't take down a single one of our planes and we destroyed four of them in Iran and one in one go one go and so you know did was this war beneficial for American arms manufacturer you bet you was it bad for the Russians you beta I wouldn't buy Russian arms now I wouldn't and um C nature is such that countries need armies and armies need to defend themselves that as such but I don't think the arms manufactur promoted this war at any anything and if in fact the bid Administration acted against the interest at sometimes of these armed manufacturers by withholding armed shipments to Israel right and um the Russians didn't do that they didn't withhold arms from anybody Michael Orin I will continue to pray for your safety and the safety of Israel and I want to thank you one of the things I often times say is that it feels to us in the west that Israel is the Iron Dome of the West you are taking on a big fight for those of us who want to live in Freedom and so thank you and to th those who serve alongside you I'm very happy with the families of uh Deron and Emily and Romy um I know one of the families um and that Joy is just is mixed it's mixed with incredible pain and fear and anxiety and even anger I don't know any s that has gone through this but I really don't know any other society that could go through this and come out stronger and that's my hope and we thank you we thank everybody who stood beside us and with us during this very trying period and we pray for the future amen amen thank you [Music]