Listen: On this episode of the GZERO World Podcast, while the Gaza war rages on with no end in sight, Ian Bremmer and three-time Pulitzer Prize-winning New York Times columnist Thomas L. Friedman discuss how it could end, who is standing in the way, and what comes next.
Currently, a rift between the Biden administration and the Israeli government over how to handle the conflict is widening. More than 32,000 Palestinians have been killed in Gaza, including nearly 14,000 children, according to local health officials and the United Nations. And over a hundred Israelis remain hostages of Hamas. And to make matters worse, just this week, thousands of Israelis took to the streets to call for Netanyahu’s ouster, an Israeli airstrike in Damascus killed several top Iranian commanders (threatening a wider regional escalation), and another Israeli strike in Gaza killed seven aid workers in a food convoy for the nonprofit, World Central Kitchen.
It may seem premature to talk about a resolution to this conflict, but Friedman argues that it is more important now than ever to map out a viable endgame. "Either we're going to go into 2024 with some really new ideas,” Friedman tells Ian, “or we're going back to 1947 with some really new weapons."
Also, Friedman emphasizes the "codependency" between Netanyahu and Hamas, noting Bibi’s reliance on a right-wing coalition opposed to any progress toward Palestinian unity.
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TRANSCRIPT: Author Thomas Friedman on how the Gaza war could endThomas Friedman:
Hamas is hugely benefiting from the way Bibi fought this war, which was to take very little care of Palestinian civilians, because Hamas basically was ready to sacrifice its civilians, made no preparation to protect them before launching this war, gave them no warning, even though they have this whole 400 miles of tunnels that could have protected people, because every Palestinian civilian who dies for them is an advantage on the world stage. It's amazing to me in that six months into this war plus, Bibi and Hamas, their codependency is still a central factor in this war.
Ian Bremmer:
Hello, and welcome to the GZERO World podcast. This is where you'll find extended versions of my conversations on public television. I'm Ian Bremmer, and as the Gaza War rages on with no end sight, a rift between the Biden Administration and the Israeli government over how to handle the conflict, is wide. More than 32,000 Palestinians have been killed in Gaza, including nearly 14,000 children. That's according to the local health officials and the United Nations, and over 100 Israelis remain hostages of Hamas. To make matters worse, just this week, thousands of Israelis took to the streets to call for Netanyahu's ouster, an Israeli airstrike and Damascus killed several top Iranian commanders, threatening a wider regional escalation, and another Israeli strike in Gaza killed seven aid workers in a food convoy from the nonprofit, World Central Kitchen.
It may seem premature to talk about a resolution to this conflict, but my guest today argues that it is more important now than ever to map out a viable end game. How that resolution comes about and what comes next is the topic of my interview today with three time Pulitzer Prize winning, New York Times columnist, Thomas Friedman. Let's get to it.
Speaker 3:
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Ian Bremmer:
Tom Friedman, welcome to GZERO World.
Thomas Friedman:
Great to be with you, and this is terrific.
Ian Bremmer:
We're six months into this war. How close are we to being able to think about ending it?
Thomas Friedman:
Nowhere. We aren't even close to thinking about how to end it. And when people ask me, how's it going to end, I tell them, unlike most global geopolitical events, you can see a pathway one way or another. I have no visibility here, I do not know how this is going to end, and that's what I'm really struggling with.
I'm listening to the debate here and I'm really trying to answer a question for myself that's so visible in our own national debate. What's the most pro-Palestinian thing you can do today? What's the most pro-Israeli thing you can do? What's the most pro-peace thing you can do? Because I think they all overlap. I think the most pro-Palestinian position you can have is to be against Hamas and for the Palestinian authority in Ramallah, for strengthening, building, transforming the PA into the most credible, legitimate, functional representative of the Palestinian people. That to me is the most important thing you can do to be pro-Palestinian. The most important thing you can do to be pro-Israeli is to be for the removal of Bibi Netanyahu by the Israeli people, and be for a credible, legitimate Palestinian authority that can be a partner for peace with Israel over the long term. What's the most pro-American thing you can be for? I think against Hamas, against Netanyahu, and for a credible, legitimate, authentic Palestinian authority that can represent the Palestinian people.
Ian Bremmer:
Now, I mean, it's not lost on me that the way you said that implied some level of even handedness as to the dysfunction and problematic nature of Hamas and Netanyahu. Now, one runs a democracy, the other's a terrorist organization. How do we square that?
Thomas Friedman:
Absolutely. So one runs a democracy, the other runs a terrorist organization, and they have had a codependency, really, for the last 15 years because Netanyahu always understood and actually said in his own voice as of some of his colleagues, having a strong Hamas in Gaza is the best way to ensure a weak PA in the West Bank.
Ian Bremmer:
When you say PA, you mean Palestinian authority?
Thomas Friedman:
Absolutely.
Ian Bremmer:
And no two state solution.
Thomas Friedman:
And no two state solutions.
Ian Bremmer:
Correct.
Thomas Friedman:
And so that cynicism is there, and for the Hamas-
Ian Bremmer:
And that cynicism is even stronger, arguably today.
Thomas Friedman:
It's not been the least diminished by the war.
Ian Bremmer:
Because it's essential for Netanyahu's survival politically.
Thomas Friedman:
Exactly. Because he now is hostage to a far right in his coalition that has told him anything that smacks from a Palestinian state or even progress toward a Palestinian state or even progress toward a unified Palestinian position where you'd have the PA in Ramallah and the West Bank and the PA in Gaza, is a no-go, we'll throw you out of power. Bibi looks like he's driving the car there, he is not. Smotrich and Ben-Gvir, his right wing allies are calling up-
Ian Bremmer:
In cabinet.
Thomas Friedman:
... Left, right, go here. So yeah, and at the same time, Hamas is hugely benefiting from the way Bibi fought this war, which was to take very little care of Palestinian civilians, because Hamas basically was ready to sacrifice its civilians, made no preparation to protect them before launching this war, gave them no warning, even though they have this whole 400 miles of tunnels that could have protected people, because every Palestinian civilian who dies for them is an advantage on the world stage. It's amazing to me in that six months into this war plus, Bibi and Hamas, their codependency is still a central factor in this war.
Ian Bremmer:
Now, the Israelis have a war cabinet, it's a unity cabinet. It is ostensibly running the war, and when I see Israeli public opinion, it's overwhelmingly in favor of continued military action, destroying Hamas, whatever that means. So, I mean, even if Netanyahu were gone tomorrow, how would that materially change the war?
Thomas Friedman:
Everything, it would change the war that much in the sense that dismantling Hamas, is Israel defines as a central security requirement.
Ian Bremmer:
Imperative, yeah.
Thomas Friedman:
Imperative, for anything future. At the same time, when you're dismantling something, what is your plan for mantling something else in its place? Okay, if this is a war of dismantlement, unlike all previous Hamas-Israel wars, which were wars of retaliation, Hamas fired rockets, Israel fired rockets, ceasefire eventually. This is a very different war. It says, we're going to dismantle them, but if you are going to dismantle something, what are you going to put in its place?
And Israel has been fighting a war, quite remarkably, not unlike our war after 9/11-
Ian Bremmer:
In Iraq.
Thomas Friedman:
... In Iraq of having no plan for the morning after, because having that plan would alienate Netanyahu from his core political base.
I've often thought about the worst mistake I ever made in journalism. I went to see Donald Rumsfeld, I believe it was on the Saturday before the Tuesday that the war in Iraq was launched. I went to see him at the Pentagon and I asked him, what's the plan for the morning after? And he drew all these boxes and lines and squiggles, made no sense to me whatsoever and I thought it was my fault, because surely, the United States of America-
Ian Bremmer:
Would have a plan. [inaudible 00:07:45].
Thomas Friedman:
... Would have a plan for the morning after, and I see the exact same thing with Israel here. And when you don't have a plan and you have lots of civilian casualties, rather than saying those casualties are the truly unfortunate byproduct of a war against an enemy who tunneled underneath the ground, but we are fighting this war for a better future for Israelis and Palestinians. That it's not going to justify it, but it gives a different political frame for it. When you don't have that and you have 20,000, 30,000 civilian casualties, however many there are besides non-combatants, it starts to just look like a war of revenge.
Ian Bremmer:
So the far right in Israel does seem to have a plan, which is, use the war to take more territory.
Thomas Friedman:
Exactly.
Ian Bremmer:
Right, it's occupation, it's buffer zone, it's get the Palestinians out, move them to Egypt, move them someplace, they don't have to be in Gaza. When you say that they're the ones driving the bus, is that what you mean? In the absence of a military plan that they essentially defacto are driving what the Israelis are doing?
Thomas Friedman:
Yeah. Well, I would say that that is their aspiration, their maximum aspiration. Their minimum aspiration is to ensure that the war doesn't end in a way where you have a unified Palestinian decision maker in Gaza and the West Bank, under the Palestinian authority with a lot of global legitimation that could potentially be a partner for a two-state solution.
Ian Bremmer:
Which happens to be the aspiration of literally everybody else on the global stage.
Thomas Friedman:
Exactly.
Ian Bremmer:
Literally everybody else at this point.
Thomas Friedman:
That's right, whether it's possible or not is a whole nother question. A lot has to be done, and that's why I say to me, the most pro-Palestinian thing you can be doing today is working on that project because if that project succeeds or makes progress, many more things are possible, in terms of what can happen between Israelis and Palestinians and getting Palestinians closer to the future of an independent state. If that isn't possible, nothing is possible.
Ian Bremmer:
Imagine it were possible. What does a post-war Palestinian solution actually look like?
Thomas Friedman:
Two stages. The first stage is the UAE, Egypt and Jordan, agree to send troops to Gaza to provide security in a transition after Israel would pull back, with American logistical help. I think they would require us to provide the buses, as it were, the planes and the intel.
Ian Bremmer:
Israeli buffer zone?
Thomas Friedman:
Initially, probably, and then Israel would have to pull back. So you'd have an Arab security force that would replace Israel, and then those same countries and the US and again, ideally in Israel, would work with the PA to build its capacity, okay, for ultimately governing and building up some kind of security force. And the thing that the Palestinians would do is I believe reconvene the PLO, the umbrella, the sole legitimate-
Ian Bremmer:
The Palestine Liberation Organization.
Thomas Friedman:
Organization, which means the umbrella organization to legitimate, to nominate a Palestinian government of technocrats, not factions, not one Fatah guy, not one this or that. I mean, but of technocrats to actually govern in Gaza and the West Bank. So, I think those are the three things you need. That would be my wishlist for a deal.
Ian Bremmer:
So you're a journalist and arguably you're the most important American voice on the Middle East in journalism for decades now. Are the Palestinians winning the information war, globally?
Thomas Friedman:
That's a really good question. I would say there's a short term and there's a long term. Short term, I'm not sure if Palestinians are winning, but I sure know Israelis are losing. There's a shift now and they are being seen as the aggressive extreme party because the number of civilians who have been killed. But I'm not sure that even if you look at the polls here, it's about 50/50 now, maybe slightly more pro-Palestinian.
Ian Bremmer:
Slightly more pro-Palestinian now, yeah.
Thomas Friedman:
Yeah, but to me, in winning is, are you getting closer to your objective, which is an independent Palestinian state as part of a two-state solution? They're not winning in that sense. And that to me is tragic for them and for Israelis, because to me that's the only way, because absent that... There's been a lot written, you and I follow these commentaries a lot, I know, Palestinian state's impossible, Palestinian state's impossible. All of you writing about a Palestinian state, two-state solution wasted breath, to which I say, first of all, oh, thank you. I thought it was a layup, I thought it was easy. I mean, thank you for explaining that to me. My response is, well then what? Then you got a forever war. It's just a forever war. And that's the way I frame this moment, is either we're going to go into 2024 with some really new ideas, or we're going back to 1947 with some really new weapons. But 2023, this kind of whatever it was, stable, crickety status quo, is no longer available. And that's what I'm telling. We're going to start to think radically differently about this or going back to the core primordial conflict, not of two states, but truly about who controls the river to the sea.
Ian Bremmer:
Who controls the land.
Thomas Friedman:
Yeah, who controls the whole thing.
Ian Bremmer:
And in that regard, I mean-
Thomas Friedman:
But with new weapons.
Ian Bremmer:
In that regard, I mean, Hamas and the far right of Israel seem to be the same animal.
Thomas Friedman:
Oh, absolutely. They're both-
Ian Bremmer:
Because they're saying the same thing.
Thomas Friedman:
They both advocate our control for everything between the Jordan River and the Mediterranean.
Ian Bremmer:
Just for different people.
Thomas Friedman:
Just for different people, yeah.
Ian Bremmer:
Yeah, yeah. So when you look at what can be done by a United States, which is not an honest broker, never has been. Top ally of the US in the Middle East remains today, Israel, even with a leader-
Thomas Friedman:
No question.
Ian Bremmer:
... that is not liked or trusted by the US. How big of a problem is this for the Biden Administration in a 2024 election race?
Thomas Friedman:
I think it's becoming a bigger and bigger problem because this is the first war in the age of TikTok. And what I mean by that is, when you lose public opinion now, you don't just lose Arab American and Muslim American voters in Michigan, you actually lose a whole generation globally. And that's what Israel's in danger of right now, and America is the unfortunate collateral damage in that. And that's why how this war ends... When the Ukraine war happened, I wrote a column and I said, this is World War I. I said, oh, that thing we called World War I.
Ian Bremmer:
I remember that, yeah.
Thomas Friedman:
1914 to 1918, it wasn't really a world war. Half the world was colonized, half the world were subsistence farmers. This is the first war where two thirds of the planet has a smartphone, they can follow it.
Ian Bremmer:
They're aware of it.
Thomas Friedman:
They're kind about it, and they're affected by it. I mean, Argentinian farmers two weeks after the war didn't have fertilizer or diesel, prices skyrocketed. I call Gaza, Israel, Israel, Hamas, and Gaza, World War II. It's, everyone on the planet is following this, engaged in it and therefore, from an Israeli point of view, if you're losing in the PR sense of World War II, you're losing generation all over the world. Now, some of this is unfair how Israel's been depicted, the way that information has gotten out, but hey, it's an unfair world and you've got to be smart. Therefore, how you approach this war, how you fight it, and most importantly, how you frame it. And it's why I've argued from the very beginning, look, I argued in the beginning, don't do this, all right? But if you're going to do this, you have to do it in a political context.
Ian Bremmer:
Don't do what?
Thomas Friedman:
My argument right after the war started is, ask yourself, Israel, what does your worst enemy want you to do, and do the opposite. Your worst enemy is Iran. Iran wants you to go in there.
Ian Bremmer:
Big.
Thomas Friedman:
And big, get stuck in Gaza, and kill a lot of Gazan civilians. That's what they wanted. And my view originally was, make this operation rescue grandma. Focus entirely on the hostages.
Ian Bremmer:
On the hostages.
Thomas Friedman:
Delegitimize Hamas, focus on what Hamas has done, and what I call more Munich, less Dresden.
Ian Bremmer:
So even no airstrikes?
Thomas Friedman:
More Munich. I said targeted.
Ian Bremmer:
Targeted.
Thomas Friedman:
Go after the leadership, as Israel did after the Munich Olympic massacre, not Dresden. All right?
Ian Bremmer:
So no ground war.
Thomas Friedman:
But that became a moot argument because Israel went in.
Ian Bremmer:
Went in almost immediately.
Thomas Friedman:
And so when they went in, I said, look, if you are going to do this, you have to do it in a political frame, that if you fight a war, first of all, against an underground army, you're going to kill a lot of civilians. If you fight a war of dismantlement, you need a plan for mantlement. If you fight a war in the context of the Abraham Accords, you need to have a position that your Arab allies can basically justify continuing to support you on. And if you're fighting a war that has a regional component, and Iran threat network of Houthis, Hamas, Hezbollah, Shia militias in Iraq, and you need regional allies, you need a political objective as well. If you're going to fight this war, you need to do it with a very clear political horizon of, we're for two states, for two people. This war is a step to getting there.
Ian Bremmer:
But that's impossible for Netanyahu to do, of course.
Thomas Friedman:
And that's why-
Ian Bremmer:
Completely impossible.
Thomas Friedman:
And that's why I think it's turned into that public relations disaster.
Ian Bremmer:
So I mean, this is a really hard question to ask, but in an environment where over 30,000 Palestinians so far have been killed, a majority of whom are civilians, a large number of whom are children, thousands and thousands. I mean, how much can we blame? How much is Hamas responsible for the deaths of those civilians? How much is Israel responsible for the deaths of those civilians? How can we talk about that?
Thomas Friedman:
And the way I talk about it is, it's a stain on both of them. It's a stain on Israel for the way it fought this war, I believe with a lot of large bombs going after very small targets, which ended up in just devastating vast areas of Gaza. And it's a stain on Hamas that launched a war, knowing exactly what the Israeli response would be, on giving no notice for its people, giving no access to shelter in 400 miles of tunnels, they said, no, that's just for us. And basically being quite content to drag out ceasefire negotiations even though Palestinians are dying every day, children, to basically sustain their leadership and to protect their leadership. It's a stain on both of them.
Ian Bremmer:
Is it fair? I mean, the Israelis talk a lot about existential threats. They've discussed that with Iran, of course, in their nuclear weapons program. They discussed it with Hamas, and I mean, the acts of October 7th were unspeakably horrific. They deserve to be condemned by every human being, and most of the countries around the world have certainly done so. But the Israeli government has said that we have to go in, we have to take out all of the Hamas capabilities because otherwise they'll do it again.
Thomas Friedman:
Here we are.
Ian Bremmer:
And this is an existential threat for Israel. How fair is that for a country that is overwhelmingly the superior military in the region?
Thomas Friedman:
It's a really good question, Ian. I wrestle with it because I can write the Israeli-Palestinian history for you long or I can write for you short. The short version, going back to 1929, war, timeout, war, time out war, timeout, war, time out.
Ian Bremmer:
Mowing the grass, mowing the grass.
Thomas Friedman:
War time, it's always been. And so to me, the difference between the two is who did what during the timeout. So Israel built what was the fourth best economy in the world on the eve of the war declared by the economist. And for me, Israelis should always be looking to get to the timeout and doing everything they can politically, militarily, to minimize the conflict.
Ian Bremmer:
Because they're in the stronger position.
Thomas Friedman:
Because they're in a stronger position and they have the ability to really take advantage of the timeout. So I just feel, but again, I understand the existential argument.
Ian Bremmer:
So war is good for Hamas, timeout's good for Israel.
Thomas Friedman:
Exactly.
Ian Bremmer:
I mean, just-
Thomas Friedman:
That's a very good way to put it, exactly. Hamas does really well in the war, Israel does really well in the timeout. Get to the timeout or if you're going to fight what you call as an existential war, and I would question that, it was a terrible thing what Hamas did. Was it existential? I'm not so sure, and not in any way trying to minimize it, how terrible it was, but when you do what Israel did, it reminds me of things that I did after 9/11. Existential war, we just got to go half a world away and fight these people and do it without a plan.
Ian Bremmer:
Which was clearly a mistake in every way.
Thomas Friedman:
Yeah, yeah, exactly. In retrospect, it certainly didn't work. All right, or it hasn't worked in any way to justify the cost to us. So-
Ian Bremmer:
And Biden said that. Biden warned the Israelis early, don't make the mistakes we made of 9/11.
Thomas Friedman:
Exactly. I said the same thing, been there, done that. You know what I mean? And so if you're going to do that, you say, this is an existential war. Ian, you have to frame it then, in a political context because wars are fought for political ends. That's the essence of what strategy is. You have to have a strategy for after the war that will allow you to consolidate your gains. Well, if you have no strategy after the war to consolidate your gains and that only strategy could be effective collaboration with an effective PA and then working toward that end, you got what you got.
Ian Bremmer:
The thing that worries me, I think, the most going forward is the fact that Hamas has so much more sympathy from the Palestinian civilians in Gaza, to the extent that it's possible to ask them anything right now. And in the West Bank consistently. And of course, lots of Palestinians have died in the West Bank through conflict, hundreds over the last several months. More land has been taken illegally by the Israelis during this period of war, which I think most Americans aren't aware of, but it's an astonishing thing. So I mean, we can, you and I can sit here and talk about a Palestinian authority, but the reality is that the average Palestinian is much more in line right now with, blow these guys up. Am I wrong about that?
Thomas Friedman:
Well, certainly when you look at the polls, it would suggest that's the case. And because one side is actively opposing Israel and the other one seems to be fecklessly involved in internal squabbling in Ramallah.
Ian Bremmer:
Yeah, and has been for a long time, yeah.
Thomas Friedman:
But if you actually study Hamas' relationship with Palestinians, in 2019 and in 2023 before this war, Hamas was increasingly unpopular in Gaza. There was a movement actually in Gaza called Bidna Na'eesh, which in Arabic means, we want to live. Okay, so I always distinguish in these moments where who's popular and who's not, in between the morning after and the morning after the morning after. The morning after, let's assume Sinwar, the leader of Hamas and Gaza survives the war. He comes out, I won, I held off the Jews for six months, whatever he says, people applaud, carry him on their shoulder. The morning after the morning after, there's going to be a lot of conversations there.
Ian Bremmer:
What have you done for me?
Thomas Friedman:
[inaudible 00:22:52]. See my house here? What in the world were you thinking? What were you thinking? I lost my kids, I lost my job, I lost my family. What was your plan for the morning after, other than to steal a march on the PA in the West Bank? You sacrificed all of us without asking our permission, okay, without giving us any warning, without giving us any protection. So I pay no attention to wartime polls. What matters is that poll afterwards, and we saw the exact same thing happen with Hezbollah in 2006 to the point where the head of Hezbollah, Nasrallah said, if I'd known then what I know now, I'm not sure I would've done this. So, I-
Ian Bremmer:
One of the reasons they're being so much more cautious.
Thomas Friedman:
Exactly.
Ian Bremmer:
Is same leadership this time around, even though the Israelis are hitting him deeper and deeper into Lebanon, Hezbollah's been very cautious.
Thomas Friedman:
They know what it's like to govern, they know they do not have permission from Lebanese to drag them into a war, not just for their greater glory, but for the greater glory of Iran.
Ian Bremmer:
So you're less pessimistic that this war is going to spread into the northern front until later?
Thomas Friedman:
I would say I'm neutral on that because I think you could get mistakes. One mass casualty event on either side, they're throwing a lot of ordinance at each other now. An Israeli was recently killed, a lot of Lebanese have been killed. Probably as many Lebanese or more have had to flee from their border on their side-
Ian Bremmer:
As the Israeli's, yeah.
Thomas Friedman:
... as the 60,000 Israelis on their side. So I think both sides still want to keep it at a certain level because what's different about Hezbollah as the enemy, which you know, is that they have precision rockets. So this is not like a moss, throw up a bunch of stuff, patriots knock them down, other stuff ends in an empty field of the ocean. They have rockets that if you fired it at the nuclear reactor in Dimona, it hits the nuclear reactor in Dimona, or it hits Tel Aviv airport or it hits Hadera port.
Ian Bremmer:
And the Israeli missile defense doesn't prevent that from happening?
Thomas Friedman:
Well, this would be the arrow system more than, and Israel's been working on a laser system. We don't know, and by the way, it just takes one to get through.
Ian Bremmer:
Yeah, so let's not test that theory, is what you're saying.
Thomas Friedman:
No, I don't think they want to test that theory.
Ian Bremmer:
Yeah, now let's talk a little bit about where the war is actually going. We've heard so much about Rafah, where well over a million Palestinians are sheltering, where we believe Hamas leadership is sitting there in tunnels with hostages. Netanyahu has been talking about the fact that this war has to go to Rafah. He said that starting with the beginning of Ramadan, which he has not done, he has been backed down. Did he ever have the plan to do that? Where are they going?
Thomas Friedman:
He had the aspiration to do it, and by the way, the United States does not disagree with him, that at this stage, leaving Hamas in charge of Gaza-
Ian Bremmer:
Is a bad idea,
Thomas Friedman:
... is a bad idea.
Ian Bremmer:
The US doesn't support that.
Thomas Friedman:
For Israel, for Palestinians, for the Arab world and our Arab allies. Their point is though, you told everyone to move from Gaza City to Khan Younis. You told everyone then to move from Khan Younis to Rafah.
Ian Bremmer:
To Rafah.
Thomas Friedman:
So you can't fight a massive division level war in a city where you're just surrounded by all these civilians, it's not going to happen. And so they've been asking him for a plan.
Ian Bremmer:
They haven't gotten a plan.
Thomas Friedman:
And they haven't come up with the plan. That's why I think a lot of this is domestic politics in Israel, of Bibi setting the predicate of, I tried to win the war, I tried to go all the way and Joe Biden stopped me. And so he's been running against Biden in America here, even as he's taking weapons and ammunition from America. [inaudible 00:26:08].
Ian Bremmer:
So you think he won't do it, ultimately?
Thomas Friedman:
No, I wouldn't say that. I wouldn't say that, but I think he's going to have to do it the way the Americans want because we've actually slowed down weapons shipments.
Ian Bremmer:
Yeah, no more emergency authorizations. I've seen that.
Thomas Friedman:
Yeah. We've slowed down.
Ian Bremmer:
Nothing's been stopped, but yeah.
Thomas Friedman:
Nothing's been stopped, but it's been really slowed down. So they've got, the administration has Netanyahu's attention here.
Ian Bremmer:
And if I understand correctly, you say that the Israelis don't have the troops in position now to do this anyway?
Thomas Friedman:
No, they do not have the number of troops they need, they will tell you that. They have not moved them there. Actually, Israel's been taking troops out of Gaza. Remember, it's a small country, a lot of reservists.
Ian Bremmer:
The economy's important, of course.
Thomas Friedman:
The economy's a real problem, they've had to bring people back. So I don't see it happening immediately.
One thing I wouldn't rule out though, in that Israelis have captured a lot of Hamas people and they've been close to Sinwar several times, they will tell you. And I think there's a 10% chance, even without going into Rafah-
Ian Bremmer:
That they get him.
Thomas Friedman:
... that they get him. I wouldn't rule that out, that they get him and the other key leaders with him.
Ian Bremmer:
And then they can say they won.
Thomas Friedman:
Then they can say, yes, although if all the hostages, God forbid, who are with him and Palestinians all around, if lots of people are killed, that will be obviously for Israelis and Palestinians to all sort out the moral balance of that, but certainly if they get Sinwar, they'll be able to say, we got our revenge against the guy who ordered this. But again, if there's no political frame or horizon after that, it just becomes... I used to say, how many times has Israel killed the number two man in Hamas? I mean, I said, we killed the number two. By the way, they killed the [inaudible 00:27:59], they killed the number one guy, Rantisi. They've killed the leadership before and another one emerges.
Ian Bremmer:
I can't finish this without asking you a little bit about the broader Middle East.
Thomas Friedman:
Please.
Ian Bremmer:
I mean, obviously, we have seen lots of Iranian proxy strikes against the West, including most specifically the Houthis attacks on the Red Sea. And those attacks have included strikes on US warships. They got a lot of ordinance that they're throwing at. What happens if we see a US ship get sunk? What happens if there's a major terrorist attack with significant numbers of American casualties? I mean, not 9/11, but something, I mean, we've had three American servicemen and women that were killed in Jordan about a month ago. What happens if something, a significant step up from that happens, which is certainly very thinkable in this environment, how do you think the Americans are likely to react to that? What happens in the world?
Thomas Friedman:
So let me answer the question on two levels.
Ian Bremmer:
Sure.
Thomas Friedman:
One, going back to what was going on on October 6th in the world, because I think it's an important framing moment. What was going on October 6th in my view, is Ukraine was trying to join the west and Israel was trying to join the East. Ukraine was trying to join the European Union and had Ukraine joined the European Union, it would be the biggest geopolitical geo-economic change in Europe since East Germany joined West Germany, because Ukraine is the biggest land army in Europe now. It has the giant agricultural bread basket and a huge tech sector. While Ukraine was trying to join the west, Israel was trying to join the East by normalizing with Saudi Arabia. If Israel were able to normalize with Saudi Arabia, on terms that would also advance Palestinian statehood, it would be the biggest change in the Middle East since Camp David.
Ian, we are here. It seems like an innocuous year, 2023. Now, this is a 1989 moment. This was a pivotal year in the war between what I would call the world of inclusion and the world of resistance. And so how these two balances come out are hugely, hugely important. Now, let's go drill down.
Ian Bremmer:
To the specific question, yeah.
Thomas Friedman:
I was just out in the region with General Kurilla, our CENTCOM commander. We traveled all over eastern Syria, which is no man's land, and Northern Jordan and visited Tower 22, the base you referred to that got hit-
Ian Bremmer:
Where the servicemen got killed, yeah.
Thomas Friedman:
Exactly, three American service women got killed in this drone attack. And my takeaway from that trip was, because we visited I think, seven different bases, and they're like little sort of Port Apaches out there in the middle of the Syrian Desert, all designed originally to interdict ISIS, not-
Ian Bremmer:
Which no longer has any territorial control there.
Thomas Friedman:
It has no territorial control, but they're out there.
Ian Bremmer:
They're out there, yeah.
Thomas Friedman:
But not to be hardened against an Iranian attack. So the complete strategic mismatch between why the bases were there and now the Iran threat network that they're up against, and I drew the same conclusion that you're saying, wow. And by the way, the soldiers at these bases, what happened on October 17th, Iran started its proxies, started attacking every one of these bases, and it was literally like, I don't play paddle ball, but what it looks like that we were using anti-missile technology, started to beat back every one of these drone things, these coyote systems and whatnot.
Ian Bremmer:
At great expense.
Thomas Friedman:
At great expense.
Ian Bremmer:
By the way, yeah.
Thomas Friedman:
Yeah, $200,000 missiles against $10,000 drones, and one of them got through and killed those three soldiers at Tower 22. Now, it happened that they had blast walls. You go to these bases, there's barrack blast walls, barrack blast walls, but if one of those rockets, because Houthis now have land to sea rockets, they have undersea drones, they have suicide patrol boats, they got everything. If one of those gets through, hits a US destroyer and you get a mass casualty event, we're at war with Iran.
Ian Bremmer:
And we know that's plausible.
Thomas Friedman:
We're at war with Iran.
Ian Bremmer:
War with Iran. With Iran.
Thomas Friedman:
We're at war with Iran.
Ian Bremmer:
Even though the Iranians have arguably less control over the Houthis than the Americans have over the Ukrainians.
Thomas Friedman:
Yeah, I mean, it's a real... Look, this is such a... and something you've written about, this is such a problem of the world we're in right now. When I give my standard foreign policy talk today, I begin it like this. Mom, dad, moms, dad's out there, mom, dad. If your son or daughter come home and say, mom, dad, I want to be Secretary of State one day, anything but Secretary of State, okay? Be Secretary-
Ian Bremmer:
Secretary of Commerce.
Thomas Friedman:
Commerce, agriculture. Okay, HHS. Okay, anything honey, but Secretary of State, worst job in the world. Why? Think about Henry Kissinger, a lot of people compare this war to the '73 war, this Hamas, Israel war. Henry Kissinger after '73, I'm going to date myself now.
Ian Bremmer:
You've done that, yeah, it's okay.
Thomas Friedman:
Okay, he needed three dimes to do his diplomacy. He needed a dime to call Golda Meir, a dime to call Hafez al-Assad, dime to call Anwar Sadat, his own plane, two months, diplomacy, disengagement agreements. Who does our Secretary of State, Anthony Blinken call? Are the Houthis in the phone book even? If you call them, does the phone come off the wall? By the way, if you bomb them, do they know they've been bombed? I mean, there's so much destruction [inaudible 00:33:01].
Ian Bremmer:
If the Iranians tell them to stop, do they actually stop? It's clearly not coordinated well.
Thomas Friedman:
Because the Iranians know that these guys are not in the control that they want. And for the Houthis, it's really working in terms of their, this is all domestic politics, they're domestic fight with the other factions in Yemen. This has given them steal a march on the other domestic factions, so really working for them domestically. And it's a real problem and it's part of the world we live in now, the world of disorder and order, and you've got all these non-state actors now, and this is the war of the future.
And we think of them, biggest thing I learned from this war, first trip I made to Israel after the war and I saw a friend of mine in the military said, the thing you have to understand about Hamas, Hezbollah, Houthis, these are not militias. A bunch of guys walking around flip-flops and carrying like we thought of the Taliban or... These are armies-
Ian Bremmer:
Armies.
Thomas Friedman:
... with divisions and arms factories. They're actually making their own arms. Not the core stuff, but boy, the Iranians, the Houthis, are incredibly adaptive and they know how to adapt a lot of these missiles, the Iranians give them the motherboards and whatnot. I mean, they're incredibly innovative.
Ian Bremmer:
Tom Friedman, thanks for being here.
Thomas Friedman:
Pleasure, Ian. Thanks for having me.
Ian Bremmer:
That's it for today's edition of the GZERO World podcast. Do you like what you heard? Of course you do. Why not make it official? Why don't you rate and review GZERO World, five stars, only five stars? Otherwise, don't do it, on Apple, Spotify, or wherever you get your podcast, tell your friends.
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