A conversation with Ambassador Ron Dermer
The security situation continues to deteriorate in Israel -- tragic developments, including right in the heart of Tel Aviv. We continue to monitor developments and stay in close touch with Israeli family and friends. While Israel is a major focus of today’s conversation, the security crisis is not. We focus on the political impasse in Israel, which may be connected to the security crisis.
Today we sit down with Ambassador Ron Dermer, who served as Israel’s chief envoy to the United States from 2013 to 2021 – working closely with the Obama, Trump, and Biden administrations. During that time, he was widely regarded as one of the most consequential ambassadors from any country.
Ambassador Dermer was one of Prime Minister Netanyahu’s closest advisers and played a key role in what led to the US relocation of our embassy to Jerusalem, U.S. recognition of Israeli sovereignty over the Golan Heights, implementation of the maximum pressure campaign against Iran, and the historic breakthrough that led to the Abraham Accords. He is a graduate of the Wharton School and completed a degree at Oxford.
In this episode, we focus on three topics: What to make of the current Israeli political crisis? (Will the Government fall? Will Netanyahu return to power?) What are the real prospects for a new Iran nuclear deal? And what to make of America's role in the Russia-Ukraine crisis?
Transcript
DISCLAIMER: THIS TRANSCRIPT HAS BEEN CREATED USING AI TECHNOLOGY AND MAY NOT REFLECT 100% ACCURACY.
[00:00:00] To think that we're going to catch them weaponizing when you can weaponize in a room that's about twice the size of this podcast room in a country that is a third the size of Europe, it's cruise control heading over a cliff. And so when people will say, and they'll say today, the deal was working, the deal was working.
Yeah, the cruise control is working. What about the cliff? What are you doing to deal with the cliff?
The security situation continues to deteriorate in Israel. Tragic developments, including right in the heart of Tel Aviv. We continue to monitor developments and stay in close contact with Israeli family and friends. While Israel is a major focus of today's episode, the security crisis is not. We focus on the political impasse in Israel, which may be connected to the security crisis.
Today we sit down with Ambassador Ron Dermer, who [00:01:00] served as Israel's chief envoy to the United States from 2013 to 2021, working with three administrations, the administration of Barack Obama, Donald Trump, and Joe Biden. During his tenure, he was widely regarded as one of the most consequential ambassadors.
From any country, I'd often hear this from ambassadors representing governments. Across Europe and Asia and even from Arab countries in the Middle East. He was one of Prime Minister Netanyahu's closest advisors and still is today. Almost an alter ego. And he played a key role in what led to the U. S.
relocation of our embassy to Jerusalem. And the U. S. recognition of Israeli sovereignty over the Golan Heights. And implementation of the maximum pressure campaign against Iran. And the historic breakthrough that led to the Abraham Accords. He's a graduate of the Wharton School, and he completed a degree at Oxford University.
Now, Ron and I banter a lot when I'm in Israel or when he's here in the U. S., like he is today, but in this conversation, I tried to get Ron's take on three [00:02:00] specific topics. One, what to make of the current Israeli political crisis. Will the government fall? Will Netanyahu return to power? Two, what are the real prospects for a new Iran nuclear deal?
And how should Israel respond? And finally, three, as an insightful analyst on U. S. power as a force in geopolitics, what to make of America's role in the Russia Ukraine crisis. This is Call Me Back.
And I am pleased to welcome my, my old friend, not my My long time friend. People get offended when I say old. I'm not offended. All right, good, good. Well, you know, you're not old. Your long time friend, Ron Dermer, who, who is, uh, joining for this conversation. In person. I gotta say, this is a rarity now. This is, this really does mean we are post corona, because we are not doing it virtually.
There's not little zoom boxes. We are in person, in Manhattan. You [00:03:00] could say it's post corona, or you can say I happen to be in New York on, as part of a speaking tour, either way. But I'll say I tried to do this in Israel when I was in Israel. And you were in Jerusalem and I was in Tel Aviv. And the idea of us doing something in person while you were in Jerusalem and I was in Tel Aviv Bridge too far.
One of us had to go One of us had to hop on that highway. It was considered No, no, no, no, no. That is a bridge too far. But for you to come from Israel to Manhattan, now we're talking, you know, uh, convenience. That's because of the bagels. That's right. You can't get a good bagel in Tel Aviv, but in New York City you still can.
And you, you, you are someone, and I, we quote this in our next book, you say that Manhattan is a place that Israelis come to relax. That's right. That's right. When I was trying to explain to Americans while I was ambassador how intense a place Israel is, I say Israelis go to Manhattan to relax. Unwind to relax.
And then the Americans would inevitably laugh because they know how crazy and intense Manhattan is. And the Israelis [00:04:00] in the audience would always say, why is that funny? Yeah. We go to unwind. We go to relax. That's 'cause life in Israel tends to be a little bit tense. So you got a lot going on now. Which, which I, I want to come back to, but one, you've got your own podcast.
Uh, that has launched called Diplomatically Incorrect, which is a great title, which is, uh, which is sponsored by JINSA, the Jewish Institute for National Security for America, uh, you are a newly announced partner of Exigent Capital, uh, a boutique investment, uh, company in Jerusalem, multi strategy, so that's, uh, very exciting to, uh, do something meaningful in the private sector that I wanted to do when I, um, uh, came back to Israel, so I'm looking forward to that.
And focused on venture capital? No, not just venture capital. They've done VC deals, and they've done things in, uh, invests in medical technology companies, they've done fintech, they're doing something in cyber now, but, uh, basically a small, smart group of people who, uh, really care about, uh, about building [00:05:00] Israel's up, turning the startup nation and taking it to the next level.
And, and hopefully I can help them, uh, with their strategic partners around, uh, the globe and also particularly to develop in the Gulf as well. And which is, I want to talk, we're going to get into the Abraham Accords, uh, in this conversation, but, but that is a big focus. You have these relationships in a number of these Gulf states with, based on your time as ambassador to Washington.
During the, the real, the shaping and development of the Abraham Accords. Right. And I think it's important also to get these piece of chords right. You know, we had We've had peace with Egypt for over 40 years, had peace with Jordan for over 25 years, and better a cold peace than a hot war, but they weren't warm peaces, and not because of Israel, largely because of them, because they didn't do the things that I think would have helped their economies and would have brought tremendous benefit, primarily because you have Uh, political, uh, economic and cultural forces in those countries, Egypt and Jordan, that militate against peace.
So if an Egyptian businessman ten years ago would have come [00:06:00] to Tel Aviv and bought an Israeli start up and went back to Cairo, his house might have been burned down. And a Intellectual in Jordan, uh, a writer, would go to a symposium in Jerusalem and would return and write about it in the Jordanian paper.
He may never publish anything again. It's just because it's very, very hard in those societies where there are so many forces. Militating against the peace. You don't see any of that in the Gulf. And now that presents an enormous opportunity for Israel that in these agreements, in the Abraham Accords, Um, which include the Emirates, Bahrain, Sudan, and Morocco came later.
But let's focus on the Gulf for a second. To turn those into much warmer, uh, pieces where you're having relationships and joint ventures with Arab businessmen and Jewish businessmen. And I think that is an enormous opportunity for Israel. Because if you match Israeli technology and innovation, I don't need to tell you about that.
But if you match that and marry it with the entrepreneurialism and the [00:07:00] tremendous resources in the Gulf, I mean, the sky's the limit. The Emirates are, uh, uh, as you know, are a center, not just in the Arab and Muslim world, but well beyond that. And I think we have to do this right, and so I'm looking forward to working with my partners in, uh, in achieving that.
The only, the only point I'd add to that is, so there's a tremendous source of capital in the Gulf, right? So, so, you have these sovereign wealth funds in the Gulf that have been deploying capital all over the world, and up until recently there was only one country that was left out of that capital deployment, which was Israel.
And you have a market, a population of about five to six hundred million people in the Arab world that has been basically shut off to Israeli entrepreneurs, Israeli startups. Even startups, Israeli Arab startups couldn't penetrate those markets. And now, you know, I've heard from a number of players in the Gulf, like, we need Israeli startups helping us develop companies that reach Our populations, it's not just deploying our capital, it's building companies that actually [00:08:00] reach this massive market that has been shut off from Israel.
And I think that's where the real value added is. Because if you see, uh, the Gulf states as a, as an ATM wearing a, you know, a keffiyeh or something. Then you're, it's gonna be very limited because they have the ability and they're very sophisticated investors. They've invested all over the world. Okay, so they'll invest in some VCs in Israel and other things.
I think. The real play that brings the greatest mutual benefit is to do these joint ventures, take Israeli technology, take it to the region, have the, have them set up shop, whether it's in the Emirates or Bahrain or Morocco or elsewhere, and use that also to spread that technology throughout the Arab world.
If you think about it, and this is one of the Reasons that I think we had the Abraham Accords, it was a recognition among the leaders in the Gulf that their own economic interests demand that they move into a much closer relationship with Israel because if, if Israel is the second great innovate, center of innovation in the world, and we [00:09:00] are, then the traditional Arab boycott of Israel is about as intelligent as Oregon, Nevada, Utah, Wyoming, Utah, New Mexico, Arizona, and half of California boycotting Silicon Valley.
It makes no sense. And so to the extent that you have these leaders who are thinking, 20, 30, 40 years ahead, what's gonna happen when I can't just rely on the single cash crop, you know, that I have in oil or in gas? How are we going to develop these economies? And I think you had that leadership in the Emirates.
I think you have, there's part of that thinking in Saudi Arabia as well. And so their economic interests, I think, are drawing them to move closer to Israel. Now, we need to take advantage of this window of opportunity. To actually do those deals that are much greater than simply them throwing money into a fund.
It's taking the Israeli technology, because then they can also show their own people, here are the benefits of the peace with Israel. You know that ag tech [00:10:00] that all of a sudden has transformed, uh, you know, the southern, uh, Desert part of our country. Yeah, that comes from israel. You know that water technology That is helping us actually bring water to places that didn't have it or that people would have to walk four hours You know both ways to get to what that's also coming from israel and they can point to all of these different technologies That are Israeli technologies.
I think that bodes very well for strengthening the current peace agreements that we have, but also to expanding it and to really change a lot of hearts and minds in the region about the benefits of working with Israel. And that was not there with Egypt and Jordan. As I said, not because of us, but because of them.
So this could lead to not only strengthening the current peace agreements we have, it could warm. the piece that we have with Egypt and Jordan, and I think make it much easier to expand the Abraham Accords in the future to Saudi Arabia and elsewhere. Okay, I want to come back to the Abraham Accords and the evolution of the Abraham Accords, because you, you had a front row seat and an instrumental role, uh, in the, [00:11:00] uh, Accords.
But before we come back to that, I just want to not lose, uh, this moment to just pick your brain on what on earth is happening in Israeli politics right now. So, just to, just to level set for our audience, in the last, Ron is checking his phone right now. Gotta check the phone, cause I don't, I don't, I don't want to speak out of turn.
When I say right now, he's like checking, you know, wait, what, you really mean right now? No, I don't mean right now, but I mean, in the last few days, Right. Uh, the, the chairman or the whip of the coalition for the Yamina party, which is Bennett's party, Stillman, Uh, announced that she was leaving the government, uh, and this is, uh, she's a member of Bennett's party which has six seats in the government.
This is an oddity in Israeli politics where the prime minister of a government is leading a party. of six seats, but in order to form a government, you have to have a minimum of 61 seats. [00:12:00] So it is, it is literally the smallest party in the history of Israeli politics to have as its leader, the prime minister of the country, while it is only a six seat party.
So that was, that was an extraordinary feat or oddity, depending on how you look at it. And of course, what that meant is that the government was inherently weak. Uh, now we had Mika Goodman on Uh, this podcast a few weeks ago, and he argued, while it is a weak government, it is amazing that it survived as long as it did.
By my count, nine months and 23 days. That's pretty impressive. Longer than I actually thought at first it would last. I guess they're lowering the bar on impressive coalitions. If nine months counts, constitutes Well, nine months for a government that, that had Eight parties in it, ranging from, you know, the hard left, Labor and Merits, to the right, Yamina party, and some parties in between, and an Arab Islamist party in there.
I mean, it is a, nine months and 23 days is, is, I [00:13:00] actually think, is longer than I pegged that. But what Mika argued was that this government had survived up to that point that I interviewed Mika, they had passed a budget. They had basically been working things out and managing and governing, uh, and they had not faced any major crisis.
And at a time in which politics everywhere seems to be highly polarized, and it's impossible for anyone to compromise and get anything done, that these, these very ideological, uh, this very ideologically diverse group of parties coming together and agreeing, agreeing to, to make it work was impressive and a model.
So, I guess my first question to you was, is it impressive as a model? And then I want to get into, which may, which may, your answer to that question may inform whether or not it was inevitable that it was going to fall apart. I don't think it's impressive at all because You know, normally what happens in, in politics, [00:14:00] the first few months of a new government, you have this when you have a new president, usually the support grows out of the gate.
And there is some period of time, and then things start to sort of go down. There was no such period like that in Israel. I mean, right now according to the polls, Netanyahu is the head of the opposition, is sitting somewhere between 35, 38, 39 seats. And the current prime minister is maybe at five seats, six seats.
That's, it hasn't grown in support. And so that tells you that there's essentially a problem here. And this is just based on polling. Yeah, on polling, but I'm saying, you know, having been with Netanyahu in, in one capacity or another for over 20 years, He doesn't poll at 38 seats. I mean, there's clearly, um, uh, a sense that he is the most popular political leader in Israel by far.
Now, what you had was after the last election, you had, which was the fourth in two years, you had three in succession, and then they put [00:15:00] together this national unity government that's kind of held together for Pretty much about a year or so, but I guess if nine months is the bar, that was a great feat. It went to a fourth election and there's basically been a part of the political spectrum.
And the parties in Israel's politics that refused to sit with Netanyahu. And they, and I think they used these, the, the clouds of these indictments over Netanyahu to say we're not going to sit with somebody who's under indictment. And it doesn't matter that The cases have not impacted Netanyahu's popularity at all because a lot of people think this thing is ridiculous But they took those stance.
They took the stance some of these parties were not going to sit with Netanyahu So while Netanyahu was extremely popular and had by far the largest party even in the last election. His party is 30. I think the second biggest party is Lapid's party has about 17 seats, so he's almost twice the size.
According to current polls, he's well more than twice the size. He's [00:16:00] like 38, and Lapid is around the same thing that he was. But it was hard for him to cobble together this coalition. And what you had after the last election, it was essentially around a 6159 split. Um, that was with Bennett. So the four parties that supported Netanyahu, there were two ultra Orthodox parties, there was a, a, a right wing party and Netanyahu's Likud party.
After the last, the last election So the, the religious parties, the ultra, Shas and United Toward Judaism. Judaism, right. So there's, I guess you really get into the weeds on your podcast. So, we, we, we got, we've got listeners who are deep, so I don't Deep, okay, so UTJ and Shas. Right, and then you take the, uh, the party to the right of Netanyahu that's run by Mr.
Smutrich, Bitzala Smutrich, that together, those three parties and the Likud were 52. And Bennett's party added 7, which made it 59, but that didn't get to the 61. [00:17:00] And then rather than go to another election And Bennett said that if Netanyahu's right wing coalition could get 61 seats, he would serve in it.
Yeah, no, he said a lot of things. He said that he would never go into a government. with Lapid and make him prime minister, never. Yair Lapid, the current foreign minister. The current foreign minister. And he said that it was a kind of read my lips type pledge in Israel because it was the night before the election.
And the Likud was making the allegations down the stretch that, hey, Bennett is going to go with the other side, that he's going to take your votes from the right, because it's all right wing voters, and he's going to actually join the left in a government. And that was harming. He was losing support down the stretch, and to, to, uh, refute that, he went on television.
Uh, in a very dramatic way and put like two points and one point number one was I will not go into any government that will make [00:18:00] Lapid a prime minister. And the second point is I will not sit in a government with this Arab Islamist party. Those are the two points and he says I'm willing to sign it Netanyahu Are you willing to sign it?
And and it turns out that it wasn't just something that a fiction of someone's imagination That's what happened that at the end Bennett took his party into a coalition with the left So he took right wing voters got elected got seven seats and then went with a coalition on the other side Um, and I think that's part of the problem he's had from the beginning, because he hasn't been able at no point, I think, did he ever get ten seats in the polls.
I think maybe the highest was about seven, and the lowest maybe about four. But he stayed in that same area. Now, coalitions, and this is with people who are only in like, uh, 303 on Israeli politics. We're gonna do the advanced placement course today. Alright. What happens is The weaker the parties in a [00:19:00] coalition, the stronger the coalition.
And that's counterintuitive to people. By that I mean, when parties are not popular, they will band together to save themselves. Because the Titanic is going down. They don't want to face an election. So when you're thinking about Israeli politics, I'll give a free tip to become good political analysts in the future in Israel.
There's only two questions that are relevant about coalitions. Most people think what's relevant is who's in the coalition. Not important. Totally not important. Two questions are this. Can the party in that coalition topple the coalition? Second, do they want to topple the coalition? Those are the two questions.
Now, sometimes you have small parties in a coalition that they're added. They're fifth or sixth or seventh wheel, and they can't topple the coalition, so it doesn't really matter. When it comes to a battle between them and another member of the coalition that's stronger or bigger, they're not going to get their way.
When you have a small party, who can topple the coalition. [00:20:00] The issue that's the number one issue for that party, they will win out on it every time. Unless it happens to put them in a direct clash with a prime minister who's willing to basically go to an election over that issue, which is very rare. And if they believe they'll be in a weaker position in that next election.
No, no, if they, yeah. But the key part first is the players in Israel who can get their agenda through a government are those If they're not supportive of the government, they can topple the government themselves. Now the second question that you have is, do they want to topple the coalition? And do they want to topple the coalition is largely a function of the polls.
Because if the polls show that they're getting stronger, then they're willing to play a lot of brinksmanship. Because there's no fear of elections. That doesn't mean that they necessarily want to go to a new elections, but it means they're not afraid. And when you have a small party that's not afraid of a new election, that has a very important item on the agenda, now if they're playing offense, it's complicated, but [00:21:00] if it's defense, where they're trying to block something, you can rest assured they're gonna dig in their heels and prevent something from happening 100%.
You've had that with the ultra orthodox parties several times over the years. Where somebody would try to push something they would say absolutely not we're not going to do it and because they can topple the coalition And because they don't fear an election It just wasn't going to happen because that's the nature of Israeli politics and a lot of times when Netanyahu was prime minister They would they would uh, uh see Netanyahu As a president, the American administration, let's say, and they would look at his decision making as if he were President of the United States.
And he's not, he's a Prime Minister, and he has to pass a no confidence vote every Monday when he goes to Parliament. Now imagine if President Obama or Trump or Biden had to, every Monday, go to Congress and win a vote of confidence. They would govern differently, but for them it was a character issue, right?
So when Netanyahu would not [00:22:00] accede to their every little demand, that he may not have thought was the biggest deal in the world, but it was going to completely undermine his coalition. Ah, now he's just a small time petty politician who's never willing to risk anything. When you're asking a prime minister to risk staying in power for something that he thinks is marginal, they're not going to do it.
Now, if you have a peace treaty, if there's a major move that happens, then prime ministers historically are willing, you know what, I'll go to election on this because this is important enough. But I think that it's, uh, it's also another reason, by the way, this is not about politics, it's another reason why A lot of the deals are negotiated secretly.
Because it causes so much turbulence in a coalition in Israel, when you're negotiating, that you can never maybe get to the finish line. So a lot of times these deals have to be negotiated in secret, and they come out as something fully baked, and then you can just deal with the politics the way it is.
But the key question is, can they topple it, and do they want to topple it? Okay, so Ron, this is [00:23:00] like a master class. In the, uh, let's call them the peculiarities of Israeli politics. Now, just Briefly walk us through scenarios. What could happen from here? Well, there's a couple a couple ways that you bring down a government in Israel One is you replace it with another government and that requires in Israel what's called a constructive no confidence vote meaning It's not enough to get 61 of the 120 members of the Knesset to vote against the government You have to have 61 back another candidate, and that is And agree on a government, right?
Well, back another candidate for prime minister. Okay. It's less is gonna be the issue of, uh Who serves in which ministries, right? Yes, but technically you're right. Because if if one person, uh, is disgruntled, then I guess he can vote against the government for a or he or she can vote against the government for other reasons.
But basically, you have to have 61 that will back another candidate for prime minister. And here, the opposition, which is now 60, because this, this [00:24:00] woman has moved over from the coalition to the opposition, is 60 on paper. But I would say that it's 54 plus 6. 54 are parties that would be on the right side of Israel's political spectrum.
And then you have six seats, which are, is another Israeli Arab party. So that Israeli Arab party is not going to back. Netanyahu to be prime minister. I don't see that So you'd have to get another seven people who are in the current coalition to peel off in order to do that. So The second way that you would bring down, so that is less likely, Uh, in part one it's less likely, but not in part two, and I'll explain to you in a second.
The second way that you bring down an Israeli government is you go to a Knesset election, and the Knesset election is essentially a bill that is passed to disband the Knesset, and it requires three readings of the bill, and you need majority for that bill and in the case of 120 you generally need 61 to pass it.
I guess it's [00:25:00] possible if there are abstentions to have less but let's say you need 61. Now you have 60. Those six Arab members of Parliament, they will vote to disband the Knesset and go to a new election and the 54 will also vote for a new election. So if one more person goes Then the possibilities of disbanding the Knesset and going to a new elections is very real.
And what could happen, it's possible, that you'd have a first reading of that pass. And in between the first reading and the second and third reading, people will say, Wait a second. Now the die is cast. Now we're going to an election. And now what I said to you before becomes very important. Who fears a new election?
So there are several parties in the coalition are going to fear a new election, and then people who today We'll say I'm not going with Netanyahu under any circumstances. They may say, you know what, to save myself, I actually am going to go on the other side. And it would, it's not inconceivable to me that we're going to head down the path of new Knesset elections and at the last [00:26:00] second, all of a sudden you'd see a reshuffling and a new government on the existing Knesset.
I think the bottom line is this, a government in Israel can't function. with only 60 members. Now, the Knesset is not in session right now. So it might survive Hobbled for a little bit longer, but it can't pass anything, because you're going to have a block of 60. against them on virtually everything. We don't have to pass a budget in Israel as opposed to the United States.
If a budget is not passed, it automatically goes to an election. But that date is about a year away. So it could be bleeding. And they passed a two year budget, right? They passed it that goes through the end of 2022. But they can't pass anything and it's going to be a very ineffective government of dealing with almost anything because it doesn't have the votes in the Knesset.
I think the more likely scenario is that somebody else abandons ship fairly soon and then there's the two [00:27:00] possibilities of a reshuffling. Um, and I don't see anyone, I mean, Netanyahu would be the most likely scenario, but there is talk that maybe Gantz can, himself, can try to put together a coalition, so, uh, Benny Gantz, current defense minister, and he was defense minister in the last Netanyahu government.
So Bennett is a person from the right who is running essentially on a center left government. And so it would be that you'd have a right wing coalition, and the figurehead of this right wing coalition would be Gantz. But you have to also look at the political forces that are at work. And I don't know if those 54 members of the right are going to want to have Gantz as, uh, as prime minister.
There's no party on the right, as far as I can see, who's, who is afraid of new elections. That doesn't mean that they wouldn't mind having a coalition that would be a clear right of center coalition, because the current Knesset right now has a 65 members. who are parties on the right, traditionally [00:28:00] associated with the right.
So it's possible to put together a very strong and stable coalition. And I think if Netanyahu succeeds in getting to 61, then I think he'll be able to expand to include Gantz's party as well. And so you might go from Everyone thinking there's going to be an election, and the next thing you know, you're, you get to 61, and the next thing you know, you have a coalition of 70 under Netanyahu.
So there's a lot of different things that can happen at this time, but the situation today is different than it was yesterday. Because you can't, I think people were thinking that this was eventually going to happen because of the internal fissures within. These parties that you have left and right parties in the same coalition But they expected it to happen probably six months or a year from now what might have triggered it And advanced it is the security issues in Israel the last couple of weeks, the terror attacks, because here, the left and the right are divided on several issues, but the [00:29:00] one they're usually most divided on is how do you deal with dealing with terrorism, dealing with the territorial issues vis à vis the Palestinians.
And this becomes, I think, much more complicated for the current government when they're dealing with a security crisis. And don't forget, it's a inexperienced government, so you don't have people, with the exception of Gantz, who was military chief of staff. Bennett is, uh, fairly inexperienced, and he's been prime minister for six, nine months.
Lapid does not have that experience, and you're comparing it to Netanyahu, who was there for the longest serving prime minister ever, and also he was, he was prime minister in Israel over 12 years, that was really the safest decade. plus in Israel's history and I think that plays in the minds of voters and that's why his numbers continue to rise from the opposition which doesn't happen all the time.
I think it's not known that oppositions usually don't bring down Israeli government's coalitions. Do and we just saw an [00:30:00] example of that yesterday. So I want to one issue that that we don't hear that much about is The enlarged in part because there's so much attention paid to the understandably to the Russia Ukraine crisis but is the potential return to an Iran deal The, the resurrection of the JCPOA, the 2015, uh, deal that was to put limits on Iran's nuclear program.
President Trump obviously pulled out of the deal. There have been ongoing negotiations in Vienna to resurrect the deal. And recently, like in the last couple days, Secretary of State Tony Blinken, for the first time, started to, it seemed, signal that the likelihood of a deal coming together was low. Uh, I guess my first question is, do you think there will be a return to the JCPOA in some construct that has been being negotiated the last few months in Vienna?
Well, I don't think that what's gonna prevent a return is the United States sticking its [00:31:00] heels in the ground and, uh, not agreeing to something. I mean, if there's not a return to the JCPOA, it will be a decision that Iran makes, that they don't want to go back into this deal. Uh, because throughout this process, the United States has sort of done everything to appease the Iranians.
It, what began as a, as a promise, we're gonna make a longer and stronger deal, which made no sense from the get go, because the, the idea from the beginning, understand, let's take a step back. for your listeners. I'm sure they're very advanced in the politics and the policy of the nuclear deal. But what the nuclear deal is, it puts restrictions on Iran's nuclear program for a limited number of years.
Those restrictions are automatically removed. Some in year 5, that's the arms, 8, missiles, 10, centrifuges, 15. This is in the original 2015 deal. In the original 2015 deal. So we're already 7 years in it. That's why a year from now The missile restrictions are removed, according to the old deal. And then three years from now, you won't have any [00:32:00] restrictions on centrifuges, and so Iran can start putting in the most advanced centrifuges, and the stockpile restrictions will sunset.
And President Obama conceded as such. He did this interview on NPR at the time of the deal, where they said, well, what happens when these sunset clauses expire? And he basically said They'll be able to He said the breakout time is close to zero. Meaning the breakout to a nuclear bomb. Well, no, the breakout time is, is understood as when they would have the fissile material necessary for a device.
Whereas a bomb, you have to also weaponize that fissile material. But when they, the term of the trade of the breakout time is when will they have the military grade Fissile material necessary for a nuclear bomb. And in year 12 or 13, which is 2027, 2028, according to the old deal, that's when Iran has it by keeping the deal.
The greatest problem in the deal is not that Iran's going to get to a bomb by violating it, they're going to get to a bomb by keeping it. This is why it was so [00:33:00] bad. And actually what was said at the time Meaning compliance would Yeah, compliance, because what it does is they don't need to sneak in or break in to the nuclear club.
They just walk in, because they essentially can legally put, put in place an industrial size enrichment program with a zero break in time. So all they go is go to the end of the pool and, and simply tip in. They don't have to dash to the bomb. It's a question of days. When you have the most advanced centrifuges, IR 8s, let's say, which allow you to spin uranium very quickly.
You can then have huge stockpiles of enriched uranium, many bombs worth. And all of a sudden, in a few days, boom! Assuming you weaponized in some place, and the chances that our intel agencies or your intel agencies are gonna catch that. You know, we didn't know about Natanz for quite some time. We didn't know about COM, the underground facility that they have at COM.
That was British intelligence. So to weaponizing, when you can weaponize in a room that's about twice the size of this podcast room, in a [00:34:00] country that is a third the size of Europe. It's crazy. We're not going to be able to catch it. So, you're basically putting them on a glide path to nuclear weapons. And what I said about the nuclear deal in 2015, I said, it's cruise control heading over a cliff.
And so when people will say, and they'll say today, The deal was working. The deal was working. Yeah, the cruise control is working. What about the cliff? What are you doing to deal with the cliff? And then when Trump, in 2018, turns the wheel. Now that doesn't mean he solved the problem of the nuclear Iran.
It just means that we're not on automatic pilot going over a cliff. This is what is happening. And to go back into the deal made no sense to begin with because they also inherited tremendous leverage. And so here you had the new Biden administration coming in and saying, you know, we're going to do, we're going to go back into compliance with the deal, compliance for compliance, and we're going to make it longer and stronger.
How are they going to make it longer and stronger? If you remove all the sanctions on Iran, [00:35:00] what incentive Do the Iranians have to do any kind of follow up agreement with you to deal with the problem that, that Obama said in this moment of candor? He said, yeah, you're 12 or 13 is a problem. Yeah, thank you.
It's a huge problem. It means that they can get a nuclear weapon in those years. What are you gonna do? What leverage do you have? And from the beginning, the idea that you're gonna get a longer, stronger deal after you go into the agreement, meaning first we'll go back to the old deal, JCPOA 1. 0, then we're gonna make a JCPOA 2.
0, that's crazy. That's like somebody playing poker, and they've got a full house. And they say to the dealer, you know what, take the three aces back, okay? I think I can get a better deal. It's ridiculous. You've actually removed all of your leverage. So they went into this thing, it was a huge mistake to begin with.
And what has now happened is the deal we're talking about is shorter and weaker. And it's not just the slogan, it's because none of the sunset calls are being [00:36:00] kicked back. Then it was 5, So they're not doing a deal now to say it's another 5, another 8, another 10 or 15, which would be bad enough. Again, we'd be on cruise control over the cliff.
The cliff's not further away. So they're just jumping back on the same timeline, but the time expired now. Exactly. On the time, we're getting the, we're going right back, we're setting up the car right in front of the cliff, and we're putting it on cruise control. Okay? That's what they're doing. But worse, what they're doing now, Iran knows they're so desperate to do a deal.
They being the U. S. They being the, Biden is aware that, right, they're tuned into how desperate, yeah, totally desperate because they're not holding red lines and you have the situation where you got people on the American team who are resigning right and left. And these are not people who disagreed with the original JCPOA, but they know that there's a fire sale going on and they don't want their names associated with it.
So they're just conceding all of these points and remember when the original deal was signed, it was sold, this is a nuclear agreement. Okay? The [00:37:00] issue of terrorism and ballistic missiles and other things, we're going to take a tough position on the regional aggression and terrorism and nothing we do here is going to prevent us from pushing back.
Now, we know that was not true between 2015 when the deal was done and by the time Trump came into office in 2017. So we had a year and a half where the deal existed and there was no pushback by the U. S. But they claimed, both the Obama administration and the Biden administration, We're going to stand up to Iran's regional aggression, we're going to stand up to its terrorism, right?
What is Iran doing now? They're using the deal to blackmail the United States to remove sanctions on terrorism. Now they say we want the IRGC, which has nothing to do With the nuclear deal they say we want you to take off the designation of the Iranian Revolutionary Guard, right? We're going to remove that so they're using the deal as leverage and we thought the whole time what Iran is going to do is Use this deal and hold the entire world hostage to [00:38:00] it because every single time the US would push back We thought this in 2015 you push back in Syria.
You push back in Iraq. You push back in Yemen Iran's gonna say if you do that We're going to walk away from the deal because you've, you're so desperate to get on that cruise control heading over that cliff and the whole point, look, we have to ask why are they doing this? Why does the, why is the administration doing this?
I mean, they're not stupid. They see this and, and, and the answer, it's the same answer of why the, there was an appeasement policy in the 1930s. Why did it happen? Was Chamberlain a fool? Were the people who backed the policy of appeasement immoral? I mean, you see the stuff, the reports today. You read cables and historians about the French and the British and the American ambassadors from Berlin cabling back to their capitals.
[00:39:00] And it's all there. It's all there, Hitler building up this war machine. And in hindsight, it looks so ridiculous. You gotta ask yourself, why were these people so blind? Why did they not open their eyes and open their ears? And why did they do nothing? And the answer was, they didn't see and hear because they didn't want to see and hear.
Because they wanted to avoid confrontation at all costs. The reason why you had appeasement in the 1930s is because of World War I. You had 16 million people who died in World War I. The dumbest war in human history. Trench warfare. An entire generation died on the fields of Belgium and parts of France.
And an entire generation of leaders is elected to avoid conflict at all costs. That's their charge. We're going to avoid And when all the information is coming in, they can see it. I mean, what, people don't know what Iran is doing? They're building underground bunkers under mountains. That's a peaceful [00:40:00] nuclear program.
They're building ICBMs, what, to launch medical isotopes into outer space? Only in cartoons do you put TNT on ICBMs. You know, the Wile E. Coyote thing, where you fire it to the other side of the world. In the real world, You only payload that you put on an ICBM is a nuclear payload so everybody knows what they're doing They just want to avoid confrontation at all costs because of Afghanistan and because of Iraq which is a totally different scale there You were talking about 16 million here.
You're talking about 000 I'm not saying that we're not horrors in those wars, but you just have the winds of appeasement and Let me just say the head of the IAEA. I was blown away by this eight months ago said you don't enrich uranium At the level that Iran is enriching uranium if you are not Do not have ambitions for military capability with, with your nuclear resources.
A. B, you aren't so resistant to inspections [00:41:00] if you aren't trying to hide something that most likely would lead to some military, nuclear military capability. So the head of the IAEA, not exactly some like neocon, you know, from the United States was saying this. And I was thinking, why is this not a massive story?
Because they don't want it to be a story. Because they want to bury the story, because they don't want to deal with the consequences of what that means. So when Israel goes into the heart of Tehran and takes out the nuclear archive, and it's obvious that they lied about everything. Everyone was on TV. I remember the day that Netanyahu does that press conference.
So I was You have, you have people who are going out on TV and say, Ah, this is nothing new, this doesn't, I mean, it was ridiculous. Right. They didn't even know the information. They are willfully blind. They do not want to open their eyes. They do not want to open their ears because they want to avoid having to have a military confrontation with Iran.
That, to them, is the worst scenario. The policy of the [00:42:00] United States government under Obama and Biden, understand this. The policy is not to prevent a nuclear Iran. The pro The policy is to contain a nuclear Iran. There's a big difference, and the difference boils down to one central question. If you're only left with two choices, like, no one wants to have wars, but if you only have two choices, military confrontation with Iran Nuclear armed Iran.
Which is worse? That's the question. For Israel, it's clear that a nuclear armed is worse. But both are terrible for Israel. Actually, worse for Israel than it would be for the United States. Because if the United States tomorrow would get into a military confrontation with Iran, they're not going to hit New York.
They can't reach New York yet. They're not going to hit, uh, Boca Raton. They're not going to hit Chicago. But they can, through Hezbollah, they can hit Israel's north. They can also hit the Saudis, they can hit the Emiratis, so the forces in the region are the ones that would pay the price for a nuclear, for a military confrontation.
But if you ask Israelis what's worse, we'll say, clearly, a [00:43:00] nuclear armed Iran is worse, because that becomes a threat to the very survival of the country. It also, by the way, nuclearizes the entire Middle East. Because if Iran is gonna get nuclear weapons, you can bet that the Saudis are gonna speak to the Pakistanis, they're gonna get their own nuclear weapons, the Turks are gonna want it, the Egyptians are gonna want it, and then you're gonna turn The Middle East, which is the most unstable place on the planet, into a nuclear tinderbox.
But if you ask the Biden administration and the Obama administration, and when it comes to the nuclear deal, it's the same thing. All the same players are there. If you ask them honestly, hopefully you'll get one on your podcast, and just ask them a simple question. Which one is worse? Military confrontation with Iran, or a nuclear armed Iran?
The answer for them is a military confrontation with Iran. And I'll tell you how they'll explain it to themselves. How they'll justify it. They will say that a military action will set Iran back 2 3 years, and they'll reconstitute their nuclear program, and they'll end up getting nuclear weapons because they have the knowledge.
Right? You can't bomb the [00:44:00] knowledge out of their heads. And you're going to have all the negative fallout of a potential military confrontation, but they're going to end up in the same place. So I would, two answers to that, which I said years ago. I said, first of all, it's not true what you're saying about the knowledge.
I mean, if you take the hundred best nuclear scientists in the United States, and you put them on a desert island with no centrifuges and no uranium, they cannot spin each other, uh, fissile material for a bomb. It's absurd. That's number one. Number two is, When Begin made the decision to bomb Osirak. So this is 1981, to bomb the nuclear reactor in Iraq.
Right, so Israeli intel at the time told him that it would delay the program up to two years. And now we're 41 years and counting. So, to assume that that's the case, now I personally believe That if the United States is prepared for a military confrontation, there won't be one. Because I think the last thing that the Iranians want is a potential military confrontation with the United States.
And [00:45:00] when the Iranians faced the clear red line, they actually were deterred. It happened twice already. No diplomatic process with the Iranians. There weren't even crippling sanctions then. In 2003, You will recall, when that invasion in Iraq happened, and Saddam is pulled out of that spider hole, it has an immediate impact on two weapons of mass destruction programs.
One was in Libya, where they got out of that business. The second was in Iran, where they stopped, because they were put in the axis of evil, so they knew their name was on a list. They saw Afghanistan, Iraq, and they said, Wait a second. We don't want to give Bush a smoking gun. And they stopped. Only military, credible military threat, they stopped.
The second time was about a decade later, 2012. Netanyahu goes to the U. N. and he does his, uh, his red line, his famous red lines, you know, on the Yeah, where he held up the, the, the chart, the graphic and he showed where Iran was and what the red line was in terms of their Which was a [00:46:00] very difficult thing to actually hold that up and use the graphic and speak because he doesn't because he doesn't speak with a teleprompter so that one day I'll tell the story of how complicated that actually was.
He, he, he drew the draw, we draw this Wile E. Coyote bomb and he draws the red line. That was a red line for Israeli military action which at that time was if Iran was going up vertically they had already gotten a bombs worth of three and a half percent. They then were working on a bomb's worth of 20%, which is the medium level.
The next level is 90. And the road from to to 3 12 is much harder than from 3 12 to 20, which is much harder than from 20 to 90. You sort of fly up as the centrifuge gets Sort of, it's thicker at the lower percentages, and then it gets easier and you can whip it up, basically. Um, so when he put that red line, he said if Iran has a bombs worth of medium enriched uranium, that's Israel's red line.
And guess what? Iran went up that vertical. They did it for like another two, three weeks just to show that it wasn't [00:47:00] the speech that changed it. But then they changed their policy, and they started to stockpile many bombs worth of the lowest enriched uranium. But because they didn't want to cross that line.
So I believe the right policy on Iran is a credible military threat of a breakout. Iran must know. And it's harder to make that threat today. After Afghanistan, it's harder to make that threat today. To convince them. Meaning after the withdrawal from, the botched withdrawal from Afghanistan last August.
Yeah, because do they really believe that the United States is going to take action? I think it's really hard to do. So somebody's going to have to put their credibility on the line in such a dramatic way. And maybe Congress here can play a role. Like if you have bipartisan support for a clear red line and Biden is saying, I'm going to take action to stop you.
I actually don't believe they're going to cross it. And it will avoid a potential military conflict. But you need a credible military threat. You need crippling sanctions, which you actually had only since 2019 because people forget Trump did not withdraw from the deal right away. It took him a year and a [00:48:00] half.
And then it was another year that he gave them waivers. To continue to sell oil on the financial markets strong pressures economic pressures on Iran was only 2019 and the third thing that you need to do is really reach out to the Iranian people who are not It's not the enemy of the United States.
It's not the enemy of Israel. They're your ally in this struggle against the regime. That's a three legged policy that would be an effective policy and is an alternative to simply a fire sale, cruise control, heading over the cliff, which is a disaster for Israel, a disaster for our Arab neighbors, and ultimately is a disaster for the United States.
As I never stop reminding people, Israel and Iran are on the same continent. So those intercontinental ballistic missiles, They're not for us. Right. They're for you. Okay. So I want to, um, transition here just, just for a few minutes before we wrap. You're an astute observer of American power and the role American power plays in the world and in geopolitics.
The discussion about I'd like [00:49:00] to see some American power. Well, let's talk about that. I haven't been observing it lately. Okay. Okay. So, imagining. You're, you're, you have an imagination about the, about the reach and, and potential influence of American power. How do you think the Biden administration Uh, used American power in the lead up to Russia's invasion of Ukraine.
Do you think, I mean, you've said, I think, uh, I know you're, you're a former boss, Prime Minister Netanyahu, uh, when I, when I recently saw him, just simply made the point, no country wants to wind up in a military situation with the United States of America. That's the bottom line. So as long as all these bad actors around the world think there is a risk.
Whether or not the U. S. actually deploys troops is a secondary, that's not the question. The question is, do countries around the world think it's a real possibility? And if they do, nobody wants it. How do you think about that and how the, the U. S. handled the lead up to Russia's invasion of Ukraine? Well, I think that rule is [00:50:00] true certainly for the non superpowers.
It's a hundred percent true. And you really, if you're willing to use force. In a judicious way, but you're really willing to use it and you back up, uh, you know, your diplomacy with a very big stick rather than a twig, uh, you can actually deter a lot of bad actors around the world. That, I think the situation with Russia and China is different because I think here you have mutual deterrence.
And the reason why you don't have a no fly zone over Ukraine now is because Russia has a vast nuclear arsenal, and so people are concerned of a potential escalation. Um, I think it was a mistake for the United States to sort of back down. They had some sort of drill with their nuclear programs and stuff because I think it sent a message of tremendous weakness to Russia.
Um, but I think America in general can deter. All these non superpower actors. What you're dealing with, with [00:51:00] potentially aggressive superpowers, is you really have to arm your allies. And you have to arm them early. And if you believe there's a possibility of an invasion, and apparent, one thing that was very good was American Intel, before.
They did a very good job seeing this thing. Um, you have to make sure that you get those arms into the country to deter a potential invasion. And I think the message The lesson from Ukraine for a lot of countries is to make sure that they arm themselves. But look, this whole thing could have gone very differently had the Ukrainians folded.
And I think probably the miscalculation that Putin made was that this thing would be wrapped up in four or five days. Why that is, who told him, I don't know. But Zelensky, I think, was a wild card. No one expected him to be this kind of powder keg and dynamo. Churchill in a green shirt, sitting in the middle of Kiev, giving, you know, televised addresses, making it clear that he wasn't bailing, that he wasn't going to lead.
The [00:52:00] defense of Ukraine from a, from a, from the outskirts of Ukraine or from a foreign country. Yeah, I'm not gonna compare, uh, Zelensky to Churchill. It's David Sanger's line, I'm just paraphrasing. Yeah, he's, yeah, uh, well, he should have a little more respect for Mr. Churchill. Um, but, what I would say is, you know, Churchill did say in May 1940 that the British people were a lion and he provided the roar.
So, in that sense, it was Churchillian because he could have taken the route of the Afghanis. Right. Take the suitcases full of cash, head for the, you know, to board the plane. And he instead holds his ground, shows not, I mean, physical courage, and I think rallies his country, his countrymen, they've shown a tremendous capability to fight.
And they've had minimal support from the outside. And if anything, look, Zelensky It's a double edged sword, his courage, because, I mean, one thing Churchill had was the English Channel between him and, uh, [00:53:00] Germany, and he never surrendered, and eventually the tanks rolled into Berlin. Tanks are not rolling in, the Western powers are not rolling into Moscow, and Russia's in Ukraine.
So you're in a situation now where people are thinking about a compromise and so they ask, well, can Putin actually compromise? Putin can't afford to be vilified. He can't afford to lose, okay? So is there some compromise where he can say is a quote unquote victory? And then you have the problem of giving somebody who's done this something, which it creates a huge problem long term.
But there's also a problem on the Ukrainian side. Having stood up and stood their ground and done all of these heroic things, how does he work out a potential compromise? And, and, and Zelensky taking that That strong stand has also led to the devastation that you've had in the Ukraine, like, so he saved his country, but his country is getting pounded and pummeled and is in rubble, parts of the country.
By the way, the person who Zelensky may have saved, [00:54:00] the country that should really honor Zelensky, the Taiwanese. Taiwanese might be saved because they, I'm sure that China is looking at this and if they thought that the world's attention, you know, would not be there and the Taiwanese have got to be thinking if we can hold out for a few days, then we can rally a lot of people to our side and put in tremendous support.
Taiwan's government, I'm getting as many weapons as I can into the country, uh, in order to make the price of invasion so high. You know, many years ago, I went to see a, uh, a speech. It was Richard Perle, actually. It was in Britain. This was in the early 90s, and it was around the conflict in Bosnia. And he said something very interesting in the speech.
He said, The Bosnians have to make themselves indigestible to the Serbs. So he said, why did Switzerland not get attacked and taken over [00:55:00] by the Nazis in World War II? He said because they had made themselves indigestible. Because they told the Nazis, you can take the trains and We'll go through Switzerland, we'll let you pass through those mountain passes, but you can't stop anywhere.
If you stop those trains in Switzerland, we're gonna blow the mountain passes. And if Switzerland would have blown the mountain passes, the price for Germany would have been, for Nazi Germany, would have been just too high. It's not that they couldn't have conquered, it's just It would've created this indigestion.
So he says the Bosnians have to make themselves indigestible to the Serbs. And I think what Ukraine should teach other countries is you gotta make yourself indigestible to aggressors that aggressors know they may win, but the price they're gonna pay is not simply, is not gonna be worth it. And I think this is what has changed what the United States should have done at the beginning.
And I don't know all the facts in the lead up to it, but I think more should have [00:56:00] been done to give, uh, as Churchill would say, to give the Ukrainians the tools they need, not necessarily to finish the job, but to hold their ground. What, what has happened now is really thanks to the political courage of Zelensky, and to the courage and competency of the Ukrainian, uh, soldiers in the field who are fighting, uh, this aggression.
My contrarian take I generally agree with you, the contrarian take on what China's taking away from this may be think twice before you strike on Taiwan, or think twice before you do a long build up before striking on Taiwan, that maybe the miscalculation that Putin made is he spent years talking about positioning, incrementally Crimea.
Basically signaling over and over that I'm going to do this giving speeches that he was going to do it So gave plenty of time for ukraine to modernize its military to your point much to the credit of zelensky And be [00:57:00] ready for it and actually what China's takeaway from this is be quiet and just strike quickly and they'll build up but yeah, but that's not it's it's not mutually exclusive those two things and and it could be that the situation with Russia with a ground invasion and where they have to put their troops requires a buildup that you don't necessarily have in the case of China, but you're right.
It doesn't make any sense because the nature of democratic politics is that is that. It takes time to sort of build up through the system. People see these images, had the war been over in day five or day ten, all of this thing would have been behind them. But the nature of politics and democracies is, people see it, they demand action of their leaders, you ratchet up pressures, it keeps going up, up, up, up, up.
Eventually, by the way, people start, their interest starts to taper off. Right. That's what happens also in like 50 minutes of a podcast. All of a sudden the interest starts to taper off. Yeah, no, no, not this one. Because they want to Just to keep it And we haven't, and we haven't even talked about the Jets, but the point that I wanted to make Yeah, I'd like to go after the Jets on your podcast.
We'll spend a minute on that before we go, but [00:58:00] go ahead. As a lifelong and long suffering, uh, Dolphins fan. Dolphins fan. Exactly. An AFC East rival of the Jets. That's right. Um, but I think, uh, now that I'm just, I'm thinking about the Jets and how much I can't stand them, so it throws, throws off my, uh, chain.
But what I wanted to say was that, uh, with democracy sometimes they lose that focus. And Putin may think that after 40 days and after how he's now moving to the East, the television stories, they're telling the same story day after day. By day 50 interests will reign. And then he'll be able to do what he wants to do.
So to sustain it, I think Zelensky himself said about a week ago, he's worried that people are going to lose interest. I worry about it too. Uh, I mean, we saw it with Afghanistan, where there was tremendous wall to wall coverage and interest in the botched withdrawal from Afghanistan. And then people moved on.
Uh, I would say what's What's different about this, and I'm struck by, if you look at the polling, I, I, it's the first real bipartisan consensus I've seen in this country in a long [00:59:00] time. Majorities in both parties view Putin as a serious threat that the United States, not Western Europe, not Eastern Europe.
Although those two, but the United States has to deal with, and I see this in poll after poll, I see this in polls on Republican primary races I'm looking at, in terms of Putin and Russia and foreign policy is a real ballot issue, right up there, like not far behind inflation, and you're seeing that among Democrats too, um, it's, it's, I mean Well you can thank, you can thank Trump for that, because before Trump, there was a clear difference between the two parties when it came to Russia, that you remember, and you'll remember this well in that debate, with Romney and Obama in 2012 when Romney was asked who's the greatest threat and he said Russia and he was mocked and they said ah, the 1980s wants their foreign policy back.
Well, we might like a Reagan back from the 1980s. It's funny, Tony Blinken recently was speaking to uh, this, this, this briefing the Senate caucus, the Senate and members of the U. S. Senate and he [01:00:00] specifically acknowledged to Romney that he was right. Yeah, that's great. After the fact that you acknowledge it.
But, but the point, the point is that Because of Trump, and the relationship with Putin, and the allegations that were made, I remember in Washington when I was here for the first time seeing a shift, that the Democratic Party became the more hawkish party in Russia. On Russia. On Russia. Yeah. And that has changed the dynamic, and you're right, now when he comes in, he's seen as an aggressor across the board, and it's one of the few Across the political spectrum.
Across the political spectrum, and it's one of the few issues where Republicans and Democrats agree on. I mean, I think it's probably on Russia now. Don't send troops to the Middle East, which I think connects to Obama, Biden, and Trump altogether. And some semblance of an understanding that China represents a huge Oh yeah.
You see it That's about it. When it comes to The Chicago, uh, World Affairs Council does this annual poll on U. S. attitudes and foreign policy on the [01:01:00] question of, uh, should, should the U. S. deploy military force? to defend Taiwan from a Chinese, from a China military threat. The numbers, they do this poll every year, the numbers through the last few years have gone through the roof.
And that can only happen through a bipartisan consensus. You don't get that kind of rise of just one side. And one, and one good thing that happened, there was a poll a few weeks ago, like three weeks ago, which Americans did not support, you know, sending troops into Ukraine, but they asked the question. If there would be an attack against a NATO member, do you support America take military action?
And I was pleasantly surprised that the number was as high as it was, and there was this bipartisan consensus. And I think that makes the chances of Russia going into one of these Baltic countries lower. Because believe me, in the Kremlin They'll read those polls. Right. And back in Beijing, they'll read those polls.
And that might deter them from doing things that they otherwise might. Before we go, we do have to spend [01:02:00] one minute as, on sports, as an Israeli who, who is not only an astute observer of American power, but an astute observer of American sports. American football. Um, I, I actually think while the Jets will never lead the AFC East anytime soon with the Buffalo Bills there, they do have the potential to By, uh, overco uh, overcome the Patriots, and most certainly the Dolphins.
And I know the Dolphins are your team. So you're just gonna rub my nose into that? Yeah, yeah, yeah, absolutely. I mean, it's rare that I get this opportunity as a Jets fan to, to, you know, rub a rival's team nose into, in being behind the Jets. Um, you do agree that the Jets are actually better positioned. I mean, with the exception of Tariq Hale going to the Dolphins, which is not inconsequential.
Um, the Dolphins have been kind of lackluster. Yeah, we've been lackluster for about a half a century at this point. But we do have a two word answer to Jets fans and Patriots fans and other, all other fans of football. Perfect [01:03:00] season. That's our two word answer. Yeah, but what year was that? Listen, that's fine.
It's 1972, but But we are now, we are, we are now left It's a year after I was born, you're hanging on to 1916. Yeah, and we're gonna, and we're gonna hang on to it for a long time, because So, look, the Jets hang on to Joe Namath, they have Joe Namath showing up at games, rolling. What we have is the schadenfreude.
You know, which is this German word that taking pleasure in the suffering of others. So the only thing Miami Dolphins fans have at this point is Schadenfreude. We wait and we look at it around game five. Who's 5 0? Okay, and we're hoping that the number is like three or four teams. By 10. If it's 10 0, we start getting a little nervous, and all we want is for somebody to be tagged with a lose, with that loss, so we can have one thing.
But Tyreek Hill, it'll be interesting if, I don't know if the Dolphins have a quarterback that can actually They may get Tom Brady. I'm telling you, don't underestimate those rumors. The Buccaneers thing is a, is a, is a, uh, is a decoy. They signed with the [01:04:00] Buccaneers with, he signed with the Buccaneers with the understanding that he would ultimately get traded to the Dolphins.
He lives in the Miami area now. He'd rather live in Miami and work in Miami than, than work in Tampa Bay. As we say in Hebrew, halavai, that he would go. One problem may be he might, you know, if Tyree Hill takes off, I don't know if Tom can reach him. I actually think he can't. Anymore. I, I'm actually, as, as someone who, who has just hated the idea of Tom Brady being in our division because he was just constantly decimating my jets, uh, I'm still in awe of watching the man.
And any. person approaching middle age, whether they're a professional athlete or not, should celebrate Tom Brady's success. May he live long and prosper. Cause it is, cause we get to point to that and say, you know, Moses to 120 and Brady to, you know, playing football into his 50s. Yeah. I, I could have been there.
I could have been there, right? Exactly. Cause he's still our age. Yeah. More power to him. You just took a different [01:05:00] career, but like, And that's why this weekend. Every single person worth his salt is saying, go tiger, go tiger. Exactly. Exactly. All right, Ron Dermer, thank you for joining the conversation.
Again, I encourage our listeners to listen to Diplomatically Incorrect, which you can get on Apple, Spotify, wherever you get your podcasts, and we will get you back here. Maybe I'll come back, I'll come to you in Israel, and we'll do this again. Very good. Look forward to it. Thanks for doing this.
That's our show for today. To keep up with Ron Dermer, you can follow him on Twitter. He's at AmbDermer, like short for Ambassador, A M B D E R M E R, and you can also see a lot of his work at the JINSA website, that's J I N S A dot org. Call Me Back is produced by Alon Benatar. Until next time, I'm your host, Dan Senor.[01:06:00]