Middle East priorities

PAUL BUTLER, HOST: It’s Thursday the 22nd of August.

Glad to have you along for today’s edition of The World and Everything in It. Good morning, I’m Paul Butler.

MYRNA BROWN, HOST: And I’m Myrna Brown.

First up on The World and Everything in It: Middle East policy.

While the Democratic National Convention is taking place in Chicago, Secretary of State Antony Blinken has been traveling between Egypt and Qatar. He and other negotiators are making a so-called final push to get a cease-fire deal between Israel and Hamas.

What are the foreign policy objectives of this year’s DNC, and how do they connect with what’s happening in the Middle East?

BUTLER: Joining us now to talk about it is Rich Goldberg. He served the Trump administration as a member of the National Security Council staff, and is now a senior advisor for the Foundation for Defense of Democracies. This week we’re talking to him from the Democratic National Convention in Chicago.

Good morning, Rich.

RICH GOLDBERG, GUEST: Good morning.

BUTLER: Well, the country has primarily been focused on the DNC keynote speakers like former President Barack Obama and former First Lady and Secretary of State Hillary Clinton. What else is going on there that we should be aware of, especially related to foreign policy?

GOLDBERG: Well, there's two things that are going on. One is outside the convention halls. There are a number of, I would call them pro-Hamas demonstrators, or rioters. This is not pro-Palestinian, to be clear. This is anti-semitic. This is anti Jew, anti-Israel, and we're seeing American flags being burned. This is anti-American as well. I mean, at its core, they hate America for standing for democracy, for standing with Israel, and they're trying to silence any Jewish communal voice in American politics. So that's happening outside the DNC.

What's happening inside the DNC? Unfortunately, there is a pocket of those folks that are aligned inside. We've seen applause lines when speakers like AOC, Senator Warnock mentioned Gaza. And we even saw the President of the United States, for those who stayed up late enough to see him, around midnight on the East Coast, talking about how the protesters, these rioters I just talked about outside, have a point, he said.

So clearly, this issue is one that that is a problematic inside the base. The platform was released by the DNC. It does pledge support for Israel, pledges to combat the BDS, the boycott campaign. Pledges to prevent Iran from acquiring a nuclear weapon. At the same time, lambasts the Trump administration for leaving the Iran nuclear deal that I and others believe would have paved the way to a nuclear weapon for Iran, gives a lot of discussion of a two state solution and nods to the Palestinian cause.

That's the foreign policy piece so far. But as people have seen, the speeches without those nods, other than those nods to Gaza, you're not really hearing a lot of foreign policy. You're really seeing a focus on domestic issues, abortion being number one, some of the sort of class warfare type rhetoric that's been classic in past campaigns, and I think in general, steering away from from foreign policy.

BUTLER: So you mentioned the platform. You know, there's a 92 page platform document that's been approved. And tucked near the back is where the supposed priorities are for Middle East policy. Rich with Tehran within reach of nuclear weapons. What kind of Iran policy do you think the next American president should lead with?

GOLDBERG: Well, there's no question that we now have two different ways of approaching the region in the last four to eight years that we can now look at. We have maximum pressure on Iran and maximum support to Israel, and we have what I would call maximum deference to Iran and pressure on Israel.

The first produced the Abraham Accords and put Iran on its knees. Nearly broke Qasim Soleimani, its terror in chief, dead, its godfather of its nuclear weapons program, Mohsen Fakhrizadeh, dead. Budgets for terrorist groups going down. And then we saw the reversal to this maximum deference program, allowing sanctions relief for Iran, pumping Iran with more cash, no further expansion of the Abraham Accords, no Saudi-Israeli normalization that we had all hoped for coming after the Abraham Accords, and instead, we have an eight front war for the last almost 11 months that Iran has been waging in the Middle East with the cash that they have available because of the deferential policy, the accommodationist approach.

So I would argue whoever wins should take stock of where we are today and just face reality. Iran is on the one yard line of a nuclear weapons capability. They are now apparently working on an actual weapon through computer modeling, not just the fissile material, through the production of enriched uranium. That means we now have to look at other options, not just balancing sanctions, political rhetoric. We're talking about the need for potential military action soon to prevent a catastrophic event for the world and making sure our ally Israel has our support, not our back, not our pressure.

BUTLER: Well, as we wrap up this morning, focusing in on that ceasefire deal, it seems like it's a big priority for the White House and the Democrats. Can you tell us where things stand in terms of what Israel has put on the table compared to Hamas?

GOLDBERG: Yeah, basically every single time the United States has come back to Israel saying, can you compromise, can you can you come closer to the Hamas position? Let me pause there by just saying, think about that when you when you're talking to Israel and saying, “Can you come closer to the Hamas position,” this is a terrorist organization.

But where it stands is every time they still have come to Israel, because in the end, the families of the hostages in Israel want their loved ones back. And there's protests inside Israel, you know, saying, Give Hamas whatever it wants, just get our loved ones back. You have the United States come and say, Well, is there anything more you can give them? Give them more terrorists to let out of jail for every hostage they release. Israel says, Fine. Agree that you're going to withdraw all the Israeli forces from various areas inside Gaza day one. Israel says fine.

But there's a couple of bottom lines where Israel just says we can't commit national suicide for you just to get the ceasefire, they can't remove their forces from the Egyptian Gaza border, this area in Rafah it's called the Philadelphi Corridor. You're hearing about in the news. Israel has found, now, according to its defense minister, more than 150 tunnels connecting Gaza into Egypt. This is where Hamas has been getting all of its weapons for years. And so the idea that you're gonna say, well, we'll just put the Egyptians back in charge of this border, that's just saying Hamas come right back. That's the major holdup right now. There's a few other key areas where they don't want to withdraw forces from to prevent Hamas from retaking control of Gaza as you work on the day after.

And so I would just say, rather than going back to the Israelis and saying, please just, we just need this ceasefire, remove your forces so Hamas can come back and take over Gaza again, and you might have another October 7 and Iran wins on all fronts, how about we start looking at actually putting more pressure on Iran and on the Qataris in Doha that have been sponsors of Hamas, and on the Egyptians that have clearly been complicit in the tunnels, and on Lebanon that hosts Hezbollah and Hamas and Islamic Jihad and all of these actors, rather than saying to Israel, hey, keep caving so that Hamas can hold out for more caves in the future?

BUTLER: A lot to consider and a lot to keep our eyes on. Thank you so much. Rich Goldberg is Senior Advisor for the Foundation for Defense of Democracies and a former member of the National Security Council staff. Rich, thanks so much for joining us today.

GOLDBERG: You bet.

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