A Wider Middle East War, With Steven Cook

LINDSAY:
Welcome to The President's Inbox, a CFR podcast about the foreign policy challenges facing the United States. I'm Jim Lindsay, director of Studies at the Council on Foreign Relations. This week's topic is a wider Middle East war. With me to discuss fears that we are on the brink of a wider war in the Middle East is Steven Cook. Steven is the Eni Enrico Mattei Senior Fellow for Middle East and Africa Studies here at the Council. He's the author of four books on Middle East politics, the most recent of which is The End of Ambition, America's Past, Present, and Future in the Middle East, which was released earlier this year. Steven is also a columnist for Foreign Policy magazine. Steven, as always, thank you for sitting down and chat with me.

COOK:
Thanks for having me back.

LINDSAY:
We are talking here, Steven, a few days before the Labor Day. A lot has happened since we spoke in early June. A ceasefire in Gaza remains elusive. In late July, Israel killed Ismail Haniyeh, a top Hamas leader by exploding a bomb inside the Tehran guesthouse where he was staying. That prompted Iranian pledges to retaliate. Israel also killed a senior leader of Hezbollah with an airstrike on a building in a Beiruti suburb. Just days ago, Israel launched a preemptive strike on Hezbollah missile and rocket sites. It says we're preparing to attack Israel, and as we were talking, Israel has launched raids against what it says are Palestinian militants in the occupied West Bank. Help me make sense of everything that's happening.

COOK:
Well, Jim, it is in one sense, extraordinarily complex and in another sense, pretty straightforward, and that is that Israel is fighting adversaries on a number of fronts, certainly in Lebanon, obviously Gaza, the West Bank is something that Israeli leaders are very, very concerned about. And then you have adversaries further afield like the Houthis in Yemen. So there already is in many ways a regional conflict. The question is, will it become more intense? Will it draw the Iranians in? Will Israel and the Iranians square off again in the same way that they did perhaps last April? What is the Iranian response to the killing of Ismail Haniyeh? The Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, promised a punishing response, yet it hasn't come yet.

LINDSAY:
Well, let me ask you, Steven, why haven't we seen a punishing response? Iran in the past has been quick to retaliate and make good on its vows. That hasn't happened so far. It's been a month.

COOK:
It's an interesting development because the Iranians made a very, very big deal. After all, the Israelis who are suspected of killing Ismail Haniyeh did so in Tehran in an Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps guesthouse on the occasion of the new Iranian president's inauguration. It was provocative to say the least, and the Iranians were very quick to say that a punishing response, and they talked about a multi-dimensional response, a coordinated response among Iran, Hezbollah, Hamas, as well as the Houthis in Yemen.

LINDSAY:
Those are the groups we often refer to as the "axis of resistance."

COOK:
Correct. Add to that "axis of resistance," Iranian-backed militias in both Syria and Iran, which we're also expected to take part in this multidimensional response. But as you point out, it hasn't happened yet, and the big question that analysts are asking themselves is why. And there seems to be fairly straightforward questions. Immediately after the assassinations of Fuad Shukr, the military advisor to the leader of Hezbollah in Lebanon, and then shortly thereafter, the killing of Ismail Haniyeh, the United States started deploying a lot of force into the Middle East.

LINDSAY:
Well, I think we should just dwell on that for a second, Steven, because it is a considerable show of force. We have eighteen warships in the region, including two aircraft carriers, eleven destroyers, and a submarine. Now usually the United States Navy doesn't like telling the world where its nuclear submarines are. Here, it went out of the way to say, so this is an attack submarine, so it has the ability to fire conventionally armed Tomahawk cruise missiles, and it is presumably within range of Iranian territory.

COOK:
That's exactly right. In addition to that, you had the deployment of a number of Air Force assets as well, including F-22 Raptors, which are among the most advanced fighters in the U.S. arsenal at one point, or still the United States has more combat aircraft in the region than in the entire inventory of the Israeli Air Force. So it's a very, very considerable show of force, unfortunately.

LINDSAY:
And this is at a time where the Biden administration has been talking about rebalancing toward Asia, confronting China's rising power, and building up America's deterring capability in the region. So this is a significant decision by the Biden administration.

COOK:
A very significant decision. The Biden administration came into office believing that it could actually de-emphasize the Middle East and the words of now Secretary of State Tony Blinken during his confirmation hearings, use that word specifically, "de-emphasize" the Middle East. But as President Biden said, "The Middle East just sucks you back in." It just sucks you back.

LINDSAY:
You may want to leave the Middle East, the Middle East doesn't want you to leave.

COOK:
Want to leave. Exactly. Exactly. So there's a significant amount of American force in the region. The United States has signaled to the Iranians very clearly that the United States will help defend Israel and that any Iranian attack on Israel that causes a major amount of damage.

LINDSAY:
As have some U.S. NATO allies. I mean, Britain and France played a role in striking down the Iranian attack back in April.

COOK:
That's right. And so there's in a way, deterrence by punishment, by promise of punishment. And then of course you have the Israelis, their own demonstration of force and the preemptive strike a number of weeks ago on Hezbollah sites demonstrated one significant Israeli firepower and technical proficiency. They hit six thousand rocket launchers in the course of a number of hours, which it's true that Hezbollah was able to still fire somewhere in the neighborhood of two hundred rockets and drones, but this was not the devastating response that either Hezbollah nor their Iranian patrons had promised.

LINDSAY:
Put that in perspective for me, Steven, because I've heard time and time again that Hezbollah has something on the order of a hundred thousand to a hundred fifty thousand missiles, rockets, drones, but we're talking about a response to the Israeli attack, preemptive attack, that was in the hundreds.

COOK:
This is, I think a very, very important point, and I don't think that analysts know quite enough about Hezbollah's arsenal and its capability. We've been talking about a hundred thousand to a hundred fifty thousand rockets and precision guided munitions over a number of years now.

LINDSAY:
So could that be just an exaggeration?

COOK:
It might be an exaggeration. At the same time, it might very well be that since October of 2023, the Israelis have been working assiduously to cripple Hezbollah. They have killed about five hundred Hezbollah fighters, including very senior people in the organization. They have attacked Hezbollah infrastructure in southern Lebanon. They have made it clear that they know where Hezbollah is and where its munitions are located.

LINDSAY:
And obviously if you have missiles or rockets, but the launchers themselves get destroyed—

COOK:
Those things are useless.

LINDSAY:
—the missiles and rockets don't do anything for you.

COOK:
Exactly. There's also a sense that Hezbollah has been somewhat intimidated by this demonstration of firepower on the part of the Israelis. The Hezbollah leader, Hassan Nasrallah, has talked about devastating responses, but has never yet done much more than a few hundred rockets here, a few hundred... Right, now for Israelis who are living in the Galilee, that's a terrible thing, but it is not the devastating response that Hezbollah has promised and that many had feared.

LINDSAY:
Steven, how much of this has to do with the fact that Hezbollah's interests aren't the same as Iran and that Nasrallah has to keep his people together and they don't want to feel that they're being used as pawns for Iranian interests?

COOK:
First, there's a number of political dynamics that are underway here. Hezbollah is not popular in Lebanon. If you talk to many Lebanese, they don't want war. They don't want Hezbollah to drag them into war.

LINDSAY:
And they see Hezbollah's bringing war upon them.

COOK:
Right. That's exactly right. And so Hassan Nasrallah has to tread carefully here. At the same time, Iran sees Hezbollah as its second strike capability. If the Israelis do a lot of damage to Hezbollah, if Hezbollah really gets into the fight or Iran throws Hezbollah into the fight, and there's a tremendous amount of damage to Hezbollah and its arsenal that leaves the Iranians and their nuclear program vulnerable to both Israeli and American attacks. So there's a certain amount of caution that you detect in both what Hezbollah is doing and what the Iranian leadership is doing. I would say that in Lebanon, the escalation risk really lies with Israel rather than Hezbollah.

LINDSAY:
And I will note that in the wake of that attack of 150 rockets and missiles that Hezbollah launched in response that Hezbollah announced that, "Our military operation for today has been completed and accomplished." I'll just say from a basic bean counting point of view, it was a one-sided exchange with the Israelis.

COOK:
Right.

LINDSAY:
But I want to pick up on that last point that you raised, Steven, about the escalatory risk lying with Israel. I have seen a lot of commentators in Israel and outside of Israel, liberals and conservatives, argue that the real risk here is from Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. That whether for strategic reasons or domestic political reasons, he is hoping to try to get Iran to attack because he wants the United States to go after Iran with a punishing response that could include up to destroying Iran's nuclear weapons program. Is that a reasonable assessment? Is that just wild-eyed speculation? How do you sort out those arguments?

COOK:
There's a lot of speculation about Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu's motivations. Some of it is the result of what I've called the other BDS, "Bibi Derangement Syndrome," Bibi being the nickname of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. He's certainly a calculating and cynical character. The question is whether he's really maneuvering the United States into a conflict or not. When I talk about Israel being the escalation risk here, particularly when it comes to Lebanon, it is the fact that the Lebanese, as you point out, said, "Our military operations are over and they're a success," that may be okay with Hezbollah to have fired two hundred rockets at the Israelis, and they go back to this tit-for-tat that has been going on since October 2003. For the Israelis, that's not enough. Hezbollah is up on the Israeli border. The Israelis have felt it's necessary to evacuate. The numbers vary sixty, eigthy thousand Israeli citizens—

LINDSAY:
But it's disrupted life in northern Israel.

COOK:
It's disrupted life in northern Israel, and it's actually disrupted life in southern Lebanon as well. What the Israelis say is Hezbollah needs to abide by UN Security Council Resolution 1701, which brought a conflict between Hezbollah and Israel to an end in 2006. And among a range of things that this security council resolution calls for is dismantling Hezbollah and prohibiting any forces in southern Lebanon south of the Litani River. Now, no one believes that Hezbollah is going to be dismantled, but the Israelis at least want a diplomatic agreement that would push Hezbollah to the Litani River. That doesn't seem to be in the cards. I mean, Hezbollah has said, "We're not going anywhere." That means that if the Israelis are serious, they're going to have to do that militarily with a ground incursion to push these guys way, way back. And that's a very significant undertaking and would be a very significant escalation.

LINDSAY:
Let's put aside the argument, Steven, that Prime Minister Netanyahu is being driven by ulterior motivations and sort of assess his argument that Israel needs to reestablish deterrence with all of these groups, not just Iran, but all the members of the axis of resistance. That the attack last October 7th showed Israel's vulnerability, showed that Hamas was willing to risk what has become a devastating retaliation and that the only way Israel can live in this dangerous neighborhood is if it shows that it is willing to withstand international criticism and to go after the groups and leaders who threaten it.

COOK:
This is an argument that the Israelis have been using and pursuing, and that's the argument that has held sway within the Israeli military and security establishment as well.

LINDSAY:
Would you say it also holds with the Israeli public?

COOK:
For the most part, I think yes, it does. Although the Israeli public, at least anecdotally are growing weary of a war, and the idea that this was a long conflict is something that I think Israelis, they don't see an end to it, but they do feel that it's important to reestablish deterrence. Now, not everybody agrees with that. Consider the amount of firepower that the Israelis have poured into Gaza, Lebanon, the West Bank, as you mentioned in your lead-in. This has not forced Israel's adversaries to stand down. Hamas continues to fight. They pop up in places that the Israelis believe that they have cleared in the Gaza Strip. The recent military operations in the West Bank, specifically in the towns of Jenin and Tulkarm because there is a significant support and there are significant numbers of Hamas militants in these towns, and the Israelis are concerned about the West Bank exploding.
So what is it about this amount of firepower and establishing deterrence? Do they need to do more? You can't imagine more firepower there. So there is an argument, I think it was most eloquently made by my friend and colleague and former intern Michael Koplow from the Israel Policy Forum, which he questioned this idea of reestablishing deterrence because the Israelis have used so much power, it clearly doesn't seem to have worked.

LINDSAY:
Are there any indications that the government of Prime Minister Netanyahu is rethinking its strategy given that it doesn't seem to be working as you described?

COOK:
Thus far, no. Because there's two other indicators that would suggest perhaps maybe it is working. First, northern Israel has been relatively quiet since Israel's preemptive strike. There was one or two drone incursions into Israeli airspace that were quickly taken out by Israel air defenses, but there was an entire day where there wasn't anything in the aftermath of this preemptive strike. Can we read anything into that other than the fact that perhaps Hezbollah is licking its wounds and is dealing with the fact that six thousand, perhaps, rocket launchers were destroyed? But from what we believe we know they have much more in their arsenal, but there is some reason to believe that perhaps Hezbollah has been cowed into at least ratcheting down their operations against Israel.
Second on the Yemen front, after a Houthi drone attack in Tel Aviv at 3:30 in the morning, that killed an Israeli. But I mean an attack on Tel Aviv is clearly an Israeli red line. The Israelis undertook a daylight raid on the Yemeni port of that the Houthis control, and it was quite daring. I mean, they did it in daylight and they did a lot of damage to fuel depots and a variety of other infrastructure in that port from which the Houthis benefit quite a bit. We haven't seen a lot of direct Houthi attacks on Israel since then, although they have continued harassing and attacking shipping in the Red Sea.

LINDSAY:
Do you think that's a function of their desire or lack thereof or their capability or lack thereof?

COOK:
Well, I think the Houthis certainly have a desire. They're ideologically motivated to attack Israel. That is unquestionably the case, and they do have capability. I mean, they have fired ballistic missiles at Israel that Israel's Arrow anti-ballistic missile system has successfully shot down or the U.S. Navy has shot down other ordinance that the Houthis had fired at Israel. You have to wonder though, after this daylight raid in which the Israelis said, "We're not going to actually take a page from the U.S. military's playbook and engage in tit-for-tat for you, we are going to take out some of your strategic assets and let's see what happens."

LINDSAY:
So deterrence by punishment?

COOK:
Deterrence by punishment is exactly what the Israelis are doing. And it did seem for the first time in many months that the Israelis were taking the initiative against the Houthis, taking the initiative against Hezbollah, and certainly in these assassinations of Hamas leadership and Hezbollah leadership basically demonstrating to their adversaries, we can penetrate you at will.

LINDSAY:
Let's talk about what's happening in Gaza, and if you could sort of walk me through where things stand in the pursuit of a ceasefire. I keep reading newspaper articles with the headline that the ceasefire is almost here. It never seems to arrive. What's going on?

COOK:
Yeah. Journalists and columnists have stopped writing ceasefire as imminent column or article because it just doesn't seem to happen. I think there's a number of obstacles to a ceasefire. There's the kind of broader meta obstacle, if that's a term. I don't think that Yahya Sinwar, who is now the leader of Hamas after the assassination of Ismail Haniyeh—

LINDSAY:
He was the planner for the October 7th attacks.

COOK:
Right. And this dispels any notion that there's a difference between the political office and the military wing of Hamas—

LINDSAY:
Good Hamas and bad Hamas.

COOK:
Right. And so it's unclear, and I think evidence would suggest that actually it's quite clear that Yahya Sinwar doesn't believe that they need a ceasefire, that they're winning, that this is a long war against Israel. And that as he has drawn the Israelis into this long grinding conflict in the Gaza Strip, he and Hamas are doing a number of things, they're undermining the Israeli economy. They're undermining Israel's international legitimacy as the very difficult images of Palestinians who've been caught in the crossfire. Lots of children have been killed and maimed in this conflict are flashed across the screens across the globe, and that as long as the Israelis are in Gaza, they can continue to do that, and over a long period of time, this will further erode Israel and undermine its legitimacy and essentially turn the Israelis in on each other and destroy.

LINDSAY:
That seems to suggest two things, Steven. One is that we need to put aside the notion that war is about gaining or losing territory. That's not the kind of war that Hamas is fighting. But the second thing is you're describing what seems to be a mirror image of Prime Minister Netanyahu in the sense that the war he's fighting may be having a terrible toll, but there doesn't seem to be a recalculation or recalibration of war aims or war strategy.

COOK:
I think that that's right because Netanyahu... It's unclear what Netanyahu believes here. He's always maneuvering in the seams of politics. But we do know that his coalition partners, particularly the Minister of Public Security or as the Israelis have joked, Minister of Public Insecurity, Itamar Ben-Gvir, and Netanyahu's finance minister, Bezalel Smotrich, and the people that they represent do not want a ceasefire. Their ultimate goal is annexation of the West Bank and resettlement of the Gaza Strip. So that's the kind of broad political situation that we find ourselves in. Yahya Sinwar doesn't believe he needs a ceasefire and Netanyahu and or his partners don't want one either. These are one staters pitted against each other. Sinwar wants to destroy Israel and Smotrich and Ben-Gvir and others want to annex this territory and bring it under formal Israeli sovereignty.

LINDSAY:
So this is a recipe for continued death and destruction.

COOK:
That's right. But now we get to the negotiations that the United States has been shepherding for all of these months. Then there's a whole host of other issues in the negotiations, at least what's being leaked out, which is that the Israelis are demanding a presence on what's called the Philadelphi Corridor, which is on the Egypt-Gaza border. This is the place where Hamas has been resupplied through smuggling under the frontier with Egypt. The Egyptians object, because this would be a violation of what's called the Philadelphi Accord, which was signed in 2005 on the occasion of Israel's withdrawal from the Gaza Strip. The Israelis also want to remain in Gaza. Sinwar and Hamas say, "No, the Israelis have to get completely out of the Gaza Strip."
And then there's the question of whether even Hamas can comply with Israeli requirements regarding the number and mix of hostages. No one actually really knows how many of the 107 hostages remaining are still alive or how many Hamas actually controls. So at that nuts and bolts level, which is what American officials are talking about, oh, there are negotiating nuts and bolts. There seems to be no sense that there's overlap where anything that they can work out in agreement added to this political situation where there doesn't seem to be a desire among leadership for a ceasefire.

LINDSAY:
And just note, the reason that we don't know whether Hamas holds all of the hostages is that there are other groups that are part of the Palestinian resistance in Gaza that are believed to be holding hostages.

COOK:
Including Islamic Jihad and others, absolutely.

LINDSAY:
So let's talk about the West Bank because we've had this major Israeli military operation, particularly in Jenin. We don't know whether it's going to expand, what the consequences are going to be, but help me understand what it is that the Israelis are trying to accomplish, and do we see any evidence that the Netanyahu government is trying to reel in or constrain Israeli settlers who seem to be acting in many instances with impunity toward their Palestinian neighbors in the West Bank?

COOK:
Let's take your second question first, Jim, and my answer to that is no. The settlers are emboldened by October 7th. They're emboldened by the fact that their people are ministers in this government and that Benjamin—

LINDSAY:
You talked of Ben-Gvir.

COOK:
Ben-Gvir and Smotrich, and they're emboldened by the fact that Netanyahu is beholden to Ben-Gvir and Smotrich. So they've acted with impunity. They're acting with impunity even before Hamas attacked southern Israel in October 2023. Now, when it comes to Israeli military operations in Jenin, Jenin has long been a hotbed of Hamas support and militancy. One of the reasons why there weren't as many Israeli soldiers on the Gaza border on October 7th is many had been rotated over to the West Bank to conduct counter-terror operations in Jenin among other places. So the Israelis are quite concerned that there will be a storm of violence in the West Bank creating another genuine front in this conflict. There is evidence that Iran has been pouring money and weapons into the West Bank from Syria via Jordan. There's been a real deterioration of relations between Jordan and Iran. Not that they were close, but part of this has to do with the fact that Jordan is being used as a conduit.

LINDSAY:
You're right, there have been significant smuggling groups developed over time.

COOK:
That's exactly right. And so the Israelis are trying to nip this in the bud. Tulkarm, another place where they've been conducting operations is right across the green line from Israeli communities. And there's obviously, and you can't blame them, a lot of fear of another attempt like October 7th. And of course the West Bank, there is the wall, there is the fence, but it is a much bigger and more complicated place for the Israelis to operate than for example, in the Gaza Strip. So they are using intelligence and periodically raiding places. They've killed a fair number of Hamas and Islamic Jihad and quite frankly, Fatah, the party that dominates the Palestinian authority in Ramallah, fighters, and they've arrested thousands and thousands of people.

LINDSAY:
Let me widen the aperture, if we may, Steven, and tell me about what's happening in the Arab world. And I'm old enough to remember when we had the October War and it led to the Arab oil embargo, and there was considerable Arab solidarity to bring pressure on Israel, but also Israel's support, particularly the United States. I don't get the impression that that is happening here today. So help me understand the divisions within the Arab world, particularly I think in the Gulf Egypt in terms of dealing with this issue.

COOK:
I think at the popular level, there's a tremendous amount of solidarity with the Palestinians. Unquestionably the case. It's the question at the level of governments. Of course, we talked about Lebanon before. There are a lot of Lebanese who are opposed to Hezbollah and believe that Hezbollah has brought ruin onto the country, but that doesn't, I think, diminish Lebanese solidarity with Palestinians. What's been actually quite remarkable to me is that there have been... Even if you dispute the numbers of Palestinians who have been killed that have been reported over and over again, there's still a large number of Palestinian civilians who've been caught in the crossfire and killed and maimed. I've been surprised through all of that, that Israel's diplomatic relations with countries in the Arab world remain robust. It clearly has become a strategic decision on the part of Emiratis and Bahrainis and Moroccans to maintain, even at a lower level, the Abraham Accords.
Those countries may not, although the Emiratis do, may not have an ambassador in Israel, but that doesn't mean that they've broken diplomatic relations. One of the gateways to Israel, because a lot of international airlines have stopped flying, is through Dubai whose airlines have never stopped flying throughout the conflict. Egypt remains committed to its peace treaty, although it's under a tremendous amount of strain as a result of what's happened in the Gaza Strip. And the Jordanians, also a country with a huge population of Palestinians. I mean by one estimate, more than 65 percent of the Jordanian population is a Palestinian origin yet, despite protest and anger, the Jordanians remain committed to their peace treaty. And the Saudis through all of this say that they are interested in normalization of relations. What's driving, I think the Gulfis in particular is, one, there remains a concern about the Iranians.
I think the faith in the Israelis and their proficiency was shaken for a while, but I think the Israelis have demonstrated over time that the Iranians, they can give back as much as they have gotten over the course of the last eleven months or so. But there's clearly been a strategic decision on the part of leaders in the Gulf that having relations with Israel integration in the region is good for them in terms of economic development, in terms of their security, in terms of ultimately the normalization of the region. You keep hearing leaders in that part of the region talk about wanting to establish normal countries and for their citizens to live in normal countries, and part of that is the further integration of the Middle East.

LINDSAY:
So as you survey the horizon here, Steven, where do you think we are headed and perhaps most important, what do you think U.S. policy should be going forward?

COOK:
Yeah, this is fascinating. I thought about writing some of this. You have this region that's in dual tracks, you do have a regional conflict, and the question that we've been talking about, will it intensify? Will it engulf more countries? It's really two countries, Israel and Iran, and a variety of non-state actors. The non-state actor phenomenon is something that's... We've seen obviously for a long time in the Middle East, but could this pull the region into a conflict so you have that. At the same time, you have a group of countries who remain interested in economic development in internal development. Here I'm thinking about Saudi Arabia in particular, and despite this conflict, despite whatever solidarity their people have with the Palestinian people remain committed to, as we were just talking about, regional integration including Israel, that Israel is an integral part of the region.
There's a certain amount of cognitive dissonance that goes with this. I think American policy is really caught here because President Biden has, I think made two mistakes, two critical mistakes that have an impact on the trajectory of the conflict. First, early on in the conflict, he felt an enormous amount of solidarity with Israel and the Israeli people and believed that by visiting the country, it would give him the kind of influence that was necessary to help shape the Israeli response.

LINDSAY:
If he hugged Israel publicly, Israel would listen to his advice.

COOK:
Right. And I think he miscalculated. I think he misunderstood that the Israelis would interpret that as essentially licensed to pursue the conflict that they define as existential in the way that they believe necessary. And that's where the tension between the United States and Israel has surfaced over and over again over the course of the last eleven months. The other one is the kind of emphasis that the administration has put on getting a ceasefire. Some of that has to do with domestic U.S. politics, but there doesn't seem to me to really be a ceasefire to be had, and that leaves the administration with stark choice. You either go all in with the Israelis and say the best way to get this conflict over is by giving the Israelis that support and let them dismantle Hamas or—

LINDSAY:
Victory.

COOK:
Victory.

LINDSAY:
Victory brings peace. That's where they are now.

COOK:
Victory brings peace, or you cut the Israelis off and say enough, and you essentially impose a solution, which goes back to a status quo, essentially some ugly version of the—

LINDSAY:
Do you think either of those strategies work?

COOK:
No, I actually don't. I think the Israelis, if they were cut off, would scour the earth for the last bullet to put in the back of the head of Yahya Sinwar. And I think that a full American Israel roll through is just a recipe for killing more people, which is not going to ultimately bring this—it might bring this crisis, this immediate crisis to an end, but it will not bring this conflict—it might even extend this conflict.

LINDSAY:
If I'm hearing you correctly, Steven, you've just ruled out all available strategies. What do you do?

COOK:
Right. And so that's the enormously frustrating thing. But something that I have felt important to articulate over and over again, that this is a conflict that defies solution, even if you didn't have the one staters on either side, the Yahya Sinwars and the Smotrich and Ben-Gvirs on side. Let's say you had an Israeli Prime minister and Palestinian leader that wanted to negotiate. The bottom line for each is they can't satisfy the minimum demands of the others because of their own domestic politics, and that situation is far worse today as a result of this conflict than it was let's say on October 1, 2023. So I think we're headed towards the Israelis declaring victory and going home and essentially wringing the Gaza Strip with force and retaining the right to conduct counterterrorism operations. Something more akin to what they have in the West Bank, continuous military operations in the West Bank, which is some, as I said, ugly version of the status quo. And that's going—

LINDSAY:
But that's going to lead to further immiseration of Palestinians living in Gaza because no one is going to invest in reconstruction in Gaza. If next week, next month, Israeli military is going to come across the border and level what you just built.

COOK:
That's exactly right. I'm not necessarily advocating this, I'm just pointing out what I think the likely outcome is among a range of outcomes that people have talked about.

LINDSAY:
On that somber note, I'll close up The President's Inbox for this week. My guess has been Steven Cook, the Eni Enrico Mattei Senior for Middle East and Africa Studies here at the Council. Steven, thanks as always for sitting down and chatting with me.

COOK:
It's always great to be with you, Jim.

LINDSAY:
Please subscribe to The President's Inbox on Apple Podcasts, YouTube, Spotify, or wherever you listen, and leave us a review. We love the feedback. You can email us at [email protected]. The publications mentioned in this episode in a transcript of our conversation are available on the podcast page for the President's Inbox on cfr.org. As always, opinions expressed on The President's Inbox are solely those of the host or our guests, not of CFR, which takes no positions on matters of policy. Today's episode was produced by Ester Fang and Kenadee Mangus with Director of Podcasting Gabrielle Sierra. This is Jim Lindsay. Thanks for listening.