The Middle East Challenge, With Steven A. Cook and Amy Hawthorne (Election 2024, Episode 4)

Jim Lindsay:
Welcome to The President's Inbox. I'm Jim Lindsay, the Mary and David Boies distinguished senior fellow in U.S. foreign policy at the Council on Foreign Relations. This is the fourth episode in this special 2024 U.S. election series here on The President's Inbox. From now until election day, I will be sitting down with experts to unpack some of the most pressing challenges in the next president's foreign policy inbox. This week's topic is the Middle East challenge.

With me to discuss recent events in the Middle East and the challenges it poses for the United States are Amy Hawthorne and Stephen Cook. Amy is a Middle East Expert who now works as an independent consultant for various non-governmental organizations. Most recently, she was Deputy Director for Research at the Project on Middle East Democracy. She was also previously a senior fellow of the Rafik Hariri Center at the Atlantic Council. During the 2011 Arab Spring, she was a Senior Advisor and Coordinator for Egypt policy at the U.S. State Department. Amy has written numerous articles on the Middle East for magazines like Foreign Affairs and Foreign Policy.

Steven is the Eni Enrico Mattei senior fellow for Middle East and Africa Studies here at the Council. He has written four books on the Middle East with the most recent being The End of Ambition: America's, Past, Present, and Future in the Middle East, which was released this summer. Steven is also a columnist at Foreign Policy Magazine.

Amy and Steven, thank you for joining me on The President's Inbox.

Steven Cook:
Thanks for having me, Jim.

Amy Hawthorne:
Thank you.

Jim Lindsay:
Now, first question, are either of you advising the Harris campaign or the Trump campaign?

Amy Hawthorne:
No.

Steven Cook:
I'm not advising anybody.

Jim Lindsay:
Okay. With that out of the way, let's dive into the topic of the Middle East. We are talking just days before the one-year anniversary of Hamas's attack on Israel. I think we can safely say that the situation in the Middle East right now, especially in the Levant, is fluid, it's dynamic, so things may change before this episode goes live. Fighting continues in Gaza. Israel has killed the leader of Hezbollah, Hassan Nasrallah, and launched an invasion of still unknown dimensions into Southern Lebanon. Iran has fired some two hundred missiles at Israel. Everyone expects Israel to retaliate. The question is when and where and what magnitude. So there's lots to talk about.

But where I want to begin the conversation, Steven and Amy, is with Gaza itself. The Israelis, from the moment the attack happened last year, have said that their strategic goal is not simply to degrade Hamas's military assets. It is to destroy Hamas as an organization. We're a year on—has Israel succeeded in achieving its strategic goal, Steven?

Steven Cook:
Well, it depends really on who you ask, Jim. I was just in Israel, and I think that by and large Israelis understood that when Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said, "We're going to destroy Hamas," that this was a political statement, and that the goal was to make it impossible for Hamas to threaten Israeli security in the way that it had on October 7th.

And the current thinking is that it has done that, that Hamas is no longer an organized military force. And while there are still many Hamas fighters throughout the Gaza Strip, and while Israeli military operations continue, Israel can turn the page on Gaza and focus its attention on the North where sixty-eighty thousand Israelis have been evacuated from their homes.

So that's sort of kind of a mainstream view of things in Israel. But among Prime Minister Netanyahu's partners on the right, some of whom I didn't meet his actual partners, but I met people, activists within that end of the Israeli political spectrum, they do not believe that the government has done enough to destroy Hamas. And that they believe that destroying Hamas would have a beneficial effect on not only the situation in Gaza, but the West Bank and Lebanon as well. The quote to me was, "If we win in Gaza, if we destroy Hamas in Gaza, we will win in the West Bank and we will win in Lebanon."

Jim Lindsay:
Well, let me ask you a quick follow-up on that, Steven.

Steven Cook:
Sure.

Jim Lindsay:
What does that actually mean in practical terms?

Steven Cook:
Well, that was my follow-up, and they said, "Well, win." And I think the best, and it was a somewhat glib answer to my follow-up, which was the same as yours. One of my interlocutors said, "Well, we realize that it's an idea, but so is Nazism." And there's a lot fewer Nazis around these days than there were. And so, the implication was that you just have to continue to grind Hamas down and kill as many Hamas fighters as possible. But of course, that presents a whole range of other moral problems that clearly these folks did not have much concern with.

Jim Lindsay:
Amy, I want to bring you in here on this particular question and also on the broader issue of while the Israelis clearly have degraded Hamas's military capability and perhaps broken Hamas as an organized fighting force—one could potentially debate that I suppose—there is the question of whether Hamas can and will reconstitute itself. I'd love to hear your views.

Amy Hawthorne:
Yes. Well, I want to say at the outset for our listeners, there's something really important to keep in mind about Gaza, which is that we don't actually have a clear or a full picture of what is going on there. It's worth reminding people that Israel, for the most part, has not allowed international journalists to enter the territory, and things are very murky in terms of the actual situation on the ground. I think that's incredibly important to keep in mind, as we have a much less clear picture of what's happening in Gaza than we did even during the Syrian Civil War where there was much more international presence covering things.

That being said, based on pretty consistent anecdotal reports, it appears, as you said, that Hamas militarily has been very, very significantly degraded. But they are not destroyed neither as a military or a fighting force. And of course, what that means is important to define, but at a minimum, they've survived as a guerrilla force, as an insurgency.

There's also reports that indicate that Hamas continues to survive in certain parts of the Gaza Strip and to hold sway both in the security realm and even in terms of some service delivery functions. So a year on since the devastating and horrific Hamas attack on Israel and the beginning of Israel's war on Gaza, with forty-two thousand Gazans killed, and the real numbers actually may be much higher, we just don't know yet. Some people think there's tens of thousands of Gazans buried under the rubble. But with this high, high casualties, Hamas is not gone. It's still there.

Jim Lindsay:
So Steven, give me a sense of where the Israeli government thinks it's going to go from here on Gaza. Is the idea that the Israeli military will sort of continually mow the lawn, to use that metaphor I've often heard in this context? Does it plan to occupy Gaza? Does it have some other vision for the future of Gaza?

Steven Cook:
Yeah, I think it's important to listen to what Israeli leaders themselves have said about this situation. I think that we often in Washington sort of listen to what they say, but say, "This is really what they mean." And I think since October 7th, when Israeli leaders say something, they kind of mean it. And sometime last fall or early winter, one of Prime Minister Netanyahu's most important and trusted advisors, Ron Dermer, who was at one point the Israeli Ambassador to the United States and now is the Israeli Government's Minister of Strategic Affairs said, "We, the Israelis, will have overall security control over the Gaza Strip for the foreseeable future."

And people kind of ran over that because, of course, at the time, the U.S. government was talking about a two-state solution, an international force, all kinds of ideas about what to do with Gaza the day after when the Israelis had a very clear plan. And Dermer followed up that statement by saying, "The difference between Gaza and the West Bank is that we had no access to the Gaza Strip. We had withdrawn from the Gaza Strip. There was a blockade of the Gaza Strip—that, by the way, Egypt also participated in—but in the West Bank, we were able to conduct anti-terrorist operations."

And so, what you take from those two statements are that the Israelis are going to remain in some shape or form within the Gaza Strip on the inside along the Netzerim Corridor, which is an East-West axis that bisects the Gaza Strip in two, and possibly on the Philadelphi Corridor, which is a axis along the Gaza-Egypt border, which if they stay there is actually a violation of a 2005 accord between Egypt and Israel governing that space, and that they will conduct counterterrorism operations from both the outside as well as those two points within the Gaza Strip. I think we have to take that very, very seriously.

There's one thing though that I think that people are lost in this, is that I think that there are, again, among the people that I met in my recent trip who have a different view of what should be the final disposition of the Gaza Strip, and that is Israeli settlement. And there is a not insignificant number of Israelis who believe that the answer to the security problem that the Israelis have with the Gaza Strip is to resettle the Gaza Strip. The argument that they make is-

Jim Lindsay:
What does that mean in particular, Steven? Resettle the Gaza Strip?

Steven Cook:
Reestablish the Israeli settlements from which Israelis withdrew from in 2005.

Jim Lindsay:
So you would be displacing the Palestinians who are living there.

Steven Cook:
Well, this is the question, right? And you've heard some of these folks say, "Well, the Palestinians by dint of October 7th have lost their right to stay there." And so, that raises all kinds of alarm bells about resettlement and the potential for, there's no other way to put it, but ethnic cleansing. Where would these people go?

And I think American officials have sort of dismissed this possibility, and I think that they are underestimating the determination, at least among some within Israel's hard right, to resettle the Gaza Strip. And it's interesting because they now have a more potent argument. The hard right has a more potent argument as a result of October 7th than they did beforehand because they can say, "Everything that we predicted would happen as a result of this withdrawal from the Gaza Strip has now happened." And that has actually garnered the support of people even beyond the settler movement. So because the Israelis have said that they're turning the page on Gaza, people forget about these very, very serious issues that are going to come up in the coming months and that the next administration is clearly going to have to confront.

Jim Lindsay:
Well, Amy, if you could, could you walk us through what those decisions by the Israeli government might mean for the United States and whoever is the next president?

Amy Hawthorne:
Sure. Well, let's say that the Israeli government adopts an official position of returning Israeli settlements into Gaza. What is the next administration's response going to be to that? What if the Israeli government moves to formally access the West Bank? Many experts watching the West Bank, where by the way, things are very, very bad there. Just because it's relatively more quiet than Gaza, it's still a very, very unstable and violent situation in the West Bank. And this Israeli government has been taking a number of steps since October 7th to move toward what many analysts believe is an annexation of the West Bank through administrative measures.

So let's say the Israeli government announces that it is officially formally annexing the West Bank. What if the Israeli government, either de facto or formally, actively pursues a policy of displacing Gazans outside of Gaza, which is something that we've heard some Israeli ministers—I don't believe anyone in the security cabinet has ever said this—but other Israeli ministers, Israeli politicians, public figures on the far-right have talked about this as a goal of displacing Gazans out of the Gaza Strip, presumably into Egypt.

Jim Lindsay:
Well, let me ask you about that, Amy. What would that mean for Cairo? I can't imagine the Egyptian government would be open to having the Israelis push Gazans into Egypt.

Amy Hawthorne:
No. The Egyptian government is very, very strongly opposed to this concept and, indeed, the Sisi government—the Sisi regime—has been alarmed by the prospect. And it's my understanding that when some Israeli officials and politicians started making noises about this potentially being a goal, the Egyptian government was alarmed, and that the Biden administration behind the scenes worked hard to damp down Egyptian concerns and try to stave off the Israelis from actually making this happen.

Egypt is very, very concerned about such a displacement for several reasons. First of all, Egypt's longstanding position is supporting Palestinian homeland, a Palestinian state, so increased displacement of Palestinians from Gaza, the majority of Gazans, as we know, are themselves refugees and displaced in 1948. So, creating a new population of Palestinian refugees outside of Gaza would be a huge diplomatic and security crisis for the Egyptian government.

The Egyptian government is also understandably concerned about security in Sinai. What if a large number of Palestinians in Gaza somehow managed to cross the border or were pushed out into Sinai? What if Hamas elements infiltrated into those groups and then joined with the currently dormant, but previously pretty active anti-state, anti-Egyptian regime, Jihadist insurgency in Sinai? Not to mention the economic burdens that such refugee population would bring to Egypt. So, in short, this is something that Egypt is alarmed by, tremendously worried about, and the Biden administration for its part shares this concern. What will happen with a Trump administration, that's something we could discuss and speculate about.

Jim Lindsay:
Okay. I want to come back to the issue of the Trump administration, if there is one, in a bit, but you wanted to jump in here?

Steven Cook:
Yeah. I agree with everything that Amy has said about Egypt. I just wanted to get back quickly to this question of settlement in Gaza or annexation of the West Bank. And Amy was making a point here. I don't think there's ever going to be a formal declaration on the part of an Israeli government with regard to settlement, particularly in the West Bank. I think more likely what will happen is some of these folks who are motivated to resettle it will drop a caravan in the middle of what was the settlement, and the IDF will be forced to defend them. That's kind of the history of the expansion of settlements throughout the West Bank, including the ones that were at one time illegal and then have subsequently been legalized.

And I think that's the issue that concerns me about the U.S. government in believing, "Well, the IDF doesn't want to do it, and Netanyahu and Dermer don't want to do it." But they're not the decision-makers on this because someone's going to drop something in the middle of what was the settlement and dare the IDF not to defend it. Same thing with annexation on the West Bank. This has been a process of annexation over many years. They just haven't said anything about it.

There is a hope on the hard right that Trump would be elected and that would pave the way for annexation of about 30 percent of the land in the West Bank. But that's about as close as I think we get to an actual formal declaration of annexation until it's a done deal, until there's really no question that Israel has annexed those territories.

Jim Lindsay:
I want to shift our geographical focus, if we can. I want to look toward the North and the issue with Lebanon. And the first thing, perhaps Amy you could explain to people, why is Hezbollah, which is based in Lebanon, largely Shia, so focused on its efforts to shell Northern Israel?

Amy Hawthorne:
That's a great question, Jim. There are at least two reasons. First of all, when October 7th happened, when Hamas carried out the October 7th attack and atrocities, by all accounts, Hezbollah was caught unawares that that operation was going to be taking place on that day, on that time, in that form. They were caught off guard, and to show their relevance and solidarity, they decided to jump in and start attacking Israel, firing rockets and missiles at Israel just the very next day.

So one reason is that they want to show that they're in the fight for Palestine. We always need to keep in mind that the number one stated and actual mission of Hezbollah is to destroy the State of Israel. That is the primary reason why Hezbollah exists. So apparently, they saw an opportunity after October 7th to show that they are relevant and they also have a major role to play. They apparently believed in that fight following October 7th, that it wasn't just Hamas that was taking the fight to Israel in a really new and shocking way.

Secondly, maybe on the strategic level or the tactical level, perhaps their leaders—the Iranian regime, which is Hezbollah's patron and controller—directed Hezbollah to start attacking Israel as a way of creating a situation in which Israel would be forced to fight on two fronts at once. And so, they just jumped right in there, and it is important to remember that Hezbollah was the party that did start attacking Israel on October 8th. They instigated this latest round of conflict almost a year ago.

Jim Lindsay:
Steven, help me understand what the Israelis are doing right now. It seems to me for a long time, the Israelis largely relied on deterrence to try to hold Hezbollah at bay. They now seem to have shifted from deterrence to trying to degrade—if not destroy—Hezbollah's military capacity. We first had the detonation of the pagers, then the walkie-talkies, then we had the airstrike that killed Hassan Nasrallah, the leader of Hezbollah. Now we have an invasion of Southern Lebanon. Again, unclear how far Israeli military forces are going to do and what they will do once they complete their mission. So help me understand what the calculations seem to be in Jerusalem.

Steven Cook:
I think once again, go back to what Israeli leaders themselves have said. And after October 7th, people like Prime Minister Netanyahu, but also Defense Minister Yoav Gallant, members of the War Cabinet when they were part of it, like Benny Gantz, the former Chief of the General Staff who now leads an opposition party, and others said that Israel had to change the equation, change the rules of the game.

And so, in order to both reestablish its deterrence and resolve its security problems both in Gaza as well as in the North, that military force was required. It took about a year until the Israelis feel as if they have Gaza well at hand. And as Amy pointed out, we don't really know what they have at hand, but certainly they've made the determination that now is the time to turn to the North.

And the Israelis have been living since a conflict with Hezbollah in 2006, with Hezbollah moving closer and closer and closer to their borders. Quite extraordinary in Northern towns, you could walk along the Northern border and see Hezbollah guys not too far from you. The Israelis also over the years have discovered tunnels under or near the border. There've been any number of infiltration events.

And so, with Hassan Nasrallah deciding on October 8th to target Israel, which required the Israelis to evacuate sixty to eighty thousand of their people, Israelis are now changing the equation, changing the rules of the game. To allow that evacuation to stand would be to essentially allow Hezbollah and their Iranian patrons to throw open the question of Israeli sovereignty within sovereign Israel. And so, they have now undertaken fairly significant military operations, both from the air and this kind of skullduggery, the walkie-talkies and the beepers.

But of course, recent press reports indicate that the Israelis have been at this much, much longer. There has been this low grade war going on there. And contacts of mine in Beirut have said the Israelis have really gotten the better of Hezbollah. And then, of course, we have these spectacular attacks including the killing of Hassan Nasrallah, and now what seems to be an Israeli invasion of Southern Lebanon.

The goal here is, I think, three major goals. One, to return Israelis safely to their homes and resolve that question of Israeli sovereignty. Two, push Hezbollah back so that it can't use, in particular, anti-tank munitions against those communities. And three, to degrade as much as possible, if not destroy Hezbollah, and reestablish Israel's deterrence, not just in Lebanon, but with regard to its other adversaries around the region.

Jim Lindsay:
Amy, help me think through what the Israelis are doing, because I'm old enough to remember when the Israelis in the early 1980s went into Southern Lebanon.

Steven Cook:
Me, too.

Jim Lindsay:
And, initially, it was very successful. They got all the way to the edges of Beirut, but it ended terribly for the Israelis. What is your sense of how the Israelis are thinking about this, how they intend to avoid an outcome they've seen before where you get stuck and then you get bled by a resistance movement among the local people?

Amy Hawthorne:
Yeah, it's a great question. What the Israeli government has in mind for its ultimate war aim in Lebanon, and its strategy for accomplishing that war aim is not clear. It's not publicly clear. The Biden administration, I believe, is also trying to understand what the Israelis have in mind. As you said, Jim, this has happened before. By my count, I believe this would be the fourth time since 1978 that Israel has invaded Southern Lebanon and, in some cases, gone further north than that to try to take out a terrorist threat, the PLO and then Hezbollah. The three previous times before were largely viewed as failures—as strategic failures—for Israel. The problem was not solved, it got worse, and Israel was eventually forced to withdraw.

So what will be different this time? That is a question that a lot of people are asking. What is the strategy that they're going to pursue that will bring a better outcome than they've had in the past? Now, to be sure, in recent weeks, we have seen extraordinary Israeli campaign to basically decapitate the—not just degrade, but remove the top leadership of Hezbollah—really kind of extraordinarily successful from a military point of view. And so, apparently, Israel feels very emboldened, very confident that they're starting this latest invasion, this incursion of Lebanon, with a real strategic opportunity.

But we also have to keep in mind that Lebanon is a different battlefield than Gaza. And crucially, Hezbollah is a different group than Hamas. Hezbollah is much bigger, far more sophisticated, something like fifty thousand fighters, hundreds of thousands, I believe—Steven, correct me if I'm wrong—of missiles and rockets that can reach many, many targets in Israel. So we are talking about a group, a terrorist organization that is very capable and has a lot of capacity. And also, there are delivery routes wherein they can be resupplied and get weapons and other support across the border, for example, from Syria. Whereas Israel in Gaza has tried very hard to seal off Gaza along the Egyptian border.

So we could say that Lebanon, even with the Israelis' current kind of astonishing intelligence and military preeminence that they're demonstrating in Lebanon right now, there's a lot of factors with Hezbollah and with Lebanon that make this a much harder fight. So I've been asking myself, "What are they going to do differently?" I believe on the first day of the announced invasion of Southern Lebanon, something like eight IDF soldiers were killed. That's a pretty high casualty rate just for the very first day. So how far north are they going to go in a ground incursion, and what kind of casualties are they going to sustain? How will the Israeli public respond to this? And ultimately, how do you really take out a group like Hezbollah that has drilled bunkers into mountains and has tunnels for exactly this reason—to protect themselves during an Israeli invasion? So, I don't know the answer to what Israel's ultimate goal is and how they're going to achieve it.

And I also just want to add that the humanitarian and sort of political destabilization costs of this Israeli attack on Hezbollah that started ramping up a couple of weeks ago to a very intense cadence. The humanitarian effect is already devastating in Lebanon. And from a moral perspective, we should care about that, but from a strategic perspective, we should also care about it. Lebanon is a country that was already in a terrible economic situation and very politically precarious. Mass destabilization in Lebanon is not good for anyone, number one, the Lebanese of course, but it's also not good for Israel.

Jim Lindsay:
On that point, I'll note that I've seen news reports that already something on the order of a quarter million Lebanese have crossed the border into Syria—and Syria is not a place normally a woman would want to go.

Steven Cook:
That's exactly right.

Jim Lindsay:
So gives some sense. Steven, I know you may want to add something to what Amy just said, but I also want to just ask about the country you've mentioned several times here, which is Iran. My sense is that Iran has used groups like Hamas and Hezbollah, a variety of other resistance groups, as its way to penalize, push, and deter Israel from any attack on Iran—the so-called Axis of Resistance. But now it appears that those proxies that Tehran used to count on to basically threaten Israel and to deter it are being, if not wiped off the map, significantly reduced as a threat. What does that mean for where we're headed?

Steven Cook:
It has been a rather extraordinary, not only few weeks, but year. Before I get to that question, because it is moving Israel and Iran closer to direct confrontation than we ever really imagined, I just want to add just a couple things on this question of Hezbollah and Lebanon. I think with the Israelis why they have focused so heavily on decapitating Hezbollah is one, there is obviously a military effect of that. You throw the organization back on its heels, disarray, command and control. But I think that they're thinking that by undermining Hezbollah, which is unpopular in large parts of Lebanon but by no means among everyone, that it will provide an opportunity for the Lebanese government to extend its authority throughout its territory, and thereby implement UN Security Council 1701 that ended the 2006 conflict between Hezbollah and Israel that Amy referenced.

I think that this is an incredibly simplistic thing if this is what the Israelis are thinking. Lebanon is an extraordinarily complex place politically, and many, many things would have to happen perfectly for there to suddenly appear a decent government there that can extend its authority. It is a government that doesn't really do much in the way of governing, and I don't see any leadership emerging there.

But nevertheless, that is, I think, part of the thinking here is that you so weaken Hezbollah that finally the Lebanese government can assert its authority. I'm not sure that that's going to happen. As Amy pointed out, this is a well-armed organization with at least fifty thousand fighters. Before the conflict, the estimates were one hundred and fifty thousand rockets. So even if the Israeli estimates that they've destroyed 50 percent of it, that's still seventy-five thousand missiles, rockets, and drones. That's a lot.

Okay. Getting back to Iran. I had the opportunity to talk to a fairly senior Saudi official who said, "We look at Iran as a paper tiger with steel claws." And so, to the extent that the Israelis are now declawing the paper tiger, the Iranians are in a position where they have to respond, otherwise they look extraordinarily weak. And that's where we get two hundred ballistic missiles fired at Israel. They could, after the assassination of Nasrallah and after the assassination of Ismail Haniyeh, after the Israelis had done so much damage in such rapid succession to the kind of preeminent member of the Axis of Resistance. It's hard to imagine the Iranians sitting on the sidelines and they didn't. Had they done so, it would have been this situation where everybody would have understood exactly what that Saudi official is saying, that it was truly a paper tiger and they're out to prove that they're not.

The danger here is that the Israelis are going to respond and they are going to go way up the escalation ladder in order to intimidate the Iranians and thereby re-establish its deterrence. That may not work. Ayatollah Ali Khamenei gave a speech today armed, he was carrying a gun, and said that neither Iran nor Hamas nor Hezbollah will ever give up. So if he's good to his words, no matter what the Israeli response is—and people have been debating for days what the Israelis are going to target—if he's good to his word, and they're committed to never giving up, then the Iranians will respond. And then the Israelis will have to respond because it's the same dynamic. And the regional conflict that we have been so concerned about is upon us.

Jim Lindsay:
I think that raises an important set of questions for the United States. The Biden administration, obviously, is going to have to make decisions in the near term how to respond to these events. And whether it's a President Harris or a President Trump, there is the potential that by the time we get to January, 2025, the lay of the land in the Middle East could look much different.

With that sort of caveat in place, I just want to ask you, Amy, as you sort of look at the current situation, what do you think the U.S. government's choice set looks like? I understand there are things the candidates would like to do, and we can argue about what their policies will be—I think it's a bit unclear for both presidential candidates. But, what do you think the realistic sort of choice it is for the next president, given that we have this relationship with Israel, given that we also have important relations with other countries in the region? Is this a place where the United States should do less? Or is all of this pointing to the need to do more?

Amy Hawthorne:
Well, I think it's important for our listeners to keep in mind that at this moment, we've been alluding to this in our conversation so far. But just to spell it out very clearly, right now in the Middle East, it is the most dangerous moment for this region in decades. The region is on a knife's edge with a real genuine possibility of a much bigger war whose consequences are even impossible to really imagine, and also a conflict that could draw in the United States directly. And then, we start thinking about Russia being drawn in. It really is—I don't think Steven would disagree with me—that it's not an exaggeration to talk about how dangerous this moment is.
And with that being said, when we think about the next president, there is a chance, and I would say it's not a small chance, although we hope that the Biden administration right now is doing everything they can to prevent such a major war from occurring. But let's say in the next few weeks that does happen. The next president will be dealing with a war, a full-scale war in the Middle East.

And in that regard, the U.S. doesn't have a choice, in my opinion, except to do everything it can to bring down the conflict and the fighting and stop things from escalating further. So the next president, whether it's Harris or Trump, possibly could face a situation where we are just in a conflict and managing a conflict. Forget about all of the other goals: two-state solutions, stabilizing Gaza, promoting Saudi-Israeli peace agreement. We're talking about moving into new territory that is incredibly dangerous, where serious U.S. interest, economic, and security are at stake, and in which the next president, he or she—no matter how much they want to pivot away from the region—they could be potentially spending most of their time on this conflict in this region, which I don't assess is what either of them would like to do in an ideal situation. So I don't know if we have the luxury at this moment of thinking of whether the U.S. should pull back, do less, do more—we're in a new territory now that we really haven't been in in this region for many decades in terms of danger and risk.

Jim Lindsay:
Amy, let me draw you out on that because I've had lots of conversations with Americans across the country, and what I hear from some people is at the end of the day, we should do less. That we should just let...These countries want to fight, let them fight. We should just sort of stick to our own knitting if I can use that metaphor. Why is it that you're so convinced that we really don't have that choice?

Amy Hawthorne:
Because if you look at where the Middle East is on the map and what that region produces, it is strategically a very, very important region for the United States, mostly because of oil and gas, even with increased U.S. energy production, which has been one of the most important things. Our domestic energy production rise has been one of the most significant developments of the past decade. Even that being said, an oil shock or a dramatic change to the oil markets has effects on the global economy. So that's the first thing, is Americans, "Middle East is very far away. Why does this matter?" Well, it matters when it starts affecting the global economy and, potentially, the U.S. economy.

It also matters because I think Biden is the third U.S. president, starting with Obama, then Trump, then now President Biden who wants to turn away from this region who came into office saying in one way or another, they have different tones and different styles, but, "We don't want to get so involved in this region." Unfortunately, the region keeps pulling us back in and we don't really have a choice in my view, and things could get much, much, much worse with the absence of U.S. leadership. U.S. leadership is not a silver bullet. It's not the solution. Our leverage and our influence certainly has waned since the post-Cold War era when Steven and I first came of age starting out as Middle East specialists. But it's hard to imagine anything getting better in that region without the U.S. applying a steady hand and being very, very engaged in conflict resolution.

So unfortunately, I don't think we have the luxury of stepping back, and things could get much worse in that region. And if the Biden administration is successful in its remaining time in office, its main success with regards to this region will be to keep things from getting worse. That's kind of where we are in terms of our regional goals.

Jim Lindsay:
Steven, I want to give you a crack at that same set of questions, but I also would like you to tell me whether there are any chances for opportunity. When I sort of think about the history of the Middle East in the modern times, particularly U.S. activity in the Middle East, I'm immediately drawn back to the 1970s where there was a horrific war, the October War. Everything looked like it was going badly, but out of that, we crafted a new, relatively more peaceful era in the Middle East, the most notable accomplishment being the peace treaty between Israel and Egypt. As you look at the current crisis, do you see opportunities there whereby we might be able to build something better out of what appears to be a situation getting worse, as Amy pointed out?

Steven Cook:
It's a good question. I'm perhaps the wrong person to ask for silver linings or opportunities, given my profound cynicism, despite my I promise, sunny disposition. But let go back to your original question to Amy. First, it's my view we're already in that regional war. Today, two Israeli soldiers were killed as a result of an Iraqi drone strike on the Golan Heights. The Russians are deeply involved with the Iranians and have promised to supply them with weaponry just as the Iranians have supplied them with weaponry to fight in Ukraine.

I think the real issue is not a question whether there will be a regional war, it's whether there will be an intensification of that regional war. Will countries that are non-combatants at the moment—like the UAE, Saudi Arabia, Jordan—will they become directly involved in the regional conflict? And how will other external powers, in addition to the United States? What will Russia do? How will it seek to fuel this conflict? What will the Chinese do? It's all wild cards.

I think the United States can do more, and I think that what we are seeing actually are the wages of us not doing enough over those ten years that we've been saying, "We have to get out of the Middle East." The Middle East is the middle when you look at the map. And to say that we're going to pivot to Asia, I think dismisses the fact that, for lack of a better term, the game is a global one. And as Amy pointed out, lack of American leadership leads to chaos very often, regional powers taking matters into their own hands, that leads to suboptimal outcomes for everybody else. So I think that we could be doing more. I think we went from a period where we did way, way, way, way too much, and the reaction to that was we should retrench and withdraw and leave. And that's not the smartest thing for us to do. We need that Goldilocks response.

Jim Lindsay:
Okay. I want to ask both of you in this, and I'll go to Amy first. You both seem to be big believers in what American leadership can accomplish, and that we're probably worse off when the United States sits on the sidelines than when it tries to actively broker a peace. My question to you is, is that still the case? And I have to ask. You're both deeply enmeshed in the region.

You know all of the countries in the region. It seems to me that a lot of the capitals across the Middle East are both disappointed in the United States, but also skeptical about Washington's ability to deliver on any kind of agreement. Given that context, why are you optimistic about the potential for American leadership? And I'll go with you first, Amy.

Amy Hawthorne:
I am not optimistic at all about the region or about America's role. I would say that I'm thinking right now about preventing things from getting even more dangerously worse. And in that regard, I don't see any other player stepping up and being able to play a role that the United States, for all of its flaws and weaknesses, for all of its sins, can play. I don't see any other alternative. Does the Saudi government really believe that China is going to come in and de-escalate the situation to avoid a major full-scale regional conflagration in the region? I don't think so. The European Union and the European countries, I don't think so either. So the U.S., we're kind of in a purgatory period right now with regard to our role in the region because our influence is diminished, and we've made so many mistakes, and there are certain things about our approach that in my view, need to be changed.

On the other hand, we're not at a point yet where the U.S. isn't still indispensable toward at least dampening down the conflict and preventing things from getting worse. And I just wanted to quickly add that something Steven said is very important for our listeners to keep in mind, is that the U.S. is already involved in this war. I didn't mean to suggest that's not the case. In fact, the U.S. Navy is regularly engaging with the Houthis in Yemen. We've got some major warships in the Red Sea that are engaged regularly in an exchange of fire with the Houthis who continue to attack commercial ships. And that's just one example. President Biden has ordered several thousand more troops to the region over the past year. So we are actually increasing our military involvement in the region, not decreasing.

But what I am extremely worried about right now is a much larger conflict that draws in even more countries and in which the United States is involved in a direct confrontation with Iran and potentially with others. And that's what I think we need to prevent at all costs. And then, we need to figure out how to stabilize and return as much kind of normalcy and stability to the region. But that's kind of a second order goal in my view. First order is urgent.

Jim Lindsay:
Steven.

Steven Cook:
I think what you're hearing in what both of us are saying is two people who sort of came of age or came up with liberal internationalism, and, in fact, perhaps the height of liberal internationalism, yet grappling with the very real limits of American power. And one of the reasons why I wrote my recent book just to grapple with this idea that the United States cannot resolve every conflict.

I think that the current situation in the region may actually be beyond the ability of the United States to actually resolve anything other than to manage the conflict as best as we can, and even though I don't think we've done a great job. The contrast, you mentioned the 1970s, Jim, and out of that crisis in October, 1973 came the peace treaty between Egypt and Israel. It strikes me that the major difference between then and now is that Anwar Sadat, the president of Egypt who launched the October, 1973 war, had actually very limited goals. His goal was to bloody the Israelis and get a toehold in the Sinai that would force negotiations. And that's exactly what happened. And Henry Kissinger, the then Secretary of State, understood this and carried it forward.

I think here we're in a very different situation. I think the Israelis defined their conflict in existential terms. I think that in Gaza, it is a fight between one-staters: Hamas believes in the liberation of all of Palestine, Israeli settlers believe in the one Israel, Hezbollah, as Amy pointed out, is dedicated to the destruction of Israel. The Iranians share two primary goals in the region, which is to push the United States out and to destroy the state of Israel.

These are existential conflicts that don't seem to me that even as they get more and more dangerous don't seem ripe for resolution. And that's where American power is somewhat limited. Even so, the region is looking to the United States to deescalate and restore some sort of equilibrium, and we don't have it. The idea that we're somehow isolated as a result of our policies on Israel, sure, it's been some tough going. But nevertheless, all of the countries in the region are waiting for the United States to demonstrate some sort of initiative.

Jim Lindsay:
We haven't seen embargoes, we haven't seen termination of diplomatic relations.

Steven Cook:
Right. That's exactly right.

Jim Lindsay:
Any of that stuff as we saw back in the 1970s.

Steven Cook:
That's right. But I think it's easy to overstate what it is, under the current circumstances, what the United States can actually do.

Jim Lindsay:
I want to just leave us on an optimistic note. Let me just say, if we had been sitting down a year ago, what we would've been talking about is the potential emergence of a new Middle East. Indeed, Jake Sullivan, the National Security Advisor, wrote a piece in Foreign Affairs Magazine talking about the really positive trends that were emerging, most notably, we had the Abraham Accords. There was talk potentially of Saudi Arabia joining the Abraham Accords. Obviously, we're in a very different place today, one year later. I will just note that history can change very quickly, but it doesn't always change in a bad direction. So I will just put that on the table.

Steven Cook:
That's because you don't work on the Middle East, Jim. It always changes in a bad direction.

Jim Lindsay:
On that note, I'll close up this special election 2024 episode of The President's Inbox. My guest have been Amy Hawthorne, a consultant on Middle East issues, and Steven Cook, the Eni Enrico Mattei Senior Fellow for Middle East and Africa Studies here at the Council. Amy and Steven, thank you for joining me.

Amy Hawthorne:
Thank you so much.

Steven Cook:
Thank you.

Jim Lindsay:
This special election 2024 series is supported by the Carnegie Corporation of New York, working to reduce political polarization through philanthropic support for education, democracy, and peace. More information at Carnegie.org. If you would like to learn more about what the candidates have said about foreign policy, please visit the Council's 2024 election central site. You can find it at CFR.org/election2024, and election 2024 is one word.

Please subscribe to The President's Inbox on Apple Podcasts, YouTube, Spotify, or wherever you listen. And leave us your review. We love the feedback. The publications mentioned in this episode and 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 institutional positions on matters of policy. Today's episode was produced by Kenadee Mangus with Director of Podcasting Gabrielle Sierra. Ester Fang was our recording engineer. This is Jim Lindsay. Thanks for listening.