 Good morning and welcome. My name is Lise Grundy. I'm the President of the United States Institute of Peace. We're a public institution that was established by the US Congress in 1984. We're a national, nonpartisan institution that's dedicated to helping prevent and mitigate violent conflict abroad. It's really an honor and a pleasure this morning to host a conversation with Ambassador David Hale on his new book, American Diplomacy Toward Lebanon, Lessons in Foreign Policy and the Middle East. When you hear the catchphrase, season diplomat, that's used to describe someone with deep experience, navigating the labyrinthian political shoals and complex negotiations in distant lands, the name that first comes to mind is Ambassador David Hale. The ambassador is a career foreign service officer. He started in 1985. His postings have taken him from North Africa and the Persian Gulf to the Levant and South Asia. Ambassador Hale was promoted to career ambassador in 2018. As you know, this is the highest rank in the US foreign service. Ambassador Hale has been the ambassador to Pakistan, Lebanon, and Jordan, as well as the special envoy for Middle East peace. More recently, Ambassador Hale served as the Undersecretary of State for Political Affairs. He was responsible for the day-to-day management of all regional and bilateral policy issues and for the regional and functional bureaus at the State Department. Ambassador Hale's book on Lebanon, a deeply complex country with enormous geopolitical significance, provides us with a rich and timely resource for broader lessons about US engagement in the Middle East and also about contemporary American diplomatic trade craft. These lessons have come at a critical moment. We were just talking about this in the green room. We have a war in Gaza, a war in Ukraine, a crisis in Haiti, the war in Sudan, instability across the Sahel, and tensions, as we know, are rising in the South China Sea with one of our near nuclear peers. If we needed to learn lessons about how to do American diplomacy better, this is the moment to do so. To elicit these rich perspectives, we're very privileged to extend a warm welcome to another seasoned diplomat and foreign policy expert, Ambassador Ed Gabriel. He is a member of USIP's board, and will be guiding today's conversation. Gentlemen. Thank you, Elise. And thank you all for coming today. The US Institute of Peace is very delighted to have a discussion with Ambassador Hale this morning and his new book, American Diplomacy Towards Lebanon, Lessons in Foreign Policy and the Middle East. You know, David served more than nine years in Lebanon in three different posts, including US Ambassador there. And of course, most recently, as Elise mentioned, the third highest ranking position in the State Department under Secretary for Political Affairs. In his book, David explores the legacy of US-Lebanon relations focusing on the key episodes that started with the country's independence all the way up through the Syrian Civil War. Now, I got a copy of the manuscript before the book came out. And I have about 300 stick-ums in that book on important things that Ambassador Hale said. And it was a, I just found the book a must-read for anyone involved in Middle East foreign policy making in the wider region, actually. He underscores the most the indispensable ability of the United States during its most tumultuous times and also the intransigence of the US as well. He goes on to talk about and predicts the destabilizing force of Iran in the region. So welcome, David. Thank you. Let me begin with a few icebreaker questions if I may. I'd like to set the context for today's discussion with just two fundamental questions. Why did you write the book? In other words, what is it that you want the reader to know and get from this book? And the second question is, why in your view should Lebanon matter to the United States? Well, thank you very much, Ed. And thank you for the very kind introduction. And thanks to all of you for being here and for your interest in this topic. I wrote the book because Lebanon had been a big part of my life, not just the nine years that I lived there over a 25-year span. But for other reasons, people I knew, events that happened in my career elsewhere involving Lebanon, it really played a very significant role for me. And I like to say that for young diplomats, it's a great place to be an apprentice. Because in a lot of countries, when you're more junior, you don't really do the normal diplomatic functions that you might think of as an ambassador or a DCM. In fact, in Lebanon, you do. Because all of these different factions, and there are 18 different religious communities in Lebanon, all of them want their own relationship with the great powers, including the United States. So all of them are clamoring for attention and influence with the American embassy. So inevitably, you are drawn as a young officer into that of those conversations. So you have to learn very quickly how to conduct yourself. And all of this, by the way, is under the microscope of the media. Even our very young officers find themselves, like it or not, under media attention. So to me, it was a great education. And I wanted to share some of that with readers. Because I also felt that over a period of time, there were a lot of things America did well. There are a lot of things that didn't go well that may or may not have been partly America's responsibility. But there were definitely lessons to be learned in the conduct of our foreign relations there. Your second question was the significance of Lebanon. This really comes down to geography, in many ways, and the demographics. Geography, for those I'm sure everyone in this room is familiar with, but to remind them, Lebanon is a very small country. The size of Connecticut wedged between Israel, traditionally America's closest friend in the Middle East, and Syria, often our most hostile antagonist. And demographically, because of these 18 different religious communities, every cross current in the Middle East, religious, cultural, political, economic, educational ideas of politics, what have you, language, are all woven into Lebanon and repackaged and exported again. And many of these sects seek to have some kind of partner, as I mentioned, outside of Lebanon in order to gain security or influence inside Lebanon to enhance their power through relationship, whether it's a Sunni Muslim community seeking a relationship with Saudi Arabia, the Shia seeking a relationship with Iran, Christians looking to the West. That is often a very positive mix, but sometimes a very combustible mix as well. Yeah, in your book, I come away with one word, especially, oscillation. Yes. Can you describe for us the themes outlined in your book, as well as the six episodes that you describe about US involvement in Lebanon, please? Well, I chose six episodes just as a device in order to organize the book. These are six periods when there was a relatively coherent American policy, a series of events that I could sort of unpack and describe. I started with the independence movement. It was a very little known chapter of American involvement in Lebanon. The United States was actually instrumental in compelling the French to do what the French were saying they were going to do, which was grant independence to Lebanon. But we're doing everything they could to not do in reality by having special privileges for military access and so forth to Lebanon. And FDR put his foot down, as did Truman after FDR's death, to insist that the gall actually pull out. And they did. And then I moved to 58 when 14,000 Marines were sent by Eisenhower to draw a line in the Middle East between the West. And he thought Soviet domination through the Arab nationalist movement. But in addition to the 14,000 Marines, he sent one diplomat. And the Marines didn't have to shoot in anger. But having 14,000 Marines behind you as an American ambassador is pretty good. And he was able to resolve the Civil War underway there in Lebanon to our satisfaction. And then, of course, the Civil War began in the 70s. And we sent an envoy to try to establish successfully red lines between Israel and Syrian troops that had moved into Lebanon. And then the 80s, which were a very unhappy period, where Reagan sent in 1,400 Marines. But the mission ultimately, in order to help the Israelis extricate themselves from Beirut, very reminiscent, by the way, of the situation in Gaza today. But then our mandate and our mission got very muddied and we can go into that in more detail. And we stayed too long. And the Marines ultimately became a target of Iran and Hezbollah. And then into the 90s, where we focused on the Syria First strategy, which we subordinated our interests in Lebanon in pursuit of what we thought would be a peace deal between Israel and Syria that never occurred. And during that period, Hezbollah gained a great deal of influence and power in Syria. And then finally, the freedom agenda in the 2006 war, which again has lessons, I think, for Israeli overreach and how do you extricate yourself from a war? How do you deal with asymmetrical powers? How do you deal with a proxy that hides behind civilians in a way that actually can enhance deterrence and security? The themes of the book, you mentioned oscillation. That's probably the primary theme. The primary takeaway I had from our involvement in Lebanon is that we would find ourselves, for usually very good reasons, getting very deeply involved in Lebanon, often to protect a friend by Israel. We would then overreach. We would find it was complicated. And in the words of Phil Habib, one of our great envoys in Lebanon, we would drop it like a hot potato. And then we would find ourselves in withdrawal in a chapter of neglect. These moments of extreme involvement would usually be followed by long periods of absence. And my argument overall in the book and foreign policy in general in the Middle East is that we should do neither. The peaks of extreme involvement usually end unhappily, as I mentioned. So we shouldn't necessarily reach that high, but also the valleys of neglect are periods in which our friends, our allies, and our own interests suffer greatly. So we should try to even out the oscillations so that there is a constant level of reasonable rational engagement to protect our interests. The other, in the conclusion of the book, I talk about problems of three sets of people, problems with ourselves here in Washington and the conduct of our foreign policy, problems with our friends, typically Israel in the case of dealing with Lebanon, and problems with our enemies, which was Syria now, Iran primarily. And the most interesting part to the problems of ourselves, the self-absorbed, self-created difficulties that we have. And a lot of it has to do with the fact that we have a democracy. And as a democracy, we have trouble with staying power. I go back to the oscillations. Our enemies stay. Our enemies don't usually leave office except feet first. Our presence come and go. And our policies change as they should. They should always be responsive to the needs of the American people and responsive to changing interests and changing facts. But they shouldn't necessarily be contradictory every two to four years. And particularly in our policy toward Iran, that's one of the major takeaways I have is that a lack of persistence, of endurance, of patience, in dealing with adversaries in the Middle East is a hallmark of American policy. The problems with our friends, and of course, there are lots of things in the book about, I call them bureaucratic, not in the book, but I call them bureaucratic sort of panty games. I mean, the game is people play in this town that undercut our own policies. The State Department not really getting with the program from the White House. The White House feeling the State Department, since they're not with the program, we should have our own back channel that undercuts the State Department envoy. This is a constant theme throughout our involvement in Lebanon and very unfortunate. Problems with our friends comes to current events, and that is where if you're a country like Israel and you don't want to live in the shadow of a threat from your neighbor, but your neighbor has all the means to continue to be a threat to you, how do you deal with it? And what we found, I think, in the case of Lebanon is that we were often the situation of allowing Israel to complete its military campaigns. And then at that moment, trying to advise them on how to extricate from it. How do you bring about a diplomatic approach that can bring a conflict that they've started to an end? And a classic example is 2006. Condi Rice observed in her memoirs and elsewhere in the archives that the Israelis didn't know what they were trying to achieve in the 2006 war, so they didn't know how to declare victory. If you don't know what your goal is, then you don't know how to end. And so that became a primary goal of Condi Rice at that moment, was defining, quote, success, or at least an end. And then problems with our enemies. And this comes very much to what's in today's news. Even in 1983, when the Marines were bombed, two embassies, two American embassies, our Marines were killed in quick succession. And Ronald Reagan, who is remembered rightly as one of the toughest of our presidents when it came to foreign policy and the use of force, did absolutely nothing. There was no retaliation for the death of all those Marines, of the American diplomats, of our Lebanese staff. There was a lot of talk inside the NSC about attacking the Iranian Revolutionary Guards, who we concluded at the time and since have been able to prove did it. But there was no attack. And I can get into all the bureaucratics, and it was bureaucratics, between DOD and the state and the NSC that led to that result. But that was the beginning of the problem, because that was the birth point of Hisbollah. And if you're an Iranian leader, and you observe this behavior pattern, where not only did we not respond to that attack directly against the Iranians, we didn't respond against Hisbollah. And then they started taking American citizens, innocent American citizens, professors at AUB, journalists, hostage off the streets of Beirut. What did we do? We tried an Iran counter-deal. We tried to do a bargain. And you can just go right through the history of the Iranian-American relationship in which we really didn't hold anyone accountable on their end. And I think it should be no mystery then why they've been able to gain the level of influence that they have in the Middle East today. In Beirut, in Baghdad, in Damascus, in Sanaa, the Iranians basically can call the shots, at least on the matters, things that matter to them. And that's not our fault. But our inability to really respond to this threat contributed to it. Thank you. This spasmodic approach that you're describing is evidence, I think, in respect to the current. Israeli Hamas-Gaza war, they're talking now about a lurch back to the two-state solution after it'd be in dormant for so long. David, how do you rebuild consensus domestically and internationally towards a two-state solution? And what would be your advice to the Biden administration? Well, the two-state solution is something that many in this room toiled on. Myself included, for many years, I was a Middle East peace envoy, had served George Mitchell in that role, and then when he retired, I replaced him for two years and worked very hard with Abbas and with Netanyahu as Prime Minister at that time as well. Even then, the ingredients for a two-state solution were very hard to identify and bring together and create something new. And after I left office, John Kerry, of course, as Secretary of State, brought enormous energy and brain power to the issue. And he too, after one year, found that he could not reach a breakthrough on a two-state outcome. And there's been no serious effort since then. And I would go back to my theme of spasms and oscillations. If you believe that a two-state outcome is essential for stability in that part of the world, then you need to not neglect that goal for a dozen years, which has been the case. And then wonder why, when you go back to it, it's even harder. The climate in the region before October 7th was not particularly conducive to this. God help us now. How are you going to create public support on either side for the kinds of compromises that are needed? The reason we couldn't get an agreement, during my opinion anyway, during the Mitchell, during the Obama years, either through Mitchell or through Kerry, is we could not bridge the gap between sovereignty and security needs. Sovereignty of the Palestinians on territory, but the security needs of the Israelis. And we tried multiple ways. We had everything, everyone you could think of as a security expert on our side coming up with creative ideas. We had all kinds of offers of technology that we were prepared to make, none of which could square that circle. And so you think after October 7th, it's going to be easier? Not you, but I mean, does one think it's going to be easier? Does one think that the Israelis, public is going to be more inclined to compromise? The opinion-polling I see shows that the overwhelming majority of Israelis do not accept the two-state solution. They believe that Hamas would then take over the West Bank. I'm not saying that's correct, but that is a reality that has to be dealt with if we want to climb back into a negotiation that has any chance of success. Because the last thing, again, in my opinion, that you want to do is launch a negotiation that's going to fall flat within weeks. That would lead, as it did in 2000, to an intifada again. So what would you advise the Biden administration to do? Are you saying stay away from putting together a two-state day after solution? Or what's your advice? I don't think we can ever walk away from a two-state solution. I think if the United States were to state that they no longer believed in that, it would have ramifications for our interests that would be very negative. But I don't believe that we can just jumpstart that process overnight. I think right now, if I were in office, I would be advising a couple of smaller steps in Gaza to be working on. Again, people talk about reform of the PA as if changing the prime minister is going to suddenly be, hooray, we've got a new PA. It's much deeper than that. Inside Gaza, we could be doing things to help re-establish security, maritime interdiction operations, things that could convince the Israeli public that their security needs are being taken seriously, the better performance in Sinai against the tunnels, obviously ramping up humanitarian assistance, economic strategies, and then in terms of governance, again, don't just think you can wave the magic wand and have a state emerge. You have to start building it up from beneath. And in a place like Gaza, there are neighborhood associations, there are business associations, there are nurses, there are doctors, there are educators. Their people have credibility at the neighborhood level because they've survived and they've served their people and they're not political. And those people should be entrusted to begin to govern their neighborhoods and to talk about what it is they want in the long run. Because again, the two-state solution is talked about as if it's something coming from outside, whether it's Ramallah or from Washington or from Europe. It's got to be organic. And right now, I don't see how you do that except by starting at the most basic level with whatever remains after this campaign is over. Do you think that part of the reason for the Biden administration focusing among other things on the two-state solution, that it's partly to address a domestic audience who are very much against what's going on in Israel today? No doubt. And that's legitimate. I mean, we have, we're a democracy and so our domestic politics are bound to influence our foreign policy. In fact, they must. But it has to be enlightened self-interest. And so again, I think I would hope anyway that once the shock and horror of what we see on our evening news or on our social media every day, once that has stopped, that we can have a more rational conversation about what's really going to help build enduring peace. And so launching negotiations on a two-state outcome next week, it's going to fail. And that's going to set back that entire concept for quite some time. So you have to build toward it. And that's what, that requires education. It requires educating people who may not, you know, it's been almost a generation, as I said, since we've had a serious peace effort on our part. So you have to educate a public as to what it really entails. And what's going to be an American commitment, by the way, to this? Because if we're going to sponsor talks, there has to be some expectation anyway on our part that we're going to contribute to the outcome of peace. Not just economically, but I talked about security being a major need in the future. So let's, we'll come back to the Israel, Israel-Lebanon border in a second. Let's talk about Iran, which is really one of the most important things you discuss in your book. You suggested that all roads lead through Tehran when it comes to Lebanon and the greater Middle East. What do you think the pressure points can be on Iran to change their behavior? What can the United States do to change that behavior? Well, since 1979, the Iranian Revolution, American presidents in Congress have tried almost everything in the national security playbook to try to change Iranian behavior. And none of it's really worked very well. The only time we actually got something we wanted, which was JCPOA, it was a result of a combination of sanctions that were significant, but focused on a very specific goal, which was getting into that nuclear deal. They also were effective because they were signed onto by a wide assortment of countries that had influence on Iran, Russia, China, Europe, the United States. And even that had, as I said, a pretty limited focus. And that was the reason why the Trump administration walked away from it. Now, I would say we have to re-establish deterrence. I mean, you have the Iranian, we wake up every morning and the Iranians or their proxies have done something to us or our allies that we're reacting to. That's not deterrence. Obviously, deterrence has evaporated. To re-establish deterrence, I think you have to see a resumption of massive economic pressure on Iran. The oil sanctions, to my knowledge, are not being implemented. We can do that. We did do it. And we should return to that. We should be doing much more to prevent the export of arms by Iran to various countries, including Russia. We should be doing everything we can to sever the connectivity between the regional proxies and Iran. And all I'll say is gonna be controversial because of what we've just seen. But I've been advocating since this war started that if you just wanna go after the proxies and not after the source of the problem, the master of these proxies, we will never have an end to this kind of violence and instability. We will always, it might stop for a while and it'll come right back. We have to take the conflict to the source. The Iranians have to feel the pain. I'm not advocating for Iran and the United States to go to war in Iran, but there's a lot more we can do, as we saw yesterday, to make Iranian leaders pause and think twice about their activities they have to pay a price. And we also, on our side, have to be prepared to take a risk of escalation. If you wanna maintain a great power position, you do have to also be prepared to pay a price. So in retrospect, in giving Iran's nuclear program now is stronger than ever before, was it a mistake for Trump to walk away from that deal? Well, it's kind of a hypothetical because he did and now the timetable, by-demonstration came into office, pledged to resume and to return to the deal. The Iranians didn't cooperate and the whole timetable and structure of that deal no longer really is very rational. I would say, I would cast the question slightly differently. I was a professional diplomat. I was capable of defending any policy that was thrown my way. Obviously, I now can voice my opinion and undo, but the point is that any policy toward Iran, whether it's maximum pressure, which was the Trump administration's definition of its policy, or whether it's the kind of engagement, negotiation strategy of the last part of the Obama administration and the first two years of the Biden administration, you gotta stick to it, okay? You can't judge it by what happens in 18 months, right? I mean, a maximum pressure strategy of sanctions, sanctions by definition isn't gonna change behavior in 18 months. So it may never have, I mean, we don't know, but that has to be persistent, which goes back to your point. When I was making democracy, our policies have to be bipartisan. Personally, I'm a hardliner on Iran, but I'd give up 20% of my hardline policy if it bought me 40% of the US Congress to join the other part of it, because then we could stick to it and test it. So this stick-to-ed-ness, why didn't Trump stick to it and build upon it when he took office? Would that have been a better approach? He came to office convinced that it was not a good deal primarily, in my opinion, because of Iranian behavior in the region, which JCPOA did not, by conscious design, did not address. We would not have had that coalition, I mentioned, of Russia, China, Europe, the United States agree on the regional behavior of Iran. We only agreed on one significant thing, which was the nuclear program. But I think the thinking in the Obama administration was that if you got that nuclear deal, then the moderates in Iran would start to have more influence, and then we could start to work on sort of moving Iran in a more moderate direction. And that was a complete fallacy. On the contrary, the moderates were not particularly strong and were sidelined, and the Soleimani wing, the IRGC, and that element gained more and more traction in the Middle East. So that was the situation that I think the Trump administration saw and tried to address when it came to office. Do you think maybe when it comes to Lebanon, we're looking too much through the prism of Iran's role in the region, which prompts us the US to a seat to a weak Lebanese group of leaders in government? What's your view of that? Well, if you take time to look at Lebanese history, I think you'll see, at least I do, that Lebanon is a weak country. It doesn't have really a coherent state because of these factions. The state was designed deliberately to be weak. Every one of the major factions has a veto on its power, so basically it can do almost nothing, particularly at times of crisis. And any element in that mix that's prepared to use arms will have the upper hand. And since the end of the Civil War, when all the other factions agreed to disarm, Syria and the Iranians were able to preserve the arms of Hezbollah using the justification of the Israeli occupation of the south. Well, the occupation ended in 2000, so there's really no pretext anymore, but the arms remain. And there's no force prepared or willing to remove the arms. 1701 was about obviously disarming Hezbollah. So I don't think it's a mistake to look at Lebanon through the prism of Iran. I think it would be very misleading not to identify that. There are other prisms that are important and we shouldn't lose sight of, but that is one of the major fault lines in Lebanon as it is in the Middle East today. Thanks, David. Let's move on to back to Israel Gaza angle. You know, as we observe the consequences following the October 7th atrocities, there appear to be some important parallels with earlier instances in U.S. policy engagement in Lebanon. Give us the audience some key takeaways that you see in this regard. Well, the obvious parallels are the Israeli invasion in 1982 and strategy to basically wipe away the PLO infrastructure leadership ability to use Lebanon as a base at that time. And then a more ambitious strategy as well to push the Syrians out and also to see the election of a new president of Lebanon who would be inclined to normalize relations with Israel. Huge overreach. In 2006, an accidental war, 82 was a war by design. 2006 was an accidental war that began. I think both sides, look in hindsight, view it as having been a mistake. It was devastating. But again, you had an Israeli overreach where they had difficulty identifying what the target was. In 82, they couldn't really get at Arafat because Arafat and his fighters were deeply embedded in West Beirut, one of the densest Arab capitals that exists in tunnels and in basements. And so they decided to adopt a strategy of putting pressure on the civilian population, which if anyone had a degree in psychology in the Israeli leadership at the time, they should have realized it was a guaranteed way to bring the Lebanese public and the Palestinian leadership together rather than the opposite. In fact, many Lebanese at the time before or as the war was beginning were very angry at the Palestinian leadership for taking refuge in their midst. But by the time that siege was over, the feeling was, well, this is what we have to deal with and why I'm on the side of the Palestinians. And so we had, and the situation between Reagan and Prime Minister Begum became extremely stressed out. Reagan was constantly telling Begum to stop and Begum was lying to him. Begum would say, oh, we're not doing anything. And there are these moments where Phil Habib, again our envoy, would take the tax hat phone and talking to Washington and Washington, hear this, those are Israeli shells. And so it became very stressful relationship between the United States and the Israeli leadership and ultimately we were able to prevail but not until the Israelis pretty much had finished their operation. In 2006, again we had basically two strains in our government. You had Condi Rice who felt she was operating based on guidance from President Bush to bring the war to an end and you had Vice President Cheney back channeling to Jerusalem, don't stop. And when Condi says that the president believes XYZ don't believe her, the vice president understands better. She had to go back to Crawford, Texas. This was a summer war and it all got laid out in front of the president. He slept on it overnight and he wrote out handwritten instructions that backed up Condi Rice and said, there's too much at stake in my freedom agenda because he was trying to promote democracy in Lebanon. We have to bring this war to an end. And that's when she was able to really mobilize and work with the French to bring about a ceasefire. Great insights, thank you. We talked last week about how the Biden administration is doing a pretty good job up until now with de-escalation on the Lebanese-Israeli border with the good work of presidential envoy, Huckstein. But boy, this weekend has changed all that. There's been more bombings in Bacaw. They've been previously in Beirut and now the Iranian embassy in Syria. What's the chances, David, for a wider war, in your opinion? How do you game that? Yeah, well, I appreciate you're saying wider war because it is a war going on only because Gaza is so much worse. Does it not draw our attention except when there is occasionally something that really spills over? But on both sides of the border, there's been essentially a depopulation. Numbers vary, but close to 100,000 Israelis have evacuated the north since October and similar, if not greater, numbers of Lebanese from the south. And this is, from a humanitarian perspective, pretty intolerable. And then you have the ever-present risk of miscalculation. I mean, that is the history of warfare is a history of miscalculations of both of these parties. Think they know exactly where the red line is or the other one. They think they know exactly how far to push and then pull back. Well, if they knew exactly how to do that, we wouldn't have had all the wars that we've had up till now. So I think that that is always a danger. There's always an accident that can happen. You might remember Kana in the mid-90s when I'm convinced the Israelis did not intend to, but they fired upon a place where civilians were taking refuge and the carnage was really quite extensive and moved that whole conflict to a new phase. I would say that the risk of escalation is quite high. And the problem today is that the level of armament and the sophistication of the armament that both sides have stockpiled since 2006 would make that 2006 war look like a tea party. The extent of his plausibility through both highly sophisticated missiles and very low, what would be the opposite, very simplistic missiles that can go under cover beneath the various defense mechanisms the Israelis have is quite substantial. And I think this is holding both sides back. And I thought there's a very good piece I saw a couple of weeks ago that tried to explain why is it that the Iranians are not unleashing his Bala more than they are already? And I don't know if this is true. I have no inside information, but there's some compelling argument behind this. It's because they wanna preserve his Bala's capacity because that capacity is Iran's deterrence against Iranian attack, excuse me, an Israeli attack on Iranian nuclear facilities. If they can hold a credible threat that if Israel attacks their nuclear facilities, his Bala will be unleashed. They think that is some level of deterrence. Again, I don't know if that's true. There may be some logic to that. So there may still be, even after yesterday's attack in Damascus, a reluctance to really let things go in South Lebanon, but we don't know. It's gonna be a decision made in Tehran, not in Beirut, probably not in Jerusalem. So given this heightened tension that you've just described, we've talked about, I think it's safe to assume that any ceasefire in Gaza will not automatically create a ceasefire between Israel and Hezbollah. What do you think the trade offs are for Hezbollah? What is it that we can give Hezbollah or deal with Hezbollah on that would bring calm to this hair trigger scenario? Yeah, right, I mean, there certainly won't be an end to the tension in South Lebanon until there is a resolution in Gaza. The question I think you're posing is, will that be sufficient? And I think Hezbollah wants to go back exactly to where it was before, which is the ever-present shadow that they can pose over Israel. And I don't think after October 7, the Israelis will tolerate that, which is what's fueling this speculation and even statements that some Israeli officials make that threaten an escalation or a widening of the war. So our diplomacy has to deal with a new reality, which means old solutions probably aren't gonna be able to deal with a new reality. But there are tools that we have that we should be working with and not throwing away, 1701. We've talked about implementing 1701 since it was passed in 2006. We haven't really made a serious effort to impose it. And that's something that I think we're gonna have to think about again. Now it's really hard. And Hezbollah will have many, and by imposing it, I mean disarming Hezbollah and demilitarizing the border. That's what 1701's unfinished business largely is. And that means going back to who's calling the shots. Hezbollah's part of it, but it's Iran. So how do you apply sufficient pressure on Iran that puts 1701 back into activation? So let me ask you, there's a lot of worry and leviton by the government and other people there that Hezbollah would trade, I get the presidency. I get to pick the president and Lebanon in exchange for maybe a 10 kilometer buffer zone. What's the US position on that? I'm a little bit off message when it comes to the presidency. I don't wanna say anything, particularly to my Lebanese friends that suggests that I don't attach importance to the presidency. It is important. It is the highest Maronite Christian position in the country, so it's important for that community. It's also important for the cohesion of the country and the functioning of the government because without a president, they can't really appoint a full-time prime minister. Without a prime minister, they can't get a cabinet going, which means they can't address all of the economic and financial problems as thoroughly as otherwise could be the case. But it's a little bit like walking into a rug merchants shop and saying, I want that rug no matter what it costs. I want that rug. Let's begin our bargaining. Okay, that's the West's approach to the presidency. We want a president. We aren't even talking about the who. We're talking about the filling the vacancy as if it's more important to be filled than the nature of how and who fills it because it's gonna be a package deal. It's not gonna just be about the presidency. It could be about the things you just mentioned, trying to get a deal involving the South. More typically, it involves also the prime minister, the cabinet, these other factors. So you don't start in saying that's the most important thing I want. That just raises the price. I think we should be putting the presidency aside. We should not be neglectful of it, but for now there's a war going on and to try to link these two together will only further enable his beloved to raise the price. And so I would instead focus on bringing this conflict to an end, reducing his beloved's ability to use its arms to get its political way in Lebanon and then start talking about what the Lebanese can do, not outside powers to reconcile their differences sufficiently to elect a president. So just to get into 1701 a little bit, Envoy Huckstein is saying, look, I'll get what I can, I'll take what I can get. And by that I think they mean, can we end hostilities, create a 10 kilometer buffer zone, stand up the LAF kind of incrementally looking at these things, even deal with a commitment to deal with infrastructure there. So the U.S. is involved, not just Hezbollah, on its way to hopefully full implementation of 1701. What's your view of that and what's your view of the chances of getting all the way to 1701 in the next year? Well, I think if they can achieve that, the administration will have achieved a great deal. How are you going to get there is the question. And I go back to Iran as a, not the only element in the equation, but a very significant central character in all of this. And I don't detect an Iran policy right now. So I don't know how we're going to change Iranian behavior, which will be essential. The Iranians, not just in South Lebanon, but also if we try to approach a diplomatic solution related to the Palestinians, it's the last thing the Iranians want. They will be doing everything they can to spoil it. How are you going to stop that from there being a spoiler? And so again, you have to have an Iran strategy, not necessarily Lebanon strategy. You also have to have the Iran strategy. And that is a missing element I see. But yeah, if those pieces can begin to be put into play, that would be a fantastic platform. But then back to my theme in the book about oscillation and spasms, we better not have a spasm when we're done that has us go away. Because then all of those elements will just one by one fall apart. Is it in US's interest to have an Iran strategy in concert with and in cooperation with collaboration with Saudi and some of the other Gulf countries? I think it'd be key. And I think one of the things that was happening before October 7 was a hedging strategy by those countries because they no longer had confidence in the integrity of the American security umbrella. And so they needed to make their own deals with Iran. And again, we need to turn the tables on that kind of thing, make our allies and friends feel that confident in the United States approach, which means they have to be part of it. This has been great, David. Thank you so much for this. I want to end with a couple of questions on broader lessons in American diplomatic trade craft. At USIP, we're looking to highlight instances of creative US diplomacy. Can you unpack for us an example of creative US diplomacy from your Lebanon experience, the complexity of Lebanon, and maybe across the episodes that you highlight in your book, regardless if they were successful or not? Yeah, one of the ones that's less known here in Washington is a guy named Dean Brown, Foreign Service Officer, was sent to Beirut in 1976 by Henry Kissinger because we were worried as the Syrians were moving in much more overtly in uniform, their soldiers into Lebanon. At that time, to protect the Christians against the Palestinians, the Syrians were ostensibly allied to the Palestinians, but they didn't want the Palestinians to have the upper hand in Lebanon. As they began to move in, the Israelis got very nervous while anything that diminished Palestinian power was good, but what were the Syrians really intending to do? Were they gonna move further south? So Kissinger sent Brown with very unrealistic instructions to basically wipe out the Palestinians, get the Syrians out all the way down the list. Bear in mind this is during the Cold War period. And Brown got there, and he had great credibility because he had helped save the kingdom of Jordan as ambassador in Amman. He developed very close relationships with Hussein when Hussein was battling the Palestinians and really played a key role there. So everyone respected Brown. And Brown was there for about a week and he went back to Henry Kissinger, one of our most powerful and sometimes rather difficult secretaries of state. And he said, my instructions are all wrong. We need to work with the Syrians, not against the Syrians, because that's the only way we're gonna get what we want. And I needed to negotiate with them. And I also wanted to negotiate with Arafat. So he got a green light on the first one. The second one, this is 1976, an election year. Ford was not prepared to begin a dialogue with Arafat because Arafat said it has to be public. So we worked with Arafat through the Saudis. But he ended up with a red line agreement that lasted until the Israelis got way unrealistic about eight or nine, eight years later. And that was the work of one foreign service officer, frankly, who knew how to use power. That kind of brings me to another question for you. One of the last acts that you did as undersecretary was go to Lebanon after this terrible port blast. And your sense of condolence and caring for a people that were really in shock was very much appreciated. Particularly in this age of social media work, how important is that diplomacy on the ground, personal diplomacy? How would you see it? Are we losing it? And if it's important, what would you say to bring us back to more of that personal diplomacy? Well, it's absolutely crucial. And I had the further advantage of having those nine years I had spent in Lebanon. It's a small country. So you get to know people and people get to know you. If I had just landed and never been to the country before, I probably would have been a little bit at sea. I could sense perhaps better, because of that experience, better than I would have otherwise, the lay of the land. And we landed, it was a long flight. We brought some COVID supplies. ATFL was there to help. And we went directly to a site that had been devastated by the bombing. And no one from the Lebanese government had been there in the preceding week. It was a little less than a week. And I didn't know what to expect. But when I got there, they were very well organized. These were volunteers from Lebanese civil society who put away aside their day jobs and were using, excuse me, their expertise, whether it was in health or computer work or organizations to help people get back on their feet and get their lives going again. And I saw in the audience some friends and particularly children of friends of mine, I'd known for a long time. And I was really proud to see what they were doing. And I was making my way back to the car. And there was a little protest of sorts. And I turned to look at it and they were saying, no bailout. And they thought I was there with a message from the administration saying, well, it's so bad we're gonna bail out this government. And of course, the government was partly accountable for all the corruption and all the things that had brought Lebanon to this point. And so I walked over to them and I said, I agree, we're not gonna bail them out and this is all on camera. And I spent the next day repeating that message. And so what I was struck by though is all the cynicism that we bring to our political analysis of Lebanon, it's important to remember that there are actually wonderful people in Lebanon who are victims as much as anyone of what's happened and they need our help. That's very good. Thank you, David. Let me ask you on a personal note. You know, your career has literally spanned the whole trajectory of US foreign policy positions and with a concentration in the Middle East but all the way to Pakistan and further. Can you elaborate on your personal ties to Lebanon and how the country and its many challenges are intertwined with your own personal experience? Yeah, when I arrived in Lebanon, as assigned to Lebanon, I had been before under various missions, I was in my late 20s. The head of Hizballah had just been assassinated by the Israelis, Muswe. And our ambassador is being flown out for his safety as I was being flown in. We had dinner in Larnaka and he eventually came back but we locked our self down. Our embassy there is already more security than you could believe but because of that period, I didn't leave the embassy for four months. But back to your earlier question about the personal ties, because Lebanese are so outgoing and because they're so determined to get their point of view known. And give you dinner. And give you dinner and so forth that they broke down all the barriers that we were trying to build, not against them but incidentally kind of made it harder to come see us. This is before social media and cell phones and all of that. And they wanted to come meet the ambassador and if they couldn't meet him, they'd meet me. And that's how we began these relationships. And so it's absolutely crucial that we not forget that that is the building block of diplomacy as a personal relationship. David, thank you for such a thoughtful and personal discussion this morning. Thank you. Thank you.