 Welcome to the Reason Stream. I'm Zach Weismuller, joined by my co-host, Liz Wolff. We are live today, so if you have questions or comments, please leave them and we'll get to some of the good ones. Already, we have a $5 Super Chat questioning the very premise of this stream, which is titled, Can America Help Deescalate in the Middle East? Steve answers, Spoiler Alert? No. Well, Steve, I'm not ready to pack it up yet and go home because we are picking up where we left off last week and looking to further our understanding of the events unfolding in Israel and the Gaza Strip. And joining us today to help with that is Trita Parsey, the executive vice president at the Quincy Institute for Responsible Statecraft, a DC foreign policy think tank. The name's to promote a more restrained US foreign policy. He was previously the head of the National Iranian American Council and author of the book, Treacherous Alliance, the Secret Dealings of Israel, Iran and the United States. And he recently published an article imploring the Biden administration to step up efforts to de-escalate the conflict in order to avoid sparking a larger regional war. Trita, thank you very much for talking with us today. Thank you so much for having me. I want to begin by reading a couple sentences from that article. There is a palpable fear that the conflict will escalate into a region-wide war. None of the main actors with the possible exception of Hamas want or benefit from such a war, yet all sides are acting in a manner that increases its risk by the day. Ian, what ways are all sides acting recklessly at this moment in your view? Well, if we first take a look at it, I don't think that Iranians or Hezbollah wanted a war here. If in fact the Iranians were behind this, which was an early reporting that was debunked rather quickly, then it made no sense for Hezbollah not to attack Hamas simultaneously from the north. The Iranians just came out of more than several months, seven, eight months of protests. They barely made it out of that. They're extremely unpopular at home. Their economy is in shabbles. They cannot afford a war. A war in this case would not be a distraction. It would be something that reader would go against their interests because the population is already quite by and large. Not everyone, of course. Skeptical of the matter in which Iran has involved itself in this issue and believed that Iran should use its resources at home rather than on funding Hamas or Hezbollah. Same thing with Hezbollah. I mean, the situation in Lebanon is the economic disaster, political crisis, et cetera. Nor do the Saudis want this. The Egyptians absolutely do not want this. I don't think the United States want that. I genuinely don't believe that the Biden administration is looking for an excavation. I don't even don't think that the Israelis want this. They may want to go after Hezbollah after they're finished with Gaza assuming that they actually can be successful. But the idea of having a region-wide war with several fronts at the same time, I don't think they want. But who was actually acting in a restraint manner to make sure that that scenario does not happen? Take a look at, for instance, these Israelis, they have mobilized 350,000 people. You don't need that many to invade Gaza. So if you're sitting in Lebanon with Hezbollah, your assumption is gonna be that Israel is preparing for an invasion of Lebanon. Now, the Israelis may not be planning that at all. They may be mobilizing those people to deter Hezbollah from intervening in the conflict, to be ready for it, rather than necessarily signaling that they're actually aiming to go after Hezbollah and invading Lebanon. But because of these security dilemma and the misperceptions, and because of the fact that what the Biden administration is doing is to solely put pressure on Iran and Hezbollah in order to try to deter them from intervening, which I think is fine. But the problem is that that is all that they're doing. There is no such pressure on Israel for it not to escalate. The British press is reporting today that Biden in private talks with the Israelis gave them the green light for a land invasion of Gaza. We know that a land invasion of Gaza is the most likely thing to trigger a Lebanese intervention through Hezbollah, which would then trigger an Iranian involvement, which in turn would trigger an American involvement. If our objective is to prevent that and prevent the United States getting dragged into another war, then we have to do much more than just deterring the Iranians. We also do need to put pressure on these Israelis. And there's very little science that that has happened so far. And just take a look at what happened this morning. The US embassy in Lebanon issued a statement urging all Americans to leave Lebanon. That's not a statement that you make easily. It's a statement that reflects at least a significant expectation on the American side that this is going to lead to a region wide war and it's better for Americans to leave Lebanon before that happens. There was a clip I wanted to play that I think encapsulates the argument as to why some people believe Israel should do a land invasion in Gaza and why it's necessary for them to do everything possible to eliminate Hamas. The clip I'm gonna play is from Ben Shapiro, who I think recently encapsulated the argument. He said they should show basically no restraint in finishing off Hamas, as he puts it. And the US should offer material support. And then he lays out a series of escalating events that isn't all that dissimilar from what you lay out in your article as to how this could spill out into a bigger conflict. Let's roll that clip and I'd like to get your reaction. So the real risk for Israel in not finishing off Hamas right now is that this is taken as a sign of weakness, as it certainly would be, by Hezbollah. Hezbollah is a far more dangerous terrorist group than Hamas. Hamas is a dangerous terrorist group. They just proved it by killing 1,300 Jews. Hezbollah currently has over 100,000 highly sophisticated rockets aimed directly at the north of Israel. Estimates suggest that were Hezbollah to fire all of those rockets, we wouldn't be talking about 1,300 dead Jews. You would be talking about somewhere between 20 and 30,000 dead Jews, day one. If Hezbollah gets in, Israel will have no choice but to unleash the air force. If they unleash the air force, they're not going to be worried at that point about civilian casualties at all. They're simply going to have to eviscerate the entire south of Lebanon and topple the regime in Lebanon that supports Hezbollah. If that happens, Iran undoubtedly gets in and so does Syria. If that happens, and Israel is now faced with a full war in the north, combined with a war in the south because they will not have defeated Hamas, that's the predicate. If Israel is forced to the wall, the possibility of nuclear exchange is extremely high. That is why it is very important that the United States provide the material aid to Israel and that they also dissuade Hezbollah from getting in. It's why Joe Biden has been warning Hezbollah not to get in. What do you think of the doomsday scenario that he lays out there? And what is your prescription on how to avoid such a horrific scenario? There's part of the excavation that I agree. Some of the logic there, I think, is valid. He talks about a nuclear exchange. I don't really understand what that is because it's only Israel that has nuclear weapons. Iran does not have nuclear weapons. Hezbollah does not have nuclear weapons. So I don't know what the exchange there really would be. But the main problem I have with that analysis is the fundamental premise. The idea that if Israel doesn't destroy Hamas, eliminate it, Hezbollah will view that as a sign of weakness. That type of sign of weakness argument is what we're hearing all the time in order to justify completely senseless escalations that have been utterly unsuccessful. The United States, when after the Taliban and al-Qaeda, rightfully mindful of al-Qaeda's attacks on the United States on 9-11. But some way, somehow, that objective of taking out al-Qaeda or punishing it then there in Afghanistan changed into a much larger objective of bringing democracy to Afghanistan and completely ending evil and things of that nature, which led to a 20-year long unsuccessful, extremely costly occupation of Afghanistan. And guess what? The Taliban are still in charge in Kabul. So for Israel to try to do the same, which it has tried before and failed, seems to me be extremely unwise. And in fact, rather than Hezbollah looking at that as a sign of weakness, if Israel doesn't do so, it will be a sign of actual wisdom of recognizing what is not achievable and pursuing a much more strategically wise strategy of being able to protect Israel without falling into the trap and this fear of looking weak. Only the weak fear-looking weak, if you're actually strong, you're not worried about those things. I mean, but then by that logic, like what should Israel be doing? What is justified? Well, first of all, killing thousands of Palestinians that don't have anything with Hamas doesn't do anything to punish Hamas. It doesn't do anything to actually add security to Israel. I agree with that, but Hamas puts them in a very difficult position in terms of using human shields, right? Well, it's not a question about human shields. That area is so heavily populated that you can't go and do mass bombings and expect you're gonna hit Hamas people and not hit civilians. The larger problem of all of this, and this is very interesting, I had conversations with Israelis just immediately after this happened, is that Israel was under a very false belief that it could sustain an occupation of Gaza indefinitely, that it would bring about small increases of instability, some skirmishes every two or three years, but overall it would be manageable. And as a result, you did not need to resolve these Israeli Palestinian conflict because this could be managed. That belief has been completely shattered because Hamas went in and killed more than 1,300 Israelis. That is not a cost that Israel can absorb and find acceptable as part of a broader occupation strategy. It is also incidentally, part of the assumption that the United States by thinking that it's gonna go for a normalization deal between Israel and Saudi Arabia by completely ignoring the Palestinian issue. The world may have forgotten about the Palestinians, the Israelis, the United States, a lot of the Arab elites, very much so, but the Palestinians have not forgotten about the Palestinians and now they have reasserted their relevance in the most, most horrific way. So you actually need to go for an actual solution of this conflict, which does not entail some sort of a military elimination of the other side. Keep in mind, Israel was very much part of funding and bringing about Hamas as part of a strategy back in the 1980s to play Hamas a religious radical organization against the PLO, which Israel at the time saw as a far greater threat. Playing these different games have only cost a lot of people's lives on both sides and it's not bringing about any type of establishment. By now, 50, 60, 70 years into it, we should have understood that. I very much agree with you in terms of mourning the loss of Palestinian life. I mean, the fact that so many innocent civilians, so many children have been caught up in something, have been senselessly killed by IDF forces. It is a completely unacceptable thing. And every morning I have a reason roundup which covers this. I think it is important that people start these conversations with mourning this loss of innocent life because Israeli life and Palestinian has been terribly lost. But I do think you're not fully tackling the question head-on of what should Israel do? Given that on October 7th, 1300, mostly innocent people were slaughtered, Holocaust survivors, babies, families all sheltering together. It's not like Israel is realistically going to say, oh, well now's the time for diplomacy and to really hammer things out. Like surely there will be a military response. So what are they justified in doing? I mean, you at the beginning of this conversation also said that activating 350,000, 360,000 reservists is an unacceptable way to respond to this and that that's more manpower than they really need. But I'm curious from a more concrete place, what should Israel be doing right now? So let me first say something in terms of the loss of life. I agree with you fully on that. And I think at the same time, it is realistic to expect that there will be some sort of a military response after such an attack. Whether those attacks, such a response is within the realm of international law, et cetera, we can discuss separately. But the expectation that there would have been a response I think is quite clear. This is unfortunately the way most countries do react to horrific attacks of this kind. But I had this conversation with an Israeli security expert earlier this week and he insisted to me that, look, the idea of taking out Hamas, that's an impossibility. That's not what this is about. So I asked him, so what is this about then? He said, well, this is about revenge. Israel is filled with rage because of what Hamas has done and this is about revenge. Okay, if that is what the case is, you asked, you know, what should Israel do? What has Israel already done? There's already more than 4,000 people killed. At what point is the revenge satisfied? And if it is only revenge, then let's also be honest about the fact that it may be an impulse and need to do something because of the rage, but let's not pretend that it's actually adding security. Let's not pretend that it's bringing a solution. So I'm gonna say that in the sense of saying, you know, debunking the idea that the other side who's arguing in favor of these military interventions have a solution, they don't. They have a revenge plan and a revenge plan at the end of the day is gonna leave a lot of people killed, but it's not gonna bring about a better situation. If you truly wanna get to a secure situation, you do have to start negotiations. I understand clearly that this is not the right moment in which anyone on either side is gonna be open to it. But the first step is de-escalate, get a ceasefire. Hamas is holding more than 200 hostages. Those have to be released. They have no right in taking those hostages. Those have to be released. The United Nations had a resolution in the Security Council yesterday, introduced by Brazil, a close US ally. It condemned Hamas. It condemned terrorism in the strongest possible words. It called for the hostages to absolutely be released right away. And it also called for a humanitarian pause. It did not even mention Israel. It didn't single out Israel. The United States under the Biden administration still vetoed that resolution. How can we say that this is a path towards a better future for all of the people in the United States, including the United States? The vengeance thing is, well, the vengeance thing is one possible theoretical explanation. But what about if we take seriously the idea that wiping out Hamas is actually the goal? Then what types of things are justified? Or is that just an untenable theory to you? It's not that some people are not saying that it is a goal. They are saying that it is the goal. But I've never seen that goal be able to be successful. Again, we tried that 20 years in Afghanistan with a group that is not even as close as sophisticated as some of these other groups as Hamas is, for instance. So it's not about whether it is some goal that you can justify as a result of the horrible thing Hamas has done. It's whether this is actually a realistic thing that ultimately is going to bring about a better situation for all sides, including, of course, for the Israelis. So I can understand the impulse. I can understand the revenge desire, which unfortunately it's part of humanity. But we have played this game many, many times and we're not seeing it leading to a better situation. And at some point we have to have a conversation because it's not going to be correct for us to constantly do this and 20 years afterwards, laugh about how, you know, why wasn't the United States more realistic about how to react to the 9-11? Well, we're having that situation right now. Are we going to learn from that wisdom? Are we going to tell a friend as in Israel about our experience and caution them not to repeat the same thing, given the fact that the idea of actually eliminating Hamas is extremely unlikely and the human cost in doing so is not just the thousands of people that have been killed right now, but thousands and thousands more, both on the Israeli and the Palestinian side. I want to put some more, I want to put the discussion around ceasefire or de-escalation in the U.S. political context. In your article, you linked to this fact that there was a State Department memo telling diplomats not to impress materials, reference these three specific phrases, de-escalation slash ceasefire, end to violence slash bloodshed, and restoring calm. And I think that the reason there's so much hesitance to talk about ceasefire is as you mentioned that UN resolution, the demand is that Hamas needs to return the hostages that they've taken. And it does strike Israelis and supporters of Israel that until that happens, that's the order of operations. Until that happens, there's not going to be anything like a ceasefire. Is there anything to that idea that really to get this going in the right direction, Hamas needs to take the first step and start turning over those hostages immediately? That's not the way these things work, unfortunately. Every time you end up having a release of hostages and return for a ceasefire or whatever the other ask is on the other side, it happens as a result of diplomacy taking place. There is simply zero trust between the two sides. So neither side is gonna unilaterally take such a step in the hope that the other side is going to reciprocate. That can only happen if it's a part of a negotiation. The UN has offered to help with that. This is something that actually the United States could have also done through Qatar, through Egypt and others that do have a dialogue with Hamas. Those are things that could be done, in my view, should be done. And even if the United States wouldn't want to do it, what is the signal we're sending to the rest of the world, not only instructing our diplomats that they cannot talk about ending the bloodshed, but also we're vetoing a resolution that is actually condemning terrorism and condemning Hamas and calling for a humanitarian pause, which is part of a release of these hostages. And let me take it back to the U.S. perspective and interest here as well. We can, because part of what the gentleman that the clip that you showed was saying is very much, Ben Shapiro, is very much part of the calculations that may very well exist on the Israeli side. I think the calculation that it should be existing on the American side is that if these scenarios, and it doesn't have to go as far as Ben put it, if these scenarios go forward and you do have a land invasion that triggers Hezbollah intervention and Hezbollah's involvement will definitely be seen in Washington as Iran's involvement. It may also trigger Iraqi militias starting to attack American bases throughout the Middle East, particularly in Iraq. There's already been some drone attacks this morning against an American base. Then then the U.S. is gonna get dragged into this war. Some people are saying, well, it won't be any ground troops, doesn't matter. There's about 50,000 U.S. troops in the region already. There are going to be sitting targets and they're gonna be targeted by this. So in the midst of the crisis in Ukraine, in the midst of a potential crisis with China over Taiwan, we simply cannot, from a U.S. interest perspective, afford yet another war in the region with these maximalist goal with no exit plan. We've already been there. It would be a stunning stupidity to allow us to get into that situation. That's why I think the de-escalation priority has to be priority number one. And I'm not confident that the approach that the Biden administration has pursued is sufficient to achieve that. And I think that could end up being a dramatic disastrous. Well, I wanna dig a little bit more into what that approach is. Biden was in Israel on a Wednesday meeting with the prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu. And he made some remarks after that meeting. Let's play those remarks and get your analysis of what he's saying. I come to Israel with a single message. You're not alone. We're gonna make sure we have what you need to protect your people, to defend your nation. For decades, we've ensured Israel's qualitative military edge. And later this week, I'm gonna ask the United States Congress to give us an unprecedented support package for Israel's defense. I understand and many Americans understand. You can't look at what has happened here to your mothers, your fathers, your grandparents, sons, daughters, children, even babies, and not scream out for justice. Justice must be done. But I caution this while you feel that rage, don't be consumed by it. After 9-11, we were in rage in the United States. While we sought justice and got justice, we also made mistakes. The vast majority of Palestinians are not Hamas. Hamas does not represent the Palestinian people. Palestinian people are suffering greatly as well. We mourn the loss of innocent Palestinian lives like the entire world. I was outraged and saddened by the enormous loss of life yesterday in the hospital in Gaza. Based on the information we've seen today, it appears a result of an errant rocket fired by a terrorist group in Gaza. Today, I asked the Israeli cabinet I've met with for some time this morning to agree to the delivery of lifesaving humanitarian assistance to civilians in Gaza. Today, I'm also announcing $100 million of new U.S. funding for humanitarian assistance in both Gaza and the West Bank. This money will support more than 1 million displaced and conflict-affected Palestinians, including emergency needs in Gaza. It must keep pursuing peace. It must keep pursuing a path so that Israel and the Palestinian people can both live safely in security and dignity and in peace. For me, that means a two-state solution. So there's a lot packed into that montage of highlights, but what I hear Biden saying is that America will keep funding Israel's military defense, that he's working to provide aid to Palestinians, telling Israel not to let rage cloud their wartime judgment, and that he still believes in a two-state solution. What are your reactions to Biden's comments and what are your critiques of his overall diplomatic approach? I think that Biden says a lot of very valid things in this interview. I think it is quite helpful that he has raised the example of our own conduct after 9-11 and acknowledged mistakes and missteps that were taken and excesses that were taken. I think it's also valid for him, of course, to validate that they're suffering on both sides. Here's where I have a problem. On a rhetorical level, many of the things that Biden is saying, in my view, are correct and are the right things to say. On a practical level, are we actually doing those things? He says that he believes in the two-state solution. The United States is long abandoned actually putting any pressure to make sure that there's an achievement towards that. It was quite interesting in the New York Times article that Tom Friedman wrote when the Biden administration was trying to get a normalization deal between Israel and the Saudis. And what was in it for the Palestinians was not a compromise that would give them the state that they've been seeking for more than 70 years now, but rather a pathway to keep the option, the dream alive. So we've gone from actually promising to achieve a two-state solution, to promising to achieve the survival of the dream of a two-state solution. So we're not doing those things that the president is saying. And again, the normalization deal was premised on the idea that you can just ignore the Palestinians, that you can, as Jared Kushner said, because this is all built on what Trump's Abram Accord was, that you can move beyond the Palestinian issue, not even a desire and ambition to resolve it, but you can move beyond it because that conflict has now become so contained that we don't have to bother trying to resolve it. In essence and in practice, that has been US policy. The rhetoric has been that we still believe in a two-state solution, et cetera. Part of the reason why we still say that we do is because it sounds good. And the minute we say that we don't, when we recognize that we have also helped kill the pathway for a two-state solution, that's when we would have a very active crisis, even short of what Hamas did here. So we keep on saying it, but it's a pretense game. We really do have to shift to being serious about this, particularly mindful of the fact that that instability has a significant likelihood of sucking the United States into a conflict that we should not be involved in militarily. So say a two-state solution gets pursued. What indication do we have that Hamas would in any way agree to that? Play this out for me a little bit. Well, first of all, Hamas is not in control of the West Bank. They're in control of Gaza. Sure. So- I don't even agree in terms of like, the way tensions are right now, why do we think that that is what would be happening? Well, you're saying that right now, but why didn't we do it three, four weeks ago? Why didn't we do it during this entire period in which we didn't have this? Instead, we just gave lip service to the two-state solution and continued to pursue a policy that essentially buried it in the ground. You're quite right that under the current circumstances, it's going to be extremely difficult to just get any diplomacy going. But that is nevertheless ultimately where we have to end up. And these moments are the extremely difficult moments in which you have to set your ambitions a little bit more realistically. It has to be about the escalation. Cease fire, once you have that, it creates a bit of a pause that creates political momentum to escalate it towards a bigger political agenda and then move towards a real negotiation to actually end this conflict. It's not so that tomorrow there can be a meeting with all of these parties at the table and they would actually talk about this issue. There's several preliminary steps that need to be taken. If we don't take them, however, we will never get to the point of actually having the real diplomacy and we will also not have the de-escalation that can keep the United States out of this world. I have to assume that this such negotiation would involve the Palestinian Authority cooperating with Israel and partners to facilitate the complete expulsion of Hamas because there's no way that we're coming out of this on the heels of a brutal terrorist attack giving a two-state, giving an independent Palestine that would just send the message, I would assume that terrorism works and is an acceptable method of negotiation. I think the pathway here is to first recognize that there needs to be a negotiation with the Palestinian Authority. Who, by the way, incidentally is lacking significant legitimacy amongst Palestinians as well. The majority of Palestinians in the West Bank tend to see the Palestinian Authority essentially having taken over the management of the occupation and collaborating with Israelis and that kind. So it's not as if there's a partner there that has the backing of its population and that further complicates matters. But I can see a pathway in which there is first a negotiation that I actually get serious about a two-state solution with such a two-state solution has to deal with what the United States used to call illegal settlements on Palestinian territory. We have significantly softened our language and in our opposition to that, even though those are violations of international law and even though they have made prospects of a two-state solution far, far less likely. We have green-lighted that, which again is in practice, we're moving in a direction of making a two-state solution next to impossible but rhetorically we still talk about it as if that is our goal. But that sort of dodges the question that Zach just asked, right? Like, there would be this problem of if, you know, ultimately there was a two-state solution that was pursued and granted and gotten, that would send the message. I mean, you have to fully stamp out Hamas before that. No, no, hold on, let me get clarification. What do you mean that there was a two-state solution that was there? No, no, no, I'm saying if there were to be a two-state solution in the aftermath of this, surely one of the stipulations would have to be that Hamas can in no way exercise any power within this region because otherwise there is this message sent of, you know, you commit terroristic acts and get rewarded for your efforts, right? Certainly. Yeah, no, I'm sorry. I better understand the question now. Thank you. So first of all, let's recognize that in the past negotiations the West Bank and Gaza oftentimes have been separated. Let's also recognize that if there actually is a valid process that it's genuinely moving towards a two-state solution, guess what that does? It delegitimizes Hamas. Hamas is managing to get a degree of support precisely because there is no diplomacy, precisely because there is no, the implementation of the measures that Israel was supposed to do were never implemented. And instead we've seen an increase of settlement activity and the de facto annexation of Palestinian territory. So there's a clear perception in the region that that diplomacy did not yield what it was supposed to do. And then that further gives legitimacy and support for a rejectionist organization like Hamas who was opposed to that process from the outside. If you actually truly want to get rid of that type of a radicalism by being able to have a genuine process that is genuinely seeking a solution, that's the best way of weakening Hamas. And then after that, then that dynamic in and of itself can create new opportunities in Gaza that can help get the Palestinian population themselves there. Get rid of Hamas and get a leadership that is willing to participate in the process. But right now, given the track record of how negotiations have been used to expand settlements, that is right now not something that has a lot of buyers amongst the Palestinians. And this is what I'm saying. We have to completely reverse this if we truly want to get a resolution here. The assumption had been, this is okay. There's never going to be a major amount of violence and destabilization here because we have managed to contain the Palestinians. We have managed to contain their aspirations. We have AI and all of this technology. They can never do anything else. So the cost of just going on with the status quo and the occupation is manageable. And that was fundamentally disprover. Would you explain the annexation issue to our audience a little bit? I think that's an interesting thing to bring in and I know you have some knowledge of that. Yeah, so the Israelis, the division that was made when the Israeli mandate was created back in the late 1940s had a two-stage solution. Of course, there were several different wars. The Israelis were successful in those wars. They occupied a lot of those different territories. And then in the 1970s, a project began incidentally partly led by Ariel Sharon that said that for security reasons, Israel needed to start populating these parts of the territory that actually belonged to the Palestinians. Others were pursuing it from a religious standpoint. For instance, Hebron is an area in which you have settlements that has a significance in the Jewish tradition. Those have grown exponentially during the period of the negotiations, even though they were supposed to be dismantled. And that has led to a scenario in which the Palestinian territory is no longer continuous. It's cut off in so many different parts by settlements and roads and checkpoints that the Israelis put in place in order to facilitate transportation between the different settlements. So the Palestinian territory that used to be continuous is no longer such. And that is some of the facts on the ground that is so-called that has made a two-state solution so much more difficult because it either requires uprooting of all of these settlements and some of them have now been there for 30 plus years. Or it means that there's going to be a Palestinian state that is, as they call it, just a complete Bantustan. It is not a continuous territory and a completely impossible to come. We should not be here in the first place. Many of the mistakes that we committed and the status quo that we accepted has led us to this scenario. I want to bring us back to the U.S.'s role in all this for a moment because obviously the history of the region is incredibly complex. The question I want to get at here is what the U.S. should be doing, if anything, to facilitate these solutions. I mean, Biden mentioned in that clip that he's requesting $100 billion in foreign aid and that's to be split up between Israel, Ukraine and Taiwan about reporting from the New York Times. The package is expected to include about 10 billion in mostly military assistance to help Israel, 60 billion for Ukraine. And this would cover supposedly a full year and insulate security funding from the partisan spending battles that we see playing out in Congress. What exactly do you think that America's role should be in funding any of these governments in the Middle East? You mentioned the rise of Hamas earlier, that arguably the U.S. has some complicity in that. We talked with Max Abrams last week a little bit about how the Israeli far right and Hamas kind of had this symbiotic relationship that squeezed out negotiators in the middle. I just sometimes wonder like, what does America get for pouring all this money into the region? And so what is the appropriate use of foreign aid from the perspective of the Quincy Institute which has a more restrained foreign policy and does not want to the U.S. to orient around basically it's self-interest? So I think that's a great question. And I would say that if you're pouring money into a policy that is strategically unwise and on very weak grounds in the first place, then you should not have the expectation that that money magically is gonna fix it. That, however, is not necessarily the same as saying that some degree of foreign aid cannot be helpful or that that is inherently problematic. I think there's a lot of money that is going around right now that should be revised and revisited in many different ways. But it can also have a very stabilizing effect if it is part of a strategy that in and of itself is stabilizing. And I think unfortunately we have pursued for more than 40 years a belief and a strategy that is centered on the idea that we have to dominate the Middle East militarily. And if we don't, it's going to lead to chaos and anarchy in the region. And if for our own security and for the security of the region as a whole, we have to be the dominant power. The track record of that policy I think is disastrous. In 1998, there were five armed conflicts in the Middle East. By 2020, after two decades of that policy of American domination, the number of conflicts in the region had increased to 22. It's not all America's fault in any way, shape or form, but it is happening during a period in which we're pursuing that strategy of domination. And some have argued that the attack of Hamas is an indication as to why the U.S. need to reengage in the region and have a greater military presence, et cetera. I think that's, I don't understand the logic of that because I think, frankly, our military domination in many senses actually cemented certain conflicts. It also led to a scenario in which some of the states that thought that they had America's protection ended up acting more recklessly than they otherwise would have. Precisely because they thought that whatever they do, the United States is going to come out and bail them out afterwards. So take, for instance, Saudi Arabia's conduct and the bombing of Yemen, et cetera. Part of the reason why Saudi Arabia has shifted in the last two, three years towards far greater diplomatic engagement, normalization with Iran, resolving the conflict with Turkey, resolving the conflict with Qatar, et cetera, is precisely because the Saudis came to the conclusion that they didn't have a captive launch, a green light from the United States to do whatever they wanted. And guess what happened? Instead of leading to chaos, at least among those countries in the Persian Gulf, it led to far greater degree of intraragional diplomacy in which they started to resolve their problems on their own. Ultimately, that is actually quite good for the United States. It's good for us if they take on the burden of stability themselves instead of shifting it to American shoulders. And I know a big piece of the puzzle from your perspective is U.S.-Iran relations. It's your expertise and you've been very critical of America walking away from the Iran nuclear deal under Trump. Biden recently froze $6 billion in funds from Iranian oil sales. It's still unclear what exactly Iran's role was in the Hamas attack, but we do know they've been issuing continual threats to strike Israel if they invade Gaza. Is reproachment with Iran even conceivable at this point, given what's transpired? What has transpired has made it much, much more difficult. But even before that, it wasn't that it was extremely difficult, it certainly was, but it was no political appetite for it in Washington nor in Tehran. So I did not expect anything to be able to come out of any major diplomatic moves between now and the election. This, of course, have made it much worse and has potentially put a quiet understanding between Iran and the United States in jeopardy as well. A quiet understanding that would have led to neither one of them actually escalating matters with the other. How long that would last is unclear, but I think the administration's hope was that it would last at least until the elections of November next year. In some ways that is good. We don't need escalating tensions. On the other hand, it's a reflection of a very minimized ambition level when it comes to this. We could have solved this issue if we had continued to invest in the JCPA, not only because it would have stopped Iranians from having 60% enrichment and far greater amount of low-rich uranium, all things that were very problematic that they have far more of now since we left, but also because it would have potential other geopolitical repercussions. Not everything that we wanted, but a lot of things including the fact that I don't believe and I know several people in the US government do not believe that had the JCPA still been in place, had we been still a part of it and it was fully implemented, the likelihood of the Iranians actually supporting Russia in the invasion of Ukraine would have gone down significantly. The cost-benefit analysis in Tehran would have been tremendously different if they understood that they risked the JCPA and some of the benefits that they got from the JCPA if they supported the Russians on this. With the JCPA gone, that calculation of course ended up being very different and now we have them providing a tremendous amount of support from drones and other things to the Russians. We wanted to just ask you one last question and then let you go because I know you have a hard out pretty soon here. You alluded at the very beginning of this conversation to Iran's domestic politics situation. I think you were probably alluding to the MASA protests which I have followed extremely closely. Could you just fill our viewers in and give a little bit more context about what has been happening in Iran domestically for the last year or so as well as what's been happening in Lebanon? I think having a little bit of a sense of what's going on domestically can sometimes help people more fully picture how a regime, how a leader will respond internationally. I think about this a lot in terms of assessing the degree to which a Chinese invasion of Taiwan is likely and paying a lot of attention to issues which he sort of being perceived as a little bit weaker than he used to be. But talk about the MASA protests, talk about domestic politics in Iran and then also a little bit about Lebanon and then you're welcome to head out. All right, thank you so much. The protests started last year in Iran because the Iranian people had just had it. They had been under so much pressure economically partly as a result of the exit of the JCPA by the United States, but also because of the mismanagement and immense corruption of the Iranian regime itself of the Iran. On top of that, that summer, the Raisi government had started to tighten and make the implementation of certain religious rules much stricter. And then you had the tragic death of Masa Amini which then sparked massive protests that went on for months and months. And what was different about these protests a really reflected that the population at least at the time had given up on the idea that there was a way of reforming the Iranian system from within that that pathway could lead to a positive outcome. And it was reflected because they were no longer calling for reforms or changes within the political framework of Iran. They were calling for complete regime change. The regime showed tremendous brutality clamped down on these protests and by and large was successful in making sure that it not end up becoming that type of an existential threat to the regime even though it's still a very clear threat that has already deprived the regime of the little legitimacy it had in the first place because the reaction of the regime and the fact that this was over the implementation of the headscarf even had a tremendous amount of opposition from conservative, religious conservatives in Iran who may have chosen to wear the hijab themselves but were completely opposed to the idea that it has to be mandatory or that the regime has to use this type of brutality to clamp down on it. Now a year later, the protest movement to a large extent is not what it used to be. And I think to a large extent that is because it lacked a clear leadership in the first place. Movements of that kind cannot take down a government, a regime that is as entrenched as the Iranian one and that is willing to use brutality to the extent that the Iranian one is without a much, much clearer and stronger structure. So there was this immense energy in society but no leadership to channel it and be able to really press the regime and force it to compromise and force it to to make significant changes. So in some ways a lot of that energy was lost. Now there's some changes that have happened but they're not structural changes. A lot of people I talk to say that you actually don't see women wearing hijab in the same way as they did before and in some ways they have won that battle. The implementation of it is also not at all what it used to be. I mean, the religious police is by and large off the streets and are not acting in such a manner to be able to spark another protest. But nothing has changed in terms of the legislation of the laws of the land. So this could easily be a tactical shift that the regime is doing for now but then go back to a much stricter implementation but also perhaps even more importantly it has deprived the opposition from being able to take this matter that was centered on the hijab in the beginning but to then transcend it to a focus on the more fundamental structures and the tremendous injustices that exist in the Iranian system. Now I think there is a bit of disillusionment because the population on the one hand had lost faith in the idea of reform and I think many at this point have lost faith in the idea of a revolution as well. Where this will go, no one knows at this point but one thing we can say is that the Iranian population by and large is extremely unhappy with the situation and definitely want to change. The pathway to that change however is unclear at this point. Thank you so much for talking to reason. We really appreciate it. For our live stream viewers, Zach and I will stay on and talk a little bit about some of the US cultural domestic politics response to this but thank you so much, Trita Parsi. Where can people find you in the future? They can find me at TritaParsi.com or go to the website of the Quincy Institute which is QuincyINST.org. Thank you, Trita. Thank you so much. Okay, thank you. Okay, I'm gonna pull up a couple of questions that have come in and then as Liz mentioned we'll shift to some further discussion of some of the domestic reactions to the terrorist attack that Hamas engaged in. One was from, I'm pulling up to that from kind of opposite perspectives here. One is El Harto. Hates to both sides this but yeah, both sides. Two bloodthirsty regimes are tearing each other and the civilians caught in the crossfire to shreds. US has nothing to gain from this debacle. I think that it's true that the US has nothing to gain from this debacle. The both sides aspect of this, I think the misleading part of that is that there was clearly an aggressor in this case. It was a terrorist attack on civilians from Hamas. That's not to say that Israel's government has not engaged in violent and repressive activity leading up to this or that their response cannot be critiqued. In fact, I think that Israel is not doing all it could be doing to enable humanitarian corridors. There's been reports that Israel, I mean, Egypt has been trying to negotiate with them to get supplies in and they've faced a lot of resistance to those negotiations. I understand their security concerns. They're growing up their hands and being like, oh, well, we're not really going to do much in terms of humanitarian aid and being very difficult to negotiate with. So I do think there's an Egyptian role there that people aren't paying as much attention to, which is a little weird to me. You mean the fact that Egypt's not willing to take in the refugees? The fact that they're not willing to take in the refugees, but then also the fact that, although the rough of border crossing is technically passable, so you could get people out via that border crossing or also Egypt has the ability to supply humanitarian aid to Gaza. I think it's a little wild that there's so much heat given to Israel in terms of like, hey, you need to bring in food and water and fuel and ensure that the generators stay running in Gaza when it's like, well, Egypt could also be playing a role here. There was that huge dispute a few days ago related to the quality of screening of the humanitarian aid that is literally assembled on the border right now in Egypt, waiting to enter Gaza and Israel and Egypt are very much at loggerheads in terms of the method in which the aid is going to be screened for weapons, which seems like a very reasonable request on the part of the state of Israel to basically be saying, hey, we want to ensure that this isn't a means of trafficking any weapons to Hamas. We want to make sure that this is just literally food and water and fuel. And Egypt could sort of a seed to some of those demands, I think. It's a little odd to me that there isn't more blame place there. Yeah, this is some of the recent reporting on that matter that you're referencing Liz, this is from Reuters, talks fail to let aid reach Gaza. Israel evacuates Lebanon border and Cairo is saying that the Rafa crossing was not officially closed but was inoperable due to Israeli strikes on the Gaza side. And the Egyptian foreign minister said there's an urgent need to alleviate the suffering of Palestinian civilians in Gaza adding that talks with Israel on opening Rafa for aid had been so far fruitless. But you're saying that a lot of the fruitlessness of that has to do with security concerns. Well, completely. And I mean, so the border crossing was allegedly struck, I believe like a week ago or more than a week ago at this point. And then basically in order to get the 500 or so U.S. citizens out of Gaza that are trapped there basically the U.S. government said, hey, come down to the Rafa border crossing this will be sort of the only means of getting you out. And then the Egyptian government has basically been like, no, we're not going to permit that. And so you had people waiting at that border crossing the appropriate window of time came and went and they just thus far still have not gotten out. All of this transpired on Saturday, today is now Thursday. And then we also have this huge dispute between Israel and Egypt with which President Biden claims to have brokered a deal. And until the aid literally passes through the border, like that's when I'll believe that this deal has actually happened because there have been quite a few news reports over the last few days of Egypt and Israel reaching a deal to get this humanitarian aid through the border and finding something that is mutually agreeable in terms of screening for weapons. And Egypt hasn't really been willing to work with Israel to come to something that they both agree to. So I just think it's like, it's legitimately a very like all sides are doing something very bad, right? I think there should be nothing bad about the both sidesism and the both sides rhetoric because in many situations in politics, domestic and international, both sides or all sides are behaving terribly, right? Yeah. And this is a one more comment I wanted to bring up from Raylene Katz who says, occupation Israel pulled out of Gaza in 2005. Hamas has ruled Gaza since 2006, both of which are true. However, that's not very comforting for the civilians who live in Gaza who are both under the thumb of Hamas, which has not held elections for years and also have been subject to a blockade for most of that time that limits their options. So I mean, I'm not here to adjudicate or come up with what the perfect two-state solution is, but there's clearly reason for these grievances that people both in Gaza and the West Bank have. Their lives are far from pleasant and free. Well, the thing that's kind of interesting to me about this, and I think that this is frankly more of a subject for a future live stream, is we keep hearing the rhetoric of open-air prison being thrown around to describe what conditions in Gaza are like and conditions, especially right now are atrocious, horrible. I mean, you have 600,000 people who fled from North to South, astonishing numbers of people displaced. You have dwindling numbers of hospitals where people can go and seek medical care. You have last night, I believe, the last oncology unit able to treat people's cancer and able to do radiation treatments for people is no longer operational because of the crisis of generators having run out of fuel. It's a horribly dire situation there, but I think the thing that's kind of odd is people keep fixating on the open-air prison concept. And in reality, the situation for the last 16 years has frankly been more like just a massive sprawling refugee camp. Like there are some parts that are actually relatively, I don't wanna say wealthy, but sort of acceptable, but by and large, vast parts of Gaza are legitimately more akin to refugee camps. And the thing that's really horrifying is that, I mean, there are so many other entities in the region. I'm thinking particularly Egypt that could decide to allow some sort of influx of gossips through their borders when times are as dire as they are. And there's been a little bit of mixed messages from LCC's government basically saying that they are setting up some refugee camps possibly in a few small towns in Egypt, but then also they're sort of reneging on that and saying, nope, nobody will be allowed to pass through the border. And I don't know, I think the role that Egypt is playing honestly deserves more scrutiny here. Although the perspective of the Egyptian government and many Palestinians is that to enable a sort of mass exodus into Egypt or Jordan, which has also refused to take the Palestinian refugees is that this would be enabling, I mean, in their words, an ethnic cleansing that this is from their perspective what Israel wants is to clear the Palestinians out and send them to the surrounding countries. I mean, do you think there's any validity to that? I mean, the IDF is caught between a rock and a hard place, right? I mean, you had 1,300 people brutally murdered, including 260 people at like a peace, love and rave. You had a bunch of like Kibbutzim. So people who live on Kibbutzis who are frequently kind of like agricultural, left-wing-ish hippies, like living in community, doing their little experimental living thing. I mean, you had Holocaust survivors, you had innocent people brutally slaughtered en masse. And then frankly, when dealing with Hamas, you have an entity that uses human shields and has even in the past conducted some of their main operations beneath Al-Shifa Hospital, right? So then that puts Israel in a very tough spot because if you actually do want to target this terrorist group, Hamas, to take them out, yet their tactics are entirely predicated on ensuring that they're centering their operations underneath hospitals and in dense places and in like these vast networks of underground tunnels, what exactly is the approach to take them out? I think we all want to see less and less innocent human life lost. That's something that's so essential to how I look at non-aggression and my libertarianism, right? Like any, I think the reason why so many of us are non-interventionists is because we see the massive human toll that war takes and see it as just a deeply abominable thing that we should always at everywhere oppose. But there is also this challenge of how is Israel supposed to ensure that this terrorist group that brutally murdered so many of their people is taken out or has their operations crippled? Because this is very much an unsustainable situation for them. I mean, I think that the IDF is fairly as conscientious as one can be while still being a military in terms of attempting to, for example, drop the little, I don't know what the term for it is, but like the sort of like warning shots on tops of buildings to indicate, hey, this is going to be where a strike is taking place. Please, like, you know, get out of here, flee. And then even things like ordering the evacuation of Northern Gaza down to the South. And basically Hamas was telling people to stay put, but the IDF was very specifically saying, hey, here is where we are going to strike. Here is where we're going to do a ground invasion. And you have a 24 hour deadline to get out. And then people didn't move. Some did, but not everybody. Hamas kept telling people to stay put and Israel kept pushing back the time that they were going to invade. And they still haven't done a ground invasion. Like, I'm sorry, but that looks to me like an attempt. An attempt, however, you know, imperfect to lose as little innocent civilian life as possible. Yeah, but to treat a Parsi's point, I think that the way the role that the U.S. might play a little bit more is to broker, whether that's, you know, directly or through its role in the U.N., some sort of assurance because there's an understandable suspicion, I'll say, among Palestinians and the Arab world in the way Palestinians have been treated in the past and the way that Palestinians have been, you know, there's been exodus out to the surrounding countries that's caused destabilization in these countries. It's also caused Palestinians to leave and never really be able to come back or not really have citizenship in this new country either. So I think that has to be taken into the equation and any sort of agreement that is brokered, there needs to be assurances that if we are exiting you out of here to get you to safety, A, we're not gonna drop bombs near the border checkpoint as you are headed to the south. Oh, 100% agree. And B, there's gonna be some sort of international assurance that if you're innocent, you're not affiliated with Hamas, then you will be able to come back. I think that is probably driving a lot of the fear. It's gonna be hard to get that message into Gaza at this point, but you know, these are, when we talk about non-interventionism, you know, what we're focused on is not trying to overly tilt the military balance one direction or another, but diplomacy is still I think an important role from a libertarian perspective for the US to broker. I 100% agree with you on that. I think it's, you know, I see from one of the comments on here, you know, this, what was it? I catch a little hint of war drumming by Jason English and then he later commented just surprised because a lot of this sounds a little like CNN, Fox, NBC, so on. And I do think that it is important to draw this distinction. You know, I am not interested in the US going to war here. In any way, I think that Zach is totally right in terms of the diplomatic role the US can play in brokering a peace deal. The thing that I think is really tough though is sometimes I think from the libertarian perspective, you have a certain, I don't know, sometimes there's a, people are a little unrealistic in terms of basically saying, pull out any amount of, you know, pull out all US supportive, this report, all USA pull out all US diplomacy. And it's like, well, but surely from the role that the US currently plays to the aspirational role that we want it to play, there are a whole bunch of sort of incremental steps that must happen along the way. And I think it's important to take those types of things seriously and to still maintain this idea that like loss of life, you know, frankly wasting US taxpayer money, all of these things are horrible. And the US has a long track record of sitting in this realm in many different places over many different decades. But I also do think it's important to take seriously this question of, well, US involvement aside, what is justified? Like, does Israel have any sort of like self-defense type justification here? I don't think there are any easy answers to this question. And the person who I actually think has grappled with this most successfully on the recent masthead has actually been our editor-in-chief, Katherine Mingu Ward on reasons round table. I think there's a lot of knowledge of the history here, but also a comfort in saying there are no easy answers here. And even sometimes libertarianism doesn't perfectly inform like what the state of Israel is justified in doing, right? It gives us a little bit of a better sense of what the US's role in relation to these other countries ought to be. But I think it's a very thorny issue. I mean, fundamentally the fact that these terrorist groups exist and have murdered by a large peaceful and innocent people in Israel is just, I mean, it's profoundly devastating. And it's very possible that many of the actions that the US takes in the future will also be devastating, right? Like I think committing troops to this situation or making clumsy diplomatic missteps or wasting a ton of taxpayer dollars that we don't have to spend would also be really devastating. So I think it's likely that lots of people will end up losers in this. I think that's for sure. And the problem with Israel should have, like any country, a right or not a right, but the military is justified in offering defense and self-defense when attacked. And the US, I think, to the greatest degree possible should not be putting its finger on the scale one way or another. But the fact is that we are doing that and we heard Biden make the announcement in the speech and went over the amount of money and military aid that the US is gonna continue to supply to Israel. So whether you and I like that or think that's the right move or not, that is the fact that the US is backing Israel. And so to one degree or another, whatever they do is going to be a reflection on US foreign policy as well. I mean, I see the role of libertarians as sort of two-pronged, right? Like on one hand, we articulate an aspiration of what we want the future to be. And then on the other hand, we also engage with the world as it currently is, which is frequently very, very far from the libertarian ideal. And it's tough because I think in this conversation even, like you and I I think share the exact same aims of how the US ultimately becomes less involved in this conflict and serves less as the world's policeman or ideally doesn't serve as the world's policeman at all. But there is this question of like, well, when we're, how do you extricate yourself? When you're already in so far, you know, when you're in this far, right? And I think the fact of the matter is we're going to see so much horrific political posturing and Nikki Haley's probably going to beat her war hunger Israel drum in the next debate. And we're going to have to host a therapy session for Zach afterwards because he will absolutely hate every second of it. Let me turn us to what we talked about a little bit last week, the ways in which many American activists have framed Hamas's attack on Israel because I think you and I are a complete agreement on this point. I want to revisit the conversation with a clip from this past weekend of a Cornell professor expressing the exhilaration he says he felt after that attack happened. Let's roll that. First, let me just say that I hear complaints that harping on the stuff from lefty activists and professors is not as important as what's happening in Israel and Gaza. And that is absolutely true. But the reason I think it's worth talking about is because it's a real mask off moment for the social justice left. They use all these academic terms, decolonialization, shifting the power dynamic. But we are now seeing in practice what all of that means. It means we're okay with killing innocent people, non-combatants. Maybe we won't do it ourselves. Maybe we'll throat clear before, but we'll excuse it. Just like how we excused the looting and destruction in the summer of 2020 with this out-of-context MLK quote about riots as the voice of the unheard. And it's just been years of microaggressions, silences, violence, punch fascists. And fascists is like everyone to the right of Hugo Chavez. That's what I hear with this rhetoric. You're giving permission to cheer slaughter. And as long as you're on the wrong side of the simplistic oppressor or press dichotomy, we're gonna shrug at best when it happens. And you can criticize Israel's government all you want and they should be criticized. I've criticized them some today, but you don't make excuses for barbaric killing because you agree with the cause. And it's just asking for something really ugly to happen in this country. And when it does, part of that is gonna be on people like that guy. You're supposed to be an intellectual role model. So start acting like it. Yeah, I mean, my thoughts on this are a very strong and concise fuck that guy. There is no excuse for that type of thing. Nothing about watching innocent people be murdered was exhilarating. Nothing about that was exciting. It was despicable. It was a horrible, unprovoked, senseless act of violence. And it's really stunning to me that people all across college campuses, sometimes at very elite schools, we have this happening at Cornell. We have this happening at Harvard. We have this happening at the University of Pennsylvania. The degree to which the left has consistently, the far left, the progressive woke campus activists and academics have really shown themselves to be simplistic in their understandings of foreign policy, simplistic in their understandings of race relations, simplistic in sort of promulgating their colonizer narratives, acting as if basically the racial dynamics and colonist dynamics of the United States can be mapped on to every other area in the world, which is obviously patently false. I mean, for about nine years now, these same people have been shouting about microaggressions and the need for safe spaces and shouting down campus speakers. In one case, I remember, I think it was the Middlebury College case where they ended up also assaulting the person. It was the Charles Murray Allison Stanger talk. They ended up assaulting Allison, who by the way was the sort of slightly more lefty person presented as the foil, the person there to challenge Charles Murray. So you literally in some cases have these campus speaker shout downs that are resulting in actual violence. And yet these are the same people who want to act like the littlest thing is a microaggression. I'm sorry, this is a fucking macroaggression. You don't get to stand on stage and talk about how exhilarating it is to see people be brutally raped and murdered. I wonder whether this will be the moment that the radical campus and academic left breaks. It feels like the cracks have been forming. It feels like some of the grift and corruption are present in the Black Lives Matter organization and the higher ups like Patrice Collers. It seems like people have really lost some faith in that. We also saw a lot of sort of Hamas paraglider, graphic design co-opting by BLM and by DSA groups in the US. I wonder whether DSA, Black Lives Matter and some of these woke campus groups will sort of completely lose credibility forever because of this moment. I think it's very possible. I mean, it's already becoming a liability because employers are trying to ask if you are affiliated with this group or that group that did that. And I'm not someone who is for that kind of oppressive, we might call cancel culture, but to the degree that it does become a liability, I think that there's enough of a backlash where we might start to see a little bit of that unwind, but whether it does or not, I mean, we need people to stand against that and call that crap out because we have to defend like the liberal society, we have to defend the idea that it's not acceptable to violate people's rights and their life and their property just because they happen to be in a disfavored group. That's just like a fundamental bedrock of what this whole thing is supposed to be about. And these people, it's reached a breaking point, for me at least with this, like that they are eroding that just really fundamental bedrock. And by the way, his assertion that, oh, it's so exciting and exhilarating to see this power dynamic flip. Like- What power dynamic? Yeah, right. I mean, Israel is annihilating Hamas and the Gaza Strip is never gonna be the same after like there hasn't been some sort of like amazing shift in power. Like we learned talking to Max Abrams last week, terrorist attacks like this, they don't achieve their political objective. And Hamas's political objective is not to help the people in Gaza or the West Bank, at least in the short term, it's to bolster their image and put them at the center of some bigger movement. And they'll rack up as much collateral damage as they need to do so. So this is a really just disappointing and frustrating moment. I honestly feel like this is the second installment of the summer of George Floyd. Like do you remember that moment in 2020 after George Floyd was brutally killed by cops and were libertarians, we completely reject the fact that so much police abuse of power exists. And that type of thing is absolutely horrific to watch. Reasons, Billy Binion and CJ Ceremella have done excellent reporting on this. But right after that happened, there were all of those crazy protests, some of which are protests, a lot of them were riots and you remember, I mean, it's now an internet meme, the idea of the mostly peaceful protest. And it was like some anchor talking about this as fires were burning in the background right behind it. Like these were riots and there was enormous property destruction that resulted from this. And on one hand, you could say, people have every right to protest this horrific police killing, but they ended up really savaging American cities. I mean, it was awful. You had shop windows being boarded up as if that's the sign of a functioning healthy democracy. It was really sad. And I think for a lot of people, it was this moment where there was like, this isn't just advocating for police reform. This isn't just advocating for specific changes to qualified immunity, right? Like this is people engaging in these really brutal and sometimes violent methods of trying to get what they want politically from the left. And like that's not something that we like. They sort of showed themselves a little bit. And I wonder whether we're currently seeing this in this current moment where there's an awful lot of, I think legitimate antisemitism coming out. And a sense that I'm getting from some far left progressive activists that they authentically think that, for people who they consider to be oppressed, it is perfectly okay to use violence to achieve the ends that they desire. And I disagree with that. And I think many normal people on the left disagree with that. I wonder what will happen and whether these progressive far leftist ideals and talking points in groups will continue to exist for years to come or whether they will just lose credibility on mass as a result of this. Well, and I hope that they realize the degree to which they are tainting these conversations and the ability to have to advocate for police reform which is necessary. None of us thought it was okay for Derek Chauvin to kneel on this guy until he died. And I'm glad that this man is in prison. And I continue to be a believer in an advocate for criminal justice reform and police being held accountable for their actions and people not being sentenced to decades and decades in prison when they shouldn't be. And similarly, I have sympathy for aspects of the Palestinian cause. It's partly why I wanted to have Trita on here today to try to flesh that out a little bit and explain a little bit of the history and the grievances I think it's not completely without merit but when you are embracing or elevating this iconography it taints the conversation and it just makes it that much harder to make any progress on these issues. And I'm hoping that the kinds of the conversations we're trying to host here where it's a little less heated and a little less reliant on slogans that we can advance that. And I really appreciate your participation in that project, Liz. And I'm both Trita Parsi who joined us this week and Max Abrams the week before and we're gonna continue that conversation in the weeks to come. And I hope that all of you who participated live today and who listened after the fact will tune in again next week, same time, Thursday, one o'clock Eastern. Thank you so much. We will see you then.