 Good morning and welcome, my name is Lisa Grande and I am the head of the United States Institute of Peace, which was established by the U.S. Congress in 1984 as a national nonpartisan public institution dedicated to helping prevent, mitigate, and resolve violent conflict abroad. We are delighted this morning to welcome Amos Hoshting, the Special Presidential Coordinator for Global Infrastructure and Energy Security, for a discussion on the historic maritime agreement that was reached between Israel and Lebanon last October. The agreement is remarkable. It establishes a permanent maritime boundary between the two countries for the first time since Israel was established in 1948. The agreement strengthens regional security, it gives Lebanon an urgently needed source of new income from the Kana Gas Reservoir and it opens the way for Israel to extract oil and gas from the carousel field and export these to Europe who needs them desperately. It also lays the groundwork for future possible land border negotiations between the two countries. The role played by Special Envoy Hoshting was decisive. He built on earlier efforts. Some of the greatest mediators in the international community had tried to solve this problem. They failed, but he didn't. The Special Envoy mediated between the two countries and kept offering options and draft agreements for them both to consider until they finally agreed on one. His exceptional leadership has been lauded by all of the concerned parties and heralded by the State Department this is a direct quote for demonstrating the transformative power of American diplomacy. You must welcome. Thank you for joining us this morning. Mona, the floor is yours. So much, Liz. I'm Mona Yacubian. I'm a senior advisor here at the U.S. Institute of Peace. Let me welcome all of you here in the room as well as those of us who are those of you who are joining us online. Almost welcome. It's a real honor and pleasure to have you here. What I want to do is maybe just actually dive right into a conversation with Amos. We're going to talk for about 30 minutes and then we're going to open it up to all of you for your questions. I'm actually going to draw on a few of your bio lines for this first question because this deal did not materialize overnight. It had a fairly long gestation period, more than 10 years across three administrations. You were serving in the Obama administration perhaps when negotiations first started at that time. You were both deputy assistant secretary of state for energy diplomacy and then later special envoy and coordinator for international energy affairs and you led the Bureau of Energy Resources. This deal has been a long time in the making. What is it that changed most recently to make this sort of momentous agreement possible? Well, Amos, first let me just say thank you for having me and it's my honor to actually be at the U.S. Institute of Peace which contributes so much to the conversation about how do we get to resolution of conflict and so I really appreciate the opportunity to be here and especially with you in this conversation. You know, this is a moment ago I said that others had failed in their attempts to negotiate this deal and I succeeded and I'd like to just amend that a bit because I was one of the people who failed. So I tried doing this in 2015 and I myself failed so I think that it's a little bit of an unfair advantage because I got to fail once and try again and I think sometimes that's the key ingredient to success is to fail a couple of times before you actually succeed. Look, what I think changed when I came back into the administration in the summer of 2021 and I was asked to take a look at what's happening in Lebanon just because we were so concerned about the fact that electricity supply in generation for the Lebanese people had declined dramatically as part of the economic collapse in Lebanon and we were looking at options and the fear is always that with economic collapse comes political collapse and usually that feeds on itself and we were in a dangerous situation. So we started looking actually not at the maritime but at other things and other ideas that I started promoting at the time that would create both short and long term solutions for or I should say medium and long term solutions for Lebanon and then I was asked would you consider looking at the maritime agreement again and I said no because I've tried I failed and don't want to do that again but I agreed that we would do one trip where we would talk to the parties and see is there an opening here and I did one trip and I believe that there was an opportunity. Conditions on the ground changed. I think there were the people in charge of different portfolios and files were different and people matter. I think there was a for the first time crystallizing that need of the there's a you can ignore the economics for a certain time to promote your own political aspirations but at some point that tilts to the other side. I felt like the tilt had happened or was potentially there to to really talk to the Lebanese people more than to Lebanese government about why this was the time. This is the it's unprecedented to be able to do a maritime negotiation over an economic issue in its core between two countries where one doesn't recognize the existence of the other. So that that creates a bit of a challenge and where they're officially at a state of war and in a continuous state of war for 70 years and where there's no tradition of reaching agreements. Israel has other countries it was at war with that it has already reached other agreements whether important or not but there's a history of reaching agreements or understandings. Lebanon is not one of them. It's also the two countries that have fought more wars with each other than any other with a Paris state terrorist organization right there on the border. So there were a lot of challenges but I thought that we had a moment of opportunity that we may not get again and so I agreed to to walk and I think that's what made the difference. So you've you've started to reference a bit the complexity of this deal. These are two states that are at war with one another technically the U.S. has a role in the agreement France has a role in the agreement of private French energy company Total has a role. Can you for the for those of us that haven't followed the ins and outs can you unpack a little bit kind of what what is different about this deal. How should we understand it. What does it achieve and what doesn't it achieve at its core it's a boundary agreement it is not an energy agreement it's a boundary agreement it creates a legal internationally recognized boundary between the two not in land but in the sea. That is at its core what this is however in order to get there we have to remember what is what are the what's the underlying environment that we're dealing with. There was a discovery that this is a disputed zone that has existed in dispute for a very long time but nobody really cared for much of that time about it. It was fairly far offshore the only part of that zone that people cared about was let's say the first five six miles of because of the unique environment geography of a rock that sticks out into the water so you really care from a security perspective there's not a lot of fishery even in that area because of that and therefore it didn't really wasn't that all that important to either side and then came the natural gas discoveries in the eastern Mediterranean in Israel in Cyprus in Egypt and suddenly there's a value to it and in 2011 the Lebanese actually had discovered that there was a potential gas field and one that just as we would have it in this region it stretched geographically from undisputed Lebanon territory all the way down to undisputed Israeli territory making sure that it covers every piece of the dispute in every way possible. So we have a real potential for economic activity and because of that geography it means that it was licensed for exploration by both Israel and Lebanon thereby there was a recipe for a disaster because suddenly there was something to fight over and both side had legal claims. So what this deal is one establishes a maritime agreement that is a line lines can't go in zig zags you know in this case they're a straight line that starts at a certain point and ends at a certain point. It also governs though that the entire structure the entire gas field that will that has been discovered but not yet explored so we don't know if there's commercial gas and how much but all of it whatever is discovered will be by Lebanon for Lebanon. So the gas will not go to Israel however Israel has a fair right to some of this gas because it does extend beyond the line that was agreed to on the boundary but they will not be able to exploit that instead they will be purchased once gas is discovered analyzed and agreed to on what the valuation is and then the consortium will have to buy Israel's share at this means that we have multiple agreements when we talk about the maritime agreement there's not one agreement there's different things that have to be signed because the parties can't sign with each other nor can their proxies meaning the companies can't sign on their behalf so it has to be completely separate agreements which leads to even more complexity to the suite of agreements that we had to do here where the US had to play a role because they can't sign with each other so each party Lebanon signs with the United States Israel signed with the United States total signed or on behalf of the consortium signed with the government of Lebanon their licensee they have a separate agreement that they signed with Israel that we helped craft and then there is a number of other agreements in order just to be able to get to the point of exploration so the way you've described it it sounds like it was very much a zero or looked like a zero-sum proposition right how how what insights were you able to come upon to take it out of a zero-sum game and bring it to I think what I've heard you reference as a win-win for both parties the zero-sum is how we the United States and I think how the world approaches negotiations by and large and I don't it's a little bit of an unfair characterization because people would say every agreement negotiation is a win-win and it's in the negotiating phase trying to convince people but at the end they wanted we have we had a boundary agreement dispute sorry boundary dispute we'll stretch a line and what has been the discussion for 12 years was which side will get how much will you get 60 and you get 40 will be 50 50 55 45 is 63 43 that's that's where the entire negotiation was and then what we say is we'll throw in some sweeteners if you agree to a 58 42 then we'll give you also the 42 side we'll get some sweeteners that are unrelated to this deal that's how we do politics right we'll also throw in a couple planes you'll get a couple a ID projects and you know we'll do a deal that that's basically how we do this around the world and I did not think that that was going to work we tried that doing that so we changed it from let's not talk about percentages but rather change the conversation to ask a simple question what do you Lebanon actually need what do you want what's a win for you and same question to Israel and the answer immediately was what the other side would get so for Lebanon the win was what Israel cannot forget Israel don't say it the word Israel just tell me what do you want and the same thing with the Israelis the Israelis immediately go to what's unfair and why do we have to give up and what the Lebanese will get so we changed the conversation the hardest part was to identify what is actually good for Lebanon what do they need out of this and what is Israel need and the reality is they need a different things and the wins there for the win-win really is when there is on paper they're conflict but in reality they're not what Lebanon desperately needs is hope for the future on the economic side you can talk about all my view my personal views we can have all the arrangements on politics in Lebanon they're very complicated and we can maybe even reach an agreement on who the next president's going to be and who the next prime minister is going to be if you don't do it with an eye towards the economics it will fail it's a recipe for failure so you'll have a president so what if people now when I started this negotiation people told me it's a disaster we're between six and eight hours a day of electricity today we are below two it's not going in a different direction so a win-win means Lebanon gets foreign direct investment it gets a potential of discovery it creates a narrative that foreign companies are investing and when foreign companies invest it usually if it goes well it encourages other foreign companies to invest it's a takes away a huge security risk which means insurance companies and all the other enabling environment that you need for an investment suddenly is possible it has the stamp of approval of the United States and and others which means that I'm willing to take the risk of investment that's what Lebanon needed in addition to just actually the gas coming out of the ground and actually creating an opportunity what did Israel need at the end of the day Israel doesn't need the gas from the Kana field it needs that they already have several discoveries one more field is not going to make or break the Israeli economy however the eastern Mediterranean has become not only a source of one of Israel's biggest economic successes but also a dependency the entire economy they were able to go greener by getting rid of the coal and replacing it with natural gas when Russia was about to invade Ukraine the price of natural gas in the world went up to from $5 to 50 and ultimately reached at its peak $95 that was true in all of Europe and all of Asia who didn't have to pay those prices Israel so at a time when the recession was setting in in Europe and in Asia Israel could grow because its base cost of electricity was 10% that of Europe which means manufacturing and and and high-tech which is some of it is data centers and so on a very electricity dependent so they don't need the gas what do they need they need stability along the border they need certainty and they need security so the deal has in it a codification of the the buoy line it has some areas near the shore that are don't have that much meaning to Lebanon but do have a lot of meaning for Israel further out where the gas reserves are have a lot of meaning for Lebanon less meaning for Israel so we can create structures in the agreement that provide for the Israeli security needs provide for the Lebanese gas and creates the kind of stability environment from that both countries desperately need to attract one to attract investment and one to have continuity of service for the electricity needs so the deal establishes a permanent maritime border I think an obvious question that comes to mind with these two warning states is can the deal pave the way for negotiation of a land border I believe it does I think there are conditions on the ground today are not there to do that because you actually need a government in Lebanon we have an interim government that is functioning as a government but still this would require more than that you need a president and the country needs to be on a set path in order to be able to agree to a to a boundary I believe again the Lebanese could decide no we want to have an agreement without a government but I don't know who would make that decision we have a new government in Israel that just been established I think its focus is on other issues at the moment and so I think you need to have in order to do something like this you need to have a certain stability on both sides politically to be able to to be able to negotiate such agreement but I think that we were careful in the maritime agreement to start it at a point in the water that doesn't touch the land by definite legal definition so that it doesn't impact the land boundaries so I was very cognizant to do this in a way that did not have any effect on the boundary I I'm one of those who believes it is it is possible a lot of people just disagree with me so I just want to be clear this is even within the US government I'm sure there are those who are would listen to me and say you know you're dreaming there's an it's not possible but I will tell you most of them and everyone else told me it was not possible to reach a maritime agreement either so I believe in the art of the possible thank goodness for your optimism I think it's important so let's talk a little bit about Lebanon in particular noted there's a political vacuum there the country is in the midst of an unprecedented economic meltdown unfortunately and I think it's fair to say self-inflicted the Lebanese political class political leadership such as it exists refuses to move forward on IMF mandated reforms and so there's been a concern about this deal that it would serve as yet another distraction from the need to undertake reforms because the Lebanese political leadership will point to the deal and say okay well we're gonna have you know billions coming in in gas revenues no need to move on on these reforms what can you say and I know this isn't necessarily in your bailiwick per se but what what could you say about both efforts to ensure that the revenues from the gas do not end up being pocketed by corrupt elites what's what's a mechanism to ensure against that and how can the US ensure that Lebanon moves forward with much needed reforms so there's a lot in what you just asked so first I care deeply about ultimately the success of Lebanon I've spent a lot of time I've been going to Lebanon for almost 30 years you know one of the things that Prime Minister her the late Prime Minister Hariri before he was assassinated and the tragedy of his assassination is that his political vision included almost entirely was was almost entirely built on economics on he and I used to talk about the fact that the American concept of if you would build it they will come from a field of dreams and that was his entire policy and many doubted it but it actually worked and if you look at the the rebuilding of downtown Beirut and the road from the airport and through the tunnels and so on that's what we need in Lebanon today is a political vision that is anchored in economics and I've said this in Lebanon many times I go everywhere in the world I travel is run by Lebanese I mean from from Dubai to Africa to the United States to the UK you know I was recently we're promoting a on the telecom side and around the world a company that we've financed and I look and I see I asked oh so where are the different offices and they're like oh we have you know New York the US and UK and Dubai and Beirut I was like wait what he said well I'm Lebanese and I said this is the tragedy the whole world is being moved by Lebanese except for Lebanon and if all these people were incentivized to stay in Lebanon and to build an economy it could be one of the most flourishing economies on it definitely in the Middle East and around the world it has that potential it has the people it has the resources it has the environment so we need to address what you just asked and that is to make sure that if there's gas discoveries that they are done in a way that is preserved and for the people part of the agreement states that the consortium that is on this field at least in these areas has to be non Lebanese non regional not Iranian or Russian or anything like that but rather well recognized international companies so that you have more transparency who will worry more about their global reputation than they do about another dollar or minus a dollar and so that's part of it there's but we have time before we have to worry about revenues and I kept telling the Lebanese don't fight over dividing up the revenues from the kind of field before we know that there is gas in the kind of deed let's just at least wait for that on the reforms they have to do the IMF reforms we have to do the World Bank reforms and I have while we're doing this we've been negotiating a gas deal from to increase electricity in the shorter term I'll tell you about a weekend within a matter of two weeks increase the power the electricity to the people of Lebanon from two hours to six hours and eight hours I can do that like that everything is there we came up with an idea in the summer 2021 to fix the infrastructure build it out get the contract sign we got it all done contracts between Lebanon and Egypt Lebanon and Jordan Lebanon even the Syria piece working around the the whole issue of how do we manage the sanctions on on Syria the infrastructure was broken and leaky inside Lebanon we got a contract we were able to get a company hired they fixed it it's all done it could flow tomorrow we had very minor reforms that needed to be done for the World Bank to be able to finance this deal and it's taking over a year to get minor reforms and for the first time a couple of weeks ago two of the pieces of the reform out of the three were done one of them was putting an ad in the Economist I mean it's literally as as as simple as that and that took I was promised in July in September and October that it was two days away but it got done now so I still we I think the United States continues to push and we need to and we will and our ambassador bless our heart is fighting the good fight in Lebanon every day on this I think we can do it we then have to make sure that international institutions live up to their end of the deal and not we cannot have a narrative of Lebanon's to risky for international organizations if they do the reforms they do the reforms and look the reforms that we just achieved in the electricity side are ones that have been on the table literally on the legislative table on the government table since 2006 or 2008 and they now got done so the leverage from this agreement it's not that it's a distraction it's the other way around it shows that it actually delivered something that nobody believed was going to happen and delivered afterwards more things in other words Total actually has together with the and I has rented office space they've brought their people in their people so money is already being spent in the Lebanese economy on this one of the companies exited the consortium and cutter joined the consortium something that the United States we I worked very hard for and I think is a another sign of a Gulf countries we've been reading about how they've been leaving Lebanon this is one taking a risk and coming in on a commercial side not giving out money but investing in Lebanon again not contributing but investing in Lebanon so I think that we're showing that there is reward for reform but it's it's not just on the Lebanese it's also on some of these international organizations that we can't have an attitude that it's too risky it's too risky for a commercial bank that's why we have multilateral development banks that's why we have IFIs so I want to open it up to the audience both here and those online and those of you who are online please use the chat box to ask your question and then we'll we will get it we will ask it to to almost before I do that though I do want to sort of broaden this discussion a little bit beyond the the Lebanese Israeli deal and ask you to what extent does this deal serve potentially as a model for either other disputes in the Eastern Med of which there are a few or more broadly in the region for deescalating conflict and I will note that you were in Iraq maybe earlier this year and I think we're engaged in discussions between Baghdad and Erbil on those energy disputes but what what what have you learned and what could be applied from this model to other conflicts in the region I think that our foreign policy and our national security engagement is has to change and I think the projection of power used to be what's the size of your military how many planes do you have what kind of planes do you have what kind of missiles do you have and that was your projection of power and diplomacy was around strength and showing that that power and there's surely that still is part of narrative of creating military deterrence between between enemies and between states but what I believe has changed dramatically is today it's all about economics I don't believe the China necessarily is going to try to beat the United States on the battlefield as much as it seeks to dethrone the United States on the economic field the Marshall plan gave the United States beyond rebuilding Europe after the devastating war it created a economic integration between the U.S. and Europe that endured for for 70 80 years and that's what others are looking at that model of how do you do that how do you come in and now you can do it in a nefarious way and you can do it in a positive way I believe that if we can engage in in disputes and in areas of relative peace in that with that frame of mind where what do you actually what do countries need the win-win is it's easy to say win-win everybody wants a win-win they're not always very easy to achieve but I think their remark sometimes they are right there and I think Baghdad Yerbil is a great example where right now it's engaged in a spiral of lose-lose Yerbil and Yerbil or Yerbil and Sulaimaniya are engaged in a lose-lose but if you start taking broadening these apertures and say don't look at your only under your political what are you what are you gonna get if you make a compromise politically that is not that much of a compromise and you suddenly can look at a region that says all right Baghdad and Yerbil can have an agreement on revenue sharing that will enable unlock gas development in Yerbil gas development in southern Iraq you can not buy as much gas from Iran and this is forget about just the Iran politics but why are you buying expensive gas from Iran when you have your own why are you flaring 80% of your gas when you have a gas fire power plant that's not being used while 12 hours a day there's nothing but generators on diesel in most of Basra why is Turkey short gas why is Europe short gas when you have a short distance of gas from Yerbil that can go into Turkey used in Turkey and moved on to Europe as part of a diversification from Russia I had this conversation in 2014 in Yerbil and I think now is the moment to be able to do that as well but at this goes well beyond the region yeah we have to look whether it's telecom or it's renewable energy and now we don't have to build pipelines I came in and said we don't have to build a pipeline from Egypt and Israel to site to to Greece and Europe why build a gas pipeline I advocated for 10 years ago perhaps but now generate electricity in one place and lay electricity lines down and suddenly you can have a connection from Saudi through Egypt and through Israel and Jordan all the way to generate clean power because Europe doesn't have the land and the abundance of Sun and wind to be able to generate that cheap of electricity but you can connect it via electricity lights don't think of transiting molecules think of instead of molecules electrons and suddenly you can create the assets that the Middle East has and connect them to where what Europe needs and doesn't have despite all the green deal and everything else it doesn't have it and that now you can start looking at physical interconnection and integration that leads to a interdependency between states and between regions that suddenly makes conflict much more costly for both sides because it's not just a military cost and the human cost which for some bizarre reason that seems like a lesser cost but it has also economic costs and suddenly okay I'm gonna lose my electricity or I'm gonna lose my revenues so I think that it goes beyond energy I think it goes into telecom and 5G and all these other things but we can look at foreign policy and diplomacy as we engage differently and at the end they only the United States for whatever reason only the United States can do that in these areas both those who are strongest allies and those who spent a lot of time in social media attacking us at the end of the day that's the only state that can do this kind of indispensable diplomacy to bring people together so I'm gonna resist the temptation to draw you out further on this because I think it's fascinating and we are at the US Institute of Peace very interested in understanding better the American model of peace building and diplomacy and what makes us distinct and I think you're already circling around the notion of creative problem-solving and a certain entrepreneurial injection of ingenuity into how we do think so maybe we're gonna have to demand that you come back to have a deeper discussion on that but I would like to now turn to those in the audience please raise your hands Haneen I've seen your hand already raised please just wait for the mic and then introduce yourself in your affiliation and ask your question okay thank you very much for this fascinating discussion thanks Mona for organizing my name is Haneen Ghaddaar I'm a senior fellow at the Washington Institute I've been following this issue very closely I am Lebanese and this is professional and personal for me and on the personal side would like to congratulate you on making Hassan utter the word Israel for the first time so this is a huge achievement so thanks for that this caused waves in Lebanon on the the second part of the discussion which is the energy deal and the contracts on electricity and gas between with Egypt and Jordan which hopefully will come will come true but there are a lot of complications and sanctions inside there's the big question of part of it coming through Syria and the parts in Syria that are controlled by Assad and the Caesar sanctions aside the humanitarian issue aside there's a big question of this will give Assad but not just Assad regime also the Iranians and the Russians one access to the the the whole thing the the passage of the of the gas and electricity but also not only access to it but the control over it which means that if they find it suitable they will cut it so this means that we're bringing Lebanon back into the fold under the control and desires of Assad whether it were whatever he feels fit and now also his partners to access it or cut it my question is is there a way around it and to is it worth it you're asking excellent questions that I've asked myself at the beginning of this process so one they don't have control over it they can cut it that is true but it's not that they will cut it and keep the gas if they cut it they lose the gas to so you're creating an interdependency the amount of gas that's coming so let's just start from the beginning the amount of gas that's coming through is fairly small we're talking about four hours of electricity a day for Lebanon they will the pass-through as you said gas would come from Egypt through Jordan into Syria stay in Syria in that region in the south and then it will be swapped out for gas that will come on the other side because there's no infrastructure that connects it to they will also get a tariff fee but because of sanctions they won't get it in money they will get it in an in-kind in a certain amount of gas now think about it you don't get that much because it's a small percentage of the total as your fee so if they're only getting four hours you're talking about something like in the 20 to 30 minutes of electricity a day in that region of Syria so as far as a bonanza for Syria I would just I would pump the brakes on that and you know caution us on how much they're getting they are getting some and that's a cost for us the United States and the international community of giving anything to the Assad regime at this moment but I think that you have to always look at nothing's for free I did not determine who Lebanon's neighbors were going to be and unfortunately Israel as far as a pipeline is not an option they have the ocean and they have Syria so that's what I have to deal with so you got to deal with the cards that you have in the deck that you've been dealt and and that's what you work with so they will get some that is true but the minute they cut off to Lebanon on one side the gas gets cut off on the Jordanian Syrian border so they can't make Lebanon lose without them losing and remember once that gas flows now that's another 30 minutes of electricity that don't exist in Syria either so shutting it off hurts themselves in the old days of control of Syria that was not the case they can have Razik Anan and Khaddam and so on doing things to Lebanon that had nothing that would not hurt Syria at all they just enjoyed hurting Lebanon so one there's no other option and the option that does exist what is on the table at the moment listen to what Hassan Nasrallah says what the Syrians say bringing fuel from Iran that is saying the IRGC saying I will give it for free and people come to me in Lebanon say great it'll be free I said I've never heard of something for free when the mob gives you a loan of a thousand dollars it doesn't cost a thousand dollars to give it back so this is the danger here is people always a Mona you talked about a distraction that would be a distraction oh we don't have to do reforms instead of getting the gas from Egypt we'll just get fuel oil from Iran now as this if we can get gas discoveries in the Mediterranean if we can get the electricity going from Jordan all of a sudden Syria cutting it off may not even make that much of a difference in the long term the point is to make that interconnection one of a diversified portfolio and what Lebanon can do now that we've changed the electricity law now that we change the tariffs for the first time who would have believed that we'd be able to get the tariffs changed I mean in America we don't talk about that to me is one of my biggest achievements is just getting the tariffs changed after how many decades where we've had the same price that means we open the door to rooftop solar and renewable energy that Lebanon can do so we can bring ourselves to a point where the Syria part is relative it's very meaningful in the early stages and less and less meaningful as we go along so before turning to the audience I'm seeing a couple of online questions that relate to what you've just said one is you know what are the prospects for renewables the question is particularly offshore so I'm assuming wind but I think if you could speak about renewables broadly in Lebanon that would be good and how if there is gas out there which I sounds like it's still an if how long before it could actually be exploited and derive revenues and then we'll turn it back to the audience so on the exploitation look there's going to be exploration I'm expecting at some point before the before the end of this year we will already have a rig that arrives for the first time ever in Lebanese waters and then they will have to drill and find and analyze and then do another drill so it will take some time if there is gas you're talking about probably four years before meaningful gas can come out of the ground what I've told what I've said in Lebanon TV often is think about 2016 when we had an offer on the table if we reached it then today we'd have gas flowing in Lebanon you'd have 24 hours a day of electricity which would have generated economic activity probably less of the brain drain and outflows of migration of middle class from Lebanon leaving and you would be selling into a potentially into the highest price of gas that the world has ever seen during this past war that's the opportunity cost so four years yes it's four years but if you say oh it's four years it doesn't make any difference think about four years ago and then think where you'd be today if you had done that on renewables we are engaged US government we are supporting through AID and other mechanisms to establish more renewable energy I think it's a it's a it's a shame that in Lebanon there hasn't been the kind of regulation that allows for rooftop solar first offshore wind again let's not go to the hardest most complicated piece of renewable energy before we do some of the things that are that are much more easily done renewable energy today is much lower cost and I think that changing the tariffs and creating an enabling environment legally in Lebanon should allow you should have every construction of a new house and a new high riser in Lebanon should be mandating a rooftop solar at you don't have to have full capacity for the building but at least some there has to be some incentives that the government gives to build this out it is it is creates energy security it would have more electricity it would contribute economically Joseph Habush thank you Joseph Habush a lot of the English I must say as objectively as a journalist can be as objective I was one of those that was skeptical this deal was going to get done so well done to us diplomacy I've been covering it for you know 10 year almost 10 almost a decade now from half to take to you you know we had Elizabeth they both davids so anyways congrats and David Shanker as well so well done to that but my I have two questions first is why wasn't this celebrated as much as one would expect domestically you know from the state department at least we saw I think it was maybe one statement leading up I was constantly asking state department nse and others you know what's the status on this and there was a noticeable I guess lack of celebration for such a success in us diplomacy so that's that's one my second one is what's your response to those critics and you mentioned there's there's quite a bit on social media and other places as well to to you know that this deal what served the interest of Hezbollah and how do you how do you counter that or respond to that thank you I have to admit that I'm less focused on the celebrations of the state department it's not known for its celebrations but it's it's busy with other things maybe Ed Gabriel who's here can answer that question a little better than I can I think the president held several calls with the prime minister of Israel the president of Lebanon we that's not a regular occurrence where the president spends a time on the phone with the president of Lebanon the it came up in the president talked about it again in the press conference between him and president Macron during the state visit the president issued a number of statements so I think this is a deal between two enemy states there's no signing ceremony I mean I think Washington likes visuals of it's not a deal unless there was something on the south lawn or some kind of remember we had to put up the signing was a tent in the parking lot of a UN facility on the border where we had to negotiate down to the point of which doorway entrance of the tent who would come in and would they look at each other or not and the tables so and no cameras so I think a lot of that is the reason that our domestic media doesn't usually look at these kinds of things in general and so I think that I wouldn't I wouldn't look at the the statements from the state department or any other statements that you were hoping to see as an indication of where how the U.S. government approached it I think there was a I think the president himself saw this as something important and he without without his personal involvement it could not have been done in other words he at critical moments was intervening in things behind the scenes and I think everybody in Lebanon and Israel knew that the president president Biden himself was was committed to this happening and I I can deal with all my efforts without his intervention and the fact that he had a history on this issue in the Eastern Mediterranean from when he was vice president where everybody knew his involvement in Cyprus and in Israel and Egypt and so on back in back when he was vice president that contributed to this effort. Ambassador, sorry just the second one, your response to the Hezbollah? I think you should ask Hezbollah that. I think they were against the deal for a very long time. I think I don't look at his look I didn't negotiate with Hezbollah and negotiate with the president of Lebanon the prime minister of Lebanon the president of the parliament so as I said shuttle diplomacy was really inside Lebanon first and only then shuttle diplomacy with Israel. This is good for the Lebanese people that's what's important here this is good for stability in the region that's what's important if Hezbollah is for it or against it is not really my consideration that's theirs. Ambassador Ed Gabriel. Thank you. Ed Gabriel recovering State Department diplomat. Amos congratulations on a real important feat for not only those countries but I think for the region. You're somewhat of a rock star in Lebanon now. People really appreciate what you've done and one of the things that you've shown is when America gets involved in an issue it can actually really lead and have a positive outcome. You talked to Mona about kind of a new diplomatic way of maybe America leading in the world. What brings me back to some of the specifics in Lebanon particularly the IMF reforms. You've got a parliament that just won't come together. I happen to think that actually what happened was a deal was kind of pushed down some people's throats. Take it or leave it. Not the kind of negotiation I think that you would have advocated but that's where it is. The question is you lend some sense of facilitation to that process so that all parties may be able to have a safe space to have a conversation and come up with a IMF plan that works for everyone. So Ed you're asking me if I would get involved in IMF negotiations in Lebanon. I was trying to be diplomatic. I thought we were friends. Look I don't know the details of the negotiations on the IMF package. I think that whoever is in charge of those I'm sure understands that we have getting to a deal is the most important part and therefore we have to look at when we put conditionality on in any scenario. I believe that we have to not only think what one side the giving side needs from the conditions but also what the other side can do. So and that's not always apparent but one side is developing those set of requirements in Washington or London or Paris or elsewhere but we also have to understand what's doable what is actually achievable and there has to be a give and take because the other side can say always this is not doable but I think what we've shown in some of the reforms now that the World Bank has asked for that after 40 years we can get a tariff change 35 years we can get a tariff change that we can get some reforms in the electricity sector that Lebanese themselves said was not possible they told me repeatedly the politics in the parliament will not allow for this to happen and yet they did. So I think on the IMF I think there has to be an understanding in Lebanon too that above all you've seen what's happening with the banks you see where we are this there's this notion in Lebanon around Lebanese around the world and everybody who touches has worked on Lebanon that Lebanon is one of those countries that lives on the edge lives on the cliff but it never falls off and I think that's a crazy way to think because yet that's always true until it falls off and countries do fall off and Lebanon is testing that proposition on an increasingly dangerous way when you have no electricity no fuel no economics and yet some people are living as there's cash flowing from somewhere and the banks are you know it's a mess and it can't it is it's a shell game that can continue so yes if you want this kind of an injection massive injection of capital from american taxpayers and european taxpayer and asian taxpayers and everybody else that pays the IMF is not a bank the World Bank is not a bank they sometimes think they are but they're not a bank they're playing with taxpayer dollars from around the world and Lebanon is not entitled to the taxpayer dollars it is in our interest to give it but not if it's going to go in and i'm going to not see any i'm not going to be able to see a trace of it a year later so yes they have to buckle up move away from their squabbles in the parliament and with different factions and say this is life or death and sometimes that's the moment that you get together i think this is the moment in Lebanon to say if you still want a functioning country this is your moment take away and some of them don't want to agree to things just because they think somebody else will benefit not even economically but will have a political win from having it from it being achieved and that's what we have to get away from in Lebanon i think we have to once again one of the things that we didn't talk about before why do we get an agreement on this maritime deal because the people in Lebanon supported it and that's why i took my case to the Lebanese people on a day-to-day basis where they're interviews and that's why almost never with print right with TV media because print you never know what gets printed bring talk to the people directly and say this is what this deal will do don't listen to everybody else this is what it's going to do this is what it includes this is not a surrender it is a good deal and this is why the generating of the public opinion for it meant the politicians knew if i look like i'm standing in the way then i caused the problem so nobody it went from nobody was everybody was afraid of being for it because somebody will the other will say they're the you know that they betrayed the country it went and it flipped whatever organization or entity or faction or party was going to be against it was going to be standing in the way of progress on the imf i think it's the same thing we have to generate stop talking just to the government and we got to start talking a lot more to the Lebanese people who have shown an ability over the last few years to walk to come out in the streets to demonstrate to say things with placards that we've never seen before written on those placards because they already don't believe anything the government says so whoever's negotiating on the imf behalf i think that part of whatever reforms you want spell it out for the Lebanese people this is so they know that the international community is not trying to choke them and and try to leverage them because that's what they hear on tv every day if that's not the case go talk to the Lebanese people i would tell my colleagues and people in the imf go talk to the Lebanese people say here's what we are demanding for our money to give to you doesn't even and it won't sound that difficult and if the Lebanese people understand it and they're talked to we can't rely just on the government we have to talk to those people they will then support it forcefully enough that the people in parliament and the government will support it i believe that you didn't make too many friends when you came in and get rid of the shall we say the pipeline from to to europe but then the war in ukraine started and the whole strategic picture changed i'm not saying you want to rebuild the pipeline but i just want to ask you how does ukraine figure out in the medium and long term in terms of the whole strategic picture of gas and where the middle east sits in that thank you i will say my goal was not to make friends that pipeline is not has never been proven to be economically feasible it was discussed when i came in it was already being discussed for six years with not a single actual feasibility study and cost ranging between 10 and 16 billion dollars for that pipeline with no financing in sight it would probably take at the best case scenario 10 years to get from feasibility study to construction completion and first gas into europe that means 2032 2033 34 you then need 20 year contracts to support that which means 2050 something you tell me who in europe is signing a contract for fossil fuels and specifically natural gas where they are committing to pay for that gas on a taker pay basis in the into 2050 to 2060 versus i'm not against the interconnection and the integration i'm all for it that's been what i've dedicated so many years to but all i was saying is instead of a pipeline for gas have laid down electricity lines at the end day that's what the gas was going to be used for when it got to europe it was it's not going into eastern europe and western europe for heating it's going into greece that uses gas differently from the rest of europe everybody in europe that gets gas from russia is using it for heat greece is using it for electricity i was one of the architects of the sun and gas corridor going into into greece i supported long big complicated expensive overpriced gas pipelines and they're important and if we didn't do the pipeline diplomacy that the vice then vice president biden and i worked for him then around europe in 2012 to 2016 today europe would not be able to survive these winters but the reverse flow that we did from bulgaria all the way up to hungary through romania that didn't exist then we did it then the kirk island lng facility the interconnection and reverse flow between greece and bulgaria the southern gas corridor being completed and choosing the route to go through greece to italy if those things didn't happen think about all of that was really hard to do because you had cheap gas flowing in from russia and every time we wanted to have one of those projects guess what big discounts coming in from russia to undermine it but the entire found that is the foundation of our entire what president biden wanted to do which was to uh surge gas capacity to europe at the beginning of the war and before it that all happened because we had that foundation so i support the infrastructure but we're going we're going through the greatest economic transformation since the industrial revolution because we are seeing an energy transition that is happening at the same time as a um as a digital transformation we're going from three and four g to five g and there is that's not just a step from three to four is a step from four to five is transformational so as we're going through these two concurrent massive transformations we have to change how we think about this and we have to invest differently and not build infrastructure that will be stranded assets around the world and that was the idea ukraine is can and should be the beneficiary of this energy transition it it should not only make money where its primary income before the war its single largest income was a pipeline tariff where they at good days when depending on the price of gas could get two and a half billion dollars a year on something they don't do which is having a pipeline go through their territory but they have one of the few countries in Europe that has an enduring not just an enduring nuclear industry nuclear power industry uh a know-how and an expertise but also public opinion that actually supports it and provide clean energy they have great wind and solar potential they have electricity system that i worked very hard with the ukrainian government and ukraine ergo before the war to disconnect their electricity system from Belarus and russia we did that the on february 23rd and 24th is when we concluded that disconnect from russia and and Belarus and the interconnection into the through the nsoe into into europe the day the war started was our final day and we did that testing period in the two weeks leading up as the president of the united states was declaring that war was coming trying to convince everybody to be ready for it so we got that done at the nick of time so ukraine can become we first have to rebuild the electricity but the crisis this war this horrific war has destroyed the electricity system in ukraine that means we get a chance to rebuild something from scratch a whole new electricity system after the war is over and that can become a remarkable boon not only for ukraine but for the clean energy needs of of europe as a whole so i'm i'm a big believer that the minute we can get um prudent to stop this war and ukraine can rebuild on the energy piece it will become it can become it has the potential to become the best thing that happened to europe's energy transition amos thank you so much i i wish i have more questions there are more questions online but we're mindful of your very busy schedule all of you please join me in thanking amos hawkstein congratulations on a remarkable deal and i hope we'll invite you back again to delve further into these issues i look forward to it thank you so much