How the U.S. Failed to Bring Peace to the Middle East

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Brian Lehrer: It's The Brian Lehrer Show on WNYC. Good morning, everyone. Today, of course, is October 7th, 2024, exactly one year since the world changed in so many ways with the Hamas attack on Israel. You've been hearing all the coverage just now on the BBC, earlier on NPR, if you've been listening this morning. For this show's contribution and observance, we're going to focus on US policy toward Israel and Gaza and the region in the last year with Franklin Foer, staff writer for the Atlantic, who has a very in-depth timeline and analysis of the Biden administration response.

The article displays at around 50 pages. It's called The War That Would Not End. Of course, a major question for the presidential candidates is whether Kamala Harris or Donald Trump would change course in any way or how they would try to end the war if they would. Spoiler alert about this article, Franklin Foer writes near the top that it's the story of an overextended superpower, his words, story of an overextended superpower and its aging president unable to exert themselves decisively in a moment of crisis. Franklin, thanks for coming on with us again. Welcome back to WNYC.

Franklin Foer: Thank you. I was just remembering that I was on with you, I think, about a year or two after September 11th on its anniversary, so I guess I'm your go-to guy for commemorating atrocity and their painful aftermaths.

Brian Lehrer: [laughs] Well, one of them and one of many, unfortunately, in the world in which we live in. You were here in April to talk about another major Atlantic piece that you had written about American Jews. I should say that despite your frame of failure, the article begins, and we're going to talk about this a lot in Part 1 here with how close they were to an epic success on October 6th last year, literally the day before, when a Biden official was meeting with a group of Saudi diplomats, drawing up a normalization of relations deal between Saudi Arabia and Israel that also included a Palestinian state.

Can you talk first about how developed that plan was and how close to yes they were on October 6th last year between the various parties?

Franklin Foer: That plan was of a piece with a much broader deal that the administration was hatching with the Saudis, which would have entailed a mutual defense pact between the United States and Saudi Arabia. We would have helped launch their civilian nuclear energy program. They would have been tethered to the US dollar. This was all means to counter China's growing presence in the Middle East and to cement an alliance against Iran.

In order for that deal to happen, Saudi Arabia and the administration both understood that there needed-- Well, the other component of that deal was normalization of relations with Israel. You would have had the Saudi government, which are the custodians of Mecca and Medina, normalizing relations with the Jewish state. That would have been a major achievement.

For any of this to have happened, there needed to be a process to begin to get to a Palestinian state, which would have primarily taken place with the Palestinian Authority and the West Bank, but there were all sorts of technocratic blueprints for reforming that government, reforming its education system, reforming its security services. The Saudis even had blueprints for reforming the Palestinian welfare system and electric grid.

That was all taking place on October 6th, the very next week Tony Blinken was supposed to fly off to Saudi Arabia to have discussions with the crown prince, Mohammed bin Salman, to hash this out even further. It should be said that there was good reason to believe that Benjamin Netanyahu, the Israeli prime minister, was very interested in this deal, but we also know that throughout his political career, he's often choked on the words Palestinian state.

It was unclear if he would be able to muster the will to get something done that he viewed as part of his crowning legacy as prime minister. That all, of course, came crashing down hours later.

Brian Lehrer: Right. We'll get to a point on your timeline in January where Netanyahu almost did endorse that deal, but again, as you write in the article, as you just said it now, choked on the words Palestinian state and didn't utter them, did it really include a Palestinian state? I ask because weren't the previous so-called Abraham Accords the other Arab countries striking normalization deals with Israel in the several years before?

Didn't they betray the Palestinians by normalizing in exchange for something for themselves, trade or US security assistance, but sweeping the central issue in Arab-Israeli relations under the rug?

Franklin Foer: Betrayed? I don't know what obligation the UAE actually has or any of the other Gulf states have to the Palestinians, but I think Mohammed bin Salman did feel a sense of obligation to the Palestinians. He would tell the Americans that he personally didn't care a whole lot about the fate of the Palestinians but he felt like, as the leader of the Muslim world and as the leader of a country whose population cared a lot about the Palestinian issue, he felt that there was an obligation to do something meaningful.

Would it have culminated in a Palestinian state? I think that the United States was probably much more interested in getting to something resembling a Palestinian state than either the Israelis or the Saudis. I think that Biden was more committed to this deal, not only because it advanced US interest in the regions and because of the economic significance of Saudi Arabia, but also because he is a Zionist. In the marrow of his bones, he's a liberal Zionist.

He wants Israel to be democratic. He wants it to be committed to a two-state solution. He thought that this was the biggest enticement that he had in order to keep the possibilities of a two-state solution alive.

Brian Lehrer: From the Palestinian side, Hamas is dedicated to the destruction of Israel as a Jewish state, not making accommodations with it, though they have taken the position at times that they would accept a two-state solution as an interim measure, while I guess they continue to push for an end to a Jewish state. Was Hamas a party to those talks with the Saudis? Or if not, was there a plan to contain them as a threat?

Franklin Foer: No, Hamas was not a party. I think that there are a lot of people who suspect that one of the reasons among many that Hamas planned and instigated October 7th was in order to derail these talks because they saw themselves and they saw Iran as getting cut out of the deal and being weakened in the region. We have to remember that there are two strains of Palestinian politics. There is the annihilationist strain that you described, which Hamas practices, and then there is the Palestinian Authority in the West Bank, which for all its many laws, there's a lot of corruption, there are a lot of deep flaws within the organization.

They're at least committed to peaceful coexistence with Israel. I think Israel made a very bad bet on trying to prop up Hamas in Gaza and thinking that it could coexist with Gaza as it tried to squeeze the Palestinians in the West Bank because of the pressure from Netanyahu's own right wing, which wanted to expand settlements in the West Bank.

Brian Lehrer: One more thing on this deal that they were trying to get close to on October 6th of last year, Saudi normalization with Israel and a two-state solution, when they came close to a two-state deal in the '90s as you know, some major sticking points turned out to be just too hard to resolve; where would the borders really be, the right of return, for how many Palestinian refugee families displaced in the 1940s and to where, the status of Jerusalem, the role of Israeli security in a Palestinian state where rejectionists like Hamas would presumably still try to stage attacks from. Did they have those things worked out?

Franklin Foer: No. I think one of the problems with this deal to an extent-- This was detailed, but it was still in its early stages. It hadn't been presented. The Palestinians were, in fact, cut out of these discussions more or less, and so there would have been something close to a fait accompli that would have been presented to both the Israelis and the Palestinians, which they would have had to accept. The very, very tricky things that you're mentioning were not fully hashed out in these blueprints.

Brian Lehrer: It would be 1993 again, the concept of a plan, as Donald Trump recently said about healthcare, the concept of a plan without an actual plan. One theory that we all heard just after October 7th, and you just referred to this a minute ago, was that the Hamas attack was specifically timed to sabotage the potential Saudi-Israel deal because that would further marginalize Hamas. Have you been able to confirm or refute that in any meaningful way?

Franklin Foer: No. I think it's almost a strand of conventional wisdom. I haven't seen intelligence that verifies it. I think the other piece of speculation is that Israeli society was riven by these judicial reforms that the Israeli prime minister was promoting. There were demonstrations in the streets against that. There were major divisions within Israeli society that I think Hamas was exploiting, as well as this fact that Israel had clearly taken its eye off the ball as it relates to Gaza. It had assumed that it had everything bottled up and handled in Gaza.

As it turned out, they were extremely negligent on that count. Can I just say one last thing about the Saudi deal-

Brian Lehrer: Yes.

Franklin Foer: -in the Palestinian state, which is that we're at this moment now, a year later, where I think there's so much despair and despondence over the fact that there is-- It's hard to see any sort of alternative to endless war at this stage. I think what was so wrenching to me about reporting this piece was that there was a vision of a better world that could exist on the other side of this war and that the administration had the outlines of that better world in its head.

It may not have ever had the ability to translate that into actual politics, into actual facts on the ground, but I think given where we are, that better vision and the fact that there were major parties who were willing to promote it, to finance it, to put their national authorities behind it, is the wrenching fact because, at this stage, it feels like we've all but given up on that vision of an alternative reality.

Brian Lehrer: Right. That's really the core of what I found so interesting about your article. My guest is Franklin Foer from the Atlantic, who has a super in-depth timeline of the last year of US diplomacy since October 7th that starts with a description and then comes back in the middle of the year, as we'll do, of this possible normalization deal between Saudi Arabia and Israel and the United States as a broker that includes a Palestinian state.

To follow up on what you just said, why don't they still just do it? One could argue that it's still in the Saudi's interests, it's still in Israel's interest, and, of course, it's in the United States' interest.

Franklin Foer: There are a couple preconditions for advancing to the next phase. The first is that the Saudis have insisted that there be calm in Gaza because Mohammed bin Salman, I think, is afraid, or he says that he's afraid for his life, that he's seen what's happened to other Arab leaders. Anwar el-Sadat looms most large in his mind, who've committed to peace deals with Israel. In order to get to a place where he feels like he's willing to make this big commitment, he needs there to be a ceasefire in Gaza. In fact, there's no possibility of that in the short term it feels like right now, and that's one major obstacle.

Then the second is that Mohammed bin Salman may not care that much about a Palestinian state, but he needs Netanyahu to utter the words Palestinian state. He needs there to be some commitment on Netanyahu's part. Even though Netanyahu says in private time and time again that he's willing to finagle something, that he's willing to wordsmith something, that he's willing to come to something that would satisfy the Saudis, he's yet to make that leap because he faces pressure on his right, and it's pretty clear over the course of his career that he's just highly skeptical of the idea of a Palestinian state.

Brian Lehrer: Do you know if the emerging Saudi-Israel deal a year and a day ago had anything for Gaza? Conditions were already harsh under the ongoing blockade. Would Saudi normalization and a Palestinian state have included anything for Gaza which was already technically independent from Israel, though very affected by Israeli outside control?

Franklin Foer: Yes, not to my knowledge. No.

Brian Lehrer: All right. Now I want to move on to another key theme of your article. Listeners, we'll open up the phones in a minute, but I want to establish a certain few basic things with Franklin Foer from this timeline of US diplomacy in the last year. We've done one now, this possible Saudi-Israel normalization deal that would have included a Palestinian state, which they were getting close to on October 6th.

Another key theme of your article, maybe the biggest theme, is that Biden's goal after October 7th was to avert a regional war that might ensnare the United States, particularly to keep it from spreading to the Israel-Lebanon border and then Iran. Now, of course, that seems to be happening now to a larger degree than at any point in the past year, but why was preventing that, spreading of the war, the early focus, not just to get-- was it just to keep US lives out of the mix or also with a larger concern for the people of the region?

Franklin Foer: Well, there is a massive US presence in the region, and it's actually grown larger over the course of this year as we've brought in carrier groups and the like, but I think that there was definitely a fear that American troops in places like Iraq would be left vulnerable if there was a regional war. I think that there were concerns for global stability in the global economy. We all know about the centrality of the Middle East, its fossil fuels, but also its shipping channels to the global economy.

That was on his mind but then there's also this other-- it’s a little bit more intangible part of his thinking, which is that Joe Biden was somebody who grew up in the Atomic Age and he knew he could remember when kids had to hide under their desks as part of drills. Fears of escalation have shaped the way that he's formulated America's policy in Ukraine, and I think those same fears have shaped the way that he's thought about the Middle East as well.

He also worries about this as a Zionist. I think that he was genuinely worried that Israel would become overextended, that it was fighting one war with Hamas, which wished for its annihilation, then fighting another war with Iranian proxies who wished for its annihilation, would overextend Israel and leave it even more vulnerable than it actually was.

Brian Lehrer: In pursuit of that, keeping the war contained, at least to Israel-Gaza, Biden tried to broker a deal for a return of the Israeli hostages, dissuade Israel from going too hard into Gaza so as not to inspire Hezbollah to launch a second front from Lebanon. Biden tried to accelerate the path to that Saudi normalization we've been talking about. You have a quote from Biden speaking to Netanyahu that says, "If you launch this attack, you're guaranteeing a major Middle East war. If you don't, there's a lot we can do to deter it."

This is just after October 7th, right? Obviously, Netanyahu did not go along with that. He went as hard as they could possibly go into Gaza. Why did he refute or refuse that apparently very direct entreaty from Joe Biden, "If you launch this attack, you're guaranteeing a major Middle East war. If you don't, there's a lot we can do to deter that"?

Franklin Foer: Yes. This was on October 11th, four days after October 7th, and Israel was convinced that Hezbollah was about to launch a preemptive attack on Israel. There were very, very dramatic moments that day where the Israeli war cabinet was gathering and they were processing all of this intelligence that they were gathering, where they were actually convinced that paragliders were beginning to fly over the northern border much as they had from Gaza and that they were going to be invaded by Hezbollah in the same sort of way.

As it turned out, there weren't paragliders. They were a flock of birds that Israel mistook for paragliders. It was in that moment that Israel was so jangled that they were so traumatized. They had so little faith in their own intelligence because they had just been caught by surprise so badly on October 7th that they were seeing shadows. Biden was trying to get them to return to some sort of state of emotional and strategic equilibrium. On that day and throughout the next coming months, Biden tells them, "If you launch these preemptive wars, you're going to be on your own."

That threat carries a lot of weight with Israel now because as we've seen in the response to the Iranian rocket salvos in April and then last week, it's incredibly important for Israel's defense to have the US playing this coordinating role. The US shoots down a good chunk of the ballistic missiles and the drones that emanate from Iran. Israel's defense against Iran and its proxies to some extent depends on American participation.

Brian Lehrer: You also write that after October 7th, Iran communicated through a back channel that they opposed Hezbollah entering the war from Lebanon and wanted to calm tensions. You're right that Iran might have been lying, but with the year of hindsight, Franklin, did they have an interest early on in more war or in less war?

Franklin Foer: It seemed like, at that early stage, part of the problem that Hezbollah had-- We have to remember, Hezbollah was essentially Iran's main insurance policy against an Iranian preemptive strike because Hezbollah has this massive cache of missiles that could do incredible damage and potentially overwhelm Israeli air defenses. Hezbollah was and still is in a relatively vulnerable position in Lebanon that the rest of Lebanese society does not especially want a major confrontation with Israel. They remember the 2006 war.

For Hezbollah to get engaged in a massive confrontation with Israel at that early stage would have risked Hezbollah's political future. Hezbollah engaged in, I think, what was a very tactical dance with the Israelis, which they started to fire missiles on Israel in solidarity with Hamas, but at the same time, it seems like at least in that early phase of the war, they tried to calibrate their response so as to not provoke an Israeli overreaction.

Brian Lehrer: Listeners, this segment is about the Biden administration's role in the post and just pre-October 7th world, and we'll get to the prospect of a Harris or Trump administration and how differently they might continue to engage in the region. We welcome your comments and questions on specifically those things at 212-433-WNYC, 212-433-9692 for Franklin Foer from the Atlantic, author of the year-long diplomatic blow-by-blow article called The War That Would Not End.

Sometimes when we talk about the Middle East situation, I say there's always a risk that the phones are going to get overwhelmed with people who just want to describe one side or the other as the bigger monsters. We're trying to do something that doesn't let us just go down that unproductive rabbit hole from any point of view. We're talking today about the Biden administration's role in the post and just pre-October 7th world and the prospect of a Harris or Trump administration and how different they might be. We'll get to that. 212-433-WNYC.

In that context, comments are welcome. Questions are also welcome. Call or text 212-433-WNYC, 212-433-9692. Interestingly, you also write about Nasrallah, the leader of Hezbollah, who Israel just recently killed in that strike across the Lebanese border. You have Nasrallah resentful of Hamas for not informing him in advance of the plans for October 7th. Why wouldn't Hamas have given their ally a heads-up? Do you have anything on that?

Franklin Foer: Well, I think Israel in the immediate aftermath of October 7th was extremely worried that Iran's access of resistance, all of these proxy armies that encircled Israel and what the Iranians described as kind of a ring of fire, were going to descend on them simultaneously. What Nasrallah, I think, had his own plans for invading-- Sorry. Hamas, I think, was acting independently. I think there was always this sense that the Iranians had and that other Iranian proxies had, that Hamas would fire rockets, that they would engage in something.

I don't think that there was necessarily the sense, especially that Hezbollah had that Hamas would hatch a plan like this. In fact, Hezbollah imagined that it would eventually hatch a plan quite similar to it on its own. Part of the reason Nasrallah was upset with Hamas was not because that he objected to the murder of Israelis or the invasion of Israel, but he wasn't the one to reap the glory for leading the charge into Israel.

Brian Lehrer: You write that by the end of October, the Biden people began to feel as if there was a stark difference in outlook between them and the Netanyahu government. I guess we've already established that and everybody kind of knows that, but a central question of the rest of this past year has been-- I'm going to let a caller ask it, actually, because I think Sherry in Manhattan is going to be right in point to where I was going with this question. Let's take our first call in this segment. Sherry, you're on WNYC. Hello. Thank you for calling in.

Sherry: First of all, I wish, Brian, you would interview a Palestinian scholar like Noura Erakat, there's so many Palestinian scholars, or someone like the people at Jewish Voice for Peace, Naomi Klein.

Brian Lehrer: Yes. We've had Naomi Klein. We have people who are of Palestinian background, Israeli. We have a lot-- in different segments on different days. You had a point about this segment. Go ahead.

Sherry: Yes. Well, just to cut to the chase, Biden, the US president, could end this war this minute by cutting off the weapons that are bombing families and Israeli hostages in Gaza. He could have cut it off a year ago by not funding the bombing in Gaza. The orientation towards the Abraham Accords was a way of sidestepping the Palestinians and sidestepping any kind of genuine solution to the problem.

Brian Lehrer: Sherry, thank you very much. Two things there. One I think we addressed a few minutes ago, the thing at the end of her call, were the Abraham Accords really a way of sidestepping, which they had done with the previous countries that normalized relations with Israel in that context, a way of sidestepping the Palestinian issues? You said it really was going to be addressed in the Saudi deal, but to her central question at the beginning of the call, and that's where my question was leading, why hasn't Biden used more leverage to get Netanyahu to do what Biden thinks is smart for Israel or humane for the Palestinians, pursue more of the Biden path that you've been outlining?

He could have instituted an arms embargo or conditions on the use of and further shipment of US weapons as Bernie Sanders proposed in the Senate and as has become such a central demand and focus of the ceasefire movement.

Franklin Foer: I have a couple responses to that. The first is that I don't think it's-- There's this almost magical sense that Biden has a switch that he could flip and that that would change the outcome of everything. In the past, when the US has cut off military aid to allies in order to change their policy, whether it was in Egypt or in Bahrain, that's been essentially an ineffective policy because nation-states have a sense of their own interests. When they feel as if they are existentially threatened, they continue to go on and fight against the existential threat.

Even if Biden instigated an arms embargo, I don't think that that would have changed Israel's policy as it relates to Gaza. Secondly, I think that the Biden administration, and this is a failing, I think that they felt as if they were using their leverage in order to rack up a series of wins with the Israelis as it relates to getting humanitarian aid in or changing the battle plans in Rafah or constraining regional war.

I think that they probably overestimated what they were getting in return in those instances, and I think that there were times where-- I say this as somebody who's pretty sympathetic to the Biden administration, I think it ultimately made them look quite weak because they would draw what looked like were red lines in the sand, red lines, and they would be transgressed. Biden never really had a response after those transgressions.

Then finally, I'll just say that there was something pretty muddled about Biden administration policy where they disagreed with Israel over tactics but they didn't necessarily disagree with them over goals. One of the stated goals of the Biden policy at the beginning of the war was that they wanted to see the dismantlement of Hamas as it relates to Hezbollah. I think the Biden administration is quite happy to have Nasrallah dead and to have Hezbollah dismantled. I don't think the administration wants there to be a nuclear Iran.

While there's these pretty stark differences over tactics, there's actual agreement over ends, and I think that's resulted in this muddle that we've seen over the course of this year.

Brian Lehrer: We'll continue with Franklin Foer from the Atlantic. We'll get next into the current presidential race, including how much the domestic politics of the Israel-Gaza war has affected the Biden presidency and the policy toward the region over the last year. It's that whole last year of Biden policy that Franklin documents in his in-depth Atlantic magazine article.

We'll get to a very surprising quote from MBS, Mohammed bin Salman, the leader of Saudi Arabia, turning from support for Trump in the presidential election to support for the Democrats, we'll see if Franklin can back that up, and more of your calls and texts. Stay with us.

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Brian Lehrer: Brian Lehrer on WNYC as we observe this one-year anniversary of the October 7th attack with Franklin Foer from the Atlantic, who has written a super in-depth timeline and analysis of the Biden administration response. The article displays at around 50 pages. It's called The War That Would Not End. He writes near the top that it's the story of an overextended superpower and its aging president unable to exert themselves decisively in a moment of crisis.

We will get to why he deems the Biden administration to have failed so much and where that would leave Kamala Harris if she does ascend to the presidency. Franklin, we took one caller, very critical of the Biden administration, from one point of view. We're going to take another very critical of the Biden administration from another point of view. This is Rabbi Eli in Lakewood. You're on WNYC. Hello, Rabbi Eli.

Rabbi Eli: Yes, thank you for taking my call. The Biden and Harris administration really is playing both sides over here because they do help Israel. At least President Biden is on the side of Israel, but on the other hand, they keep giving diplomatic cover to the Palestinians by calling for ceasefires instead of calling for victory. The killing of the top leaders in Hezbollah would never have happened if the Jews had followed what Biden has been calling for, what Harris has been calling for. You mentioned Senator Sanders being against Israel. This is déjà vu.

Brian Lehrer: I didn't say against Israel. He said he wanted conditions placed on arms. Just to be accurate.

Rabbi Eli: Okay. Well, I view that as against Israel. It reminds me of the Holocaust. This is déjà vu. This is America's Jews. We're happy to throw the Jews of Europe under the bus during the Holocaust. There are no regrets. There's no soul searching, no blaming. America's Jews totally could have prevented the entire Holocaust from happening, and many leaders went out of their way to make sure that they did not prevent it.

The Sulzberger family, who owned and operated The New York Times during World War II, they were Jewish at the time, and they knew what was going on in Europe. They purposely covered it up.

Brian Lehrer: That sounds like a conspiracy theory, but I don't want to go back that far anyway. Rabbi Eli, I appreciate your call. We take from these very two polarized calls that we've gotten, Franklin, that here we are in this political season, actual presidential election, congressional election, and so central to the US politics of the situation from the left on college campuses and elsewhere, stop arming Israel for the way they're waging this war, killing tens of thousands of people, at least place conditions on the use of those weapons for Israel's defense of itself, that it's not necessary or even effective in protecting Israel long term, and it's so cruel.

On the other side, we have what we just heard from the last caller. Does your article go into how much the domestic politics of the situation in this election year have influenced Biden one way or the other?

Franklin Foer: I just want to say one thing, which is that the Biden administration policy actually probably lines up pretty neatly with a certain segment of the Israeli political elite and Israeli polity that Benny Gantz, who'd been the head of the IDF, who was a member of the war cabinet, has blamed Netanyahu for not having a day-after plan, which is one of the things that the administration has insisted on.

Yoav Gallant, who is the defense minister, has criticized Netanyahu for creating new obstacles to getting a ceasefire deal and hostage release. Netanyahu's own defense minister actually wants a ceasefire deal and a hostage deal but has been frustrated with Netanyahu for continuing to add new conditions in the course of that negotiation. As it relates to your question about electoral politics, it's really hard to disentangle that.

It was pretty clear that as soon as the Uncommitted Movement in Michigan burst onto the seams and as soon as the American left began to, not just on college campuses but within the administration itself, began to criticize Israel for its tactics, I think that resulted in certain shifts within administration policy where it began to talk, I think, more validly about humanitarian aid and about civilian deaths.

I think one of the great frustrations for the administration is that it believed that it could get to a ceasefire deal and hostage release before the elections rolled around, that it felt like Israel was going to wrap up its operations at the beginning of last year. The fact that this war and that the hostages continue to be these unresolved issues headed into this election, I think, is something that surprises and frustrates the administration. To some extent, the administration knows that it undermines and weakens their position headed into the election.

Brian Lehrer: Back to the premise of your article, that it's the year-long story of an overextended superpower and its aging president unable to exert themselves decisively in a moment of crisis, has Biden accomplished anything? Here's a clip of Vice President Harris from the CBS 60 Minutes interview that will air tonight defending their record.

Kamala Harris: The work that we have done has resulted in a number of movements in that region by Israel that were very much prompted by or a result of many things, including our advocacy for what needs to happen in the region.

Brian Lehrer: Your reaction?

Franklin Foer: Look, I think that there are-- If you squint, it's possible to point to ways in which the administration's pressure has resulted in a change in Israeli policy that I think that if you look at the bombing of Gaza City and then you look at subsequent military campaigns, especially in Rafah, you could see that there's less civilian damage, that the Israelis are more attentive to refugees and to evacuees, and that when you look at Rafah, this is something the administration claims, that when the Israelis initially planned to invade Rafah, which was parenthetically not in their original war plan, that they had planned to go in a block-by-block way through the city, and that the administration pressured them to change their war plan in a way where they did more encirclement, that there were more evacuations that happened in advance of that, and that there were relatively few civilian casualties in the course of that battle.

Or you could look at the way in which, all right, so the world has finally come to the brink of a regional war, but there was a year that the administration was able to kick that can down the road. Is there some victory in that? It's hard to see one, but that was the big victory that the administration claimed up until last month.

Brian Lehrer: If your article says flat out, as it does, that it's an analysis of failure by the Biden administration, can you see any path that would have led to success on Biden's terms, the Saudi normalization of relations with Israel in exchange for military restraint and a commitment to a Palestinian state, that's what Biden wanted, or if Israel under Netanyahu has been that recalcitrant, maybe no other US leader could have gotten them more to yes, and failure was inevitable and not on Biden, it's on the Israeli leadership?

Franklin Foer: It's not just, by the way, Netanyahu, who has been recalcitrant, that Hamas is committed to the annihilation of the state of Israel, and that there have been many moments, and now is one of them, where Hamas has displayed very little interest to no interest in getting to a ceasefire because Hamas looks at the way in which the world has shifted over the course of this last year, and they see the way in which Israel has been delegitimized in the American and global left. They see all these ways in which Israel is now probably more diplomatically isolated.

It's been Sinwar's dream to see all this happen, and he's more than happy to allow the war to continue. I don't think that it's totally fair to cast all the blame on Netanyahu here. Honestly, this is a place where I struggle.

Brian Lehrer: Let me follow up on that because what you said is fair. The Biden administration has struggled, as you indicate, to get either side fully to yes. Could anybody have gotten these two sides who, frankly, want to annihilate each other-- Israel doesn't want Hamas to even exist. Hamas doesn't want Israel to even exist. Could anybody have gotten them to yes?

Franklin Foer: I'm not sure. That's why I can say that the administration failed on its own terms because it set these goals for itself and it's failed to achieve them. As I was writing this piece, I was going back and I was rereading biographies of some of the great American diplomats of the late 20th century and just thinking about Richard Holbrooke, or thinking about James Baker, and thinking whether there was somebody who could be forceful and willful and creative and impose themselves in a way that achieved objectives that to some extent are contradictory on paper but work to achieve some sort of overarching goal.

All I can think of is that, maybe if there was the presence of a diplomat who was extraordinary and creative and forceful, maybe something different could have happened. As you say, facts are facts and interests are interests. It's very, very hard to get over this fact that you have two sides that are equally committed to their goals.

Brian Lehrer: Do you think that both Netanyahu and Sinwar, the head of Hamas, are both gambling now on maximal war as ultimately being in their interest, that they each think they're going to win more by going all out?

Franklin Foer: I definitely think that-- I'm [unintelligible 00:42:27] to draw a direct comparison here between the two. I think Sinwar right now sees the possibility of a regional conflagration where Israel gets overextended. All along, he's been waiting for the Axis of Resistance to ride to his rescue, and he sees that this is the moment where Israel is drawing closer to a war with the Houthis, with Hezbollah, and with Iran. I think Israel has been more cautious about wanting to be ensnared in a regional war, that it did not want to get into a war with Hezbollah.

There were forces in the cabinet who were trying to propel Israel into a war with Hezbollah, but Netanyahu ultimately resisted those pleas until the very end of this summer. I think as it relates to Iran, there have been moments where Israel could have struck Iran harder in response to the ballistic missile attacks. It actually restrained itself in order to either adhere to the wishes of the Biden administration or because it realizes that it's not in its own interest to get into an all-out war with Iran and with Hezbollah.

Brian Lehrer: Now we get to the present and perhaps the future. Kamala Harris, not Biden, is now the candidate for president of the Democratic Party. In the 60 Minutes interview that will air tonight, CBS's Bill Whitaker asks Harris this about Netanyahu.

Bill Whitaker: Do we have a real close ally in Prime Minister Netanyahu?

Kamala Harris: I think with all due respect, the better question is, do we have an important alliance between the American people and the Israeli people? And the answer to that question is yes.

Brian Lehrer: Franklin, she wouldn't say he's a close ally but apparently didn't criticize him either. We'll see the larger context of that interview tonight when it airs in full. That's just a clip they released. How do you see Harris as picking up the leadership on this in continuity with or as a break from Biden's strategy or priorities to any degree?

Franklin Foer: I think it's pretty interesting when I was asking people inside the room, "What was Kamala Harris saying? What was Kamala Harris showing in the course of these debates?" I never really encountered a moment where it felt like there was massive gaps between Biden and Harris on these issues. I think there have been moments where her office and her staff has hinted that she's further to the left than Biden is on these issues, but there hasn't been a whole lot of substance to justify that claim.

The one thing I would say is that the world she would inherit as president is very different than the world that exists right now. It's in some ways hard to anticipate how any president would respond to a different set of facts on the ground that between now and the election, there's very, very little likelihood of there being a ceasefire deal and hostage release. It almost takes the presence of a new president to be able to create a different dynamic at this stage.

Brian Lehrer: In 30 seconds, what do you think will be different from Harris if Trump is elected?

Franklin Foer: I just want to point to one irony that perplexes me, which is that you have people in Michigan, Arab Americans, who are inclined to vote for Trump to protest the Biden policy, and you have American Jews--

Brian Lehrer: Or not to vote at all because they don't see enough of a difference with 40,000 deaths. Go ahead.

Franklin Foer: Yes. There are some people who are going to vote for Trump, and you do have certain American Jews to protest Biden policy who are going to vote for Trump, and that there is this really strange convergence of its interests. I have a hard time telling you what Trump's going to do because he's just erratic about everything as it relates to foreign policy. That erraticism is something that he celebrates as a core tendency, which makes him very, very hard to read sometimes.

Brian Lehrer: Franklin Foer's article in the Atlantic is called The War That Would Not End. Thank you very much for sharing it with us.

Franklin Foer: Thank you.

 

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