Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East | Lex Fridman Podcast #399

The following is a conversation with Jared Kushner, former senior adviser to the President during the Donald Trump administration and author of Breaking A White House Memoir. He's one of the most influential and effective presidential advisors in modern history, helping conduct negotiations with some of the most powerful leaders in the world and deliver results on trade, criminal justice reform and historic progress towards peace in the Middle East. On Thursday, October 5, we recorded conversation on topics of war and peace, history and power in the Middle east and beyond. This was about a day and a half before the Hamas attack on Israel and then we felt we must sit down again on Monday, October 9th and add a discussion on the current situation. We opened the podcast with the second newly recorded part. My heart goes out to everyone who has and is suffering in this war. I pray for your strength and for the long term peace and flourishing of the Israeli and Palestinian people. I love you all. This is the Lex Friedman Podcast. And now, dear friends, here's Jared Kushner. We did a lot of this conversation before the Hamas attack on Israel and we decided to sit down again and finish the discussion to address the current situation which is still developing. If I may, allow me to summarize the situation as it stands today. It's morning Monday, October 9th. On Saturday, October 7th, at 6:30am Israel time, Hamas fired thousands of rockets into southern Israel. The rocket attack served as cover for a multi pronged infiltration of Israel territory by over 1000 Hamas militants. This is shortly after at 7:40am The Hamas militants went door to door in border towns, killing civilians and taking captives including women and children. In response to this, Israeli air force began carrying out strikes in Gaza, also fighting on the ground in Israel, to clear out Hamas militants from Israel territory and preparing to mobilize Israeli troops for potential ground attack on Hamas in Gaza. Now, of course, this is what it appears to be right now and this along with other things might change because the situation is still developing. The IDF is ordering civilian residents of Gaza to evacuate their homes for their safety. Benjamin Netanyahu declared war in several statements and warned Israelis to brace themselves for a long and difficult war. Just today, Israeli ministers ordered a quote, complete siege of Gaza, interrupting supplies of electricity, food, water and fuel from Israel to Gaza. As of now October 9th, the death toll is over 1200 people and over 130 hostages taken to Gaza by Hamas. So as I said, the events are rapidly unfolding, so these numbers will sadly increase. But hopefully our wards here can at least in part speak to the the timeless underlying currents of the history. And as you write about the power dynamics of the region. So for people who don't know, Gaza is a 25 miles long, 6 miles wide strip of territory along the Mediterranean Sea. It borders Israel on the east and north and Egypt on the southwest. It's densely populated, about 2.3 million people. And there's been a blockade of Gaza by Israel and Egypt since 2007 when Hamas took power. I could just summarize that. Hamas is a Palestinian militant group which rules the Gaza Strip. It originated in 1988 and it came to power in Gaza in 2006. As part of its charter, it sworn to the destruction of Israel and it is designated by the United States, European Union, UK and of course Israel as a terrorist group. So given that context, what are your feelings as a human being and what is your analysis as the former senior advisor to the president under the Trump administration of the current situation in Israel and Gaza?

So I think you did an excellent job of summarizing a lot of the context. But watching what's unfolded over the last 48 hours has been truly heartbreaking to see. We're still in the early stages of what's developing, but seeing the images on X of militants, terrorists going door to door with machine guns, gunning down innocent civilians, seeing beheaded Israeli soldiers, seeing young 20 year olds at a rave dance party to celebrate peace with militants flying in and then, you know, shooting machine guns to kill people indiscriminately, seeing young children captive and held prisoner, seeing 80 year old grandmothers, a Holocaust survivor also being taken captive. These are just images and actions that we have not seen in this world since 9 11. This is a terror attack on the scale of which we have not seen. And it's been incredibly hard for a lot of people to comprehend. My heart goes out obviously to all of the families of the victims, to the families of those who are held in captive now, and to all of Israel. Because one of the beautiful things about the state of Israel is that when one Israeli is hurting, the entire nation comes together. It's a shame that it's taking an action like this to unify the nation, but I have seen incredibly beautiful signs over the last 48 hours of a country coming together. The Jewish people have been under oppression before. The Jewish people know what it's like. And seeing people rally together to fight for their homeland, to try to reestablish safety is a very beautiful thing to watch. I wish it wasn't something we had to watch, but it is. With that being said, though, the backdrop I've been speaking to friends over the last couple days. I have one friend I spoke with last night who was saying that a good friend messaged him, saying, I'm going in. We're going to do some operations to try to free some of the hostages held in one of the kibbutzes. Messaged him the next morning. He was one of the first through the door to try to free these hostages, and he was killed by a Hamas militant. And sadly, we're going to be hearing many, many more stories of brave Israeli soldiers trying to get these terrorists out of Israel, trying to free innocent civilians who, unfortunately, are risking their lives to do it. And they're all heroes, but some will have a less good fate than others, sadly. So it's a very, very heartbreaking moment. And I do think that it's very important at this moment in time for the entire world to stand behind Israel. I think that Hamas has shown the entire world who they really are. I think what their aim is, what they're willing to do, and all of the strong security that Israel's put in place over the last years, which in some instances was criticized, I think is now being validated that there was a real threat that they were looking to deter. So, short answer is, my heart is broken. Praying for peace, praying for strength, praying for Israel to do what it needs to do to avoid being in this situation again, which is either eliminating or severely degrading Hamas's capabilities. There cannot be peace in Israel and in the Middle east while there is a terror group that is being funded by Iran that is allowed to flourish and is allowed to plan operations that are going to aim to kill innocent civilians. And so, as somebody who was formerly in this position, who was intimately involved with Israel, with the strategies to minimize attacks from Hamas and to try to turn the region around, and I think we did do a very substantial job under President Trump. The Middle east went from one of the most chaotic regions in the world. You had ISIS in 2016. ISIS had a caliphate the size of Ohio. They were beheading journalists. They were killing Christians. They controlled 8 million people. They were planning attacks all over the world from their caliphate. They were using the Internet to radicalize people. We had the San Bernardino shooting in America. We had the Pulse nightclub shooting in Orlando. And there was real threat. And then you had Iran, which was given $150 billion in a glide path to a nuclear weapon. And they were using their newfound riches to fund Hamas, Hezbollah, the Houthis, different rebels all over the region that were looking to destabilize further Syria was in a Civil War where 500,000 people were killed. Yemen was destabilized, Libya was destabilized, and it was just a mess. And all of America's allies had felt betrayed. President Trump came into power. We rebuilt the trust and the relationships with all of our traditional allies. We were able to eliminate isis, the territorial caliphate, and then we were able to project strength in the region, really go after Iran's wallet. We were able to stop, through crushing sanctions, a lot of their financial resources, which they were using to fund all these terror groups. And so we left the Middle east with six peace deals and a fairly peaceful world. So seeing what's happening, I think it was completely avoidable. I think it's horrible to see that it's occurring. And I pray that those in power will make the right decisions to restore safety, but also to potentially create a better paradigm for peace in the future.

So I have a lot of questions to ask you about the journey towards this historic progress towards peace with the Abraham Accords. But first, on this situation, to step back and some of the history. Is there things about the history of Hamas and Gaza that's important to understand what is happening now? Just your comments, your thoughts, your understanding of Hamas.

I think you did an excellent job, Lex, of really giving the summary. Just a couple things maybe I'll add to it, is that Hamas was originally founded from the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt, which is a group that's caused a lot of issues in the region. They've attacked Israel many times in the past. There's a lot of discussion about how Israel is an occupying power. Well, In Gaza, in 2005, they withdrew from all the land. And then they say Israel's an apartheid state. Well, Israel then gave governance of the region to the Palestinians. And then what's happened is the Palestinian people's lives have now gone down, not up, since then. I will say that under Hamas's leadership in Gaza, the people who have suffered the most are the Palestinian people. And I see, I've watched cries throughout my time in government from people saying, we want to see the Palestinian people live a better life. I agree with those people. I think that the Palestinian people in Gaza are essentially hostages. In Gaza, you have basically 2.2 million people that are being held hostage by 30,000 Hamas terrorists. And that's really the problem. And I would just encourage people to. To push their attention and energy in this moment and their anger towards Hamas. Those are the people who are killing innocent civilians, who are murdering indiscriminately. And those are the People who have held back the Palestinians from having a better life. And just finally, what I would say is what we saw with Hamas was that if you go back to 2007, they basically had just one plan that they did over and over. And we were very careful to try to monitor very closely and stop the Iranian money and the resources from coming in. And again, we took a little bit of criticism from the international community from keeping the border tight. But unfortunately, every time you'd allow construction materials to go into Gaza, they'd use them to build tunnels, not homes. You would have equipment that would come in to build pipes, they'd turn it into bombs. So it was very, very hard to figure out how do you get the resources into Gaza to help people live a better life, while at the same time the leadership in Gaza was taking all those resources and turning it into military equipment to attack Israel.

What role does Iran play in this war and this connection to Hamas? Can you speak to the connection between Hamas and Iran? That's important to understand, especially as this most recent attack unfolds.

Sure. So the correlation, I mean, there's reports that Iran is behind the attack. Hamas has thanked Iran for their support. And it's been very well known that Iran supports the destruction of the state of Israel. And I won't say Iran as a country. I'll talk about Iran in the leadership. There's actually a beautiful thing I saw on the Internet where at one of the soccer games in Iran, they were trying to rally support for the Hamas terror attacks. And a lot of people in the crowds were chanting F you to the regime. Because I think the Iranian people, the Persian people generally are peace loving people who don't want to see this focus on destruction and annihilation. But you saw this in 2015, 2016, when the Iranian government had resources, the region was less safe. And since now there's been more resources allowed to go to the Iranian regime by lack of enforcement of sanctions. And as a result, Iran is funding Hezbollah, Hamas, they were funding the Houthis. Now there's a little bit of a detente between Saudi and Iran which has led to that going down, which only further proves that Iran was behind the Houthis, which is what the Saudis had been saying for years, and Iran was denying. So there's a very strong relationship between the two. And we always knew that the way that Iran fights wars or fights conflicts is never directly. It's usually through its proxies. And in this case, Hamas has been a proxy for Iran who wanted to obviously see the destruction of Israel, but also does not want to see the Israelis and the Saudis come together for a peace agreement.

So the name of this operation, of the Hamas operation, is Al Aqsa Flood, referring to the Al Aqsa Mosque. How much of this attack is about the Al Aqsa Mosque?

In actuality, I don't think any of it is, but the Al Aqsa Mosque is. Is something that all of the Shia jihadists have used for years in order to justify their actions that are aggressive towards Israel. So this is something I'll maybe even take a step back and go through. When I was working initially, in my first year on the peace plan, I was doing a lot of listening, and quite frankly, a lot of what people were saying to me didn't make sense. And the reason why I was trying to figure out they were talking about sovereignty over Al Aqsa Mosque. The Al Aqsa Mosque is a mosque that's built in the holy of holies, the Haram Al Sharif in Israel, where the. The Jewish Beit Hamikdash, the holy temple, was built in a very religious place. After the temple was destroyed, then there was a big mosque built there. And it's one of the more holy places in Islam now. So the big thing everyone was saying is, what do you do with this land where you have a mosque built over a very big Jewish site? And I was hearing all of the experts, and I always say experts with quotes, because only in Washington can you work on something for a decade and continue to fail. And then you. Basically, we even are considered an expert. But that's one of the problems with Washington, which maybe we could talk about later. But the notion here was I went and I said, let me try to understand what the issue is with the Israeli Palestinian conflict with the people. I always felt the politicians were a little disconnected. So I commissioned several focus groups, one in Amman, one in Cairo, one in Dubai, and one in Ramallah. And I asked people, Muslims, what is the Israeli Palestinian conflict about? And time and time again, the most popular thing that they said was that Israel was not allowing access to the mosque for Muslims to pray. And what was interesting was, is that Israel's policy is to allow anyone who wants to come and pray peacefully at the sites to come and pray. Sometimes they have security issues when there's provocations. But by and large, since 1967, when Israel was able to take back Jerusalem in a defensive war, just to be very clear, they were attacked in the south, and they were attacked from the east, and they basically were able to beat back the Jordanians and the Egyptians and then reconquer the old City of Jerusalem. And during that time, immediately after, Israel then passed the Protection of Holy Places law, which was they basically took resources they didn't have, and they said, we're going to restore the Christian sites, the Muslim sites, the Jewish sites. And they've worked to allow everyone access to the mosque. So today any Muslim who wants to come can come and pray at the mosque. The mosque is Israel's. Acknowledged that King Abdullah, the King of Jordan, is the custodian of the mosque. And as long as people want to come to the country and pray peacefully, they're able to do that. But if you look at a lot of the propaganda that's been used by ISIS or Iran to, to recruit terrorists or to justify their incursions, they often say they're doing it in the name of liberating the Al Aqsa Mosque. But from an operational and pragmatic perspective, today, any Muslim who wants to go to the mosque, you can book a flight to Israel now through Dubai, because there's flights between Israel and Dubai. And as long as your country has relations with Israel and they'll accept your passport in there, you can come and pray. And that's what Israel wants. Israel wants Jerusalem to be a place where all religions can come and celebrate together. But you have a lot of actors that look to find ways to use these religious tensions in order to sow division and justify violent behavior.

I wonder how it's possible to lessen the effectiveness of that propaganda message that a lot of the war, a lot of the attacks are about access to the Al Aqsa Mosque. Is there something you can speak to why that message hasn't disseminated across the Arab world?

So Israel's good at a lot of things. They're not very good traditionally with public relations. After the Abraham Accords, we made the first Abraham accords deal in August 2020, and then we made five other deals. We first did United Arab Emirates, then we did a deal with Bahrain, then we did a deal with Kosovo, then we did a deal with Sudan, then we did a deal with Morocco, and then we got the GCC deal done as well. The tension between Qatar, Saudi, uae, Egypt and Bahrain, and that was allowing us to create a pathway to then pursue the Israeli, Saudi normalization. So we had so much momentum then that the goal was just keep getting more countries to normalize relations with Israel. Once you create the connection between people and create the ability for people to do business together, the ability for flights to fly between. Then you would just start naturally having people coming, and everyone has a smartphone today so they can then post and combat the misinformation that's been out there. But this misinformation is not something that's new. One of the characters who played a very big role in spreading the anti Semitism and the violence in Israel in the 1920s was a guy named Hajj Amin Al Husseini, who was known as the Grand Mufti of Jerusalem. He was very close with Hitler and Mussolini, and he was working with them to try to get some claims to the Middle east once the Jewish people were annihilated. And what he did for a very long time was he did the same shtick, only it was before you had smartphones and YouTube where he would say, the mosque is under attack. These imperialist Zionists are coming in to try to destroy the mosque. And he would use that to raise money from Indonesia, from Pakistan, from all over the world, and then use that threat to justify recruiting groups of young, vulnerable Muslim men and then, you know, getting them, in the name of religious rights, to go and kill people, which really is more of a perversion of the religion than, I think, the true essence of what Islam is. I think Islam, at its core is a peaceful religion, and I think that's where a lot of the great leaders in Islam want to take it. But the people who use Islam or the mosque or as a justification for violence, those are people who I think are really, they are disrespecting the Islam religion.

As you said, you helped make major strides towards peace in the Middle east with the Abraham Accords. Can you describe what it took to accomplish this, and maybe this will help us understand what broke down and led to the tragedy this week?

Yeah, so I always believed in foreign policy. I learned very quickly that the difference between a political deal and a business deal is that in a business deal, you have a problem set, you come to a conclusion, and then if you buy or sell something, you either have, you know, more cash or you have a company so more to do, less to do. Political problem set is very different where, you know, the conclusion of a problem set is essentially the beginning of a new paradigm. So when I would think about, how do you move pieces around the board? You couldn't say, let me just solve the problem. You have to think about what happens the day after the signing, and how do you create a paradigm that has positivity to it?

So.

So the biggest piece of what President Trump did during his four years in office was he really strengthened the relationship with Israel, number one. And he did things like recognizing Jerusalem as the capital of Israel. He moved the embassy to Jerusalem. He recognized the Golan Heights. He got out of the Iran deal. We did an economic conference in Bahrain where we brought Israelis to meet with Saudi and Emirati and Qatari businessmen. And everyone came together. And each one of these instances were unthinkable previously. And everyone said that if you did it, the world was going to end. And every time President Trump did one, the next morning the sun rose, the next evening the sun set, and things moved on. And so by doing that, what President Trump did was he slaughtered a lot of the sacred cows of these false barriers that people had erected and showed people that the vast majority of the people in the Middle east, whether they're Jewish, Muslim, Christian, whatever religion they are, they just want to live better lives. And so what we basically did was create a paradigm where the voices for peace, the voices for Together now, finally had a forum where they were able to do it. And we did that. In the backdrop, the way we were able to be successful was we severely limited the resources of Iran, and they were focused more internally, and they couldn't cause the trouble that they were causing everywhere else. Since we've left, obviously, the dynamics have changed. But the way you get to peace is obviously, number one, through strength, and number two, by finding a way for people to be better off tomorrow than they are today. And what I found was that most of the voices looking for violence or trouble were people who were just focused on what happened two years ago, 20 years ago, 70 years ago, 1,000 years ago. People who are trying to solve those problems in that context often were looking more to use those past grievances as a justification for their power and for the bad behavior that they were looking to perpetuate.

So managing, as we have talked about extensively, managing the power dynamics of the region and providing a plan. This is something you did with the economic plan titled Peace to Prosperity, a vision to improve the lives of the Palestinian and Israeli people. Can you first of all, describe what's in the plan?

Sure. So this was something I took on. I was working on the political framework between the Israelis and the Palestinians and trying to understand what were the issues. And the issues were not very many. Basically was you had a land dispute, so you had to figure out, where do you put borders? Ultimately, you had a security paradigm, which I was much more favorable to Israel's perspective on. And obviously, the events of the past 48 hours have fully justified that, that bias. And then in addition to that, you had to deal with the religious sites. But I felt operationally that wasn't actually as complicated as people made it because you wanted to just leave it open for everybody. Then I went through, and I felt that the Palestinian leadership was fairly disincentivized to make a deal because there was just this paradigm where they had billions of dollars coming in from the international community. And I think that they feared that if they made a deal, they would lose their relevancy internationally and the money would stop flowing into the country. So what I tried to do is to say my approach when I would get into a hard problem, say, how do I understand all the different escape patches? How do I try to eliminate them and then build a golden bridge that becomes really the only, but also the most desirable pathway for the decision makers to walk through. And it wasn't always hard. And sometimes you have to go and get hold their hand or you try to pick them up and walk them across. But a lot of these leaders are very reluctant to change. And the dynamics of the Palestinians also were such that I think they were fairly stuck where they were. So we developed a business plan for Gaza, the West Bank. We threw in some improvements for Jordan and Egypt as well. I based it off of the Vision 2030 that they did in Saudi Arabia, which I thought was a visionary document. I went back through this process and I studied basically every economic project in the post World War II period. So we looked at what they did in South Korea, why it was successful with some strong industrial planning. We looked at Japan, we looked at Singapore, we looked at Poland, why it was successful. We spent a lot of time on the Ukraine plan for the country and why it wasn't successful. And that was mostly because of governance and corruption, which actually resembles a lot of what's gone wrong with the Palestinians, where there's no. No property rights, there's no rule of law. And what we did is we built a plan to show it's not that hard in the sense that between the west bank and Gaza you had 5 million people. And we put together a plan. I think it was about $27 billion. We got together a conference. I had the head of AT&T. We had Steve Schwarzman from Blackstone came, which was very gracious of them. We had all the leading Arabic businessmen, the leading builders, leading developers. And the general consensus of that conference was that this is very doable. We think that for Gaza in particular, it would cost maybe 7 to 8 billion dollars to rebuild the Entire place. We felt we could reduce the poverty rate in half. We can create over a million jobs there. The only thing that people said was holding it back wasn't Israel. What was holding it back was governance. And people wouldn't have confidence in investing there with the rule that Hamas was perpetuating. So I encourage people actually to look at the plan. It was very thoughtful. It was 181 pages. We went project by project. Each project is costed out. It's a real plan that could be implemented, but you need the right governance. And all of the different Arabic countries are willing to fund it. The international community is willing to fund it because they've just been throwing so much money at the Palestinians for years. That's never been outcomes based or conditions based. It's just been entitlement money. And unfortunately it hasn't really achieved any outcomes that have been successful. So it's a great business plan. It just shows too rebuilding Gaza could be easy. But like I said, the problem that's held the Palestinian people back and that's made their lives terrible in Gaza has not been Israel. It's really been Hamas leadership, or lack of leadership, and their desire to focus on trying to kill Israelis and start war with Israel over improving the lives of the Palestinian people.

And the current approach of Hamas, the more violence they perpetrate, the more they can hold on to power versus improving the lives of people. So as you said, maybe you can comment on, they do not propose an economics plan.

I mean, Hamas has been running it now for 16 years and they don't have a lot to show for it. And our posture with them was basically a very simple deal. If you think about what's the end state in Gaza, it's actually not that complicated. There's no territorial disputes. The border's the border. There's no religious issues there as well. You're not dealing with Jerusalem. You're basically just dealing with the fact that Israel wants to make sure that there's no threat from Gaza. So it's a demilitarization or some kind of security guarantee from a credible source where Israel doesn't feel like Gaza can be used to stage attacks into Israel or to fire rockets into Israel. And by the way, these are things I was saying three, four years ago that that was the objective and that was really the fear. Now that's been proven, unfortunately, the fear has manifested. And in exchange, you can rebuild the place and you can give the people a much better life. But Hamas has not shown a desire for that or a capability for that. And I don't think there's enough trust to allow them to do that, which is why under the current circumstances, if you do want to have peace there, Hamas has to be either eliminated or severely degraded in terms of their military capabilities.

I would love to ask about leadership, especially on the side of the United States. What has the current administration, the Biden administration, done different than the Trump administration, as you understand, that may have contributed to the events we saw this week?

So all I can talk about are where we left them, right? We left them a place where they had tremendous momentum in the Middle East. I met with them during the transition and said, look, we even got the Qatar, Saudi conflict done, which was a big no peace between Israel and Saudi would have been possible without that. So we even got that done in our lame duck period. And they came in and they said, look, we want to focus on the three Cs, which is Covid climate change in China. And I said, that's great. But the Middle east, we have an amazing place right now. It's stable. There's momentum. Iran is basically broke. We put such crippling sanctions on Iran that they went from about, I think it was 2.6 million barrels a day of oil they were selling to about 100,000 under Trump. So their foreign currency reserves were basically depleted and they were broke. Same with the Palestinians. We stopped the funding to UNWRA, the UN agency, which is totally corrupt. We've put $10 billion in there over time. I did a poll in the Middle east, in Gaza, to say, okay, we've invested $10 billion here as a country, are we popular? Right. The US had a 7% approval rating. USAID had a 70% approval rating. But it just felt like a waste of our taxpayer dollars. And again, we wanted to make it conditions based. The Biden administration came in number one. They started insulting Saudi and Russia. Oil prices went up at the same time. What they did was they stopped domestic production of oil. They disincentivized a lot of oil and shale production with regulations. They stopped pipelines. Oil prices went up. They stopped enforcing the sanctions against Iran, probably to get the oil prices lower to make up for what they were doing. They ran to Iran to try to make a deal. They started funding the Palestinians again right away. And I even said, if you're going to fund them, if that's your policy, I respect that. Again, elections have consequences, and you can take a different policy. But what I would recommend is get some conditions, make them do some reforms, make them give property rights to people, make Them, you know, do real economic investments for people, but they just went right away. So they were funding the Palestinians, not enforcing the sanctions, and then overall just projecting a lot of weakness in the region. So one of the most embarrassing examples is what happened in the United Arab Emirates. Again, an amazing. Probably one of America's best allies over the last 20, 30 years. They fought with us in Afghanistan. They were the first Muslim country to stand up and do that after 9, 11, because they didn't want it to be a war of the west against the Muslim religion. So they joined the fight because they saw it as a fight between right and wrong. They have rockets shot into their country. From the Houthis, and they basically don't get a call from the US for 17 days. They need their equipment that they buy from the US which creates job in the US they need it restocked. We don't call. So they've severely degraded the trust that we had to rebuild with our allies. I think they've been working now to get it back. They, after two years, started working with Saudi and Israel, which I think was good. I think that they realized after a stint that maybe the process that President Trump had created in the region was the right policy. And keep in mind, President Trump's policy that I was working on was very strongly criticized during the first three years before we were able to achieve the results because it was departure from the failed policies of the past. And so first there was a return to those policies. Appease Iran, let's criticize Saudi Arabia. Then they started embracing and working on the Israel Saudi deal, which was really exciting. I think we were all very excited about it. But they did it in public. And I think that that also was something. And I didn't have access to their intelligence, so I assumed that by doing it so publicly, they thought that they'd either had a deal with Iran because they were letting them get all this revenue where Iran wouldn't be a problem. But one of the reasons with the Abraham Accords, we kept it so quiet during the whole time was because we always felt like the troublemakers in the region, particularly Iran, who we thought would be disadvantaged by having uae, Saudi, Israel altogether. Israel's a nuclear power. You have other strong economies. Iran seeks instability. They seek looking to create division in the region. And if you can create that economic sphere where you have security from Haifa to Muscat, from Israel to Oman, all the way through with Saudi, Jordan, uae, Qatar, Egypt, that's an incredibly powerful bloc. If you can make it secure and then get economic Integration that really could be a Middle east that thrives. So Iran obviously wanted nothing to do with that, and that's why they've been working to disrupt. So I think the administration has. They took an incredibly stable situation with momentum. I think they underestimated. The way that Iran would approach the region to undermine. I think they gave way too much rope to Iran, and I think that they didn't seize when they had an opportunity of strength with the Palestinians to try to drive to a conclusion that I believe could have prevented us being where we are today. Not to mention that even just three weeks ago, it's a bad luck that they just, you know, basically gave $6 billion to Iran in exchange for hostages, and then Iran's basically funding these terror attacks, are killing American citizens you have in Israel. And it's just. It's a heartbreaking situation. Again, totally avoidable, and one that I think has been very badly mismanaged to date.

If Trump was currently president, you were still working with him on this part of the world, what actions would you take? What conversations would you have? What ideas would you be working with in order to unite the. The various allies that you mentioned in the Middle east over this tragedy and not let it be a thing that divides the Middle east, but make it a thing that catalyzes progress towards peace, further progress towards peace.

So I want to say one thing, Lex. I have a lot of friends who are fans of Trump or not fans of Trump, but one thing I want to say with absolute certainty is that if President Trump was in office, this never would have happened. And when President Trump was in office, anyone who supports Israel or who wants to see Jewish people not be innocently slaughtered, he would never have allowed that to happen. It did not happen when he was in power. And I hope people recognize that as something that's very, very true. How I would play the ball where it lies right now, Keep in mind, we transferred the ball. It was on the green. Now it's almost like it's gone back 150 yards and it's in a sand trap. I think the way that I would play the ball right now is, number one, is you have to show strength. I actually think President Biden's words were the right words. I see that they're moving aircraft carriers to the region. Again, the purpose of having a strong military, I believe, obviously, if you get into a war, you want to win the war, but the purpose of a very strong military primarily is to avoid a war. I don't know what kind of credibility the biden administration has to show the strength. But right now you have to support Israel completely. You have to really let people in the region know that there'll be consequences if they, if they try to escalate. Again, we saw a little bit of rocket skirmish from Lebanon, from Hezbollah, but again, this is the type of thing that they have to know there'll be severe consequences if they make this a multi party fight. And I think sending a strong message to Iran, I think that they have to see some consequences from this and know that they're not going to be allowed to have a free reign to cause instability and that Iran doesn't usually fight face to face. They usually do it through proxies. But let's just all be honest about where this is coming from and let them know that there will be a consequence if they instigate these actions. And again, at least with the Biden administration, they've had contact with Iran, they've been talking with Iran, but they've allowed Iran. I mean again, the number I saw last year, I think under Trump, the number was maybe like 4 or 5 billion dollars of oil revenue in total. I think last year it was something like $45 billion in revenue. This year I think it'll be even more. That's a combination of them driving up oil prices but also allowing much more sales. You would think that they would find a way to get them to behave and allow them to have this happen or if that's not the case, then be tough, go back to being tough. That's what you have to do.

Building off of Abraham Accords as you mentioned, Israel, Saudi normalization. There's been a lot of promising progress towards this. What does it take to not allow this tragedy damage the progress towards Israel Saudi normalization?

I think right now it's probably not the best to think about that. I think that we want to think about that after whatever is going to happen is going to happen now. I think right now the number one priority for Israel has to be to fully regain security in the country. And then number two is to figure out how you can, like I said, eliminate or degrade the Hamas capability or other Iranian threats to make sure that you have your security apparatus. I think that the Israeli leadership right now should proceed with that. And I don't think that they should be thinking about normalization with Saudi at this moment. My instinct and I've been watching this Israeli, Saudi normalization play out, obviously just speaking with people and seeing what I've been reading and watching with great excitement, I think it would be a game changer for the region. I think it's one of Iran's worst nightmares to have Israel and Saudi interlinked together. I think it'd be great for the Saudi people from a security perspective. What they're discussing with America would be very strong. The ability to get different elements across would be incredible. So what I would say with it is that the industrial logic held yesterday and I think it will hold again tomorrow. So I always expect countries to act in their interests. I think that the deal that's on the table right now between Saudi, Israel and America is in Saudi's interests, it's in America's interests, and it's in Israel's interest. What's going to happen now, though, is the political dynamics are going to shift. And I think that, as we've seen with political dynamics, they come and go. I think, let's get through this moment and then I hope at the right time that those talks will be able to resume and conclude in an appropriate way. And it's funny, Lex, when I was working on the U.S. mexico Agreement for the trade we would have, every day there'd be a tweet that would go out or there would be an issue. I mean, people forget how intense it was between America and Mexico. And I would speak to my counterpart in Mexico after a rough day and we were working on something, we were making progress, it'd get blown up, and I'd speak to them and say, you know what? Look, they're not moving America, they're not moving Mexico. Let's just stop for today, let's pick up tomorrow, and let's find a new way to bring this forward. So I would just encourage everyone working on that not to give up, to keep working hard at it and to find a way. But like I said, I would take a little bit of a pause for the time being. Let's let the current situation play out and then hopefully there'll be a way for it to move forward.

I just hope there's still people on the US side picking up the phone and calling uae, Saudi Arabia, just as human beings, as friends, as allies, and just keeping that channel communication going. Because I. Maybe you can correct me, but I just feel like there's just simple human dynamics that play out here, that divisions can form and just run away from you over simple misunderstandings, over just inability to see a tragedy from the same perspective because of conversations that could have happened but didn't happen.

I think there'll definitely be communication, but words on phone calls is only worth so much. It's really trust between people and power. And obviously when you're in a position of power, you represent your country and your country's interests. But the ability to have trusting relationships where people feel like they're okay taking more risks to help each other, that's actually what's most important. So communication I hope for, but deepening and trusting relationships, that's what I believe makes progress and keeps people safe.

And we talk quite extensively about the value of trust and negotiation and just working with leaders, which I think is a fascinating conversation and you've taught me a lot about that. Let me ask you about the end here. What are the various trajectories this war can take, in your view? What are some of the end states, as you've said, which are desirable and are achievable?

I mentioned this earlier, but whenever I would get a problem set in government, I'd always think through from a first principles perspective, what's the logical outcome and forget about all the reasons why it can't happen. That's what everyone in governments always rush to talk about. But I do think here, number one, Israel has to have a secure environment where they don't feel threatened from Gaza. And number two is the people in Gaza need to have an environment where they feel like they can live a better life and have opportunities. So that's the end state. And so I think that the international community should come together. I do think that the people who are usually putting blame on Israel should now realize that maybe they've been a little bit harsh here and that Hamas has been as big a threat, if not an even bigger threat, than Israel has been saying. And I do think that if the international community comes together and unites behind Israel and really forces Hamas and their Iranian backers to stop hostilities, to stop saber rattling, to stop misrepresenting the history in order to justify their violent behavior. And if they say instead, we want to hold you accountable, no more money, and they all say that they're going to stand behind Israel's efforts to eliminate their national security threats and then we will all come together and only fund again into a framework that we believe can be a long term solution where the Palestinian people really have a chance to live a better life, that's really the best way to get there. There's tons of complicated factors, but that's the end state that the global community should be looking to come together. And it's very achievable. It's very, very achievable.

So there's a as we stand here today. There's a lot of different ways that this war can evolve. If a ground invasion happens by Israeli forces of Gaza, and if the number is correct, of 100,000 Israeli soldiers, do you worry about various trajectories that can take of the consequences that might have of an unprecedented ground troop attack?

Yeah. So I think as a leader, you can't change yesterday, but you have the ability to change tomorrow. And that's very important, fundamental. I mean, that's true for all of us, not just leaders. But we saw with 9, 11 how America was caught off guard by a terrorist attack. We acted somewhat rationally, somewhat emotionally, which led to a 20 year war with trillions of dollars lost. I think almost a million lives lost, not just American, but all lives. And it was a total tragedy what occurred. I think right now the temptation is to be strong. I think that that's a necessity. I do think eliminating risk is the right objective. I think the goal should be to stay very clear about what the objective is. But also this attack was very well planned, not to walk into another trap. I think you have to be very smart, very cautious. I've been happy to see that what they've been doing in retaliation so far has been somewhat measured and they've taken their time to try to assess what's achievable. Again, I don't have access to the intelligence, and we're talking at a very early stage in this conflict. So a lot could happen even by the time this is published. But my hope is that they'll just stay very focused on what the objective is and try to make sure that they're acting appropriately in order to do that. And I will say this too, that this has been different than what I've seen in the past, in that the attacks were so heinous and so disgusting that I've seen the international community rally around Israel more so than I ever have. And I hope that Israel continues to keep the moral high ground and continue to communicate what they're fighting for, why they're fighting. And I do hope that the international community supports the objective and they can work together to achieve it.

Benjamin Netanyahu, Bibi, somebody you've gotten to know well, in negotiation, in conversation, he has made statements, he has declared war, he has spoken about this potentially being a long and difficult war. What have you learned about the mind of Benjamin Netanyahu that might be important to understand here in this current war?

Bibi is definitely a historic figure. I meet with a lot of different world leaders and some of Them, I would say they're very, very special, transformational figures. And some, I would say, how the hell is this person running a country? And Bibi's somebody who has done a lot for the state of Israel. He has a tremendous understanding of the security apparatus. He has tremendous global relations. So for a crisis like this, I think Bibi's the leader you want, if you're Israel, to be in that seat. I think he's ambitious in what he's going to look to achieve. He understands his role in history as somebody who's helped strengthen Israel economically, militarily. And I don't think he wants to see his legacy be somebody who left Israel more vulnerable than it had to be. So I think in that regard, he'll be incredibly strong. But I also think that he'll hopefully be calculating in the risk that he takes and not create more risk than is needed. And that's easy to say. The two of us sitting here having a conversation when you're sitting in that chair as a leader in the fog of war. It's a very, very. It's a very hard decision to make. He's been here before. He knows the weight of the situation. I'm sure he knows the moment. And I pray that he'll do what's right here to bring the best outcome possible.

I wonder if you can comment on the internal political turmoil that BBWE has been operating in and how that relates to the. The tragedy that we saw.

On the one hand, the political turmoil is a sign of a vibrant democracy. I think it's been actually nice to see how people have fought for their country and their beliefs in a democratic way. You compare that to the Palestinians, where there's no democracy, there's no free speech, there's no free press. You can't disagree with the leadership in Israel. If you want to be homosexual, you can go to a parade and live your life. In Gaza, they'll throw you off a building and kill you. So in Israel, you have the freedoms which I think make it a special place, and you have a very vibrant democracy. With that being said, the times in Jewish history where the Jewish people have been most vulnerable have been when there's been division and that's when the temple was destroyed. But that's not just with the Jewish people and with Israel. That's in all societies. So I definitely believe that this division has left them less prepared for the situation than it would. I do think there's real lessons we should be taking from this. Here in America, where we're in A time where we're very divided. But I do think that it'd be very wise for our leaders to find the areas where we do agree and find ways to, you know, secure our southern border, to make sure that we know who's in our country, what risks we all face. And I do think that that division definitely creates risk for countries.

Let me switch gears here and just zoom out and look at our society and our public discourse at the moment. What do you make of the scale and nature of the Palestinian support online in response to this situation?

This is something I've observed over the years since I got involved with the Israeli Palestinian issue with a lot of interest. I think a lot of the people who are pledging support for the Palestinian people, I think that they want to see the Palestinian people live a better life. And I actually agree with them in that regard. Unfortunately, I think many of them are incredibly ill informed as to the facts on the ground. I think all of the people who are advocating online for the Palestinian people who are going to these marches in support of them, I think they'd be best served if they really care about effectuating the outcome of joining with Israel right now and directing their anger towards the Hamas leadership. I think that it's very clear that the group that's responsible for the Palestinian people living the lives that all of these people are angry about is Hamas. And if they direct their anger towards Hamas and put the attention on the failings of Hamas and put forth a vision for what they'd like to see leadership in Gaza do, and they respect that there's a real fear that Israel has and any country would have of having a group of terrorists next to them that's calling for their destruction. I think that that recognition of finding a way for Israel to be secure and then having an opportunity for the Palestinian people to live a better life is the right pathway to try and pursue.

So to you, there's a clear distinction between Hamas and the Palestinian people in that Hamas is the enemy of progress and the flourishing of the Palestinian people.

100%. It's very, very clear. And I think that if people were honest about the situation, if they spent the time to really understand it. Again, if you follow the conference I did in Bahrain, we had all of the leading businessmen there and they said, we can rebuild Gaza very easily. We all want to. The leading Arab businessmen, the leading American businessmen, everyone wants to. They're just held back by Hamas. And so I do think having an honest conversation about this at this point in time has really only one Logical conclusion. And my hope is that maybe this conflict leads to that conversation being had. And if it is, then maybe that brings more unity and understanding and we kind of get to a conclusion better that could improve the lives of the Palestinian people.

Pragmatic question about the future. Do you hope Donald Trump wins in 2024 and how can his administration help bring peace to the Middle East?

I think when Donald Trump was president, we had a peaceful world. Everyone said if he was elected, we would have World War iii. Meanwhile, he gets elected, and he not only is the first president in decades to not start any wars, he's making peace deals, he's making trade deals, he's working with our allies, getting them to pay their fair share in NATO, he's having a dialogue with China, with Russia, he's weakening Iran. And so I do think that the job he did as a foreign policy president was tremendous. I think now more and more people are starting to recognize that again under President Biden, this is the second war that's broken out in the world. And when you have a weak American leadership, the world becomes a less safe place. And so my hope and prayers are that President Trump is reelected and that he's able to then restore order and calm and peace and prosperity to the.

World from a place of strength.

That's the only way he knows how to do it.

What gives you hope about the future of this region of Israel and of the Middle East?

The Middle east for 20 years was an area of conflict. They spent all their money on bullets and bombs. You have young leadership now in Saudi Arabia and UAE and Qatar. And there's a much more ambitious agenda now for the region to make it an economic superpower and hub of the world. Israel is one of the most burgeoning and exciting tech economies in the world. And if you think about it, it's almost like having Silicon Valley not connected to California. The thing that's held the region back for all these years has just been the conflict and the division and the lack of connectivity. But if you have that region and if it can all come together, if you can create a security architecture, you have an incredibly young population. You have a lot of wealth and resources and a lot of capabilities and know how. And so I think that if it's managed correctly and if Iran is able to be restrained and suppressed with their ambitions to cause destabilization, I don't mean around the country, I mean the Iranian regime. Because actually, once you have this economic sphere, if you could bring Iraq into it, if you could bring Iran into it. That makes it even bigger and stronger. And the Persian people are incredibly entrepreneurial and incredibly industrious. So I do think that the region has tremendous potential. It's just been held back by bad policy, bad leadership, bad objectives. And again, when President Trump left office in 2021, the Middle east was really on a very, very positive trajectory, and if the right things happen, it can continue to be so. So I'm praying at this moment in time that we navigate the current crisis that the important objectives are achieved of eliminating the terrorists and their threats and then allowing the leaders who are focused on giving their citizens and their neighbors the opportunity to live a better life, are able to work together and. And really dream and be ambitious and find ways to create a paradigm where humans can flourish.

What is the best way to defeat hate in the world?

Hate is a very powerful force, and it's much easier to hate people you don't know. It's funny, when I was working on prison reform, one of the most interesting people I met was a reverend, actually, down in Texas, who negotiated the first truce between the Bloods and the Crips, two of the notorious gangs in America, in prison. I was very excited to meet him. And when I met him, I said, well, how'd you do it? And he said, it was very simple. He says, I got all the guys together, and I had a tremendous amount of barbecue brought in. He says, and I got the meeting. He says, no drinking. Says drinking sometimes gets people a little bit more against each other. He says, but I got a meeting, and they started sitting down together, and they started saying, you know what? You're just like me. And all of a sudden, they started finding areas where they were more together. Look, I've traveled all over the world now. I've been very fortunate to meet people from different states in America. I have different political persuasions, different ages, different classes. And what I found is that there's a fundamental driving amongst all of us where we all want to live a better life. And people don't want to fight naturally. But it's easy to fight when you feel wronged or you feel like somebody disrespected you or somebody did something from hatred. And hatred leads to more hatred, which sometimes just pushes that cycle further and further. So I believe that each and every one of us has the power to stop that cycle. And we don't do it by being on Twitter and yelling at people. We don't do it by just being critical. We do it by finding the people we disagree with, by listening to Them by asking questions, by sitting with them. And then if we each take responsibility to try to make the world better, then I think that there's no limits to the incredible place that this world can be.

So, as you've said, you've traveled all across the world. Do you think most people are good? Most people have love in their heart?

I do believe that, yeah. And you have some bad people. I mean, you have some real evil people. I mean, a big part of the work I did was on prison reform. And previously the mentality was, is that the prison should basically be a warehouse for human trash. And if you've made a mistake in this world, then we're going to throw you out and we're going to make the rest of your life incredibly difficult because you're going to have a criminal record. You're not going to have access to jobs. But what I found is, when I would sit with people in prison, the people I met through my father's experience and who I met along the way, is that people make mistakes. We're all human. I think it's the right thing from a religious perspective to give people second chances. I always believe you shouldn't judge people by the worst mistake they make in their life. Unfortunately, now, in the era of social media, people will say one wrong thing, it sticks with them forever. They get canceled or they get put out. We're all humans. We grow from our mistakes. We learn from our mistakes. And I think that some people are just evil. There are some evil people, but I do think the vast, vast, vast majority of people are good. And I do think that people sometimes also can be in a bad place, and then society can push them to a worse and worse place. But we all have the power to make them feel loved, make them feel heard. And I think there's also tremendous power that we have as people to help people get to a better place. And so my wife and I, we've always tried to be a force for good. We've always tried to be. We've always tried to provide a place where people can discuss with each other. When we were in Washington, we would host dinners at our house all the time, or we would have Democrats and Republicans sitting together. We just had. I saw Senator Feinstein just passed away. We had a great dinner at her house when she was senator with her and her husband, and Mark Meadows when he was on the Freedom Caucus. And we had actually a fascinating discussion about Iran. Mark was much more hardline than me. I had to actually bite my tongue. I was impressed at how much he did. Whereas Feinstein and her husband were super into. They knew the Iranians well, they thought they were peace loving. And it was an incredibly robust and respectful debate. And so I don't think we maybe concluded anything that night. But it was interesting for people to get together having a dinner in my house where I had Dick Durbin, the number two ranking Democrat in the Senate, Lindsey Graham, and Stephen Miller, who's known to be a very hard line on immigration, discussing what an immigration reform could look like. I mean, they left that dinner saying, wow, we hadn't spoken to people on the other side and we actually agree on 85% of things, maybe something is possible. And so I believe that we should always be trying to push to make the world a better place. And you only do that by listening to people and connecting with people and by respecting people. And finally, I'll just say on this is that I meet people all the time who have so much confidence in their perspectives. And I'm very jealous that these people are able to be so confident about every single thing, because for me, I have some degree of confidence in the things that I've studied and what I've learned. But I'm always trying to find people who disagree to kind of sharpen my perspectives and to help me grow and to help me learn further. And so I think that's kind of the beauty of the world is that the knowledge base continues to grow, the facts continue to change and what's possible tomorrow continues to become different. And so as humans, we have to continue to thrive, to learn and to grow and to connect. And if we do that, everything's possible.

Well, Jared, thank you for your compassion, first of all, but also your wisdom today on this very difficult, this tragic set of events, these difficult days for the world. It's a big honor to speak with you again. Every time I speak to you, I learn a lot about the world. And I deeply appreciate, like I said, your humility and your understanding of the details of all the complex power dynamics and human dynamics that are going on in the world. Once again, thank you for talking today.

Thank you. And Lex, if I could say just one final thing, which is that my thoughts and prayers are really with all the people in Israel and the innocent civilians as well on the Palestinian side. And my prayers are with the IDF soldiers, that they should be safe and they should be really watched by God to accomplish whatever mission will enable to make the world a safer place.

Thank you for listening to this newly recorded segment of the conversation that addresses the current situation in Israel and Gaza. And now we go on to the second part of the conversation recorded on Thursday, October 5th. Given your experience in negotiating with some of the most powerful and influential leaders in the world, what's the key to negotiating difficult agreements in geopolitics? Let's start with a big question.

If I look back on the different negotiations I had when I was in government, either with leaders of countries, with representatives of leaders, or even with members of Congress to pass legislation, the most important thing I would draw back to would be trust. I think getting to know each other, understanding what was motivating the other party to get to the outcome, and making them feel like you weren't going to use whatever information they gave you to benefit yourself at the expense of them is probably what I would call table stakes. To have a shot at accomplishing anything that was hard in a negotiation after that, I would say taking maybe a first principles approach to what the outcome of whatever problem you're looking to solve should be. Now you have different kinds of negotiations. I always tried to create a framework in the negotiation where it wasn't me against you. It was always, let's agree on what the outcome is that we're trying to accomplish. Let's all sit on the same side of the table and say, we want to get to this outcome. How do we get there? Really trying to create a roadmap. And so once you understand the destination, you want to get to the endpoint, then you'd have to work backwards and really try to put yourself in their shoes and try to understand what were their motivations. Macro. Most of the time you have to assume that a leader's primary objective was to stay in power. And so all decisions made would be made through the framework of what it would take to do that and how it would impact their ability to do that. And then finally, I would just say that in any negotiation, you have to understand the power dynamics as well, and you have to then weight your approach in order to maneuver pieces to accomplish the objective. And so in areas where we had stronger power dynamics, I'd always look at it and say, what are the potential escape routes? Where a politician would say, this is just the reason why we can't get there. And I'd always think, how can you try to eliminate those escape routes or make them much harder to accomplish? And then ultimately think about what's the golden bridge that you want to create for them in order to get to the other side, where they were motivated to get there because it was in their self interest to get there, but also because it helped accomplish the different objective. And I have many examples that I live through with that. Obviously, negotiating in Congress for prison reform, I had to form a lot of trust with Democrats, whether it was Hakeem Jeffries or Dick Durbin. And then also on the Republican side with, I had Mike Lee, I had Lindsey Graham, I had Tim Scott, Senator Grassley, and then also Doug Collins in the House was tremendous. And every time we maneuvered something, we would get attacked either from the left. There was a time we were being attacked by Nancy Pelosi, John Lewis for not being inclusive enough. And then there were times that we maneuvered it, we'd be attacked from the right for maybe going too far. And ultimately we had to find just the right place where we can get it done. And the same thing happened with usmca, where we were negotiating the biggest trade deal in the history of the world, which was $1.3 trillion in annual trade between Mexico, Canada, the United States of America. And we were able to form good trust with the other side and try to say, how do we create win win outcomes? And ultimately we're able to do something in a record time that people thought was very hard to do. And both of them, in a divided time of the Trump administration, were by putting.