Episode Transcript
[00:00:00] Speaker A: Foreign.
[00:00:12] Speaker B: Welcome back to Going Underground, broadcasting all around the world from Dubai. We're in a region with millions killed, wounded or displaced and in a world where billions have been pushed into hardship. Despite the defeats of Trump and Netanyahu and their wars on Lebanon and Iran. This week marks more than a century since the San Remo conference when in the aftermath Of World War I, European powers formalized the carve up of West Asia. Building on the secret Sykes Picot Agreement, Palestine fell under British mandates, setting in motion a chain of events culminating in 1948 when David Ben Gurion declared the establishment of Israel, triggering the Nakba, the mass displacement of hundreds of thousands of Palestinians. Today, that history is still being written with Israel's continued land grabs in the occupied west bank, its relentless genocide in Gaza, and its expanding military footprint across the region. All this amidst another catastrophic loss for its benefactor, usa, which after losing from Korea to Vietnam to Afghanistan, now adds Iran to its monumental chain of military defeats since 1945. Joining me is a veteran Israeli peace negotiator who served in the Israeli prime minister's office. President of the US Middle East Project, Daniel Levy joins me again from London. Daniel, thank you so much for coming back on. I mean, people understand all around the world that Netanyahu's Israel is associated with genocide in Gaza, the attempt to destroy Iranian civilization through Trump. But there's also, and actually the Defense minister of Israel Katz saying first and foremost, the completion of the elimination of the Khamenei family is awaiting a green light from the United States. People understand all that perhaps. But for you, there's something else. An attempt to replace Iran and Saudi Arabia as the superpowers of West Asia.
[00:02:01] Speaker A: That is an argument I am making.
It's good to be back with you. And let's at least pause for a minute and say, no, it is not normal to talk like that and it should not be accepted.
[00:02:13] Speaker B: That's Defence Minister Katz.
[00:02:16] Speaker A: That's Defense Minister Katz talking about removing the rest of an entire family, not even attempting to draw this distinction, that they sometimes like to pretend that other members of the family were collateral damage. But it was legitimate to go after X know, saying openly the whole family, following off the back of President Trump, talking about wiping out a civilization. So we at least need to pause and say that is not normative, normal or acceptable talk or behavior.
[00:02:48] Speaker B: At least it's transparent.
[00:02:51] Speaker A: Well, yes, but I'm not going to give them too many marks for transparency.
What I have argued is that we talk a lot about a project of Greater Israel. Okay. And it's understandable that people normally attribute to that term territorial expansion, settlement. It's something we've seen, of course, across the Palestinian territory is something we now see with Israel expanding its borders, trying to take again a security zone in southern Lebanon, having done so for 18 years and then withdrawn in 2000. We see that in Syria, even beyond the already illegally annexed Golan Heights. But what I'm suggesting is that the notion of a Greater Israel dominion, a project of domination in the region, is not just about territory, it's about how far Israel can extend it's hard power hegemony.
And to do that it wants to create a situation where it is surrounded by states that are either collapsed, chaotic in the process of fragmenting and dismantling, and therefore cannot present any challenge to that hard power Greater Israel project or states which find themselves easily co opted by Israel because of vulnerabilities and dependencies that are brought into play, often actively by Israel. I don't want to suggest Israel is the only country that has encouraged and played into the fragmentation that we're seeing in the region. But with Israel, it is a geopolitical strategy. And in that respect, what Israel has tried to achieve in this war by pulling the US into it, because it couldn't do this unless it could deploy not only its own military, but the American military. And it hasn't succeeded, let's just note that.
But what Israel is trying to do is not some dream of regime change in Iran. It doesn't really believe that it's going for regime and state collapse, chaos that then spills over. So that deals with Iran.
And then the other thing you mentioned in that opening was Saudi.
And so while some may say, ah, look, what an unfortunate byproduct, unpredictable perhaps of this war, the attacks on the Gulf, the strikes on the Gulf, this was eminently predictable. It had been broadcast in advance. That is where the American bases that are being used to attack Iran exist.
And this is by design as far as the Israelis are concerned, because part of the goal here is to weaken the Gulf states so that they look around and they say, you know, America couldn't deliver for us. We may not all like it, but there is a major regional power here and we are going to have to get on board with its project. Israel has talked openly about not only being a regional superpower, but in Netanyahu said, becoming a global superpower. It's talked about corridors for transporting Gulf oil to market that would run through, through to Israel, through to Israel's Mediterranean ports. So it is trying to create Gulf dependencies on Israel. I'm not saying it will succeed.
[00:06:33] Speaker B: Yeah, we'll get on to whether, whether any of this will succeed. I will return to the gcc, of course, which said that airspace wasn't provided for US And Israeli warplanes. But I will that. But then, so what you're setting out there is part and parcel of what the US Ambassador to Israel, Mike Huckabee said to Tucker Carlson. In one sense, and I suppose that included a Greater Israel of Lebanon, Syria, Palestine, Iraq, Saudi Arabia. And I know you've just, and Egypt and I know you've just been in Turkey.
Do people, what do people in Turkey think a NATO member think of this new great power in the region, let alone its territorial desires?
[00:07:22] Speaker A: So I think we have to distinguish between what Huckabee, who comes from an eschatological theological position of a Greater Israel, which I think is beyond, well beyond the capacities and the planning of, of where the center of gravity is in Israel today and where it's ever likely to get to. By the way, remember how small the country, the population is in Israel at the end.
[00:07:50] Speaker B: But you're saying that they don't even need to do it territorially. They can own Saudi Arabia.
[00:07:56] Speaker A: Precisely. That's what they are looking to do. And then you asked me about Turkey and we were just talking about do you get marks for transparency by openly acknowledging what you were trying to do in destroying that entire lineage, that family line.
What's interesting here is how transparent Israel is being Israeli officials, not just government. By the way, probably the most outspoken on this issue is the leader of the so called opposition, normally opposition in name only when it comes to these issues. Naftali Bennett in Israel, who's primed to perhaps be the next prime minister. He was briefly prime minister when they talk about the next target being Turkey, that part of what they're trying to do is to create an equation where Turkey, Turkey will be isolated and then Israel can go after Turkey. I'm not saying that's the military plan for the next five years, but that is what they are now putting on the agenda. And when you go and speak to government officials around the world, they will often say we just had the Israelis in town, depending on where you are, of course, we just had the Israelis in town.
Wow. They were talking about Turkey the same way they talked about Iran 10, 20 years ago.
Now that is partly why I think not just Turkey but a whole host of states in the region are saying, whoa, wait a minute, the most revanchist radicalizing, destabilizing actor in the region today is Israel because it has this extremely overambitious agenda of how it wants to reshape the region.
What Israel's betting is that even if that conversation is beginning to take place, the states of the region won't be able to come together to offer any kind of collective containment or deterrence of Israel and therefore that Israel will be able to advance this project. That's the bet it is placing.
[00:10:06] Speaker B: And I suppose I should ask you, I mean, I know people watching this program, people who watch you on many different outlets, may live in an echo chamber where people think it's a defeat for Netanyahu, the war in Iran. Here's the Schulzbergers newspaper owners owned New York Times. Any way you look at it, Netanyahu wins. That's seriously a full page in the New York Times this month. Netanyahu. Is that an op ed or it's an opinion? But you know, that's quite a platform for a huge piece about Netanyahu winning by a man called Mairav Zondstein.
I've got to ask, since you were an advisor in an Israeli prime minister's office, does all of what you've said about territorial, not so much territorial, but superpower hegemonic activity, is this a big shift in Israeli policy?
The desire to inhabit like some parasite and then to control all the countries in West Asia?
[00:11:10] Speaker A: So I think this does signify an important shift. Okay. I think there are threads of continuity in terms of expansionism. Okay. I think what we see vis the Palestinians, the zero sum attempt to further displace, physically remove, is something that is over one with previous Israeli policy, but it's an intensification of those things.
What I think is relatively new here is that Israel has looked at this moment of great geopolitical fluidity when it feels that like everything is up for grabs, right? We're in this state of global viscosity, if you like, what will happen next. And it looks at this. And while many states, especially America, America's allies, as we see the decline of the US that's what I think we're witnessing. Many of America's allies are looking around and ducking and saying, how do we make sure we're not the collateral damage, that we're not too badly hit by this. Israel is looking around and saying this is a moment of opportunity before the tectonic plates stop shifting and when things settle down again and when certain restraints will again be imposed, how far can we push this project. So I think that's what's new, is it's a new geopolitical reality.
I think Israel is looking at it and saying, you know what, maybe America's done and maybe our ability to get America to do our work is running out of time.
We're less popular in the US The US Isn't the power it once was. There is not American primacy and preponderance, despite the attempts to reassert that. We live in a multipolar world. Let's make use of this while we still can't use it or lose it. So let's do as much as we can in this interregnum to create a new reality where we are stronger. I think it's incredibly risky. I don't think you can understand it without going back and acknowledging Netanyahu's personal political dynamics. His court case is coming up for election.
You can't understand it also unless you understand that Israel has gone on a certain journey, that you have a new elite.
I'm not suggesting here there was a golden era under the old elite, but it was different. There was a degree of acknowledgment of limitations, a degree of pragmatism which didn't translate into justice or rights for Palestinians, et cetera. But it's not this project. So you have a new elite. You have more religious nationalist ideology fueling this. You now had heads of much of the military who come from that space. Daniel and you have something really.
Dan, you have something really important.
[00:14:14] Speaker B: We'll get back to this in part two.
I'll stop you there. More from the former Israeli peace negotiator under Israeli Prime Ministers Yitzhak Rabin and Ehud Barak after this break.
[00:14:28] Speaker A: Foreign.
[00:14:35] Speaker B: Welcome back to Going Underground. I'm still here with Daniel Levy, president of the US Middle East Project and former Israeli peace negotiator under Israeli Prime Ministers Yitzhak Rabin and Ehud Barak. Daniel, I interrupted you in part one as you were talking about the different dynamics of power in Israeli leadership that are behind this Greater Israel Project beyond all imagination.
[00:14:57] Speaker A: And I was just going to finish with one thought, which is you. You also can't understand the journey that it's gone on without a crucial additional component, which is the learned experience of getting away with stuff, the impunity. After everything that was done in Gaza, Israel looked around and said, wow, there are massive street protests.
There are a lot of people really unhappy with us. We've never faced so much antagonism. But you know what?
The places where power Resides.
Enough of them are still with us, we can get away with it. You know what, why doesn't our next project be pulling America into a war with Iran? So the empowering of this line of extremism, given the impunity, that's a crucial explanatory component here?
[00:15:57] Speaker B: Well, I suppose some might say that can't Israel just use its nuclear weapons to threaten countries in West Asia to create this vision that you've outlined? Of course, what you've just said is, I mean, it's horrifying to think of how the genocide would have empowered all that. But having said all of that, do you think Iran is making a historic mistake then? Just relying on attacks on GCC countries, control of the Hormuz Strait, waiting for Trump to bring in all his warships? Do you think it needs to announce possession of nuclear weapons urgently to prevent what you are saying coming true?
[00:16:39] Speaker A: Well, there's a couple of different things going on there.
[00:16:41] Speaker B: So first of all,
[00:16:45] Speaker A: Iran's leverage here has come from what it did on the Hormuz more than anything else. Which does beg the question that even if Iran could make the case that American bases in those Gulf states was justification for what it did, that's the case it's making, was that the right way to go? Given that there's a real question as to what added benefit Iran got from carrying out those strikes in the gcc. But stepping back from that, many people have asked, would this have happened if Iran had crossed that threshold? If Iran was like Israel, a nuclear armed state, Iran, North Korea, compare and contrast how one situation has been approached compared to another situation.
[00:17:47] Speaker B: So
[00:17:50] Speaker A: there are different ways of coming at this. But why are we not asking the question, where is the push for a wmd, free West Asia, how have we allowed this situation to be normalized, that Israel is a nuclear armed state? You said, couldn't Israel achieve this domination project just by threatening to use those weapons? It's not so simple. You use that weapon, it's a pretty big red line to cross. Only one country has done it, used a wmd. We all know what that is, the US and Japan.
So if you threaten and you do it, you'd better be damn sure that no one else is able to come after you.
There is a country that's now involved in all of these talks which has a nuclear weapon, Pakistan. It's not part of what's considered the Middle East, North Africa, West Asia region, but it's a risky place for Israel to go. And if you make the threat and don't do it then that threat appears to be a bit of an empty threat. But the question for me is coming out of this, when we eventually come out of it, you are either likely to see very serious exploration of going nuclear by several states in the region or a proper push for this to be a WMD free part of the world, as it should be.
That's again takes you back to whether Israel can be contained and deterred and put back in a box, which it has gotten out of with dramatic consequences so far afield.
[00:19:30] Speaker B: I mean, you said it's a five year plan. Perhaps if you look at the American electoral cycle, then that might be a generation of Americans who have been educated by the old TikTok and social media to understand the Gaza genocide. Who knows, it might be too late, don't you think? Is there an impetus to speed things up? And in any case, is Trump starting to suffer a bit of a backlash? And he will in any case from the medium tail impact of the Strait of Hormuz, let alone if there are US casualties in any onset of actual hard war that emerges after this fake ceasefire. I mean, will the Trump administration be reacting to it by saying the Miriam Adelson money is worth it, or will there be signs in the Trump administration, let alone an administration in five years that says no, Israel isn't allowed to become this hegemonic power in West Asia.
[00:20:30] Speaker A: So there's a couple of things going on. There's the question of Israel's standing in American public opinion, right?
In that respect, what you see appears to be quite dramatic. I mean, we've all seen this polling, the negatives, how people are more sympathetic to Palestinians than to Israel. First time ever. You look at the younger age demographic and it's even more pronounced on the Democrat side is basically done.
The Democrat voting constituency has abandoned the traditional filialty and slavish devotion to Israel that the Biden administration and virtually all those that preceded it pursued on the Republican side.
This is controversial all of a sudden. Israel first versus America first. We see these wars inside maga.
So that's one thing that's going on now.
The question is how, when, under what circumstances does that translate into a policy shift?
Because we know the role that campaign finance plays in American politics, not just on the issue of Israel, whether it's big pharma or the gun lobby or the military industrial complex, and certainly Israel as well. So it may be that some of the thinking in Israel is this is a blip, we can get past this. We know how to manage our equities with America. We've been doing this for longer than you or I have been on this earth, Afshin. So they may be looking at it and saying, and look, not everything is going against us.
Our friends, the Ellison family, for instance, are buying up not only legacy media, but also new media.
You mentioned old TikTok. They've brought new America TikTok. So that's one of the things you were referring to. So they may think we've got this.
They may, as I suggested, think, you know what, maybe we can't pull this back, but maybe one of the things we've done in this war is we've accelerated American decline to a place where we can create a regional alliance where we're not so reliant on America. I think that would be a very risky bet to place, but it's one that they perhaps are placing. So you, you have at the moment what feels like it could become at least a perfect storm, that Israel is more dependent on the US More controversial in the US and less able to pull opinion on politics in its direction and more overstretched in its ambition. The second part of this, very briefly, how is this playing out?
[00:23:20] Speaker B: Sorry, we're running out of time a bit, Daniel, But I mean, on that and what you were saying earlier about the gcc, I mean, here's Gulf news in Dubai saying Sheikh Mansoor bin Zayed Al Nahyan, vice President, deputy Prime Minister and Chairman of the presidential Court, discusses de escalation with Iran parliament speaker.
That's direct talks between UAE officials and Iranian leadership officials.
Doesn't seem to be going that well then at trying to drive this wedge and getting that oil pipeline route from Saudi to Haifa, does it? How will Netanyahu react when things like that start to happen and when Trump perhaps turns away from him and doesn't give him the green light?
You drew our attention earlier to the corruption case for his own personal situation.
Just finally, how will Netanyahu react if Trump says no, you shouldn't go further with Iran.
[00:24:18] Speaker A: Yeah. And there's the question of how much longer Trump can keep going. America may be feeling less painful, but America's threshold for pain, certainly when it's economic and it translates into political, is significantly less than it is for others.
And this is where this question of how Netanyahu will respond is where it looks like many of us may be used to watch cartoons where the cartoon character goes off the edge of a cliff and then they stay in motion until they look down and then they've got nowhere to go. They can't go back. And it feels like Israel may be going on that journey, that it has simply gone too far.
The question for many is, well, why isn't there an establishment inside Israel that's stopping this? And that's why I've tried to suggest that it's not just Netanyahu. The country has gone off on this sugar high of death and destruction, that all that, all that was built up for decades has now come into Pepsi,
[00:25:24] Speaker B: so would unilaterally attack even after Trump saying no,
[00:25:30] Speaker A: you see, here is where you bump into the reality that America has tremendous leverage over Israel. And so I think if America wants this to stop, just as it has in Lebanon said enough, although Israel is still physically inside Lebanese territory, it's still ceasefire, Israeli style, which means you still kill the other side.
But I think if America says stop, then Israel stops. But the question is, has Israel given itself an alternative path to pursue? Or are we seeing that actual existing Zionism as practiced by the state of Israel has nowhere to go now? And either you radically rethink what is the future for the Israeli Jewish community, not in a regime of an ethnostate, but as some kind of normal way of interacting with those in its midst. That is a very different future. And it's not clear to me that the project, the Zionist project, can reinvent itself.
[00:26:31] Speaker B: Daniel Levy, thank you.
Thank you. That's it for the show. Our continued condolences to all those bereaved by today's NATO nation wars of aggression. We'll be back on Monday with a former translator of China's paramount leader to ask what China's reaction to the war in Iran is now going to be. Until then, keep in touch by all our social media if it's not sense in your country. And head to our channel goingundergroundtv on rumble.com to watch new and old episodes of Going Underground. See you Monday.
