April 3, 2025 • 58 mins
On this week’s episode, Israel Policy Forum Policy Advisor and Tel Aviv-based journalist Neri Zilber hosts Barbara Leaf, the former assistant secretary of state for Near Eastern affairs and distinguished diplomatic fellow at the Middle East Institute in Washington, D.C. They discuss the Biden administration on October 7 and during the Gaza war, the evolving U.S.-Israel relationship during the conflict, reflections of the prior ceasefire-hostage deal talks, the prospects for a new hostage deal and a realistic post-war plan for Gaza, Barbara’s impressions after meeting new Syrian president Ahmed al-Sharaa, Washington under the Trump administration, and more.
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Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Neri Zilber (00:04):
Shalom and welcome to the Israel Policy Pod.
I'm Neri Zilber, a journalistbased in Tel Aviv and a policy
advisor to Israel Policy Forum.
We have a great episode for youthis week with Barbara Leaf
joining us.
Barbara was, of course, theAssistant Secretary of State for
Near Eastern Affairs until veryrecently in the Biden
administration, which, in plainEnglish, means she was the top
(00:26):
US diplomat for the entireMiddle East, stretching from
Morocco to Iran.
Barbara spent over 30 years inthe Foreign Service, across
multiple tours in the Balkansand the Middle East, holding
senior posts at State and theWhite House and serving as
ambassador to the United ArabEmirates.
She was also a senior fellow atthe Washington Institute for
(00:46):
Near East Policy a few yearsback where full disclosure we
first met.
This was a really fascinatingconversation about what it was
like at the very top of the USadministration on October 7th
and during most of the Gaza war,the ongoing ceasefire for
hostage talks and day afterplans for Gaza, and at the end
we even got into Syria and whatit's like right now in
(01:09):
Washington under the Trumpadministration.
Like I said, a great episode.
Let's get to Barbara Leaf.
Hi, barbara, welcome to theIsrael Policy Pod.
Barbara Leaf (01:19):
Hi, neri, it's great to be on at last.
Neri Zilber (01:23):
At last.
Yes, a few false starts, butI'm really thrilled to have you
on for many reasons, not leastof which you were at the very
top of the Biden administrationuntil very recently, dealing
with Middle Eastern affairs and,fair to say, crises, not least
October 7th and the Gaza war,which we'll get into in a second
(01:43):
, trust me.
But I wanted to start here,barbara, with maybe a more
personal reflection.
It's now been just over twomonths since you finished up and
the Trump administration tookover.
Hopefully you've taken time off, gone on vacation, had time to
rest, but I'd love to get asense of what your last job as
Assistant Secretary of State waslike, especially in the 15
(02:06):
months from October 7th 2023 toJanuary 20th 2025.
In other words, behind thescenes, in the room, on the
plane.
What's a job like that like,day to day, during a major
global crisis, especially?
Barbara Leaf (02:21):
Well, thanks for the mouthful of a question and I
will try to give you somethingcoherent as a response, naria,
although there are days when Ireflect back, and pretty much
every day these days I reflectback a lot on that 15 months,
but it's as you say, it's that15 months that was really the
(02:43):
crucible.
And there were days, frankly,when I felt like I was no longer
the assistant secretary of NearEastern Affairs, I was the
assistant secretary of Gaza andthere was a certain, as we say,
(03:08):
quoting that Bill Murray movie,there was a sort of groundhog
day, all over again quality tomy life, which is to say that,
starting with the trip that Itook off on with Secretary
Blinken and his team on October11th, so the Wednesday after
that terrible Saturday, I was ona constant, to use another
metaphor, constant hamster wheelof travel, largely to the same
places, which was to say theArab quint capitals, the Arab
(03:32):
quint as we called them SaudiArabia, uae, qatar, egypt,
jordan and then, of course,israel and out to the West Bank
to see the Palestinians, whichwas quite a contrast to my
earlier period, my initialperiod as assistant secretary,
when I was really working to getmy arms around the region, in a
(03:53):
sense, and renew myacquaintance with a lot of
different foreign leaders acrossthe region and see all my
people, all my posts.
So the hamster wheel, as I callit, was such that every couple
of weeks either I was goingforward on the trip, sometimes
with Brett McGurk, sometimessolo, or more often with
(04:17):
Secretary Blinken, as we groundforward on a set of policy
efforts which were well, theywere grinding, they were hard,
laborious, everything was hardin that 15 months.
But I'll take you back to thatfirst trip, if I might, which
(04:38):
was first of all started offwith almost with a bang, which
was to say I was up on the hillat about 7 am on Wednesday
getting in a classified briefingto the full Senate and the full
House with Undersecretary forPolitical Affairs, toria Newland
.
At the Congress's request, atthe members' request, we were
giving them a sort of a fullclassified briefing on what had
(05:01):
occurred on October 7th, whatthe administration was proposing
to do, et cetera.
And then I was to go straightout to Andrews, joint Air Base
Andrews, to catch up with thesecretary's team and get on the
plane and get off on our trip.
And as I finished up and wewere of course in this setting
(05:23):
where for two plus hours we werewithout comms, we had no idea
what was happening out in theworld.
And when we came out, toriasaid gee, this is strange.
Everybody's saying you know theboss has gone over the White
House, but nobody knows why.
And the boss meaning SecretaryBlinken.
Well, as it turned out, and hecaught up with us belatedly out
(05:44):
at Andrews, there was a veryrapid huddle that morning
because, as it all became publiclater, there was a near-death
experience, if you will, of asecond big front opening up that
day between Israel andHezbollah.
Now Hezbollah had startedfiring rockets and so forth on
(06:06):
the 8th, so quickly joined thefight, as it were, with Hamas.
But this was what was hangingin the air was the possibility
that Israel would turn andlaunch a full-scale assault in
fear that what they saw comingwas something similar from the
Lebanese side of the border.
(06:27):
Anyway, long story short, thatwas a sort of hair-raising start
to our trip.
Of course it was averted.
The White House and theSecretary and President were all
on the phone and sorted thingswith Prime Minister Netanyahu
and his team and clarified thatthere was in fact not coming
(06:47):
what they thought was coming.
So we took off on that tripthat was really rapidly thrown
together and sort of almostinstinctively, if you will, with
the thinking that these werethe five core partners that we
would want to, first andforemost, get in a huddle with,
(07:08):
compare notes, with try to alignapproaches with in terms of
what was developing in Israeland in Gaza.
And, of course, in the firstinstance, it was to show just a
massive, visible show of supportfor the Israeli people, for the
Israeli government, at thistime of really severe trauma.
Neri Zilber (07:30):
Right, and we're going to get into many of those
issues in just a moment, trustme, and I'm curious in terms of
the travel to the region,obviously meeting with key
stakeholders, obviously here inArab capitals, in terms of the,
shall we say, dialogue back inWashington, especially at the
(07:52):
very top of the administrationand this is a hypothetical
question, Barbara but in termsof the president's senior
foreign policy team, how do youall coordinate and manage and
speak to each other?
How?
Barbara Leaf (08:13):
do you all coordinate and manage and speak
to each other?
Or, put another way, how shouldsenior aides to the president
communicate with each other onsuch sensitive matters during a
crisis?
Classified phone calls,meetings in the situation room?
Of course, across classifiedemail.
I assume you're prodding me interms of signal gate.
Yeah, these wereextraordinarily sensitive issues
(08:36):
and extraordinarily periloustime Because, as we saw rapidly,
if you go back and look at theearly public remarks, the thing
that the secretary flagged, thatother senior officials flagged
early on, was theirdetermination, our determination
to prevent all-out war and anopening up of a front on every
(08:58):
side.
So providing the requisitesupport of every nature was key.
And those were sensitive issueswhich were captains in
classified channels for the mostpart.
I mean, you use obviouslypeople use messaging apps to
(09:21):
check in and say, hey, have youarrived yet?
Hey, what's the mood, Thingslike that.
But you keep your sensitivetopics to classified channels,
which is often the case.
Neri Zilber (09:34):
Right, I had to ask because it's still front and
center in the news and onpeople's minds.
So, having someone who recentlyserved in a senior position,
I'm sure many of our listenersare curious as to how you
actually would communicate withyour peers in the administration
.
Barbara Leaf (09:54):
I had a secure phone in my office.
I had a secure classifiedsystem for both reading cable
traffic and for secure emailtraffic, or secure email traffic
.
So there was that, which wasthe typical way that I would be
talking across theadministration or I'd nip
upstairs to see senior officialsin person, again in a
(10:16):
class-wide setting, or I'd goover to the White House when
there was a meeting, or we wouldhave a secure video conference.
Neri Zilber (10:24):
Right.
That all makes a lot of senseto me, maybe not to others.
Let's get into the brass tacks,and you alluded to some of
these issues, and I wanted tostart really with the US-Israel
relationship in the context andshadow of the Gaza war.
Look, from first-handexperience, being here on the
ground, there was definitelythis amazing sense of gratitude,
(10:45):
appreciation and love I'll sayit towards President Biden.
In the early stage of the war,he really saved Israel's bacon,
kosher bacon.
But still In the first fewweeks after October 7th, when
things were really dicey,especially, like you said,
things like a potential secondfront opening up, a real second
(11:07):
front, an invasion opening up byHezbollah.
But at some point the sentimenthere seemed to turn, especially
at the very top of the Israeligovernment.
So were you and the otheradministration officials?
Were you aware of this shift?
And the other administrationofficials?
Were you aware of this shift?
(11:28):
How do you explain it now, inretrospect, a few months away
from it?
The simple answer may be justsimple ingratitude by the
Israeli prime minister.
My words, not yours.
But how do you actually explainthe evolution of the US-Israel
relationship, given where itstarted right after October 7th?
Barbara Leaf (11:44):
relationship, given where it started right
after October 7th?
Yeah, big, big question and Idon't think I can give a neat
and tidy response to that.
It's a vast question and if Ipick it apart, I would say,
first and foremost, what neverflagged was President Biden's
unstinting, really emotional butalso hard-nosed foreign policy,
(12:07):
foreign policymakers'determination to support Israel
and the Israeli people and, ofcourse, the Israeli government
insofar as he could.
That never flagged.
There were very scratchyconversations which, by and
large, he and the administrationkept out of the public domain.
(12:27):
Of course I can't speak to theleaky nature of the Israeli side
of the equation.
Neri Zilber (12:35):
Yeah, it may have been coming from one side more
than the other.
Barbara Leaf (12:37):
Yeah, but I mean, there was just an unstinting
determination on his part tosupport Israel through this
terrible trial and, of course,it wasn't a one-week, 11-day
sort of trial such as we'd allgone through in May of 2021,
just a scant few months after wesettled into office.
(13:00):
This was something thateverybody recognized from the
outside was going to beseismically different.
So, yeah, there were tough,scratchy, angry conversations at
times, but the president wasdetermined that we were going to
stay the course in criticalsupport.
And, mind you, part of thedetermination not to be too
(13:24):
leaky about that discord was theconcern about deterrence.
This was a to the best of ourability and I think we were
largely successful.
This was a contained,multi-front war.
I say contained because itrisks, of course, right at the
outset, exploding into an actualtwo-front full-on kinetic war.
(13:49):
That would have beendevastating and would have been
extraordinarily hard to, if youwill put it back in the box.
So deterrence was a key concernall the way along, in other
words, that you not let a lot ofvisible daylight be seen by the
adversaries and enemies thatwere looking to take advantage
(14:12):
or to demoralize the public orto demoralize the forces, etc.
It was tough.
I can't speak for the Israeliside of the equation I mean for
Prime Minister Netanyahu and howhe looks at the relationship or
how he looks at Joe Biden but Ican speak for how the president
looked at the issue.
Neri Zilber (14:31):
And in terms of the no daylight policy, which was
very clear and it did serve alarger strategic purpose, like
you said, to deter Israel'senemies, especially Iran and
others.
Purpose, like you said, todeter Israel's enemies,
especially Iran and others, fromkind of pressing the advantage
if they thought the UScommitment to Israel's security
(14:52):
wasn't robust.
But do you think now, with thebenefit of hindsight, that no
daylight policy was maybe takentoo far or taken advantage of by
the Netanyahu government too?
Barbara Leaf (15:04):
far, or taken advantage of by the Netanyahu
government.
Well, look, I have 35 plusyears of diplomatic effort
behind me and what I've learnedfrom my first assignment in
Port-au-Prince, in Haiti, allthe way through, is that every
country, small or great, hasenormous agency, even the
(15:26):
smallest and seemingly mostfragile.
It's what I call the tyranny ofthe weak.
They can or refuse to go along.
They can, whether for becauseof public will or the
government's will to kind ofpersist, they can absolutely
flout what larger, greater, morepowerful countries want.
(15:50):
Of course, israel had enormousagency, notwithstanding its
vulnerability, its sense ofacute vulnerability in the wake
of the attack of October 7th andthe attacks which were
extraordinarily difficult forthe IDF to contain and turn
around over the course ofseveral days.
(16:11):
So Israel had agency, too, tomake decisions that we very much
disagreed with, and I, thecoulda, woulda, shoulda question
always hangs over you in suchcrises, but especially when
they're 15 months long, can I goback and say, well, we
shouldn't have done that, weshould have done that?
(16:31):
Yeah, I could, and yet we werecollectively making the best
decisions we could at any givenmoment, with extraordinarily
conflicting, shall we say,interests, objectives, and then
context, which was fraught, andcertainly as the corner rounded
as we rounded the corner rather,on the conflict in the winter
(16:53):
into the spring of 2024, thatbecame a more heated set of
issues because of the Rafahoperation and the extreme levels
of deprivation that the Gazans,the Gazan Palestinians, were
suffering.
So no easy answer to that oneand I'm not ducking it.
(17:17):
I don't have an answer to itbecause I know that you know,
the easy answer all along waswe'll just cut off the arms or
just hold back on X or Y.
Well, that's a blunderbuss and,as I say, deterrence was a
strategic concern.
Still, you can hold up a givenarms shipment and the country
(17:41):
will still do what a country isgoing to do.
Neri Zilber (17:43):
And I mean I'll say so, you don't have to.
Also, the US was heading intoan election year and it became a
very fraught domestic politicalissue as well.
Barbara Leaf (17:52):
I mean yes, of course, from all sides.
No question, no question.
That was, in no small part, alot of the heat, as well as the
campus protests.
So, yeah, all of these factorshad to weigh heavily every day,
especially on the shoulders ofthe president himself.
But, as I said earlier, he hadan unstinting, fixed purpose,
(18:16):
which was to see Israel throughthis crisis one way or another,
give his best advice.
Sometimes that was a brutalconversation, and it wasn't just
the president.
Obviously, there were many,many different channels of that
advice giving, and historiansare going to judge, of course,
not only the Americans.
(18:36):
The historians will judge, ofcourse, how the Israeli
government maneuvered throughall of this.
Neri Zilber (18:43):
Indeed government maneuver it through all of this
Indeed and I hope Americanhistorians will make their own
analyses.
But I think, when the dustsettles on my end over here, I
think Israeli historians and Ithink the Israeli public will be
very grateful that Joe Bidenwas the president on October 7th
and after October 7th, just interms of his commitment to
(19:06):
Israel and Israel's security.
And, like you said, barbara,states have agency.
It's true in the Israelicontext, it's definitely true in
the Palestinian context andit's true in many other parts of
the world.
I think, from the outside,looking in, especially at how
policy and foreign policy ismade in Washington, it's very
easy just to say well, whydoesn't the US just dictate to
(19:29):
this or that country on this orthat issue to get things done?
I think this isn't a new thing.
This goes back years anddecades.
It's easier said than done toget countries to do what you
want them to do, even closeallies.
Barbara Leaf (19:42):
That's right, neri .
And I will just say, as anamateur historian myself, or at
least a history lover, avidhistory reader, israel itself
will bear the burden of thechoices its leadership made or
didn't make all along the way.
That, in effect, is going to bethe more telling cost, the more
telling price.
A friendly government, even theclosest friendly government,
(20:07):
yeah, we could have cut off armssales, we could have done X and
Y and Z, but ultimately theprice will not be in an arms
shipment here or there, held ornot held.
The price will be how Israeleventually gets out of this
crisis.
And that is where agency I meanagency is both the ultimate
(20:28):
privilege, ultimateresponsibility, ultimate burden.
Neri Zilber (20:31):
Yeah, especially since it's quote unquote, our
crisis and our burden and the USis thousands of miles away.
That's right.
That's also something peopleforget, shifting gears.
But staying on Gaza, barbara, Ihave to ask about the ceasefire
for hostage talks in retrospectand then we'll get, hopefully,
to the current moment.
But looking back to last year,as I understand it, there are
(20:56):
two competing understandings.
Shall we call it for whathappened in the summer and fall
of 2024 and why we didn't get adeal until this past January, at
the cost, it has to be said, ofseveral hostages' lives.
One side has fully and solelyblamed Hamas for ducking a deal
and hardening its terms duringthat time period.
(21:17):
The other side of the debatepins the blame more on Netanyahu
, due to domestic politicalconsiderations and various
machinations, and especiallyhardening Israel's terms in the
early part of that summer andthen, in the fall, making the
Philadelphia corridor and otherissues the bedrock of Israeli
security.
I have to ask what's yourunderstanding of what really
(21:38):
happened last year inside theGaza talks and especially to get
the hostages back?
Barbara Leaf (21:43):
Look, I mean there are myriad factors that weighed
on the talks throughout thecourse of the summer and into
the fall and weighed heavily onthe prospects for a breakthrough
.
I would say there's no questionthat Hamas had a major piece,
(22:06):
had a major role in that, anduntil now Hamas is the ultimate
villain of the piece.
Let us never forget, and Hamastoo, even as a non-state actor,
enjoys tremendous agency and ithas chosen to exercise it most
often negatively, most often insaying no or in obstructing or
(22:31):
what have you take the militaryand civilian leadership and so
forth struggled throughout thatperiod with an ultimate sort of
unanswered question, which Ithink hung over everything and
(22:51):
still does, which is where doesthe prime minister want to go
ultimately with Gaza?
Now he has begun to articulatesomething a little more defined,
I guess you would say, in thislast week or so, suggesting
possibly an indefinite Israelireoccupation not clear,
(23:15):
certainly an eternal Israelisecurity overwatch.
But you know, as thosenegotiations stumbled along,
that was a period during whichseparately, but not unlinked,
obviously running along inparallel tracks, we were
(23:38):
attempting to put together, andput together with our friends
the Israelis, a practical kindof roadmap for post-conflict
arrangements, security,governance, reconstruction, et
cetera, which ultimately has totake you to.
What is Gaza supposed to be,other than this battered piece
(24:02):
of real estate with 2 millionsuffering people?
What is its part in thePalestinians' future?
They know what Gaza is supposedto be, which is a piece that is
politically and otherwiseconjoined with the West Bank and
is sort of the stepping stoneto a state.
The prime minister was neverclear.
(24:23):
And why does that matter?
Because, as you recall, thatthree-stage construct that the
president announced at the endof May, embedded in that first
phase I think it was day 22, wasto be the kickoff of
discussions about what phase twowould be.
(24:43):
But phase two would only occurwith the agreement of the
parties on those post-conflictarrangements.
Which is to say, does the idfwithdraw all the way out?
Does certainly the war ends?
Because phase three was reallyjust, if you will, the kind of
mopping up phase of return ofthe last of the remains that had
(25:07):
been held, but all the livingwould be returned in phase two.
But phase two itself would onlybe able to kick off with that
post-conflict set ofarrangements agreed.
I don't think, I don't know ifthe prime minister has a clear
vision.
He did not articulate itthroughout that period and
(25:28):
senior officials acknowledgethat to us.
So it did make thingsextraordinarily difficult,
certain that, much as we wereall thrilled to see the
agreement on January 17th andthen the kickoff on January 19th
(25:50):
of phase one of the ceasefire,I had no confidence.
In fact, I was quite confidentin the opposite direction.
I had no confidence that phasetwo would ever get started,
because you have to begin aserious conversation about those
(26:11):
post-conflict arrangements andthere's a fundamental conflict
embedded in that.
If I could just add what you'veheard me say before, I always
found it illogical that Hamasshould be the party at the table
for those discussions on phasetwo.
(26:32):
Why would you want to discussthe arrangements for
post-conflict security,governance, et cetera, with the
party that brought this terrible, precipitated this terrible
conflict?
Why should Hamas have a vote?
It should be a representativeof the Palestinian people, but
it should I mean, in my mindit's the logical thing as a
(26:54):
Palestinian authority, howeverbattered and imperfect, a vessel
of governance that is, thatwould have been, in my mind, the
logical partner at the tableand that would have, with the
right political kind ofdiscussions.
In bringing in the other Arabstates would have had a
(27:17):
squeezing effect on Hamas.
That isn't there right now.
Neri Zilber (27:21):
And I'll just tie that to.
I mean, it's interesting aboutthe stage two and tying it
obviously to a real post-warorder, or understanding the
Palestinian Authority, like yousaid, should have a role, and I
assume this is part of your many, many discussions with the Arab
Quintet, the five Arab statesthat also put forward and have
(27:44):
been putting forward their ownplan for a day after post-war
order in Gaza.
So tying it to stage two andobviously the end of the war and
stage three, what would thatpost-war order look like with
input and other resources by theArabs and the Palestinian
Authority, which, to be clear,yes, this current Israeli
(28:06):
government does not want to seethe Palestinian Authority back
in Gaza.
It also obviously doesn't wantto see Hamas there, and so we're
kind of in this limbo period.
Barbara Leaf (28:14):
Yeah, and I mean what's going to break the
impasse?
I mean, how does I come back tothe question of how does Israel
escape a terrible fate which isto go back into Gaza, which,
frankly, I think Hamas wouldlove nothing better than to see
the IDF come back in and be atarget, get sunk into a quagmire
(28:38):
where the IDF is clearing andre-clearing and re-clearing the
same pieces of territory, as wesaw over the 15 months from the
spring on.
So you have to have somethingto break all of that.
Well, if you look at all of thediscussions that have generated
plans of one kind or another,and plan is a very loose
(28:59):
approximation for what they are.
But the conceptual frameworks,the Egyptian plan, is not very,
very different from theprinciples and the framework
that Secretary Blinken laid outon January 14th at the Atlanta
Council in Washington DC, whichis to say, you take on board
sort of a hybrid confection withthe PA as a central piece of it
(29:23):
to reestablish propergovernance.
There are various ideas aboutthe security piece of it, but
what you do want everybodyagrees on is that the PA
security forces they have been,as the Palestinians often
bleakly said to me and others.
You know, we're Israel's partneron the West Bank, why can't we
(29:44):
be its partner in Gaza?
Who else is going to do thekind of job?
This is my question who else isgoing to do the kind of job
that has to be done just interms of basic policing and so
forth?
I'm not talking about terrorismraids, even on Hamas, but if
you're going to ensure thatHamas as a movement and as a
(30:06):
military and politicalorganization does not recapture,
over time, its standing even ifit's not its October 6th
strength and standing, but it'strying even now, is trying to
demonstrate to the Palestiniansof Gaza, first and foremost, and
secondarily to the Israeligovernment and the Israeli
(30:28):
public, that Hamas is there,present and will retake its role
, how do you ensure that doesn'thappen.
Well, it is not merely amilitary question, and that's
been clear over 18 months now.
It is a political question.
You have to squeeze them outand you have to offer an
(30:48):
alternative.
And if you insist on keepingthe PA out and with other
Palestinian factions, I mean youeffectively cede the field to
Hamas, so it's a dead end.
Cede the field to Hamas, soit's a dead end.
(31:09):
But all of these Arab states andI mean every one of them,
including the UAE, which is, ofcourse, most acerbically
critical of current PAleadership.
All of them formulate ideasthat have the PA as a key player
in the immediate post-conflictpeace and that, ultimately, the
PA is the governing and securityactor over time.
Neri Zilber (31:33):
Right, and this is, I think, a key point no PA, no
Arab state input.
That's right.
In a post-war order, and that'snot a minor point.
So you're well, there's no onereally else left, except maybe
the IDF.
Yeah, it's not a minor point.
So you're well, there's no onereally else left except maybe
the IDF.
Barbara Leaf (31:47):
That's right, that's right.
Neri Zilber (31:49):
And just to be clear for our listeners, I
believe Barbara is laying outhere is door number one, which
would not only end the war, itwould also get the hostages back
and set up at least thepossibility of some kind of
realistic post-war order in Gaza.
That's not where we're at at themoment.
(32:09):
So I'd have to ask about doornumber two, which is that, as we
all know, the first stage ofthe ceasefire ended over a month
ago and you were right, barbarathere was no follow-on stage
two, and Israel has obviouslyrestarted the war and its
offensive against Hamas is nowexpanding from the air and also
on the ground.
(32:30):
Do you believe that the currentposition put forward by the
Israeli government with, I thinkit's fair to say, the backing
of the Trump administration, isa realistic diplomatic path?
Ie, they're now demanding thatHamas soften, capitulate, cave
vis-a-vis its longstandingpositions and just release
(32:53):
hostages without a guaranteeit'll end the war.
Knowing what you know about thedynamic of these negotiations,
going back now a year and a half, do you think this course of
diplomacy has a chance tosucceed, at least to get a month
or two ceasefire in return forX number of hostages, if not to
end the war?
Barbara Leaf (33:12):
Well, I mean Neri to say the obvious, but I will a
clock is ticking.
And that clock is the lives ofthose remaining hostages.
So of 59 still named, maybe 24are living.
It's all very uncertain.
From one week to another Onedoesn't really know, or even the
(33:34):
best intelligence withcertainty.
So there is that clock that ismoving inexorably.
You overlay active militaryoperations, especially if, as is
being discussed, you have areally a very large resumption
of ground operations.
(33:54):
Then there is obviously greaterrisk and peril to the hostages
themselves and with very littlecertainty or confidence that the
IDF will be able to rescue themor that this will work fast
enough as a pressure point onHamas to bring you to that next
(34:15):
phase of exchanges, I hope, ofcourse, every day that there
will be a breakthrough.
I'm just not confident thatthose clocks are working at the
same speed and certainly Hamashas a ghastly resilience to all
of this military pressure, in nosmall part because, a large
(34:38):
part because they have a rabbitwarren of places to go to and
leaving, of course, the publicexposed but themselves largely
out of firing range.
Neri Zilber (34:50):
I'm not confident at all okay, well, neither am I,
but I suppose this is, this isnot the plan.
Barbara Leaf (34:57):
So but I guess what I would say, nary, is you
know, rather than be hostage toall of those clocks that are
moving as they will, I mean youneed something bold and
different, something out of thebox, out of the box thinking,
and I say that for the Israelis.
I mean, I'm out of governmentservice and I'm free to give my
(35:19):
unsolicited advice to anygovernment broadcast, but I
would say it requires really outof the box thinking that will
reverse or will turn the tableson Hamas.
Hamas is very comfortable inthis kind of setting.
It is.
It goes back to the, you know,the resistance flag that it
(35:40):
wraps itself in.
It's comfortable with thiscontext.
Israel is the one that isbearing the brunt of it all the
IDF and the government and thepublic and so on.
Hamas simply doesn't have thesame sort of pressure points.
So you've got to turn thetables on Hamas and put it under
a kind of unbearable politicalsqueeze that it hasn't been
(36:04):
under, frankly, all of this time.
And that requires again I mean,I'll come back to the mantra
you know I've been pushing formany, many months which is you
put at the table a differentpartner.
Why should Hamas be yourpartner for deliberating over
(36:24):
the course of post-conflictsecurity and governance
arrangements.
Why should Hamas have a vote?
Hamas may feel it will exercisea vote indirectly putting
pressure on people, but whyshould you give it an overt role
of any kind?
And, by the way, at the end, ifyou've been able to somehow get
(36:48):
back all the hostages but youcan't get back the bodies, or
people die, et cetera, at theend you still have the
fundamental question what is thedisposition of Gaza?
Neri Zilber (37:03):
Right, the thought experiment I mean comes to my
mind quite often.
But if there were no hostages,right, you would still need a
plan for post-war Gaza.
Barbara Leaf (37:12):
That's exactly right.
Neri Zilber (37:14):
Okay, we'll be right back after this brief
message.
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Neri Zilber (38:19):
Barbara, shifting gears to another issue very much
in the news and, I believe,very much near and dear to your
professional heart Syria.
Barbara Leaf (38:27):
Yes.
Neri Zilber (38:28):
Your last diplomatic trip in December was
to Syria to meet with Ahmedal-Shara, the new ruler in
Damascus, formerly known asMohammed al-Jolani.
I have to ask what was yourimpression of the man?
What was your impression of thenew regime that took over in
Syria and the prospects for thecountry's future?
Barbara Leaf (38:51):
I know these are big questions, but you're
uniquely placed to give insighton them analyst that day, as
much as you know, a diplomatproffering a set of messages and
so forth.
And you know I scrutinized him,I listened carefully to every
(39:13):
word.
I, you know, reviewed his bodylanguage in the course of a
number of exchanges.
That couldn't have beencomfortable for him.
That couldn't have beencomfortable for him.
And, of course, I had talked toa whole set of Syrians ahead of
meeting with Ashara civilsociety actors, our own embassy
staff, who have fearlessly insome cases, but courageously,
(39:39):
kept our installation secureduring these many years when
we've been gone.
And, of course, I met with theWhite Helmets, another fearless
set of actors.
So I had a lot of informationgarnered that day.
I'd also spent a week in Ammanpreparing for the trip and
talking to a lot of other folks,including people who were going
(40:04):
in ahead of me, european andother diplomats, talking to
other regional officials and soforth.
Anyway, long story short, I'vesaid, and I still find it the
right analysis he is.
Ultimately, he came across as athoroughgoing pragmatist, as a
(40:28):
thoroughgoing pragmatist, apolitical leader, not just a
military leader.
So much has been made of his.
You know what he's wearing onany given day.
I think that's not incidentalto the way he is transitioned
and again transitioned in themost remarkable fashion, with
speed, speed that he did notexpect to have to operate in.
Let's remember when he and hiscoalition of fighters set off
(40:52):
for Aleppo as they have saidthemselves, their objective was
Aleppo and they spent a lot oftime mapping out how they would
govern, secure etc.
But they were not planning togo further than Aleppo and what
they found was it fell, justfell into their arms and they
turned southward.
And you know, it was the old,you know hot knife cutting
(41:16):
through butter analogy of justmoving down towards Damascus
with virtually no effort atresistance by the regime's
forces.
So he didn't expect to comeinto Damascus on December, I
guess it was the 9th or 10thAssad, you know, fled
ignominiously on December 8thand he came in a day or so later
(41:39):
after southern militias hadmoved in to secure the city.
So a thoroughgoing pragmatist.
Why do I say that?
He had obviously and rememberthis was only 12 days after the
fall he had clearly put a lot ofthought into what he termed
(42:02):
should be the new Syria.
Now, was this his own thinking?
Was it based on sort of thepublic clamor meeting with
people as he was at that point.
You know it's a mix of things,but he clearly, as many analysts
who have tracked him in HTSover the years told me, he had
(42:24):
clearly moved down a road awayfrom his transnational jihadist
origins as a fighter, as a youngman who went to Iraq two months
ahead of the US invasion toprepare to fight the Americans.
He had traveled that long roadaway from the ISIS predecessor,
(42:49):
al-qaeda in Iraq to turn hisback on them, viewed them as an
enemy, said so to me, had turnedon al-Qaeda, the other
jihadists transnational jihadistorganization he'd made common
cause with.
And he strikes me now assomebody who is very much a
(43:10):
Syrian Islamist nationalist.
Now I am tracking closely.
You know developments in Syriaevery day, as many people are,
and the evolution continues interms of governance,
transparency and so forth, andthere's a high bar for him to
(43:30):
meet.
But I am impressed by the degreeto which he is putting so much
personal effort into outreachwithin Syria to all of its
different communities, as wellas the outreach that he and his
foreign minister are doing forregional countries, including,
importantly, iraq, which youknow, given Iraq's difficulties
(43:55):
all those years of Basharal-Assad having basically fed
this stream of foreign fightersinto Iraq to fight the Iraqis
not just the Americans, but Imean Assad fed that conflict in
Iraq.
And of course, the disappearance, the eclipse of Iran and its
(44:19):
proxies in Syria in a sort of anearthquake of a moment really
shook actors, political andmilitia actors in Iraq.
And that first week I did twotrips to Baghdad, one ahead of
the secretary and then one withSecretary Blinken, before we
(44:41):
went to Jordan for a ministerialwith other countries and before
I went to Damascus.
The Iraqis were staggered bywhat had occurred next door.
As a Shia-majority country,they were anxious and alarmed by
the Alawite community nowdisplaced from power and now
(45:02):
presumably being very vulnerable.
They were concerned about Shiareligious sites and so forth.
But I have watched this efforton both sides to really connect
with each other, which I thinkis really fundamental to the
prospects of Syria stabilizingand Iraq stabilizing further.
So so far so good, but still along, long way to go.
Neri Zilber (45:28):
Undoubtedly, and I just have to ask again on a more
personal level, I think youwere the first US diplomat to
visit Damascus.
In what?
Since 2012?
Yes, suss out this new ruler inDamascus.
But I'm sure he was also verycurious, excited, maybe even
(45:51):
happy, that a senior US diplomatwas actually coming and meeting
with him, right?
Barbara Leaf (45:57):
Yep, and I mean it was evident that he had both
cleared his entire afternoon forus and would have stayed
indefinitely.
I had to bring the conversationto a close after an hour and a
half because we had to get backon the road before dark.
But it was also clear that hehad done an enormous amount of
(46:17):
preparation and thinking aboutthe conversation.
So he was very well preparedand he was very engaging on
every topic.
In other words, no matter howdifficult the topic or how
difficult my message was, heengaged and engaged forthrightly
and with good humor.
I would say he does not strikeme as a joking, a lighthearted,
(46:41):
joking kind of guy, but hecracked a smile a number of
times and it was a very cordialconversation.
That's what was so striking,including in the parts where we
were talking about Israel andwhat Israel was doing.
And he rather plaintively askedcould we help in getting Israel
to get back on its side of the1974 demarcation line?
(47:04):
1974 demarcation line.
But that was one of the manypoints at which I sort of
metaphorically closed my eyesand remind myself I was speaking
to a Syrian official because hewas non-polemical, you know,
did not?
You know, hafez al-Assad wasfamous for starting every
conversation with let me tellyou about 1948.
(47:27):
And and and, of course, he andhis son were extremely polemical
in every sense about Israel,publicly and privately.
Shadrach was verymatter-of-fact in discussing it
and matter-of-fact in discussingthe fact that the new Syria had
no quarrel with Israel, had nofight, didn't want any fight,
(47:49):
and he intended that the newSyria would be a good neighbor
to everyone, including to Israel, and that he would not allow
groups, whether it's Hezbollah,palestinian groups, iran,
iranian-backed militias, hewould not allow them to use
Syria as a launching pad forattacks against Israel.
So it was, to my mind, one ofthe more striking pieces of our
(48:16):
conversation because of thematter of factness, about the
way he spoke of Israel and thedesire not to have any fight.
Neri Zilber (48:26):
That's not a minor point and since this is the
Israel policy pot, I have tofollow up and ask, given what
Israel has done since earlyDecember in Syria moving in
across the border from the GolanHeights, taking over this kind
of new security zone, declaring,as Netanyahu has, that he wants
(48:49):
all of southern Syriademilitarized, still striking
various military assets andsites all across the country
both as a former senior USdiplomat and as a Middle East
analyst, what do you think aboutthis new hardline Israeli
approach to the new Syria?
Barbara Leaf (49:09):
Well, look, I think it risks stirring up the
kind of agitation and animositythat wasn't there then and still
is there only in very localizedplaces.
The sort of outreach orsuggested desire to be
overwatched for the security ofthe Druze also, I think,
(49:33):
actually puts them in a verydifficult position, and one that
you know.
It's clear from Druze leaders'commentary that they were
uncomfortable with, that.
They don't want a separate,special relationship with Israel
.
In this context, in thiscontext, when there are these
(49:54):
various assertions about intentand about longevity of intent to
stay on a large piece of Syrianterritory, let alone to say
that all of southern Syria hasto be demilitarized, I think,
look, in our trade there aremany ways to get at your
(50:15):
security and there are manychannels for that, and I would
hope that those channels wouldbe used.
I'm not talking aboutdiplomatic channels, obviously,
but that there would be channelsused to both understand and
convey intent and find a wayforward.
(50:35):
I would hate to see kind of astirring up of attention, of
anti-Israeli sentiment andattention, where there isn't any
.
And I will tell you, the thingthat you hear constantly from
Syrians, inside as well asoutside, is this issue of
wanting unity again, that theyhaven't enjoyed unity across
(50:56):
society, across ethnic andsectarian religious communities.
I mean, you have to rememberthat the Assad spent a lot of
time and effort keeping thecountry very divided and setting
communities against each other.
So there's a sort of avehemence to the public's
(51:17):
expression of the desire to knitback up again and a kind of
hostility to foreigners talkingto them about their quote
minorities and yes, it is amosaic of minority communities
with a large sunny majority.
But there is nonetheless a realsensitivity in Syria and you
(51:41):
get this from Syrians,expatriate communities.
They want the chance to knitthings back up together and
that's a long, long task andthat requires external actors,
all of them in the region to notfoster things in the opposite
direction.
Neri Zilber (52:01):
Fascinating answer, I have to say, really
interesting, barbara.
Last question before we wrap upon an issue closer to where you
are and not so close to where Iam at the moment, but
Washington under PresidentDonald Trump I have to ask
you're still there and you'restill obviously plugged in.
What is the mood like in DCright now in foreign policy,
(52:27):
national security circles,especially given the I mean
what's the right word Purge,dismantling, complete
undermining of what we had cometo know as the US government's
kind of foreign policy, foreignaid, national security apparatus
?
Give us some insight for thoseof us not in DC anymore, about
(52:49):
how you view what the past twomonths.
Barbara Leaf (52:52):
Okay, well, look, this is.
You know, this is anextraordinarily tough time in
this town for those who are well, not just national security
focused.
I mean, it goes much beyondthat.
There were a whole set oflayoffs announced this week for
(53:14):
people in the public healthsector, and that's you know.
State, nsc, white House,department of Defense, the IC
community in its full breadth,it's just the core actors.
(53:35):
It is disorienting, and thatstarts with the dismantling of
USAID.
And look, anybody who has servedin state, run an embassy, been
part of an embassy team wherethere was a large AID mission,
or worked in Washingtonalongside AID, you know a couple
(53:56):
things.
You know that there are justextraordinary people who've
worked in that organization,who've devoted their lives to
the mission of that organizationand who and who integrate
sacrifice to themselves, totheir health, to their families,
to their safety, often to carryout a mission of not just
development but humanitarianassistance across a very
(54:18):
disordered and dangerous world.
And at the same time, you know,no question, there were plenty
of programs that you could takea you know a seasoned eye to and
say does this really fit withinthe bounds of what we want to
do, even in this bilateralrelationship with country X, let
(54:40):
alone step back and say does itreally make sense to be in this
business, in this particularsector anymore?
But you know, that kind ofreally methodical review was not
done, unfortunately.
So it's been pretty shattering,of course, to folks in the
national security community towatch this, because AID and the
(55:02):
assistance that comes with it,it's just a critical, critical
tool set Along with defense,along with diplomacy.
You've got development and allthe things that fit under it and
we've massively shrunk thatdown and I think that's going to
hurt us, there's no question.
And the Chinese boy, they'reall about exploiting that hurt
(55:27):
in large swaths of be it Africaor the Middle East, where we
will no longer have programs ofany size or substance.
And then there's a questionjust overhanging in a large part
where is this all going?
So great uncertainty, I willjust say, because I have tons of
(55:49):
friends across the NATSACcommunity.
You know they are great publicservants and they are
tenaciously doing their jobs invery difficult circumstances.
And it's always been the casewith state.
You know the adage has beenthat we don't really have a
constituency as such in thepublic.
Folks in Washington understandwhat we do as diplomats, members
(56:14):
of Congress to some degreeunderstand, but we don't have
constituency.
Neri Zilber (56:18):
Right.
Barbara Leaf (56:19):
So maybe that's part of it, but I think it's
also.
Things have moved at such speedthat there hasn't been time for
the public to catch up.
So we'll see, but it's a veryuncertain time and I'm concerned
, as always, with how it affectsour core national security
interests, including overseas,in such difficult situations in
(56:42):
which my colleagues operate now,in which my colleagues operate
now.
Neri Zilber (56:46):
Indeed, and I guess all of our fears is that it's
not over yet.
So, like you said, it's aquestion of where this is all
going and how far this newadministration wants to take it.
And yes, it's oftentimes verydifficult to explain to lay
people, people outside of DC,the American public, the exact
importance of a forward-leading,robust international presence,
(57:17):
whether it be diplomatic,developmental, defense, military
, to be engaged in the world.
And I think that's going to bea major loss, not just for the
US but for the entire globe, aswe may find out.
Barbara, we have to leave itthere.
Thank you so much for your timeand insights.
We didn't even talk aboutLebanon or Iran, all the other-.
Barbara Leaf (57:37):
There's so much and this is why I said you know,
I felt like the AssistantSecretary of Gaza, because that
was my life for 15 months, butnotwithstanding that, I did
manage to get to Algeria andMorocco late last year.
I did work on other issues, soinvite me back and we'll talk
about those other issues.
Neri Zilber (57:56):
We'll have you back on for sure, barbara, and thank
you again, take care.
Barbara Leaf (57:59):
Thank you.
Neri Zilber (58:01):
Okay, thanks again to Barbara Lee for her generous
time and insights.
Also a special thanks to ourproducer, jacob Gilman, and to
all of you who support IsraelPolicy Forum's work.
Do consider making a donationto Israel Policy Forum, so keep
being a credible source ofanalysis and ideas on issues
such as these that we all caredeeply about, including this
podcast.
And, most importantly, thankyou for listening.
Shalom and welcome to the Israel Policy Pod.
I'm Neri Zilber, a journalistbased in Tel Aviv and a policy
advisor to Israel Policy Forum.
We have a great episode for youthis week with Barbara Leaf
joining us.
Barbara was, of course, theAssistant Secretary of State for
Near Eastern Affairs until veryrecently in the Biden
administration, which, in plainEnglish, means she was the top
(00:26):
US diplomat for the entireMiddle East, stretching from
Morocco to Iran.
Barbara spent over 30 years inthe Foreign Service, across
multiple tours in the Balkansand the Middle East, holding
senior posts at State and theWhite House and serving as
ambassador to the United ArabEmirates.
She was also a senior fellow atthe Washington Institute for
(00:46):
Near East Policy a few yearsback where full disclosure we
first met.
This was a really fascinatingconversation about what it was
like at the very top of the USadministration on October 7th
and during most of the Gaza war,the ongoing ceasefire for
hostage talks and day afterplans for Gaza, and at the end
we even got into Syria and whatit's like right now in
(01:09):
Washington under the Trumpadministration.
Like I said, a great episode.
Let's get to Barbara Leaf.
Hi, barbara, welcome to theIsrael Policy Pod.
Barbara Leaf (01:19):
Hi, neri, it's great to be on at last.
Neri Zilber (01:23):
At last.
Yes, a few false starts, butI'm really thrilled to have you
on for many reasons, not leastof which you were at the very
top of the Biden administrationuntil very recently, dealing
with Middle Eastern affairs and,fair to say, crises, not least
October 7th and the Gaza war,which we'll get into in a second
(01:43):
, trust me.
But I wanted to start here,barbara, with maybe a more
personal reflection.
It's now been just over twomonths since you finished up and
the Trump administration tookover.
Hopefully you've taken time off, gone on vacation, had time to
rest, but I'd love to get asense of what your last job as
Assistant Secretary of State waslike, especially in the 15
(02:06):
months from October 7th 2023 toJanuary 20th 2025.
In other words, behind thescenes, in the room, on the
plane.
What's a job like that like,day to day, during a major
global crisis, especially?
Barbara Leaf (02:21):
Well, thanks for the mouthful of a question and I
will try to give you somethingcoherent as a response, naria,
although there are days when Ireflect back, and pretty much
every day these days I reflectback a lot on that 15 months,
but it's as you say, it's that15 months that was really the
(02:43):
crucible.
And there were days, frankly,when I felt like I was no longer
the assistant secretary of NearEastern Affairs, I was the
assistant secretary of Gaza andthere was a certain, as we say,
(03:08):
quoting that Bill Murray movie,there was a sort of groundhog
day, all over again quality tomy life, which is to say that,
starting with the trip that Itook off on with Secretary
Blinken and his team on October11th, so the Wednesday after
that terrible Saturday, I was ona constant, to use another
metaphor, constant hamster wheelof travel, largely to the same
places, which was to say theArab quint capitals, the Arab
(03:32):
quint as we called them SaudiArabia, uae, qatar, egypt,
jordan and then, of course,israel and out to the West Bank
to see the Palestinians, whichwas quite a contrast to my
earlier period, my initialperiod as assistant secretary,
when I was really working to getmy arms around the region, in a
(03:53):
sense, and renew myacquaintance with a lot of
different foreign leaders acrossthe region and see all my
people, all my posts.
So the hamster wheel, as I callit, was such that every couple
of weeks either I was goingforward on the trip, sometimes
with Brett McGurk, sometimessolo, or more often with
(04:17):
Secretary Blinken, as we groundforward on a set of policy
efforts which were well, theywere grinding, they were hard,
laborious, everything was hardin that 15 months.
But I'll take you back to thatfirst trip, if I might, which
(04:38):
was first of all started offwith almost with a bang, which
was to say I was up on the hillat about 7 am on Wednesday
getting in a classified briefingto the full Senate and the full
House with Undersecretary forPolitical Affairs, toria Newland
.
At the Congress's request, atthe members' request, we were
giving them a sort of a fullclassified briefing on what had
(05:01):
occurred on October 7th, whatthe administration was proposing
to do, et cetera.
And then I was to go straightout to Andrews, joint Air Base
Andrews, to catch up with thesecretary's team and get on the
plane and get off on our trip.
And as I finished up and wewere of course in this setting
(05:23):
where for two plus hours we werewithout comms, we had no idea
what was happening out in theworld.
And when we came out, toriasaid gee, this is strange.
Everybody's saying you know theboss has gone over the White
House, but nobody knows why.
And the boss meaning SecretaryBlinken.
Well, as it turned out, and hecaught up with us belatedly out
(05:44):
at Andrews, there was a veryrapid huddle that morning
because, as it all became publiclater, there was a near-death
experience, if you will, of asecond big front opening up that
day between Israel andHezbollah.
Now Hezbollah had startedfiring rockets and so forth on
(06:06):
the 8th, so quickly joined thefight, as it were, with Hamas.
But this was what was hangingin the air was the possibility
that Israel would turn andlaunch a full-scale assault in
fear that what they saw comingwas something similar from the
Lebanese side of the border.
(06:27):
Anyway, long story short, thatwas a sort of hair-raising start
to our trip.
Of course it was averted.
The White House and theSecretary and President were all
on the phone and sorted thingswith Prime Minister Netanyahu
and his team and clarified thatthere was in fact not coming
(06:47):
what they thought was coming.
So we took off on that tripthat was really rapidly thrown
together and sort of almostinstinctively, if you will, with
the thinking that these werethe five core partners that we
would want to, first andforemost, get in a huddle with,
(07:08):
compare notes, with try to alignapproaches with in terms of
what was developing in Israeland in Gaza.
And, of course, in the firstinstance, it was to show just a
massive, visible show of supportfor the Israeli people, for the
Israeli government, at thistime of really severe trauma.
Neri Zilber (07:30):
Right, and we're going to get into many of those
issues in just a moment, trustme, and I'm curious in terms of
the travel to the region,obviously meeting with key
stakeholders, obviously here inArab capitals, in terms of the,
shall we say, dialogue back inWashington, especially at the
(07:52):
very top of the administrationand this is a hypothetical
question, Barbara but in termsof the president's senior
foreign policy team, how do youall coordinate and manage and
speak to each other?
How?
Barbara Leaf (08:13):
do you all coordinate and manage and speak
to each other?
Or, put another way, how shouldsenior aides to the president
communicate with each other onsuch sensitive matters during a
crisis?
Classified phone calls,meetings in the situation room?
Of course, across classifiedemail.
I assume you're prodding me interms of signal gate.
Yeah, these wereextraordinarily sensitive issues
(08:36):
and extraordinarily periloustime Because, as we saw rapidly,
if you go back and look at theearly public remarks, the thing
that the secretary flagged, thatother senior officials flagged
early on, was theirdetermination, our determination
to prevent all-out war and anopening up of a front on every
(08:58):
side.
So providing the requisitesupport of every nature was key.
And those were sensitive issueswhich were captains in
classified channels for the mostpart.
I mean, you use obviouslypeople use messaging apps to
(09:21):
check in and say, hey, have youarrived yet?
Hey, what's the mood, Thingslike that.
But you keep your sensitivetopics to classified channels,
which is often the case.
Neri Zilber (09:34):
Right, I had to ask because it's still front and
center in the news and onpeople's minds.
So, having someone who recentlyserved in a senior position,
I'm sure many of our listenersare curious as to how you
actually would communicate withyour peers in the administration
.
Barbara Leaf (09:54):
I had a secure phone in my office.
I had a secure classifiedsystem for both reading cable
traffic and for secure emailtraffic, or secure email traffic
.
So there was that, which wasthe typical way that I would be
talking across theadministration or I'd nip
upstairs to see senior officialsin person, again in a
(10:16):
class-wide setting, or I'd goover to the White House when
there was a meeting, or we wouldhave a secure video conference.
Neri Zilber (10:24):
Right.
That all makes a lot of senseto me, maybe not to others.
Let's get into the brass tacks,and you alluded to some of
these issues, and I wanted tostart really with the US-Israel
relationship in the context andshadow of the Gaza war.
Look, from first-handexperience, being here on the
ground, there was definitelythis amazing sense of gratitude,
(10:45):
appreciation and love I'll sayit towards President Biden.
In the early stage of the war,he really saved Israel's bacon,
kosher bacon.
But still In the first fewweeks after October 7th, when
things were really dicey,especially, like you said,
things like a potential secondfront opening up, a real second
(11:07):
front, an invasion opening up byHezbollah.
But at some point the sentimenthere seemed to turn, especially
at the very top of the Israeligovernment.
So were you and the otheradministration officials?
Were you aware of this shift?
And the other administrationofficials?
Were you aware of this shift?
(11:28):
How do you explain it now, inretrospect, a few months away
from it?
The simple answer may be justsimple ingratitude by the
Israeli prime minister.
My words, not yours.
But how do you actually explainthe evolution of the US-Israel
relationship, given where itstarted right after October 7th?
Barbara Leaf (11:44):
relationship, given where it started right
after October 7th?
Yeah, big, big question and Idon't think I can give a neat
and tidy response to that.
It's a vast question and if Ipick it apart, I would say,
first and foremost, what neverflagged was President Biden's
unstinting, really emotional butalso hard-nosed foreign policy,
(12:07):
foreign policymakers'determination to support Israel
and the Israeli people and, ofcourse, the Israeli government
insofar as he could.
That never flagged.
There were very scratchyconversations which, by and
large, he and the administrationkept out of the public domain.
(12:27):
Of course I can't speak to theleaky nature of the Israeli side
of the equation.
Neri Zilber (12:35):
Yeah, it may have been coming from one side more
than the other.
Barbara Leaf (12:37):
Yeah, but I mean, there was just an unstinting
determination on his part tosupport Israel through this
terrible trial and, of course,it wasn't a one-week, 11-day
sort of trial such as we'd allgone through in May of 2021,
just a scant few months after wesettled into office.
(13:00):
This was something thateverybody recognized from the
outside was going to beseismically different.
So, yeah, there were tough,scratchy, angry conversations at
times, but the president wasdetermined that we were going to
stay the course in criticalsupport.
And, mind you, part of thedetermination not to be too
(13:24):
leaky about that discord was theconcern about deterrence.
This was a to the best of ourability and I think we were
largely successful.
This was a contained,multi-front war.
I say contained because itrisks, of course, right at the
outset, exploding into an actualtwo-front full-on kinetic war.
(13:49):
That would have beendevastating and would have been
extraordinarily hard to, if youwill put it back in the box.
So deterrence was a key concernall the way along, in other
words, that you not let a lot ofvisible daylight be seen by the
adversaries and enemies thatwere looking to take advantage
(14:12):
or to demoralize the public orto demoralize the forces, etc.
It was tough.
I can't speak for the Israeliside of the equation I mean for
Prime Minister Netanyahu and howhe looks at the relationship or
how he looks at Joe Biden but Ican speak for how the president
looked at the issue.
Neri Zilber (14:31):
And in terms of the no daylight policy, which was
very clear and it did serve alarger strategic purpose, like
you said, to deter Israel'senemies, especially Iran and
others.
Purpose, like you said, todeter Israel's enemies,
especially Iran and others, fromkind of pressing the advantage
if they thought the UScommitment to Israel's security
(14:52):
wasn't robust.
But do you think now, with thebenefit of hindsight, that no
daylight policy was maybe takentoo far or taken advantage of by
the Netanyahu government too?
Barbara Leaf (15:04):
far, or taken advantage of by the Netanyahu
government.
Well, look, I have 35 plusyears of diplomatic effort
behind me and what I've learnedfrom my first assignment in
Port-au-Prince, in Haiti, allthe way through, is that every
country, small or great, hasenormous agency, even the
(15:26):
smallest and seemingly mostfragile.
It's what I call the tyranny ofthe weak.
They can or refuse to go along.
They can, whether for becauseof public will or the
government's will to kind ofpersist, they can absolutely
flout what larger, greater, morepowerful countries want.
(15:50):
Of course, israel had enormousagency, notwithstanding its
vulnerability, its sense ofacute vulnerability in the wake
of the attack of October 7th andthe attacks which were
extraordinarily difficult forthe IDF to contain and turn
around over the course ofseveral days.
(16:11):
So Israel had agency, too, tomake decisions that we very much
disagreed with, and I, thecoulda, woulda, shoulda question
always hangs over you in suchcrises, but especially when
they're 15 months long, can I goback and say, well, we
shouldn't have done that, weshould have done that?
(16:31):
Yeah, I could, and yet we werecollectively making the best
decisions we could at any givenmoment, with extraordinarily
conflicting, shall we say,interests, objectives, and then
context, which was fraught, andcertainly as the corner rounded
as we rounded the corner rather,on the conflict in the winter
(16:53):
into the spring of 2024, thatbecame a more heated set of
issues because of the Rafahoperation and the extreme levels
of deprivation that the Gazans,the Gazan Palestinians, were
suffering.
So no easy answer to that oneand I'm not ducking it.
(17:17):
I don't have an answer to itbecause I know that you know,
the easy answer all along waswe'll just cut off the arms or
just hold back on X or Y.
Well, that's a blunderbuss and,as I say, deterrence was a
strategic concern.
Still, you can hold up a givenarms shipment and the country
(17:41):
will still do what a country isgoing to do.
Neri Zilber (17:43):
And I mean I'll say so, you don't have to.
Also, the US was heading intoan election year and it became a
very fraught domestic politicalissue as well.
Barbara Leaf (17:52):
I mean yes, of course, from all sides.
No question, no question.
That was, in no small part, alot of the heat, as well as the
campus protests.
So, yeah, all of these factorshad to weigh heavily every day,
especially on the shoulders ofthe president himself.
But, as I said earlier, he hadan unstinting, fixed purpose,
(18:16):
which was to see Israel throughthis crisis one way or another,
give his best advice.
Sometimes that was a brutalconversation, and it wasn't just
the president.
Obviously, there were many,many different channels of that
advice giving, and historiansare going to judge, of course,
not only the Americans.
(18:36):
The historians will judge, ofcourse, how the Israeli
government maneuvered throughall of this.
Neri Zilber (18:43):
Indeed government maneuver it through all of this
Indeed and I hope Americanhistorians will make their own
analyses.
But I think, when the dustsettles on my end over here, I
think Israeli historians and Ithink the Israeli public will be
very grateful that Joe Bidenwas the president on October 7th
and after October 7th, just interms of his commitment to
(19:06):
Israel and Israel's security.
And, like you said, barbara,states have agency.
It's true in the Israelicontext, it's definitely true in
the Palestinian context andit's true in many other parts of
the world.
I think, from the outside,looking in, especially at how
policy and foreign policy ismade in Washington, it's very
easy just to say well, whydoesn't the US just dictate to
(19:29):
this or that country on this orthat issue to get things done?
I think this isn't a new thing.
This goes back years anddecades.
It's easier said than done toget countries to do what you
want them to do, even closeallies.
Barbara Leaf (19:42):
That's right, neri .
And I will just say, as anamateur historian myself, or at
least a history lover, avidhistory reader, israel itself
will bear the burden of thechoices its leadership made or
didn't make all along the way.
That, in effect, is going to bethe more telling cost, the more
telling price.
A friendly government, even theclosest friendly government,
(20:07):
yeah, we could have cut off armssales, we could have done X and
Y and Z, but ultimately theprice will not be in an arms
shipment here or there, held ornot held.
The price will be how Israeleventually gets out of this
crisis.
And that is where agency I meanagency is both the ultimate
(20:28):
privilege, ultimateresponsibility, ultimate burden.
Neri Zilber (20:31):
Yeah, especially since it's quote unquote, our
crisis and our burden and the USis thousands of miles away.
That's right.
That's also something peopleforget, shifting gears.
But staying on Gaza, barbara, Ihave to ask about the ceasefire
for hostage talks in retrospectand then we'll get, hopefully,
to the current moment.
But looking back to last year,as I understand it, there are
(20:56):
two competing understandings.
Shall we call it for whathappened in the summer and fall
of 2024 and why we didn't get adeal until this past January, at
the cost, it has to be said, ofseveral hostages' lives.
One side has fully and solelyblamed Hamas for ducking a deal
and hardening its terms duringthat time period.
(21:17):
The other side of the debatepins the blame more on Netanyahu
, due to domestic politicalconsiderations and various
machinations, and especiallyhardening Israel's terms in the
early part of that summer andthen, in the fall, making the
Philadelphia corridor and otherissues the bedrock of Israeli
security.
I have to ask what's yourunderstanding of what really
(21:38):
happened last year inside theGaza talks and especially to get
the hostages back?
Barbara Leaf (21:43):
Look, I mean there are myriad factors that weighed
on the talks throughout thecourse of the summer and into
the fall and weighed heavily onthe prospects for a breakthrough
.
I would say there's no questionthat Hamas had a major piece,
(22:06):
had a major role in that, anduntil now Hamas is the ultimate
villain of the piece.
Let us never forget, and Hamastoo, even as a non-state actor,
enjoys tremendous agency and ithas chosen to exercise it most
often negatively, most often insaying no or in obstructing or
(22:31):
what have you take the militaryand civilian leadership and so
forth struggled throughout thatperiod with an ultimate sort of
unanswered question, which Ithink hung over everything and
(22:51):
still does, which is where doesthe prime minister want to go
ultimately with Gaza?
Now he has begun to articulatesomething a little more defined,
I guess you would say, in thislast week or so, suggesting
possibly an indefinite Israelireoccupation not clear,
(23:15):
certainly an eternal Israelisecurity overwatch.
But you know, as thosenegotiations stumbled along,
that was a period during whichseparately, but not unlinked,
obviously running along inparallel tracks, we were
(23:38):
attempting to put together, andput together with our friends
the Israelis, a practical kindof roadmap for post-conflict
arrangements, security,governance, reconstruction, et
cetera, which ultimately has totake you to.
What is Gaza supposed to be,other than this battered piece
(24:02):
of real estate with 2 millionsuffering people?
What is its part in thePalestinians' future?
They know what Gaza is supposedto be, which is a piece that is
politically and otherwiseconjoined with the West Bank and
is sort of the stepping stoneto a state.
The prime minister was neverclear.
(24:23):
And why does that matter?
Because, as you recall, thatthree-stage construct that the
president announced at the endof May, embedded in that first
phase I think it was day 22, wasto be the kickoff of
discussions about what phase twowould be.
(24:43):
But phase two would only occurwith the agreement of the
parties on those post-conflictarrangements.
Which is to say, does the idfwithdraw all the way out?
Does certainly the war ends?
Because phase three was reallyjust, if you will, the kind of
mopping up phase of return ofthe last of the remains that had
(25:07):
been held, but all the livingwould be returned in phase two.
But phase two itself would onlybe able to kick off with that
post-conflict set ofarrangements agreed.
I don't think, I don't know ifthe prime minister has a clear
vision.
He did not articulate itthroughout that period and
(25:28):
senior officials acknowledgethat to us.
So it did make thingsextraordinarily difficult,
certain that, much as we wereall thrilled to see the
agreement on January 17th andthen the kickoff on January 19th
(25:50):
of phase one of the ceasefire,I had no confidence.
In fact, I was quite confidentin the opposite direction.
I had no confidence that phasetwo would ever get started,
because you have to begin aserious conversation about those
(26:11):
post-conflict arrangements andthere's a fundamental conflict
embedded in that.
If I could just add what you'veheard me say before, I always
found it illogical that Hamasshould be the party at the table
for those discussions on phasetwo.
(26:32):
Why would you want to discussthe arrangements for
post-conflict security,governance, et cetera, with the
party that brought this terrible, precipitated this terrible
conflict?
Why should Hamas have a vote?
It should be a representativeof the Palestinian people, but
it should I mean, in my mindit's the logical thing as a
(26:54):
Palestinian authority, howeverbattered and imperfect, a vessel
of governance that is, thatwould have been, in my mind, the
logical partner at the tableand that would have, with the
right political kind ofdiscussions.
In bringing in the other Arabstates would have had a
(27:17):
squeezing effect on Hamas.
That isn't there right now.
Neri Zilber (27:21):
And I'll just tie that to.
I mean, it's interesting aboutthe stage two and tying it
obviously to a real post-warorder, or understanding the
Palestinian Authority, like yousaid, should have a role, and I
assume this is part of your many, many discussions with the Arab
Quintet, the five Arab statesthat also put forward and have
(27:44):
been putting forward their ownplan for a day after post-war
order in Gaza.
So tying it to stage two andobviously the end of the war and
stage three, what would thatpost-war order look like with
input and other resources by theArabs and the Palestinian
Authority, which, to be clear,yes, this current Israeli
(28:06):
government does not want to seethe Palestinian Authority back
in Gaza.
It also obviously doesn't wantto see Hamas there, and so we're
kind of in this limbo period.
Barbara Leaf (28:14):
Yeah, and I mean what's going to break the
impasse?
I mean, how does I come back tothe question of how does Israel
escape a terrible fate which isto go back into Gaza, which,
frankly, I think Hamas wouldlove nothing better than to see
the IDF come back in and be atarget, get sunk into a quagmire
(28:38):
where the IDF is clearing andre-clearing and re-clearing the
same pieces of territory, as wesaw over the 15 months from the
spring on.
So you have to have somethingto break all of that.
Well, if you look at all of thediscussions that have generated
plans of one kind or another,and plan is a very loose
(28:59):
approximation for what they are.
But the conceptual frameworks,the Egyptian plan, is not very,
very different from theprinciples and the framework
that Secretary Blinken laid outon January 14th at the Atlanta
Council in Washington DC, whichis to say, you take on board
sort of a hybrid confection withthe PA as a central piece of it
(29:23):
to reestablish propergovernance.
There are various ideas aboutthe security piece of it, but
what you do want everybodyagrees on is that the PA
security forces they have been,as the Palestinians often
bleakly said to me and others.
You know, we're Israel's partneron the West Bank, why can't we
(29:44):
be its partner in Gaza?
Who else is going to do thekind of job?
This is my question who else isgoing to do the kind of job
that has to be done just interms of basic policing and so
forth?
I'm not talking about terrorismraids, even on Hamas, but if
you're going to ensure thatHamas as a movement and as a
(30:06):
military and politicalorganization does not recapture,
over time, its standing even ifit's not its October 6th
strength and standing, but it'strying even now, is trying to
demonstrate to the Palestiniansof Gaza, first and foremost, and
secondarily to the Israeligovernment and the Israeli
(30:28):
public, that Hamas is there,present and will retake its role
, how do you ensure that doesn'thappen.
Well, it is not merely amilitary question, and that's
been clear over 18 months now.
It is a political question.
You have to squeeze them outand you have to offer an
(30:48):
alternative.
And if you insist on keepingthe PA out and with other
Palestinian factions, I mean youeffectively cede the field to
Hamas, so it's a dead end.
Cede the field to Hamas, soit's a dead end.
(31:09):
But all of these Arab states andI mean every one of them,
including the UAE, which is, ofcourse, most acerbically
critical of current PAleadership.
All of them formulate ideasthat have the PA as a key player
in the immediate post-conflictpeace and that, ultimately, the
PA is the governing and securityactor over time.
Neri Zilber (31:33):
Right, and this is, I think, a key point no PA, no
Arab state input.
That's right.
In a post-war order, and that'snot a minor point.
So you're well, there's no onereally else left, except maybe
the IDF.
Yeah, it's not a minor point.
So you're well, there's no onereally else left except maybe
the IDF.
Barbara Leaf (31:47):
That's right, that's right.
Neri Zilber (31:49):
And just to be clear for our listeners, I
believe Barbara is laying outhere is door number one, which
would not only end the war, itwould also get the hostages back
and set up at least thepossibility of some kind of
realistic post-war order in Gaza.
That's not where we're at at themoment.
(32:09):
So I'd have to ask about doornumber two, which is that, as we
all know, the first stage ofthe ceasefire ended over a month
ago and you were right, barbarathere was no follow-on stage
two, and Israel has obviouslyrestarted the war and its
offensive against Hamas is nowexpanding from the air and also
on the ground.
(32:30):
Do you believe that the currentposition put forward by the
Israeli government with, I thinkit's fair to say, the backing
of the Trump administration, isa realistic diplomatic path?
Ie, they're now demanding thatHamas soften, capitulate, cave
vis-a-vis its longstandingpositions and just release
(32:53):
hostages without a guaranteeit'll end the war.
Knowing what you know about thedynamic of these negotiations,
going back now a year and a half, do you think this course of
diplomacy has a chance tosucceed, at least to get a month
or two ceasefire in return forX number of hostages, if not to
end the war?
Barbara Leaf (33:12):
Well, I mean Neri to say the obvious, but I will a
clock is ticking.
And that clock is the lives ofthose remaining hostages.
So of 59 still named, maybe 24are living.
It's all very uncertain.
From one week to another Onedoesn't really know, or even the
(33:34):
best intelligence withcertainty.
So there is that clock that ismoving inexorably.
You overlay active militaryoperations, especially if, as is
being discussed, you have areally a very large resumption
of ground operations.
(33:54):
Then there is obviously greaterrisk and peril to the hostages
themselves and with very littlecertainty or confidence that the
IDF will be able to rescue themor that this will work fast
enough as a pressure point onHamas to bring you to that next
(34:15):
phase of exchanges, I hope, ofcourse, every day that there
will be a breakthrough.
I'm just not confident thatthose clocks are working at the
same speed and certainly Hamashas a ghastly resilience to all
of this military pressure, in nosmall part because, a large
(34:38):
part because they have a rabbitwarren of places to go to and
leaving, of course, the publicexposed but themselves largely
out of firing range.
Neri Zilber (34:50):
I'm not confident at all okay, well, neither am I,
but I suppose this is, this isnot the plan.
Barbara Leaf (34:57):
So but I guess what I would say, nary, is you
know, rather than be hostage toall of those clocks that are
moving as they will, I mean youneed something bold and
different, something out of thebox, out of the box thinking,
and I say that for the Israelis.
I mean, I'm out of governmentservice and I'm free to give my
(35:19):
unsolicited advice to anygovernment broadcast, but I
would say it requires really outof the box thinking that will
reverse or will turn the tableson Hamas.
Hamas is very comfortable inthis kind of setting.
It is.
It goes back to the, you know,the resistance flag that it
(35:40):
wraps itself in.
It's comfortable with thiscontext.
Israel is the one that isbearing the brunt of it all the
IDF and the government and thepublic and so on.
Hamas simply doesn't have thesame sort of pressure points.
So you've got to turn thetables on Hamas and put it under
a kind of unbearable politicalsqueeze that it hasn't been
(36:04):
under, frankly, all of this time.
And that requires again I mean,I'll come back to the mantra
you know I've been pushing formany, many months which is you
put at the table a differentpartner.
Why should Hamas be yourpartner for deliberating over
(36:24):
the course of post-conflictsecurity and governance
arrangements.
Why should Hamas have a vote?
Hamas may feel it will exercisea vote indirectly putting
pressure on people, but whyshould you give it an overt role
of any kind?
And, by the way, at the end, ifyou've been able to somehow get
(36:48):
back all the hostages but youcan't get back the bodies, or
people die, et cetera, at theend you still have the
fundamental question what is thedisposition of Gaza?
Neri Zilber (37:03):
Right, the thought experiment I mean comes to my
mind quite often.
But if there were no hostages,right, you would still need a
plan for post-war Gaza.
Barbara Leaf (37:12):
That's exactly right.
Neri Zilber (37:14):
Okay, we'll be right back after this brief
message.
Speaker 3 (37:21):
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Neri Zilber (38:19):
Barbara, shifting gears to another issue very much
in the news and, I believe,very much near and dear to your
professional heart Syria.
Barbara Leaf (38:27):
Yes.
Neri Zilber (38:28):
Your last diplomatic trip in December was
to Syria to meet with Ahmedal-Shara, the new ruler in
Damascus, formerly known asMohammed al-Jolani.
I have to ask what was yourimpression of the man?
What was your impression of thenew regime that took over in
Syria and the prospects for thecountry's future?
Barbara Leaf (38:51):
I know these are big questions, but you're
uniquely placed to give insighton them analyst that day, as
much as you know, a diplomatproffering a set of messages and
so forth.
And you know I scrutinized him,I listened carefully to every
(39:13):
word.
I, you know, reviewed his bodylanguage in the course of a
number of exchanges.
That couldn't have beencomfortable for him.
That couldn't have beencomfortable for him.
And, of course, I had talked toa whole set of Syrians ahead of
meeting with Ashara civilsociety actors, our own embassy
staff, who have fearlessly insome cases, but courageously,
(39:39):
kept our installation secureduring these many years when
we've been gone.
And, of course, I met with theWhite Helmets, another fearless
set of actors.
So I had a lot of informationgarnered that day.
I'd also spent a week in Ammanpreparing for the trip and
talking to a lot of other folks,including people who were going
(40:04):
in ahead of me, european andother diplomats, talking to
other regional officials and soforth.
Anyway, long story short, I'vesaid, and I still find it the
right analysis he is.
Ultimately, he came across as athoroughgoing pragmatist, as a
(40:28):
thoroughgoing pragmatist, apolitical leader, not just a
military leader.
So much has been made of his.
You know what he's wearing onany given day.
I think that's not incidentalto the way he is transitioned
and again transitioned in themost remarkable fashion, with
speed, speed that he did notexpect to have to operate in.
Let's remember when he and hiscoalition of fighters set off
(40:52):
for Aleppo as they have saidthemselves, their objective was
Aleppo and they spent a lot oftime mapping out how they would
govern, secure etc.
But they were not planning togo further than Aleppo and what
they found was it fell, justfell into their arms and they
turned southward.
And you know, it was the old,you know hot knife cutting
(41:16):
through butter analogy of justmoving down towards Damascus
with virtually no effort atresistance by the regime's
forces.
So he didn't expect to comeinto Damascus on December, I
guess it was the 9th or 10thAssad, you know, fled
ignominiously on December 8thand he came in a day or so later
(41:39):
after southern militias hadmoved in to secure the city.
So a thoroughgoing pragmatist.
Why do I say that?
He had obviously and rememberthis was only 12 days after the
fall he had clearly put a lot ofthought into what he termed
(42:02):
should be the new Syria.
Now, was this his own thinking?
Was it based on sort of thepublic clamor meeting with
people as he was at that point.
You know it's a mix of things,but he clearly, as many analysts
who have tracked him in HTSover the years told me, he had
(42:24):
clearly moved down a road awayfrom his transnational jihadist
origins as a fighter, as a youngman who went to Iraq two months
ahead of the US invasion toprepare to fight the Americans.
He had traveled that long roadaway from the ISIS predecessor,
(42:49):
al-qaeda in Iraq to turn hisback on them, viewed them as an
enemy, said so to me, had turnedon al-Qaeda, the other
jihadists transnational jihadistorganization he'd made common
cause with.
And he strikes me now assomebody who is very much a
(43:10):
Syrian Islamist nationalist.
Now I am tracking closely.
You know developments in Syriaevery day, as many people are,
and the evolution continues interms of governance,
transparency and so forth, andthere's a high bar for him to
(43:30):
meet.
But I am impressed by the degreeto which he is putting so much
personal effort into outreachwithin Syria to all of its
different communities, as wellas the outreach that he and his
foreign minister are doing forregional countries, including,
importantly, iraq, which youknow, given Iraq's difficulties
(43:55):
all those years of Basharal-Assad having basically fed
this stream of foreign fightersinto Iraq to fight the Iraqis
not just the Americans, but Imean Assad fed that conflict in
Iraq.
And of course, the disappearance, the eclipse of Iran and its
(44:19):
proxies in Syria in a sort of anearthquake of a moment really
shook actors, political andmilitia actors in Iraq.
And that first week I did twotrips to Baghdad, one ahead of
the secretary and then one withSecretary Blinken, before we
(44:41):
went to Jordan for a ministerialwith other countries and before
I went to Damascus.
The Iraqis were staggered bywhat had occurred next door.
As a Shia-majority country,they were anxious and alarmed by
the Alawite community nowdisplaced from power and now
(45:02):
presumably being very vulnerable.
They were concerned about Shiareligious sites and so forth.
But I have watched this efforton both sides to really connect
with each other, which I thinkis really fundamental to the
prospects of Syria stabilizingand Iraq stabilizing further.
So so far so good, but still along, long way to go.
Neri Zilber (45:28):
Undoubtedly, and I just have to ask again on a more
personal level, I think youwere the first US diplomat to
visit Damascus.
In what?
Since 2012?
Yes, suss out this new ruler inDamascus.
But I'm sure he was also verycurious, excited, maybe even
(45:51):
happy, that a senior US diplomatwas actually coming and meeting
with him, right?
Barbara Leaf (45:57):
Yep, and I mean it was evident that he had both
cleared his entire afternoon forus and would have stayed
indefinitely.
I had to bring the conversationto a close after an hour and a
half because we had to get backon the road before dark.
But it was also clear that hehad done an enormous amount of
(46:17):
preparation and thinking aboutthe conversation.
So he was very well preparedand he was very engaging on
every topic.
In other words, no matter howdifficult the topic or how
difficult my message was, heengaged and engaged forthrightly
and with good humor.
I would say he does not strikeme as a joking, a lighthearted,
(46:41):
joking kind of guy, but hecracked a smile a number of
times and it was a very cordialconversation.
That's what was so striking,including in the parts where we
were talking about Israel andwhat Israel was doing.
And he rather plaintively askedcould we help in getting Israel
to get back on its side of the1974 demarcation line?
(47:04):
1974 demarcation line.
But that was one of the manypoints at which I sort of
metaphorically closed my eyesand remind myself I was speaking
to a Syrian official because hewas non-polemical, you know,
did not?
You know, hafez al-Assad wasfamous for starting every
conversation with let me tellyou about 1948.
(47:27):
And and and, of course, he andhis son were extremely polemical
in every sense about Israel,publicly and privately.
Shadrach was verymatter-of-fact in discussing it
and matter-of-fact in discussingthe fact that the new Syria had
no quarrel with Israel, had nofight, didn't want any fight,
(47:49):
and he intended that the newSyria would be a good neighbor
to everyone, including to Israel, and that he would not allow
groups, whether it's Hezbollah,palestinian groups, iran,
iranian-backed militias, hewould not allow them to use
Syria as a launching pad forattacks against Israel.
So it was, to my mind, one ofthe more striking pieces of our
(48:16):
conversation because of thematter of factness, about the
way he spoke of Israel and thedesire not to have any fight.
Neri Zilber (48:26):
That's not a minor point and since this is the
Israel policy pot, I have tofollow up and ask, given what
Israel has done since earlyDecember in Syria moving in
across the border from the GolanHeights, taking over this kind
of new security zone, declaring,as Netanyahu has, that he wants
(48:49):
all of southern Syriademilitarized, still striking
various military assets andsites all across the country
both as a former senior USdiplomat and as a Middle East
analyst, what do you think aboutthis new hardline Israeli
approach to the new Syria?
Barbara Leaf (49:09):
Well, look, I think it risks stirring up the
kind of agitation and animositythat wasn't there then and still
is there only in very localizedplaces.
The sort of outreach orsuggested desire to be
overwatched for the security ofthe Druze also, I think,
(49:33):
actually puts them in a verydifficult position, and one that
you know.
It's clear from Druze leaders'commentary that they were
uncomfortable with, that.
They don't want a separate,special relationship with Israel
.
In this context, in thiscontext, when there are these
(49:54):
various assertions about intentand about longevity of intent to
stay on a large piece of Syrianterritory, let alone to say
that all of southern Syria hasto be demilitarized, I think,
look, in our trade there aremany ways to get at your
(50:15):
security and there are manychannels for that, and I would
hope that those channels wouldbe used.
I'm not talking aboutdiplomatic channels, obviously,
but that there would be channelsused to both understand and
convey intent and find a wayforward.
(50:35):
I would hate to see kind of astirring up of attention, of
anti-Israeli sentiment andattention, where there isn't any
.
And I will tell you, the thingthat you hear constantly from
Syrians, inside as well asoutside, is this issue of
wanting unity again, that theyhaven't enjoyed unity across
(50:56):
society, across ethnic andsectarian religious communities.
I mean, you have to rememberthat the Assad spent a lot of
time and effort keeping thecountry very divided and setting
communities against each other.
So there's a sort of avehemence to the public's
(51:17):
expression of the desire to knitback up again and a kind of
hostility to foreigners talkingto them about their quote
minorities and yes, it is amosaic of minority communities
with a large sunny majority.
But there is nonetheless a realsensitivity in Syria and you
(51:41):
get this from Syrians,expatriate communities.
They want the chance to knitthings back up together and
that's a long, long task andthat requires external actors,
all of them in the region to notfoster things in the opposite
direction.
Neri Zilber (52:01):
Fascinating answer, I have to say, really
interesting, barbara.
Last question before we wrap upon an issue closer to where you
are and not so close to where Iam at the moment, but
Washington under PresidentDonald Trump I have to ask
you're still there and you'restill obviously plugged in.
What is the mood like in DCright now in foreign policy,
(52:27):
national security circles,especially given the I mean
what's the right word Purge,dismantling, complete
undermining of what we had cometo know as the US government's
kind of foreign policy, foreignaid, national security apparatus
?
Give us some insight for thoseof us not in DC anymore, about
(52:49):
how you view what the past twomonths.
Barbara Leaf (52:52):
Okay, well, look, this is.
You know, this is anextraordinarily tough time in
this town for those who are well, not just national security
focused.
I mean, it goes much beyondthat.
There were a whole set oflayoffs announced this week for
(53:14):
people in the public healthsector, and that's you know.
State, nsc, white House,department of Defense, the IC
community in its full breadth,it's just the core actors.
(53:35):
It is disorienting, and thatstarts with the dismantling of
USAID.
And look, anybody who has servedin state, run an embassy, been
part of an embassy team wherethere was a large AID mission,
or worked in Washingtonalongside AID, you know a couple
(53:56):
things.
You know that there are justextraordinary people who've
worked in that organization,who've devoted their lives to
the mission of that organizationand who and who integrate
sacrifice to themselves, totheir health, to their families,
to their safety, often to carryout a mission of not just
development but humanitarianassistance across a very
(54:18):
disordered and dangerous world.
And at the same time, you know,no question, there were plenty
of programs that you could takea you know a seasoned eye to and
say does this really fit withinthe bounds of what we want to
do, even in this bilateralrelationship with country X, let
(54:40):
alone step back and say does itreally make sense to be in this
business, in this particularsector anymore?
But you know, that kind ofreally methodical review was not
done, unfortunately.
So it's been pretty shattering,of course, to folks in the
national security community towatch this, because AID and the
(55:02):
assistance that comes with it,it's just a critical, critical
tool set Along with defense,along with diplomacy.
You've got development and allthe things that fit under it and
we've massively shrunk thatdown and I think that's going to
hurt us, there's no question.
And the Chinese boy, they'reall about exploiting that hurt
(55:27):
in large swaths of be it Africaor the Middle East, where we
will no longer have programs ofany size or substance.
And then there's a questionjust overhanging in a large part
where is this all going?
So great uncertainty, I willjust say, because I have tons of
(55:49):
friends across the NATSACcommunity.
You know they are great publicservants and they are
tenaciously doing their jobs invery difficult circumstances.
And it's always been the casewith state.
You know the adage has beenthat we don't really have a
constituency as such in thepublic.
Folks in Washington understandwhat we do as diplomats, members
(56:14):
of Congress to some degreeunderstand, but we don't have
constituency.
Neri Zilber (56:18):
Right.
Barbara Leaf (56:19):
So maybe that's part of it, but I think it's
also.
Things have moved at such speedthat there hasn't been time for
the public to catch up.
So we'll see, but it's a veryuncertain time and I'm concerned
, as always, with how it affectsour core national security
interests, including overseas,in such difficult situations in
(56:42):
which my colleagues operate now,in which my colleagues operate
now.
Neri Zilber (56:46):
Indeed, and I guess all of our fears is that it's
not over yet.
So, like you said, it's aquestion of where this is all
going and how far this newadministration wants to take it.
And yes, it's oftentimes verydifficult to explain to lay
people, people outside of DC,the American public, the exact
importance of a forward-leading,robust international presence,
(57:17):
whether it be diplomatic,developmental, defense, military
, to be engaged in the world.
And I think that's going to bea major loss, not just for the
US but for the entire globe, aswe may find out.
Barbara, we have to leave itthere.
Thank you so much for your timeand insights.
We didn't even talk aboutLebanon or Iran, all the other-.
Barbara Leaf (57:37):
There's so much and this is why I said you know,
I felt like the AssistantSecretary of Gaza, because that
was my life for 15 months, butnotwithstanding that, I did
manage to get to Algeria andMorocco late last year.
I did work on other issues, soinvite me back and we'll talk
about those other issues.
Neri Zilber (57:56):
We'll have you back on for sure, barbara, and thank
you again, take care.
Barbara Leaf (57:59):
Thank you.
Neri Zilber (58:01):
Okay, thanks again to Barbara Lee for her generous
time and insights.
Also a special thanks to ourproducer, jacob Gilman, and to
all of you who support IsraelPolicy Forum's work.
Do consider making a donationto Israel Policy Forum, so keep
being a credible source ofanalysis and ideas on issues
such as these that we all caredeeply about, including this
podcast.
And, most importantly, thankyou for listening.
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