Are we heading towards a deal? I don't think so, just given who's making decisions in Iran and given that gap between what Trump can accept and what the Iranians might be willing to give, but this will not be over, I hope I'm wrong, by the end of Trump's presidency.
Hello and welcome to GZERO World. I'm Ian Bremmer. And as election day approaches, the country is deeply divided. The conservative party fights for its political survival. The opposition hopes to capitalize on voter frustrations, and with a war dragging on, foreign policy is dominating the debate. The outcome could have enormous consequences, not just at home, but around the world. No, I am not talking about the United States. I'm talking about Israel because Americans aren't the only ones heading to the polls soon. Israelis will vote on a new government on October 27th, and after more than 18 years in power, off and on, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu faces a very serious challenger in retired Israeli Defense Forces Chief Gadi Eisenkot.
During those 18 years, Netanyahu has transformed both Israel and the Middle East. After Hamas's attack on October 7th, Israel responded with a vengeance, decimating not just Hamas, but most of Gaza as well. To Israel's north, Hezbollah's presence in Lebanon has been severely diminished. And even under a new government, Israel's approach to an increasingly unstable Middle East is unlikely to change all that much.
My guest today, Brett McGurk. He has spent decades working on Middle East policy from inside the White House, serving under four American presidents, Republican and Democrat. He served as the White House Coordinator for the Middle East under Biden. He's helped lead negotiations over the release of hostages taken by Hamas on October 7th. He knows both Netanyahu and Eisenkot well. He also has a new book out, "Brink: Inside the Race to Free the October 7th Hostages." I recently met up with him in Washington to discuss Israel's upcoming elections, Trump's war with Iran, the growing threat from the Houthis, and if the United States has a broader strategy for a rapidly changing Middle East.
But first, a word from the folks that help us keep the lights on.
Funding for "GZERO World" is provided by our lead sponsor, Prologis. And by: Cox, a family of businesses. Additional funding provided by the Andrew Carnegie Foundation, Koo and Patricia Yuen, committed to bridging cultural difference in our communities, and...
Brett McGurk, good to have you.
Thank you, and great to be here.
You look a lot at how the world has changed since October 7th, and most recently headlines being driven from the Middle East from perhaps an unlikely corner, the Houthis. We've been there before. I want to start with that.
The Houthis, sure. Happy to get right into the Houthis. I dealt with this problem directly. In fact, Ian, in "Brink," the book I have out, the first chapter talks a little bit about this problem. And no, the Houthis are an indigenous group to Yemen and they overthrow the legitimate government, but they're heavily backed by the Iranians. And I mean, their main weapon system is anti-ship ballistic missiles and ballistic missiles, which we, you know, saw recently in Riyadh tragically. And that is all IRGC and Iran, and that happened really over a decade. And this is an awful, awful problem. The Houthis are dispersed across Yemen, they're dug into mountains. In the age of drone warfare, you can launch a drone from anywhere. They're very accurate. I struggle to come up with the kind of military answer to the Houthi problem.
Yeah, it appears that the Saudis don't have a military answer. I mean, Mohammad bin Salman is like moving from secure location to secure location. He's not able to be in public right now. You've got missiles that are traveling hundreds of miles that the Saudis are apparently not able to intercept that are hitting Riyadh airport, as you say, tragically. 13 people dead, hundreds, civilians that are wounded. This is clearly not sustainable. So what do you do? I mean, how should the Americans be responding to this and how should the Saudis respond if those things are different?
Yeah, first question for any scenario like this, I always have, what's the objective? I think you got to think about what is it? Is the objective to defeat the Houthis? Is the objective to degrade the Houthi missile and drone capability? Is the objective to contain and do a deal with the Houthis as the Saudis have done a number of times? You know, what are we actually trying to do? And right now, I don't think the Saudis have an answer to that question. I think they would like to somehow find a way to actually defeat the Houthis and get rid of this problem. That's probably not going to happen.
Some of their initial announcements were take all the land back, but that hasn't been-
So then it gets into degrading their capabilities and that's an objective. But again, we tried that. It's very difficult.
So the Americans have basically said, "Okay, you're attacking the Saudis, you're not attacking us, so we're not going to be directly involved again in this fight." The Saudis are clearly extremely concerned about that, but if you're the United States, if you were advising the president right now, you would say good, stay clear of that or not?
I think CENTCOM will come into the White House with, "Here are some options. Here are some things that we have left off the table in the past. Here are some things we might do together with the Saudis." When I dealt with this problem in real-time, when the Houthis were targeting American naval ships, and people forget about this, I mean, one thing that was keep-
Which again, they're not doing right now.
Not doing right now because of the deal that was cut in the first year of this current Trump administration, right? It was basically like US went to war with the Houthis, a deal was cut through the Omanis. They're not going to target our ships, but the Houthis retain the right to target others. So we basically got out of it to protect US shipping, which was the objective the president had set. But now the Saudis are now in this alliance with Pakistan and Turkey. I've never seen a moment, Ian, I've been doing this for 20 years, that things are so fluid and like first principles are opened up in almost every capital. Who are our partners? Who are our allies? Who do we count on?
Yeah, because if you're Saudi Arabia, you don't know that you can count on the United States going forward.
Exactly, who do we count on? How they then play off the different countries in the Middle East, I think is potentially quite dangerous, honestly. And I would like the United States to play a bit more of a forceful diplomatic role to try to pull this together in a way we have some sort of concerted, organized, collective effort. I mean, right now I'm not seeing that. When we started to grapple with the Houthis, and I have this scene in the book, President Biden, I was very much of the view, we had to take military action against the Houthis because we were, from day to day, and what I was hearing from the Pentagon and Central Command, we were within seconds of having dozens of dead American sailors. And I cannot overemphasize how serious this situation was. We have these anti-ship ballistic missiles being fired at our ships. We are firing interceptors to take these. This is the first time it ever happened in combat. And Biden's view was, "I'm not going to take this on ourselves. So, you know, do the diplomatic legwork, build a coalition, and then we'll take it on." That was kind of his late 2023. You get a sense of how these debates happen inside an administration when you're contemplating military action. So just to bring it up to present day, finding a way, and it's hard right now, and this is not the modus operandi of the current administration, finding a way to-
Bring countries together.
Bring countries together, I think it's really important because if it's just the US, Saudis on their own, UAE kind of on their own, Bahrain, Kuwait, everyone is looking around like, you know, where is the US going to be in two years? Where's the world heading? And who is going to help protect us from a problem? And you're right, the Houthis are not Iran. There's some differences, but at the end of the day, they are missiles and drones or without Iran, you don't have all this stuff. And Iran is just so loaded up with missiles and drones and once they get that capacity and production back up, they'll be able to scale it. It's a huge challenge for the future of the world.
So one other place I want to talk about in the region, of course, is Israel and we do have elections coming up in short order. Never count Netanyahu out in any environment until it's over, maybe not even then. And yet there is a possibility, and the polls increasingly look like Gadi Eisenkot would lead the next election, former chief of staff for the Israeli Defense Forces. If that were to come to pass, hard to imagine that Israel's foreign policy in the region would suddenly change dramatically, but where do you think it would make a difference?
Yeah, it's interesting. I know all these guys. I've known Gadi Eisenkot a long time. Completely different personality than Netanyahu. Eisenkot is kind of the thoughtful warrior scholar, a very deep thinker about where Israel needs to head. And again, a scene, a very difficult scene that is in "Brink," I was in his home at shiva for his son, Gal, who just died in Gaza, and he turned around and took a book off his shelf and opened it up to a page. It was about the Second Intifada and he read from it and the quote was, I'm going to paraphrase it here, the quote is in the book, "I know the cost of war. I have a five-year-old son and effectively if we don't get things right, my son will be fighting terror just like I did." And that five-year-old son, he closed the book, put it on shelf, he said that five-year-old son was Gal.
Who was killed and you're sitting there in shiva.
I've never had a conversation like that with Bibi Netanyahu, so I don't want to suggest he's not also, you know, he fought, his brother died in the Entebbe raid, you know the history, but he is much more immediate of the moment. Everything is the immediacy of the moment. And I describe him in the book, Netanyahu, like impossible to pin down, you know? So a couple things will not change, I believe, after October 7th, and this is what I think, just whatever you feel about this issue, and I know it's so polarizing, Israel, Gaza, Palestinians, but Israel after October 7th, I think Eisenkot shares this, Netanyahu shares it, will never allow threats to gather again. Like Israel will never allow 30,000 Hezbollah troops to be sitting on the northern border, and that's a problem that you just have to kind of manage. They'll never allow Hamas to be reconstituted in Gaza ever. And I think that applies to threats further abroad, including Iran. Their security doctrine after October 7th has just completely changed, and I think Eisenkot would very much share that. So a change in policy toward Lebanon, Iran, even Gaza, and the fact that whatever comes in Gaza after this, it cannot be Hamas. I think Eisenkot would be the same. Where we would see a difference and an important difference and a needed difference is the West Bank. Now the West Bank, in the Biden administration, we sanctioned Israeli settlers. I mean, it's a big step we took to try to-
And some of this has been the fact that Bibi is in coalition with-
Exactly, that's another key question.
Kind of a fascist party at the end of the day.
Every leader is constrained by politics. And when Bibi came back into power in 2023, he had a call with Biden. Biden, you know, was calling to congratulate him after the election. And Bibi said, unprompted, he said, "Hey, Joe, I know I got this coalition, you know, but I'm driving the bus." You know, he said it right away. Meaning Smotrich and Ben-Gvir and these guys are kind of in the backseat. So when I was dealing with this, they had a war cabinet, which Smotrich and Ben-Gvir were not included in, and Eisenkot was there for a significant part of it, kind of a unity cabinet on the Gaza piece. But Smotrich, Ben-Gvir were doing, and the West Bank has now become such a flashpoint and, you know, that has to change. So if you have an election in which Eisenkot comes in, I think you'll see a significant change in the West Bank. But still, I think Eisenkot would bring the hammer down on what the Hilltop Youth in these groups are doing in the West Bank.
But if anyone's expecting a total sea change in like overall Israel security doctrine and how they're viewing the world, I don't see that. And even a Netanyahu with a broader based coalition, if that's how it comes out, you also might see some decent changes. Honestly, we'll see. Scenario analysis, put my hat on, what are we likely to see? What worries me is you'll have the two main coalitions kind of tied, and you'll have the Arab Coalition in the middle, and you can't form a government. And then you'll have a new election early next year.
