[SPEAKER_01]: Good morning, it's Friday, August 7th, the multi-front war of the Middle East is now 1,000 and 35 days old.
[SPEAKER_01]: I'm your host, Jonathan Shanzer, welcome back to the FTD Morning Brief.
[SPEAKER_01]: People asked me all the time if I think we were winning the war in the Middle East, and all really depends on who you mean by we, and which fronts you're watching.
[SPEAKER_01]: These rallies are in the driver's seat in both Gaza and Lebanon, and
[SPEAKER_01]: It's not a win, but things to be in control for the foreseeable future, especially with political processes underway that are designed to weaken the political grip of both Hamas and his blood and their respective territories once they're under full control.
[SPEAKER_01]: The U.S. and Israel, however, fought together in Iran, but right now Israel's no longer fighting.
[SPEAKER_01]: They're not part of that war.
[SPEAKER_01]: And the United States can't seem to cement the advantages it gained over the regime.
[SPEAKER_01]: So no.
[SPEAKER_01]: It's hard to say America is winning here, but if you look out across the entire Middle East, it certainly seems like the multi-front war is less foreboding than it once appeared.
[SPEAKER_01]: Until last night, when the Saudis Turks and Pakistanis,
[SPEAKER_01]: joined a new military alliance that could put all three of them against Israel, Greece, or other American allies across the region, bottom line, this stuff is complicated, folks, but it's probably better than it was when this war erupted more than a thousand days ago.
[SPEAKER_01]: So bank that, bank anything you can that is even remotely positive and keep pushing forward.
[SPEAKER_01]: That's the name of the game here, folks.
[SPEAKER_01]: The fight continues.
[SPEAKER_01]: The drama continues with Iran as President Donald Trump struggles to find an exit from the current war.
[SPEAKER_01]: This war has dragged on much longer than Trump thought it would.
[SPEAKER_01]: It's not because Iran has such a formidable military.
[SPEAKER_01]: It's because the regime raised the cost of fighting by holding the state of Hormuz hostage.
[SPEAKER_01]: That has put a squeeze on oil.
[SPEAKER_01]: But beyond that, they forced the United States to burn through more missile defense interceptors that we expected due to the sheer number of drones and rockets the regime fired at surrounding Gulf Arab states and even country's farther afield like Jordan.
[SPEAKER_01]: We have fewer fat and Patriot interceptors right now than we had when this war began, and information continues to trickle out about just how bad our munitions crisis may be.
[SPEAKER_01]: Trump is apparently pretty grumpy with Defense Secretary Pete Hagseth for mismanaging this munitions issue, and let's be honest, the picture will likely only appear more dire as more information becomes available.
[SPEAKER_01]: How much this potentially affects our homeland defense is one important question right now.
[SPEAKER_01]: How much this potentially affects our ability to defend Taiwan in the event of a Chinese invasion?
[SPEAKER_01]: Well, that's another.
[SPEAKER_01]: And that would have significant impacts on our ability to produce our most advanced microchips.
[SPEAKER_01]: These are the chips that we need for advanced weapons, not to mention AI.
[SPEAKER_01]: So, yes, this crisis could hinder our ability to keep pace with China as great power competition heats up,
[SPEAKER_01]: Now, for your headlines, headline 1, Mossad Chief Roman Guffman has removed two of the agencies' top officials over their role in a failed plan to topple Iran's regime.
[SPEAKER_01]: This is all according to a channel 12 report.
[SPEAKER_01]: Out of Israel, it's officially described as a mutually agreed upon parting of ways tied to a broader Mossad reshuffle with the now former Mossad agents,
[SPEAKER_01]: expected to stay on elsewhere in the agency.
[SPEAKER_01]: The original plan called for Israeli strikes on IRGC positions in Iranian Kurdistan meant to open the door for Kurdish fighters to push into Iran and spark a mass uprising against the regime.
[SPEAKER_01]: Israel and the U.S. did not carry out those opening strikes early on in the war.
[SPEAKER_01]: Weeks and Turkish pressure and Kurdish hesitation stopped the plan from going further.
[SPEAKER_01]: And if you ask me that was the best chance for regime change
[SPEAKER_01]: headline two, speaking of the regime Iran's execution campaign against January protestors is not winding down.
[SPEAKER_01]: It's expanding.
[SPEAKER_01]: Two men were hanged publicly in Isfahan last week.
[SPEAKER_01]: We talked about that last episode.
[SPEAKER_01]: Now we've learned that a third Iranian citizen was hanged in secret four days later.
[SPEAKER_01]: His family was only notified in time to bury him.
[SPEAKER_01]: Now the cities of Mashaad and
[SPEAKER_01]: Five more detainees are facing the same fate.
[SPEAKER_01]: Three already sentenced to death.
[SPEAKER_01]: Two more facing charges that could very well result in death sentences by this fetid regime, including a young woman who was arrested for the crime of posting Instagram stories about the protests.
[SPEAKER_01]: That brings the total to at least 56 executions on national security charges since March in the Islamic Republic roughly half tied directly to the unrest back in January with over 100 more defendants facing the same possible sentences.
[SPEAKER_01]: Remember folks, the biggest threat to the Islamic Republic is its own people and the regime knows this.
[SPEAKER_01]: So the leaders of the regime are literally trying to kill the next protest before it erupts.
[SPEAKER_01]: headline three, a seventh round of Israel Lebanon talks wrapped up yesterday in Rome and the two sides are still claiming that progress is being made, but it's far from perfect Israel wants to confirm Lebanon's army fully controls the first two pilot zones at the idea of vacated before agreeing to add a new one.
[SPEAKER_01]: The government of Lebanon has been pushing for either Hiyam or Ben Chibbel to be next.
[SPEAKER_01]: The State Department says,
[SPEAKER_01]: The two sides are, quote, a lot closer end quote on that process, but a Lebanese source says nothing settled yet.
[SPEAKER_01]: And here's the reality on the ground folks.
[SPEAKER_01]: Talks continue even as the heaviest cross border fighting in weeks, just broke out two IDF soldiers were killed by an explosion while the IDF continued demolishing his Bola infrastructure.
[SPEAKER_01]: The first Israeli deaths reported in Lebanon since late June.
[SPEAKER_01]: Israel responded forcefully and unifill the
[SPEAKER_01]: really corrupt UN agency that is trying to keep the peace in Lebanon or at least reportedly says it's trying to.
[SPEAKER_01]: They say the idea fired 113 munitions in a single day, the most since June 21st.
[SPEAKER_01]: Disarming his bullet was never going to be easy bugs.
[SPEAKER_01]: Israel already knew this, the fight continues.
[SPEAKER_01]: and headline for some relatively late-breaking news, I guess we can call it out of Yemen and Saudi Arabia.
[SPEAKER_01]: The Houthis are on the offensive again.
[SPEAKER_01]: They've attacked Yemeni forces in southern Yemen where the good guys are nominally in controlled dozens of fatalities were reported with more details coming.
[SPEAKER_01]: This comes in the wake of a separate Houthi attack on Saudi Arabia that wounded 11, watch the Houthis people.
[SPEAKER_01]: They appear to be ready to jump back into the fray.
[SPEAKER_01]: What this means for the Red Sea shipping corridor, the Bobo Mandab straight, the Saudis and others, well, that remains to be seen, but the war could become more complicated in a short amount of time.
[SPEAKER_00]: All right, that's enough hot air for me.
[SPEAKER_01]: It's time for our interview and that interview is with the guy who forgot more about Gaza than I ever learned.
[SPEAKER_01]: We're talking about Ahmed Fuad Al-Hatiib.
[SPEAKER_01]: He's a senior fellow at the Atlantic Council.
[SPEAKER_01]: He's the guy behind this thing called realign for Palestine.
[SPEAKER_01]: So what's the deal with this deal about Hamas disarmament?
[SPEAKER_01]: And what's going on with the board of peace?
[SPEAKER_01]: Let's welcome Ahmed Fuad Al-Hatiib onto the show to find out.
[SPEAKER_01]: Welcome back to the FTD morning brief.
[SPEAKER_01]: Ahmed Buat al-Hatib.
[SPEAKER_00]: Good to be with you, brother.
[SPEAKER_01]: Good to be with you.
[SPEAKER_01]: All right, so let's start with what's going on in Gaza?
[SPEAKER_01]: Hamas is still, I guess, in control of about 30% of the territory.
[SPEAKER_01]: That's a significant loss for the terrorist organization that sparked this war back on October 7th.
[SPEAKER_01]: So what does Hamas control in 30% of the Gaza Strip look like?
[SPEAKER_00]: Well, unfortunately, continues to look like control over the hospitals, over the infrastructure, over the routes that facilitate the incoming humanitarian and commercial goods.
[SPEAKER_00]: Those are the trucks that are being facilitated by Cogat, these rarely military, into the Gaza
[SPEAKER_00]: Really, it's run by an amalgamation of Hamas, of the UN and a whole host of NGOs, and then you have the elements of the private sector that are bringing in supplies from within Israel for the most part.
[SPEAKER_00]: And so supplies for sale to the population.
[SPEAKER_00]: And Hamas is very much so back in control from a governance security point of view, Hamas, and I know this is a point that we may have disagreed upon in the past, they're back to being a governance apparatus, per se, even though their militancy or their terror apparatus has very much been diminished to a shell of its former self.
[SPEAKER_01]: So in other words, they're trying to re-establish a certain amount of legitimacy as a government after having destroyed the entire infrastructure of Gaza.
[SPEAKER_01]: They're saying, give us a chance, folks.
[SPEAKER_01]: We're going to try to rebuild everything and be a government again, but don't worry, we'll build a bunch of tunnels and rockets and missiles soon enough that we'll destroy all of this again.
[SPEAKER_01]: Does that kind of sum it up?
[SPEAKER_00]: not so much legitimacy as they're kind of forcing themselves on to everybody.
[SPEAKER_00]: I added them to the whole population and this is why I even wrote that book that I released a month a week ago called Hamas and it's 2 million hostages and I do very much to address the idea of their governance apparatus being part.
[SPEAKER_00]: of this hostage taken effectively of the Palestinian people, arresting their development in Gaza for the last 20 years.
[SPEAKER_00]: But yes, in short, Hamas is in control from a security point of view of written extensively on Twitter examples of how my own friends have been called in for interrogation in the basements of the Baptist Hospital, the Nasser Hospital, other fascinantical facilities,
[SPEAKER_00]: But Hamas has there's the police force and then there's the internal security force nevertheless Hamas is on it back foot it's on it's in it's in the midst of it the worst existential crisis that the terror organization finds itself in since it's founding really in an official founding in 87 and since it's
[SPEAKER_00]: the seeds for its launch in the 1970s, I would argue that there is an arc, a story of Hamas, and I strongly believe that we are witnessing kind of the final epic, if you will, of Hamas's story.
[SPEAKER_01]: Inshallah, I think is pretty much the only thing I can say to that.
[SPEAKER_01]: All right, but I think let's just back up because I do think that some of this, the trailing off, the bottom part of this arc, is directly tied to something that was just proposed by the board of peace.
[SPEAKER_01]: This is, of course, this quasi-private sector entity stood up by Donald Trump, supposed to be an alternative to the UN, maybe in some ways, but certainly an alternative to Hamas,
[SPEAKER_01]: Tell us a little bit about this plan and why you think it's a good thing or a bad thing.
[SPEAKER_00]: So, like everybody else, I was initially skeptical.
[SPEAKER_00]: I remain skeptical.
[SPEAKER_00]: I think it's totally normal to be skeptical.
[SPEAKER_00]: We're talking about Hamas after all, they're gonna play all sorts of games.
[SPEAKER_00]: They, they, they're trickries their middle name.
[SPEAKER_00]: That said, I've actually come to appreciate that this could be the beginning of something truly significant, bordering on monumental, significant in that, I mean, I never thought that Hamas would even verbally,
[SPEAKER_00]: agree to the possibility of this armament.
[SPEAKER_00]: From a narrative point of view, I actually think this is just as important as it being an achievement on the security and the tactical and the strategic point of view.
[SPEAKER_00]: From a narrative point of view, Hamas has all said, no, there's a red line, our weapons, you know, I've been using this metaphor of there's no olive oil without olives.
[SPEAKER_00]: There's
[SPEAKER_00]: to see that the organization, especially a week after the announcement came a week after the Ascent of Khalil al-Haiya, to the leadership of the organization.
[SPEAKER_00]: Of course, al-Haiya is someone who's more aligned with the Islamic Republic of Iran, with the hardliners, if you will, he's unlike Khaled Mishal, or unlike Musa Abu Marzu, the more
[SPEAKER_00]: quote unquote the wish or quote unquote pragmatic this is of course and relative terms to Hamas folks say if you're calm down but um the idea being that he signed off ostensibly on this deal I think that that was surprising number two
[SPEAKER_00]: This we saw a shift from, okay, initially we were talking about heavy weapons, the RPGs, the grenades, the, the, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh
[SPEAKER_00]: But what's important about that, the heavy weapons classification is that it does include the tunnels, and I saw reporting by housing and journalists who are very close to Hamas actually say that the tunnels, according to Hamas, the tunnels are mainly in the 70% of the idea of controls because most of the confrontations for which they were preparing for over the past 20 years.
[SPEAKER_00]: are in the parts that are closer to these rarely waters.
[SPEAKER_00]: So even though the IDF controls the ground on the surface and it's clear of how mass underneath, allegedly remains an extensive network of tunnels.
[SPEAKER_00]: So that's important, but then we saw a shift when a few days ago, when Nikolai Madnaugh met with Prime Minister, Nikolai Madnaugh, of course, being the executive of the Board of Peace, met with Prime Minister Netanyahu, and we saw,
[SPEAKER_00]: Shall we say firm?
[SPEAKER_00]: That was a bit more contained proof.
[SPEAKER_00]: Well, a good game proof, gaming proof, because Hamas and Ladnaf was talking about is really with draw, happening in lockstep, with the disarmament of every weapons.
[SPEAKER_00]: But what we saw is actually Israel paid a heavy price to be in control of Gaza militarily in terms of cost, manpower, international reputation, the diplomatically, et cetera.
[SPEAKER_00]: It's not going to forego that just so that Hamas can continue to be in control of Gaza and with tens of thousands of collation accosts and AK-47s.
[SPEAKER_00]: most of which were used to carry out the atrocity on October 7th.
[SPEAKER_01]: I mean, some right arms, light arms was, you know, I mean, yeah, you had, like, these sort of, you know, drones and vehicles that people used to cross over the border, but it was light arms that did most of the damage, maybe along with some RPGs.
[SPEAKER_01]: All right, I want to talk about the Israeli rejection of this
[SPEAKER_01]: Look, Hamas is still arming up.
[SPEAKER_01]: They're still recruiting.
[SPEAKER_01]: They're still training.
[SPEAKER_01]: There are apparently bombs that Israel dropped that didn't explode and they're trying to repurpose those for, I guess, heavier weapons.
[SPEAKER_01]: And there are still some tunnels.
[SPEAKER_01]: You mentioned the hospitals.
[SPEAKER_01]: Those hospitals are still being common deered by Hamas in their areas that the Israeli still can't
[SPEAKER_01]: PR nightmare.
[SPEAKER_01]: Um, so Israel's standing firm right now.
[SPEAKER_01]: I have to think that a lot of this has to do with election season in Israel.
[SPEAKER_01]: You just are not going to watch the current government make any compromise.
[SPEAKER_01]: But I guess my question is.
[SPEAKER_01]: Is is all of this still moving in the right direction?
[SPEAKER_01]: I mean, should Israel?
[SPEAKER_01]: I mean, you know, if you're the Israelis right now, I'm not saying you're BB, but whatever, you're somebody within the military structure.
[SPEAKER_01]: Are you happy about what's happening here?
[SPEAKER_01]: mean, from my perspective, it looks like the Israelis are in military control.
[SPEAKER_01]: They get to continue to squeeze that remaining 30% of Hamas kind of at will, right?
[SPEAKER_01]: Within the Gaza Strip, no one's stopping them from doing this.
[SPEAKER_01]: Give a little bit of political pressure coming down from Aladdin off in the board of peace.
[SPEAKER_01]: But from my perspective, it does look like the Israelis are where they want to be.
[SPEAKER_00]: So it's important to keep in mind that I'm point taken by the way about the unexplored munitions.
[SPEAKER_00]: Though for the most part, Hamas is really only able to repurpose that for IEDs.
[SPEAKER_00]: They're able to reuse some of the materials from the distort building, some of the pipes, some of the electrical wiring, to do a little bit of reconstruction there,
[SPEAKER_00]: very rudimentary reconstruction of rockets, but my point being that there's a very finite amount of weaponry in Gaza.
[SPEAKER_00]: That cannot really be replenished easily if at all.
[SPEAKER_00]: There's no smuggling Hamas' finances are in the gutter.
[SPEAKER_00]: And by the way, yes, I hear that all the time I've been hearing it for two years, I heard it personally from Secretary Blinken.
[SPEAKER_00]: former, yeah, the Secretary of State Lincoln that Hanas is recruited just as many as fighters as it had lost.
[SPEAKER_00]: However, the fighters that we hear about them recruiting right now, their kids.
[SPEAKER_00]: Number one, their boys.
[SPEAKER_00]: Number two, they all have enough AK rounds to actually train them on how to shoot these rounds.
[SPEAKER_00]: There aren't active ranges that they can use.
[SPEAKER_00]: They used to go
[SPEAKER_01]: and travel and they would get that training and then come back and that's what made them more formidable those guys or use every t-spaces in Gaza they weren't training or they really made the near borders but that's a control right precisely so so I just I I invite
[SPEAKER_00]: Folks to be, to put that in perspective because it's not just, I mean, if you want to throw a bunch of meat at the kind of like the Russians are doing at the eastern front in Ukraine, that's one thing.
[SPEAKER_00]: If you want to actually have the kind of fighters that we saw on October 7, that's an entirely different cadre of soldiers.
[SPEAKER_00]: Hamas doesn't have those kinds of soldiers for the most part.
[SPEAKER_00]: all of its leadership, as Adina had that, after the ceasefire of October 2025, Israel continued relentless targeting of Hamas's military infrastructures.
[SPEAKER_00]: So to your point, I do believe that these really military or let's say security establishment feels that it has continued the squeeze on Hamas, but I would caution against seeing that as a potentially perpetual state in which Israel can be
[SPEAKER_01]: There are no permanent victories in this part of the world, my colleague Cliff May says it all the time, only permanent battles.
[SPEAKER_01]: And all right.
[SPEAKER_00]: So that's where I hope that no amount of, I mean, there's a baseline among all the candidates in the Israeli elections whereby even if it's
[SPEAKER_01]: But okay, so the thing that I would say probably represents the other side of the narrative for somebody like Nitsenyao, who I think is going to want to frame this as, hey, we're winning.
[SPEAKER_01]: Country, safer, et cetera, et cetera.
[SPEAKER_01]: Hamas is hanging on inside the Gaza Strip.
[SPEAKER_01]: You've talked about that already.
[SPEAKER_01]: The fact that they still control territory.
[SPEAKER_01]: They're reestablishing themselves as a government.
[SPEAKER_01]: They're providing services,
[SPEAKER_01]: I guess, you know, my question you, we've talked about this in the past.
[SPEAKER_01]: There have been militias that have tried to rise up against Hamas.
[SPEAKER_01]: There are the families and tribes and clans that have tried to stand against Hamas.
[SPEAKER_01]: Are they still trying to do that right now or in that 30% rump state of Gaza?
[SPEAKER_01]: is Hamas fully in control.
[SPEAKER_01]: Is there anything happening there that would suggest that this is an internally dynamic situation that could be used to the benefit of peace in the region?
[SPEAKER_00]: So I do not see anything on the horizon that suggests the Hamulas, the clans, the different militias that have worked with Israel, being able to overpower Hamas or being able to substantially change the facts on the ground.
[SPEAKER_00]: However, what I would argue is an even greater development, and this is something I've been saying for two years.
[SPEAKER_00]: This is something that unfortunately, some remain highly skeptical of,
[SPEAKER_00]: The majority of the population of Gaza are against Hamas, whether it be the consequences of October 7th, whether it be the totality of the 20 years of Hamas' rule, whether it be the arc of the so-called armed resistance narrative and how we could have Hamas literally could have just not existed.
[SPEAKER_00]: And even the corrupt Palestinian Authority, PLO, could have stuck with Oslo and peaceful negotiations.
[SPEAKER_00]: And Gaza would have still had the airport that I flew into.
[SPEAKER_00]: have had a seaport by now, et cetera, et cetera.
[SPEAKER_00]: So I would argue that by the way, the reaction to Hamas's disarmament.
[SPEAKER_00]: I mean, that's where I go back to the narrative side of things, because the narrative warfare is just as important as the tactical or the battlefield warfare.
[SPEAKER_00]: The narrative, the people of Gaza have been the, it's the folks that I'm following, the social media, the Gaza social media, that I'm following.
[SPEAKER_00]: the lighted and furious to see how mass this is basically a soft surrender.
[SPEAKER_00]: Okay, there's time about storing their weapons.
[SPEAKER_00]: They're talking about gradual.
[SPEAKER_00]: This is a defeat.
[SPEAKER_00]: This is a surrender.
[SPEAKER_01]: Okay, all right.
[SPEAKER_01]: So put a pause on that for a second because then comes you and you mentioned this.
[SPEAKER_01]: If Holeo Haya just getting nominated, I don't know, appointed elected.
[SPEAKER_01]: I don't know.
[SPEAKER_01]: It's hard to say that he's elected because it makes it sound
[SPEAKER_01]: So this guy is like in a run loyalist, he's a hard-blind guy.
[SPEAKER_01]: He was purportedly one of the planners of October 7th, right?
[SPEAKER_01]: So you have the defeat that you're kind of describing that they're losing control, they're hated by the people.
[SPEAKER_01]: Um, these rallies have them pinned down, the board of pieces negotiating their demise.
[SPEAKER_01]: And you have a hard-liner that comes in.
[SPEAKER_01]: I mean, I, by the way, I do hate using that term because it, it delineates this,
[SPEAKER_01]: Hamas and ways that I don't think are realistic.
[SPEAKER_01]: They're all hard-liners.
[SPEAKER_01]: Some of them are maybe more pragmatic on the hard-liners spectrum.
[SPEAKER_01]: I think it's absolutely the safer way to put it.
[SPEAKER_01]: But anyway, you have this guy, he's intransigent.
[SPEAKER_01]: He's a militant.
[SPEAKER_01]: He's a fighter.
[SPEAKER_01]: He is supportive of the Iranian regime's war against the United States and the rest of the region.
[SPEAKER_01]: So how does that square?
[SPEAKER_01]: You've got kind of competing forces right now.
[SPEAKER_01]: you would hope that at this moment where they're being asked to negotiate their demise that you would have somebody that was more of a diplomat or something.
[SPEAKER_01]: It seems incongruous to me.
[SPEAKER_01]: So, explain it.
[SPEAKER_00]: But no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no
[SPEAKER_00]: So there could be an element to where he himself at a just a basic human level might actually be registering the calamity.
[SPEAKER_00]: He unlike of what's happening in Gaza as much as he might be overseeing a monstrous horrendous ISIS-like entity.
[SPEAKER_00]: He is registering the calamity of Gaza.
[SPEAKER_00]: I mean, Hamas knows that the people are against it.
[SPEAKER_00]: Hamas knows that Qataris can't support it.
[SPEAKER_00]: through the Strait of Hormuz.
[SPEAKER_00]: Iran is on its back foot, the Hezbollah is isolated.
[SPEAKER_00]: There's no more smuggling.
[SPEAKER_00]: So there are human factors, there are tactical and regional factors.
[SPEAKER_00]: He might very well be registering that
[SPEAKER_00]: This group has plateaued.
[SPEAKER_00]: They've reached the peak, and now is about the managed decline at this point.
[SPEAKER_00]: The on the other hand, this could very well be.
[SPEAKER_00]: And I've seen reports of this.
[SPEAKER_00]: This is why he was not present at Harmonize funeral.
[SPEAKER_00]: But what I've seen is that Hamas was told by the IRGC.
[SPEAKER_00]: to basically buy time by time until the mid-term elections in the U.S. these really elections until potentially the 2028 elections when there could be a democratic president.
[SPEAKER_00]: A lot of time to hold on for safety.
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah.
[SPEAKER_01]: That's breath is long trajectory that I'm just not sure that this guy's going to be able to maintain
[SPEAKER_01]: Well, it'll be interesting to see whether he's able to tread water for this terror group as the vice grip, I think continues to just squeeze.
[SPEAKER_01]: And again, I think it is a political process along with the military advancement, where these really keep moving.
[SPEAKER_01]: Literally, moving the blocks of the yellow zone deeper and deeper into a lost territory, they are pinned down, and I just don't know how they're going to get out of it.
[SPEAKER_01]: Alright, um, I know I got to let you go, um, just briefly give us a plug for your new book.
[SPEAKER_00]: So it's called Hamas and it's 2 million hostages.
[SPEAKER_00]: It's neither an exhaustive history nor a full memoir, but I weave in personal dimensions of my story, growing up in Gaza, living in the Middle East.
[SPEAKER_00]: I trace the roots of Hamas's rise.
[SPEAKER_00]: I give hypotheses for why.
[SPEAKER_00]: There needs to be Palestinian accountability, agency and responsibility within the imbalance of power dynamics.
[SPEAKER_00]: I talk about Gaza, the beautiful memories that I have, the tail end of the optimism of Oslo, as well as the sadness of the finance of the second antifada, Hamas is a scent to power all the way to October 7th, and I deal with the narratives that have emerged since burgeon for a course correction.
[SPEAKER_00]: you can find it on Amazon or Jewish Quarterly online.
[SPEAKER_01]: All right, you guys heard it there?
[SPEAKER_01]: Well, thank you.
[SPEAKER_01]: I might pull it off the team for joining us yet again on the FTD morning brief.
[SPEAKER_00]: Thank you.
[SPEAKER_01]: All right, folks, it's quit and time until Monday that is, but the good news is that FDD.org is there all weekend if you're craving a smart read and don't stop there replace your doom scrolling with smart scrolling by visiting our socials and finally, if you love FDD or even if you just like us as a friend, you can always make a tax deductible donation at FDD.org slash invest reminder, we take no foreign government funding so we couldn't beat more grateful for your support.
[SPEAKER_01]: I think it might be a wild weekend for news.
[SPEAKER_01]: So buckle up, but regardless of what happens, we'll see you first thing Monday.
[SPEAKER_01]: Until then, have a great weekend.
[SPEAKER_01]: I'm Jonathan Chanzer, signing off for FTD.