Middle East Dialogues Tarek Masoud In Conversation With Dan Senor

TITLE: Middle East Dialogues: Tarek Masoud in Conversation with Dan Senor CHANNEL: Harvard’s Middle East Initiative DATE: 2026-04-09 URL: https://youtu.be/82yeTIav9rE ---TRANSCRIPT--- You keep talking about this war as it’s like it’s some kind of disaster.

I don’t think it’s good for America when the Straight of Hormuz is closed or when Dubai and Abu Dhabi are hit with more rockets than Israel is hit with. Iran has been in the business of murdering Americans, conducting terrorist attacks and supporting terrorist attacks all over the world. You have said more to explain why we are in this war than the president of the United States. Before October 7th, Israel was focused on deterrence. And after October 7th, the consensus in Israel from right to left was we’re out of the deterrence business. When we see a serious threat, we remove it. Like kill the leadership. Sure. Like when Naftali Bennett says, “Turkey is the new Iran. Erdogan is dangerous. We got to kill Erdogan.” Now, I think it’s anti-semitism and it’s anti-Westernism. Anti-semitism is the core of it, but I think there’s something broader going on as well. I’m not sure that the people who accuse it of committing genocide in Gaza are all anti-semites. Some of them are looking at the statements of Israeli officials where sometimes it looks like killing a lot of people is the point.

Welcome ladies and gentlemen. My name is Tarek Masoud. I’m the Ford Foundation Professor of Democracy and Governance here at the Kennedy School and I’m the faculty chair of our Middle East Initiative. And it is my great pleasure and honor to welcome you to what I think is the 17th in our ongoing series of Middle East Dialogues. It is also the penultimate one. And we have with us a very special —

Things have been getting progressively better in the Middle East — Well, we have decided, I mean, we’re not great at causal identification but our concern is that the more we’ve been doing this the worse things have been getting, and so — Maybe if we stop, peace will break out. Cutting the whole thing off, right.

And so we’re joined today by Dan Senor, who is really one of our most trenchant and insightful observers of Israel and analysts of the geopolitics of the Middle East more broadly. Mr. Senor is the host of Call Me Back, a podcast largely focused on Israeli and Jewish affairs — a podcast to which I listen quite religiously. It ranks in the top 200 podcasts worldwide. He is also a former American public servant. He was the spokesman for the Coalition Provisional Authority in Iraq. He was a Middle East adviser to Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney. And he’s the author of two really important and influential books. One written in 2009 called Startup Nation, the story of Israel’s economic miracle, and a newer book in 2023 also on the topic of the special alchemy of the Israeli state. So we’re really thrilled to have him here at Harvard to talk about the war in Iran, the US-Israel relationship, Israel’s broader relations with its neighbors, and the problems of anti-semitism on American college campuses and in the United States more broadly. Please join me in welcoming Dan Senor.

So Dan, typically when I have these conversations with Palestinians or Israelis, I start by asking them about their families, in part because I want to remind everybody that people who are talking about this are all people with real personal stakes. I recently learned that your mother lives in Jerusalem. How is she?

She’s good right now because she’s in New York City. She was on, I think, the last flight out of Israel before the war started. She left two weeks ago tomorrow. The 1:00 a.m. flight Thursday night. She lives in a small neighborhood called Baka in Jerusalem. She’s 87 years old. She’s vibrant and she’s resilient. But being woken up by a siren two, three, four, five times a night and rushing into what they call the mamad, a safe room or bomb shelter — during the June war, my sister, who also lives around the corner from her in Jerusalem, had to have conversations with her saying, “No, mom, the fact that you’re tired is not an excuse for not getting out of bed when the siren goes off.” It’s not like the rockets and missiles that land at 3:00 p.m. are more dangerous than the ones at 3:00 a.m. You got to move for all of them. So as the buildup was occurring for this war, we persuaded her to come to New York, and so she’s with us. She’s doing fine.

Well, look, I hope that this war ends soon. Too many people in that part of the world have been subject to projectile attacks from the air. I want to talk to you about this war. If you’ll permit me, I’ll be a little personal. I have an 18-year-old son who’s about to join the Navy, and I think to myself, when you are confronted with having a child who’s going to join the military at a time when we’re engaged in military action, you have to think about the prospect of losing them. If I had lost a son in World War II, I could tell myself a story by which that really was a worthwhile sacrifice — died fighting fascism. It’s hard for me to tell myself the same story about a war like this. I think about Declan Cody, who was one of the first people to die in an Iranian drone attack in Kuwait. Guy was from Iowa. What must his family tell themselves about the reason that their son died? Can you help me construct an account of how this is actually in the American interest and worth the expenditure of American lives?

I will. But before I do that, can I ask you a question? You used World War II as the model of a worthy war. Is there another American military intervention since World War II that you would have felt the same way about?

It’s hard. You were associated obviously with our conflict in Iraq. Thank God I was nobody back then. I actually supported the war in Iraq. Luckily, I was a graduate student and nobody paid attention to a thing that I said. In my view it is not a war worth the expenditure in American lives. In fact, in the wars the United States has gotten into in my adult lifetime, it’s hard for me to identify one that I think was worthwhile. Afghanistan — the Taliban were running it before, the Taliban are running it now. Iraq was a crummy anti-Iranian regime before. It’s a crummy somewhat pro-Iranian regime now. Syria. We’ve been fighting this global war on terror. I live in Belmont, Massachusetts. We have memorials to all the wars. And my view is our defeat in the global war on terror was signaled most dramatically by the fact that 23 years after 3,000 Americans were killed on 9/11, a former member of the organization that committed that great crime against us rolled into power in Damascus and we celebrated it. I don’t know how you would tell any of the American mothers and fathers who lost sons and daughters in those wars that it was worth it. For just about any American under 40 years old, they’d be hard-pressed to point to an example of an American military intervention in their adult lifetimes that went great.

It’s interesting you go all the way back. Do you think the Vietnam war was worth it?

I’m just saying America engages militarily all over the world to protect the United States and advance US security interests. These wars were really messy and really problematic — the Iraq war and the post-9/11 wars. Let me pause on that. For you to make this sweepy like there was this government before the Iraq war and this government after — there was a government before the Iraq war that committed genocide against Kurds and Shiites and used chemical weapons on their own citizens and buried tens of thousands in mass graves. The system now is imperfect, but it is not that.

That’s fair.

Secondly, we fought wars after 9/11 to make sure there was never another 9/11 again. We can debate whether those wars were necessary, but that was why we were engaged the way we were. And the reality is, thank God, there has not been another 9/11 since 9/11. You can make the argument we got a lot for it.

We don’t know. We’d have to adjudicate between my argument, which is I’m not sure the absence of 9/11s was a function of kinetic actions in Afghanistan and Iraq as opposed to better security, better intelligence. But please, explain this war.

You touched some sore spots, I couldn’t let those go unaddressed. Iran has been a serious threat to the US going back to the revolution in ‘79. In 1979 the revolution comes in, takes 63 Americans hostage, over 50 of them for 444 days. Why keep American citizens hostage for a year? In 1983 they bombed the US Marine barracks and killed over 240 Americans. From 2003 to 2011, over 600 Americans killed by these roadside bombs, these IEDs that were coordinated, organized, funded by Iran. So Iran has been in the business of murdering Americans, not just in America but conducting terrorist attacks through Hezbollah and other terror proxies all over the world. The idea that Iran as a regime is not a threat and a menace consistently against Americans and Westerners is disconnected from reality.

Nobody made that claim. They were contained.

You asked me to make the case. So now Iran is murdering Americans. At the same time it is developing a nuclear weapons program and a ballistic missile program —

Destroyed the nuclear weapons program according to President Trump last summer.

Before 10 days ago, Iran’s missile and rocket program, if you look at its range, was within reach of one-third of the world’s population — basically from Paris to Kolkata. For a regime that has hegemonic ambitions, their ability to reach American bases and assets is basically putting a gun to our head. Of the four governments that are a real problem for US interests — China, Russia, North Korea, Iran — three have nuclear weapons programs. Iran is the only one that doesn’t yet.

It was clear Iran wanted one. Take their word for it. They were never saying “we’re going to shut down our ambition.” Steve Witkoff and Jared Kushner, in their negotiations, said Iran had enough highly-enriched uranium to build 11 bombs. In those negotiations when the administration was saying “take yes for an answer, we want a deal, shut down this program” — according to Witkoff, the Iranian negotiator said, “We are not going to concede anything diplomatically that you weren’t able to take out militarily.”

You don’t believe the Omani foreign minister who said on February 27th that the Iranians had committed to not stockpiling?

You should have stopped me at “I believe the Omani foreign minister.” I do not believe him. I think this administration was serious about getting a deal.

It is true that enrichment and stockpiling were an issue. But my understanding is the weaponization program had stopped after 2003. It’s not like they were weeks away from a bomb. My president told me we had obliterated their nuclear program in the summer. So how did we get from “obliterated” in the summer to killing the Supreme Leader?

Let’s break this up. There’s the why — why confront Iran militarily — and the why now. Why: Iran, despite being impoverished and isolated, has had this obsession with a nuclear program they would not make meaningful concessions on. And before October 7th, they were investing in a proxy system in the Middle East.

Which had been demolished.

Largely demolished, but this is a window into — they clearly have this ambition to build both conventional and unconventional capabilities. There were signs they were trying to rebuild their nuclear program. For some reason the regime would not fold. Why won’t the regime let up even when they’re isolated and impoverished?

I don’t know the details, but I know our president told us the nuclear program is destroyed. I know for a fact that Hezbollah and the proxies were destroyed. It doesn’t mean Iran wasn’t a threat. It just suggests maybe we didn’t need to eliminate the entire leadership of Iran and plunge us into a war that is now threatening the entire Gulf. And our president has not articulated a clear rationale. You have said more to explain why we are in this war than the president of the United States.

That’s really why you brought me.

So I guess you can frame it as a “why now” question, but I still think it’s a “why” question. Marco Rubio and Mike Johnson said, “We knew the Israelis were going to hit them, so we had to get involved.” Which makes it sound like we got dragged into this.

If you believe the regime’s behavior is not going to change — there’s nothing between 1979 and today suggesting intention to de-escalate or stop pursuing this messianic ambition —

We shouldn’t jump from the data of their behavior to an interpretation about what’s driving it. It’s a country that wants to be hegemonic. Their interests are not aligned with ours. They’re committed to their own survival at all costs. Everybody is. We had a negotiation that failed. We instantly killed their leadership. What do you expect them to do? Of course they’re going to pop off. If I were an Israeli, my interest is to destroy this regime to make it impossible for them to fire rockets on me. But as an American, we have more encompassing interests. We need to guarantee the free flow of oil. We have major non-NATO allies in that part of the world. This action has resulted in their serious endangerment.

Years of inaction resulted in containment? You think the proxy system they were building was containment? When we had the pager operation against Hezbollah, I heard more from our Gulf allies cheering on what Israel was doing.

I loved the pager operation. Why not that instead of this war that’s threatening Arab cities and Israelis? This was a step that was unnecessary.

Let me articulate Israeli security doctrine, because I think it’s relevant to how American policy is being driven. Before October 7th, Israel was focused on deterrence. We got a lot of players who want to wipe us off the map and we’re just going to deter them all. After October 7th, the consensus in Israel from right to left was: we’re out of the deterrence business. When we see a serious threat, we remove it. That game where things are basically quiet and every few years there’s a little skirmish — that is over, given Israel faced an existential threatening attack on October 7th. Israeli doctrine evolved: we seek out threats we may not be able to deter and remove them.

Like kill the leadership. Sure. Like when Naftali Bennett says Turkey is the new Iran, Erdogan is dangerous, we got to kill Erdogan. First, if I’ve delivered the case for Iran on behalf of the president, I’m not going to now declare Erdogan a marked man. Turkey is a problem, but not the problem Iran is.

If cooler heads could prevail within the Iranian regime, I’m all ears. Haven’t seen it since 1979. When you assess their capabilities and see no change in behavior, given how much American blood they have on their hands — I can’t think of another regime in our times with more American blood on its hands. This has been their obsession. The administration basically said we need to put Iran out of the wreaking-havoc business.

Now the why now. I think there are three reasons. One: January and February was the protest movement in Iran and the unbelievably brutal crackdown — estimated over 30,000 killed. The whole world got focused on the slaughter of Iranians, including the administration. The president made threats and drew red lines. Two: increasing concern about Iran’s missile production capability. Iran was producing missiles faster than anyone in the West or Israel was producing interceptors. At some point Iran can look around and say, “contain me from what?” Three: intelligence that created a surgical strike opportunity — taking out 40 officials, including the Supreme Leader, on a Saturday morning in one hour. A complete miracle they have not figured out how to use Zoom.

Then we’re debating about when. You’d have been just as upset a year from now.

I am frustrated we’re doing it this way. I can imagine a world in which we start hitting the nuclear production, missile production, and drone program. The point is then when we also do this — very on brand for Israelis but not really for us. President Reagan in 1981 issued an executive order saying we don’t do political assassinations. When you assassinate their leadership, you’re starting at the very top of the escalatory ladder, virtually guaranteeing Iranians respond the way they have. I don’t think it’s good for America when the Strait of Hormuz is closed or when Dubai and Abu Dhabi are hit with more rockets than Israel. We want to promote stability, friendly Arab governments who are liberalizing. This puts all of that at risk. Why do you think those governments are not allowing us to launch strikes from their territory? I could see us doing something short of assassination and all-out war.

So you’re okay with my why. You’re even okay with my why now. You’re just — the how is kind of icky.

It resulted in a level of response we wouldn’t have seen if we had done something more targeted.

One way to think about it. Another: if this war is going to be relatively quick and successful from the US perspective — if we meet our objectives with relative speed, it may be because we totally disrupt the leadership and command and control. When you have 40 of these leaders in one place on a Saturday morning and the opportunity to take them all out — does that actually accelerate the speed of this war? Many in the Pentagon argue we’ve completely jammed up Iran’s ability to conduct this war.

You keep talking about this war as if it’s some kind of disaster. I’m not saying it’s not going to be messy or that there aren’t going to be setbacks or surprises. But on balance, what we’ve accomplished so far is extraordinary. I actually think we are making tremendous progress. One of the problematic legacies of the post-9/11 wars is we tend to think of military intervention in a binary way — do nothing or quagmire or endless war.

And you’re saying we have a third way here. We do. And we’re watching it. That third way may be possible because we’ve so disrupted their leadership and command and control. When you say symbolically it was terrible to take out the Supreme Leader, American military planners may say we’ve just made this war a lot more winnable because we’ve injected chaos into their decision-making loop. And if we hope for the Iranian people rising up, the likelihood goes up if they believe the regime is weak and wobbly. Not only are they targeting weapons capabilities — missiles, drones, air defenses — they’re taking out the instruments of the regime’s repression, the Basij, the IRGC security forces. If Iranians see the people who have been doing the killing and torturing getting killed, does that change things up?

You’re not seriously worried about the risk of a failed state? In any military action that’s a huge risk. But I think there’s something in between. It’s worth it? I’m proposing to you a contained Iran where maybe we’re mowing the lawn every few years, avoiding a failed state that becomes a serious problem for decades for our Gulf allies. A failed state and system collapsing and possible civil war would be a disaster and I don’t think we’re ready for that. But the risk from that is lower than what we were facing with a strong Iran given their capabilities and ambition.

You said we’re already in quagmire mode, we’re only a few days in. In the lead-up to the Iraq war we moved about 250,000 ground forces to the region. We’re nowhere near that. We have the equivalent in naval and air assets, and that’s where it ends. We don’t have ground forces. President Trump isn’t going to one day deploy. It took months to move those assets in the lead-up to Iraq. It’s just not happening. I’m not saying you can’t have a really messy situation, but it’s not going to be one managed by American ground forces.

At what point does Dan Senor say “mission accomplished, we’re done”? Give me metrics. Watch the Pentagon press briefings. Daily. General Caine briefs out the progress. The Pentagon briefings are quite good. You can see the systematic effort to take out drone and missile programs, not only the actual missiles and drones but production facilities. Next will be the industrial base supporting production. Then the security apparatus — the Basij, IRGC.

It took Israel 2-3 years to get rid of Hamas, and by some accounts Hamas still hasn’t been gotten rid of. Hamas is an underground militia in a tunnel system. Iran is a sovereign state, and from the air, using sophisticated technology deployed in this war like we’ve never seen, the US has the capacity to do real damage — which you could not do in Gaza.

Do we need an unconditional surrender? Can we declare victory without what President Trump said he needed? Yes. If we seriously degrade Iran’s weapons capabilities, defenses, production capacity, probably the industrial base, and get that 400 kg of highly-enriched uranium — which we think is in Isfahan — out, this will be pretty impressive. Time frame? Weeks? I don’t know. It’s ahead of schedule. I’m not read in enough to tell you if it’s three weeks or six weeks. I would be shocked if we are in this months from now.

Okay, let’s get off this. You co-wrote Startup Nation — it captured something true about Israel’s economic miracle. You are a strong defender of the special relationship between the US and Israel. But it’s clear now in 2026 that fewer and fewer Americans share your view. A Pew survey says about half of Americans have an unfavorable view. 71% of Democrats under 50 and about 50% of Republicans under 50 have unfavorable views. And it’s not just Americans — Jewish Federations of America did a poll in 2025. Only 37% of American Jews identify as Zionists. 14% of Jews between 18 and 34 identify as anti-Zionist. What are these people getting wrong?

Israel is a real country. A normal country. A democracy. In a very dangerous part of the world, under extreme pressure in a way no democracy I can think of has had to navigate. Fighting a war on multiple fronts — the most covered, most scrutinized war in our lifetimes. Maybe the Vietnam war was similar, but there was no TikTok, no Al Jazeera. It’s the first war with all these channels for people to cover it minute-to-minute. Does every decision the Israeli government makes make sense? No. Does that mean Israelis are always innocent? No. No country at war is ever innocent once drawn into defending its survival. But because of this scrutiny, everything gets outsized attention. Israel is a real country that got attacked and is under siege. Are you saying the standard is they have to get everything right? Because if that’s true, you have to apply it to every other country, and you don’t. You hold Israel to a different standard, and that is inherently a form of discrimination. If you say “I’m not holding any country to these standards but this one country that’s faced an existential attack of the most barbaric possible terms” — what is behind that?

Gavin Newsom, governor of California, gave an interview saying Israel was committing genocide in Gaza. What was even more striking is how we’ve become numb to these — “Israel’s committing genocide” is now the talking point. He prefaces it by saying “don’t get me wrong, Israel has a right to exist.” It’s amazing. That has become so normalized that everyone who criticizes Israel prefaces it that way. Thank you, Governor Newsom, you’ve granted Israel its right to exist. What other country do we say that about? Countries that have existed for hundreds of years — you’d never say that. Countries that came to life after WWII, after the fall of the British Empire. These were countries created, we treat them as legitimate sovereign states, and we never say that about any of them. People are viewing the Jewish state as something other.

Anti-semitism. Of course. I actually think it’s anti-semitism and anti-Westernism. Anti-semitism is the core, but there’s something broader going on.

Far be it from me to defend Gavin Newsom, but he’s speaking to Democrats, and a lot of progressives don’t think Israel has a right to exist. It is a constant demand of Israel and its friends — an appropriate demand — that its interlocutors accept Israel’s right to exist. I wouldn’t attribute Newsom — Signaling he is on the side of those who believe the Jewish state is legitimate. He’s a weathervane.

Harvard last year added to our bullying and harassment policy the IHRA definition of anti-semitism, and one of the examples is holding Israel to a standard you wouldn’t hold other democracies. Which I thought was very telling — it wasn’t about holding Israel to a standard you don’t hold Iran or China to. Of course I hold Israel to a higher standard. It’s a democracy, a Western democracy, an ally. I don’t know other democracies engaged in a decade-long occupation of another people. The war in Gaza — I totally think Israel had the right to defend itself. I don’t think Israel is committing genocide. But I’m not sure the people who accuse it of genocide are all unremitting anti-semites. Some are looking at statements of Israeli officials where sometimes it looks like killing a lot of people is the point. There was a former Israeli intelligence official last summer reported by Channel 12 saying “you’ve got to give the Palestinians an etzba — for every one they kill of us, we’ve got to kill 50 of them. Doesn’t matter if it’s children.” Prime Minister Netanyahu’s statement about the Amalekites. He was referring to Hamas, but lots of people think he was referring to all Gazans — and we know what happened to the Amalekites, men, women, children, even their livestock had to be killed. And Israeli critics, like Moshe Ya’alon, who says Israel has become a “leprous fascist state committing ethnic cleansing.” Some of these critics are driven by the same things driving Ya’alon or Ehud Olmert — the war has been conducted with disregard for civilian life.

There’s so much to respond to. I think it’s unfair, when a country’s at war and has within the population a handful of critics of how it’s conducting the war, to cite those individuals. Over 90% of Israel’s population from right to left supported what Israel did in Gaza and supports the war with Iran. Between 315 and 330,000 Israelis fought in the war — as a percentage of Israeli society, higher than Americans that fought in WWII. Tens of thousands of Israelis today have missing limbs, no more eyesight or hearing, severe PTSD. And yet the overwhelming majority of public opinion stands with “yes, we had to fight this war, warts and all.” So some officials having gripes — some are political critics of Netanyahu. I don’t think Newsom and those who represent where he’s at are the same as those who’ve been fighting with Netanyahu politically for decades. Ehud Olmert has been fighting with Netanyahu for decades saying the same things.

I might have Israeli friends who think this. Bring them to the Kennedy School and get them on stage.

Let’s stay on Newsom. I don’t want to dwell. I think he’s representative of something. He’s a finger-in-the-wind politician. This is where the center of gravity in the Democratic party is right now. It’s not where the center of gravity is in the Republican party. There’s a separate thing going on there.

The whole Tucker Carlson wing is going — Tucker Carlson inveighing against this war, and President Trump has not blinked. Not a Republican member of Congress has blinked. There are Republican primaries right now — Texas, North Carolina, Arkansas, upcoming in Florida — where candidates are as critical of Israel as Newsom. They’re all losing their primaries. In this entire House Republican majority you can point to two members of Congress with this kind of rhetoric. Marjorie Taylor Greene, she’s gone. Tom Massie is in the middle of a primary. What’s going on among Democrats is a much bigger problem. I’m much more alarmed by it.

Do you think Zionism is racism? No. I think Zionism is a form of nationalism, as legitimate as any other. In 1975 there was a UN resolution calling Zionism racism. Over 70 governments voted for it. This was after Israel had fought defensive war after defensive war. It was before the first Intifada, before the first Lebanon war. Yitzhak Rabin was prime minister. So what we’re seeing today is just — this has been going on for a while. It was not the mainstream of American opinion or the Democratic party.

Let me offer another hypothesis. I was born in the US but grew up in Saudi Arabia with all the standard views about Israel, the “Zionist entity.” I remember the first time I saw Abba Eban on television. I was shocked and depressed. “Oh my god, this is who the Israelis have — speaks the Queen’s English, brilliant, admirable.” Who did we have? Arafat, Mubarak. In the 1970s Israel was Rabin, Meir, Dayan — admirable, Western, center-left. Today Israel is much more legible as a Levantine country. After October 7th you had that Druze general Alian, who went on Twitter looking like a WWF fighter saying “Hamas has opened the gates of hell.” Very different from the Israel of Abba Eban. How much do you think the American unease is driven by Israel transforming into an Eastern right-wing country rather than the Western center-left country —

We’re getting into real pop psychology here. You started — you said they were all anti-semites and I’m trying — there’s a reason they call it the oldest hatred. It’s very persistent. Interestingly, in the days after October 7th, I naively thought the world would rally to Israel. I really did. I remember telling my wife on a walk two days after, “Now the world’s going to see what Israel has to deal with.” She said, “You’re delusional.” The world was pouncing on Israel days after October 7th. That’s perplexing. I would have thought the outrage would have been directed at those massacring Jews, and instead the outrage was directed at Jews for objecting to being massacred. Israel was roadkill on October 8, 9, 10 — 1,200 people slaughtered, people mass raped. The most dangerous geopolitically — Israel is now going to be perceived as a paper tiger in the region. Because all these countries before October 7 thought of Israel as a military and intelligence juggernaut, and now they’re roadkill. That is partly why so many critics of Israel and Jews pounced. The pouncing begins when Jews are weak. In October 7, 8, 9, when Israelis were picking up body parts from the Nova festival and pulling dead children out of kitchens in kibbutzim in the south, Israel looked pathetic. That is consistent with anti-semitism — the pouncing, the pile-on typically occurs when Israel looks weak. And you’re basically saying it can’t all be anti-semitism. There must be something else. And you’re saying it’s Israel’s fault.

No. Basically Israel bears some responsibility for these negative attitudes. I also think there’s something else going on in terms of attitudes toward the West and Western civilization. When I’m asked how to respond to a friend very critical of Israel, my response is always: before we have a conversation about how to respond, what do they think of America? They’re always confused. “Well, I asked about Israel.” I say, “How do they feel about America? Do they think the original sin is the founding of the US? Are they 1619-project? Or do they think that on balance, warts and all, America has been the greatest contributor to the advancement of mankind?” You will find a lot of overlap among the Americans quick to demonize Israel and quick to never give America the benefit of the doubt.

On the progressive side that’s true. It doesn’t cover the other side — 50% of young Republicans now view Israel unfavorably. Those are people who think America is the greatest thing since sliced bread.

On the right, many have much more of a transactional relationship with foreign policy. The case has not been made to them. What the United States gets out of its relationship with Israel. Take Admiral Cooper, the head of CENTCOM — he described the US and Israel as the two most powerful air forces in the world. One of those countries has a GDP 50 times the size of the other, and he talked about them as equal players. Israel is a capable ally on steroids. I actually think there’s no other ally America has that can do what Israel can do in terms of military security, technology, cyber capabilities.

(Audience Q&A)

Hi, I’m Avi Eisen, student here at the Kennedy School. Question on Lebanon. Last night Morgan Ortagus was here and said the Lebanese government and armed forces are not doing enough to dismantle Hezbollah. Do you think the US government can do more than just point at Lebanon and say “try harder”?

Thank you. My question is about nuclear weapons. In 1992 Netanyahu said Iran was 35 years away from a nuclear weapon and repeated it at the UN in 2009. In 2002 he said in front of the US Congress that Saddam Hussein’s ultimate goal was nuclear weapons. He said hostile regimes cannot be allowed to have nuclear weapons. My question is: what is a not-hostile regime for Israel in the Middle East? Will a force like the UAE or Saudi Arabia one day be able to get a nuclear weapon like Israel has, or will it never be allowed?

On Lebanon, it’s fluid. Israelis explain it: we have to figure out Lebanon strategy, but so much will be driven by the outcome of this war with Iran. Absent a robust regime fueling chaos, dealing with Hezbollah becomes a lot easier. It’s not never — it’s that Iran is the focus. Iran has been a concern of many players beyond Netanyahu. The first person to seriously talk about dealing with the Iranian threat was Yitzhak Rabin. One of the rationales Rabin gave for the Oslo accords was “we got to focus on Iran — that is the biggest threat, and the more we are bogged down with this Palestinian issue, it is a distraction from dealing with Iran.” He said that in the early 90s. This is a consensus position from right to left in Israel. Yair Lapid, leader of the opposition in the Knesset. Yair Golan, leader of the Democrats party, far to the left of Lapid. They’re out there publicly defending what Israel is doing with Iran. Some are critical of Netanyahu because they’re worried he’s not going to finish the job. This was not a “boy who cried wolf” situation. The IAEA also had real concerns. A bipartisan consensus in Israel and a bipartisan view in the US.

This is as much for the professor as for both of you. I was struck by your saying US policy to the Middle East should be a “mow the grass” approach, which Israel has now totally rejected. In terms of why now, the issue is Lebanon — you said Hezbollah was pretty much eliminated in June, but clearly looking at the number of missiles, they have not been eliminated.

And Dan Kitsik from the medical school. If Tarek’s fears come to fruition and we end up in a quagmire, are you concerned there will be blowback against Jews not just in the US but worldwide — that the Jews dragged us into this war? The kind of thing Hitler was saying before WWII.

Yes. If the war drags on, the US doesn’t meet all its objectives, there are major setbacks, American public opinion dramatically turns on the war — I do worry Israel will be blamed.

Can I ask — one thing we did not talk about, because you had a bad moderator, is the Palestinians. Another theory for why many Americans, including young American Jews — half the people who accuse me of being too much of a Zionist are young co-religionists of yours — are souring on Israel is the occupation and how long it’s gone on. It’s in the American interest, Israeli interest, and the interest of the US-Israel relationship that the occupation get resolved in a way that provides dignity and self-determination for Palestinians. Am I wrong about that?

I feel Israel needs to reach some kind of accommodation with Palestinians as much today as I have for a very long time, going back years. Not primarily out of compassion for Palestinians — I think we should obviously have compassion — but this accommodation is about the soul of Israel, the soul of Israeli society. Israel does not want to live the totality of its enduring life in this situation. It’s in US interest because if you’re going to get any broader normalization, dealing with the Palestinian issue is necessary. So we agree. Show me how. The Rabin process did not work, the Sharon approach did not work, the Olmert process did not work, the Barak process did not work. Now layer on October 7th. The overwhelming majority of Israelis from right to left saying “it’s a sentiment — it’s not a plan, not a proposal” — that Israel needs to deal with the Palestinian issue. In a world in which Israel just went through October 7th, it’s harder for most Israelis to see a path. The Knesset had a vote about four or five months ago — one would have thought it was some fringe group on the right that introduced a resolution saying there will not be a Palestinian state. Out of the 120-member Knesset, over 90 members voted for it. The Likud party represents 32 seats, which means all the opposition parties that would form an alternative government came out against a Palestinian state.

There’s a theme in this conversation, Dan, where you take the fact that the consensus of Israeli opinion is in a certain direction as evidence of the rightness of that position. Why isn’t the response “this is a problem — Israeli public opinion is as much an obstacle to peace as Arab public opinion”? My view: there are two indigenous peoples living in that territory. To be against a Palestinian state is as egregious in my view as to be anti-Zionist. I don’t know why I’m the only person on the stage who thinks that.

Why does only one indigenous people have the right to self-determination? Because you expressed a sentiment which I’m sympathetic to. But this is a serious policy school. I’m open to ideas on how to get from here to there. The majority of Israelis are open to ideas. But just telling us “therefore these two and a half years have been a mess and we need a Palestinian state” —

I’m talking about what US policy should be. My view is US policy should be to promote a Palestinian state. We can fight this war with Israel, support Israel in self-defense against Hamas, but ultimately US policy has to be strongly in support of a Palestinian state. You don’t think that?

This was unlike any war Israel has fought. The worst war before was the 1973 Yom Kippur war, where Israeli soldiers were killed in open land areas defending borders. On October 7th, people murdering Israelis were in their kitchens. It’s not just a legacy wound. These people live the distance from where I live as we from downtown Boston. Real security implications.

100%. The amount of pain and trauma both peoples have suffered is incalculable. 60,000 Gazans, if not more, have been killed. This war has exacted a massive human toll. But from the American standpoint, I don’t see an alternative to two states for two peoples. One concern about US foreign policy in the last few years, particularly in the Trump years, is that we’ve given up on that. We paint the Palestinians as if it’s all Hamas, but it’s not all Hamas. There are Palestinians who want two states. Did the Israelis or Americans help them when Salam Fayyad was prime minister in Palestine? In 2017 you did an interview with Nikki Haley — she was crowing about how she stopped a Palestinian from getting appointed to a position at the UN because “I wanted the Palestinians to know they don’t get a free lunch.” The Palestinian was Salam Fayyad — the greatest Arab politician, frankly the greatest politician, a true devotee of coexistence, two states, non-violence. He was going to be appointed for a position that had nothing to do with Israel — special envoy for Libya or something. And the American administration blocked him purely because he’s Palestinian. That does not seem like the policy my country should be taking. They’re mainly Muslims and Jews, but they’re in a Catholic marriage. There’s no divorce from this day to the end of time. They’re going to live together, and we need to be the marriage counselor.

This summer at the UN there was a convening and resolution to formally recognize a Palestinian state. In that resolution and those governments voting, this resolution did not call for Hamas to be thrown out of Gaza and disarmed. The Saudi-French plan did, but this was the one overwhelmingly voted on, and it did not call for the hostages to be released. The UK position was “there should be a Palestinian state, and we’re not commenting on hostages or Hamas out of Gaza.” The majority of Palestinians want normalcy and dignity. But the message of that resolution was: Hamas is not an obstacle to Palestinian statehood. Hamas is midwifing Palestinian statehood. By voting for this resolution, they legitimized the idea that Palestinians get a state and October 7th is their independence day and Hamas is the one that made it happen. There are over 100 hostages in the tunnels of Gaza. If you start looking for ways to delink Palestinian society from Hamas, you could get real progress. You should be happy with what the Board of Peace and Jared Kushner and Steve Witkoff are working on — they are basically invested in a real economic polity in Gaza to give Palestinians an opportunity to live some semblance of a normal life.

Dan, Tarek, this was very engaging. My name is Andrew Donahue. I’m a political scientist here. I’m worried about a shift towards authoritarianism in Israel. In many countries where democracy backslides — Hungary, Poland — we see politicians attacking the courts. That’s what we’ve seen in Israel for many years. Are you worried about a movement towards authoritarianism under the Netanyahu government?

I did not agree at all with the way the Netanyahu government went about judicial reform in early 2023. But the role of the courts in Israel, the role of the judiciary, the lack of a constitution in Israel — complicated stuff that has created tension on left and right for a long time. Objectively speaking, I think the judiciary in Israel is way too powerful relative to elected officials. The way judges are chosen — basically the Supreme Court chooses itself. There have been efforts over the years to address this. Netanyahu thought he had a mandate and was like a freight train to tackle this issue. In a healthy democracy he got stopped. He got stopped even though he had the majority in the Knesset. That has not gone through. In those other countries when leaders are racing towards reform efforts like a freight train and consolidating power, they don’t get stopped. In Israel they got stopped. Not me making a blanket defense of every aspect of Israel’s political system, but lumping it with those countries is apples and oranges. There’s going to be an election in Israel between now and October. I think the outcome will be a pretty broad-based government, far more inclusive than we have seen.

Hi, my name is Ry. I’m an Israeli at the college. I want to ask about the pro-Palestinian movement, the tide of pro-Palestinianism in the US. As an Israeli, I came two years ago exactly on October 7. I’ve had the chance to speak with many pro-Palestinian members of the movement, presidents, heads of — what troubles me most is that you’ve tried to paint it as something driven from a strong moral imperative, but in all the conversations I had, none spoke about peace, about a two-state solution. There was no single protest calling for a two-state solution, calling for Hamas to concede and return the hostages. How could one decipher this phenomenon without concluding there is something deeper there — anti-semitism, maybe anti-Westernism?

I agree with them. (Masoud) I’m not talking about people celebrating the taking of hostages. I’m talking about the kind of person Dan ridiculed who prefaces their criticism of Israel by declaring they are not anti-Zionist — “I believe Israel has a right to exist, but I don’t like what’s happening there.” When we talk about student activism — President Trump says Harvard is an anti-Semitic far-left institution. In my own view, no, Harvard and American universities are just institutions populated by people predominantly between 18 and 22 who are full of the spirit of righteous indignation who see the world in moral absolutes. Much of this —

I don’t express that to other human rights violations in other governments. Here Dan, Israel is our close ally. It is a democracy, and there’s a sense that what happens at Harvard could influence decision-making in Israel. Nobody’s going to influence decision-making in Damascus or Tehran. Our government is already putting the squeeze on those places. With Israel, because our country has close relations with it, that’s why these protests are focused predominantly on that country. Of course there are anti-semites. But in 1948, Menachem Begin came and visited the United States. There’s a letter in the New York Times 1948 — three years after the end of WWII — signed by Albert Einstein, Hannah Arendt, a rabbi named Jesurun Cardozo (the first rabbi to perform high holiday services in Spain since 1492). They were objecting to Begin’s visit because the movement he was associated with, his party at the time (the Freedom Party), they said, would be familiar to anybody acquainted with fascism and Nazism. Three years after the end of the Holocaust. Do I think Einstein and Arendt and this rabbi were driven by anti-semitism? No. They were driven by the fact that they didn’t like the Deir Yassin massacre. Similarly, for most of these kids we teach, are they driven by the world’s oldest hatred? Many of them are your co-religionists.

Not many. Some. I think you’re overstating the numbers. There’s a tendency — including on this campus where anti-Israel rallies always featured one or two Jewish speakers to open the rally, and then those were the only Jews at the rally. Like “see, Jews are with us.”

When we label people criticizing the conduct of a country at war as partaking of the world’s oldest and vilest hatred, we foreclose opportunities to talk to them, to educate them. This whole series was driven by my feeling that the people who wrote that statement after October 7th saying “we blame Israel for all the unfolding violence” really don’t understand what’s going on. Let’s bring a variety of views here so we can educate the community.

A lot of them were KKK members. I mentioned the first lady of New York City liking posts in the days after October 7th referring to the mass rape hoax. This wasn’t “I don’t understand and I’m uncomfortable with America’s allies.” This was a level of dark delegitimization of a people trying to survive.

When student activists are tearing down posters of hostages — unconscionable. There was a movie, October 8th, where they interviewed someone doing this. The person said they felt highlighting the hostages was being done to justify killing Gazans. One of the Jewish women activists putting the posters back up said, “Okay, I want to have that discussion with that person.” She felt “we are finally talking about an issue that deserves to be talked about.” That was a noble sentiment.

I want to end on this. I want a world where we can argue about all of it — Israel, Saudi Arabia, Iran. These issues have torn our country and our campuses apart. How do we get to a place where we as Americans can have these arguments in a knockdown-dragout way — sometimes you win, sometimes I win — but we both look at each other and think “that’s my countryman”? Is that possible?

Of course. Standing on one foot. What’s happened in higher education in the United States, not just at Harvard but generally — two problems. There are two inputs. One: the students you admit and what they’re looking to get out of the campus experience. Are they looking for a real dialogue or to build an encampment? Are they looking for a polarized existence where they’re in their own little world and demonize everyone who thinks differently, or do they want to be part of a real conversation? University admissions departments can choose how they select. The other input is the faculty. What happens outside the classroom after October 7th, the encampments, all fine, but there’s also what’s happening inside the classroom. That’s a much tougher problem to solve. Students you can play with the dials year to year. The faculty is a much bigger problem. Faculty get lifetime employment in many cases and they have this worldview. I don’t entirely understand where it comes from. They have very few checks on their ability to pass on or indoctrinate that worldview in the classroom. What I’m more concerned about on elite college campuses is not what’s happening outside the classroom — I actually think Jewish life at places like Harvard is very strong right now, vibrant Jewish life. What worries me, not just for Jewish students but for all students, is how these issues — Western history, Western civilization, the classics, American history — how those topics are being taught inside the classroom. That’s a much harder problem to fix. Without addressing that, you don’t get what you’re speaking to, because a lot of the most interesting conversations should be happening in the classroom, and I worry they’re not. The oxygen in many cases is being sucked out of the room, or viewpoints are being suppressed because of the tone a tenured professor can set.

This tenured professor definitely feels — I wasn’t singling you out. No, I feel this was one of the most interesting conversations we’ve had in this setting. I’m thrilled you were able to come, and the only thing I will ask is that you come back, because I only got through a third of my questions. Everyone, please join me in thanking Dan Senor.

This has been a presentation of the Middle East Initiative at Harvard University’s John F. Kennedy School of Government. If you enjoyed this conversation, please consider sharing it, clicking like, and subscribing to our YouTube channel. To learn more about Harvard’s Middle East Initiative, please visit hks.harvard.edu/middle-east. Thanks to the Kennedy School and the Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs, and thank you for watching.