Brian Lehrer: It's The Brian Lehrer Show on WNYC. Good morning again, everyone. We'll return now to the Israel-Hamas war. We'll focus specifically for this segment on the questions facing the United States with respect to the war, how much and what kinds of involvement should the United States have with two leading journalists, Ishaan Tharoor, who covers US foreign policy for The Washington Post and Robin Wright, columnist and contributor for The New Yorker, who, among other things, is a leading expert on Iran. Her books include The Last Great Revolution: Turmoil and Transformation in Iran.

With Americans as well as Israelis among the hostages, this is definitely an immediate US interest foreign policy challenge very directly right now. It spreads out from there to a number of complicated policy decisions facing the Biden administration and Congress, if Congress can ever start doing business again with the turmoil in the House leadership. Robin Wright and Ishaan Tharoor now on the risks and benefits for all involved and the options from a US foreign policy perspective.

Among Ishaan's recent articles is The Washington Post news analysis headlined, "Biden hoped for a quiet Middle East. So much for that," and among Robin's recent New Yorker piece is an almost prescient one from last month headlined, "Freedom for five Americans doesn't end flashpoints with Iran." Robin and Ishaan, it's awful that it's under these circumstances, but welcome back to WNYC.

Robin Wright: Thanks, Brian.

Ishaan Tharoor: Thank you, Brian.

Brian Lehrer: Robin, I'm going to dive right in on your September article that I just mentioned. Remind people of the prisoner exchange with Iran just recently that freed five Americans.

Robin Wright: The Iranians and the United States through intermediaries swapped five prisoners, each country releasing five. United States also issued a waiver on South Korea, which allowed it to pay back Iran $6 billion it owed Tehran for oil that it had purchased. The United States did not give any money to Iran, and the funds that were released were deposited in a bank in Qatar, which will monitor all Iranian requests and handle all Iranian requests for use of those funds for humanitarian purposes.

Let me just say, as someone who's covered all the dramatic hostage seizures since the takeover of the US Embassy in 1979, and all the hostage seizures when I lived in Beirut, that the human drama that comes out of taking a human life, physically, while they're still alive, can drag on for far longer than a military conflict. This gives Hamas extraordinary leverage in what it demands. Remember that Israel once engaged in its own swap for one Israeli soldier named Gilad Shalit and in exchange released almost 1,100 prisoners. With more than 100 lives, maybe even up as many as 150, the price exacted for their release is likely to be very steep.

Brian Lehrer: The premise of your article is that the prisoner swap that just took place would almost certainly not stop a tactic used by Iran for more than four decades, you write. Now, in fairness, we don't know the extent or nature of Iranian involvement with these terror attacks by Hamas, but do you have reason to believe that there's a line from freeing American hostages one month to taking new ones such a short time later in the next?

Robin Wright: No, I think one of the problems with Iran and its proxies is that it has proven effective to take hostages, particularly Westerners, because it can exact some price. One of the huge problems is also the militias in the Middle East are not conventional armies, and they're willing to engage in activities that violate every basic international law on warfare. In the end, as the United States learned in Afghanistan and Iraq, fighting militias, even if their ragtag militias that are poorly armed, have minimal training, is much tougher than fighting a state where you know where the address is, what the goals are, how to engage in any kind of diplomatic resolution. My fear is that this war between Israel and Hamas gets very messy, and has multiple layers to it, not just on the ground, and also the big question about what happens the morning after. I think that's where there's not enough thinking right now.

Brian Lehrer: We'll get to that angle which you wrote in another New Yorker article, but Ishaan, what can you report that the Biden administration is doing with respect specifically first to the American hostages currently being held by Hamas?

Ishaan Tharoor: Well, forgive me. My details and understanding of what's happening in those negotiations is not particularly specific. There's a lot happening in the background. We know that other governments are also involved using what connections they have to Hamas to try to negotiate something. The Qataris, the Egyptians are playing a role in some of these talks, but Hamas has been saying that as long as the Israeli air strikes are pounding Gaza, we're not really going to move on this. It's a very tense game that's being played out right now all the while Israel is wrapping up for what looks to be a really major and protracted ground defensive into the Gaza Strip where these hostages are located. It's pretty fraught right now.

Brian Lehrer: Is the challenge of the hostage-taking different for the US administration than if it was only Israelis, if there were no US nationals who were seized, or is it the same policy challenge?

Ishaan Tharoor: I think the scale of what's happened, we're not talking about one person, we're talking about more than a dozen. We're talking about over 100 Israeli hostages. The whole context is unprecedented vis-à-vis Israel's own turbulent history of conflict. On one hand, it's a staggering challenge, on the other, the fact that it's such an unprecedented moment perhaps gives the US a bit of space to rally around Israel and press forward.

Brian Lehrer: Listeners, your calls are welcome with questions or comments on the US role, and what it is or should be in the new Israel-Hamas war. 212-433-WNYC, 212-433-9692 for Ishaan Tharoor from The Washington Post and Robin Wright from The New Yorker. Robin, this is perhaps the most pressing challenge, the hostages, ahead of longer-term goals of preventing future such attacks because the hostages are being held right now, and we know Hamas is very willing to kill people. With the diplomatic channels opened through the prisoner swap, could Iran actually be a key to securing their release or should we assume they're not interested in playing any role like that?

Robin Wright: Well, Iran has been complicit in everything that Hamas has done. The US intelligence, again, just today said their initial indications are that Iran did not play a direct role, but since the late 1980s when Hamas was formed, Iran has played a role in financially supporting, supplying arms, diplomatically backing, and coordinating among its so-called Axis of Resistance. Iran is playing a role in this conflict, even if indirectly, in having helped create this and train this extraordinary militia.

Iran may play some background role. This is where you get into Qatar and Oman and Egypt all weighing in and saying, "Iran, use your influence on Hamas to release the hostages." This is very complicated because the United States or Israel, they don't have diplomatic relations with the militia in Gaza, and so figuring out how to negotiate this is going to be much more complicated than negotiations over the five Americans who were held in Tehran's Evin Prison.

Brian Lehrer: Ishaan, your article in The Washington Post headlined, "Biden hoped for a quiet Middle East. So much for that." In that article you write that Biden had hoped to keep the Middle East at arm's length as president preferring to focus on China and then the invasion of Ukraine once that began. What did arm's length look like before this?

Ishaan Tharoor: Well, I think the Biden administration came to office really charged up about pursuing the so-called foreign policy for the middle class, reorienting American strategic interests around a sense of its place in the global economy as opposed to the two-decade legacy of the war on terror that has accumulated over these years. Then, I think, at the same time they also recognized that the Middle East was really complicated and made all the more complicated by certain decisions by the Trump administration. I think first and foremost when you look at what they saw in Israel, they saw a situation where the ghost of the two-state solution was barely floating around at this point. They saw a situation at that time when Benjamin Netanyahu was out of office and there was a Motley coalition government that they could potentially work with, but they embraced the process the Trump administration had begun of these normalization deals, not necessarily because they were that invested in normalization deals per se but because it seemed like a vehicle through which the Middle East would sort itself out.

The administration official specifically told me once that we think the Middle East is sorting itself out. You could see that say, in the way Saudi Arabia and Iran achieved the rapprochement that was facilitated by the Chinese. That was a bit awkward in Washington, but if you talked about administration folks, they didn't mind so much. Then you could see that the situation in the Israelis and Palestinians was deeply complicated.

You saw eventually when Netanyahu came back to power, an extremist right-wing government really inflaming the situation in the West Bank, but as far as the Biden administration was concerned, it didn't feel like it had the leverage it could really pull to change Netanyahu's behavior or the behavior of Netanyahu's allies. He didn't want to expend the political capital that would be necessary to push them partially because of domestic politics here, and it was focused on China, and it's focused on the war on Ukraine, and the headache and the intractable challenge of figuring out what to do with this moribund peace process between Israelis and Palestinians. That was not something that this administration wanted to take on at all, and now it has to live with the consequences of that.

Brian Lehrer: Yet, whatever leverage they did have, they seem to be expending toward these normalization deals that you were just describing, such as the one that was in the works with Saudi Arabia. In fact, I want to linger on this for a minute. I want to play a clip of a moment on this show last Thursday, so that was two days before Hamas's attack. My guest was former New Jersey congressman and former Obama Assistant Secretary of State for Democracy and Human Rights, Tom Malinowski. I asked him about the deal Biden was brokering for Saudi recognition of Israel. My question as you'll hear, asks if the Palestinian question was being marginalized too much in that possible deal. This clip begins with my question.

If the United States is pushing the Arab countries to normalize with Israel, to form a unified front against Iran, which is I think, one of the US main foreign policy concerns in that context, but it leaves the Palestinians without those Arab countries to withhold normalization until something happens for the Palestinians. Maybe that's not the morally correct choice either for the United States that ignores one of the key interests there too much, perhaps, people are alleging. What's your view on that?

Tom Malinowski: Saudi Arabia should have recognized Israel decades ago. If Saudi Arabia were to recognize Israel now, that would be great. If it recognized Israel alongside a resumption of the Israeli peace process with the Palestinians, a resumption of the two-state solution, that would be even better. It would be a huge breakthrough, a huge win for the Biden administration if they could broker that kind of deal. The problem is that the Saudis are also demanding something else, they are demanding, as part of this deal, a defense treaty with the United States that would be akin to what we have with our NATO allies, with Japan, with South Korea, a legally binding promise that the United States will defend Saudi Arabia forever, if it is attacked.

Brian Lehrer: Tom Malinowski on last Thursday's show. Again, that was before Hamas's attack. Robin Wright, all Malinowski said there was it would be even better if a two-state solution was brought back into the equation as part of brokering a deal for Saudi recognition of Israel. Do you know if it was in the way that deal was actually shaping up?

Robin Wright: The United States senior US officials even said over the weekend in a briefing with some of us that the deal was still a long ways off. I think Tom Malinowski was absolutely correct when he said, it was not just rapprochement between Israel and Saudi Arabia, which would have been the biggest breakthrough in peace because Saudi Arabia is the guardian of Islam and Islam's holy places, but it will also would have required that the United States basically fight any wars, or provide all protection for Saudi Arabia indefinitely as we do with NATO countries, and that's a non-starter for an autocratic regime in a volatile region.

I think that aspect of it was problematic, even while the first part a deal between Israel and Saudi Arabia would have been a wonderful achievement for the Biden administration. Again, there are a lot of assumptions about how close it was, and I don't think it was imminent, I think that the Biden administration did look at this as a way to extend the Abraham Accords. Basically, if Saudi Arabia agreed to recognize Israel, a lot of other Arab countries that have resisted so far would also have fallen in place, but the cost would have been high for the United States indefinitely.

Brian Lehrer: Would it have done anything for the Palestinians' aspirations for a state, or would it have marginalized that issue and made it even less relevant?

Robin Wright: That's one possibility. I just don't know that it was going to lead to anything tangible. I've covered the peace process now for 50 years, and every time you think you're close to something, it falls apart. Again, if as part of the deal, there had been an acceptance of the future of a Palestinian state, but remember, the Palestinians weren't included in this deal. Again, it would have been the next step. It's a little bit like the United States doing a deal on the Taliban, but not including the Afghan government. Those kinds of arrangements when they're not all-inclusive, have a propensity to fail.

Brian Lehrer: Ted in Brooklyn, you're on WNYC with journalist Robin Wright from the New Yorker and Ishaan Tharoor from the Washington Post. Hi, Ted, thank you for calling in.

Ted: Hi. I have something very controversial, but if you were to look at the history of-- I'm talking about just the plight of the Jews here. If you're looking at the history of how the Jews are persecuted or captured or whatever, in this case, kidnapped, during Auschwitz and some of the other concentration camps, they were interviewed afterward and asked if the allies could have come in and bombed those camps to prevent future death.

Almost I think unanimously everyone said they would have sacrificed themselves for that. My controversial view is that while it is absolutely horrible and everyone wants their loved ones to come home, I think we have to not negotiate with the people who has kidnapped these people, not at all, and call them collateral damage, but for the future of the plight of the Jews going forward, you have to almost not accept any negotiation because it just incentivizes kidnaps in the future.

Brian Lehrer: Ted, thank you very much. Ishaan, that of course, is a heartbreaking scenario to contemplate, but I think Ted does put his finger on a very real policy dilemma for anyone in a hostage situation. Do you incentivize more hostage-taking by giving the hostage-takers anything in a negotiation for the hostages' release? Is the Biden administration grappling with that dilemma in any particular way that you know of?

Ishaan Tharoor: I think obviously, these are very pressing and emotional considerations that are on the plates of a lot of policymakers. I think even more so among for the Israelis, of course. The Israelis have already set the precedent as Robin mentioned earlier with the episode surrounding Gilad Shalit, one person for hundreds of Palestinian prisoners. I think Hamas appears to want a similar ratio of releases because there are hundreds of Palestinian prisoners kept for various reasons in various contexts in Israel. Also, we are in a scenario that is fast-moving, and the suggestion that Israel or whoever should be bombing and pummeling the Gaza Strip accept the collateral damage of hostages and civilians there. That's a pretty controversial statement. I don't know if there are others that would necessarily agree with that.

Brian Lehrer: Let's take another call. Alice in South Orange, you're on WNYC. Hello, Alice.

Alice: Hi, Brian. Very, very long-time listener, very nervous first-time caller. Anyway, in thinking about how to deal with the hostage situation, why not set up a negotiation whereby the Israelis can provide food, water, and electricity for a certain amount of time each day or for a few days or for a few hours for a certain number of hostages released. It would put Hamas in the situation of, "Do we take care of the innocent Gaza residents or kill more Jews?"

Brian Lehrer: Alice, thank you very much. Well, Ishaan, that raises another whole moral question, which is, could the US even contemplate, should anybody contemplate using the withholding of food and water as a bargaining chip for even something as right as the release of hostages? Is anything like that remotely under consideration? We know that Israel is cutting off food and water and electricity to Gaza, they said so.

Ishaan Tharoor: Whether it's a part of a consideration for this, I don't know. We know as a fact that the electricity is essentially out. In most of Gaza, hospitals are short on supplies. Some are unable to function at this point. Hundreds of thousands of people in Gaza have had to leave their homes and are taking shelter in various places, including in these really over-crammed and under-equipped hospitals.

The capacity for Gazans to leave the strip is non-existent at this point for a range of reasons. The crossing into Israel has been destroyed. The crossing into Egypt is shut and being bombed by the Israelis. The scenario in Gaza is horrifying. It's one of the most densely populated places on earth. It's two million plus people in this narrow strip, half of whom are children and most of them were not even alive when Hamas essentially captured Gaza in 2007.

The acceptance of the suffering and misery that's about to be inflicted upon them many would say is a part of what's the underlying conditions that have fueled grievances and fueled this conflict for so many years.

Brian Lehrer: To that point, I want to play a clip of President Biden from his speech yesterday. Obviously, he was expressing nothing but solidarity with the Israelis, but he also did raise this, that he said he told to Israeli Prime Minister Bibi Netanyahu.

President Biden: I told him, "The United States is experiencing what Israel is experiencing. Our response should be swift, decisive, and overwhelming." We also discussed how democracies like Israel and the United States are stronger and more secure when we act according to the rule of law.

Brian Lehrer: Robin, how do you hear that portion of Biden's speech yesterday? Is he warning Netanyahu against acting within the laws of war? Is he asking him, what's the relationship there and what do you think Biden wants?

Robin Wright: In the past when we've had these skirmishes or smaller skirmishes between Hamas and Israel, the White House has said in strong language, they want restraint by everyone. You didn't hear that in President Biden's speech yesterday. I think there's a deep concern in Washington about how this war could degenerate into something that is such a pure bloodbath. You've had over 2,000 that have been killed on both sides of the divide already, and how many more will die down the road?

I think he was talking to both movements or both sides when he talked about or mentioned the rules of war. Again, it's very striking that he did not call for the kind of restraint and allowed and encouraged Prime Minister Netanyahu to act with force and decisive decisiveness. I just want to comment about the hardships. I was based in Beirut in the early 1980s and lived under the siege in Beirut when Israel invaded. In some ways, the militias know this is coming, and they look at it as a means of rallying public support. Hamas has about 20,000 fighters in Gaza, according to various estimates but this is a community of 2 million people, and not all of them support Hamas.

This is a moment that under difficult conditions, Hamas may be hoping that it can recruit more fighters or mobilize more public opinion behind it. Remember, Hamas is playing a longer game than just this fight, just this war.

Brian Lehrer: What game do you think it is playing? Does it actually even have any policy goals or is it just bloodlust and nihilism?

Robin Wright: In 1988, shortly after it was formed, Hamas issued a covenant and it has very absolutist language about not recognizing Israel, eliminating the Israeli state. I think that it is still determined to do that and feels, given the history since 1988, as much of a commitment today as it did then.

Brian Lehrer: Ishaan, after Biden's speech yesterday, the National Security Advisor, Jake Sullivan, took questions from the press. I watched that briefing. One of the things he talked about was the deployment of a US carrier group to the region. He said specifically that it's not for Hamas, it's to prevent other actors, other countries, or non-state actors from getting involved. Have you done any reporting on what exactly the purpose of that deployment is?

Ishaan Tharoor: I think, it's on one hand, a show of solidarity and support to these essentially what will be a pretty unfettered Israeli offensive. Yes, there is a recognition that when these conflicts explode that there are other actors who are primed to get involved, specifically Hezbollah in Lebanon. We've already seen some clashes on Israel's border with South Lebanon on Israel's border. Then, as we know, Iran and its proxies are arrayed against Israel in Syria and Iraq as well. There is a clear desire that they don't get involved in any particular way.

The Israelis have spent a long time in the last decade frequently targeting Iranian assets and proxies in Syria and probably will continue to do so. The US is signaling its presence there because it doesn't want to see this expanding arc of instability although its capacity to control that is in question. Remember that Syria itself is a pretty active theater. The US is dealing with a very complicated conflict there where you have Turkey launching drones against US allies. You have the Russians still there.

There is a complicated set of theaters. It was interesting that the Turkish President, Erdoğan, was perhaps the most outspoken world leader when the news of the US carrier group emerged. He was very concerned about its presence and that hints at the broader complexities that are surrounding all this.

Brian Lehrer: One more call. Alan in Brooklyn, you're on WNYC. Hello, Alan. [phone beeps] I guess we lost Alan, but I'm going to summarize what I think he told our screener because we've been talking about Biden in this conversation about US response, but there's also Congress. The caller, Robin, seemed to be saying Democrats are playing Putin's game by setting up Israel against supporting Ukraine. Any Republicans who are reducing funding for Ukraine, citing funds for Israel are playing Putin's game. That's a little confusing.

I did see the New York Times columnist, Tom Friedman, on TV this morning say something kind of similar. He said Vladimir Putin is watching with great interest because if the US and potentially more US weaponry is focused on Israel, then Ukraine won't have as much of what it needs as it would without this. In the meantime, Robin, Congress without a speaker can't act. Do you agree with what I read of Tom Friedman's analysis?

Robin Wright: I cover foreign wars. I try to avoid American wars. We're in a terrible position at the moment when it comes to, how do we deal. I think the broader argument about can we help both Ukraine and Israel and what are the larger stakes in the geostrategic sphere, I'm not sure that the military needs of Ukraine and Israel are exactly the same. We're talking about very different size of territory, very different equipment that's needed. Short term, I think we can provide what's needed. The bigger question is long-term. Does the divide in Congress actually polarize an issue in domestic politics in a way that makes it difficult for the US to help two allies when the stakes are so huge?

The bottom line of what's happening worldwide today is that we're seeing a real transition here. We're seeing the disassembling of what was the traditional order. When you put it in a larger context, both of these conflicts, you have to think about, how does this settle out? What are the ideas? Who are the powers that prevail in the end? The stakes here are far larger than the future of Ukraine, the future of Israel. It's really the future of ideas, political systems, democracy, traditional alliances, and so forth. This is the beginning of a lot of questions about the future of the world.

Brian Lehrer: Ishaan, I'll give you the last word for you who covers US foreign policy explicitly. Congress or the House, I should say, may or may not elect a new speaker for today. Are there implications for the US response to the situation in Israel right now of this vacancy?

Ishaan Tharoor: I would not overstate it. I think right now the US has a pretty easy role insofar as it's rallying behind Israel offering a show of unity. It's very easy for any Washington politician to do. The big questions, as Robin alluded to, are, if Hamas is defeated, even after this war ends, the fundamental issue of what happens between the Israelis and Palestinians, how do you reckon with the absence of a Palestinian state with the absence of Palestinian rights?

Those are challenges that all US politicians, the majority of Congress have put their heads in the sand about for decades or for years. That needs to be addressed if there's going to be any actual peace.

Brian Lehrer: Ishaan Tharoor, foreign policy correspondent for The Washington Post and Robin Wright, contributing writer and columnist for The New Yorker and Joint Fellow at the Woodrow Wilson Center and the US Institute of Peace. That's our conversation for today on US foreign policy choices with respect to what's going on in Israel and Gaza now. Thank you both for joining us.

Robin Wright: Thank you, Brian.

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