Brian Lehrer: It's the Brian Lehrer Show on WNYC. Good morning, everyone. Robin Wright from The New Yorker is back with us. Her latest article, written almost right after the October 7th terrorist attack looked already to what happens in the long run, and that's what we'll focus on mostly in this conversation even as specific events are obviously taking place. We'll touch on a few of those too. Robin Wright, columnist and contributing writer for The New Yorker is also a joint fellow at the Woodrow Wilson Center and the US Institute of Peace. She is, among other things, a leading expert on Iran which is relevant to this.

Her books include Sacred Rage, The Wrath of Militant Islam, The Last Great Revolution, Turmoil and Transformation in Iran, and other books. Robin, thanks for coming on again. Welcome back to WNYC.

Robin Wright: I'm always happy to have these conversations with you, Brian.

Brian Lehrer: In your article, you quote counterterrorism expert, Bruce Hoffman, from the Council on Foreign Relations, saying unlike other confrontations in previous decades that followed a pattern of death, destruction, and negotiated cease fires, this one seems completely unpredictable. Can you describe the pattern he was referring to first? Israel and Hamas have had shooting wars before, as we know.

Robin Wright: Yes, several times. Usually, the pattern is the Hamas organization fires rockets and missiles into Israel. Israel responds with airstrikes, sometimes brief ground assaults, and then [unintelligible 00:01:41] and Egypt engage in diplomacy to bring about a temporary ceasefire, with the emphasis on temporary, knowing that the basic issues have still not been resolved.

This time, we see both sides all in. Hamas has engaged in atrocities that are unprecedented in terms of the Arab-Israeli conflict in the 21st century. Israel has said it's going to destroy Hamas, its leadership, its arsenal, its command post, and its ability to govern in Gaza.

Brian Lehrer: The question of a ceasefire, which is how these previous encounters ended, is becoming a source of political disagreement. The UN Secretary-General, Antonio Guterres, called for a ceasefire this week because of the humanitarian crisis. The UN said on Tuesday, for example, that a third of the hospitals in Gaza are not functioning anymore because of damage or lack of fuel. The UN says Gaza could totally run out of electricity today.

Israel insists a ceasefire would basically allow Hamas to win by using the people of Gaza as human shields. There's a moral question here. How many innocent Palestinian civilian lives is it moral to take as so-called collateral damage in the process of dismantling Hamas in order to accomplish the moral goal of protecting Israeli civilians from Hamas terror attacks that purposely target civilians? I don't expect you to have the answer, but maybe you can characterize who's making those decisions and who's trying to influence them.

Robin Wright: Well, Israel claims it is hitting just military targets, but many of the Hamas facilities, personnel, their arsenals are in or near civilian areas and so collateral damage is widely expected. I think that you've asked that one of the most important questions that will haunt Israel down the road as they assess what has happened or what will happen in Gaza. The death toll, according to the Palestinians, in Gaza is 7,000. We haven't even seen the beginning of the ground assault yet. There's--

Brian Lehrer: As President Biden and others have pointed out, we also can't take Hamas's numbers as real. By the same token, we know that a lot of civilians are getting killed no matter what the number is.

Robin Wright: Yes, and we've seen pictures of it. I think this is one of the great questions, the morality. I think it haunts everybody who knows anything about the region, and especially those who live on the ground there. I'm sure it haunts some Israelis too. This is the great quandary. How do you deal with an adversary? How far do you go?

The United States engaged in both Iraq and Afghanistan in acts that led to civilian deaths that were investigated, and the Pentagon conceded that it had killed civilians. Again, unintended collateral damage, but the fact is civilians always die in conflicts. I've covered every war, revolution, and uprising in the Middle East, and I've witnessed it firsthand.

I think one of the bigger questions, really, is how does the death toll, how does the destruction play out in figuring out what's next, and the issue you brought up first? What is the public sentiment? Israel does not want to govern Gaza. It has tried that once, it failed and it withdrew and pulled out '21.

The idea that the Palestinians would embrace or accept Israeli governance long-term is a non-starter but there aren't many alternatives. The idea of transferring Gaza to the government in West Bank I think is a non-starter too. They split politically. I just don't think that there are viable alternatives out there at the moment. I'm hoping that Israel is thinking about this, but as I said those of us who have followed this for a very long time don't see many good options down the road.

It's a little bit like the United States going into Iraq and thinking it could put a US-educated Iraqi leader in who had no support on the ground, or the US hand-selecting the leadership in Afghanistan after the ouster of the Taliban. It didn't work.

Brian Lehrer: Well, is it clear to you what the Israeli military campaign is designed to accomplish? If the goal is to wipe out Hamas's military infrastructure and ability to carry out another October 7th, what does that actually mean they have to change?

Robin Wright: That's the best question, Brian. What is winning? What is peace? What is the solution? What is the alternative? I don't know that Israel has the answers when senior military officials have been asked, what's next. They concede they're still sorting through that, but that the first mission is to destroy Hamas and then see what's left or what's viable.

This is where getting in and eliminating an enemy may not ensure that the enemy doesn't evolve into something else. We saw that play out in American experience when in Iraq, we saw Al Qaeda emerge. It had not been in Iraq before. We saw a branch Al Qaeda of Iraq. We killed its leadership, and it went on and became the Islamic State of Iraq. We killed its leader, and it evolved into the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria, and captured a third of Iraq and Syria. Now the caliphate is gone now, but ISIS is still a factor and it has franchises now across three continents.

This again is, what do you achieve? What dangers are there down the road that an idea evolves, a movement evolves, that there's such alienation within the society of an adversary that you don't solve the basic problem? This is why every war has to have a political end. That's what I don't think any of us can see. What is the political outcome of this war even if Israel manages to physically eliminate the infrastructure, the personnel, and the arsenal of Hamas?

Brian Lehrer: Based on that history of what the United States may have learned from its experience in Iraq, does President Biden have a vision of how this should end that he's trying to influence Prime Minister Netanyahu toward?

You just mentioned one of the great terrible ironies of the Iraq war. Supposedly, the US went in there because Saddam Hussein had some vague links to Al Qaeda, which is who attacked us on September 11th. Really, there was no Al Qaeda in Iraq. It was only after the US toppled Saddam Hussein and created that chaos that Al Qaeda was able to get a foothold in Iraq. That's a great tragic irony that came out of what on one level was a good thing, top-belaying a murderous, even genocidal dictator, Saddam Hussein, but we see what came next.

Biden says Israel should learn from the US's experience in Iraq. Is it clear to you what he thinks they should learn, meaning what they should actually do?

Robin Wright: Well, the White House, and I've been involved in several briefings by senior officials, have said over and over, "Look, Israel has a right to defend itself and to deal with its adversary." At the same time, the administration has also emphasized the need to get humanitarian aid to the Palestinians who have moved into the safe zone in the south, or the so-called safe zone. Of course, the US would like Egypt to open up the gate at Rafah so that many of the Palestinians can leave. Egypt doesn't want to do that because this is an immigration issue like the United States faces. It doesn't want to end up responsible for potentially hundreds of thousands of Palestinian people who are already refugees from other parts of what had been Palestine.

There are not many easy solutions here, but I think one of the things the administration has tried to do is ease the momentum to give time for people to think through what's next to deal with the humanitarian crisis because it's becoming increasingly grave.

A Western media outlet reported that there are over 500 women who were expecting to give birth and hospitals can't take them. The Palestinian Red Crescent is distributing kits to help women and families deliver at home. This is where these kinds of images and numbers, when we know what the true fatalities or casualties are out of this war, I think this is what is going to sway public opinion. Not just among the Palestinians, but across the region, and potentially in large parts of Europe, there is concern about how do you solve this problem that has lingered with us since 1948.

Brian Lehrer: For you as an Iran expert, the extent of their involvement, and we know about that government's religious extremism, like Hamas on one level is a religious extremist group, Iran's involvement has been a matter of speculation since day one. One piece of reporting this week from the Wall Street Journal says some of the Hamas fighters who invaded on October 7th received specialized military training in Iran. What's the best evidence to your eye about Iran's involvement or what Iran wants out of what this has started?

Robin Wright: A number of things. First, there is no question that Iran is complicit in everything that Hamas, and Hezbollah, the Houthis factions in Yemen, and the popular mobilization forces in Iraq, everything they do. Do they direct every action they take? Not necessarily, but they have trained their senior leadership. They meet with them constantly. They provide arms funding. There's no question that Iran is complicit in this.

Now, one of the really interesting things is that all of Iran's proxies did not launch an attack on Israel at the same time. Yes, Hezbollah has engaged in firing rockets and missiles across the border, but it has a far larger arsenal than Hamas does and could do far graver damage. If both Hamas and Hezbollah had fired their arsenals, launched ground assaults and by air, Israel would be in much more serious trouble on both its southern and northern borders.

Then if you throw in the Houthis who are some distance away in the Gulf, and either the pro-Iranian militias based in Syria and then in Iraq, you could have a conflict like we've never seen in the Middle East, and they haven't. Iran's proxies have probed clearly not only against Israel, but against US forces in Syria and Iraq, but it could do far greater damage.

Now, some experts believe that Hezbollah will get more involved once there is a ground assault, but that it does not in principle want to get sucked into a conflict with Israel because it would have to blow its arsenal, blow, its [unintelligible 00:14:06] militarily, and it has its own agenda.

Hezbollah and Hamas are allies. They don't always coordinate. They are part of something known as the Axis of Resistance, which is orchestrated by Iran's revolutionary guards. Lebanon is in its own terrible state where the value of the currency is plummeted by as much as 90%. It fluctuates. The state is a failing state, has had trouble forming governments. The infrastructure has deteriorated. It has one catastrophe after another.

Hezbollah may know since it runs for parliament, since it is a political player too, that it cannot afford for its own future to lose what it has and alienate the Lebanese population. A lot of these calculations, trying to game it, figure it out, is really interesting that we haven't seen more. I think the Iranians will probe continue, or their proxies will probe, will go potentially go after other US targets in the region.

The US has 900 forces in Syria and 2,500 in Iraq. They're devoted to trying to contain expansion of ISIS there. The danger is that somehow there's some incident, there's some flashpoint, there's something that changes the dimensions of this war and brings other forces in. We are at a precipice. We're not leaning over to the point that we're destined to fall, but we are at a precipice.

Brian Lehrer: By the way, The New York Times sites even much larger numbers of pregnant women in Gaza right now. The number that they publish citing the UN is 50,000. Obviously, there's a crisis there of pregnancy and childbirth.

Let me end on a gender-related question. There have been protests in Iran this year, big protests over the laws restricting women's freedom and other rights. We just talked a few weeks ago about how the winner of the Nobel Peace Prize this year was a woman who's an Iranian dissident. Is Hamas like Iran or like the Taliban, is another example, in how it forces conservative religious roles on women and violence against women and other extreme strict conservative religious rules, or are they mostly about fighting Israel and their internal governance is less extreme in that respect?

Robin Wright: Each Islamic society is different, and there couldn't be two more different societies than the Taliban and Iran. In Iran, women are members of Parliament. They're members of Cabinet. They've had a female vice president. They've won two Nobel Peace Prizes film awards at Cannes. Women Drive. They're the majority of the population in universities. In Afghanistan, women aren't allowed to go to high school and college. There's just profound difference. Have to wear burkas and so forth.

In Hamas, it's been-- I've been to Gaza many times and I'm not forced to wear a headscarf. Women have options. It is a conservative society, and many people, older generations opt to cover their heads, but not everybody does. Again, we tend to impose stereotypes if they're conservative or they're radical or they're militant, that this is the way of life.

Women are active in Gaza as they are in the West Bank. Palestinians are very well educated generally. West Bank, there's more opportunities for women. I don't think you see the same strictures that you do elsewhere. Again, I warn everybody against stereotyping every Muslim in the Middle East.

Brian Lehrer: Good to point out those specifics. Robin Wright, contributing writer and columnist for The New Yorker and joint fellow at the Woodrow Wilson Center and US Institute of Peace, thank you very much.

Robin Wright: Thank you, Brian. Always great to be with you.

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