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00:00Dan, I don't know what you're hearing this morning, but I checked in with some sources
00:03in Jerusalem, and they were at the beach this morning. They've been told that possibly this
00:0724-hour warning timeline for more strikes has been pushed back, and one of the reasons is
00:13this agreement with Hamas. So can you tell us what's going on there and if you think that's
00:17impacting the timeline? Well, if your sources, when they're not wearing bathing suits or wearing
00:22military uniforms, it's worth pointing out that the beach is only about a 12 or 15-minute drive
00:27from military headquarters in Tel Aviv. Presumably, they could be dressed and back in action at short
00:33notice. The Israelis say they have been poised to resume their war on Iran if asked to by the
00:39United States or if attacked directly by Iran. So beach or not, I think the Israelis, if indeed
00:46these leaked reports to American media are true, would be ready to pitch it in very short order,
00:50and we shouldn't rule out a resumption of that war. Significantly, I think these reports have
00:56emerged just a couple days after the Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu returned from a much-watched
01:02visit to Washington. There was some speculation at the outset that sparks would fly between him
01:07and the U.S. President Trump, given their quite public divisions over the course of the war in
01:12recent weeks and months. There was certainly no evidence of that during the meeting, and we may
01:16discover, if these leaks prove true, that if anything, they were there to decide jointly on the next
01:22course of action on the resumption of joint military action against Iran. It's worth remembering
01:26that previous meeting on February 11th came just over two weeks before that war was launched
01:31on February 28th. Anything can go, but as you noted in parallel, there has been a development,
01:38declarative nonetheless, but still dramatic, in Gaza. Gaza is the ground zero of this multi-front regional
01:45war that Israel's been waging for two and a half years. Arguably, the United States would not now be at
01:49war
01:50with Iran, were it not for Hamas, that Iranian-Palestinian ally attacking Israel on October 7th,
01:572023, and unfurling that regional conflict. It now appears Hamas has declaratively, nominally,
02:05agreed to disarm. There is a bit of a hedging to that statement. Nonetheless, it's a significant
02:11step forward. It's being held as such by international mediators, by the International Consortium,
02:17known as the Board of Peace, that's meant to implement President Trump's vision for post-war
02:23reconstruction and reconciliation in Gaza and between Gaza and Israel. That's definitely worth
02:28watching, though. The Israelis have been quietly expressing misgivings. We'll be watching tomorrow
02:33when Netanyahu convenes his cabinet to see if there's a formal acceptance of what's being called
02:38the roadmap into the Trump peace plan. We'll get back to what the president is calling an historic
02:43agreement here in just a minute, Dan. But I want to stick with the visit that Prime Minister Netanyahu
02:47made to Washington. You were along on that trip as well. And I should say, concision was the name
02:51of the game in terms of official readouts of that meeting in the White House. But Prime Minister Netanyahu
02:55did speak to ABC News afterward. Let's take a listen to what he had to say just about what he
02:59and
02:59the president discussed. He's got basically three options. One, to indeed succeed in making a deal.
03:05Two, to continue the blockade. Three, to take military action. Anything that will produce
03:12the end of Iran's nuclear program is what we want. That's our common goal. We actually analyzed
03:18all three possibilities. And I thought we did it in an open way between friends and allies.
03:24And it's his decision. Dan, we hear the Prime Minister there underscoring the friendship
03:29between him and the president of the United States, talking about the analysis that the both of them did
03:33during that meeting in the White House. How closely aligned are they? You mentioned that
03:37cabinet meeting taking place tomorrow. Your sense of what's likely to come about it vis-a-vis this
03:42conflict? If you're referring to Gaza, Netanyahu is in a bind. He's up for re-election in some
03:49three months. This Gaza plan calls for an Israeli withdrawal as part of the decommissioning of Hamas
03:57arms. And the interim plan, the problem with the Gaza plan as published by Trump in October of last
04:03year, when the ceasefire in Gaza was achieved, was that the only real detail was over the return
04:09of hostages, the increase in humanitarian aid, and the cessation of major combat. Everything else was
04:15very much bare bones, broad brush, if you like. Now we're approaching the small print. And the small
04:19print is meant to bring together sides that really don't want to be brought together. That's especially
04:25true for Hamas. It's an existential situation for Hamas. It faces destruction one way or the other,
04:30and it's trying to salvage what it can. So it's saying it won't withdraw, or I should say, sorry,
04:35won't give up its weapons without an Israeli withdrawal, without an Israeli commitment to
04:39Palestinian statehood. All of that is in the Trump plan. The question is scope and sequencing. Hamas is
04:44trying to front load this deal, its agreement to give up some of its weapons, heavy weapons, not small
04:50arms at this point, to major concessions by Israel. That really isn't borne out by a reading of the
04:56Trump plan. But if you, and certainly not by statements by the US president himself, he said
05:00a withdrawal would follow a decommissioning, a demilitarization of the Gaza Strip. Nonetheless,
05:06everyone involved here, I imagine even the Israelis, so Netanyahu may not want to say that publicly,
05:10don't want this effort to die. It is significant. They don't want it to wither on the vine.
05:15So Netanyahu has to thread the needle between keeping this initiative going, keeping Hamas on the road
05:21to disarmament, while not alienating his right-wing allies and his electorate with obvious moves that
05:28could be construed as Israeli withdrawal, Israeli redeployment, and Israel not itself receiving the
05:34weapons that Hamas plans to give up. Under the plans published this week, Hamas would effectively
05:39put them in escrow, decommissioning meaning they'd put them in storage, out of reach officially,
05:44but under the control of a future recognized and verified and approved Palestinian administration.
05:49I think many Israelis had images of piles of rifles being picked up in the middle of the
05:54street, loaded onto the back of Israeli trucks. That's not going to happen.
05:59Dan, are you going to get your take on this? Because as you mentioned, Israel has not officially
06:02commented on this deal yet. The other thing that stands out to me is you mentioned sequencing.
06:07There is a bit of a sequencing here because you get this Gaza announcement after you had this
06:13Saudi nuclear agreement get agreed to, and then you had President Trump come out and say they
06:17can't have the nuclear deal until they normalize relationship with Gaza. The Saudi crown prince has
06:22said he can't do that until there's a deal for the Palestinians. Do we think this is all tied in
06:27that all of a sudden we're getting a push on normalization here or a solution for the Gaza issue?
06:33It well could be. There are people in the U.S. administration, there are people in the Israeli
06:37government who are thinking big picture. Again, I think the immediate need or the immediate desire of
06:43any of the people, the stakeholders, would be to achieve actual peace or an abating of these
06:47hostilities. But there would be a political payoff, an electoral payoff. As I said, Netanyahu is up for
06:53re-election. The U.S. president is looking at midterms in November. If he could bring, you know,
06:58a ceremony, a signing ceremony, a handshake ceremony on the White House lawns to those elections,
07:04it could help him. Though invariably such elections come down to domestic policy,
07:09it wouldn't hurt him, given that he really is adrift in this Iran war, at least to be able to
07:14hold up a peace deal, to counterbalance that in terms of the imaging of his foreign policy,
07:19his handling of foreign affairs. So there may be something tied together here. I think what we've
07:23seen with Trump is he does like coming out with the major declarations of achievements,
07:28even though they haven't been fully signed onto by all the parties. I think he likes to will the
07:32achievement into reality by basically, should we say, corralling people publicly into either going
07:39along with what he's declared or publicly defying him. That may be the case in Gaza when it comes to
07:44the Saudi nuclear deal that you cited. The Israelis weren't happy with its announcement. They felt
07:49that they weren't properly consulted on at this stage. As you noted, the U.S. president said after
07:54the announcement, some hours, I think a day later, that the Saudis would have to recognize Israel,
07:59much come down to whether they will actually be able in the future under this deal to enrich
08:03uranium. That is not an immediate part of the deal. That's what all sides will focus on.
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