Speaker 1: You're listening to the Buck Sexton Show podcast, make sure
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Speaker 2: Welcome to Buck Brief, everybody, very special guests on this
Speaker 2: edition of the program. We are joined right now by
Speaker 2: Bernard Hudson. He spent twenty eight years in the CIA's
Speaker 2: Director of Operations and retired as the Chief of counter Terrorism,
Speaker 2: where he headed the agency's global response to terrorist threats.
Speaker 2: He retired in twenty seventeen served as a fellow at
Speaker 2: Harvard University as is in the international drone industry. Now, Bernard,
Speaker 2: honored to have you.
Speaker 3: Here, sir, great to talk with you.
Speaker 2: Buck hey, senior brother from Langley, if you will, I had.
Speaker 2: I did a short stint there myself a long time ago.
Speaker 2: It was an interesting place.
Speaker 3: Even a short stint is a long time.
Speaker 2: It felt like it, I will say at the time.
Speaker 2: So we should talk offline about some of that another time.
Speaker 2: So Bernard, you're you're very well placed to bring your
Speaker 2: expertise in your background to this issue of what's going
Speaker 2: to go on now in terms of the Israeli fight
Speaker 2: in Gaza. What are your expectations? How long will this
Speaker 2: last What kind of tactics are we going to see?
Speaker 2: Just sort of walk us through how you think this
Speaker 2: is going to play out in the days and weeks ahead.
Speaker 1: Yeah, great questions. So I think the Israeli response is
Speaker 1: going to be going to be based on three things
Speaker 1: that failed on the seventh of October. The first thing
Speaker 1: that failed was deterrence. The second thing that failed was
Speaker 1: advanced warning. The third thing that failed was forward defense
Speaker 1: at the border. All three of these were things that
Speaker 1: Israel's national security strategy.
Speaker 3: Has always depended on.
Speaker 1: They need to have a sense in the minds of
Speaker 1: their enemies that attacking Israel calm comes with an inordent
Speaker 1: amount of costs. That obviously failed on the seventh of
Speaker 1: October when Hamas launched the greatest attack against Israeli civilians.
Speaker 3: It's ever, really, frankly, ever happen.
Speaker 1: And Second, the Israelis have always placed a great amount
Speaker 1: of faith in their advanced warning and their intelligence services
Speaker 1: and their security services. Something has gone terribly wrong with
Speaker 1: that process that I am sure the Israelis are looking
Speaker 1: at trying to fix. And then third, they have to
Speaker 1: figure out and overcome a failure of forward defense defense
Speaker 1: at the border. A small country like Israel can't trade
Speaker 1: space for time. They've got to defend forward. They've got
Speaker 1: civillians located on all their vulnerable border points. So what's
Speaker 1: probably going to happen over the next few days is
Speaker 1: the Israeli defense forces and their security services are going
Speaker 1: to attempt to put together the best plan that they
Speaker 1: can to reach into Gaza, almost certainly with a ground
Speaker 1: invasion of some sort that will be sustained long enough
Speaker 1: to root out what in the Israeli defense forces minds
Speaker 1: would be the ability of hamasd ever launched any type
Speaker 1: of right like this for a number of years coming forward.
Speaker 1: The very brutality and scale of what happened on the
Speaker 1: seventh of October takes off the table realistically a moderated
Speaker 1: response by the Israelis or a response in which they
Speaker 1: would opt to take two or three months to ramp
Speaker 1: up their capabilities. There'll be enormous pressure under the net
Speaker 1: Nyah for the net Yahu government to do a maximalist
Speaker 1: response in as short a time as possible.
Speaker 2: What does that maximalist response look like? I mean, are
Speaker 2: we at a point now where Hamas leadership has to
Speaker 2: be either captured or killed across the board. I mean,
Speaker 2: what is a maximalist response from the perspective of net
Speaker 2: Yahoo and the Israelis given the terror attack that Israel
Speaker 2: has just suffered.
Speaker 1: I think a minimum it includes destroying hamas as, the leadership,
Speaker 1: its middle level cadres of personnel and staff, its support networks,
Speaker 1: and doing all of this, frankly in a physical space,
Speaker 1: especially for an American audience that is very very small.
Speaker 1: Gaza is barely bigger than two Washington, DC's two and
Speaker 1: a half million people, but you're already seeing, with the
Speaker 1: amount of air strikes and artillery strikes going on inside Gaza,
Speaker 1: a very different scale of an Israeli response. But I
Speaker 1: think that response is not going to be so much
Speaker 1: focused on how much infrastructure they destroy, but the human
Speaker 1: infrastructure of Hamas and the.
Speaker 3: Support networks that allow it to operate.
Speaker 1: And I think that will take probably at least several
Speaker 1: weeks for the Israeli defense forces and their security services
Speaker 1: to locate, find, fix, and finish those type of targets.
Speaker 2: What do you think about what Hesbola is likely to
Speaker 2: do inn Lebanon here, facing the Israelis with all the
Speaker 2: missiles that they've got stockpiled from the north. Do you
Speaker 2: think that there's a high likelihood that they could become
Speaker 2: an active combatant in this as well, or do they
Speaker 2: probably see the Israeli responses as not worth it.
Speaker 1: I think that's the biggest question in the mind of
Speaker 1: Israeli security service personnel probably going forward over the next
Speaker 1: two weeks. What is the likelihood that Hasbala would feel
Speaker 1: it has to or want to join in the fight
Speaker 1: against these ready defense forces in the north. Absolutely, Hebala
Speaker 1: has more than enough capability and rockets and missiles to
Speaker 1: cause enormous damage in northern Israel. But the Israelis have
Speaker 1: a great deal of counter force and counterstrike capability as well.
Speaker 1: I'd say, you know, the problem right now is that
Speaker 1: I think the Israelis have very little confidence or it's
Speaker 1: going to take while to re establish confidence in knowing
Speaker 1: what their enemies are about to do or might do.
Speaker 1: That will tend to push them towards assuming a set
Speaker 1: of worst case scenarios and build responses towards that.
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Speaker 2: MyPillow two point zero now, Bernard. The Iranian hand in
Speaker 2: this has already been reported on Wall Street Journal and
Speaker 2: other sources, and also Hesbalah and Hamas have basically said
Speaker 2: Iran was involved in the planning of this, So it's
Speaker 2: pretty clear that that's the case. Do you do you
Speaker 2: think that there's a chance that Israel may escalate and
Speaker 2: go directly after Iran with targeted strikes against personnel's what's
Speaker 2: your sense of the likely Israeli response to Iran's hand.
Speaker 3: And all this.
Speaker 1: I think it would be very It would take a
Speaker 1: lot of leaps of faith to believe that Iran didn't
Speaker 1: have anything to do with this. Iran is the most
Speaker 1: important benefactor and patron for Hamas for Hamas operatives. To
Speaker 1: pull off an operation of this size without telling Iran
Speaker 1: would have risked their entire support from Tehran. So I
Speaker 1: think there's ample evidence, and I think more evidence will
Speaker 1: come out over the gncoming days about their hand in this.
Speaker 1: I think the first order of business for the Israelis
Speaker 1: will be re establishing to terms Visa VI Hamas in Gaza.
Speaker 1: Longer term, I think they'll turn their attention to what
Speaker 1: would be the proper response to the Iranians. I think
Speaker 1: in this there'd be an active conversation between them and
Speaker 1: their Western allies, especially the United States, as to what
Speaker 1: the American appetite for that might be. And certainly, you know,
Speaker 1: with the current White House, which has taken a much
Speaker 1: more accommodationist view towards Iran than you know, most administrations have,
Speaker 1: I think that would be a very complex discussion between
Speaker 1: those two governments.
Speaker 2: What are Iranian goals right now visa VI, it's support
Speaker 2: for Hamas and hesblah, and just in the region, what
Speaker 2: are the Mollahs trying to achieve?
Speaker 1: So it's easy to forget how ideological at the very
Speaker 1: top the Iranian regime is. They really do believe in
Speaker 1: their revolution, they do believe in the ideology that underpins it,
Speaker 1: and they've carried out a set of activities over decades
Speaker 1: that are completely in line with that philosophy, which is
Speaker 1: push their brand of Islam, their brand of politics into
Speaker 1: their neighbors and neighboring states, often using proxies like they
Speaker 1: did in Yemen with the Houthi groups, in Lebanon with Hezbala,
Speaker 1: and certainly in the Palestinian territories with Hamas. So this
Speaker 1: is part and parcel of how Iran and Iraq frankly probably.
Speaker 3: The biggest test case or use case.
Speaker 1: So this is a tried and true tactic for the Iranians,
Speaker 1: and if you think about it from their they've been
Speaker 1: able to do this for decades with very little cost
Speaker 1: other than you know, economic sanctions extracted upon them, and
Speaker 1: certainly over the last couple of years even a lot
Speaker 1: of those sanctions have come off. Even last week, six
Speaker 1: billion dollars in sanctions got lifted on them. They got
Speaker 1: access to a lot of money they hadn't had in
Speaker 1: a long time in return for releasing five Iranian American
Speaker 1: citizens and a few other things that they have done.
Speaker 1: If you look at this from the Iranian point of view,
Speaker 1: it's a winning strategy.
Speaker 2: And so for them it's just extending their extending their
Speaker 2: influence and reach across the broader Middle East, targeting and
Speaker 2: trying to kill as many of their perceived enemies as possible.
Speaker 2: What do you think the Biden administration response should should be? Right?
Speaker 2: I mean, we know that Biden is really a continuation
Speaker 2: of Obama's appeasement of Iran, and that the Democrat positioning
Speaker 2: on Iran is very I would say, very favorable to
Speaker 2: what the what the Mullahs want. But if if they
Speaker 2: were to get serious, and perhaps there's some I mean,
Speaker 2: I don't think this is likely, but it's theoretically possible
Speaker 2: there's some changing of minds in Democrat circles in DC
Speaker 2: because of this horrific attack in Israel. What would a
Speaker 2: robust policy look like to deal with Iran in such
Speaker 2: a way that it wouldn't feel such a it wouldn't
Speaker 2: have such a free hand in its mind to engage
Speaker 2: in this nefarious terror sponsoring behaviors all across the Middle
Speaker 2: East and really around the world.
Speaker 1: So I think the Biden administration would struggle a lot
Speaker 1: with coming up with a policy that could do that
Speaker 1: that in their mind, would not risk with Iranian retribution
Speaker 1: and counterattacks in Iraq, in the Gulf States, all of
Speaker 1: which there's significant American interests in. I'd say the real
Speaker 1: realistic thing that the Biden administration might consider would be
Speaker 1: reimposing severe restrictions on Iranian oil sales, even six billion
Speaker 1: dollars around God will pay in significance to how much
Speaker 1: money they're going to make as oil moves towards one
Speaker 1: hundred dollars a barrel, and their ability to sell as
Speaker 1: much of that oil as possible fuels the Iranian government's
Speaker 1: ability to conduct repression at home and bad behavior abroad.
Speaker 1: But I would I don't think it's realistic to believe
Speaker 1: that thirteen months before an election, the current administration is
Speaker 1: going to modify its Iranian policy all that much, and
Speaker 1: not to the point of hostilities.
Speaker 2: I want to talk about the I doubt saying it
Speaker 2: go ahead.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I'm not saying I would necessarily agree with it,
Speaker 1: but I just to be realistic, I think they are
Speaker 1: not likely to push forward.
Speaker 2: We'll come back in and talk about some follow on
Speaker 2: threats and threats to the US homeland, specifically Bernard in
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Speaker 2: are concerns about our wide open border, about attacks on
Speaker 2: US by either Iranian Iranian groups different proxies than the
Speaker 2: least our IRGC could force some kind of you know,
Speaker 2: Hamas affiliated cell. I mean, this is what people are
Speaker 2: talking about right now. Bernard, what do you think of that?
Speaker 2: I mean, do you think the US should be in
Speaker 2: an elevated threat posture right now? Or is your expectation
Speaker 2: that this is all really going to be limited in
Speaker 2: terms of the kinetic you know, the fighting limited to
Speaker 2: Gaza and its immediate environs.
Speaker 1: So to the plus side within the Middle East States,
Speaker 1: I don't think there's a desire by anybody other than
Speaker 1: Iran to want this thing to escalate. Unlike previous conflicts
Speaker 1: that have happened in involving the Israelis and the Palestinians,
Speaker 1: there's not a lot of There's no sympathy for Hamas
Speaker 1: in most of the mainstream Arab countries. They don't want
Speaker 1: this thing to get worse out of hand, but I
Speaker 1: don't see any of them contributing to make it worse.
Speaker 1: Your second first question, I think is a powerful one,
Speaker 1: and that is, you know, the key feature in counter
Speaker 1: terrorism and being prepared for it is understanding the threat
Speaker 1: from the people who might carry out those acts. Possible
Speaker 1: to have a realistic counter terrorism policy if you actually
Speaker 1: have no control over your border, an unwillingness to defend
Speaker 1: your own borders or to even know who's coming into
Speaker 1: your country makes it very hard for counter terrorism officials
Speaker 1: in any country, whether it's Europe or the United States,
Speaker 1: to build a realistic plan to deal with that threat.
Speaker 1: I think it would be very hard to be in
Speaker 1: the American security services right now and to give an
Speaker 1: honest answer to their political bosses that they feel confident
Speaker 1: that they know enough about who's coming into the United
Speaker 1: States to make a calculation on what that risk really is.
Speaker 3: It's unknowable and so elevated.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I mean, I think that's right, it's both unknowable
Speaker 2: and elevated. Do you think that there's going to be
Speaker 2: any change from any of our other regional allies in
Speaker 2: their posture toward Hamas as a result of this, or
Speaker 2: are we likely to see a continuation of a status
Speaker 2: Quoia Cutter, for example, still being very friendly toward Hamas,
Speaker 2: you know, other you know what I mean, Like, is
Speaker 2: there going to be any realignment that happens as a
Speaker 2: result of this?
Speaker 1: So? I mean Hamas has long been listed under as
Speaker 1: a terrorist organization by the US State Department. However, it's
Speaker 1: always been in that gray zone of militant group, terrorist
Speaker 1: group that was viewed as not particularly trying to target
Speaker 1: Americans and so came in for a sort of a
Speaker 1: different set of policy options than El kata or isis did.
Speaker 1: I think there'll be a lot of discussion about reevaluating
Speaker 1: that and doing more towards them and more to stop
Speaker 1: as to the Middle Eastern States themselves. I think the
Speaker 1: biggest thing you see out here, and I'm in Saudi
Speaker 1: Arabia right now. What you find is people saying the
Speaker 1: American unwillingness to understand and appreciate Iran's regional bad behavior
Speaker 1: continues to make things like what just happened on seven
Speaker 1: October more like to happen. And so certainly within the
Speaker 1: Gulf States, which have seen number of tax by Iranian surrogates,
Speaker 1: they see this as simply a continuation of a terrible
Speaker 1: trend line that's been going on for over a decade.
Speaker 2: Do you think this will affect the efforts by the
Speaker 2: at the end of the Trump administration to bring about
Speaker 2: closer Saudi Saudi Israeli relations and some of those movements
Speaker 2: that were made on a peace and diplomacy side.
Speaker 1: You know, at most those may pause for a period
Speaker 1: of time, but the trend line towards normalization between state
Speaker 1: to state relations and this part of the world has
Speaker 1: been towards normalization and not towards further antagonized relationships, especially
Speaker 1: within the GCC States and the Israelis.
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Speaker 2: com because it is fun. Bernard, do you think that
Speaker 2: this is gonna be over in a matter of weeks
Speaker 2: or could you see this conflict extending for months?
Speaker 1: I think the active military phase of this probably goes
Speaker 1: on for up to a month. I think the long
Speaker 1: term fallout of a heightened number of terrorist attacks on
Speaker 1: perhaps Western interests and certainly Israeli interests in countries that
Speaker 1: are outside the region. That extends for probably six months
Speaker 1: to a year, as the fallout of this.
Speaker 3: Becomes more understood, you.
Speaker 1: Know, the longer the extreme nature of this attack is
Speaker 1: going to require an extreme response that is going to
Speaker 1: tend to radicalize or set off, you know, lone wolves
Speaker 1: or whatever type of other attacks one might think to
Speaker 1: call these things. But there's going to be elevated violence
Speaker 1: against Israelis and some Western interests I would imagine over
Speaker 1: the next six months to a year.
Speaker 2: Bernando Hudson's formerly CIA's director of Operations, Chief Bernard honored
Speaker 2: to have you on the show, sir, appreciate you being
Speaker 2: here and we will talk to you soon.
Speaker 3: Thank you,