Epoch Times - Victor Davis Hanson: ‘Trump Is Trying to Thread the Needle’ with Israel-Hamas War
Aired: 2025-05-20
Duration: 04:51


=== Trump's Dilemma: Iran and Oil (04:25) ===

[00:00:00]  Where you get the tension is in two sections.
[00:00:03]  The Israelis say, we have emasculated for a year or two Hamas, Hezbollah, we're both working on the Houthis, and we have demonstrated you can go into Iran with impunity and destroy their air defenses.
[00:00:18]  We have a brief window.
[00:00:20]  It's now the time to take out all of these nuclear facilities.
[00:00:24]  They'll lie about it, they'll lie about it, they'll lie about it.
[00:00:27]  But you cannot deal with these people.
[00:00:29]  And the Trump administration is saying to them, we agree, but this is contrary to the MAGA covenant.
[00:00:37]  The MAGA covenant we ran on said no optional Middle East wars, no foreign entanglements, and it's always better to jawbone than to go to war.
[00:00:49]  That's the MAGA.
[00:00:50]  That's the J.D. Vance, Tucker Carlson group.
[00:00:53]  What Trump is trying to thread the needle.
[00:00:55]  So he's saying to Israel, let's just get six or seven months of negotiation.
[00:01:01]  And the Israelis are saying it's a waste of time.
[00:01:03]  They'll not honor it, and they'll never give up this thing.
[00:01:07]  And he said, well, then if they won't give up, we'll negotiate to the point where they have to shut up or put up.
[00:01:14]  And if you're right, then we have a case to be made to our MAGA base.
[00:01:19]  We can say, do you want a nuclear weapon with these people?
[00:01:22]  They're going to threaten Europe.
[00:01:23]  They're going to threaten Israel.
[00:01:24]  They'll eventually threaten us.
[00:01:26]  And they're close with the Russians and Chinese.
[00:01:28]  And they're vulnerable now.
[00:01:30]  And we tried to have peace with them.
[00:01:31]  And we tried to have negotiations with them.
[00:01:34]  And they shut the door.
[00:01:35]  So I think that's what the Trump administration is saying, that we have to go through the motions.
[00:01:41]  You may be right.
[00:01:42]  And the Israelis say it's a waste of time, and I think sometime in the late summer or fall, they're going to conclude that you can't deal with the Iranians.
[00:01:50]  But they made the effort, and that was good public relations, and either we or the Israelis or both are going to take them out.
[00:01:57]  I think that's what will happen.
[00:01:59]  And that's going to be very controversial, because Trump is, as we said, a transactional diplomat, and he does not want disruption in the Middle East.
[00:02:11]  He does not want the price of oil to go high.
[00:02:15]  He does not want increased terrorism.
[00:02:17]  The Iranians have tried to kill him in the past.
[00:02:20]  We have an open border, as we discussed with Canada.
[00:02:23]  And he thinks, you know what?
[00:02:26]  I can deal with these people.
[00:02:28]  I killed Soleimani.
[00:02:30]  Everybody knew that he was a terrorist.
[00:02:32]  He was responsible for thousands of American deaths during the Iraq War.
[00:02:39]  Obama didn't do anything.
[00:02:41]  Even George W. Bush was afraid to get rid of him.
[00:02:43]  I got rid of him.
[00:02:44]  And then the Iranians wanted to retaliate and save face.
[00:02:48]  And I said to them, if you touch one American in Iraq when you retaliate, we're going to take out.
[00:02:56]  And he said he gave them a list.
[00:02:57]  You know, here's your harbors, here's your military.
[00:02:59]  So then the Iranians said, well, we'll notify you in advance.
[00:03:02]  Just keep everybody in your base.
[00:03:05]  And that's what happened.
[00:03:06]  And there's critics of Trump said, well, some Americans had some shell shock.
[00:03:10]  But basically, we knew the missiles were coming.
[00:03:14]  We stayed in the base.
[00:03:15]  And then Iran lied and told their people that they sent a barrage into Iraq to make the Yankee imperialists pay for what they did.
[00:03:23]  And that's how Trump is transactional.
[00:03:25]  And there was no war.
[00:03:26]  But the main point was he got rid of Soleimani without having a war.
[00:03:30]  I think that's how he operates.
[00:03:32]  But I don't think that that...
[00:03:36]  We did it with North Korea as well, and then Biden kind of let up on them.
[00:03:41]  But I just think if you are on record as Rubio and even Vance and Trump are, that they cannot enrich to 90% and they keep enriching, then there's no other solution.
[00:03:56]  And it's a very tricky operation.
[00:03:58]  I think the administration is also not convinced that they don't have bombs.
[00:04:04]  And they are at other facilities that have either just recently been discovered or there's other ones that haven't been discovered.

=== Iranian Missile Threat (00:40) ===

[00:04:11]  They keep talking about all of the places that we know about, but given what we know of the theocracy, there's probably a lot of places where they've been rich, and they may have two or three bombs, and that is also something they're very worried about.
[00:04:25]  That they could send it in to Israel.
[00:04:27]  And everybody says, well, Iron Dome will knock them down.
[00:04:29]  Well, the other day that Houthis sent one in, and it hit almost at the airport in Tel Aviv.
[00:04:36]  And if that had been an Iranian missile, they sent, I think, 500 total missiles in those two separate attacks.
[00:04:43]  And everybody said they knocked down 95% of them, but there were about seven or eight missiles that got through.
[00:04:48]  And if one had been nuclear, it would have been catastrophic.