Ezra Levant and Dr. Daniel Pipes examine Iran’s 45-year campaign to destabilize the Middle East, funding proxies like Hamas (Gaza), Hezbollah (Lebanon), and Houthis (Yemen) while advancing nuclear ambitions despite domestic opposition. Israel’s year-long war with Hamas stems from past strategic missteps—Oslo Accords (1993) and Gaza withdrawal (2005)—not U.S. policy, Pipes argues, as Biden’s pro-Israel stance clashes with his party’s anti-Israel factions. A U.S. election in November could reshape global tensions: Trump’s unpredictability deterred adversaries, while allies favor Biden’s stability, raising questions about whether Iran’s influence or Hamas’s defiance will escalate under either candidate. [Automatically generated summary]
That's one of the questions I put to Daniel Pipes of the Middle East Forum.
If Trump is re-elected in about 90 days, what will happen to all the wars in the world, especially the complex wars in the Middle East?
We'll talk about that and other things.
But I want you to see it, not just hear it.
So please go to RebelNewsPlus.com, click subscribe.
You'll get the video version of this podcast.
Eight bucks a month might not sound like a lot to you, but boy, it adds up for us.
If you can do that, you'll help keep us strong and independent because we don't take any money from Trudeau and it shows.
All right, here's today's podcast.
Tonight, will war in the Middle East turn into World War III?
A feature interview with Dr. Daniel Pipes of the Middle East Forum.
Shame on you, you censorious boobug.
Well, the world is on fire as it has been for, I guess, since Donald Trump left office.
And the nations of the world, the aggressors of the world realized that they could take liberties.
Russia invaded Ukraine.
The Gaza-based Hamas attacked Israel, as has in a smaller scale, Hezbollah and Iran.
China is eyeing Taiwan and other countries, including the Philippines, Japan, and Korea.
But the one that I am worried will turn into a larger conflagration, more even than the Russia-Ukraine war, is the Middle East.
You have massive American aircraft carriers there, I think, to tamp down that possibility.
But you have rogue forces like Hamas and Hezbollah terrorist groups that are not attached to the country.
The Russians would be tempered by mutually assured destruction, let's say.
But that's not something that's a deterrent to the death cult of Hamas or Hezbollah.
It's a very interesting and very dangerous situation, and I think we need a bit of an update.
And joining us now to talk about that is a man who studies the Middle East region very closely.
It's in his title.
I'm talking about Dr. Daniel Pipes, who is the president of the Middle East Forum.
He joins us now vice versa.
Dr. Pipes, great to see you again.
Great to see you, Ezra.
You know, there is absolutely a hot war going on between Russia and Ukraine, but I'm of the belief that it is unlikely to engulf the world.
I think even though NATO is involved, they're being careful to keep it in the theater.
But I am worried about the Middle East, partly because I believe that the United States under Joe Biden and Kamala Harris are, frankly, passive-aggressive towards Israel and sympathetic to Iran.
Can you give me a sense of what's going on in the Middle East?
Help me out because your sources and your understanding of that region is far deeper than mine.
Is the world at risk of a larger war in the Middle East?
The Iranians are disruptive.
The Iranian regime wishes to change the world order, not just the Middle Eastern one.
And it has been going about this systematically for now 45 years with limited resources, but with a certain cleverness.
We can see at present, for example, the Houthis disrupting trade in the Red Sea, Hezbollah dominating in Lebanon, other Iranian allies and proxies, agents, Very powerful in Syria and Iraq, also in Gaza, in the West Bank.
So the Iranians are on the warpath.
They have been so for a long time.
They have problems.
The regime is deeply unpopular at home.
There could be at any moment a conflagration which leads to its overthrow.
And yet at the same time, it is building nuclear weapons.
It is in increasingly close ties with Russia and China.
So it's volatile, it's dangerous, but I'm probably not inclined to say that it's World War III potential.
As we've seen in the last few weeks, the Iranians have been careful about responding to presumably the Israeli execution of Ismail Hania in Tehran on July 31st.
They have been very competent at sabotage and low-intensity conflict.
They're not so good at direct conventional warfare, and they've been cautious about engaging in that with Israel, much less the United States.
So it's dangerous, but I don't know that it's more dangerous than Ukraine or Taiwan.
You know, you mentioned the assassination of the leader of Hamas Ismail Hania, who is typically based, if I'm not mistaken, he was based in Qatar.
He was assassinated in Tehran.
So that's quite a bold move, if it indeed was the Israelis, who I'm sure it was.
Typically, Iran strikes back in some ways, in some way.
When Donald Trump eliminated a senior military commander named Suleimani, the Iranians fought, fired back, but it felt like it was sort of a show for domestic consumption.
Iran has to sort of show its people, I think, that it has some self-respect and won't accept an assassination of an ally on their own turf.
I don't think that's come yet, or maybe it has in the form of a suicide bombing in Tel Aviv the other day.
But do you feel like another shoe is about to drop?
I noticed a few weeks ago, a whole bunch of Western airlines canceled their commercially scheduled flights to Israel.
It felt like the region was battening down the hatches for war.
Is Iran going to punch back for that assassination, do you think?
Well, in one way, the anticipation, the fear in Israel of such a response is in itself the punishment, but it is three weeks, and there has been no striking large-scale retaliation by the mullahs in Tehran.
I'm inclined to think the likelihood declines as time goes by.
The Iranian regime itself has said that it depends on an agreement in Gaza.
If there is an agreement, they won't respond.
If there isn't, they will.
It doesn't look like there's an agreement.
It doesn't look like Yahya Sinwar, the head of Hamas in Gaza, wants such an agreement.
So I love predicting, but this is a tough one.
If I had to bet, I'd say probably not, probably not a major Iranian retaliation.
Israel typically has short wars.
One of them famously called the Six-Day War, because it was six days.
Even its more difficult wars are typically measured in weeks.
This war against Hamas in Gaza is coming up on a full year.
And Gaza is geographically a small place.
Now, obviously, it's very challenging because it's completely an urban environment.
It's underground tunnels.
And the main problem, I think, for Israel is the PR problem of the inevitable casualties of a civilian population that is being used as human shields.
But that said, I think we have to note that Israel perhaps could have done this months ago were it not being constantly restrained by the United States demanding a ceasefire, demanding a halt.
I think that the fact that Israel has allowed this to drag on has become part of the problem.
It has emboldened not just Hamas in Gaza, but it's emboldened anti-Semites around the world.
If they were to snuff out Hamas totally, like the Red Army snuffed out Berlin under Hitler, if they had that bunker moment where like Hitler killed himself, if Sinoir were to die in Gaza, I think that would deflate these folks who are hoping against hope that this will be a Palestinian uprising that'll lead to the destruction of Israel.
And I think it would deflate some of the anti-Semitism around the world.
I actually think that Israel's slow pace, which I attribute to the Americans, has been their worst strategic error so far.
What do you think?
As the author of the recently published book, Israel Victory, I could hardly agree with you more that the slow pace has been a very great error.
However, I do disagree with you, Israel, on the cause of that.
You're blaming the Americans.
And there's a tendency for friends of Israel to blame the Americans or other allies of Israel for the problems, for the mistakes of Israel.
I don't agree.
I think the Israelis make their own mistakes.
And here, to give you the full picture, the Israelis came up with the Oslo's Accord, the Oslo Accords of 1993.
The Israelis came up with the retreat from Gaza, the withdrawal from Gaza in 2005.
The Israelis came up with the idea of holding elections in 2007.
The Israelis permitted the border between Egypt and Gaza to leave their control.
The Israelis permitted 15 years of buildup in Gaza.
The Israelis have been incompetent, not the Americans.
The Israelis need to take the blame for this.
Well, that is a very persuasive point.
one of those things i can imagine there was some clever 3d chess argument for why it made sense to allow this or that but it but every single one of those things you've described has come back to bite them that said um i don't even know who's gonna go ahead Could I just put it in a larger context?
I think the Israeli security establishment has been brilliant when it comes to states, be it the Arab states, Egypt, Jordan, Syria, the three countries defeated in the Six-Day War, or Iran, or other states, Iraq, Sudan, Libya.
Netanyahu's Declining Affection00:15:16
But it has been pretty much incompetent when it comes to the Palestinians or other sub-state actors like Hezbollah.
It has allowed 100,000, 200,000 missiles and rockets to go to Hezbollah in Lebanon.
It allowed it.
It saw these weapons enter.
So the vaunted Israeli security establishment deserves its high reputation when it comes to Entebbe, when it comes to the Six-Day War, when it comes to dealing with foreign governments.
It has not done well when it comes to the Palestinians.
I think you're right.
Who is setting U.S. policy?
I don't think even before they threw Joe Biden out so unceremoniously, I don't think even back then people thought that Joe Biden was the decider.
He would be clear and coherent for, it was measured in minutes, not hours.
Who then is making the decisions?
Is it the foreign, the Secretary of State, Anthony Blinken?
Is it, I don't believe it's Kamala Harris.
I just don't think she has a lot of ideas about foreign policy.
Is it like a polit bureau of party activists?
Who makes the decisions in the United States?
I honestly don't know, but I think we can both agree it's not Joe Biden.
Well, I think you're going a little far.
He is the president.
He has taken a number of decisive steps.
I mean, going to Israel a few days after October 7th, when Israel is in a state of war, that's not something that was programmed by someone else, not by his wife, not by his Secretary of State.
He pretty clearly decided to go there in an act of solidarity.
Now, the problem for Biden has been, and I do think Biden is still the key factor here, though I agree with you.
He has his limitations mentally.
His problem has been that he has an old-fashioned democratic affection for Israel, dating back 50 plus years.
But his party, the younger people, the activists, despise Israel.
So on the one hand, he has a certain lingering affection.
On the other hand, political realities, and especially the forthcoming election in November, require him to pull back.
So he has been on the horns of a dilemma.
And those around him who have strong points of view have been pushing, especially the anti-Israel caucus, which is, as time goes on, stronger and stronger.
Though I do wish to point out that the platform of the Democratic Party, which has just been passed at the convention, is quite pro-Israel.
These tensions are not completely resolved in favor of the anti-Israel forces.
They're stronger, to be sure.
But the lingering, you know, Charles Schumer is not what I'd call a great, you know, showmaire, a great protector of Israel.
But he, like Biden, he has a long-standing affection for Israel.
And he is not anti-Israel.
He has rather dubious ideas about how to solve the problem there, but he's not anti-Israel.
And the elders of the party, like Pelosi, Schumer, Biden, are still the key figures.
And the change might come, might come imminently should Kamala Harris become president, but it's not quite there yet.
You know, I remember a few months ago, there was this astonishing speech or statement, rather, made by Schumer where he effectively called for a kind of, I'm going to call it a soft coup against Netanyahu.
Here, let me play the clip of that.
I've just never seen a senator in the United States call for the replacement of the democratically elected prime minister of another democracy before.
Here it is to refresh your memory.
I have known Prime Minister Netanyahu for a very long time.
While we have vehemently disagreed on many occasions, I will always respect his extraordinary bravery for Israel on the battlefield as a younger man.
I believe in his heart he has his highest priority is the security of Israel.
However, I also believe Prime Minister Netanyahu has lost his way by allowing his political survival to take the precedence over the best interests of Israel.
He has put himself in coalition with far-right extremists like Minister Smotrick and Ben Gavir.
And as a result, he has been too willing to tolerate the civilian toll in Gaza, which is pushing support for Israel worldwide to historic lows.
Israel cannot survive if it becomes a pariah.
As a lifelong supporter of Israel, it has become clear to me the Netanyahu coalition no longer fits the needs of Israel after October 7th.
The world has changed radically since then.
And the Israeli people are being stifled right now by a governing vision that is stuck in the past.
At this critical juncture, I believe a new election is the only way to allow for a healthy and open decision-making process about the future of Israel at a time when so many Israelis have lost their confidence in the vision and direction of their government.
I suppose you could say, well, Chuck Schumer is Jewish himself.
He has an old-fashioned affection for Israel, as used to be more common in the Democrats.
But calling for, in the middle of a war, no less, calling for the decapitation and the firing of Netanyahu.
Yeah, that might not be anti-Israel, but that's pretty crazy.
I didn't say it was smart.
I said it was an affection, a dumb, like can we call it a dumb affection?
Affection that has dumb ideas like creating a Palestinian state as a reward for October 7th.
Yeah, full of bad ideas, but still not anti-Israel, not wishing Israel ill, not wanting to get rid of the Jewish state.
So, you know, it's in between.
The Republicans, by and large, are full-throated pro-Israel, standing by Israel.
And there are some Democrats, notably John Fetterman.
Take surprise.
But overall, the Democratic Party or the liberal left in the United States, as around the world, is turning against Israel.
My favorite example, Ezra, is of all places in the southern cone of South America, where you have Argentina and Chile.
And it could not be more different in this regard.
Arguably, Argentina under Javier Millay is the most pro-Israel country government in the world.
Arguably, Chile under Garbio Borich is not the most anti, but it's very close to it, or a country that has nothing to do with Israel.
Extremely anti-Israel, to the point that Borich wouldn't accept the credentials of the Israeli ambassador.
It didn't want anything to do with him.
So there you go, far, far away, as far away as you can get.
This argument over Israel and the Palestinians, Israel and Hamas, is playing out and has an important role far away.
And it's a left-right debate.
It's a left-right debate.
It didn't used to be that way.
But over the past 35 years, since a sequence of events took place in the early 1990s, it has become a left-right debate and it's becoming ever more a left-right debate with these sides ever more clearly distinguished.
They're not pure.
You can find exceptions like Fetterman, but they're becoming ever more rare.
Yeah, it's very unusual.
I was surprised when Javier Emilier physically embraced the Israeli flag during his campaign.
I just thought, wow, that's a boldness.
I mean, he's an extremely bold showman in any event.
I mean, from his hairstyle to his speaking style, he's quite a character.
He really is Trump-like.
But he's an economics professor at the same time.
He's a character.
I see it, though, in other places.
I mean, in Ireland, I see that government, which has always been sympathetic to the Palestinians, I suppose they see themselves both as rebels.
The Irish Republic rebelling against the UK over a century ago.
But it's odd to see it because there's so few Jews in Ireland.
Ireland has such little interaction with the region.
It really is a kind of virtue signaling.
I'm constantly astonished by it.
The president of Ireland recently sent a, I think it was a condolence letter to Iran on the passing of their president or whatever it was, the guy who died in the plane crash.
Like, it's just, it's very strange to see countries with no connection to Israel economically, militarily, diplomatically, and there's no demographic connection.
There's no Jewish community just, you know, poke at Israel for whatever ideological box checking.
I just find it bizarre of all the crises in Ireland, which is a country I've followed sort of closely these days, they always stop and make time to take a shot at Israel.
It's just really bad.
Scotland and Norway and Sweden.
Yeah.
Look, the left in the early 1990s began adopting the Palestinians as their favorite cause, as its favorite cause.
And this has increased, as I say, over the third of a century.
It's a result of a whole range of things that happened.
The invasion of Kuwait in 1990, the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991, the come together of the European Union in 1992, the Oslo Accords in 1993, and finally, and perhaps most importantly, the collapse of the apartheid regime in 1994, Nestle Mendelik coming to power.
All these five events turned the left from generally sympathetic to the Palestinians to extremely focused.
And the coming out party for this was not coincidentally in Durban, South Africa in 2001, just days before 9-11.
And it has increased over the next two decades, and it's ever more acute.
But mind you, it's not just a one-sided phenomenon.
The right, which used to have a lot of qualms and problems with Israel, has increasingly adopted Israel.
It was in the 1950s and 60s the right that was reluctant to work with Israel, saw Israel as an impediment to forming alliances against the Soviet Union.
The right has now completely changed.
And again, there are always exceptions, but overwhelmingly, the right around the world, whether it's Japan or Brazil or India or Finland, Canada, the right has become Israel's stalwart friend.
This is the dramatic reversal from earlier decades, and it's becoming ever more clear that the right is with Israel and the left is hostile to Israel.
I wouldn't say that the left is pro-Palestinian.
I would say the left is hostile to Israel.
You know, here in Canada, we were always very close at the United Nations, not quite as pro-Israel as the United States was, but pretty close.
Jean-Kretchen, who was a liberal in name, would boast when he was pressed on the subject by Jews for not being pro-Israel, quote, enough.
He said, other than America, the Israeli ambassador says we're the most pro-Israel people in the world.
Isn't that good enough for you?
That was Cretchen's line, and there was some truth to it.
But that was before Canada had 2 million Muslims, many of whom are now citizens and are voting, which demographically, there are some wonderful Muslims amongst them who are liberal, who are tolerant, who are pluralistic.
For years, our chairman at Rebel News here was our mutual friend, Rahil Raza.
We know that there are progressive Muslims.
We know that.
But when you bring in 2 million Muslim migrants into Canada in short order and you don't vet in any way for cultural fit or for ancient feelings of anti-Semitism, don't be surprised when suddenly out of 338 districts in Canada, 20 of them go with the Muslim vote.
And I think that it's not just the left-wing politics that has pulled Justin Trudeau away from Israel.
I think he can do the math.
There are now five times as many Muslim voters in Canada as there are Jews.
And in the UK, it's even worse.
There's nothing inevitable about the Islamists, who you're referring to, partnering with the left.
They could have, and they still could, partner with the right.
They're parting with the left because the left has said, you Islamists, and by the way, your Palestinian cause are great.
We support them wholeheartedly.
Had the right said that and the left not said that, I think the Islamists would be partnering with the right.
In other words, there's nothing inevitable.
Back in 1970, 80, we could not have predicted this.
It wasn't apparent.
The left had not become attracted to Islamism.
I think the key event in that, I think it was a very dramatic key event, was the fact that Michel Foucault, a very eminent and very horrible French philosopher, went to Iran as a correspondent for an Italian newspaper in 1979, and he was, I want to say, orgasmic about the Iranian revolution.
Finally, there's a revolution.
Finally, there's something that he can fully participate in.
It was an enormous moment for him and for the left more broadly to approve of Islamism.
And Palestinians are a subset of that.
So I think it was inevitable.
It could have gone either way, and it still couldn't go either way.
We see more recently a number of trends where the Islamists have said to the left, you know, we're not your servants.
Taliban Armaments Parade00:09:37
We don't just automatically support you.
We could ally with the right.
And there have been a number of right-wing political and intellectual figures who said, yeah, come on over.
Let's talk.
We can perhaps do business together.
So it's not cast in stone.
You know, I'm thinking of the UK election.
July 4th was the day.
Keir Starmer, the Labour leader, became Prime Minister.
His wife is Jewish.
That's a subject of great criticism from many in the pro-Gaza left in the UK.
But there were five seats in the British election that were not won by Labour.
They were won in four cases by independent Islamist candidates who campaigned brazenly with the Gaza flag.
And all they talked about was Gaza.
It was astonishing.
And then the fifth MP was Jeremy Corbyn, who was so far out there, he was, I think it's fair to call him anti-Semitic.
He was drummed out of the Labor Party because of that.
He won.
Him and four other MPs basically are ruling an Islamist fiefdom.
You could say on paper it's a democratic election part of the UK, but the entire political narrative in those five districts is Islamic.
It's really astonishing what's happened to the UK.
And I really think that's what's coming to other countries in the West if it's not already here.
I agree.
I agreed.
I agreed.
And it has scared the Labor Party profoundly and is causing all sorts of reconsiderations of what the labor policy towards Israel and the Palestinians should be.
That's terrifying to me.
Dire implications for Israel, no question.
I saw a story in the Jerusalem Post the other day that was shocking, and I don't know if it's true.
I'm going to ask you because you probably know.
After the assassination, I'm switching gears here for a bit.
After the assassination of the Hamas leader Ismail Hania in Tehran, the capital of Iran, which is just such a dramatic move.
Like you're operating in the most dangerous place for a Mossad agent.
There's so much intrigue.
There's so much.
I mean, to accomplish that was clearly astonishing.
From my understanding, is there was a bomb pre-positioned in the apartment where Hania was staying.
Like it was quite a feat of spycraft, you could say.
I read a story in the Jerusalem Post, and I can't believe it's true.
Maybe you can tell me if it is, that reportedly, the United States revealed those Mossad agents to Iran as a kind of punishment to Israel for doing this action without their full support.
That is, America tipped off Iran after the fact to who the Mossad agents were.
I don't know if you know that story or the truth of it or if it's been rebuked in some way or refuted, but that was a terrifying article for me, and it made me think that there is a great divide between Israel and America.
I miss that story.
I'm skeptical of it.
Were it the case, we would be hearing very loud noises coming from Jerusalem protesting this.
The Israelis would not quietly go in the night.
So the fact that I hadn't heard of it, the fact that it isn't very widely known, suggests that it's rogue.
I'm glad to hear it.
I heard the other day that Israel declined to give advance notice to the United States on a particularly military operation because they were worried that Iran would be tipped off.
And again, maybe this is some overheated leaking, but it does feel to me that the United States is repeatedly holding Israel back from because they still believe that the U.S., at least under the Democrats, still believe they can work with Iran as a regional partner.
Exactly.
Exactly.
The Obama administration came up with the idea that if you approach the Iranians the right way, the Iranian regime in the right way, then you can do business with them.
And to use their phrase, the Iranians will rejoin the community of nations.
It's a nonsensical idea, but it persists in the Democratic Party.
And it is the source of the Democrats' deeply mistaken understanding of Iran.
The Israelis, in part, did not notify Americans about the operation against Taniya because of fears that it might be leaked, but also in part, they didn't want to be restrained.
There's a CIA saving saying that I like and often use.
Better to apologize than to ask permission.
Yeah.
I saw on one of these websites, I think it was Flight Tracker, where pretty much every aircraft in the world can be tracked, including military aircraft.
It's sort of quite a gripping app.
We used it when we were in Davos at the World Economic Forum to track the private jets coming in to that environmentalist conference.
It's a wonderful app.
It's called Flight Tracker.
There's a bunch of them.
And I saw this the other day: an enormous number of Russian cargo jets flying back and forth into Iran.
And I mean, really, Russia has decided that its future is with Iran and Syria.
I don't know how American can wiggle in there too, but has Russia been distracted from its Middle Eastern plans by what's going on in Ukraine?
Is Russia an important factor in Iran anymore?
Does Iran make up its own mind?
Like, I'm wondering, like, sometimes it looks like, for example, North Korea is really just a puppet on the hand of China.
That's how it looks to me.
Is Iran its own independent player, or is it really an agent of Russia?
What would you think?
I would say the Iranians make, by and large, their own decisions.
I would say that in Tehran, as in Beijing and Pyongyang, there's a sense that the Russians are needy and can be taken advantage of.
You can get a good price for your armaments.
You can extract all sorts of benefits because the Russian government is fairly desperate for arms and for other trade.
So they're pretty unscrupulous.
This is a bunch of thieves, and the Iranians are making hay.
They're getting money, they're getting intelligence, they're getting armaments as a result of their cooperation with the Russians.
It's not a perfectly happy relationship.
There are plenty of tensions, but each side needs each other and is benefiting from each other.
The Russians have very few places they can turn for armaments.
And so the Iranian.
I mean, who would think that Iran could be an important supplier of armaments to Russia?
But that has, in fact, happened in the past two and a half years.
Yeah, that's certainly the opposite of what I would thought.
How about China?
I saw the other day there was a massive military parade in Afghanistan where the Taliban were parading some of the literally thousands of military vehicles, including some quite heavily armored specialized vehicles, I think even some helicopters.
The Taliban were having a military parade with all the stuff that Joe Biden left behind when he hastily evacuated.
Like, I'm sure that a lot of that equipment has been found its way to the Ukraine-Russia war.
I'm sure that it's just an astonishing thing.
But China was there.
There were representatives from China at that military parade for the Taliban.
What do you think that portends?
The Chinese have showed very great interest in Afghanistan, in the enormous mineral deposits of Afghanistan, in Afghanistan as the neighbor of Pakistan, which is also very, very high on the Chinese priority, in Pakistan's case, an outlet to the Indian Ocean.
So, yeah, very, very important.
And the Chinese, as you're well aware, are not particularly scrupulous about the nature of the governments they're doing business with.
And they're quite happy to deal with the Taliban, especially as the Taliban are rejected by so much of the world.
Again, this gives the Chinese, as with Putin, a chance to exploit the weaknesses in Afghanistan and take advantage of the problems the Taliban have to get good deals on minerals and other commodities in Afghanistan.
I should tell you that Canada is still sending foreign aid to Afghanistan, even under the Taliban.
Just shocking, but not surprising.
Hey, I got one last question for you.
I really am grateful for you spending so much time.
We're really covering the entire world, but there's so much going on.
Things Frozen Again00:04:11
It's like a frozen river that was frozen for 50 years during the Cold War.
It has thawed and things are moving around, and it's not quite sure how it'll go.
But there was actually a period of four years where a lot of these things were frozen again.
Putin invaded Georgia, Putin invaded Ukraine, but all of their invasions stopped when Trump became president.
I don't know, but I don't know if it was for fear of Trump or what, but I don't think Hamas would have tried what it tried had Trump been in office, or at least they didn't try it.
I think a lot of things were frozen simply out of fear that Donald Trump was unpredictable and that he was the, I mean, even his use of Twitter, which was mocked on late-night comedy shows, it was extremely effective.
Like in a single tweet, he basically smashed down Mahmoud Abbas, if I'm recalling who it was, the Palestinian leader, and basically said, we're not dealing with you anymore.
In a single tweet, he cut through an ocean of diplomatic legalese.
And he just said, he basically said, you're out.
In a single tweet, his tweets to the North Korean leader, Kim Jong-un.
Donald Trump's wildness, his unpredictability.
I think it scared a lot of bad guys.
And some of them he scared straight.
I mean, he negotiated the unthinkable Abraham Accords amongst former enemies.
What do you think the world expects from America in November?
Do you think they're expecting Trump to win again so they're going to get as much dirty deeds done before he's elected?
Do you think they're trying to undermine him in some way?
Do you think they believe Kamala Harris will win?
What does the world think about Trump, especially places like Iran, Qatar, the terrorist groups, China, Russia?
What do you think?
I think Trump will solve a lot of these problems, but maybe that's me just so desperate for some sort of savior here.
What do you think of Trump and his prospects and how that might change the world?
Well, the one word summary of what you just said about Trump is a cowboy.
He is the American cowboy, unpredictable, going off in his own direction, trusting his instinct, ignoring sage advice.
And of course, Joe Biden is the opposite.
How many decades was he at the Senate Foreign Affairs Committee, the chairman of it, in all sorts of positions, and very much a product of the establishment, someone who relies on AIDS, who relies on expertise.
Couldn't be more opposite.
And in some ways, I think this is to Biden's credit.
I'm not entirely a fan of Mr. Trump's.
I think, for example, in an area on a topic like Ukraine, Biden, with all this expertise has done pretty much the right thing.
And I don't know if Trump would have, and I don't know if Putin wouldn't have invaded.
But overall, I agree with you.
It's better to have a cowboy in the White House than a bureaucrat.
And while the opponents and enemies of the United States would rather have a bureaucrat, so would many of the allies, NATO allies, for example, would much rather have Biden than, or now Harris, than Trump.
So overall, I'd say the world friendly and unfriendly to the United States would rather have a Democrat than Trump.
They will be discomforted in a variety of ways.
It's going to be Trump, whether it be the North Koreans, the Russians, the Chinese, or the Germans and the French and the English and the Canadians.
That's predictable.
Yeah, well, it's very interesting.
And that's coming up quicker than we think.
It's August already, September, October, November.
Just really, it's probably not even 90 days.
I'd have to do the math.
That's coming in extremely quickly.
Time Is Keeping Expertise Forward00:00:21
Well, listen, it's great to catch up with you.
And we did sort of around the world in half an hour.
Thank you for that for being generous with your time and your expertise.
And we'll look forward to keeping in touch.
That's right.
Thank you for the invitation.
All right.
There you have it.
Dr. Daniel Pipes of the Middle East Forum.
That's our show for today.
Until tomorrow, on behalf of all of us at Rebel World Headquarters, see you at home.