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