Resource Author: Matt Duss

Executive Vice President Matt Duss joins Zeteo’s Mehdi Hassan to discuss the humanitarian toll in Lebanon, how likely it is that Iran will get involved, and how another war could impact the US presidential election:

Watch the full interview on Zeteo. Check out transcript excerpts below:

MEHDI HASAN: Matt, were you surprised at the sheer ferocity of the Israeli assault? It’s the single biggest day of killing in Lebanon since the end of the Civil War in 1990, I believe. Over 500 dead in a day, even by Israeli standards. Even by the standards of Gaza, 500 dead in a day.

MATT DUSS: Right, no, I was surprised. And that’s saying a lot. What we’ve seen over the past 11 months really just defies belief, really unprecedented, I think, in this century in terms of modern warfare, the amount of destruction. But the ferocity of the strikes this week were staggering.

[….]

MEHDI HASAN: And, Matt, in terms of long histories, obviously Americans aren’t very good when it comes to long histories, whether it’s American elites or the American public. When you look at what’s happening with Lebanon right now from a D.C. perspective… You had Joe Biden say, my red line is Rafah. Netanyahu trampled all over that red line, destroyed Rafah in many ways. Then he said, well, regional escalation, that’s another red line. We’re not going to support you. There were all these leaks from the administration. We’re not going to support you if you pick a fight beyond Gaza. They’ve picked a fight beyond Gaza. There’s an argument that they want to escalate to Iran, and we’ll come to that. What is going on in Washington, D.C.? You’re here. You’ve worked in this town on foreign policy for a long time. You’ve worked in Congress. What is the… What calculations are going on right now in the White House, in Congress?

MATT DUSS: Right. I mean, to back up what you said about the red line, I think is right. I mean, President Biden laid down a red line on Rafah, but it became clear that the real red line was that regional escalation. We’ve seen the U.S. engage in strikes on Iran-backed groups, especially after the strike on the Jordanian facility that killed several American service members. And they opposed the Rafah invasion until it became clear that that invasion could be carried out without spilling into Egypt. So they have themselves admitted that the humanitarian impact, the number of deaths and displaced in the Rafah operation was as bad or worse than they feared. But as long as it was contained within Gaza, And as you said, Netanyahu rolled right over it. The challenge we have now is almost a year into this, whatever President Biden might say about what he wants or doesn’t want, he refuses and has refused all along to impose any costs on Netanyahu. And until that equation changes, Netanyahu is going to continue what he’s doing, which is prolonging, sustaining and expanding this war for his own political purposes. Again, it is very clear. that that is what is driving this. Israeli officials themselves have acknowledged this. The president himself apparently, you know, reportedly, privately has acknowledged that he understands that Netanyahu knows his only path to staying in political power and avoiding the reckoning for October 7 is to sustain this war.

[…]

MEHDI HASAN: When Israel says we’re being attacked on multiple fronts by Iran-backed groups, by the Houthis, by Hamas, by Hezbollah, And someone like Karim says, well, actually, they all say end the genocide and we’ll stop this. The Houthis have said that for a while. The counter comes, well, you can’t trust these groups. That’s a very naive, simplistic view of the world. But could it be that simple that if you stop the killing in Gaza, a lot of this goes away?

MATT DUSS: No, there is obviously a larger regional context here. Some of these groups, you know, they have relationships with Iran, some of which are much closer, as with Hezbollah, some not so close, as with the Houthis. But It seems pretty clear that Gaza is the crisis that is driving this right now. So yes, once you end the Gaza war, you do have a range of other problems that you still need to deal with, a range of other conflicts and tensions. But really, the Gaza catastrophe, it is what is driving this crisis right now. And we just, you know, there’s an effort by the Israelis, by Netanyahu, and by some in the United States to try and de-link these things. But we cannot.

MEHDI HASAN: Do you think that the people who are doing the de-linking in DC, Matt, they’re doing that through ignorance, or they know? Is the guy sitting inside the Pentagon, the State Department, the White House National Security Council, is that guy, he knows.

MATT DUSS: He knows that this is all interlinked, and that if we stopped one, we would stop the rest. But he can’t say it, because the political atmosphere doesn’t allow him to say it. By and large, I think people know. But you do have, you know, you have a faction in Washington, a very influential one, that is just fundamentally committed to backing what Israel wants at any given time. Some who seem, you know, particularly committed to Netanyahu. Some are acting, I think, in good faith. They are committed to the security of Israel. But the way that they divide, you know, support that in policy, we all see the results. Right? I mean, this Gaza war, the context of it comes in years and decades of U.S.-backed impunity in the occupied territories. That is what created the context for the attacks, the horrific attacks of October 7.

[…]

MEHDI HASAN: We’ve seen this movie before, Matt, in the War on Terror, where, quote, unquote, the War on Terror, which was a war of terror in many ways, and which emboldened a lot of groups and pushed a lot of people in the Middle East who should have been on our side, quote, unquote, onto the side of our opponents because of the nature of how we fought. Has the United States, A) learned any lessons from its war on terror and B) is it trying to impart any of those lessons to the Israelis?

MATT DUSS: Well that’s really interesting because president Biden as you might remember in the days and weeks after October 7 when he was you know demonstrating his support for Israel, which again I think was appropriate especially in the wake of that attack, said specifically we’re trying I’m trying to help them understand some of the lessons we learned after 9/11. Don’t make our mistakes and yet they’re making worse mistakes. And the United States and President Biden himself is backing those mistakes unconditionally. So I’m very sorry to say it does not seem that this city, many in this city have — I think there’s been more criticism of this policy than we’ve seen in the past — but I’m really frustrated to see that so many in this city have not learned those lessons.

MEHDI HASAN: A lot of people watching this will wonder, especially globally, why can people in Washington DC not see what everyone else in the world sees? As I say, you’ve been part of the bureaucracy. You’ve been in Congress. You’re in a think tank in DC. I think it’s too simplistic just to say it’s AIPAC, right? It’s a lot of factors.

MATT DUSS: That’s right–

MEHDI HASAN: What kind of factors are we talking here? Military industrial complex, the blob, as Ben Rhodes identified, kind of lazy conventional wisdom thinking. Is it Joe Biden being a Zionist in his gut? Just briefly explain to us, what are the multiplicity of factors that make Washington DC so impervious to the arguments that seem to work everywhere else? Macron comes out and says the occasional sensible thing. The British government occasionally comes out, but not in DC.

MATT DUSS: Yeah. I mean, first of all, it’s really hard to overstate the impact of a president who’s setting the tone as Joe Biden has, which is just full support for Israel and little, if any, acknowledgment of the humanity of the Palestinians, their value as human beings. I think we have seen this time and time again. And it’s partially the avoiding disagreement with the leader of your party. I mean, this is not just a foreign policy problem. Any party, politicians in that party are by and large going to be very hesitant to break with the leader in their party. And he has set this tone. Now, that has not been total. We certainly have seen people in the Congress who have had the courage to disagree and criticize.

MEHDI HASAN: All Democrats, by the way. All Democrats. No Republicans.

MATT DUSS: Of course, all Democrats. Part of it is just who, you know, the people we have kind of informing us in the major media, they tend to have a particular ideological bent on this as well, or else they just don’t know very much about it, and so the people they are trying to learn from aren’t giving them the best information. And I think we also have to acknowledge that a lot of this is just careerism. There are boundaries that are set Those boundaries are changing. Again, I think the conversation we were having about these issues is different and in many ways better than we’ve been having in the past. But there is still a very real caution, especially for younger and maybe mid-level foreign policy professionals who have their eye on that future job in the administration and don’t want to create problems for themselves down the road because they have seen how careers have been destroyed by people who take Palestinian lives too seriously. For people who take Palestinian lives to seriously.

MEHDI HASAN: What’s so insane to me, Matt, is that it is very clearly going to hurt the Democrats domestically if this continues to escalate. We are a month or two away from the election, month and a half, whatever, they can’t keep track of the date anymore. Countdown to disaster. And there’s no scenario in which a Middle East regional war involving America supporting Israel against Iran helps Kamala Harris. It’s insane.

MATT DUSS: I agree.

MEHDI HASAN: It’s self-harming for the Democrats.

MATT DUSS: I think this is, you know, the Biden administration’s, you know, calculation clearly was that Americans wouldn’t really care. I think, you know, Vice President Harris, you know, obviously has taken a bit more of a forward-leaning approach on the humanitarian crisis in Gaza. I think that’s important. I think it is notable that she lifted up the Palestinians and their right to self-determination in the convention speech. She didn’t go as far as many of us wanted. But still, the fact that that was a short speech that checked a number of boxes, that was a box she felt she needed to check. So I think we should take that as an acknowledgement. of this party, and that’s a growing constituency in the party. But yes, the fact that she has not signaled more of a break from Biden’s approach here, I think that’s going to be a problem. It may be a problem at the margins, but this election is going to be very close. It will be decided on the margins, and this could make the difference.