"In the Room with Peter Bergen" transcript: Episode 54

Episode 54: The View From a Newsroom in the Middle East

Mina Al-Oraibi is the editor of The National, an English-language newspaper headquartered in Abu Dhabi. She shares how the post-October 7th news landscape looks inside the Middle East: how Hamas is viewed in the region, how much of a threat Iran poses, and why she calls the conflict in Gaza “Joe Biden’s war.”

Please note: Our show is produced for the ear and made to be heard. Transcripts are generated using a combination of speech recognition software and human transcribers, and may contain errors. Please check the audio before quoting in print.

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Before we get started, a quick note: this episode is about a rapidly developing story — and the conversation was taped in mid-April.

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[ARCHIVAL SOUNDS OF ISRAELI AIR RAID SIRENS]

Mina Al-Oraibi: Relatively early morning on a Saturday, I was with my family and the news started to come in.

ARCHIVAL Arabic Language Newscaster: ننتقل الى مراسلنا حازم البنا من غزه للمزيد واخر المستجدات فيما يتعلق بهذه

Mina Al-Oraibi: Within maybe half an hour the extent and the magnitude of the attack became clear.

ARCHIVAL Newscaster: The Israeli military is warning that a number of militants have infiltrated Israeli territory from Gaza.

ARCHIVAL IDF Spokesman: …מחבלים חדרו לשטח מדינת ישראל…

Mina Al-Oraibi is editor-in-chief of The National, in my view the best English language newspaper in the Middle East. She directs a staff of around 200, spread across the Middle East and around the globe. And on October 7th, she knew she needed to get to the paper's central newsroom in Abu Dhabi right away.

Mina Al-Oraibi: Nobody had called to say, ‘We're going to come in. Do you need us?’ People were just coming in because where else would they be?

Like any good editor, Al-Oraibi was already trying to anticipate what could happen next in Israel and in Gaza.

Mina Al-Oraibi: Okay, what are the repercussions? Who's going to get involved? As the bombing started in Gaza, really our primary concern was for our correspondent there on the ground. I had my colleagues in Lebanon who, you know, we were talking to our security team. How close could they go to the border?

The sparks of conflict in one corner of the Middle East threatened to set the entire region ablaze.

Mina Al-Oraibi: Because I'm from this part of the world the immediate sense is a personal one: my goodness, you know, there's more coming at this region. We're in for more, more war, more destruction, more blood.

Even 6,000 miles away in the United States you can see how the Gaza War is playing out… from college campuses…

ARCHIVAL Protestors: Free, free Palestine!

…to the Oscars…

ARCHIVAL Jonathan Glazer: We stand here as men who refute their Jewishness and the Holocaust being hijacked by an occupation which has led to conflict for so many innocent people.

…to the presidential campaign trail…

ARCHIVAL Donald Trump: God bless the people of Israel. They're under attack right now.

But of course, nowhere has this conflict had a deeper impact than in the Middle East. More than 34,000 Palestinians have been killed according to the Gaza Health Ministry. Some 100 Israeli hostages remain in Gaza. Houthi rebels have massively disrupted shipping and global trade in the Red Sea. Iran has breached long-standing red lines, firing more than 300 missiles and drones at Israel. And Israel’s recent warming relations with some of the Arab states are now in the deep freeze.

[THEME MUSIC PICKS UP]

I imagine that many of you, like me, have watched this conflict mostly play out through the lens of U.S. news coverage. So I wanted to talk to Al-Oraibi about October 7th and its aftermath because I suspected it might look quite different from her vantage point — as an Iraqi journalist who spent much of her youth abroad, and returned to the Middle East to lead a large news operation.

I'm Peter Bergen. Welcome to In the Room.

[THEME MUSIC SURGES, THEN FADES]

I spoke to Al-Oraibi when I was just getting to my desk, in the morning East Coast time in the U.S. Meanwhile, she was finishing up a long workday in Abu Dhabi, the capital of the United Arab Emirates.

Mina Al-Oraibi: This is actually great. I finished my last editorial meeting for the day.

Peter Bergen: Okay, great. Well, we're going to keep you here all night.

Mina Al-Oraibi: [Al-ORAIBI LAUGHS] That's why I brought the coffee.

October 7th of course was a very big news story for Al-Oraibi, but as the editor of The National, she says that no day is exactly typical.

Mina Al-Oraibi: With this part of the world, there's so much happening at any given moment. As the day progresses, not only follow the stories, but there's usually an ambassador coming in to see me and speak to whatever's happening or somebody visiting from abroad; meeting with sources and speaking with knowledgeable people; playing the ambassadorial role, telling people about The National and my incredible colleagues’ work, but then also the editorial, keeping up with the news.

Al-Oraibi calls herself lucky — her work editing The National is fascinating. And she’s in the room with world leaders on a regular basis. But her life hasn't always been marked by luck. Her earliest memories are of the Iran-Iraq war during the 1980s, when she was a young girl living in Iraq.

Mina Al-Oraibi: I remember vividly, hiding in the house, going to a place where there's no windows. And unfortunately, many people from the Middle East when they hear this, will understand what that means to find that corner in the house that's determined to be the most secure and not having windows come at you if there is a close-by strike.

Her father was an Iraqi diplomat and they moved around a lot. By the time she turned 10, she had lived in Iraq, Sweden, Australia, and Saudi Arabia.

Mina Al-Oraibi: And we were living in Saudi Arabia when Saddam decided to invade Kuwait.

ARCHIVAL George H. W. Bush: Iraqi armed forces, without provocation or warning, invaded a peaceful Kuwait.

ARCHIVAL Newscaster: Iraq wants control of Kuwait's territory, its oil, and the money that comes with it. Iraq insists that it was invited in by a rebel Kuwaiti government, but no one believes that.

Mina Al-Oraibi: Our lives turned upside down as my father was the first Iraqi diplomat to defect against Saddam's regime in protest of the Kuwait invasion.

This was in 1990. Her family remained in Saudi Arabia as refugees for several years. And then in 1995, they received political asylum in the United Kingdom.

Mina Al-Oraibi: I always was interested in politics because my life has been really structured by political development.

It was this sense — that Al-Oraibi and her family’s fate was being decided in some unseen room in a distant capital — that motivated her to pursue journalism, to go inside of those rooms and speak directly with the leaders who made those decisions — people like President Barack Obama, Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri Al-Maliki, and U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry — all people she’s interviewed during the course of her career. She worked for Arabic language publications in London and Washington D.C. before moving to Abu Dhabi to lead The National.

Mina Al-Oraibi: I wanted to understand diplomacy. I wanted to understand what happens in closed-door sessions and conversations and how it affects so many people's lives.

In the Gaza War, we’re watching the impact of those kinds of closed-door conversations playing out in real time.

ARCHIVAL Newscaster: The Biden administration signed off on sending billions of dollars in bombs and fighter jets to Israel.

It's hard to remember now, but in the early fall of 2023 it actually seemed like a promising moment in the Middle East. The U.S. National Security Advisor Jake Sullivan even publicly said this last September:

ARCHIVAL Jake Sullivan: The Middle East region is quieter today than it has been in two decades.

That deceptively quiet moment came a few years after the Trump administration had brokered the Abraham Accords, which established diplomatic relations between Israel and Arab states like the United Arab Emirates, Morocco, and Bahrain in 2020.

ARCHIVAL Donald Trump: These agreements will serve as the foundation for a comprehensive peace across the entire region, something which nobody thought was possible, certainly not in this day and age.

Mina Al-Oraibi: I think the Abraham Accords was a way of saying we want to look to the future. We want to build alliances that are based on commercial interests and security interests. And this idea that the people of the Abrahamic faiths actually have more in common than they have against them. Before that, it was completely stagnant.

But off to the side, there was this still smoldering problem:

Mina Al-Oraibi: It seemed to be unsolvable and perhaps continues to be unsolvable situation of the occupation of Palestine. And the Israelis were moving forward and were able to kind of ring fence this issue and push it to a side.

Peter Bergen: The Abraham Accords, to me, seem to have one fatal flaw, which is the idea that if Israel made peace with a number of Arab states, somehow the Palestinian issue would be solved because supposedly the Arab states would sort of be honest brokers and would kind of intervene. And at one point, Jared Kushner, who was the architect of these accords on the U.S. side, held a conference where they were going to put 50 billion dollars worth of investment into Gaza and the West Bank. And none of that, of course, happened. There was no investment. And of course, the Palestinian issue sort of became worse. The settlements continued. To me, embedded in the Abraham Accords was a problem that really wasn't being addressed.

Mina Al-Oraibi: You're absolutely right in that you couldn't wish away the Palestinian issue, nor was enough momentum created to try to resolve it. I would say that before the Abraham Accords, there was a lot of talk about the annexation of the West Bank. And there was genuine concern that there was going to be very substantial amount of land that would be annexed from the West Bank. And that did stop during the Abraham Accords kind of signing, and those first few months. But the settlement building then continued and went on.

When the Abraham Accords were signed, Al-Oraibi says the United Arab Emirates, or UAE, wanted this agreement to be more than just a bureaucratic shift.

Mina Al-Oraibi: What was striking was the UAE wanted this to be a warm peace.

Here’s an Israeli tourist getting off the first plane to take visitors from Israel to the UAE:

ARCHIVAL Israeli tourist: This has changed my view on the Arabs, actually, because In my country, unfortunately, since I was born, always been like, everybody fighting one each other. And suddenly I'm coming to Dubai, I'm talking to the government in Abu Dhabi for a few weeks already, I have Zoom meetings with them. They're talking to me very nicely. I'm not used to it. I mean, there is human beings in both sides. Everybody, leave the political things aside. We are brothers.

Mina Al-Oraibi: You would often hear people say, we don't want it just to be, “let's have embassies that are barricaded” and leave it at that. Let this be a warm peace. Let this be between two different people, and include others. And I think they were very genuine in that. And they have been absolutely shocked with the brutality of the last six months, especially because the UAE you know, made a point to condemn the Hamas attack. And then called for not only restraint, but also a protection of Palestinian lives.

Before October 7th, the leading Arab regional power, Saudi Arabia, was trying to close a major diplomatic deal with Israel. Such a deal would have represented quite a win for both Israel and the U.S. since Saudi Arabia is one of the world’s wealthiest countries and the birthplace of Islam. At the time, in September of 2023, Al-Oraibi was at the United Nations interviewing diplomats about the negotiations.

Mina Al-Oraibi: Every Arab official I spoke to, and particularly the Saudis, were very clear that this was not going to happen without the Palestinians, that they were pushing the Palestinian Authority to make clear what was needed from their end, that yes, there was, this kind of dynamic between Saudi Arabia and Israel, but the Saudis were adamant that there had to be a Palestinian dynamic. There was a concern that actually some of the officials that were driving this, especially in the United States, were disconnected from realities on the ground. The fallout for people in Palestine, but also in Israel. And so there was this disconnect of, if we could just get the Saudis and the Israelis to sign this deal, everything else would fall into place. And actually, that wasn't the case at all. It wasn't going to just fall into place.

Since the attack on October 7th, no world leader has been as staunchly supportive of the Israeli cause than President Joe Biden. Al-Oraibi has gone as far as describing this as Joe Biden’s war.

Mina Al-Oraibi: I do believe it's Joe Biden's war in the sense that in the immediate aftermath of the terrible attack that happened on the 7th of October and what followed, you had Joe Biden not say a single word to call for the protection of civilians. To recognize the need to protect Palestinians, many of whom do not agree with Hamas. Joe Biden made it very clear, especially in the first six weeks after the attack, that Israel should do whatever it needs to do, and America will support it fully.

ARCHIVAL Joe Biden: Let there be no doubt, the United States has Israel's back. We will make sure the Jewish and democratic state of Israel can defend itself today, tomorrow, as we always have. It's as simple as that.

Mina Al-Oraibi: You speak to officials in the United States in the White House saying Joe Biden would be devastated if his legacy was to show that he was in any way a detractor from Israel's needs. Had Joe Biden said, ‘Actually, we understand that Israel must protect itself, and we are going to support it. There has to be a limit on what is done, and there has to be a protection of civilians’ which he didn't. So I think he is held responsible because almost the entire world was calling out for uh, not only restraint, but for the protection of civilians, which the United States refused. And time and again, they vetoed UN Security Council resolutions when they would have made a difference. By the time they okayed the UN Security Council resolution for a ceasefire, it had become irrelevant.

Peter Bergen: Shortly after October 7th, Secretary of State Antony Blinken arrived in Israel and he gave a speech.

ARCHIVAL Anthony Blinken: I come before you not only as the United States Secretary of State, but also as a Jew. My grandfather, Maurice Blinken, fled pogroms in Russia. My stepfather, Samuel Pizar, survived concentration camps. Auschwitz, Dachau. So, Prime Minister, I understand, on a personal level, the harrowing echoes that Hamas's massacres carry.

Peter Bergen: What was your reaction and the reaction in the region to that speech?

Mina Al-Oraibi: I think there was surprise that an American official would position himself in that way publicly as an official. Why are these lines so blurred between political interests, but also religious sentiment? And also it means can you ever be an honest broker or can you be fair to all sides?

Peter Bergen: Is this the most tricky story you've had to cover as an editor?

Mina Al-Oraibi: Oh, no. There are so many tricky stories. I think it's one of the saddest that we've had to cover, actually, because of the level of brutality, the number of children that are involved. It's been really difficult on our newsroom looking at those images time and again. We've also done, I think, a very good job at covering the Israeli hostage story.

The National’s coverage of the Israeli hostage story has indeed been robust. And for a subject that many media outlets seem to report from one of two “sides,” Al-Oraibi and her team’s coverage seems less “us versus them” and more neighborly. I remember the story Al-Oraibi told about being the little girl looking for a safe spot in her house in Iraq, to hide if a bomb exploded. And in Gaza and Israel, The National seems to always have those stories top of mind: the innocents whose lives are at risk.

Mina Al-Oraibi: And also taking into account that there are Israelis who are now displaced from the border with Lebanon because they're fearful, they're scared. We've tried to capture this idea of trauma in Israel. And frankly, it's not a popular argument to make in our part of the world to try to show any sort of understanding of what's going on internally in Israel. And on the flip side trying to explain to non-Arab audiences why it really does matter to care for the Palestinians, not only from a moral point of view, but also politically.

Peter Bergen: You mentioned the hostages. Your paper reported that the negotiations seem to have stalled. I mean, Is there any hope now?

Mina Al-Oraibi: The negotiations seem to be going around in a very, very vicious circle. One, there is a sense that even if we can't finish off Hamas in the way that the Israeli government first claimed, then we need to push Hamas out of Gaza. And what does that look like? So how can you be negotiating on one side to try to get a ceasefire when you're actually trying to push out the people who are still uh, holed up there? Second element, we don't know how many hostages are still alive or what state they're in.

Mina Al-Oraibi: I think third, because developments are becoming more regional — there's now this Iran dynamic and this dynamic of the Houthis and so forth — the negotiations are no longer the central focus of all the actors that are influencing or having a role in this war. It's becoming very hard to put the pressure on all sides to come to some sort of deal. We hear this always from negotiators, Peter, and I'm sure you've heard it too, is that, every day that they don't get to a deal, they failed — until they do get to a deal and they succeed and so I don't think you can write them off entirely. But I think the Qataris they've made this point, that they may give up doing what they're doing because of the criticism they're getting from Washington. And I think it's their way of signaling to the Biden administration, “try to give us a bit more credit.”

Peter Bergen: Why does Qatar play this mediating role, by the way? I mean, whether it's getting American prisoners out of Iran, whether it's getting hostages out of Hamas's control, they seem to be seen as an honest broker. How has that developed?

Mina Al-Oraibi: I think it's because of all the relationships they've been able to maintain. And frankly relationships with entities like Taliban and Hamas have come about based on a request from the United States.

Peter Bergen: There are people in the United States who criticize the fact that the political wing of Hamas is in part housed in Qatar, and yet it's in the U.S. interest to be able to have some ability to talk to Hamas through the Qataris or talk to the Taliban through the Qataris and by the way, this is the Trump administration, encouraged the Taliban presence in Qatar. This is kind of a bipartisan thing.

Mina Al-Oraibi: [Al-ORAIBI LAUGHS] One of the few bipartisan foreign policy issues, exactly that, as you said, is that having a channel that can be used to speak to these actors that hold sway through their powers of the gun, frankly. And so Qatar has been quite smart in, in playing that role. But by the way, it seems quite often contradictory. So for example, the Iraq war in 2003, it was from CENTCOM bases in Qatar that the Americans were really spearheading invasion of Iraq. But on the flip side, it was Qatar's Al Jazeera channel that was vehemently against the occupation of Iraq. They're very, very smart and very capable of, of managing those contradictions that kind of reflect the world we live in. I mean, I think it would be naive to say, actually, you just have one side and that's it.

And how does Al-Oraibi as editor of The National navigate these kinds of contradictions, reflective of the real world? A real world in which The National is headquartered in Abu Dhabi, an absolute monarchy? What are the red lines her paper can or can’t cross?

Mina Al-Oraibi: Every newspaper editor has their red lines that they can't cross, depending on who their proprietor is. I think for us, the absolute core has to be strong journalism. By the way, we have very strong media laws here. I have to be able to defend if it were to be in a court of law, but also, in front of my board anything that we cover that we can stand up.

Mina Al-Oraibi: So that's one. And I think people underestimate that that is the, the biggest pressure you have that if, if somebody discredits you, if somebody is able to take apart a story. But I don't think it's unique to The National. I don't think it's unique to the Gulf monarchies. I don't think we're ever under threat here of our safety of being able to do journalism. But every journalist is under incredible threat; to have access cut off to have commercial interests hit; to have advertising cut off if you don't play by certain rules. And it's always that negotiating how much political capital you're ready to burn at what point. But frankly, our day-to-day job, nobody intervenes.

Mina Al-Oraibi: But I do think the expectation for media here is different. And there is a sense of, you have to be working towards the common good, the greater good, and not working towards anything that would lead to either instability or shaking people's sense of stability. And that's a very fine line. And sometimes, actually, it's not the big political stories. It's more the local stories. And you have to be sure that if you're going to call something out, that it's constructive, you're not just calling something out to shake people's trust in it and so forth.

One of Al-Oraibi’s recent stories caught my attention: a profile of the work of José Andrés’ World Central Kitchen, which feeds people in conflict zones all over the world. Her profile was published just two weeks before seven of World Central Kitchen’s workers were killed in an Israeli airstrike in Gaza. José Andrés voices outrage that these aid workers were killed despite their efforts to coordinate with Israeli officials and properly mark their vehicles.

ARCHIVAL José Andrés: What I know is that we were targeted deliberately, non-stop, until everybody was dead in this convoy.This looks like it's not a war against terrorism anymore. Seems this is a war against humanity itself.

Peter Bergen: That seemed to be something of an inflection point in this conflict, certainly in the U.S., where José Andrés is well known to lots of people, and it seemed to produce a real shift in the Biden administration that actually produced some action.

Mina Al-Oraibi: I think it was an inflection point for a number of reasons. One, as you rightly mentioned, that abroad, there was a sense that World Central Kitchen is well known. Their ethos are known. They cannot be tarnished or branded as being Hamas sympathizers. They had done everything they needed to do to clarify who they are; their trucks were clearly signposted. They had coordinated with the Israelis. You know, I interviewed the CEO of World Central Kitchen, Erin Gore, here in Abu Dhabi just days before this terrible attack happened. And I specifically said to her, like, ‘Aren't you concerned about safety?’ And she said, ‘We're always concerned about safety wherever we go.’ But there was a level of trust and confidence because they had worked so closely with the Israelis on this. You could not tarnish these people and say that they had done anything wrong. Second reason it's an inflection point is because it came at a time when the Israelis had won almost the argument of keeping the land borders closed. And the third reason I think it's an inflection point, which is quite depressing, is that those who died were not Palestinian. And so their governments had to speak up, had to say something. [Please see a clarifying note at the bottom of this transcript.]

ARCHIVAL Anthony Albanese: I expressed Australia's anger and concern at the death of Zomi Francom.

ARCHIVAL Bernie Sanders: This World Central Kitchen horror, uh, is just one part of what the Netanyahu war machine is doing.

ARCHIVAL David Cameron: The extra aid won't work unless there is proper deconfliction. That is vital, and Britain will be watching very closely to make sure that that happens.

Mina Al-Oraibi: And it put a spotlight on what is the value of Palestinian life compared to non-Palestinian life.

Peter Bergen: Can you recall a war where the U.S. is simultaneously supplying the bombs that are used in the war while also dropping aid to the population that is the subject of this war?

Mina Al-Oraibi: No, the idea of dropping bombs and dropping food parcels simultaneously is part of what angers so many people in this part of the world.

ARCHIVAL Gaza-based Reporter: Many people there coming from the Gaza North as well, in the hope that they can secure some food for their children. All of a sudden, the tanks, gunfire started. So in one hand, they are providing people with food, and in the other hand, they are providing people with death.

Mina Al-Oraibi: Look, the food parcels from the sky are a necessary move because the land borders are closed, and they don't in any way compensate the fact that all land borders are so restricted. So this idea of the U.S. providing not only bombs, but financial support to the Israelis without condition, while at the same time claiming that they are trying to enforce a change in behavior from the Israelis, It's hard to buy. Nobody buys it. All they're doing is requesting it. They're not actually taking decisions, that would make the Israelis feel that they're really under pressure to change tack.

In the meantime, Al-Oraibi says that anti-American sentiment in the region is at an all-time high.

Mina Al-Oraibi: It is American support, political, military, and financial that has allowed Israel to continue with the type of war that it's waging at the moment in Gaza. The fact that you've had, you know, over 13,000 children dead is hard to imagine in six months. With the boycotts, you see just, you know, even if people are not doing political statements or whatever, just people are staying away from American brands. I can't tell you how many dinners or lunches I've gone to, not only in the UAE, but in different parts of the Arab world where people just be like, ‘Okay, no Coke or Pepsi.’ McDonald's for sure has a major PR problem on its hands.

ARCHIVAL Newscaster: The burger chain became a target after photos and videos on social media showed franchise stores in Israel giving away thousands of free meals to the members of the Israeli military.

Mina Al-Oraibi: There's always the sense of survivor's guilt that we get to go on about our lives when people are dying and there's very little we can do. So when they felt that they had some agency through the boycotts, I think that gave momentum to the boycotts.

[MUSIC SHIFTS]

Peter Bergen: What's the view of Hamas amongst Arab rulers?

Mina Al-Oraibi: I think the vast majority of Arab rulers don't trust Hamas, don't like the fact that they are an extension of the Muslim Brotherhood. Having said that, I think there is a real concern, unfortunately, also about the Palestinian Authority.

Peter Bergen: What about ordinary Arabs that you and your journalists talk to, and what's the view of Hamas? What's the view of October 7th?

Mina Al-Oraibi: Look, it's hard to give an honest answer and say the Arab street thinks X, right? Because it's divided. Overwhelmingly, people have sympathy for the Palestinians and feel that October 6th was as bad a day as October 7th for the Palestinians in terms of living under occupation, having no freedom of movement.

Mina Al-Oraibi: There's a sense that the Palestinians deserve like any other people not to live under occupation and, and to have freedom of choice. But there's also a lot of criticism of Hamas not only politically, but the sense of, ‘Okay, you're going to take out an attack like this. You must know that Israelis are going to retaliate hugely. Where are the stockpiles of food? Where are the bunkers being built? You know, where are the political allies that are supposed to help you out in this?’ So there's a real sense that Hamas took the step without the basic obligation of being a governance body you know, as the party that's ruling, they should have thought about the civilians. But I have to say, there's a real hesitancy to criticize Hamas when the Palestinians are under so much attack. One of the biggest problems we have is that people who are critical of Hamas find it very difficult to speak up now because you are seen as an Israel apologist when Israel has committed horrific atrocities.

Peter Bergen: What could have that Israeli response have been different?

Mina Al-Oraibi: I mean, look, I think with these things, you know, you're not in the decision making room, but first would have been, ‘We're going to strike really hard for 48 hours, and then we're going to stop. And we're going to say, we can continue this way.’ Or ‘We are going to call on the Arab states and America and whoever has influence to ensure that Hamas releases at least the women and children from the hostages.’ And then if they don't, then they start again.

Mina Al-Oraibi: I was speaking to an American official who's quite close to the Israelis, who said to me, ‘Well, they can't have a ceasefire because what if Hamas doesn't give up the hostages?’ Well, then they bomb them. I mean, you know, if Hamas gives up the hostages, they have nothing else to negotiate. That's like their main negotiating card. Whereas the Israelis stop bombing, that is a negotiation that they can then end immediately by restarting the war. And so I would have said, ‘Be very strong for 48 hours, make certain demands, they don't get met, start again, but show a willingness to put the onus on Hamas to release the hostages and from there work on other things.’ But it felt like the decision was: ‘We're going to take revenge and we are going to try to cover up what a major military and intelligence failure October 7th was for Israel.’

Peter Bergen: While there's no indication, according to U.S. intelligence, that Iran had any foreknowledge of the Hamas attack on October 7th into Israel, it is a fact, according to the U.S. Treasury, that Hamas has received hundreds of millions of dollars in aid from Iran.

Mina Al-Oraibi: Very few people understand how the Hamas attack on October 7th came about. But it's clear the fact it wasn't leaked was because they didn't share it with not only Iranian leadership, they didn't share it with the Hamas leadership sitting in Qatar. And while the Israelis had reports of a potential such attack, they kind of chose to ignore it.

But as the war has gone on, Iran has made its support of Hamas clear. And in April the Iranian regime took an extraordinary step.

ARCHIVAL Newscaster: [SOUND OF A SIREN] Iran launched more than 300 cruise missiles, ballistic missiles, and drones toward Israel, It's the first time Iran has directly attacked Israel from Iranian territory.

In that attack, 99% of Iran's missiles and drones were shot down thanks in part to the help from the United States, but also ofJordan, Saudi Arabia, and the United Arab Emirates. Does this collective effort to help defend Israel from Iran, mean that the Arab world actually sees Iran as more of a problem than Israel?

Mina Al-Oraibi: I don't think it means they see Iran as a greater problem than Israel. I think it means they see Iran as a problem, which has been the case for decades. One of the many problems we face here is this almost, well, ‘Who's worse? Iran? Israel?’ When actually both of them are infringing upon the sovereignty of Arab lands and Arab countries. As for the Jordanians, I think if they didn't take action this time, the next step would be you'd have some of these Iranian-backed militias from Iraq storming into Jordan and demanding to cross over to the West Bank, as they continue to threaten since October. So I do think that Jordan didn't have a choice except to try to stop these drones and projectiles from going over their airspace. Because again, they would lose their sovereignty, which is what we've seen in Iraq, in Syria, in Yemen, and in Lebanon. We don't need another Arab country that genuinely lacks any sort of control over what's happening in its airspace or even on its territorial borders.

Peter Bergen: Iran doesn't seem to be easily deterred. If we'd had this conversation six months ago before the Hamas attack in Israel, the fact that Iran was sending a barrage of missiles at Israel, the fact that Israel was taking out Iranian military leaders in an embassy facility in Damascus none of that would have seemed plausible. I mean, are we the frog in the water that is slowly being boiled and we're not really aware that the water is heating up?

Mina Al-Oraibi: I like your analogy about frog in the water. I keep thinking we're sleepwalking into a major war. I believe that the region is at war at the moment. And so the question is, does it remain a low-intensity war that drags out for years and frankly adds to the sense of instability, where it’s very hard for people living in many of these countries to be able to plan long-term or to see a way forward? Or do we then have a genuine effort for peace? And you know, there's all this talk about let's have an international conference and let's, you know, the root of it, solve the Palestinian issue and the occupation, establish a Palestinian state, ensure Israel’s security, have relationships with everybody in the region, you know, that when you say it is great, but you're going to have spoilers.

Mina Al-Oraibi: And the spoilers are the people who carried out the October 7th attack. And they are the people who are insisting that there continues to be some sort of war. And by the way, they're not just Iran and its proxies. You've also got elements in Israel and elements in Palestine that thrive off a constant state of war. And so how do you get out of that? I don't know. But the minute you can say ‘There's a ceasefire in Gaza, there's a path forward for the Palestinians,’ it's very hard then for Hezbollah or the Houthis or Iran to say, ‘Okay, we're going to continue with a war.’

At some point, the guns will fall silent in Gaza. I asked Al-Oraibi for her most optimistic projection for what the day after looks like. But she told me anything too optimistic is also very unrealistic. Even so, she did have a complex, well-thought-out plan of what could conceivably work, beginning with collaboration between Arab states and a newly-reconfigured National Palestinian Front.

Mina Al-Oraibi: And then after four years full sovereignty back to the Palestinians and internally in Israel, you have a genuine kind of moment of national coalition coming together and saying, ‘We want to push out the crazies that that can only speak a language of war or want to destroy any hope for us living peacefully with Palestinians and Arabs.’ And so you get national coalition there and then you start those kind of confidence-building measures between the Palestinians and Israelis in between the people there and then you have you the Arabs saying, ‘Okay, well, because the Israelis have shown that they are willing, then we are going to start talks with them from now of what the future looks like with them.’ That Palestinian statehood doesn't become the end of the road but becomes part of this momentum building. So Palestinian statehood is agreed and then slowly being built up to a full state.

This grand, optimistic plan is not likely to happen. But that doesn’t mean it’s impossible.

Mina Al-Oraibi:All of it is possible. This is all man-made. Problem is if you don't have the political will, and if you have a complete fracturing of the political leadership in Israel and in Palestine, how do you get one voice to say, ‘Yeah, we're committed to this.’ That's the biggest challenge.

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Mina Al-Oraibi: It does feel like a transformative moment in a negative sense, not in a positive sense. And this sense of guilt and sadness and frustration is felt amongst many, many, many Arabs. And the concern is, unless there is a non-militant, non-military way to resolve these issues, it's really going to inspire particularly young disenfranchised men to feel that the only solution is to pick up a gun because those who push for peace are either seen as weak or discredited, and that is one of the long term consequences in addition to the terrible human losses that have happened in the last six months that concern me.

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To learn more about the issues discussed in this episode, we recommend: Black Wave: Saudi Arabia, Iran and the Forty-year Rivalry that Unraveled Culture, Religion, and Collective Memory in the Middle East by Kim Ghattas and The Achilles Trap: Saddam Hussein, the CIA and the Origins of America’s Invasion of Iraq by Steve Coll. Both of those titles are available on Audible.

CREDITS:

IN THE ROOM WITH PETER BERGEN is an Audible Original.

Produced by Audible Studios and FRESH PRODUCE MEDIA

This episode was produced by Laura Tillman, with help from Luke Cregan and Nathan Ray.

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