Editor's note: This interview was conducted by Pamela Paresky in July 2024.

Gadi Taub: First of all, we need a clear victory in this war. And then we need to show that it was a bad idea to start it, so that the price would be heavy. The price that, according to their theology, makes jihad unprofitable is if you lose land. In Muslim Brotherhood theology, there are two conditions where you get a waiver from the responsibility to fight jihad. That’s when you’re too weak and you can’t do it, and when the war would desecrate hallowed Muslim land.

So Israel should exact a price in land. I’m not sure that we can do it, because Israel has not yet internalised the seriousness of the situation. I think there’s something comforting in the fact that we keep talking about the Israeli–Palestinian conflict as if that was in any way the issue now. The two-state solution is pie in the sky. It’s completely off the table. No one in Ra’anana is going to live five minutes from the next terror state. This is a fantasy. The very fact that we are discussing this as if this was the issue is testimony to the fact that people have not internalised what has happened, namely, that this is not another round in the Israeli–Palestinian conflict. This is the first Israeli–Iranian war.

What Israel needs to do now is prepare for a decade of wars, some that we will initiate, some that we will have to initiate. Think of the international environment. The international community and the United States are pressuring us to stop a war that we didn’t start. But we need to start a war with Hezbollah. We can’t have those Nazis on our border. They’ve moved the security zone into Israel. We’ve evacuated part of Israel. They’ve virtually conquered part of Israel. And we have this monstrous force, which the United States is now protecting, on our border. 

Pamela Paresky: You just said that the US is now protecting a monstrous force. You mean the US is protecting Hezbollah?

GT: Yeah. Yeah, the US is protecting Hezbollah. This is what they’re doing. People here, first of all, people have fantasies about the US. The US is a mythical entity that is our benevolent overseer. The whole Israeli Left has learned to count on the United States to be the responsible adult, to force us to do what we don’t yet understand we should. The Left is not able to win elections with the two-state solution. So it hopes that this will be imposed on us by the Americans. The assumption is that the Americans have got our back. But that’s not a correct assumption. People here think of the United States only in bilateral concepts, as if this was a marriage, as if this was a sibling relationship. They don’t look at what’s going on around us.

So the Americans, the current American administration, can easily fool Israel with just some nice talk. And people are not realising that they’re doing here what they’re doing all over the Middle East, which is appeasing Iran.

The whole philosophy, and I think the American public certainly doesn’t understand this because it’s not interested enough in foreign policy, and Democratic American administrations don’t tell the truth about appeasing Iran to their public because it’s not a popular cause, but what they’re doing in the Middle East, ever since Obama, is their working assumption is that the problem in the Middle East is America’s allies. That’s us, the Israelis, and the Saudis, the Egyptians, the Jordanians. These are the problem. Because these are the ones capable of dragging America into yet another war. And the coming war is going to be with Iran. So the danger, in their view, is that the Saudis and the Israelis will drag America into war. Therefore, the basic idea is America should move away from its allies and closer to Iran, and appease it. Because that’s generally the progressive and postcolonial view of the world. You hug the bully. They are the victims, so they need a hug. This is Obama’s infamous Cairo speech. It’s the same philosophy. The idea is that the Third World, the indigenous people, are like children. They’re like bullies, and we should understand that bullies are bullies because they’re in pain. And so we should hug them.

That’s exactly the same philosophy in international relations. And that is what they are doing. They’re appeasing Iran. They’re talking about “regional integration.” What is regional integration? Who is going to be integrated? Iran is going to be integrated. Obama used to say that the Saudis need to learn that they will need to share with Iran.

The Saudis need to learn that they will have to share the neighbourhood with Iran. That is what they’ve been doing all along. What is going on now in the region is that, over our heads, the Americans and the Iranians are vying for power positions and negotiating an accommodation. The Americans keep signalling: “We will not attack Iran. If you exaggerate, we will hit your proxies mildly, but we will not destroy them.”

PP: What do you mean by “if you exaggerate”?

GT: If you exaggerate means if the Houthis keep hitting shipping in the Bab al-Mandab Strait. This is a major international commerce artery. If you exaggerate there, we will bring our Iron Dome and we’ll protect the ships. Why bring in the Iron Dome instead of attacking them? This is a little terror organisation. A little terror organisation that the Biden administration took off the terror list to signal to the Iranians: “We are not after you, and we will turn our backs on the Saudis if we need to.” That’s the first thing they did when they came into office: remove the Houthis from the terror list.

So, when the US say “exaggerating” they mean if Iran or its proxies kill American personnel. They’ve attacked American forces since 7 October about 120 times, perhaps more by now. And America generally did nothing.

PP: You mean escalating? When you say exaggerating, you mean escalating?

GT: No, because they are escalating, but when they escalate too much—

PP: What is “too much”?

GT: If you actually kill American servicemen. Three were killed. Then we’re going to talk a lot about retaliation and warn you long enough in advance so that nothing really happens. Because what we really want is de-escalation. That’s their mantra everywhere: de-escalation.