Trump’s Gaza Peace Proposal: The Upsides & Downsides
October 1, 2025
Host: Hon. Sam Rohrer
Guest: Michael Rubin
Note: This transcript is taken from a Stand in the Gap Today program aired on 10/01/25. To listen to the podcast, click HERE.
Disclaimer: While reasonable efforts have been made to provide an accurate transcription, the following is a representation of a mechanical transcription and as such, may not be a word for word transcript. Please listen to the audio version for any questions concerning the following dialogue.
Sam Rohrer:
Hello and welcome to this Wednesday edition of Stand In the Gap Today. Today America Ponders the real reason and the meaning of the historic mandatory meeting that was yesterday of all US flag officers and that just really means one, two, and three and four star generals that was held at Quantico. Most people are embracing, I am finding one of two very diverse narratives. One narrative is that of great rejoicing, patriotism, and thanks for an overdue emphasis on soldiers being soldiers. But the other is a grave concern arising out of orders from the President and Secretary Hegseth to the military leaders that fighting enemies overseas is soon to include fighting on the streets of America using our, as they said, big cities as training grounds and quote for our military as they learn to fight enemies from within on our own soil. And you can see the concern divergence there.
Now, join me tomorrow on this program as I engage this particular topic further. The other dominating consideration is one for which the entire world is watching the entire world, not just America is watching, and that’s a result of the Trump Gaza peace proposal done two days ago where the President said he would bring in his words peace in the Middle East, eternal peace. Those are exactly his words. Linking talks to Iran and trade and more. Now it’s this global matter of the Gaza peace proposal to which theoretically all Muslim states and Arab nations have already agreed to which Benjamin Netanyahu in that setting appears to have agreed and to which the world now waits to see whether and what Hamas will do today. I’ve asked a first time guest to join me here in Standing the Gap today named Michael Rubin. Michael is a major research and journalist contributor to Middle East Forum and a senior fellow at the American Enterprise Institute where he specializes in Middle Eastern countries, particularly Iran and Turkey, and of course Israel. His career includes time as a Pentagon official with field experiences in Iran, Yemen, and Iraq, as well as engagements with the Taliban prior to 911. Now the title I’ve chosen to frame our important conversation today is this: Trump’s Gaza Peace Proposal, the Upsides and the Downsides. And with that, welcome to the program today, Michael Rubin, thank you so much for being with me.
Michael Rubin:
Hey, thanks for having me, Sam.
Sam Rohrer:
Let’s go Michael to the Trump Gaza Peace proposal right off here at the White House meeting. When the president presented the framework for this peace proposal, it was clear that it was his proposal where he was fully in charge and it was going to be done his way. That’s the way it was presented. Netanyahu prime minister had to apologize to Qatar, Qatar for the Israel attack. Inside Qatar targeting Hamas leaders, the Arab and Muslim neighbors had to agree to help rebuild Gaza plus more and that the US would oppose any effort by Israel to annex the West Bank or maintain any ongoing control over Gaza to name just a few. Now at this point, the entire proposal Michael seems to hinge on Hamas agreeing. In your opinion, will Hamas agree and will this peace proposal go any further than just another blip on the screen for a few weeks before perhaps a greater war breaks out again?
Michael Rubin:
Well, Sam, it’s a great question. First of all, I don’t think Hamas will agree. What Donald Trump is doing is basically offering Hamas and offering the Palestinians a path to statehood, but he’s doing it in a way that makes clear that the United States is going to stand by Israel’s right to exist insecurity as a Jewish state. Now, too often we look at Hamas and the problem of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict through the lens of grievance is there just some magic formula our diplomats can come up to that will resolve this. We don’t fully acknowledge that the real problem in the region is the ideology that is espoused by the Islamic Republic of Iran, by Turkey, by Hamas, by Qatar. What we’re basically doing is forcing Hamas to basically make clear where the problem lies. So I do think they’re going to walk away, and then what Donald Trump is saying is that if Hamas exposes its true colors, Israel can do what they need to do.
Sam Rohrer:
Alright, now that’ll move me into the next question now because all that’s extraordinarily helpful and interesting. Let’s go to the motive. I don’t like getting into motives, but there’s a reason why political things like this are put forward, but in your opinion, I’m going to ask you this, the motive for this meeting coming on the heels of overwhelming United Nations vote to condemn Israel and to force into existence a two-state solution being a Palestinian Israeli state, here’s my question. What do you see as Trump’s real motivation? In other words, as you understand this peace proposal, do you think Trump was trying to just end run the United Nations with his own approach saying it was not going to require a two-state solution, which is obviously no starter for Israel, or was it just a mere political sleight of hand to steal global media attention from the United Nation to himself or possibly something else?
Michael Rubin:
Well, Sam, I don’t want to be too cynical here. One of the things with regard to Donald Trump is he had a four year gap between his two terms. He and his aides really got to sit back and assess and instead of simply being reactive in their policies, they’ve learned how to be proactive. Now, when it comes to what the Europeans did, especially as well as Australia, New Zealand and so forth at the United Nations, it’s little more than virtue signaling because you can’t have a state without actually having borders, without having a solitary recognized government and so forth. But because the Europeans and others were willing to act so unilaterally, what Donald Trump is trying to do is say, I too can act unilaterally, but I actually have the power to do something. Now, I don’t want to be too cynical because I really do believe that Trump wants peace and this isn’t an insane way forward. What Trump is doing is building on the precedence that led to the independence of Kosovo that led to the independence of East Timor. I don’t think those cases are as analogous as some of Trump’s people think, but Trump wants that Nobel Peace prize and he wants a legacy that shows that he can make deals that others could not.
Sam Rohrer:
Okay, that’s probably as good an explanation, Michael, as I have heard in reality, it’s probably a little bit of all the things that we’ve said. It’s hard to tell. Ladies and gentlemen, we’re going into a break here in just a minute. My special guest today is Michael Rubin. He is a senior fellow at American Enterprise Institute and he does a lot of writing for Middle East Forum, a group that focuses on the Middle East, and I’ve had just a number of their fellows and writers on this program in the past. A theme today that decided to go down the road is the Trump’s Gaza peace proposal, the upsides and the downsides. I try to lay the foundation a little bit here in this first segment. When we come back, we’re going to be in the next segment, talk about upsides and downsides. We’re going to head into Iran and what’s happening as an enemy of Israel, an eternal enemy.
They really, that’s what they say, and then we’re going to end up talking about what’s happening to our south in Venezuela. So that’s a roadmap. Stay with us. We’ll go down that road. Just a minute. Well, if you’re just joining us today, welcome aboard. Our theme today is this Trump’s Gaza peace proposal. The upsides and the downsides of my special guest is Michael Rubin, senior fellow at the American Enterprise Institute and a contributor among other things for Middle East Forum. Now, since Israel was rebirthed as a nation in 1948 in fulfillment of Bible prophecy as foretold, specifically in Isaiah chapter 66 in verse 18, where a nation would be born in a day and that’s what happened then American presidents in particular have all to bring peace to the Middle East because there’s been anything but ongoing peace since 1948, but there’s also no one who has desired this prize more than our current president, who has repeatedly stated that he deserves the Nobel Peace Prize more than anyone else.
Since he has frequently stated he has done more to bring peace than any previous president, but stating as he did that he would bring peace in the Middle East. Eternal peace linking talks to Iran and trade and more is far easier said than done and frankly not humanly possible. I’m going to submit since only one person will bring lasting peace in the Middle East, which again is biblically prophesied as to both when and how, and we talk much about that on this program. Yet this peace proposal does accomplish some upsides as well as some downsides. So we’re going to go there next. Michael, in your opinion, what would you identify as the upsides or the positives that either will or may come from this particular Trump Gaza peace proposal?
Michael Rubin:
Well, the focus on Gaza itself is important. One of the biggest mistakes the United States made dating back to the Oslo Accords in 1993 was this notion that rather than deal with the Palestinian grassroots, you could bring in a dictator from afar. In this case, Yasar Arafat that a lot of people don’t realize was Egyptian. He was born in Egypt, he was an Egyptian army officer. He couldn’t care less about the ordinary Palestinian people, and of course when he died, he died after having embezzled several billion dollars. By getting back to the grassroots, you’re allowing the Gazans to take matters into their own hands and ultimately put ideology aside to rebuild their lives, to rebuild their society. And just like the Japanese and the Germans after World War ii, there are some indications that the Gazans are sick and tired of Hamas and others trying to speak on their behalf and that they’re ready to move forward should Donald Trump and the international community allow them to.
Sam Rohrer:
Alright, let’s just leave it there and I’ll go on the negatives then we’ll maybe come back into it again. Downsides, negatives that may come or will come from the Trump proposal. How do you see that?
Michael Rubin:
Well, first of all, we need to call out the fact that the biggest problem undermining peace is the ideology of Rejectionism and the ideology of the Muslim Brotherhood. So long as we continue to ignore that, we’re condemning ourselves to repeat the same mistakes again and again as is often attributed to Mark Twain or Albert Einstein. Insanity is doing the same action repeatedly, but expecting different results each time. Also, I travel quite a bit and while the Palestinians receive a disproportionate amount of international aid, so many other countries do so much more with so much less. I spend a lot of time in Somalia land, the northern third of Somalia, which never went into state failure, it’s unrecognized, it gets no state aid it it’s the first country in the world that has had elections secured by biometric iris scans. Some of the elections are determined just by 80 votes out of a million cast, and yet they receive no foreign aid. When you give foreign aid, I don’t think enough people realize how corrosive it is because it basically signals the people who are the targets of that aid, that they don’t need accountability over their own actions, that they don’t have agency, that they don’t have to be responsible because they’re always going to be bailed out. How long are we going to continue to bail out people that simply squander their opportunities?
Sam Rohrer:
That’s a great point. Boy, that’s worthy as a theme of continuing later, I think maybe I’d like to talk with you on a different program about that whole aspect of foreign aid and all of that. That’s a great, great point, but let’s move on into this one personally disturbing fact that I discovered on the White House website this morning, but I hadn’t seen it mentioned anywhere else until just a few moments ago. You guys, middle East Forum sent out an update on this and that is that the same day that the White House Peace proposal and the meeting with the president and Netanyahu took place on the 29th, there was an agreement that was made to me, it reads like a treaty where the US Senate is required to sign, but it’s where Donald Trump committed the US military to the defense of Qatar, a Qatar, in the event that they were attacked, and here’s the exact language that really bothered me. It says this Section two commitment, the United States shall regard any armed attack on the territory, sovereignty or critical infrastructure of the state of Qatar as a threat to the peace and security of the United States. I haven’t seen such a thing like this frankly, but what do you make of this commitment to Qatar, which I’ve always believed and I believe they are a very real enemy of Israel. They’ve been a protector of Hamas and they’re a funder of terrorists.
Michael Rubin:
Well, Sam, the three countries I think that deserve to be designated state sponsors of terror but are not are Pakistan, Qatar and Turkey, and you’re absolutely right, this reads like a treaty, but it’s not a treaty. Two things really bother me about this. Number one, we find ourselves through NATO with regard to Turkey and through this executive order with regard to Qatar basically shielding and protecting the chief engines of the Muslim brotherhood worldwide. In a sense, we are protecting a country that objectively speaking is a sponsor of terrorism that should end. The other thing that really worries about me is the issue of precedent. Like you said, this reads like a treaty, but a treaty would need Senate approval. What happens if in the future we have another president of the mind of Joe Biden or Barack Obama for example, that really want to reach out to Iran? Could they now issue an executive order protecting Iran in the same way? This is the type of thing that truly worries me as every other country is going to want to replicate the Qatar precedent and get this sort of guarantee through executive order if they can’t do it through the Senate.
Sam Rohrer:
Having been in office myself for 18 years, Michael, and having taken an oath to support and defend the Constitution United States as well as our Congress, as well as frankly everyone in the cabinet and the President himself, I am exercised when I see such actions like this, which are directly in opposition to the Constitution. Anyways, it’s a real bother for all the reasons that you just said. Now come back in, if you don’t mind, build out a little bit. You named three countries, Pakistan, Turkey, and Qatar. What connects all of them and why didn’t you put Iran into that mix? Out of curiosity, we’re going to talk about Iran in the next segment, but why those three?
Michael Rubin:
Well, the reason I didn’t bring Iran, as I said, the three countries that deserve to be designated a state sponsor of terror but aren’t Iran, thankfully, is already designated a state sponsor of terror.
Sam Rohrer:
Okay,
Michael Rubin:
So you’re absolutely right. There’s absolutely no, we shouldn’t be choosing sides, we shouldn’t be choosing flavors of extremism. Shia extremism is bad, Sunni extremism is bad, and we can’t ignore either. One of the statistics, which actually comes from Turkey’s interior ministry that really should wake people up to what’s going on in Turkey, whether it’s a NATO member or not, is that since Erdogan came to power in Turkey, the murder rate of women inside Turkey has increased 1400%. That’s a figure from Turkey’s own interior ministry. What we’re seeing is the sense of religious impunity for murder of anyone that doesn’t follow Erdogan’s very precise vision. There’s another quick joke which they tell in Turkey about a Turkish professor who missed tweets. Something ends up with a 20 year jail sentence, first day in prison, he goes to the prison library, has a lot of time to kill, has a list of books and asks for them from the librarian. The librarian apologizes profusely and says, I’m sorry, we don’t have any of these books. We only have the authors. The fact of the matter is Turkey is a very different country than it was when it fought with us in the Korean War and defended us as a key member of NATO.
Sam Rohrer:
Alright, we don’t have much time left. That is very, very good. Of those three Pakistan, Qatar, and Turkey, which one of those do you think is the lead or are they all equally dangerous?
Michael Rubin:
Let me put it this way. You’re asking someone to choose between a heart attack, a stroke, or cancer. The fact of the matter is Qatar has the money, Turkey has the wherewithal and the NATO backing, and Pakistan has the malign ideology and the geography. So they are all a danger to United States right now, and I would actually add Malaysia to the mix as well. Al-Qaeda’s Disneyland
Sam Rohrer:
Interesting in about 30 seconds here, why didn’t you put Saudi Arabia in that mix?
Michael Rubin:
Saudi Arabia changed course not because of 911, but when Al Queda and other extremists started attacking them at home, and this is a pattern we constantly see. Turkey, Pakistan, Saudi Arabia, you export Jihadism and you expect it not to blow back. It always blows back.
Sam Rohrer:
Very, very excellent information. Michael Rubin and Isha gentleman, stay with us. We’re going to come back and we’re going to move now into this area of Iran because there was some indication a couple of weeks ago that perhaps Iran had reconstituted itself and was ready to attack Israel again. And anyway, I’m going to ask Michael about that because that is an area of expertise for him in the Middle East and we’re going to talk about Iran, where they are and the Houthis and even Hezbollah. Well, as we get back into and pursue again, if you’re just joining us, our theme is Trump’s Gaza piece proposal, the upsides and downsides. We talked about that a little bit at the beginning. First segment when we did the upsides and the downsides. Last segment. This segment we’re going to move to the broader area of the Middle East specifically as involves Iran, but all of the things about which we have talked so far and my special guest today, Michael Rubin, is that you can find just a plethora of articles on all of these things we’re talking about here plus so much more on the website of me forum.org, that’s middle east forum me forum.org, and you can find articles that my guest today, Michael Rubin himself has written.
You can just search for at the top and they’ll all come up. Alright, now let’s move into Iran here, Michael, because in the peace proposal and what the president said about bringing peace to the Middle East, eternal peace. As I said, no one can guarantee, no human can guarantee eternal peace. But that being said, he talked about also envisioning out of this arrangement expanded trade and where Iran specifically mentioned him would be a partner in trade and it was reported some days ago though that Israel actually might strike Iran. Militarily have to, because Iran, at least what I was reading, some are saying that they have rebuilt or reconstituted their military strength sufficiently to strike Israel. Now here’s my question. Is there anything to this threat? Has Iran reconstituted itself sufficiently to pose a current risk again or a risk concern for Israel?
Michael Rubin:
The fact of the matter is Sam, yes, Iran still poses a risk. We can’t let the perfect be the enemy of the good when it comes to, for example, nuclear weapons capability. Iran has already enriched uranium past the level of what the United States had with regard to the bomb in Hiroshima. Now when in April, 2024, Iran launched 300 missiles and drones at Israel, seven got through, 293 were shot down. A lot of people said that was success, but if seven gets through and some of them have biological chemical or nuclear warheads, then it’s a whole different ballgame. One thing people don’t understand, Sam, is that when we Americans look at this, we tend to look at Iran’s nuclear program. It’s strategically untenable it. It’s something that complicates our lives. The reason why the Israelis look at this as an existential threat is it’s not Iran’s nuclear program.
It’s the revolutionary guards nuclear program. You can go into the Revolutionary guard bubble at age eight because they run the equivalent of Evil Boy Scouts and then go through your whole life and they may actually believe this sort of rhetoric, which sounds ridiculous to us. Now if you have an uprising in Iran and we saw the woman life freedom movement and the regime start to collapse, the people who have the command control and custody of the nuclear weapons would be the revolutionary guard. If you know you only have 24 hours left before your regime is gone. Think Romania in 1989 with Checo, what’s to stop Iran, the Revolution Guard from launching nuclear weapons then at Saudi Arabia, at the United States, at Israel, would anyone really retaliate against the country whose regime had already collapsed? It’s that sort of collapse of deterrence that makes Israel think this is an existential threat and we haven’t addressed this yet.
Sam Rohrer:
Okay, and as you said at the beginning, at the heart of it, it’s an ideological position coming right off the pages of the Quran that says that Israel and the United States as the great Satan as far as that goes, don’t deserve to live. So that’s still there and that’s the motivation. Now this question, to what extent do you think Iran is continuing to equip, and I want to ask you about this. Most people think that Hezbollah has been destroyed as an example, and then throw into that as well, the Houthis, because they continue, despite the fact that the United States bombed them relentlessly for about two weeks, they still continue to lob missiles into Iran. So deal with the Hezbollah first Iran supplying them and then go into the Houthis.
Michael Rubin:
Well, I mean first of all Sam, when you have a forest fire that’s burning out of control, you don’t put out 90% of the fire, the forest fire and then say we’re going to go home. That’s one of the reasons you can’t stand down. Iran is motivated by an ideology which Ali Khomeini espouses at the United Nations General Assembly. Last week I actually met with the Iranian president, Ian, and he basically said the Iranians are going to continue this. I mean take it from them. Instead of trying to act as their lawyer, which so many of our diplomats historically have done, they’re going to continue this with regard to Hezbollah. We uprooted the military, the military aspect of this. But I spent part of the summer in West Africa and what many people forget is in African countries. I was in Cote De Ivoire, most of the business elite are actually Lebanese. What have we done to uproot Hezbollah’s financial support system? Until we do that, they can reconstitute themselves. And as you know, this past July I spent in Yemen actually climbing mountains, surveying the Houthis lines. The Houthis are still there, they’re just as lethal and they’re actually expanding outwards into Sudan, bringing them further north in the Red Sea where they can threaten so much more.
Sam Rohrer:
Alright, so that’s an important part. Israel, the IDF depleted and harmed the military component part of Hezbollah what you’re saying, but the financial part that allows them to go, you’re saying is still there. The Houthis, you’re saying you are actually down there and visiting over there, but you’re saying they’re expanded. So I want you to go further on that. What does that mean when you say they’re expanding, but also to tie into this, because a couple of weeks ago it was alleged at least that Iran was providing chemical weapons to the Houthis and with the ability with them having somehow Houthis that is having hypersonic missiles, you could include some chemical weapons or biological weapons as you talked about, and all it takes is one of them to get through to Israel and then there are a big issue. So question, to what extent do the Houthis represent a really truly serious threat to Israel or peace in the Middle East?
Michael Rubin:
The way to look at this, it’s like tentacles of an octopus and we might play, I’m mixing my metaphors, but we may play whack-a-mole by going after the tentacles. You got to go after the head of the octopus and that head of the octopus is in the Islamic Republic of Iran right now, the good news is the supreme leader of Iran is 86 years old. He’s had cancer twice, he’s partially paralyzed. He’s not going to last forever. Our focus needs to be on the long game here. What would the Middle East mean if the Islamic Republic of Iran fell? On the other hand, we can’t simply sit on our hands. What would it mean for us if friendly countries to the United States at least, like Jordan or Saudi Arabia fell? We’d be talking about a fundamentally different Middle East, but one thing so many people get wrong is it’s not about Israel, it’s about ideology.
And we had talked offline in 1946, our intelligence community determined that the greatest over horizon threats to American national security were going to be communism and Islamic fundamentalism. This is a year before the partition of Palestine, two years before the creation of the state of Israel. What they were focusing on was that Muslim brotherhood ideology, which is espoused by Qatar and Turkey. And while some people say Sunnis versus Shia, Turkey and Qatar have nothing to do with Iran, Iran actually helps the Muslim Brotherhood because from the Iranian mindset, the Shia didn’t split off from the Sunnis when you were studying Islam and Iran like I did. What you’re taught is the Sunni split off from the Shia. And so we represent, we Shia represent all of Islam, and this is why you see the Islamic Republic of Iran working with countries like Turkey, Qatar and other Islamic fundamentalist groups, even Al-Qaeda at times.
Sam Rohrer:
That’s really informative. One follow up question there. You mentioned the revolutionary Guard. You mentioned the Ayatollah. Ayatollah is old and he’s not really providing the leadership per se, but when you look at the danger part, the beating heart of danger within Iran, was it ever the ayatollah or has it always been the revolutionary guard or is it some other thread in that mix?
Michael Rubin:
That’s a really dangerous question to ask a historian, Sam, but I’ll do this really quickly. Initially it was the Ayatollahs. In 1980 you had the Iran Iraq war and the Revolutionary guard became elite. Ayatollah Khomeini died in 1989. There was actually a heat wave at the time, and the quip on the street of Teran was the old man was so senile he forgot to close the door on the way down, the revolutionary guard didn’t want to go back into the barracks and they built its global economic empire that’s worth about a hundred billion dollars. They self-fund themselves now they’re basically Pandora’s boxes open. They’re too big to be put back in the box. One of the things we don’t fully know, however, is we talk about hardliners versus reformers in Iranian politics. What’s the factional division within the Revolutionary guard? How can we fracture this organization? Because in one way or another, the regime isn’t going to fall until the revolutionary guard are split and divided. That’s what our laser focus needs to be on.
Sam Rohrer:
Alright, ladies and gentlemen, stay with us. We’re moving a lot very fast here and I’m hoping that the clarity of what Michael Rubin, my guest is saying and as we’re focusing on the Middle East is helpful because on these things, confusion, reigns too much clarity is what we’re trying to do. When going to come back and we’re going to move down south here now our hemisphere and potential war in Venezuela, which by the way does have quite a connection to Iran and the Revolutionary Guard as we go into our final segment now, and we’re going to head down to Venezuela here in our own hemisphere. But before I do that, just a reminder that if you would like to find more in depth research articles on, I’m going to say everything Middle East, the countries there, just all the things we’re talking about here. You can find it at the Middle East Forum website me forum.org, and you can find the articles that my guest today Michael Rubin writes as well.
He focuses on all of those Middle Eastern countries and things beyond that as well. But you can find it all there. So I found that to be a good source of information. Alright, Michael, let’s go down here. Now down south, I set up in the last segment that there is a connection where we’re going and I ran, we was talking about, but I’m going to say this almost conspicuous by its absence in the news, I’m going to say there is a serious potential of the United States actually going to war against Venezuela. Now, a couple narratives out there of one the public narrative that I’m most often hearing is that, well, we have to do that because they are notorious drug dealers. The actual narrative though may have more to do with Venezuela perhaps being well the largest known deposit of oil anywhere in the world. In addition to the fact that we’ve covered in this program many times in the past, the fact that for years China, Russia and Iran have been there on the ground in Venezuela, they have equipped Venezuela, militarily and economically provided a lot of financial assistance. So anyways, they’re all down there and now this thing is happening. So just to the extent that you’re able, can you share what is happening there in Venezuela? What really is the issue and the concern and build out just a little bit Iran’s involvement there.
Michael Rubin:
Okay, well, very quickly, three main concerns with Venezuela. Number one is that when you talk about Venezuela having oil, in fact most of the oils either offshore or in neighboring Guyana and what Venezuela is doing to Guyana, where American companies work is what Saddam Hussein’s, Iraq eventually did with Kuwait threatening to move in that sort of issue. Number two, the drug problem is real, but you’re absolutely right. Number three, we talked about the last segment, Sam, about the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps and their economic wing. If you want to understand the economic wing of the revolutionary guard in an American context, and of course I say this without moral equivalence, imagine taking the US Army Corps of Engineers and merging it with Bechtel, Hal Burt and KBR, Northrop Grumman, Boeing, Hal Walmart, shell and Exxon. That’s what the revolutionary guard is. Now, what they did is in theory build a bulldozer factory in a portion of Venezuela that is very rural and happens to have a lot of uranium.
Now, our satellite imagery has never shown a single bulldozer coming out of that factory, but there is a no fly zone over that. And the question then becomes are they really building bulldozers or are they enriching uranium or extracting uranium in a way that could work to build this Iranian bomb? The other thing to understand about the Islamic Revolution back in 1979 with Ayatollah Khomeini is it wasn’t just a theological revolution, it was also a leftist, a socialist revolution. What Khomeini did was fuse traditional Islamism with that socialism. That’s why we so often we talk about a red green alliance now and with aro is part of it just as much as Fidel Castro used to be.
Sam Rohrer:
Alright, that is excellent. And boy, we could go further down that, but that is really well put together. Got to move this into it and see to what extent you can comment on this because as the United States move our ships off of the coast of Venezuela and these factors, these things you just talked about enter in, other things have happened. Russia has now moved their ships just this last week here into the Caribbean. I saw just yesterday that China has agreed to pick up all of the debt of Cuba, Cuba in exchange for a greater presence there because those countries, China, Russia, and Iran all have a reason to not let the United States move into Venezuela. So in your opinion, where does the greatest threat to America’s security lie right at the mental physical security? Is it from without, as in Iran, Russia, China as an example or an enemy within a stated yesterday at the Quantico meeting?
Michael Rubin:
I think it’s a combination of both, but there’s not a firewall between them. China actively works and Russia as well with some of these groups which are spreading some of these malign ideologies to od us from within. Many of the activist groups may not even recognize that China and Russia are behind their payroll and this is a pattern which goes back decades into the Cold War. But when it comes to the danger of a foreign power targeting us, I’d have to say that power is China now, to be a little bit optimistic, the fact of the matter is while China and Russia may be sending their navies here, I don’t think they have the power to do much more than show the flag. As a military analyst, what we focus on is something called Neos non-combatant evacuation operations. That’s when, for example, Libya goes wrong and the American Navy comes in and rescues all the Americans. It’s an extremely complex operation and the fact of the matter is we’ve never seen Russia and China be able to pull it off because logistically they simply don’t have the ability yet and therefore they can show the flag, but it’s not clear they can really do that much more in our neighborhood.
Sam Rohrer:
Alright, that’s a great perspective as well. We only have about a minute left here, but as far as enemies within the United States, there are ideological enemies we know, but we also have been told, and we’ve had guests on here, have said, yeah, but there’s a lot of Hezbollah that have come across the border. There are Islamic sleeper cells here in America. Anything you can comment on that as far as the actual, not just ideological, but physical presence of enemies within.
Michael Rubin:
I can say that I’ve been involved in certain very precise cases with the FBI. And what I can say in the very limited time we have is these threats are very, very real and many of them don’t reach the newspapers, don’t reach the open press. A lot of people lying on immigration applications with backgrounds in the Islamic Revolution Guard Corps, people who have no business being in the United States, but naively we’ve welcomed too many people in without adequate background checks.
Sam Rohrer:
Alright, that was a lot of information and a short response right there. All right. Trying to think. We only have about a minute left here. I’m going to ask you about the Middle East form. Just give me just a 32nd or whatever response. What’s the purpose of Middle East Forum?
Michael Rubin:
Look, what the Middle East Forum exists to do is provide analysis, realistic analysis, in favor of American interests. We don’t take foreign money, we don’t take government money, but basically we have a lot of people like myself, I used to work in the Pentagon and I did my PhD in Iranian history at Yale University. I spend a lot of my time in the so-called enemy countries. We take the people that combine academic knowledge, knowledge, and on the ground knowledge to really give you something that you’re not going to get from our universities or frankly from our diplomatic corps.
Sam Rohrer:
And again, that was very, very good. It brings us to the end, Michael Rubin. And again, thank you so much for being with us today. Just excellent. And ladies and gentlemen, for articles that he has written or many others that are fellows with Middle East Forum, you can find on the website@meforum.org. So hopefully at the end of the day, we have a little better sense of Trump’s Gaza peace proposal, the upsides, the downsides, and other things connected to it there in the Middle East. And I would encourage you all to join me tomorrow as we’re going to cover some of these areas, but particularly go a little bit more in depth on the meeting that came at Quantico in particular. Take care and we will see you back here tomorrow.
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