
Parsing the Opportunity from Extreme Challenges in the Middle East
EXPERT INTERVIEW / PERSPECTIVE – The Middle East has changed dramatically over the past four years, creating both extraordinary challenges and opportunities for the region […] More
EXPERT Q&A – Tensions along Israel’s northern border have been increasing over the past several weeks with Iranian-backed Hezbollah firing more than 200 military rockets at Israeli military bases just over a week ago. U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken is warning that Israel is effectively losing sovereignty in the North, saying that momentum seems to be moving toward an expansion of war that no one wants. So, what does all of this mean?
The Cipher Brief tapped former CIA senior executive and 6-time station chief Ralph Goff to give us some context to better understand what might come next. Our interview has been edited for clarity and flow. (You can watch the interview and other conversations with Cipher Brief Experts by subscribing to The Cipher Brief’s Digital Channel on YouTube.)
The Cipher Brief: There’s been a lot of diplomacy by the U.S. both via Secretary of State Antony Blinken and CIA Director Bill Burns, who is focused on negotiating the release of the hostages who are still being help by Hamas. The danger of a new front to the north is worrisome.
Goff: It’s a good sign that the parties are engaged in what we call “espionage diplomacy” behind the scenes – where you have the head of the (Israeli intelligence service) Mossad leading negotiations for Israel and you have the head of CIA, Director Bill Burns – a very talented diplomat in his own right – leading the U.S. and dealing with all of the various parties in the region, the intermediaries. There have been a lot of intermediaries for Hamas and I think it’s a great effort, but looming behind all of this is the internal political dynamic inside Israel itself.
The Cipher Brief: Let’s talk a little bit more about the “espionage diplomacy” that’s happening behind the scenes. You were in government for a long time. You had a very interesting vantage point to how negotiations like this occur. What are the pros and cons of trying to negotiate a situation like this using this kind of espionage diplomacy instead of more traditional diplomatic paths?
Goff: Personally, I believe there are more pros than there are cons, which is why I think espionage or intelligence diplomacy has become a much more common fixture in today’s diplomatic arena. You know, Bill Burns is the perfect candidate to lead a larger effort in this field because of his background as a diplomat, and his high-level experience from his days at the State Department, and his two terms as an ambassador and now as a very successful head of CIA.
The upside of it is that you can negotiate behind the scenes to keep things from the press, because a lot of agreements hinge on when details get announced to the public. And certain parts of any diplomatic agreement can be torpedoed, if you will, by being publicly released too soon.
When you look at Hamas in Gaza, they’re in an existential struggle. Lebanese Hezbollah up north, they’re not in an existential struggle yet. The Israelis are not in an existential struggle yet. That would be more so if they were engaged with full-on war with Iran. But at the same time, there’s a lot for all the different parties to lose there. And conducting discussions behind the scenes means you can table a lot of things. You can throw a lot of trial balloons out there. You can bring things to the point where you have an agreement, but nobody’s signed it yet.
So, it’s kind of like you can take back everything and you can deny everything. If something gets leaked – if Hamas, for instance, is unhappy with something and something gets leaked, they can say, “Well, we never agreed to that.” Whereas maybe they did behind the scenes. So all the parties have a lot of wiggle room there and it sets the stage for people like Secretary of State Blinken to then take the ball across the goal line once all the parties seem to be in agreement. I think this is why we see this tool being used more often by governments, particularly in that unstable arena of the Middle East. There’s so much less to lose.
On the side of things that can be lost, you can spend so much time in this intelligence diplomacy that no real diplomacy gets achieved. I think that’s probably the biggest risk there is, that the heads of all the agencies, the spy agencies, are meeting, they work out an agreement, and then somebody bombs the wrong target, or somebody kills the wrong person and the next thing you know, a diplomatic solution is a lot farther away.
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The Cipher Brief: Let’s get some of your thoughts now on Israel’s internal politics. If you were advising Benjamin Netanyahu right now – a leader who is facing increasing domestic pressure and a lot of international criticism – about how he is executing this war, what would you advise him to do next?
Goff: First, I probably would have resigned long ago. He’s not going to have anyone really advising him closely who disagrees with him. Unfortunately, this is the problem. There’s a lot of people there who just want him to resign, who want that government to end. But he’s got the far right urging him not just to not settle with Hamas, not settle with Hezbollah, but to double down and the far-right part of his government sees an opportunity here. They see a war with Lebanon as an opportunity. They see the war in Gaza as an opportunity to crush Hamas, and that’s one that, frankly, I kind of agree with.
The war in Lebanon, they see this as an opportunity to crush Lebanese Hezbollah, but I think the danger in that thinking is that Hezbollah is not Hamas. Hezbollah is much larger, much more capable, and when you take on Hezbollah, you’re taking on Iran. And there’s a lot of risk there for Israel and I think the far right discounts that.
Political critics say Netanyahu just wants war because the longer there’s war, the longer he stays in power. There may be some elements of truth to that, but for all his faults, I don’t think Netanyahu is that reckless. Maybe he’ll prove me wrong. I hope the Netanyahu of old emerges at some point – you know, when he was a very pragmatic politician – and that he can actually step back from the brink of war.
The Cipher Brief: You mentioned Hezbollah. They’re better equipped than Hamas. They’re bigger than Hamas and they’re backed by Tehran. Iran is now welcoming a new president after the death of their former president in a helicopter crash in May. Will that have any impact on anything regarding the relationship with Iran and Hezbollah?
Goff: Yes, it always will, but things aren’t that easy for Iran either. I mean, as you just alluded to, President Raisi was killed in the helicopter crash. They just had elections (won by) the person who, from all the analysis I’ve seen, was not necessarily the top choice of the hardliners. But at the same time, we shouldn’t kid ourselves into thinking that he’s some sort of reformist in wolf’s clothing. The Iranians are still trying to sort out their political landscape, and looming over that is the very poor showing by their strategic forces when they launched a rocket, missile and drone attack on Israel. The majority of their projectiles were intercepted and destroyed, causing very little damage inside Israel. I think they expected a high percentage of them to be destroyed, but I don’t think that the Iranians in their wildest dreams thought nearly every one of them would fail to reach a target. They’ve got to be sitting back and thinking that their main strategic arsenal is not going to get the job done, and anyone who’s arguing to the contrary is delusional. They’re going to have to step back and think about things, and think about what their viable courses of action will be, and in the meantime, again it all goes right back to Gaza and whether the Israelis can wrap things up in there.
The Cipher Brief: If full-scale conflict breaks out between Israel and Hezbollah, do you think it’s a foregone conclusion that the U.S. will have to get involved? Or can Israel’s military deal with a direct conflict with Hezbollah on its own?
Goff: It will depend on how the war unravels. If it’s mostly an Israeli incursion into Lebanon and most of the fighting takes place north of the border, I think you’ll see very little participation by U.S. forces. We don’t want to get involved in a war in Southern Lebanon. We don’t want our fingerprints on an Israeli war in Southern Lebanon. If, however, Lebanese Hezbollah can project that war inside Israel proper, then we’ll probably see some participation by CENTCOM forces in the region. This has always been a problem for the Israelis – Israelis will have to carefully weigh how much U.S. participation they want and see how much the region can tolerate.
The Cipher Brief: What else is on your mind about what comes next?
Goff: People are worried that Israel will get involved in a three-front war with Gaza, with Lebanese Hezbollah in Southern Lebanon and in the West Bank.
I think the two areas to watch are what’s happening in the West Bank, the offensive actions of the settlers and the extremists who see a big opportunity to seize territory. That’s a problem because you still have incursions on a daily or nightly basis there and you have many more Palestinians being killed than Israelis. This is one of those areas that simmers and when it boils over, can actually eclipse the violence going on in Northern Israel that would drag in other powers in the region. It causes a great deal of heartburn, for instance, with Jordan. It causes a great deal of heartburn with Egypt and with other countries in the region too.
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