AVI YEMINI ｜ Bibi's former advisor unpacks Iran's secrets
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Summary
In this episode of The Yamini Report, we speak with David Keyes, a former Israeli Prime Minister's Spokesperson and Communications Director. David shares his story of how he went from a background in the business sector to becoming one of the most influential people in the world.
Transcript
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Welcome back to the Yamini Report. Today's special guest, David Keyes.
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Well, I'm not going to bother trying to introduce you, David. Your resume is impressive, but many people here wouldn't know you.
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Well, I'm David. I grew up in Los Angeles. I moved to Israel with my whole family many years ago.
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I've been sort of obsessed with human rights and fighting dictatorships for a few decades.
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So I started a number of human rights organizations, one with the founder of Human Rights Watch, one with Natan Sharansky, the famous Soviet dissident who spent nine years in prison.
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And then I spent several years as Prime Minister Netanyahu's spokesman and communications advisor.
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So that was a crazy few years. Very interesting, very difficult, very challenging.
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But I got to really see how things worked from the inside.
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I then started a communications company. We build some AI tools. We make things go viral. We fight narrative wars.
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So I've always sort of been in this fusion between the Israel world, the human rights world, and technology and AI.
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So, like I said, it was impressive. I didn't know where to start on it. So thanks for clarifying it for us.
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What years are you talking about? You were the spokesman for Netanyahu. Let's start there.
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How was it being a communications representative for Netanyahu?
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He's a pretty polarizing figure around the world.
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At that period of time, that was prior to all the big protests, if I'm maybe the beginning of it.
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It was the adventure of a lifetime, to put it mildly.
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I hadn't served in government before that role, and so I came in with fresh eyes, I would say.
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And when I came into the job, I looked around and I said, I can't believe things are done this way.
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I would really like to change some things here.
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And so I brought the eye of, I would say, the private sector, some of the new media stuff.
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I wasn't sure why we were so dependent upon traditional journalists.
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I thought we had amazing truth on our side, an amazing story to tell.
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And so I tried to innovate in the prime minister's office.
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But I also had access to things that are truly once in a lifetime.
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I was tasked with the prime minister for exposing Iran's secret atomic archive that we stole from Tehran.
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I got to meet with all the world leaders and sit in meetings with Xi and Modi and Obama
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and hang out with people like Elon Musk and other great figures of history, most notably Chuck Norris.
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The entire world is scrutinizing every syllable, every word that you say.
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Constant fake stuff, misinformation, disinformation, just absolutely overwhelming amounts.
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And that really also shaped my vision of the challenges that the free world and the Western world face
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because we are up against extremely motivated, well-funded, large organizations
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that have no qualms whatsoever about undermining every single value, every single story, every single truth
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So that sort of puts a new frame on what this whole narrative space and communication space is.
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But I was also obsessed with trying to understand what worked, you know, the principles of effective communications.
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Some of it's old school like Dale Carnegie and Ogilvy.
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But every day in the prime minister's office, I would print out, you know, a dozen academic articles
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about virality and persuasion and framing and, you know, resonance and reach.
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And I tried to utilize that science to help us communicate more effectively.
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So that's a sort of long-winded answer, but it was a really, really fascinating and difficult
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So every adjective you could possibly throw at it, I think I experienced to some degree.
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How did you go from the business sector to being a spokesperson for the prime minister of Israel?
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They scoured the world for the most talented and brilliant spokesman, and I was...
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I mean, I had been sort of in this space tangentially for a long time.
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I was writing for, you know, all sorts of publications from the New York Times, the Wall Street Journal.
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And I had gone viral massively for pranking Iran's dictators and other dictators, really.
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I did a series of sort of satirical pranks against the world's worst people.
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The foreign minister of Iran came to NYU, and I rented an ice cream truck and handed out free ice cream
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You know, I went up to the now foreign minister of Iran, Ar-Akh-Jia,
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asked him what his favourite way to hang gay people was.
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I flew to Vienna to prank the nuclear negotiators of Iran and announced a faux human rights deal
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that reduced the rate of hanging from once every two hours to once every two and a half hours.
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Did they immediately catch on, or did it take him a little bit of time to kind of work out what was going on?
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I don't think anybody had quite done it in the way I had done it.
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So I think they were a little bit startled, a little bit, you know, taken aback in the moment
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when Saudi Arabia hosted a job fair at the Gaylord Hotel outside of Washington.
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I figured since they, you know, have the death penalty for gay people,
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I'd throw a gay party at the same time at the same hotel.
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And, you know, so I would do these kind of crazy stunts.
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And I was trying to rename the streets in front of the embassies of dictatorships after political prisoners.
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I was very inspired by the Soviet dissident movement and how the West sort of kept their names alive.
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And so I tried to recreate that with the modern dictators.
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So I was running around the world meeting with political prisoners and dissidents.
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But I was also, you know, I would say changing the human rights narrative.
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For a long time it was, you know, Israel is this, you know, terrible country.
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And we're going to get to the, you know, North Koreas and Chinas and Irans later.
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And the founder of Human Rights Watch, Bob Bernstein, who was the head of Random House for 25 years,
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he saw the situation and he was, you know, really miffed, irate.
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And so he and I together tried to, you know, reset this, what it means to be a human rights organization.
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So we helped launch this crowdsourcing platform that linked dissidents and dictatorships with people that can help them.
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In the West, we tried to put the focus where it needed to be, which was not on the one open society in the Middle East.
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There's lots of people doing great work on human rights.
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And then you look, you know, a little bit east and you have these monstrous dictatorships which don't get a fraction of the attention.
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So all that's a long-winded way of saying that I was, you know, really obsessed with this one topic and I was trying to make human rights great again.
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And I was in touch with a lot of people in the prime minister circle.
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I was actually giving a lecture at Stanford and my phone rang.
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And someone from the prime minister's office said, would you like to be the prime minister spokesman?
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We think you'd be the right person for the job.
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I guess my question when I was asking you how their reaction was, I just, we're just trying to work out, is it really, because we're marveling at the sophistication of the Mossad right now in Iran.
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So what they've managed to do over the last week and a half or whatever it is.
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But by the sounds of things, you know, is it the sophistication of the Mossad or is it the fact that the Iranian regime is just really cavemen in suits?
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Well, you know, I think when you're in government, you see the brilliance of some people with great resolution.
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You see the incompetence of the system with greater resolution than you'd ever want to.
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Government writ large, you know, just as a rule is totally incompetent.
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I mean, there's just no incentive structure to really do well.
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Government is not the place where innovation happens.
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The private sector is truly what is capable, I think, of changing the world.
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All that said, there are a few things which are very important that government does.
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And probably the greatest shining example of that, of course, are these intelligence agencies which have done marvelous, amazing, stunning, incredible work.
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And so there's sort of this fusion between gross incompetence on the one hand where nothing really works.
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You know, redundancies and just governments are just a terrible thing, you know, on the whole.
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But there's some good people working very hard trying to do good.
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But I don't think people who, you know, I've read all the memoirs or most of the memoirs of former spokespeople of American presidents.
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And I really identify with what they talk about.
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It's kind of hard to explain the pace and the balagan, you know, to use the sort of discombobulation of the system if you haven't been there.
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And just you'd wake up in the morning and there'd be 15 critical things that happened that you didn't know that were coming.
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I'll give you I'll give you one random day, OK, because it just I said at the end of this day, I got to remember this.
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It was in 2017 and I woke up in the morning and there was a huge scandal that Al Jazeera had done a sting operation and caught some low level guy in London, you know, talking his mouth off against the deputy foreign minister of England.
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And so my phone phone's blowing up. You know, this is a huge scandal at the time.
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And about an hour after that, tapes are revealed for the first time in Israel between the prime minister and a an oligarch.
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And it's the biggest story in Israel and all the news are talking about it.
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And then there's a government meeting that we go into and the government almost falls because of a religion and state clash and ministers are shouting at each other.
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And then an hour after that, the military secretary walks in and says there's just been a huge terror attack in Jerusalem.
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You know, so we jumped to the site of the attack and there's blood still on the truck that had rammed all these Israelis and the engine is still on.
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And an hour after that, Rafsanjani, the former president of Iran, dies, sparking potentially, you know, revolution in Iran.
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And so you just kind of zoom out and you're like each one of these scenarios you're supposed to be well informed about.
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You're supposed to think, is it going to help or hurt if we talk about it?
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What should we say? What is the truth? We need to know that.
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And when it all happens at the exact same time, it's kind of hard to express what that feels like.
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And probably a bunch of other things happened on that day that I don't even remember.
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As an Aussie, we want to know, I imagine in those years you worked alongside Mark Regev.
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When I first came into the job, I had a million questions for him.
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We sat down in his office and, you know, spoke about what it means to have this job.
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And, you know, we went through all the policies, which was an exhaustive process as well.
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But yes, as I know, he went on to become ambassador, of course.
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Yes, that was a good save because he's actually also my cousin.
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And I think for the audience, just to be clear, we're filming this at the present time.
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President Trump has announced that there is a ceasefire.
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Now, Iran's foreign minister has come back with an interesting tweet, which if you read
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between the lines, it is saying that they agree to a ceasefire, but they say that they
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It's just that if Israel stops firing, they'll stop firing.
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So, it's unpacking these Middle Eastern dictators and authoritarian regimes.
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It's like you've got to operate on a completely different level.
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It's meant to be taking into effect in about four and a half or four hours from now.
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We can see Israel's operating heavily right now in Tehran.
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There's news coming through of someone, an assassination at a higher level.
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So, a lot can change by the time this comes out.
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I don't know where we'll be, but I guess this is a good time to hold you, test your prediction
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abilities because on the right in America, and we'll get to that in a minute,
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they've been so horrible at predicting, and I don't know how people have been so horrible
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at predicting, and people have been so sure about how this will all play out if Trump does
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certain things or if America does certain things, and it completely hasn't happened.
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It looks like we're about to get what Trump always described as peace through strength.
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But what do you think is actually going to happen now?
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I don't know what's going to happen over the next few hours or days, but I think I can
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make some general predictions that I feel quite confident about, the most important one being
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No matter what happens, but I think the barrier of fear has begun to start crumbling, and I think
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that that's a process which is very hard to come back from.
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And I think when it falls, it's going to fall very fast, and I think that that's going to
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I speak to more than a few Iranian dissidents, some of whom have been tortured in Evin prison,
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and when you look back at the Soviet example, the dissidents, a guy named Andrei Malrik wrote
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a book, Will the Soviet Union Survive Until 1984 or 5?
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Meanwhile, the CIA, Robert Gates, said that the first time they even thought that the Soviet
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So I think oftentimes the dissidents have a better read of what's happening on the ground
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even than the, you know, benighted, you know, you know, poli-sci professors or pundits or
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So I feel very confident that the regime has never been weaker.
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They've been unmasked as both cruel and incompetent and fanatic.
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They've wasted bazillions of dollars on this stupid nuclear program instead of feeding their
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people and building hospitals and improving, you know, their water management and so many
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things that they could have done to improve the lives of their people.
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Now, they may survive for a little bit, and they're incredibly brutal and repressive, and
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they have used tremendous force to keep their people down.
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You know, if I was a betting man, I wouldn't necessarily say this is going to last forever,
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the ceasefire, and I'm very, very happy that the achievements that were achieved until
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now, primarily the destruction of these nuclear sites at Fordow, Natanz, and Esfahan, that is
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an absolute game changer, and it removes the one truly existential threat from Israel summarily.
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And for that, I think every sane person on earth, certainly every American, every Israeli,
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anybody who wants peace should be overwhelmingly happy because absent this action started by
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Israel and, you know, helped to be concluded by President Trump, I think that Iran could
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have very well achieved nuclear weapons, and I believe they would have used nuclear weapons.
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So a lot of people, you know, they don't take their rhetoric seriously, but I do.
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I speak Arabic, I was listening to what Hamas leaders were saying in the run-up in all those
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years, and they said, we're going to kill you all, we're going to slaughter you all,
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we're going to rip out your hearts, and we're going to murder your children.
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And Sinwar would sit with his interrogator in prison and say, in the not-too-distant future,
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And so we sort of, you know, too many people said, well, they're not really serious, and I
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used to, you know, fight with these people all the time, a thousand-fold more with the
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It's one of the happiest days of my life, the fact that, you know, these nuclear, you
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know, sites in the bottom of mountains are, you know, ground into powder, and they can
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no longer make the weapons for the foreseeable future that could truly kill millions of Israelis.
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Do you think, are you happy for the ceasefire to go ahead now?
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No, I'm not happy with the ceasefire, because I think that it may throw a lifeline to this
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And I think that they may survive a little bit longer because of that.
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I understand the fear and the reticence to do, you know, big military action, and it's
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totally understandable not to want to send a bunch of ground forces or anything like
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But what I'm most concerned about is how do we support the Iranian people, the long-suffering
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Iranian people, in their noble quest for freedom?
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And my only fear is that people will say, well, you know, now we have to respect the Islamic
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One, we have to, you know, we have to sort of make nice with this theocratic dictatorship.
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I think we need to apply maximum pressure at every instant and support people.
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We need to make their political prisoners famous.
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We need to be ever vigilant on the nuclear file, because they are not giving up their aims
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They are true believers, and it's very hard for rational and reasonable Western minds to
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But what would it take for you to not love your children?
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That's the depth of belief that they have that they must destroy Israel.
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They don't have the ability right now to do it.
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But I don't think that they've given up even one iota, their ultimate aim of imposing Islamic
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domination on the world, of destroying America, and of eradicating Israel.
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I've thought about it today, and I feel on one level.
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So there's the actual war with Iran, which clearly Israel and the US, those final strikes
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by the US have set back Iran, even if they want to get back into the nuclear game, set
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them back years, and that's if they survive as a regime.
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But I feel like it's a tightrope because when you look at American politics, it was getting
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And Trump, if he doesn't pull out, if he doesn't get some sort of ceasefire now, after striking
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so heavily, doing it, especially in the fashion that he did, announcing up to two weeks and
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then two days later, smashing it and coming out and celebrating it.
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And most of the country and most of the world, even here on left-wing TV, they found it really
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hard to criticise him as much as they wanted to, because even their contacts within Iran
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But we know as soon as that becomes drawn out, even within Iran, there may be this effect
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where people who don't really like the regime, but as soon as you start, you know, when the
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death toll rises, they may rally around their flag a little bit more, or they just can't
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Who knows how, but just prolonged wars, never, you know, even just in America, the support
00:22:02.060
would have almost certainly dropped, even if they're having some sort of gains, but just
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So I feel like there's kind of this tightrope that you have to play, especially sitting here
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I understand where, you know, half my family's in Israel.
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I understand when you're sitting in Israel and all you're seeing is those ballistic missiles,
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especially in the beginning of it, where you didn't know what capabilities Iran really
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I think after a few days, people realised, OK, we can survive this.
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But as long as we go into the bomb shelters, we should be fine.
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But I think to give Trump that win within America, it almost helps us for any future issues.
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So if Trump stops it now, claims, look at what I managed to achieve in what he's calling
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the 12-day war we did with Israel, and he's saying we're a partnership in his speech that's
00:23:04.480
going to be famous, I think, for all time, where he says no team has ever, I don't believe
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no team has ever worked as well together in history.
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He said it, I'm paraphrasing, he said it much better, but it's like a crazy statement to
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Like no team has ever worked as well together as him and Bibi in getting this outcome.
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Um, so he's leaving on a high and, and, and I just can't see, you know, even if they manage
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regime change, you want the regime change to really come from inside Iran.
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So I can't see from the, when you step back and look at it, it's, it is super risky to
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And I completely understand domestically the need and why he wanted to do that.
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And we should not belittle, even for an instant, the tremendous accomplishments of the U.S.
00:24:03.060
Um, but I also think I also, my argument would be that domestic politics, so Trump leaving
00:24:09.620
this strike on a high and every American goes, yes, the American might is back.
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Um, it's, it gives us brownie points for later if needed, and also political will from Trump
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if needed, um, where he'll, he'll come and step back in as opposed to if it was a bit
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Um, he may not be willing to, he won't have the support from the people.
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I think he's regained a lot of ground right now that, that would have been risk.
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Maybe he would have, maybe there would have been another fantastic win, but, but I feel
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like there are too many risks now to keep going.
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It's a totally defensible position and it's very hard to know the counterfactuals here.
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It's possible that a few more weeks, a few more strikes, a few more leaders taken out
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and you would have had mass defections and the people would have risen up and, um, you
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know, their entire stockpiles of ballistic missiles would be destroyed.
00:25:06.000
And perhaps the next many generations would be, uh, under a free and democratic Iran.
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I guess we won't know that at this moment that that's a real possibility.
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You know, I spoke to an Iranian dissident with a PhD, um, you know, a scientist just an
00:25:27.740
So I don't know, you know, the, the crown prince of Iran, you know, had just made a
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statement a day prior saying, you know, I'm ready to lead this country in a different
00:25:36.760
So I think we look at what I, what I found in, in, in all those years in the prime
00:25:41.280
minister's office is that there's almost never a good option.
00:25:45.540
Um, and I understand why, why he's announcing this, uh, ceasefire.
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Now, I think just, we cannot keep, we can't take our eye off the ball even for an instant.
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And for as much as Iran fears America or fears Israel, they fear something much more and
00:26:03.800
So I think so long as we keep up maximum support for the people of Iran, making their
00:26:09.100
political prisoners famous, ensuring that they have star links and free internet, making
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sure that there are powerful economic sanctions if they continue to support terrorism, which
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My instinct was we need to continue supporting the people in this moment.
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And my fear is that these, these tin pot tyrants, you know, rage back and continue repressing,
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you know, over 90 million people continue manufacturing ballistic missiles.
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But the beauty is now, at least we know of the supreme, you know, the superiority of American
00:26:49.260
and Israeli intelligence armaments, military and drive that, that they can truly wipe out entire,
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you know, huge swaths of what took them just years and tens and hundreds of billions of dollars
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And the penetration of Israel is, is legendary.
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I mean, from the beepers to the atomic archive, to knowing exactly where these nuclear scientists
00:27:24.220
The top brass of the military in Iran in the first few hours.
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I think, and I guess, you know, where I'm sitting, I'm, I'm, I'm hoping like you, I am hoping
00:27:35.440
for a regime change, probably like most Israelis, the way to achieve it.
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I'm not going to profess to pretend to be any sort of expert, but I would imagine what we've
00:27:45.800
seen over the last two weeks shows that the Mossad clearly has, unlike the Shimbet failures
00:27:51.720
in, in Gaza, um, clearly in, in, in Iran and even in Lebanon, the, um, the Mossad are there
00:28:02.320
and they, they do have, um, a, a really sound presence.
00:28:06.680
So I would hope that they're the ones at this point that can pick up the thing and help the
00:28:11.060
local dissidents to, to rise up and to take it down from the inside because almost worse,
00:28:17.460
I don't know if, you know, if there was a regime change now for Trump in, uh, forced
00:28:23.200
by essentially, um, sustained another week or two, uh, military bombardment, uh, if, if
00:28:31.980
the government had fallen, but somebody, some other bad group had picked it up.
00:28:40.660
We know obviously they've got the crown prince or whatever, who's, uh, who you just mentioned
00:28:45.560
made this speech last night, but I don't know what kind of real support he has within
00:28:51.200
Is he really going to be the leader or is some other group that we don't know going to fill
00:28:56.620
And that is one of those potential risks where it could backfire for somebody like Trump in
00:29:02.600
the United States and by extension for Israel, because as soon as you lose popular support
00:29:09.060
for it within America, which we saw so many people trying to affect this time, um, it's,
00:29:16.980
it's going to be get, it's going to become harder and harder for America, for Israel to
00:29:25.340
And there's, again, there's a lot of validity, uh, to that position.
00:29:31.020
I can only say that I will be satisfied if we continue to support the Iranian people, the
00:29:40.740
There are certainly risks associated with it, but what we can't do is become, uh, lackadaisical
00:29:49.560
And I'm so happy that the president of the United States stood up and said, no, these guys
00:29:55.060
that chant death to America, these guys, I mean, think about the litany of horrors they
00:30:00.580
You have some pundits out there saying, you know, Dave Smith said, Iran is no threat to
00:30:10.760
They tried to assassinate the president of the United States.
00:30:27.400
And they say, I've never even heard of this as we, we heard recently, but Google Farhad
00:30:31.280
Shaqari, you know, go read the DOJ indictment about this guy.
00:30:38.780
They funded and armed the people who murdered 48 Americans on October 7th.
00:30:44.140
They funded the people who shot the drone that almost took out a U.S. consulate in Tel
00:30:50.420
They murdered and maimed thousands of American soldiers.
00:30:55.020
They tried to blow up a restaurant in Washington, D.C.
00:31:00.240
This is the beginning of the list, not the end of the list, the beginning, not to mention
00:31:04.240
the murder of the Marines, of course, in Beirut and many, many other things.
00:31:08.260
Go look at who, you know, the Times and Axios was saying was the number one cyber threat
00:31:14.940
Who hacked Trump's advisors before the election?
00:31:18.920
So you have a regime which was attacking America nonstop, whose main goal is to cripple and
00:31:28.240
And then you have people saying this isn't a threat at all.
00:31:31.360
It's like, what the fuck are you talking about?
00:31:35.960
So at least I'm happy that the leader of the free world said enough is enough.
00:31:40.600
You cannot incessantly kill our people, just try to destroy our allies, hack our elections,
00:31:47.180
try to murder me, the president, and all of our senior officials, and get away with it.
00:31:54.800
And the previous administration, of course, had rewarded them with hundreds of billions
00:32:01.380
Were you worried at any point during this conflict in the last two weeks that Trump wasn't
00:32:07.420
going to step up, especially with the level of noise coming from his own side?
00:32:14.800
You know, I was trying to read the tea leaves like everybody else, and I was pinging, you
00:32:21.700
I was confident that he would do something about it.
00:32:25.120
And I, you know, he definitely had a little bit of deception in there, I think aimed at the
00:32:30.540
enemies of America, and good on him for doing the head fake of the two weeks.
00:32:34.720
But I think what can happen now is that every enemy of America can know with crystal clarity
00:32:44.300
And that's a beautiful and amazing and brilliant thing.
00:32:47.460
The fact that they know that there are real serious consequences, that you can't threaten
00:32:53.600
the annihilation of a people in a state, you can't try to kill the president of the United
00:33:02.420
So this is a great sort of, you know, rebirth of sanity, I think, in the Middle East.
00:33:07.860
And I think for generations, people will talk about and think about and praise and laud the
00:33:14.900
And huge credit to Israel, too, my goodness, for taking this bold move, apropos wrong predictions.
00:33:21.860
Do you know how many people said that the prime minister of Israel did not have the boldness,
00:33:35.260
He's just blustering, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.
00:33:37.540
He's totally just trying to get the States to do it.
00:33:41.540
But, yeah, and then he took that bold decision alone.
00:33:46.060
What would you say to the, although, like, I don't know if he, when we say he took it
00:33:53.100
But clearly, when I was reading the room, and especially in hindsight, when you look at
00:33:57.920
the timeline, him and Trump were clearly working together behind the scenes.
00:34:05.400
They weren't working against each other, as was being reported in the media.
00:34:10.460
It was a game of deception that was being played.
00:34:13.560
And because of timing, if you look at like this, the first thing was the 60 days, day
00:34:18.520
61, Israel strikes, which was only a few days after he said, oh, we'll look at two weeks
00:34:30.260
And, and, and, and, I know what happened then is just before they struck, Trump had kind
00:34:36.020
of calmed them down by planning that meeting for the Sunday.
00:34:41.120
So they weren't on edge, worried that something was going to happen in that period.
00:34:44.780
So it, like, unless you believe the narrative that Bibi Netanyahu was just completely defiant
00:34:55.660
And as he says in his own words, it was the best team in history.
00:35:01.540
Well, it's a great reminder that people have no idea what they're talking about, frankly.
00:35:06.200
And that was another thing I saw in government.
00:35:08.520
It's like, have some humility about what you don't know.
00:35:15.520
It's so true you say that because even people that, you know, like, uh, what's his name from
00:35:20.600
the war room, uh, Bannon, Steve Bannon, like all these people were trading on their previous
00:35:26.400
relationships, even Tucker, like these people were trading on their old or whatever relationship
00:35:35.620
And like, they have some sort of insight into what's going to happen.
00:35:43.200
Well, I think there's, uh, layers of problems here.
00:35:47.060
Um, the first one is just, uh, everyone needs to realize that if they're not in the room with
00:35:53.480
the president at that moment, they don't know what is happening.
00:35:57.440
They may have spoken to someone who spoke to somebody who sees something in a certain way,
00:36:01.380
who has an ax to grudge, who spoke to an anonymous person who, you know, wanted to twist it.
00:36:08.440
And the social media rumor mill just operates, you know, ad nauseum.
00:36:13.720
And so people just, they take bullshit factoids that are not true at all, and then build layer
00:36:21.200
And I just saw the number of things that I knew to be true.
00:36:24.520
I would be in a meeting, I'd walk out of that meeting and I would see covered everywhere,
00:36:30.780
I saw the speculation about everything, every decision I was involved with the prime minister.
00:36:35.300
And I would see just endless, endless people with a thousand percent confidence.
00:36:40.580
It's, it's one thing to have an opinion, perfectly valid, reasonable.
00:36:43.720
But it's another thing to lose perspective that you might not know everything.
00:36:48.520
And we're, we have an epidemic of people who think they know everything about everything.
00:36:53.460
So my clarion call is a little bit of goddamn humility about what you don't know.
00:36:58.340
And I think that's proven, you know, to the nth degree with this latest, uh, you know,
00:37:02.180
and I wanted to get onto the new phenomenon that I'm seeing there.
00:37:04.940
But before I get to that, you mentioned Dave Smith.
00:37:07.380
One of the arguments that he's brought, um, forth over and over again, when it comes to
00:37:13.580
this, forget Gaza, um, when it comes to, to the Iran, um, Israel conflict was, Bibi Netanyahu
00:37:21.520
has been telling us for 30 years, um, that, uh, Iran is just weeks, months, uh, or even a
00:37:41.060
It comes up all the time now, and it's sort of parroted his truth.
00:37:44.280
And Dave Smith on, on peers, he gave two options.
00:37:47.340
He said, either Benjamin Netanyahu was mistaken, or he's lying.
00:37:54.300
Now, I, you know, I spent years with the prime minister, and I think it's, it's, one should
00:38:02.180
be modest enough to think for even just an additional section.
00:38:04.660
Is it possible that there is another explanation for this?
00:38:13.440
But let's just, for, you know, for, for shits and giggles, explore a third option.
00:38:17.760
Now, is it possible that for the last many years, Iran has been close to getting a nuclear
00:38:23.820
weapon, but a 24-7 covert war waged by the greatest intelligence service in the world with
00:38:32.500
thousands of people working on nothing but this to deny Iran nuclear weapons, maybe that
00:38:38.100
had something to do with the eternal pushing back of Iran?
00:38:41.900
Call me crazy, but according to foreign sources, every month or two, some nuclear site would
00:38:48.660
malfunction mysteriously, and centrifuges would spin a little too fast or a little too slow.
00:38:54.080
And miraculously, every five or seven days, a top nuclear scientist would meet his maker,
00:39:01.020
And every six months or so, some treasure trove of Iran's, you know, secret atomic material
00:39:07.980
would be smuggled out somehow and found its way to the military headquarters in Tel Aviv.
00:39:13.840
Is it possible that that had something to do with the fact that why Iran hasn't actually
00:39:23.700
Knowing something about this, that is the dominant reason.
00:39:30.220
And so many experts have said, they said, if Iran chose to develop nuclear weapons,
00:39:42.680
Listen to, it's okay if you want to discount all Israeli intelligence, that's fine.
00:39:50.180
These are people that I have family members who worked in.
00:39:53.480
So I believe these geniuses who are capable of finding every nuclear scientist.
00:40:01.900
And I have seen the results of what this war has done to Iran's nuclear ability.
00:40:07.040
Absent Israel's efforts, they would have had nukes a decade ago, a decade and a half ago,
00:40:13.160
So Dave Smith should be tipping his hat to these brave and brilliant intelligence agents
00:40:18.740
that stopped a theocratic, genocidal, mass-murdering terrorist regime from acquiring the most deadly
00:40:29.060
It's the result of this incredible, persistent, massive, covert war that you could fill the
00:40:37.180
library of Congress with examples of what has been done in order to stop Iran from acquiring
00:40:45.640
That is the reason they don't have nuclear weapons today.
00:40:52.200
Having been, it was my job to take Iran's secret atomic archive and tell the world about
00:41:02.560
This trove showed copious amount of documentation that Iran had planned, plotted, said the number
00:41:11.620
of warheads they wanted, where they wanted to detonate it, who was involved, and on and
00:41:16.580
And this is the same regime that said, we have never sought nuclear weapons ever, ever.
00:41:23.260
That's what the entire leadership of Iran says to this day.
00:41:31.300
I could go on and on about this, but yes, that thing I do find, I do find laughable, yes.
00:41:37.120
Okay, so just before I let you go and appreciate your time, I know it's getting later there.
00:41:43.320
We have seen this phenomena in the US where, I guess, Iran lost this war, but the other
00:41:53.320
group that seems to have lost this war domestically in the US is what's been dubbed as the woke
00:41:58.120
right, and so you see your Candace Owens and, what do they call him, him, Katarlson or Tucker
00:42:11.360
It's kind of become a trendy thing on the right to join these people that have pretty much
00:42:18.900
predicted everything in this war wrong, which has been almost a savior, like for all the
00:42:27.000
reasons that I mentioned before, because it would have just been horrible if they gained
00:42:30.540
any momentum beyond just the online clicks for the period that they got to enjoy it,
00:42:35.400
but now, obviously, their credibility has been shot, which is exactly what we need to
00:42:40.840
show that they don't know what they're talking about.
00:42:42.940
Again, this is all what we sort of unpacked already, but I want to ask you, what is happening
00:42:48.940
Because it's trickled down here as well, and it's now happening in Australia.
00:42:53.120
There's this kind of group who identify as part of the right, not necessarily even Dave
00:42:59.640
Dave Smith is a libertarian, so he was kind of left in the middle.
00:43:06.320
But there's the right wing that have identified as conservatives that almost every single one
00:43:13.860
of them, if you look back at their tweets four years ago, five years ago, it was staunchly
00:43:21.620
making the arguments against themselves today, and nothing's changed.
00:43:26.680
Israel is exactly the same, and a lot of these ones like Candace Owens will say, oh, well,
00:43:32.880
when you butcher 50,000 people, then what do you expect from me?
00:43:38.720
But that argument's bullshit because the problem is from day one of Israel's, you know, only
00:43:46.020
days after October 7th, she was already talking in this tone.
00:43:50.820
So it wasn't actually what happened in Gaza that caused it.
00:43:56.620
Do you have any theory as to what happened and what's happening?
00:44:02.880
Well, I don't think there's ever been a monolith on any political side about what people feel.
00:44:08.600
And, you know, going back to the 80s, you know, there were many different opinions on
00:44:14.440
I try very hard not to ascertain people's motives for what drives them to say what they
00:44:21.680
So I'm never going to be one of these people that's, you know, oh, well, this guy's funded
00:44:27.480
Or this person just wants clicks, or this person, you know, is trying to curry favors with
00:44:34.540
And I think a big mistake that people make often on the other side towards people with
00:44:39.560
my views is they try to say, oh, you're saying this because you think X, Y, and Z.
00:44:46.580
And on that, perhaps I agree with Dave Smith because he seems to say that a lot.
00:44:51.880
And that's where I find their ideas so offensive.
00:44:55.220
When, you know, you have this idea that Iran is no threat to America after it's killed and
00:45:02.300
maimed and murdered so many Americans, you need to explain that because that makes no
00:45:07.480
And I could give dozens and dozens of examples of the Iranian regime attacking both physically
00:45:14.000
and, you know, ideologically everything that America stands for.
00:45:21.160
If you're going to go, like, as Tucker said, and you're going to say, you know, I've never
00:45:41.800
But it should kind of be upon you to explain how and why they're lying.
00:45:46.440
So I just find so much falseness and so much vacuous logic at play about really important
00:45:53.620
I can't quite, I don't, I can't kind of psychoanalyze what's behind it.
00:45:59.540
I don't know what's behind it, but it's definitely there.
00:46:03.280
It's definitely, I think, antithetical to the truth and to, you know, America's greatest
00:46:09.280
And I think in a debate, these ideas will lose.
00:46:13.540
And by the way, you want to define what America first is.
00:46:16.140
Maybe the president of the United States and the spiritual, you know, founder of this movement
00:46:22.760
should have a say in what it means to be America first.
00:46:29.660
Finally, before I let you go, you've obviously had a relationship with the prime minister
00:46:38.720
Like I said in the beginning, he is a divisive person.
00:46:41.280
I know that prior to October 7, my mum was going to protest in support of him.
00:46:46.900
One of my brothers was going to protest against him.
00:46:50.020
So Israel itself has certainly been split over Netanyahu at least in the last seven, eight
00:46:59.000
How is he on a, as a person, on a personal level?
00:47:08.660
It's very hard to describe how well-read he is.
00:47:12.940
You know, reads a book a week, has a photographic memory, remembers everything, is very intense,
00:47:19.920
is very demanding, expects the best, is in the weeds on things, cares deeply, immensely
00:47:27.920
passionate, feels that it's his life's mission to make Israel strong and safe.
00:47:33.980
All that said, I obviously had, you know, disagreements about policy matters.
00:47:37.660
And I told that to him very frankly when I did.
00:47:44.560
And I think that, you know, October 7 was obviously a failure of the system and it needs
00:47:50.840
I think the boldness and courage he has shown in going after Iran's nuclear program is legendary
00:47:57.080
and historic and will be remembered for many generations to come.
00:48:01.500
So he's contributed an immense amount to Israel.
00:48:08.520
I'm sure there will be things I disagree with in the future.
00:48:10.940
But I think as a figure of history, he has contributed a tremendous amount.
00:48:14.820
And I don't like, I think it's unfair when people try to get in his mind as well.
00:48:19.580
I mean, they think they know him better than he knows himself.
00:48:22.140
And so there's a lot of things that aren't true out there from my experience at the very
00:48:27.100
And so I'm generally appreciative, even though I didn't agree with everything that has been
00:48:33.540
Do you think he has prosecuted the war generally?
00:48:38.960
I don't think anyone can argue that Hezbollah wasn't dealt with properly.
00:48:46.620
Do you think at least the Gaza part of this is prosecuted well?
00:48:50.540
And what would you say to people who think he's only sustaining the war because of his
00:48:56.200
own personal judicial issues within Israel and the fact that once it ends, he has to face
00:49:08.940
You don't think it comes into his calculations at all?
00:49:13.680
I mean, he meets with the families of the people that have been killed.
00:49:16.660
He's met with the families of hostages many times.
00:49:18.660
He himself had a brother who was killed in battle.
00:49:21.020
He himself almost died several times in battle.
00:49:24.260
I think he does things to try to protect Israel.
00:49:27.820
As for the conduct of the war, there are surely things I would have done differently.
00:49:31.920
And this is where there's inherent complexity to this question.
00:49:37.020
I, for 20 years, have said our goal in Gaza needs to be total victory over Hamas.
00:49:43.540
The total destruction of Hamas is a fighting force.
00:49:47.260
And so that was the policy I favored in 2007 and 8 and 9 and 10 and 11, all the way through
00:49:58.980
So I wish that would have happened much sooner.
00:50:00.580
I think many, many lives would have been saved.
00:50:03.220
And I probably would have done a number of things differently in the war.
00:50:07.620
That said, I'm eternally grateful that he has held that line as a goal of the war because
00:50:12.960
almost everyone who criticizes him would have long ago said, we're going to leave Gaza.
00:50:19.680
If Hamas is there, if Hamas isn't there, not really my problem.
00:50:27.780
Let's release, you know, any amount of murderers in order to get our people back.
00:50:33.440
And if Hamas has to remain in power, we'll deal with that another day.
00:50:39.140
And the right policy is the policy that FDR chose after Pearl Harbor.
00:50:44.080
And that was the total defeat and destruction of the enemy.
00:50:49.240
And that's exactly what needs to happen with Hamas in Gaza.
00:50:52.800
We cannot relax for a moment and think even for an instant that they can remain after they
00:50:59.460
butchered and burned so many innocent people and would do it again and again and again.
00:51:06.720
The prime minister deserves a lot of credit for not cutting and running.
00:51:09.220
And other generals and other high-ranking officials were desperate to do that.
00:51:18.620
That said, I probably would have gone further and faster.
00:51:21.640
But I also have tremendous deference to someone who sits in that seat and is the decision maker
00:51:26.700
and sees all the intelligence and has to cope with seven or eight or nine fronts simultaneously.
00:51:34.720
Like, you know, the conversation we're having to sort of flippantly say, oh, they should do this.
00:51:39.140
But when you're in the room with unbearable pressure, with so many different interests
00:51:45.320
at the same time, with superpowers asking you to do this or that, with munitions dwindling,
00:51:51.040
with people dying in the field, with attacks that come at the very instant you're thinking
00:51:55.800
about everything else, it is very, very, very hard to make good and judicious decisions
00:52:03.060
And so I myself have tremendous respect and deference for the prime minister and anybody
00:52:10.080
who sits in that seat and has that most difficult job.
00:52:15.000
Where can people find you if they're interested in hearing more of what you've got to say?
00:52:29.200
Occasionally I say things or make funny videos, hopefully.
00:52:33.060
I like satire and humor, so sometimes I post things there.
00:52:39.040
But thank you for the time and happy to have had this conversation.