in the 2024 annual threat assessment report issued on monday, united states intelligence agencies point at the risk of broader conflict related to the israely war against gaza. the report also notes that netanyahu's uh viability as leader as well as his governing coalition of far right parties may be in jeepardy. welcome to the spotlight. i'm your host. stay with us and we'll review and

discuss different aspects of the israeli failures in the deadly onslot against gaza in the eyes of us intelligence apparatus. now let me introduce our guests. ray maccuverm former cia analyst says a joining us from riley north carolina. also what is george zamerelli senior research fellow with global policy institute. to london michael university out of budapest, good to see you gentlemen, both uh let's begin with ray, according to this uh us intelligence report, tel aviv seems adaman to want to destroy hamas, that of course enjoys great public support in gaza, it predicts that the israeli regime could face a lingering armed resistance from hamas for years, i'm quoting it directly, so and as you see they're already running short of their soldiers, they have to pass this legislation. the other day

to recruit alter orthodox jews who've always enjoyed exemptions from you know doing military service. let's have your take on that. you said tel aviv, in speaking of the israeli government, this assessment, unfortunately says jerusalem, things have changed, the cia used to be lot more objective. let me start with the good news. the good news is that there was... no middle east section to the annual threat assessment last year, jacob sullivan, the national security advisor, pretty much is very smart guy, knew what was going to happen, and so he had a 70 word essay in foreign affairs and it concluded five days before the october 7 attacks, the middle east... i quote, the

middle east is quieter than it has been in decades, serious frictions have decreased, and we have deescalated crises in gaza, and quote, so this is small praise, but at least they have section on gaza, and atypically they have section on israel, now what does that section section? to, not much at all, we have fifth grade son who is exposed to 10 minutes of cnn every morning at elementary school, cnn, 10 minutes for grade schoolers, i could have written, and it sounds very much like what was written here, main, the main issues are not addressed, and when the when they are mentioned, the fact that netanyahu may be in trouble and... that a more moderate

government might come in, well that's not very helpful, you can clean that from any newspaper, so again i'm not surprised, but i am disappointed, except for a couple of things which are more positive and i can mention those later. okay, now uh george, this report, what's interesting is that they're kind of actually alluding to the military and commit wititness of the hamas movement and that this will going to take a long time and for israel uh and also some other aspects which we'll also discuss a later time. let's have your perspective of this. well, i agree with ray that this really very little that's new here or very little that's um surprising. um, the one thing that i found um, maybe surprising isn't quite well, but that um the the the see how.

evidently um doesn't believe that there there's much likelihood of a war between israel and iran, you would have thought that they want to maybe hype up the possibility. of of a confrontation, the always warning about the the dire threat posed by iran, but here they kind of minimize this, they say that no, no, no, israel and iran are unlikely to reach military confrontation, and indeed the report and also says it's unlikely that israel and hezbollah will go lead to a... greater confrontation than just simply skirmishes across the border, so i though that was quite surprising that it you say that's reasonably optimistic assessment, however you know overall one can one can say

that this war is likely to go on for quite some time and i think they the the threat assessment does confirm that that there is not likely to be any resolution or any you know prospect of some something a workable framework developing anyt soon. okay now ray, another aspect, the media coverage of the destruction and loss of life, that's the reports as being amplified by social media is roiling public reactions by both neighboring countries and other countries elsewhere in the world. instances just we had netherlands the other day, vienna. rally, you know, for instance, and many other places, even inside the united states. now, do you agree that israel has gained a hatred and indignation of the people of many countries by what is doing in gaza? well, it has of course, and uh, this is again a symptom of playing down

controversial issues. it's not very revealing that social media are playing major role in this conflict. i would add one thing that... george and i have not yet mentioned, there are two rather positive things here, one is the reiteration that iran had nothing to do with the october 7 attacks, matter of fact it goes further and it says iran didn't know about the october 7th attack, so that that was big. the other thing, and this is not negligible when you're talking about iran, israel, israel of course always says. iran is working working a nuclear weapon, the us intelligence community to its credit okay, for the 17th, 17th straight year says, let me read this so i don't paraphrase it, quote,

iran is not currently undertaking the key nuclear weapons development activities necessary to produce attestable. nuclear device, that's big, the us intelligence community has resisted all kinds of pressure, not only from the likes of netanyahu, but from the likes of the neoconservatives in the united states to change that reading, it was in 2007 that an honest system was done in that, the fact that it's reiterated here is more than more than just looking for something favorable, this is significant, and the fact that... rest of it is pretty much pedestrian, well this is included as a positive sign. all right, george, the report also warns that the conflict in gaza highlights the potential for a spillover into a larger and more dangerous conflict. this is what terran has warned on multiple occasions.

uh, what's your assessment? well, it does say that, but as i said, it draws a line um on on the possibility, which is clearly. one that uh everyone's afraid of, which is that there could be a war between israel and iran, which would of course drag the united states into it, but the report rather minimizes that, it really doesn't think that that either israel or iran wants to get into a military confrontation, it does talk about iran's proxies and and possibility of increased sc misses between israel and these proxies, um, but it doesn't really go where you would expect a threat assessment to go, which is that well, there could be a massive war in the middle east, it doesn't seem to say that, and above all where you might have been

thinking, well, what about hisball, because that that's obviously the the the big enchilada, there somehow again they says, well, hezbollah is very wary. of israel knows that it it will lead to the destruction of lebanon, hisbollah is unlikely to want major confrontation with israel, so it's it's not that pessimistic as far. the wider war goes, it's quite pessimistic about gaza, however, now what's your opinion about the spillover, how likely is that and what could be repercussions be in that case? well, the likelihood of spillover is very, very great, the fact that it sort of dusted off, just to testifies to the prosaic aspect of this briefing. and that is the big question, whether is israel will attack lebanon as it

said it would, what's missing here in a word is any realistic appraisal of the situation, because the united states of america is key player here, right, and what you get here is not the question that is really to be posed, and that is, what would it take netanyahu to stop the genoc? side, how much us pressure would that take, would it take just a telephone call? my view is, yes, that's all it would take, and that would end all this business about coming in, so you have instead of this addressing the key question, you have things pitched at the as i said before, the fifth grade elementary school level, which suppose is appropriate for most congress people, i regret to say. but it's a kind of a briefing for for them, yeah, this is the state of the world and this is where it

looks, it doesn't really help the president or the congress to say, well, how do we stop this thing before it evolves, out of control, hamas, hezballah, you want to trying to control it, it's israel that's the main problem, and we have hold over israel because we are enabling the genocide with our weapons and with our political support, our vetos at the security. counsel etc. etc. all we have to do is change our policy and of course intelligence people have to pretty much shy away from that, because to be too blunt on that is to expose yourself to charges of politicization and worse. okay, now george, let's not turn to number of arab states in the midst of this, and uh, this gaza war is set to be posing a challenge to many of them, you know, uh, uh, on the streets, people... are expressing their views, they are standing by palestinians, that they condemn israelity

crimes, but to arab states, the authorities do not necessarily share the same views and some of them even, they already signed the so-called deal of the century to normalize relations, and some of them of course regretted at this point, but you see that number of them are just sitting there doing nothing or max. what they're doing is simply giving the lift service and condemning every now and then? well that's that's right, it's it's very unfortunate that number of the arab states are mostly concerned with how can they make more money and they're uh thinking of those well we can make um deals involving israel, so we have the uh the plan that the united states has signed to as kind of alternative to china's belt and road initiative which will involve kind of a big

infrastructure project you going from india and then through the gulf states and into israel and then on into the mediterranean and then onto greece um this is this is the way they're thinking w this is fantastic we can we can make lot of money and this is obviously also the way netanyahu is thinking if you recall when netanyahu was was stood before the un general assembly last september, basically just few days before the 7th of october, and he pointed to map of the new middle east, in which there was no room for palestine, um, that's what he was thinking about, he was thinking about, hey, this is fantastic, we're going to have this great infrastructure project, you linking israel to the to the wealthy gulf states and into the mediterranean, no room there for palestinians, but unfortunately, and this is why netaniah though... "i don't have to worry about the palestinians, he has the support of these arab states, all looking to make some

money out of all this. now right, another aspect, mentioned this report is has to do with the resistance front with hisballah and lebanon, iraqi resistance, and also the yemenis that are operating in the red sea and arabian sea, targeting israel link ships and recently us and uk uh ships and this report uh foresees that..." those operations by these three fronts will be going on, so do you also agree with the same prediction? yeah, do, and you know it's interesting that they always. use the term resistance, well resistance to what uh, like maybe genocide, like maybe oppression for 70 years, so that's the resistance, and unless the the causes of the resistance are addressed, there will be resistance forever. one, one puzzling part of

this thing or one complicating part is that the head of the cia, is member of the cabinet making decisions and also trying to negotiate, exchange of of hostages and so forth, that is really, really koxious, because nobody can take seriously intelligence officer who is also implementing and forming policy, so this kind of document under the the hand of william burns and his nominal supervisor april haynes, really is hostage to... what the director of the cia is actually doing operationally as well, and if so factor cannot be cannot be viewed as totally objective briefing from intelligence. okay, now george, this us intelligence uh report also argues that the this trust of netanyahu's ability, i'm quoting, this trust of netanyahu's ability to rule has deepened

and broadened across the public from its already high levels before the war. and that they expect large protests demanding his resignation and new elections, a different more moderate government is a possibility. this is this is the us intelligence assessment, what's yours? well, it's it's very interesting, because of course that is the view of the us government, which has always found netanyahu a little bit of an embarrassment just as it was always found liquid, a bit of an embarrassment even going back to the days of manah and begin. um, shouldn't take any of that too seriously, um, the united states is obviously more comfortable with the so-called liberals uh of israel who really don't uh disagree with netanyahu very much on the issue of palestine, they don't disagree with his policies in in west bank or in gaza, they do disagree on other issues which are basically

about internal israeli politics, it's not really important, but somehow american liberals feel more comfortable. um embracing uh people they deem to be israeli liberals, even though these israeli liberals actually like gans who's also was member of netanyahu's government, even though they pursue exactly the same policies, so but i think okay, well at least those policy will have the same policies, but we'll have nicer people uh running it, so i don't take that terribly seriously, right? yeah, ray, how do you look at it? does the us really want what they call more moderate government? "the us is fixated on the united states presidential election right now, biden and his his rival need money, the israel lobby has the money, that's what they're fixated on. now as for the israelis, in 2001 when netanyahu thought

he was off the microphone, he said, and i quote, i know the american..." they're easily moved in the right direction. would you believe it? 80% of the american supporters number of what we do. that's absurd. and quote. now it's no longer 80%, maybe 50%. but it's still an appreciable majority because of our press and because of the congress people who need the money of which george spoke before. so that's what the us faces in terms of its political. structure is riding high, he's very vulnerable, but until the war ends, he's the guy you have to deal with, george, if the us really doesn't want somebody like netanyahu, why does it keep supporting uh uh his regime, saying stop uh the killing, protect civilians and all that jazz, but on the ground you see it's us made weapons

taking the lives of civilians, of course it is, that's why all this uh talk about how they don't like netanyahu, that biden's patience is running thin, that they're supposedly putting pressure on netanyahu behind the scenes, all of that is just lot of nonsense, the biden administration has a problem, as alluded to by ray, there's an election coming up, he saw what happened in michigan, and it is clearly very worried that many people, particularly muslim americans, americans are not going to vote for him and so he has to put on this uh this front that somehow he's terribly terribly unhappy with what israel is doing when if he was true. that he was unhappy with what israel was doing, he could bring it to an end. i mean, it's, it wouldn't be hard. i mean, uh, it really would take a phone call to say, that's

it, we're cutting you off, you're not getting another penny from us. he's not going to do it, so therefore, his only resort is to leak things to the new york times or the washington post to tell them how very unhappy is, and he's really getting very tired of uh netanyahu, and netanyahu contemptuously uh, said the other day. apropo of biden's red line about going into rafa and he said hey you know what my red line is no more october the 7th attacks so you know rightly treats uh the us administrations with disdain right now ray uh what what do you see on the horizon uh where will all of this end up in let me try to put some threads together here sure we we have the the palestine. people, huge populations in jordan, in lebanon, even in saudi arabia, in egypt, when will the rulers

of those countries give appropriate head to their wishes, well they aren't doing it yet, but let's say biden's non-existent red line, which he said to msnbc, well a red line, but not a red line, and if 30,000 more palestinians are killed, my god, that's no red line, so there is is there no limit to the patience of these cowardly arab countries and turkey that talk a big game but don't do anything, i don't know, but hisb is not going to wait forever, and if the israelis hitbillah, there will be a war on the northern front as well, israel will not be able to continue its genocide in gaza much longer in my view. okay, on that note we come to the end of this show. thanking my guests,

ray my govern and rally, north carolina, george, sam rally in budapest, and thank you for watching this edition of the spotlight. i've been your host, behrus, and i'll see you next time. the israeli occupation demonstrates its hatred on houses of the lord. this mask was reduced to rubble by f-16 warjet. their way led to the destruction of the houses around the mosk, causing the fall of marchers and

injuries amongst neighbors of the mosk. the palestinians did not stand on the romans of the masks idly, but they created temporary mosks that don't protect them from neither the cold of winter nor the heat of the summer. united states in leading international office to get more humanitarian assistance to gaza. tonight, i'm directing the us military to lead emergency mission to establish a temporary peer in the mediterranean on the coast of gaza. that can receive large shipments, carrying food, water, medicine, and temporary shelters. no us boots will be on the ground, a temporary pier will enable a

massive increase in the amount of humanitarian assistance gett in gaza every day. en contra, against.

the rivers of mesopotamia are going through their most critical times. with the deaths of

the tigris and the euphretes, what will the future hold for the people of iraq and syria? will the aras river end up the way the tigres and the euphretes did the future? for millions of people, is tied to the freedom of captive called water.

head of onra says more children have been killed during israel's genocide in gaza then in four years of conflict around the world. a group of human rights ngos are filing lawsuit against denmark to force a country to end its arms exports to israel amid the gaza genocide. and leader of urad's islamic revolution ali khamenei says resistance in palestine will eventually bring israel to its knees.