Jewish Policy Center (Webinar Recordings – Audio Only)

Israel has abandoned the “land for peace” formula that has governed its dealings with Arab neighbors since 1967 and is now telling Lebanon that Beirut must disarm Hezbollah before recovering its territory, according to Hussain Abdul-Hussain, a research fellow at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies. Speaking to a Jewish Policy Center webinar on April 23, Hussain said Israel is “flipping the script” by holding a buffer zone inside southern Lebanon until the Lebanese government takes responsibility for violence originating from its soil. “We will not withdraw and hope that you’ll be peaceful toward us,” he summarized Israel’s new position. “We will keep the land until you become peaceful.” Hussain, who was born and raised in Beirut, Baghdad, and Baalbek and whose new book The Arab Case for Israel was recently published, traced the arc from Israel’s 1982 invasion, through the stillborn May 17, 1983 peace agreement killed by Hafez al-Assad’s militias, to Israel’s UN-certified withdrawal in 2000 and Hezbollah’s October 8, 2023 decision to open a second front “in support of Gaza.” A Buffer Zone and a Yellow Line The IDF now controls 55 depopulated Shia villages in a strip calibrated to the roughly six-mile range of Hezbollah’s shoulder-fired, guided anti-tank missiles, weapons that proved especially lethal to Israelis during the 2023-2024 fighting, Hussain said. The IDF calls it a “forward defensive position.” Roughly half a million displaced Lebanese Shia are now “living as displaced people in tents in Beirut and Mount Lebanon.” Unlike Israel’s security zone of the 1980s and 1990s, he stressed, there will be no Lebanese population to govern and no cover for Hezbollah ambushes. Anyone crossing what both sides call “the yellow line” is “taken out.” Hussain pointed to the IDF killing of a Hezbollah “journalist” who crossed the line as proof Israel intends to enforce it. Talking Past Each Other in Washington Last Thursday produced the first direct Lebanon-Israel talks since 1983, with the two countries’ ambassadors meeting in Washington alongside the U.S. ambassador to Beirut and Secretary of State Marco Rubio. But the two delegations “are talking past each other,” Hussain said. Lebanese President Joseph Aoun and Prime Minister Nawaf Salam frame the talks as a vehicle to “stop the war and get our territory back” and say little about disarming Hezbollah. Israel’s position is that disarmament is the predicate for peace. Hussain nevertheless praised the Aoun-Salam government for rejecting French and Spanish proposals that Lebanon be folded into the Iran ceasefire, and for a March 2 cabinet resolution instructing the Lebanese Armed Forces (LAF) to disband Hezbollah. Washington, he argued, has long conflated Lebanon with its Iranian occupier and should not “be doing Iran’s job for them” by refusing to engage a weak but distinct Lebanese state. Strings Attached The roughly $1 billion in U.S. aid to the LAF over the past decade has come with almost no conditions, Hussain said, and the LAF commander is “a corrupt guy who’s in Hezbollah’s pocket.” He argued Washington should tie future assistance to measurable benchmarks and to a change in combat doctrine that still designates “the Israeli enemy” rather than the illegally armed Hezbollah as the army’s principal adversary. “We let them get away with saying one thing in English and something else in Arabic,” he said, urging that the U.S. “call them out” and impose “KPIs and benchmarks.” Drawing the lesson from Oslo, Hussain said both the Gaza peace plan — UN Security Council Resolution 2803 — and any Lebanon deal must specify “the sequence of order” so that territory, reconstruction, and economic aid follow, not precede, disarmament. The Gaza plan is “stuck at point four” because Hamas will not disarm, he noted, and Lebanon risks the same frozen outcome. Optimism, Qualified Hussain said he is more optimistic than his host because Israel has designed its posture so that stalled talks do not force an Israeli retreat. “No one now can pressure Israel to withdraw,” he said. On Iran, he predicted that a sustained U.S. oil blockade will force Tehran to shut in wells within roughly 20 days, costing half a million barrels per day of production “forever” and bringing the regime to terms. “Gaza is — we’re over the finish line. Lebanon, we’re near the finish line. Iran, we’re not there yet, but we’re getting there.” This AI-generated summary may contain errors.

Editor’s Note: We apologize for not having been able to bring you this webinar live yesterday. David Weinberg’s assessment, however, shouldn’t be missed – so we recorded the conversation and are pleased to be sending it to you. A U.S.-Israeli ground raid on Iran’s nuclear sites at Isfahan and elsewhere is under active discussion to seize more than 400 kilograms of highly enriched uranium that aerial bombardment alone cannot neutralize, David Weinberg told a Jewish Policy Center webinar on March 12. Weinberg, a government relations and foreign affairs specialist at the Misgav Institute, said the absence of American heavy strategic bombers over Iran’s nuclear plants during the current campaign was itself telling. “Something more needs to be done about the stockpiles,” he said. “You can’t just leave this as a loose end.” Weinberg spoke from the Israeli home front as the country entered its second week of direct war with Iran under Operation Epic Fury. He described an Israeli home front absorbing punishing Iranian strikes while maintaining overwhelming public support for the war. More than 46,000 missile and attack drone alerts had sounded across the country, he noted, with 18 Israelis killed, 2,300 wounded, and 3,400 civilians made homeless. He singled out Iranian cluster munitions—carried by more than half of the incoming missiles—as particularly devastating, citing one strike earlier in the week that scattered destruction across 16 sites and killed two Israelis. Roughly 35 percent of the population lacks access to a bomb shelter. Despite the toll, Weinberg said polling showed well over 80 percent of Israelis supported extending the war “until a more decisive crushing of Iran and its offensive abilities is achieved.” He described families locked down at home for a second week, dashing into shelters day and night, and noted wryly that Israeli entrepreneurs had produced apps calculating total shelter time and the statistically safest moment to risk a shower. His own app, he said, logged more than 20 hours in shelter across some 60 alerts in the previous week. Gaza, Hezbollah, and the Northern Front Weinberg stressed that Gaza remained a significant confrontation front even as attention shifted to Iran. More than 50 percent of the territory is under Israeli control, he said, with Hamas entrenched in the remainder, including Gaza City—the one major area Israeli forces had not operated in intensively over the past two years. He expressed deep skepticism about the Trump administration’s plan for international investment and peacekeeping forces in the territory, and doubting international troops would succeed in disarming and demilitarizing the enclave. Meanwhile, Hezbollah had launched 200 missiles into Israel the previous night, and Weinberg predicted that “even if the war with Iran dials down in the coming days or the coming weeks, the war with Hezbollah is just beginning.” The Regional Chessboard Turning to the broader region, Weinberg identified a “radical Sunni axis” of Turkey and Qatar as a significant strategic threat to the Jewish state, warning that confrontation with that axis could come in the years ahead. Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan had placed himself squarely on Iran’s side, he observed, and threatened to seize parts of northern Syria and move against the Kurds. “Somebody’s going to have to put Erdogan in a box,” Weinberg said. On the Abraham Accords, he noted that behind-the-scenes coordination between Israel and Gulf states was “closer than ever,” but cautioned that open normalization would take time. Saudi Arabia, he argued, had scaled back from its pre-October 7 trajectory toward Israel, and he faulted the Trump administration for granting Riyadh major concessions—including a path to F-35 purchases and understandings on civilian nuclear enrichment—without conditioning them on movement toward the Jewish state. Movement with countries like Indonesia and smaller Gulf states was more likely in the near term, he added. Trump and the Endgame Weinberg offered a forceful defense of President Trump’s handling of Iran, calling him “this generation’s greatest generator of moral purpose.” He ticked off a series of decisions—withdrawing from the nuclear deal in 2018, the assassination of IRGC chief Qasem Soleimani in 2020, Operation Midnight Hammer the previous June, and now Operation Epic Fury—as evidence of unwavering strategic clarity. Trump had also shown domestic political courage, Weinberg added, taking on progressive critics, isolationists within his own base, and prominent voices like Tucker Carlson. Still, Weinberg acknowledged that the war’s ceiling might ultimately be set not by ideology but by “Washington’s imperfect endurance”—economic costs, dwindling weapon stocks, and diminishing military returns. He cautioned that Iran could not be allowed to conclude that disrupting oil flows was “its passport to survival,” and argued that the spike in oil prices was, as Trump himself had said, “a small price to pay for major security advances.” The stockpile of highly enriched uranium, Weinberg stressed, made a ground operation a serious option. “Trump did say help is on the way,” he concluded. “And he meant it.”

The war with Iran is closing multiple fronts for Israel, but the strategic aftershocks — from a resurgent Sunni Islamist movement to a fracturing Jordan — may reshape the Middle East for decades. The current conflict is not an isolated campaign against Tehran but the catalyst for a broader regional realignment, with “the haunting black cloud over the West” finally lifting, Dr. David Wurmser told a Jewish Policy Center webinar on March 5, 2026. Wurmser, a senior analyst for Middle East Affairs at the Center for Security Policy and a former senior advisor at the White House and State Department, began with Lebanon, where Hezbollah had provoked Israel by launching missiles — what he called submitting “the winning entry for this year’s Darwin Awards.” Hezbollah is not its own front, he argued, but an extension of the broader Iranian war, and Israel intends to see the fight through to the end. Northern Israeli towns remain largely depopulated, and every Israeli knows the war was unfinished. The Sunni Threat After Iran While the Iranian regime is being brought down, a dangerous Sunni Islamist bloc is taking shape. The new government in Damascus represents the first time Arab Islamic forces have controlled that city in a thousand years — evoking the Umayyad Caliphate of 1,300 years ago and “creating a civilizational confidence that the Turks are buying into.” Wurmser identified a strategic triad of Turkey under Erdogan, Qatar, and the Muslim Brotherhood as the animating force, one that also maintains ties to the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) through the Belt and Road initiative. Qatar is trying to reposition itself after refusing US airspace and attempting to sabotage wartime diplomacy. Having chosen the losing side, the Qataris now want to claim credit for an American victory. Meanwhile, Tehran is deliberately stoking Sunni-Shiite tensions to frighten its own population into rallying behind the regime — a desperate strategy Wurmser said would likely fail. Egypt, Jordan, and Iraq Egypt is navigating between rival camps, and the long-term trajectory is troubling. President al-Sisi recognizes that the military rank and file are sympathetic to the Muslim Brotherhood, and Cairo has been drifting toward Turkey on issues from the Horn of Africa to North Africa. Egypt’s peace with Israel, Wurmser argued, has always been anchored to its desire to be part of the American alliance — a commitment that eroded under Presidents Obama and Biden but that President Trump has helped shore up by reasserting American leadership. Jordan faces an even more immediate danger. Forces aligned with the Damascus government and the Muslim Brotherhood are fracturing the tribal structure that forms the regime’s core, pulling Iraqi tribes away from their traditional Hashemite alignment. Iraq, by contrast, may benefit from Iran’s fall: traditional Shiism could reemerge, Iranian-backed militias are being targeted by US and Israeli operations, and the 20-year Iraqi conundrum — which Wurmser characterized as an Iranian-sponsored insurgency rather than an Iraqi one — may finally see resolution. Israel’s Post-War Horizon Drawing a historical parallel to the United States between 1865 and 1890, Wurmser argued that Israel is entering a transformative era. The external wars that defined its first 80 years are winding down, and the country is poised for significant immigration, demographic growth, and “civilizational solidity.” He pointed to an emerging alignment of Israel, India, and Japan — “the League of Rising Ancients” — three ancient, democratic nations that have reconciled tradition with modernity, forming a strategic arc that boxes in Chinese and Turkish ambitions from the south. The 47-year Iranian threat is nearing its end, he concluded, calling the coming resolution “almost as big as the Berlin Wall” and a major blow to China. Israel and the United States are being handed a circumstance of immense positive potential — if they are prepared to seize it. Written with AI assistance and may contain errors. 

Following U.S. and Israeli strikes on Iran’s military infrastructure, much of the Arab world—including Saudi Arabia, Jordan, the UAE, Kuwait, Morocco—publicly aligned with the action. The Houthis condemned the strike as “an attack on all Muslims,” but signaled Iran could respond without their military involvement. Russia and China issued denunciations, yet neither moved to assist Tehran. What happens next? Ilan Berman will discuss: What is the United States seeking to achieve—and what will that require? How stable is Iran’s internal political order, and what role could the opposition play? What does the regional outlook look like? Is Tehran attempting to widen the war—and what could follow? Ilan Berman is Senior Vice President of the American Foreign Policy Council and an expert on Middle East and Iran policy. He has consulted for U.S. government agencies and written and edited several books on regional security, including Dismantling Tyranny: Transitioning Beyond Totalitarian Regimes and Taking on Tehran: Strategies for Confronting the Islamic Republic.

International law involving armed conflict has been “dead” in public perception since before the first shots were fired on October 7th. A community of humanitarian activists, academics, and NGOs has long presented a version of the law that “doesn’t connect with and doesn’t align with the doctrinal version of the law that we apply in practice,” Professor Brian Cox told a Jewish Policy Center webinar on Feb. 26. Truth may be the well-known first casualty of war, but law precedes it — distorted before conflicts even begin. Cox, an adjunct professor at Cornell University Law School and a 22-year U.S. Army veteran, served seven years as a judge advocate with combat deployments to Iraq and Afghanistan. His roles included military prosecutor, federal prosecutor, brigade judge advocate, and military magistrate. That background, he said, reveals a stark “divergence” between the law as military practitioners apply it and the version the humanitarian community generates in public discourse. Military lawyers advise commanders and train soldiers — “it’s not really our job to get thoroughly involved with public discourse.” The humanitarian community fills that vacuum. He pointed to United Nations General Assembly resolutions as a prime example. While the General Assembly offers “absolutely virtuous qualities” as a diplomatic forum, it “cannot create international law” and its resolutions carry “no legal consequence.” Yet those pursuing an anti-Israel agenda exploit resolutions accumulated since the early 1970s to “create the perception as though the United Nations has said this is law and every country now has to follow.” On the genocide charge, Cox was direct: “The focus always has to be intent. Intent is decisive.” From Raphael Lemkin’s original formulation through the 1948 Genocide Convention to the 1998 Rome Statute, intent has remained the linchpin. “It’s not like there’s a lot of destruction, but we’re not sure about the intent, but it’s still genocide. Intent is decisive.” Israel’s expressed strategic objective has been consistent throughout: ensure Hamas no longer poses a threat and repatriate all hostages. To establish genocide, one would have to prove the actual intent is to destroy the Palestinian Arab population — not Hamas. Those advancing the allegation, he said, use a methodology “like clockwork”: Cherry-pick statements from select Israeli political leaders and impute genocidal intent Point to battlefield effects as confirmation Downplay or ignore evidence of mitigation measures taken to protect civilians He cited a concrete example. When the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) identified an underground Hamas command node beneath a hospital, they “deliberately delayed the fuses of these munitions so that the munitions would penetrate through the ground and explode underneath” rather than destroy the hospital above. “If the intent were to destroy the Palestinian population in whole or in part as such, there would be no need” for such measures. On disproportionate force, Cox provided the doctrinal standard: “An attack is prohibited if the expected incidental damage is going to be excessive in relation to the concrete and direct military advantage expected.” Key points: The assessment must be made per attack — each individual act of violence It requires knowledge of what the responsible personnel expected at the time Without that evidence, “we don’t have enough information to make a proportionality assessment” In 22 years of service, he said, “I can’t think of a single scenario where a commander said, I expect incidental damage that’s going to be excessive, and I’m going to launch the attack anyways.” He criticized Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch for a “flawed methodology” — visiting attack sites after the fact, finding no visible evidence of military objectives, and concluding disproportionality without access to decision-makers’ intent or intelligence. The volume of misinformation, he acknowledged, amounts to a “flood” that overwhelms the few voices committed to doctrinal accuracy. Those who understand military doctrine “are too few and far between.” The best approach: “Keep chipping away at it to create an anchor for other folks who are interested in the truth to grab onto.” Looking ahead, there is no legal obligation to rebuild Gaza before the conflict is resolved — and sound policy argues against it. The administration’s peace plan, including the proposed International Stabilization Force (ISF), represents “a generational opportunity to completely change the nature of this conflict that has been dragging out since the late 1940s.” But the international community “is going to have to put their troops where their mouths are” and use armed force against Hamas if necessary. “If that commitment isn’t there,” Cox cautioned, “my assessment is this won’t work. It’s just going to be a piece of paper.” This summary was created with the help of AI, it may contain errors. 

Immigration policy and law enforcement sit at the center of today’s most contentious national debates—often generating more heat than clarity. Steven Pomerantz, Assistant Director of the FBI (ret.), a veteran of federal counterterrorism and criminal investigations, joins us to provide a structured look at the issue: How we got here – the statutory foundation of U.S. immigration law Where we stand now – enforcement challenges, federal–state dynamics, and judicial bottlenecks What comes next – practical approaches that uphold civil rights and public safety.

In this webinar, Middle East analyst Hussain Abdul-Hussain argues that Saudi Arabia’s recent retreat from normalization with Israel reflects a deeper strategic reversal driven by economic strain and geopolitical recalculation. What once appeared to be a reformist trajectory under Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman has, in his assessment, stalled—and the response has been a return to populism and state-managed Islamism. Hussain grounds his analysis in economic reality. Saudi Arabia’s oil-based model, he explains, can no longer sustain a rapidly growing population amid global oversupply and depressed prices. The kingdom requires far higher oil prices to balance its budget, yet the market has not delivered. Meanwhile, high-profile diversification projects have failed to generate meaningful returns. As fiscal pressure increases, Saudi leadership has reverted to familiar political tools. As Hussain puts it, “When governments realize they cannot fix problems structurally, they revert to populism. And populism needs enemies.” That shift, he argues, explains the resurgence of anti-American and antisemitic rhetoric across Saudi media, religious sermons, and social platforms—channels he emphasizes are tightly controlled and reflect official policy rather than rogue opinion. This rhetoric marks a sharp departure from the language of reform and regional cooperation that characterized Saudi messaging only a short time ago. On Israel, Hussain contends that the strategic logic has changed. After Israel’s conflict with Iran weakened Tehran’s regional position, Saudi Arabia no longer views Israel as a necessary counterweight to Iranian power. That reduced threat perception weakened one of the main incentives for normalization. At the same time, he argues that Saudi leadership continues to misunderstand the nature of peace with Israel, treating it as a concession rather than a mutually beneficial economic decision. Saudi Arabia still thinks peace with Israel is a reward to Israel, they don’t understand that it’s a reward to themselves. Several themes recur throughout the discussion: Economic stress as the primary driver: Oil revenues are no longer sufficient, diversification has underperformed, and fiscal pressure is growing. Populism as a fallback strategy: With reform stalled, leadership has turned to ideological mobilization to deflect attention from domestic constraints. Eroding trust in the United States: Inconsistent U.S. policy and abandoned regional partners have pushed Saudi Arabia to hedge rather than align. A stark contrast with the UAE: The UAE’s diversification strategy and peace with Israel are presented as a durable, working model Saudi Arabia has not replicated. Realignment toward Turkey and Qatar: Hussain argues that U.S. tolerance of Islamist regimes has encouraged Saudi Arabia’s ideological drift. Throughout the webinar, Hussain repeatedly returns to the same conclusion: Saudi Arabia’s central vulnerability is economic, not military. Israel does not threaten the kingdom’s security—but stagnation does. As he summarizes, what should keep MBS awake at night is not Israel or Iran—it’s the Saudi economy. Until Saudi leadership internalizes that reality—and recognizes normalization with Israel as an economic necessity rather than a political favor—Hussain sees little reason to expect a near-term course correction. This summary was written with AI and could contain errors. 

Note: The body of Ran Gvili, the last hostage held in Gaza, was found by the soldiers of the IDF this morning while we were recording. It was with great relief that I took off my hostage pin. May HaShem bless the memory of Ran Gvili. Here, I believe, is the most poignant portrayal of the unwavering faith and loyalty that inspires Israel’s soldiers. https://x.com/i/status/2015787812155457931  While we were snowed in, we recorded this week’s JPC webinar and, assuming you are still snowed in as well, we are sending it to you today. Our guest was Dr. Mark Meirowitz, Professor of Humanities at SUNY Maritime College. As an expert on Turkey and Turkish foreign policy, he discussed Ankara’s role in Syria and its broader geopolitical implications. The conversation included historical and current regional power dynamics, including Turkey’s relationships with Israel (and Gaza), Cyprus, and other Middle Eastern countries. Grab a cup of coffee and don’t even think about shoveling for a while. Best, Shoshana

We at the JPC focus primarily on the security of countries and regions; Israel, of course, as well as Iran, Syria, Ukraine, and Taiwan. Threats, however, are not only to national or regional borders, but also to individuals and institutions within those borders. Europe has seen ever-increasing numbers of attacks on houses of worship – as we have in the United States. There are two questions: First, do Americans take these threats as seriously as we should? Second, what can we do to protect ourselves and our families in our synagogues and churches? Our guest is Dr. Stephen Bryen, a former Pentagon official and the author of Security Planning for Holy Places, a primer for keeping your community house of worship safe in increasingly difficult times. Note: We are not going wholly domestic, however. Dr. Bryen has written extensively on the war in Ukraine, which will enter its 5th year next month, and the upheaval in Iran.

WE’RE BACK. And we admit to being caught off guard by President Trump’s announcement of the capture of Venezuela’s strongman Nicolás Maduro and his wife Cilia Flores. We were also amazed and awed by the skill of the US military in his capture. No one thinks Maduro was a good guy, but to understand both the nature of the threat he posed to free countries and the legality of American action against him, we are calling on Dr. Evan Ellis, of the US Army War College Strategic Studies Institute. Dr. Ellis has written for inFOCUS Quarterly, focusing on Latin American countries and their relationships with China and other non-Western Hemisphere actors, as well as transnational organized crime and populism in the region. Please join us for what promises to be an exceptional program.