ICYMI: Risch Talks U.S. Foreign Policy in the Middle East at Hudson
WASHINGTON – U.S. Senator Jim Risch (R-Idaho), chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, yesterday joined Michael Doran at the Hudson Institute to talk about the future of U.S. Foreign Policy in the Middle East.
On the ICC and destruction of Hamas:
“First of all, Israel is one of the most reliable allies we have. The more I deal with them the more you find that their values are the same as our values. What really troubled me with the ICC, and we are not a member of the ICC as you know., and other countries are not a member of the ICC. I support an ICC so long as it focuses on prosecuting cases from countries who do not have a robust judicial system and will not themselves prosecute human rights violations. On the same day the ICC put out the warrant for Netanyahu as allegedly a war criminal, they did the same thing for the Hamas people. Listen, any organization that tries to get moral equivalency between Israel and Hamas should not be in charge of any part of the justice system because there is no justice there. These people that are complaining about what's happening in Gaza, they say they want a ceasefire, I’m all with them. This is so simple, all Hamas has to do is lay down their arms, release the hostages, and this is over. There'll never be another shot fired. Everything that happens, every civilian that's killed in Gaza is not at the hands of Israel, it's at the hand of Hamas – unquestionably. If any of you have the opportunity to see the films from what happened on October 7th, I have a recommendation for you: don't look at them because you'll have trouble sleeping at night. What they did was atrocious. How one human being could do that to other human beings is absolutely beyond me. But then to run back home and defend a war by hiding behind civilians and putting all your infrastructure in hospitals, schools, mosques, and churches is ridiculous. This is how I equivocate this, in my judgment, what Israel has done is what the United States and its allies did in the late 1930s. We saw the Nazis as an organization that could not exist on the face of the earth as a military organization, a political organization, a cultural organization, or anything else, so we set out to destroy the Nazis – and we did it. Israel says, if we don't destroy Hamas and we just agree to a ceasefire all you're going to get is putting this off for the next three years, five years, maybe longer than that, but it's going to happen again until you get rid of Hamas. When I meet with the people from the region, they tell me they want nothing to do with Hamas. They can't say it publicly, but they're rooting for Israel. They don't want Hamas, and they don't want the Muslim brotherhood.”
How the Abraham Accords caused a shift among Arab countries in the Middle East:
“I've seen tremendous change in the Middle East since I've been doing this. If you look at where we are today the fact of the matter is we're down to one bad actor. You might ask, "Well, what about the three H's: Hamas Hezbollah and the Houthis?" They are all proxies of Iran. If Iran was gone the three H's would be gone so we're down to one bad actor really in the region. I think people will look back at this point in history and see that there was a turning point, and I believe that turning point was when the Abraham Accords were signed. Once those Abraham Accords were signed it was a signal to the world that the Arab population was sick and tired of what Iran has been handing out and decided to go a different direction. You have to give President Trump tremendous credit for what was done there.”
On Iran’s uranium enrichment:
“One of my primary requirements, one of my primary red lines has always been no enrichment because if Iran says they want to enrich – they want a bomb. Life is not going well for Iran right now, if they don’t make a deal, at some point in time Israel is going to do something about that. I’ve sat across from Netanyahu a number of times and he has looked me in the eye and said, “Iran will not have a nuclear weapon,” and you know what, I believe him. I think that is a case for the United States to be in the exact same position. You cannot make an argument that Iran should be able to enrich uranium even if they say they want to be like the rest of the world and have a civilian nuclear program. I get that, and for that we have what's called the 123 agreements and it can be enriched in any of the countries that do that, and it is under very strict controls, and they won't do it themselves. They consider it a matter of pride, enrichment, they consider it a matter of pride because they want to be able to say, “we could make a nuclear weapon when we want to.” No, no you don’t. The Israelis will see that you never have a nuclear weapon, if that's what you want that's what you're going to get.”
On a failing Iran:
“I think that most countries are looking at Iran as being a failing country right now. When Donald Trump left office the first time we had them down to under 200,000 barrels a day that they were selling, now they're over two million barrels a day. We're bringing it down fairly quickly but we're going to get them back down there again. I've been leading a fight to turn the screw as hard as I can on them to do just that because in addition to all the other problems, they've got we need to cut the cash flow. Iran is alone on an island right now and they’re going to have to figure out where they want to go – if the Iranian people had the opportunity there would be a regime change in a heartbeat.”
On the future of Syria under Al-Sharaa:
“I don't think Americans have a tendency to think of Syria and Lebanon as being keystones in a peaceful and prosperous Middle East, but I do. First of all, I think you have to look back in history these are two biblical countries. Both countries I think if they get their feet under them, if they get stability, they can be part of a rebuilding a new Middle East that we all hope to see in our lifetime. That's one of the reasons why I am cautiously optimistic about Al-Sharaa. It’s my hope for him that he will end up being a Syrian leader and not an extreme Islamist. I was the guy who sponsored the Caesar sanctions that put sanctions on Syria in the first place. I led the charge to ease the sanctions and I think we should continue to ease those sanctions, but we need to wait and see. Right now, I'm still willing to stand by and wait and see – it's certainly a lot better than it was a year ago.”
On the United States Foreign Policy Posture:
“We have relationships around the world that are just as important to us for our national
security as is our military operations. We need friends, we have to have friends. There are a lot of people around the world that share our values and share our view of what life should be for human beings and that we need to maintain that, so I don't think those are mutually exclusive. I don't think you need to abandon one and pursue the other, I think you can do both at the same time. I've said since I started in this business is that the United States cannot be the policeman of the world. Every day I have people come through any country that's got a problem and says, "We need the United States here to help us resolve this,” they want the United States there to help them. I think that's a good reputation to have and one that we should prize.”
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