In an interview on “Piers Morgan Uncensored,” former U.S. Counterterrorism Center Director Joe Kent argued that President Trump must restrain Israel to preserve the ceasefire. <\/p>\n
PIERS MORGAN, HOST: To debate all of this, I’m joined by Joe Kent, the former director of the U.S. National Counterterrorism Center, and Will Chamberlain, the senior counsel at the Article III Project. Well, welcome to both of you. I mean, Joe Kent, a lot of what you said when you resigned appears to have been pretty much confirmed by that New York Times report, which is extremely detailed and paints a picture of Netanyahu in the White House, in the Situation Room, with the head of Mossad appearing on a screen next to him, in which he laid out a four-point plan for why this would work, decapitating the regime, the people would rise up, they would be too powerless to shut the Strait of Hormuz, and so on, most of which has not happened. What do you feel about the fact there’s now this ceasefire, albeit it seems quite perilous one? Is it a recognition, do you think, by President Trump that he’s got to get out of this? JOE KENT, FMR. U.S. NATIONAL COUNTERTERRORISM CENTER DIRECTOR: Well, I think it’s a good thing that President Trump took the opportunity to enact a ceasefire and to get both sides to the negotiating table. I think what’s key, though, is that President Trump has to realize, in order to accomplish our strategic goal, which is ending this conflict, reopening the Straits of Hormuz, and maintaining the alliances that we have in the Gulf, he has got to restrain the Israelis. The Israelis have a different strategic goal than we do. They want to take down the entire regime. They don’t care how long it takes. They don’t care how much we have to commit in terms of blood and treasure. So the Israelis and us have parted ways in terms of strategic objectives. We have to be honest with ourselves. It sounds like, considering the fact that someone shared that, shared the origins of this war with the New York Times, that that is recognized now by this administration. So the first thing that President Trump has to do in order to make sure this lasts is actually restrain the Israelis, take away key components of the military aid that we give them so that they lack the capability to go on the offense and to spoil this ceasefire. MORGAN: Will Chamberlain, your response to that? WILL CHAMBERLAIN, ARTICLE III PROJECT: I mean, I think that’s a completely incoherent idea, not merely wrong, but just incoherent. First off, it presupposes we have the ability to take away their offensive capabilities. Newsflash, they already have them. We can’t just seize them. Are we going to invade Israel and take their planes? We can’t. They have the F-35. They have these capabilities. Remember, they launched the 12-day war on their own. So, I mean, even if they didn’t sell themselves. MORGAN: On that point, the Americans could withdraw their funding. The billions of dollars that go to the Israelis, which they use to fund their own military, that could just be withdrawn. So, America isn’t powerless. It can exercise that power. CHAMBERLAIN: Right, but the offensive capabilities they would need to strike Iran, they already have. They’re the second biggest air force in the world today. Even if we said we’re not going to give you $ 4 billion a year going forward, that wouldn’t stop anything. And then the second point is that this is an unbelievably silly approach to foreign policy because we haven’t hammered out final terms with the Iranians yet. We’re still in the middle of negotiations. The idea that we would restrain our ally, who, by the way, just helped us achieve one of the greatest military victories of the modern era, we would restrain them instead of trying to use the threat of continued belligerence from them to extract more punitive terms from the Iranians is silly. It’s just completely antithetical to how things should work. And the idea that we need to be worried about our Gulf neighbors who would be upset if we didn’t restrain the Israelis is also absurd because our Gulf neighbors are on our side. And this war has not only solidified our position militarily, it solidified it diplomatically because all those countries are furious with the Iranians and are on our side and want to strengthen cooperation with both us and Israel. MORGAN: But what is clear from that New York Times report, it seems to be incredibly well-sourced. So somebody’s been talking who was in that room. What is clear from that is that the Israelis, you know, maybe this was an honest mistake on their part, a misreading of the situation, but they certainly appear to be of the belief. If you took out the Ayatollah and some of the top people with him, that this would then lead to an uprising by the people and that amid all this chaos, there would be no ability to close the Strait of Hormuz. Well, none of that has really happened. Yes, they got rid of the Ayatollah, but he’s just been replaced by other similarly minded people. And then there’s been no uprising by the Iranian people whatsoever. And of course, the Strait of Hormuz has been held in a kind of stranglehold by the Iranians in a very powerful way. It has to be conceded, which has caused enormous damage to the global economy. They’ve basically controlled that Strait now for four or five weeks and it’s caused hell. And none of that appears to have been predicted by the Israelis in their sales pitch to Trump to join them on this war. CHAMBERLAIN: Well, so I think you’re overstating a number of things there. First off, I mean, you know, the Iranian navy is gone. They’re controlling the strait by threatening to shoot at people, but they don’t have any naval forces meaningfully in the area. And the idea, remember, they were thinking that card, which is their only Trump card, that’s the maximum — MORGAN: But it’s a very powerful card and it’s one that the Israelis did not think they had the power, according to the New York Times report. CHAMBERLAIN: The Israelis might have made a slight misjudgment on that effect. It’s war. MORGAN: That’s a massive misjudgment CHAMBERLAIN: I think the Iranians made a much bigger misjudgment overall when you talk about the complete destruction of their military capability. MORGAN: Right, but if you take away the Strait of Hormuz issue, then you’ve got overwhelming military dominance by the Americans and Israelis. Yes, the Iranians would have still attacked their neighbouring Gulf states, but that would be a military conflict part of it. The fact that the Strait of Hormuz has been shut pretty much for five weeks, that has been an asymmetric war, which, you know, with the best will in the world has been wielded very successfully by the Iranians. CHAMBERLAIN: I don’t think so at all. I think that’s actually been wielded quite poorly. [CROSSTALK] CHAMBERLAIN: Let me finish my point, Joe, and then you can speak. Two weeks ago, the Iranians were saying we’re not going to give up the Strait of Hormuz unless we get a permanent peace deal, a permanent commitment to non-aggression and reparations. What are they trading it for as of yesterday? Two weeks ceasefire, no promises. They can’t even extract a commitment from the Israelis to stop fighting Hezbollah. That’s how badly they’re beaten. MORGAN: OK, well, Joe, he called you silly and incompetent, I think, earlier. So this is your chance to respond. KENT: Prior to this war, the Straits of Hormuz were transited by anybody trading oil for free. Post-war, the Iranians are going to be able to extract a fee. That’s one of their negotiating chips they have now. Prior to the war, the Ayatollah that we killed was actually at the negotiating table with us. The reason why none of this was taken into account is because the Israelis didn’t really care about what would happen to the Straits of Hormuz. They didn’t care what would happen to our Gulf allies. Our Gulf allies right now still technically are with us. But the fact that we were unable to provide them with security guarantees lowers our status in the region, potentially could threaten the petrodollar in the region. And so right now we’re in a weaker position because we listened to a foreign government that had a different strategic goal in mind than we did. So it’s great that we got the ceasefire. We need to maintain that ceasefire. And we have to actually withhold things from the Israelis, which we can do. The Israelis do have a modern air force, but they rely on us for a lot of the logistics, the refueling in order to be able to reach into Iran. So we very much are in the driver’s seat of what we provide. CHAMBERLAIN: That’s not true, Joe. That’s just obviously false because we didn’t help them with refueling in the 12 Day War. KENT: No, it’s 100% true. CHAMBERLAIN: That’s false. KENT: They can’t reach into they cannot reach into Israel. I was actually I’ve actually been in the military, man. I’ve been part of these operations. CHAMBERLAIN: Then explain how they did the 12 Day War without refueling. KENT: We helped them out CHAMBERLAIN: If we weren’t participating, we helped them out. [CROSSTALK] KENT: Well, we helped them out a good deal. We helped them out a good deal with logistics. They can’t sustain operations without us. They wouldn’t be able to continue to sustain operations all the way into Iran with conventional military forces in any meaningful way without our support. We have to pull that back. We also have to pull back their ability to go on the offense outside of their borders because it’s going to interfere with the peace that we’re trying to achieve. Right now, we’re paying for their defense. We’re paying for the offense. And also in terms of our status in the region and our ability to keep commerce and oil flow going out of the Straits of Hormuz and the Middle East, all of that is being negatively affected by us listening to a foreign government. So we have to put Israel back in the junior partner role if we’re going to accomplish our strategic objectives. CHAMBERLAIN: Why couldn’t you persuade Pete Hegseth of any of this? KENT: Well, I tried. So therefore, I had to leave the government. CHAMBERLAIN: He didn’t agree with you. He has better intelligence than you. You weren’t privy to any of this stuff. You just don’t know. That’s why you’re now on the outside doing podcasts instead of inside the administration trying to shape policy. You don’t know. You didn’t persuade him. KENT: From the inside. Like, look, man, my letter of resignation has been out there. What’s important right now is that we support President Trump in getting this peace deal and making sure it actually sticks. The problem is, as confirmed by The New York Times, that was well sourced from within the West Wing. CHAMBERLAIN: No, it wasn’t. [CROSSTALK] KENT: The Israelis were in the driver’s seat for all of this. Well, if you read the article, I think it’s pretty evident. You know how leaks work in Washington, D.C. with The New York Times. MORGAN: Well, if you say it wasn’t well-sourced, well, which part are you contesting? CHAMBERLAIN: Oh, no, it was well-sourced. You guys are just mischaracterizing how much influence Israel had based on what was written in that article, which was Israel gave a presentation. Yeah, I read it completely.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n