In this episode, Richard Pater speaks with veteran US official Elliott Abrams about the state of US-Iran negotiations. Abrams assesses President Trump’s approach to Iran’s nuclear programme, the future of the Strait of Hormuz, and the risks of sanctions relief for Tehran. They also discuss the Trump administration’s decision-making process, the prospects for further US military action, the potential expansion of the Abraham Accords.
Elliott Abrams is Senior Fellow for Middle Eastern Studies at the Council on Foreign Relations in Washington, DC. He previously served in senior roles in the US government, including as Deputy National Security Advisor for President George W. Bush and as Special Representative for Iran in the first Trump administration.
Transcript
(This transcript has been automatically generated by AI — please excuse any potential errors.)
00:00:07:02 – 00:00:27:00
Richard Pater
Hello and welcome to this BICOM briefing and podcast recording. I’m Richard Pater, the director of BICOM and today is the 28th of May. Amid speculation of a US Iran deal, I’m delighted to welcome our distinguished guest today, the veteran senior U.S. official, Elliot Abrams. Thank you very much indeed for joining us.
00:00:27:02 – 00:00:30:08
Elliot Abrams
Well, thank you, Richard. I’m delighted to do this.
00:00:30:10 – 00:01:01:24
Richard Pater
So, by way of background, Elliot Abrams is today a senior fellow at the Middle East Studies and the Council for Foreign Relations in Washington, D.C. In the past, he has served in numerous senior roles within the US government, including as Deputy Assistant to the President and Deputy National Security Advisor under President George W Bush, where he supervised US policy in the Middle East for the white House, and he also served as Special Representative for Iran and Venezuela in the first Trump administration.
00:01:02:00 – 00:01:17:17
Richard Pater
We’re really honoured to have you here today. And perhaps we can start just by outlining your view of the recent war with Iran between Israel and the US and your assessment of the negotiations and the contours of a potential deal.
00:01:17:19 – 00:01:50:23
Elliot Abrams
Right. Well, that’s a three-hour question, but I’ve been a supporter of the president’s effort here, something like 5 or 6 presents in a row who said Iran cannot have a nuclear weapon, but have not actually tried to stop Iran from getting one? Including, I would say, the 2015 JCPoA, which merely pushed it off. Yes, 15 years, perhaps putting aside Iranian cheating, but the 15 years would be coming to an end now.
00:01:51:00 – 00:02:26:05
Elliot Abrams
Pretty soon anyway. What? No one has been willing to do until President Trump was to strike the Iranian program beginning last June 2025. This has been a this has been a constant theme for Trump. He has not had many, let’s say, continuing views on international politics, but one of them has been Iran can’t have a nuclear weapon. And if you go back to the statement in 2015, when he entered the presidential race, he mentioned Iran.
00:02:26:07 – 00:02:47:13
Elliot Abrams
So, this is what he has centrally meant, and he keeps saying it. When you ask him about Iran, in any press event, he says Iran cannot have a nuclear weapon. Thus, the thus the strikes now.
00:02:47:15 – 00:03:31:08
Elliot Abrams
What seems to have happened seems to me to have happened, is that there was a kind of failure to think through all of the potential options. It’s not, I would argue, a substantive failure. It’s a procedural failure. And it is one that, unfortunately, is fairly typical, I would say, of the administration. That is, there has been a kind of national security process, pretty much the same for something like 50 years of how any white House, Democrat or Republican, through various levels of interagency meetings, considers options and debates.
00:03:31:08 – 00:04:06:04
Elliot Abrams
But what is this and what is that? And yes, but around the corner they might. I don’t think that process exists in this administration. It’s it. I mean, the security, the National Security Council staff in a sense hardly exists now. The same person is secretary of state and national security adviser. So, I do think that the president went into this without a firm view as to exactly what he would need to do next.
00:04:06:08 – 00:04:35:08
Elliot Abrams
And what he might need to do next. Now is another round of strikes, of military strikes. I thought, let’s say a month ago, May 1st, that we would end up not with and like the Obama deal that was with appendices, 300 pages, but a very simple Hormuz deal, I thought. All right. The United States will stop blockading uranium ports.
00:04:35:11 – 00:04:47:05
Elliot Abrams
Iran will agree that the Strait of Hormuz is an international waterway. That’s the end of it. And the president reclaim victory. And he would say.
00:04:47:07 – 00:05:21:14
Elliot Abrams
I have destroyed the Iranian nuclear program. I have obliterated it. Or when I say obliterated it and it’s gone and the strait is open. And so, we’re done, maybe even without a piece of paper. The problem has been, first, that the Iranians seem not willing to agree to this and to want to use the Strait of Hormuz as a moneymaker.
00:05:21:14 – 00:05:53:02
Elliot Abrams
So, they want, they want, they want to make money out of out of the Strait of Hormuz. And the president rightly keeps talking about the who. The 440 kilos of highly enriched uranium and demanding that it come out of Iran. I do think that if there is a deal here that will happen, that is the highly enriched uranium will come out, because I don’t think that’s a very great sacrifice for Iran.
00:05:53:03 – 00:06:37:12
Elliot Abrams
In addition to that amount, they’ve got a lot of 20% and 6% enriched uranium, which over time they can enrich to higher levels over time because I think right now their enrichment capacity has been very substantially destroyed. And I don’t think they’re going to actually risk much enrichment while Donald Trump is president. My concern right now is that if that’s part of a deal, the Iranians will ask to be rewarded for it with some lifting of sanctions and with some unfreezing of assets.
00:06:37:13 – 00:07:10:17
Elliot Abrams
They will say, of course, that they have absolutely no intention of having a nuclear weapon, but that is a lie that they have been telling for decades. I would just remind everyone that there is no country that has ever enriched uranium to 60% without going on to developing a nuclear weapon, and there is no reason to enrich even to 6%, because you only need 3.67% enrichment for nuclear power.
00:07:10:19 – 00:07:39:15
Elliot Abrams
So, I do worry that if there is an agreement here, it is one that will enrich the new or newly led Iranian regime. And what happens there? I mean, we know what happens. I mean, they will use the money for their proxies. They will use their money to rebuild aspects of their missile and drone and ultimately nuclear program.
00:07:39:16 – 00:08:03:05
Elliot Abrams
They will use the money to repress the Iranian people, a deal that financially rewards the regime is a deal that, in a certain sense, is helping the regime against the Iranian people. And that sort of that, I think would be a very unfortunate thing to do. So, you know, where are we now? Well, we don’t know where we are now.
00:08:03:08 – 00:08:33:21
Elliot Abrams
I mean, we’ve we saw the negotiations in Islamabad, and one could say that the moment at least, they’ve failed. I think it must be in the contemplation of both US forces in the region. CENTCOM, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs, General Kane, and more importantly, the president, that there may actually be another round of conflict taking out more targets.
00:08:33:22 – 00:09:07:02
Elliot Abrams
The goal, from the American point of view, being to persuade the Iranians that they’ve got to forget about any kind of Iranian control of the Strait of Hormuz. And you will have seen that today. The president, in a sort of offhanded manner, threatened Oman against joining with Iran in any effort to control the Strait of Hormuz. I think it’s almost impossible to say where we will be two weeks from now, whether a deal will have been reached or we will remain where we are.
00:09:07:03 – 00:09:46:14
Elliot Abrams
What is constraining President Trump? He claims that the November elections do not constrain him. You know, in an odd way, I am inclined to believe that because if his main concern were maintaining control of the House and Senate in November, you would not have done what he did in the last couple of weeks. With respect to the Senate Republican primary in Texas, where he favoured the weaker of Republican candidate over the stronger candidate and incumbent senator, whom he viewed as insufficiently loyal to himself.
00:09:46:16 – 00:10:14:08
Elliot Abrams
If he were concerned just about keeping the seat in Republican hands, he would not have done that. So, but surely domestic politics play some role. And that is related to the economic question. The United States is not in the position of other countries around the world, because we don’t need Middle Eastern. There is no supply problem in the United States.
00:10:14:08 – 00:10:50:22
Elliot Abrams
There’s a price problem and gasoline have at the pump gone up, I would say 50% since the war started. And we had what in American politics called the affordability issue for many families already. And that must, you know, that must be on the mind of the president and others in his entourage were thinking about the election. I think there’s another constraint on him that may act, that may counteract that.
00:10:50:24 – 00:11:48:20
Elliot Abrams
He is one of the many people I’m one. Most Republicans were who attacked the JCPoA, the Obama deal, calling it a bad deal because it merely postponed the Iranian nuclear program, and it said nothing about the missile program, which we have in this war, just seen used to damage many countries near Iran. If the president were to agree to a deal that merely postponed the Iranian nuclear program and said nothing about missiles and said nothing about the drone program, and as with Obama, and freed up a good deal of money, both freed up frozen cash and allowed Iran to export more oil without sanctions.
00:11:48:22 – 00:12:15:06
Elliot Abrams
I would think this will be attacked by a lot of Republicans already has been in prospect by a number of Senate Republicans, and the president will be, I think, quite sensitive to the criticism that, well, you know, you railed against Obama, and now you’ve come to a deal that is not unlike his own. So, these are cross-cutting pressures on the president and where he will end up in a week or two.
00:12:15:06 – 00:12:25:01
Elliot Abrams
I think even today, after several months of war, is not easy to conclude. Why don’t I stop with that, Richard?
00:12:25:02 – 00:12:45:14
Richard Pater
Sure. Thank you. I mean, I’ve got quite a few follow ups but let me start with a procedural question. From the outside, it seems very strange. And it’s been a pattern of a Trump presidency to, by and large, a point kind of loyalist. I’m thinking of the, the, the prominence of Steve Wycoff and his and his son and his son in law.
00:12:45:15 – 00:13:02:10
Richard Pater
How much does that as kind of as a ask yourself, as a kind of a policy expert and insider concern you over kind of how this is being managed by the most powerful country in the world, kind of palming off such crucial roles to amateurs.
00:13:02:12 – 00:13:27:02
Elliot Abrams
Yes. Well, he did send the vice president to Islamabad, which, by the way, is almost unprecedented, as I think back to, you know, the last 6 or 7 administrations, when did the vice president ever lead a negotiation in this way? It’s almost always the secretary of state. And it isn’t it isn’t the VP, and it isn’t, as your rightly stating, people like would go off and Kushner.
00:13:27:02 – 00:13:49:23
Elliot Abrams
Now, one does have to say in defence of Kushner that everyone called him an amateur. Eight years ago, when he started in on the Abraham Accords. And he did that quite successfully, not only in the sense that, well, it happened, but I think he actually quite successfully handled the negotiations with Israel, the negotiations with the Emirates and the other countries that joined in.
00:13:49:23 – 00:14:32:06
Elliot Abrams
So, it’s harder now, after he spent four years in the white House to call him an amateur, which I think is fairly called an amateur. I mean, he’s been at it now in this second term for a year, but he comes at it was with, to be fair, zero background in US Iranian relations. So it does worry me and it is of a piece with that of comments I made about the lack of, you know, the usual procedure where ideas are tested and where people in CIA or in the, the, the US military or in the Defence Department, the civilian corps are able to say, wait a minute, wait a minute.
00:14:32:06 – 00:14:54:13
Elliot Abrams
You haven’t thought about X, you haven’t thought about why that does worry me. And now we are at a juncture, say, on the Strait of Hormuz. That obviously was out there. I mean, no one would say this is a shocking development, yet it doesn’t seem to have been given the full consideration that it should have been.
00:14:54:15 – 00:15:16:18
Richard Pater
And just if you can give us an insight kind of from your time kind of working in a, in a Trump administration, you know, what does that what does it look like? What is it? What does it feel like. Kind of what do you imagine kind of the engagement when we all kind of is a great leveller that we’re all reading the Trump posts on his truth social as kind of that we all get to see you see that insight.
00:15:16:18 – 00:15:20:06
Richard Pater
But what can you give us a picture of kind of what’s happening behind the scenes?
00:15:20:07 – 00:15:49:02
Elliot Abrams
Well, a lot of what’s happening behind the scenes, you see on Truth Social. I mean, it’s quiet, you know, it’s no longer shocking, but it is amazing to me in the white House is in which with which I worked, you would need to get ten clearances for the Mother’s Day message. And here you have the president that 2 a.m. just saying things that are completely unfiltered on edited.
00:15:49:04 – 00:16:18:03
Elliot Abrams
I think the kinds of I’m very familiar with the usual what we call principals meetings and National Security Council meetings. These are the cabinet level officials. Plus, you know, the vice president, the head of the CIA, the commander in chief of our arm, not the commander in chief, but rather chief of staff of the armed forces who would meet when the president is there.
00:16:18:03 – 00:16:49:16
Elliot Abrams
It’s called an NFC meeting. When the president is not there, it’s called principals meeting. And you go on sometimes for an hour or two in this kind of debate and discussion, the sort of hold on, but wait a minute. But what about that? I don’t think that happens here. We’ve seen cabinet meetings on TV and, you know, they’re hard to correct, or even in the kind of yes minister sense where they go around the table for adults of the president, there’s no actual discussion.
00:16:49:18 – 00:17:11:02
Elliot Abrams
And I think this is a problem of the Trump administration. And in the first term, we saw it as well, that these meetings, you know, became efforts to report to the president to get sometimes the decision of his. But very often.
00:17:11:04 – 00:17:28:19
Elliot Abrams
He would go off topic, or it was impossible to get the kind of more serious discussion that was wanted. And I wonder if that is not still true, maybe even more true in the second term.
00:17:28:20 – 00:17:50:18
Richard Pater
I mean, onto the kind of the substance that you touched on at the beginning. That kind of Trump has long stated that Iran won’t receive won’t get nuclear weapons. Yet we see this issue that they weren’t able militarily to extract the highly enriched uranium. You also mentioned the 20% and the 6%. I mean, how do you see that that playing out?
00:17:50:18 – 00:18:00:20
Richard Pater
It seems it’s a zero-sum game that how can how Trump kind of claim any success if they if the, the highly enriched stuff remains in Iranian hands.
00:18:00:20 – 00:18:34:20
Elliot Abrams
Well in the beginning meaning at the beginning of the war, I think he could have said, and not unreasonably, I destroyed their ability to enrich uranium. They’re not going to enrich uranium while I’m around several years more. And if we find them trying, we’ll bomb them again. And I warn them right now. And as I said, I think you know the difference between 60% who and 20% who is not very large.
00:18:34:21 – 00:18:58:10
Elliot Abrams
If you have a system for enrichment, I think we’ve really hit their defence industrial base, killed a number of their scientists. People say, oh, you can’t bomb knowledge, you can bomb know how. And their ability to enrich, I think is very much compromised. So, in the beginning, I think the president could have said they can’t get it this who.
00:18:58:14 – 00:19:31:13
Elliot Abrams
And if I find them trying, we’ll hit them again. Now, he has, however, raised this topic over and over and said we must get the Who. And I think in the end, if there is a deal, it will include the who and they will presumably do some combination of shipping all of it out, down blending or down blending some of it, and certainly having IAEA inspections.
00:19:31:15 – 00:19:44:01
Elliot Abrams
My worry, my criticism of that outcome is the Iranians, if they agreed, will demand to be paid for it. And we again, we know what they do with the money that they get.
00:19:44:03 – 00:20:02:20
Richard Pater
There’s a there was a there’s a theory here in Israel that kind of the more bellicose the Trump tweets about kind of destroying Iranian civilization, really the message, the hidden message is, is that he has no, no intention to restart the conflict. Is that you’re reading, or do you think? Do you think it remains a possibility?
00:20:02:23 – 00:20:28:06
Elliot Abrams
Well, it certainly remains a possibility. I do I do think he doesn’t want to do it. If you think of his prior uses of force in the first term, killing Soleimani in the second term, what we call midnight hammer last June and Venezuela. These are all one-day uses of force. I don’t think he intended to be involved in this for three months.
00:20:28:06 – 00:21:08:00
Elliot Abrams
I don’t think he wants another round. But I think the Iranians are making mistakes. If they think, yes, that’s now impossible. It isn’t impossible. And it is striking that there’s been no move to reduce the American forces in the region. We can do it again instantly at his, at his command. So again, I don’t think he wants to, but I think it’s quite plausible that if we go on, let’s say another week and there is zero progress, that he will decide something must change here, and we’ll decide to use force.
00:21:08:02 – 00:21:20:11
Richard Pater
From your experience as national security adviser, how tenable is it to keep US forces in such significant numbers deployed in the in the Gulf?
00:21:20:13 – 00:21:48:11
Elliot Abrams
It’s doable. I mean, it’s not ideal, but, you know, one of the carriers has gone back to the Caribbean. And, you know, we you can’t let me put it this way. It isn’t cost free. Clearly, the more you have there, the less you have somewhere else. But I don’t think, at least at this point, that’s a major consideration.
00:21:48:13 – 00:22:11:19
Richard Pater
And one of the other comments that kind of caused a lot of attention here in Israel just the last few days, was President Trump’s linkage of the Abraham Accords and his and his insistence requirement that some of the other countries. Right. Obviously, first and foremost, Saudi Arabia joined that this the issue of Abraham Accords enjoys a rare consensus issue within Israeli politics.
00:22:11:21 – 00:22:18:05
Richard Pater
But what’s your what’s what was your take on those comments and how realistic do you think that that process is in the short term?
00:22:18:09 – 00:22:40:12
Elliot Abrams
I think it’s completely unrealistic. This is the kind of thing that I think in a different administration would have come out differently, and somebody would have said to the president, hold on, hold on, sir, it isn’t realistic. The Saudis are not on the verge of doing this, nor are the other countries you mentioned. One can envision it can envision it happening over time under you.
00:22:40:13 – 00:23:05:20
Elliot Abrams
You’ve got two and a half years left, but not now. So, I think that’s a harmful comment on the part of the president, in a sense, making a demand that is not going to be satisfied. I would say he’s also there is a risk. Let me put it this way of the linkage with Lebanon. The this is this is an Iranian dream.
00:23:05:22 – 00:23:31:05
Elliot Abrams
The linkage with Lebanon is of course via Hezbollah. It is not something the Lebanese want. It is not what the Lebanese government wants or talks about. Obviously, it’s not what the Israelis want, and it shouldn’t be permitted by the United States. And in these discussions, I would want it to be made very clear by the United States repeatedly.
00:23:31:06 – 00:23:52:22
Elliot Abrams
We’re not discussing Lebanon. If there is a cease fire agreement, a final agreement here in a week or 2 or 3, it’s not going to have the word Lebanon in it, because we are not going to allow that linkage make believe that it exists and restrain the Israelis from attacking Hezbollah. They are not attacking the state of Lebanon.
00:23:52:22 – 00:24:06:08
Elliot Abrams
They’re attacking Hezbollah. And one has to remember that why Hezbollah dragged Lebanon to enter this conflict, that’s the only reason they’re in it. So, this is a danger that I certainly hope we avoid.
00:24:06:10 – 00:24:31:19
Richard Pater
Absolutely. I was actually going to ask about that. I mean, how do you break I mean, apart from kind of announcing, the problem is that now there seems to be Iran have succeeded in creating that linkage, that ceasefire carries over to the Lebanese theatre as well. But in a broader strategic sense. How do you break that? Gordonia not between the influence that Iran has continues to pulverize the Lebanese governments and society.
00:24:31:21 – 00:24:35:07
Richard Pater
How do you how can you break that chain?
00:24:35:09 – 00:25:24:00
Elliot Abrams
I think first you diplomatically, politically support the government of Lebanon, and secondly, you support the Lebanese Armed Forces, which the United States does with various forms of military aid, as do other countries. And second, you insist that they confront Hezbollah. That is, you say to them, we want to maintain and indeed increase our support, but not if you run away from the fundamental fact, which is that either Iran and Hezbollah are going to run Lebanon or the government of Lebanon is thus far, the Lebanese government has said a number of very good things, very good things.
00:25:24:02 – 00:25:57:21
Elliot Abrams
We’re there in the right place. But they continue to refuse to confront Hezbollah anywhere. And, you know, the argument they make is all, we’ll have a civil war. You don’t actually know what you’ll have until you start trying. You cannot let yourself be completely intimidated by Hezbollah, or you will never get back sovereignty over your own country. You know, if you want to make a really almost black and white comparison, think of Ukraine.
00:25:57:23 – 00:26:24:23
Elliot Abrams
Ukrainians are saying we will fight and die for our own country, to run our own country, to have sovereignty over our own country. And that is, in a certain sense, what we hope the Lebanese would say. And this is the best opportunity they’ve had, I would say, since 2008, and I don’t yet see them taking it, which is very sad, tragic.
00:26:25:00 – 00:26:43:16
Richard Pater
I mean, do you hold much hope in the I mean, the significance of the talks that are started in Washington between the ambassadors is obviously a welcome, a welcome step. Yeah. Do you think that do you think that process has legs in it and kind of what more can the US and the international community be doing to support that?
00:26:43:19 – 00:27:22:04
Elliot Abrams
Well, I think it does have legs. I think it has a real prospect. For example, the border, I mean, the border issues of Lebanon, Israel can be settled in a few days of negotiations, both the land border and then questions about, you know, offshore gas, questions like that, the nature of relations between Israel and Lebanon. But it isn’t going to happen unless and until the government is willing to push back against Hezbollah, which is something that most Lebanese want them to do.
00:27:22:05 – 00:27:44:12
Elliot Abrams
So, I think the problem at this point is not diplomatic. I think the problem is are the will. Will the president, the prime minister, the commander of the Lebanese Armed Forces? You know, I don’t say this lightly. I mean, there may well be violence. Hezbollah might push back. And at that point they will need more support.
00:27:44:12 – 00:28:03:02
Elliot Abrams
The government will need more support from a friendly country around the world. But that’s the decision they’ve got to make. It isn’t really a diplomatic question. It’s a question of whether they’re willing to take risks, maybe to fight to take their country back.
00:28:03:04 – 00:28:27:10
Richard Pater
And just if I widen the prison for a minute, we saw President Trump’s visit to, to Beijing just a week or two ago. There is a concern in Israel that although they achieved tactical success in decommissioning and destroying Iranian missile capacity, there is a concern that instead of manufacturing it, they can just import them and import the components from Russia or China.
00:28:27:11 – 00:28:35:12
Richard Pater
How concerned are the US about that? How much do you think that Iran featured in the in those talks with China?
00:28:35:14 – 00:29:00:17
Elliot Abrams
Well, I am concerned I think the United States is concerned. It is it is striking, though. I mean, Russia and China have the ability have always had the ability to give Iran a nuclear weapon and they’ve never done it. They’ve had the ability to help much more than they have the Iranian nuclear program. They really haven’t done it during these months of war.
00:29:00:17 – 00:29:36:24
Elliot Abrams
Now, what have they done for Iran? Not really very much. And of course, the Chinese have mixed interests here because they do want the Strait of Hormuz to be open, and they do want this war over so that world, all prices go down. I’m sure Iran came up. And for China to start a program of rebuilding what President Trump has just bombed would change the nature of their relationship with him in U.S. Chinese relations.
00:29:37:03 – 00:30:05:16
Elliot Abrams
It would be a very aggressive step to take. Is it plausible? Yes. But I think as she Jinping, thinks about it. He’s, you know, got a lot of things to balance in the in the relationship. How? I mean, just take this one. His relations with Iran versus his relations on the other side of the Gulf, where the money is Qatar, Saudi Arabia, the Emirates.
00:30:05:18 – 00:30:21:21
Elliot Abrams
So, I’m my bet would be that they’re not going to jump in with both feet on an Iranian military reconstruction program. I think they might even be more interested in the economic reconstruction program.
00:30:21:23 – 00:30:43:15
Richard Pater
And just one final question for me, focusing. It’s been off the off the media’s attention for quite some time because of the Iranian situation. But focusing on Gaza and the role of the CMCC, the international conglomerate led by the US, to kind of go to bring through the next stages of, of a deal.
00:30:43:16 – 00:30:57:05
Richard Pater
Obviously, it’s stuck with Hamas refusing to disarm. How do you view that that process and what are the levers that the US and the international community can still use to enforce disarmament of Hamas?
00:30:57:08 – 00:31:38:15
Elliot Abrams
I think it’s it certainly is stuck. I think that it is going to remain stuck unless and until the process of disarming Hamas moves forward. Now, who is willing to disarm Hamas? The answer is the IDF, period. In fact, I think if you go back to some months ago and we were all talking about which countries around the world might volunteer police forces, armoury type forces, military forces for Gaza, you know, the answer is close to zero.
00:31:38:15 – 00:32:08:20
Elliot Abrams
And I think that the conflict now in the Gulf makes that even clearer, that governments are going to be quite resistant. I think the US has fundamentally the right policy, which is Hamas is the enemy of all of us, and it is the enemy of the people of Gaza. And Israel has to be allowed a to protect itself but be to maintain a military position there that weaken some of us.
00:32:08:21 – 00:32:32:23
Elliot Abrams
There is going to be no I mean, let’s just forget about what the Americans are saying or use rallies are saying. And Nikolai Mladenov, the UN official who is supposed to run this process, has in the last week said very, very clearly nothing will proceed without disarming Hamas. And I think that’s what we all are be concentrating on.
00:32:32:23 – 00:32:50:13
Elliot Abrams
And that means supporting the Israeli effort to, to push back against Hamas. And I would add, there are some little green shoots of Gazans trying to fight back against Hamas, and we all ought to be supporting them.
00:32:50:15 – 00:32:57:11
Richard Pater
Absolutely. And Mr Abrams, thank you so much. I’m going to stop the recording now. But thank you so much for your insights.