Is Full Isolation In Israel’s Future? With Curt Mills

_THE INTERVIEW_

Ari David

Curt, thank you so much for joining me today. I have a lot of questions for you. There's so much going on in the Middle East right now I know that you are focused on this almost 24/7.

I don't think you even sleep at all these days. I want to get your thoughts. First, can we start with Iran? There's negotiations that are happening.

A lot of people are saying that this looks like the Obama deal. There's other people that are pushing for Trump to actually take more of a military approach here. Can you break this down for us?

Curt Mills

The president has been interested in a new Trump-Iran deal since he left the JCPOA in April of 2018. He reiterated that interest after the strike on Soleimani in January 2020. COVID and his ouster from office obviously put that all on ice. The Biden people weren't that serious about a new deal.

There were elections in Iran in 2021, which delivered hardliners to government. The hardliners of government died under quasi mysterious circumstances in a helicopter crash in the summer of 2024, a year ago now, June of 2024. The result after everything that's gone on in the Middle East since October 7th is increasingly a binary, which is that the US stabilizes into some sort of arrangement with the Iranians.

So the Iranians agree to no nuclear weapons and the US agrees to some sanctions relief desperately needed for the Iranians or we are now on this ratchet to war. There's quite some wiggle room in there, might be some gray area. It's possible that the US backs out of these negotiations, doesn't do anything, the Israelis try to use these strikes unilaterally, but all of it is because they don't think they have the full capacity to do that.

The Times reporting in late March about a potential US-Israeli strike where the US was lending air support to Israeli commandos and then providing an indeterminate amount of air defense indicates the Israelis don't think they can do a mission into Iran unilaterally with any effect to really wipe out the program. They're also not entirely confident of the Iron Dome if the Iranians actually try to hit them. Of course, the Iranians have fired missiles at them before, but there's ample evidence that it was effectively a cosmetic strike for the consumption of the Iranian people that they didn't really try.

Additionally, you have this sort of deus ex machina character, this Steve Witkoff person who obviously comes from the New York real estate world, knows Trump, but is obviously a prominent figure in the American Jewish community. He has sort of defied ideology in a lot of ways. He's clearly not a straight hawkish neocon kind of person.

His approach to negotiations is very Trumpist, which is that he wants to talk to all parties. Both him and the hostage envoy, Adam Boler, who has a reasonably similar background, friends with the Trump son-in-law, Jared Kushner, have both said, why not talk to Hamas? Why not talk to Iran? Maybe they're more reasonable than we think, and that's got a lot of attention and negative clamor here and elsewhere.

Ari David 

When I think about the Iran deal negotiations, the first thing I think about is maybe back when it was Obama or just newly Trump and everyone was railing against the Obama Iran deal. They were saying that even if they got to some kind of arrangement where they could say, okay, Iran's only going to enrich this much, we can't really trust them.

When you look at Iran now and you said that Iran also, they're under a lot of pressure, they have the sanctions also after all the war since October 7th, it looks like Netanyahu has weakened Iran's proxies as well. How does that negotiation really look? How is that going to turn out if maybe some people are skeptical about enrichment and maybe Iran needs to come to a deal either way?

Curt

Most evidence suggests that zero enrichment is close to a real red line for the Iranians, that they won't sign a deal with zero enrichment. The only way they would sign it is potentially, and it looks less likely by the hour, but the only way they would sign it is a very short-term deal, quick sanctions relief for a short delay.

You now have the situation where the Supreme Leader, for all reliable reporting, was convinced of the necessity of these talks, and they are necessary. Then now he's publicly signaling that he thinks the talks will fail. Of course, the Iranian system is complex.

It's also possible that that was their balance to Witkoff's zero enrichment red line comments over the weekend. In other words, this is all just sort of a dance and that they will come to some sort of accommodation in the middle. But the reality is that the administration needs to pursue what it thinks American interests are and pursue them pretty zealously.

It's close to a binary. Either you come to an understanding, you can negotiate the Iranians hard, or you prepare for war.

Ari David

I guess those are the only two options, right? There's no in-between.

Curt

You don't want to be cartoonish. We don't know. We're forecasting the future. But if the Iranians had come back to the table and the Iranians walk away, as far as we understand about the system, it's a human system, so it's tangible in this respect, that will empower the hardline perspective.

They'll say that the US is not trustworthy. The Trump administration is not workable for their perspective. And Iran is increasingly isolated and vulnerable. They're accusing us of going for a nuclear weapon, so we might as well.

That perspective will have a greater currency within the Iranian system if negotiations fail. It won't be a great secret if the Iranians are going for a bomb in any real way. I don't think they're going for the bomb right now. I believe the US intelligence assessment, I don't believe skepticism of it.

But if they actually are going for the bomb, you better believe that we're going to hear a lot about it. Then the clamor within the hawkish DC community and a lot of our partners, for some sort of action will be pretty hard to deny. It is of course theoretically possible that they go for the bomb and Trump says I don't care.

He's done all kinds of shocking things in his tenure in American life. But he has been pretty clear that they shouldn't have a nuclear weapon. For all the conventions he's willing to violate, I don't think he wants to violate that one. So yeah, it's very, very, very, very close to a binary.

Those are really the only two options we're talking about. Anything else is very, very small percentages from my perspective.

Ari David And so everything else that's happening in the Middle East right now with Trump negotiating, and he was just in Saudi Arabia and Qatar, he is making deals there, he is lifting sanctions on Syria, it's seemingly he's putting some distance between himself and Israel. Is this all kind of with the goal to figure out the Iran problem or are these kind of separate?

Curt 

They're somewhat separate. Trump isn't looking at it, to my understanding, from this overarching, enormous philosophical construct, although there is a Trumpism, there is a philosophy there. You can trace it back to his comments generally about foreign affairs all the way to the 80s when he first started running for president.

But obviously, the Middle East, to an extent, is a chessboard as defined, however tendaciously or not by the Israeli government, which is that there is this axis of resistance in the Middle East and Iran runs it. So Hamas is part of that. The Houthis are part of that. Hezbollah is part of that. And Iran is the, quote, head of the snake.

Every time Trump does a separate piece with the Houthis and doesn't include Israel, every time Trump says the war in Gaza has to end and the Netanyahu administration doesn't agree, every time that Trump negotiates with the Iranians and doesn't include the Israelis, it's clear that they are dissenting from the perspective held in Jerusalem at the moment. And also the perspective that is sympathized by not an insubstantial number of power players within his own ranks and within the United States and the West.

Ari David One of the different points right now that a lot people are speaking about, and the American Conservative wrote a little bit about this, that ultimately the goal is to disentangle. And so right now it seems America is actually getting really involved.

And maybe even with the calls to be more aggressive with limiting Israel, that's also kind of further entanglement, further becoming a real active player in this whole conflict. What do you think? Do you think the ultimate goal is they patch this stuff up, they get out and then it's stable or how else does that end up working?

Curtis

Trump is inheriting two large wars, a Middle Eastern war and a Eurasian war. So top line is getting us out of the wars, if at all possible. And that's what's driving it.

In terms of longer term, which gets to maybe your publication and other publications, think piece-y kind of things what is the new nationalism? What is MAGAism? What is Trumpism? What is the right for the coming generation? All of these kinds of discussions. What would a Vance administration do? Obviously being the subtext on some of this stuff. That's a larger conversation. And there is a bit of a knife fight in the open channels to define that.

The idea that the US is getting more entangled by trying to leave, I don't know, it's a novel interpretation of it. But the reality is the US is involved. The US is the chief military partner of the Israelis. When Israel uses US military know-how and equipment and uses US taxpayer dollars to engage with its war, then the US is risking blowback internationally. And they are a side party to the war. Same thing with Ukraine.

So we are involved. The president, of course, could just say, we're going to rip the band-aid off, we're out today, et cetera. That would be even more radical than what he's doing now. Although I might sympathize with it personally, it's probably outside the Overton window. But yeah, the US top line has to dive into this diplomatically in order to extricate ourselves in the medium term.

Ari David That makes sense, and especially considering how much support America gives Israel as well in terms of weapons and funding. And on that note, there's been an interesting kind of call, maybe in the past year from different outlets like Tablet Magazine, where they say and argue, well, maybe it's time for America to actually kind of stop sending so much weapons or so much funding to Israel and give Israel a little bit more sovereignty because it would have less dependency that way.

And even the far right in Israel, they kind of also agree with that notion where they would prefer America to be more hands off and to maybe support less just so they can kind of feel more freedom to be able to do what they want without having to think, well, what does the American president say about that? And I want to hear your thoughts on what you think about that kind of American Israel relationship or what you think the ideal relationship between America and Israel looks like.

Curt 

As to the Tablet thing, you have to be careful about rival publications here. I've dealt with some of them and been to some of their events. They in general are very good at creating ideological cocktails that seem superficially plausible and new but really are the same old medicine.

So, the idea that they would support US ceasing military support for Israel, is basically an attempt to get out ahead of a vogue-ish idea on the right, which is if the US is going to move towards cutting support, if that's going to be the popular opinion, then we better not look off sides. You see it with frankly other aspects of what is fairly called the Israel lobby, which is, if something happens, they won't criticize it.

For instance, the Foundation for Defense of Democracies is different outfit, perhaps more bellicose in this respect. They didn't criticize Trump's Middle East speech, Middle East trip last week, even though he did everything that was the opposite of what was on FDD's website. They would say, this is the trip, the trip, et cetera. Meanwhile, here's what we should do next, which is all the other stuff that he's been ignoring recently.

To make it less personalistic and more country to country on US Israel, look, Israel has the right to exist if it can guarantee its existence. It's a hundred plus year project Zionism is. It's been there. It has nuclear weapons, even though very unusually and uniquely doesn't concede that it has nuclear weapons, which is weird.

I don't think it's going anywhere. But the idea that the US should endlessly underwrite, it's not just underwriting. The US should be twinned in a specific project of really increasingly one politician, the current prime minister of Israel, which is deport everybody in Gaza, get ready for an Iran war and get the US bombing the Houthis on this fake pretext of defending international shipping, that's not in the US interest at all.

I don't think that's in the interest of Donald Trump. I don't think that's even in the interest of Israel. I think it's in the interest of one person, the PM.

As to the quote, far right in Israel, et cetera, it's perhaps the logical conclusion of where Israel is potentially going if it proceeds this way in this level of isolation and unpopularity globally, which is that Israel may be preparing to become effectively a garrison state. An isolated garrison state, a potentially far more religious one, and one that will see, frankly, the fleeing of a lot of its intellectual capital to, let's say, Southern Europe, Spain, Portugal, Greece, of the business community will move there, take advantage of the more abundant economies they can weave into the EU.

And Israel becomes, it will continue to exist, it will continue to be heavily armed, it will continue to be a player in the international scene, but it will be far less integrated into the American framework. And again, that doesn't seem super appealing to me. I'm not Jewish, I'm not Israeli, but it seems far less attractive to the average American to move to or to support. But that is the logic of the war that they are pursuing.

It is an indefensible war as currently constructed and it is losing support rapidly from basically any ranks, from anyone in the ranks that aren't either the baby boomers in the United States or people paid to have the opinion.

Ari

How does that play in with the way that Witkoff is kind of negotiating there? And I've also read that Jared Kushner is still involved in a lot of maybe behind the scenes helping with the negotiations. And apparently there's more coming, Abraham Accords. I've heard hints about that. Do you have any, I guess, thoughts on that whole thing?

Curt

What have you heard about Kushner?

Ari

I've heard that he's still kind of playing a role there in some ways and helping with the negotiations, maybe giving some tips on what he learned when he was there or connections or something. And then in terms of the Abraham Accords, they have been saying, well, we're going to prepare to kind of give more details about some deals and agreements that are coming.

Curt

Yeah, the Kushner bit tracks with what I've heard, but I don't know how close he is to the president at the current moment or his father-in-law. As to the Abraham Accords, again, there's a possibility if the Abraham Accords, the meaning of them is so diluted that it's something like the Organization of Caribbean States, yeah, Ahmed Al-Sharaa's Syria will join them.

But if it, the original project of the Abraham Accords is now an open question, which is, basically an Israeli Gulf state alliance against Iran, mixed with economic and social liberalization, that seems way off. The reality is one of the hardline goals, as reported, of Hamas on October 7th, which was to sabotage Saudi-Israel normalization has so far been a success, and it's been a success because the Israelis have radically overreacted.

Which, granted, it's not for me to say how a country should react, but the reaction is not the reaction you would do if you wanted to maintain international legitimacy that they had 24 months ago.

Ari David I want to switch gears a little bit and ask you, I guess, about the current debate in America about Qatar. Ever since the news about the $400 million plane and all of that stuff, there's been so many people that have been wait a second, what is our relationship with Qatar?

And for a long time, on the right, we talked about how much Qatar is funding Islamic ideology. They're funding schools and lobbying in America, as well as funding Al Jazeera and just all of these things that feel maybe they're hostile to American interests or American values. And then at the same time, they're also lobbying in Washington. And clearly now we're working with them much closer and seemingly the relationship is happy on one side and on the other side doesn't really make sense. What's the right way to understand the changing relationship with Qatar right now?

Curt

I'm not sure it's changed that much. Qatar basically at the current moment is mediating something like 10 world conflicts. Qatar is the most conservative Gulf state, is fair to say. It is a conservative Islamic Gulf state, I should say.

It has Al Jazeera. It has interests. It spends money. None of that strikes me as all that different than any of the other Gulf states, just in terms of the ideology is a little bit different, but the operations seem similar enough to the Emiratis or the Saudis.

The essential gist of Qatar is somewhat of a bad joke, which is everything that is accused of Qatar is basically what's happening with the Israel lobby in maximum. And it's relying on the fact, I really hate to say this because it's not useful for people to talk in these terms often, but it is frankly just relying on people being more scared of Muslims and brown people than they are of Israelis. And it is the kind of nonsense that has gotten us into war after war after war.

The US is nowhere close to Islamizing. This isn't France, and I'm not even sure that that is even close to the goal of the Qatari state. The Qatari state has discrete goals in its region. If you are a secular modernizing Emirati or Saudi, I can see not digging what's going on in Doha.

But that said, very notably the guys in Riyadh and Abu Dhabi right now actually have tailed way closer to the Qataris since October 7th. The reality is that, the US and Israel in its current posture related to the US status quo, anti in Israel. Those are the people that are isolated. They're isolated from Europe. They're isolated from the global South.

And, it might make a certain amount of sense for Israel. It might make sense for a Ben Gvir or a Smotrich. I don't know how it makes sense for Donald Trump.

Ari David Is the posture that we're working with Qatar right now, but at the same time, maybe Trump's domestic policy and the people running some of the efforts here at home, specifically the Title VI is trying to make sure that they cut out different antisemitic elements or maybe even the funding that they're getting from the Middle East. Does it show that maybe Trump's domestic team is completely different in ideology than his foreign policy team? Do you think that there's something there?

Curt

It's possible. It's Trump. It's a knife fight. So he's a 19th century political boss in a lot of ways and there's different constituencies.

The people that are driving the domestic ideology seem somewhat different than the approach on foreign policy. What is going on in Muscat or Oman on a given weekend or Rome is probably more important or at least more of a front burner issue for the president than what's going on at Columbia. That's just the way it is.

But it doesn't mean the stuff that's going on at Columbia has any real legitimacy or is the wave of the future. It is the kind of stuff that will drag down an administration's political appeal. And it's the kind of stuff that's pretty unpopular and just frankly un-American.

Ari David Let me ask you about what you've been surprised by since Trump came into office.

Curt

I would say this, I'm pretty on record, this has been very much the bull case for the administration from my perspective. This thing's been better than term one. It's done a lot of stuff on foreign policy that I really appreciate. I don't love every single thing that's gone on, but this is upper, upper end, broadly speaking.

Even the non-foreign policy stuff, the tariffs, I'm a supporter, not every specific thing, but they're going to negotiate it pretty well. And the recession risk has gone down. Knock on wood, it's a long year ahead, but it's being managed.

What surprised me? I don't think anyone really had the cabinet selections quite right. The selection of someone like RFK, the sort of outside the Overton window, that far outside the Overton window for these cabinet secretaries probably surprised me. It's a mixed bag. The president should get to pick his advisors. So at the end of the day, I don't really care who his advisors are as long as that's who he wants and they're not actively subordinating his agenda.

But you have seen the pitfalls and personnel continues to be somewhat of an Achilles' heel in his approach. Additionally, he loves hiring and firing people. He has his whole career. He's the you're fired guy. It's not that surprising, Waltz is obviously the former NSA was somebody who he appreciated on paper but literally didn't believe anything that Trump believed fundamentally.

So yeah, I would say the picks Hegseth probably surprised me but everything else has been, I know people disagree. People were hoping for a far more normie Republican administration. They were hoping for a Bush-y Republican administration and they're not getting it and that's both what I expected and wanted.

Ari David I also want to ask you about the American Conservative. You're the executive director and it's safe to say that the American Conservative is at its peak in terms of influence and output.

And you and I, we were even talking maybe about a year ago or something. And you said it's about to be the American Conservative's moment. And it looks like you're seizing it. So could you tell me a little bit about the role that the American Conservative serves right now in the political moment and in media in general.

Curt

Look, this is a magazine that was founded in 2002 by conservatives and paleo-conservatives against the Iraq war. We also linked in their criticisms of foreign trade agreements and also linked in their criticisms of open borders and limitless immigration. Those ideas were not vogue when George W. Bush was president and wanted basically open borders, conservatism mixed with free trade, allegedly free trade, and to invade every country in the Middle East, if he could get away with it.

But all of a sudden, with Donald Trump, came down the escalator, ran on this stuff, these issues became far more lingua franca of the American right, if not the American polity writ large. And it's one thing to say, we were right, we were right, we were right. It's another thing to say, we were right back then, and then this is what we should do now and move forward, et cetera.

I prefer to call it basically conservative anti-globalism. And it's as vogue-ish and as ascendant as ever. And so providing not just saying op-eds of what we think we should do providing real-time analysis and reporting and really emphasizing our location here in Washington and also doing stuff abroad is our key and, just we're in the mix and we want to stay in the mix and we want to be lean clean and fun.

Ari David Is there anything that you would say if there's a lot of people focused on domestic policy, all the time, there's also a lot of people focused on foreign policy. Which one, if you could just focus on one, I know you probably would say foreign policy, but what would be the case maybe if that's what you would say? I don't want to speak for you.

Curt

Look, I've given this riff before. We have an imperial presidency. It's not just Trump. It's the US is, part of it is set up in the constitution. The government can't do that much or very quickly.

A lot of it is, deep state is a sort of histrionic term, but we actually do have this massive unaccountable bureaucracy that takes forever to reform. We have a mess of a healthcare system. We have a mess of a tax system. We have a welfare system that is fundamentally too miserly and too expensive.

Social Security and Medicare and Medicaid, Social Security and Medicaid, I should say, don't really provide, space-age barriers of assistance, if that. On the other hand, the current costs of the programs are enormous. And then additionally, the US is obviously going through something secular stagnation demographically, and there are no easy solutions.

Whereas the US has this massive unaccountable empire that is clearly not serving the interest of the average American person, average American citizen. And if a president gets in there and has his druthers or has her druthers and wants to roll the thing up and quickly, it can happen. And you are seeing the portents of that right now.

And you are seeing, for all of the castigation of Trump for being norm breaking and rule breaking, et cetera, there are certain advantages to that. They've been basically conceded on a cross-partisan basis. It was an astonishing article last week during the Middle East trip. It was in Axios and basically the Biden guys and the Obama guys on the record.

And some of these people said, wow, you can just do this stuff this fast? It was, normal caveats about Trump being a tyrannical, despot, et cetera aside. They commended him for his energy and pace of change. And that's quite telling that the group think in this city was too calcified and sclerotizing and needed reform. And that's why the American people keep sending this guy who is unique in American history back to the Oval Office.