Former spokesperson for the US Department of State (the Ministry of Foreign Affairs) from 2019 to 2021, US Navy reserve officer, specialist in intelligence and financial analysis, Morgan Ortagus is also the founder of Polaris National Security, a consulting firm specializing in international relations with a particular focus on threats from the Middle East, Iran, Russia and China.
More than 48 hours after the launch of Hamas’s attack on Israel, the forty-year-old, member of the Republican Party, emphasizes the need to eliminate the Islamist party in Gaza in the same way as the Islamic State had. been to Iraq and Syria in the first months of Donald Trump’s mandate. For this first interview in a European media, Ortagus also insists on the deadly role of Iran, on the moral bankruptcy of the Palestinian Authority embodied by the octogenarian Mahmoud Abbas, and on the obligation to recreate deterrence against towards the enemies of Israel and the United States.
According to her, the Biden administration has shown itself to be too weak and naive vis-à-vis Iran. While Washington begged Tehran to renegotiate a nuclear deal, the Islamic Republic continued to finance Hezbollah and Hamas. “In short, they gave us the finger,” she said.
L’Express: How can we define what happened in Israel this weekend?
Morgan Ortagus: The comparison with September 11 is unfortunately the right one. It’s the same fear, the same monstrosity: terrorists desecrate human life, kill civilians, kidnap women, children and old people, leave hundreds of dead behind them. As a mother, seeing frightened women with children in their arms breaks my heart. I don’t know how, after seeing this, it is possible not to feel solidarity with the Israelis.
How to explain the bankruptcy of the Israeli secret services?
This failure will be analyzed in due course. We ourselves, in the United States, have experienced this several times. This happened on September 11, 2001. It happened again in 2021 when the Taliban regained control of Afghanistan in record time and our troops had to abandon Kabul. This is also what happened with the Russian invasion of Ukraine, which no one believed. The intelligence agencies are wrong and, unfortunately, the price is in human lives. What is immediately important is that Israel root out the cancer of Hamas, which is inside the Gaza Strip.
In passing, let’s get rid of a myth fabricated and maintained by certain media: Hamas terrorists do not only harm Israelis; they also harm Gazans because, in reality, their fate does not matter to them at all. Their only ambition is to terrorize the Israelis. To claim that the inhabitants of the Gaza Strip have no choice but to resort to terrorism is a fable. On the contrary, it is the actions of the terrorist group, armed, financed and trained by Iran, which prevent any normalization of life in Gaza.
What is Iran looking for?
Tehran wants to stop any normalization and peace process between Israel and Saudi Arabia. The Iranian theocratic regime also wants to wipe Israel off the map. Its leaders said so. They said it again. And they will say it again. From this point of view, the Hamas attack is not surprising. This is just the culmination of Iranian terrorist rhetoric. All the countries that are under the influence of the Islamic Republic of Iran – Lebanon, Yemen, Syria and the Palestinians – have one thing in common: they are failed states. Wherever it goes, Iran sows death and destruction. Lebanon, once the pearl of the Middle East, is nothing more than an empty shell where, for three or four years, the leaders, under the influence of pro-Iranian Hezbollah, have been incapable of setting up a government of coalition.
“Hamas or Mahmoud Abbas, two despicable options…”
We must also mention Mahmoud Abbas. His leadership constitutes an example of absolute failure, which is not unrelated to the current situation. The president of the Palestinian Authority has literally abandoned the people of Gaza. Two years ago, he canceled the elections. And here he is in the seventeenth year of his four-year mandate… Corrupt to the core, he is content to divert money from Gulf countries supposed to be used to pay salaries in Gaza in order to enrich his own family. Contested and weak, Abbas betrayed the Gazans, which, as a connecting vessel, strengthened Hamas. The Palestinians deserve better than a dishonest 88-year-old man and a bloodthirsty terrorist organization. However, their choice today comes down to these two despicable options.
What will happen now?
Israel faces a complicated military situation. The scenario of a war fought on several fronts obviously worries everyone. From Lebanon, Hezbollah has already made threats. In Gaza, any ground offensive is made complicated by the population density and the presence of hostages. We know it well: urban combat is the most difficult form of warfare. Without being a military expert, I am convinced of one thing: the status quo in Gaza is no longer appropriate. Israel is preparing its response. I hope that the United States will be ready to defend this ally to the end.
Israeli strikes on buildings in the Jabalia refugee camp, October 9, 2023 in Gaza
© / afp.com/Mohammed ABED
In Washington, any decision is slowed down by the absence of a Speaker in the House of Representatives. Which further complicates the equation.
Indeed, Washington is in a state of terrible dysfunction. But beyond this problem, which I hope is one-off, it should be noted that the Biden administration is partly responsible for the international situation. It pains me to say this as an American but, unfortunately, Iran has been getting stronger for three years. The Biden team did not want to continue sanctions against Iran put in place by the previous administration. When we were in office, we took Iranian oil off the market and implemented sanctions against Tehran. Our successors have broken with this.
Conversely, they begged the Iranians to return to the negotiating table in order to restore the “Iran nuclear deal” that we had denounced. What did the Iranians do? They, in essence, responded with a middle finger. You should know that Washington’s passivity and weakness strengthen Tehran. What’s more, the Biden administration did stupid things, like releasing the $6 billion in frozen assets, in exchange for the release of a few American hostages. In fact, for three years, Iran has been getting richer. And can now finance Hamas – as well as the Houthis in Yemen, or its Shiite allies in Iraq – to the tune of hundreds of millions of dollars.
Are the Abraham Accords (between Israel and certain Arab countries: Bahrain, United Arab Emirates, Morocco, Sudan) dead?
Not at all, on the contrary! They are the very example of what United States policy in the Middle East should be. What did we do to ourselves when we came into business in 2017? We studied the “Iran nuclear deal” and found that it was an imperfect, failed, dangerous deal. Basically, it bought Iran time to develop its nuclear weapon. Furthermore, it did not include anything to prevent Iran from financing terrorist organizations in the region. Nor did it prevent Tehran from manufacturing ballistic missiles. In fact, he was establishing a balance of power favorable to Iran in the Middle East, which made no sense.
We have therefore taken measures to weaken our enemy, who finances terrorism, fights many democratic states and opposes our allies such as Israel and certain Gulf states. We applied a rather simple foreign policy principle to understand: we treated our friends better than our enemies. And it worked well. We also announced the move of the American Embassy to Jerusalem. What have we not heard! This would start World War III, we were assured. I’ll give you a scoop: World War III didn’t happen.
In short, we stood firmly on Israel’s side and that was a deterrent. Under the Trump administration, Hamas would never have dared to do what it did this weekend. Terrorists are a bit like children: when you don’t set limits for them, they go as far as they can. It is therefore time for everyone to clear their minds and reflect on the intentions of the Iranian regime as well as its potential for harm, which is enormous.
What could be the impact of the international situation on the 2024 American presidential election?
In my opinion, he will suck at the Republican Party. On the other hand, it will raise questions in the Democratic camp. Joe Biden abandoned Kabul in disastrous conditions in 2021. He failed to dissuade Vladimir Putin from attacking Ukraine when there was still time in 2022. And now, in 2023, Israel faces its worst crisis in fifty years. However, there are other emerging sources of tension, in the Balkans (between Serbia and Kosovo) or in the Caucasus (between Azerbaijan and Armenia). Democratic elected officials and voters must honestly ask themselves: Is President Joe Biden really in control of the situation? Because everything indicates that the world is on fire.
What do you think the Biden administration should do now?
Joe Biden’s speech on Saturday, as well as the words spoken by elected Democrats in Congress, are encouraging. They show that there is an absolute bipartisan consensus in favor of supporting Israel. But we have to go beyond words. Policy change is needed: To start, Democrats must recognize that their policy of appeasement towards Iran is a failure. It was she who created the conditions for what happened this weekend.
Furthermore, in the medium term, we will have to resist international pressure which, we know, will increase in the coming weeks, as soon as Israel exercises its force. We will then hear calls for appeasement and de-escalation. However, the American administration and Congress must unequivocally support Benjamin Netanyahu in order to stop the threat from Hamas, which comes from Gaza.
Is it possible to eliminate terrorists 100%? Of course not. By definition, it is impossible to eradicate an ideology. But it is possible to carry out military actions as we did in 2017. When we came to power, we inherited the “caliphate” of the Islamic State (IS) in Iraq and Syria. Aggressively, by tracking them on the ground, we destroyed the jihadists in Syria and Iraq in the space of a year. This is the recipe for putting an end to the terrorist organization Hamas.