➡ Edvin DeMarsham from The Trend Journal interviewed Trita Parsi, the executive vice president of the Quincy Institute, about a secret meeting between Huckabee and Jonathan Pollard, a former American spy for Israel. The meeting, which was not registered, raises questions about Huckabee’s role in Pollard’s release from prison after 30 years. The incident has led to calls for Huckabee’s resignation or removal from his position. The discussion also touched on the impact of this event on the perception of the relationship between the U.S. and Israel.
➡ Israel is worried about the U.S.’s growing relationship with Saudi Arabia, especially after the U.S. promised to provide F-35 fighters to the Saudis. This concern is due to Israel wanting to maintain a strategic advantage in the region. However, the U.S. has control over these machines and can prevent the Saudis from using them against Israel. The Saudis are also pushing for a two-state solution for Palestine, which could potentially lead to more conflict in the region.
➡ The person in question has initiated a ceasefire, but isn’t applying enough pressure on the Israelis to maintain it. Many countries supported Trump’s UN Security Council plan, hoping he would take positive actions. However, it seems like the US is repeating its past mistakes in the Middle East, similar to its actions in Iraq, rather than establishing peace or creating a path to bring US soldiers home.

Hello, I’m Edvin DeMarsham with The Trend Journal. It’s a great privilege to be speaking today with Trita Parsi. He’s the executive vice president of the Quincy Institute. Trita, thank you for joining The Trend Journal. I appreciate it. Thanks so much for having me on again. And I’m delighted to have you because there’s such upheaval in the news in the Middle East after The New York Times reported yesterday on what could be called, I think, a secret meeting between Huckabee and Jonathan Pollard, the former American spy for Israel in the embassy, in the Jerusalem embassy in Israel back in July.

I was curious, I saw you posting on social, I was curious to hear your immediate reaction to the newspaper’s report and what that means for Huckabee’s term there. Well, so far, unfortunately, it doesn’t appear as if it has meant that much. I’m hoping that will change because let’s just take a step back here. Jonathan Pollard was one of the worst spies in US history, did a tremendous amount of damage. I mean, he just handed over to the Israelis and some of that stuff ended up in the hands of the Chinese and the Soviets at the time, droves and droves and droves of classified documents that would fill up an entire room from bottom of the floor to the ceiling.

And he spent 30 years in jail. And apparently, Huckabee played a role in getting him out, was lobbying for him. Pollard has given some interviews to podcasts after The New York Times story came out and tried to explain why he had the meeting. And he said what it was mostly to thank Ambassador Huckabee for the help that he had provided Pollard. Now, Ambassador Huckabee made sure that that meeting was not registered. So essentially, he was a secret meeting. He was trying to hide it. And it raises severe question marks, mindful of the fact that Huckabee has already acted very much like the ambassador of Israel to the US rather than the ambassador of the United States to Israel.

You add this two on top of it. The fact that he met secretly with a spy, the fact that he played a role in his release, lobbied for his release. And things are starting to stack up in a manner that just seems to be completely incompatible with an administration that says that its guiding principle for foreign policy is America first. It’s just not really conceivable to see how America first means that the US ambassador meets with spies who spied on the US who served 30 years in American prisons for the crime that they committed against the United States.

And then also then find out as a justification for that meeting was that he was there to thank him because of the help that he had provided to him and his wife to get released. Since the fallout from the report, there have been people calling for Huckabee to either resign or be removed from his position there. I’m going to just quickly play one former CIA officer and also one of the Steve Bannon from the one time Trump advisor here, here it goes. I would ask Ambassador Huckabee, what possible good for American foreign policy did you think this was going to accomplish? And my only response remains that Ambassador Huckabee should resign.

And if he doesn’t resign, he should be fired. In all the years that Jonathan Pollard was in prison, he was in maximum security prisons, the last one was in Butner, North Carolina. Every single time that an Israeli prime minister visited the United States, they would ask for Jonathan Pollard’s release. And every single time they were told, no, he won’t be released. Bill Clinton toyed with the idea briefly of releasing him in the late 1990s and George Tenet and all of the heads of the intelligence agencies in the US government said that they would resign if he were to be released.

And then the idea went away. So he did his full 30 years, but then all of a sudden gets VIP treatment at the American embassy in Jerusalem. And Huckabee, the clown ambassador who’s an embarrassment, a total embarrassment, what he’s saying with his insanity, he ought to be recalled immediately and removed immediately. So after hearing that, do you share that opinion? Can Huckabee still carry out his job at the embassy in Jerusalem? Well, frankly, I don’t think he has carried out his job. So I think that it is incumbent upon President Trump to fire him over this.

This simply cannot be accepted. Now, of course, we have complicating factors here. When Pollard was released, immediately he flew to Israel. He was greeted at the airport by Bibi Netanyahu, who handed over to him an Israeli ID card. He had already received Israeli citizenship while he was in prison. And Netanyahu tells him, welcome home. The airplane that he flew to Israel with was a private jet. It was the private jet of Sheldon and Miriam Adelson, the biggest donors to the Trump campaign and biggest donors to many other campaigns in the United States.

And one of the most active political philanthropists for pro-Israeli causes. So I think the picture is as complete and as it possibly can get about why it simply is not appropriate for Huckabee to remain in his position. He’s not been pursuing a policy that really is advancing U.S. interest. And on top of that, he’s having secret meetings with people who spy against the United States on behalf of Israel. I was interested, I was thinking, I wonder how far it actually goes up because to bring in a former spy into an embassy in the United States, on United States, basically territory in Israel, isn’t that a very bold move from Huckabee to try to carry out and to not inform other people or at least reportedly not inform other people, to not inform the Secretary of State, to not get permission from the White House.

What does that tell you about the way Huckabee is approaching his job? Is he a little bit cavalier or what do you think? As long as Trump doesn’t demand accountability from Huckabee, just as much as the United States has not demanded accountability from Israel, Israel’s behavior has become more and more one in which it acts as if it doesn’t have to face impunity, that it is acting with impunity. And Huckabee, similarly, seems to be acting with impunity because accountability is not being enforced here. So I think it is up to the president to take action.

And as John said, either Huckabee needs to resign or he needs to be fired. And tell me, so does this also, in your view, does this hurt the way that Americans or Americans that read this story view the relationship between the US and Israel? Well, it certainly doesn’t seem to help. We already have a situation in which on the American right, there has been a dramatic drop of the standing of Israel over the course of just the last couple of months. There’s a lot of anger in the America First crowd that Israel pushed the United States into war with Iran without attack, that it did not have to go that path.

It could have actually negotiated a deal. It would have been better. That the United States is once again being led into more wars, more military action by Israel. We’ve had now a situation in which within that constituency, the question is asked, are you Israel first or are you America first? These two positioners are being put up against each other as opposites. And it’s not just singling out Israel. They’re saying that obviously it wouldn’t be Ukraine first either. But they’re tired of what they perceive to be an exception in which you could have Israel for America first, but you would make an exception in the case of Israel.

They don’t wanna see any more exceptions. And here would Huckabee, in addition to everything he’s done so far, having a meeting at the embassy with an American spy who spied against the United States, who damaged the United States, it just smacks of that type of impunity, that type of an exception for Israel that increasingly is not being tolerated within the American first constituency. I don’t know if you remember, but back in July or June, Tucker Carlson had an interview with Ted Cruz and they talked about this topic about how Israel spies on the United States.

And that’s something that people don’t really wanna discuss. And he said that, oh, well, I think Cruz’s response was, oh, everyone spies on everyone. That’s just the way it kind of goes. But yeah, I thought that was a very interesting development. It’s one thing to just observe a reality. Everyone spies on everyone. The United States spies on everyone. And we had scandals during the Obama years in which it turned out that the United States was listening in on the German Chancellor’s cell phone. So everyone spies. It doesn’t mean that you accept it. You do everything you can to prevent others, including friends, from spying on you.

And if they do, you punish them. And if you catch one of your own, doing it on behalf of a foreign power, including a friend, you put him in prison, as the United States did. And then you don’t treat him as a hero afterwards. If I’m Israel and I do have a spy network in the United States, I think I might wanna know what Trump’s thinking about the Gulf States at the moment. After the meeting he had with MBS at the White House and how they had the state’s dinner and Cristiano Ronaldo was there and it was a beautiful event.

They even mentioned how the United States would be providing that to Saudis with the F-35 fighters. And that didn’t really sit too well with Israel because Israel wants the strategic advantage in the region. But then, Yahoo came on yesterday and said, well, these plans aren’t going to be fully, they’re not gonna have all the bells and whistles that ours do. What do you see? Do you think Israel’s concerned at all about Trump’s overtures, and this goes years back, even business standpoints. Do you think Israel’s concerned about Trump’s overtures to the Saudis or is this something that they’re willing to accept for the Abraham Accords? Well, they are concerned.

Perhaps not as concerned that they would have been years ago, but they are concerned because they’re also seeing that increasingly the Saudis are getting the concessions they want from the United States, at least to a large extent, without giving concessions to Israel. The earlier concession was to normalize, but the Saudis are in no mood of doing so at this point. They can’t do so without some sort of a pathway to a Palestinian state. And instead of the US side pressing the Saudis to essentially just succumb to the Israelis, the Saudis and the Americans are going their own way.

They’re making their own deals. The Saudis are getting a lot of concessions, not the huge ones that were offered under the Biden administration, but essentially Saudi Arabia is managing to get a lot without giving any concessions to Israel. So from one standpoint, that is definitely a concern. When it comes to the F-35, Netanyahu I’m sure is not terribly happy about that the Saudis getting these, but it is important to understand though that the United States essentially has a switch off button on these machines, which it can use in order to make sure that they cannot, the Saudis cannot use these airplanes in any manner that they want, including against a threat from Israel.

And of course, it’s not entirely clear whether the Saudis even will get these F-35s because at the end of the day, the Emiratis were promised F-35s. They still have a receipt. And it will take eight to 10 years probably for the Saudis to get these. And it will be a lot of things that will happen in the region between the United States and Saudi Arabia, between Saudi Arabia and Israel before those eight to 10 years come up. And as a result, it’s not entirely clear whether they ever will get these.

So a lot of with this visit, including promises of trillion dollar investments, et cetera, is a lot of noise. There may be a lot of substance behind it as well, but we do not know quite yet because it is the style of Trump to sign deals that have very, very big headlines, but whether they have anything beyond the headlines remains to be seen. The Saudis have stayed true to the fact that they want the two-state solution, and that’s been keeping them out of the Abraham Accords. It was interesting to me, am I reading too much into this? Because NBS was said this week that they need a pathway to a two-state solution.

But in previous comments, I think back in like October, 2024, he said something along the line of that a state needs to be established. So for me hearing that and hearing his previous comments, that to me is two different things. Having a pathway to something is not the same as having an established state. Do you think the Saudis are flexible on what they view as a two-state solution being satisfied with the two-state solution proposal? Or do you think that they really need to be rigid and they need to wait for, I mean a concrete two-state solution effort here? Well, they should be rigid, and they should not do anything that would undermine the ability of the Palestinians to get a state.

But unfortunately, there is a significant fear that this is a position of perceived rigidness that the Saudis are currently adopting. But if circumstances change and it is more palpable for them to be able to strike a deal with the Israelis, that they will do so and without a Palestinian state. Instead, there would be just some sort of a formulation of a credible path or the American favorite formulation of a political horizon for the Palestinians. I mean, this is almost getting poetic, but it’s actually not getting concrete. So there is a significant risk that is what the Saudis will do.

And I think it would be a huge mistake. It would be a huge mistake for the Saudis. It would be a huge mistake for the United States. And the reason is because October 7th is in many ways a direct result of the Abraham Accord. Because the Abraham Accord essentially said, all of the investment that the Palestinians have done in a diplomatic process in which they were through nonviolent deeds seeking to fulfill their right to statehood is for naught. But the United States doesn’t care. It will close down that path and instead allow all of these Arab states, well, bribe these Arab states to just normalize relations with the Israelis, shove the Palestinians under the rug and not care about them.

And it was very clear at that moment that the end result of this would be that there will be some sort of a return to violent resistance, armed resistance if diplomatic resistance was essentially declared null and empty by the United States. Now, how that would happen, how it would manifest itself, when it would happen was unclear, but it was very clear that if there is no diplomatic path for the Palestinians and 20, 30 years of investment in it leads to absolutely nothing, then at some point there would be a return to armed resistance.

If the Saudis now repeat the mistake of the Emiratis, repeat the mistake of the Trump One administration and go down this path, they will just lay the ground for the next outburst of violence. From the US perspective, it is also a huge mistake because ultimately what the Trump administration itself says is that he wants to be able to leave the region militarily. Well, to be able to do so in a credible and sustained way, we do need to have some sort of a resolution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, otherwise we will constantly be sucked back into the region.

And just take a case of what happened after October 7th, the United States, according to the Congressional Research Service, paid for one third of Israel’s military budget in 2024. It is probably even higher in 2025 because of the tremendous cost of the United States bombing Iran and defending Israel for 12 days against Iranian missiles after the Israelis started a war of aggression in June of this past year. So as long as this continues, it seems like even presidents like Trump who do have the ability of saying no, have shown his ability to say no to the Israelis, who does explicitly say that he wants to get out of the Middle East militarily, nevertheless gets sucked back in, chooses to go back in as long as we have this level of instability and we will have that.

If we once again show the Palestinians that negotiations and peaceful efforts towards their statehood will carry zero promise. If that is the case, we will see a return to violence once more and the United States will get sucked back into it one way or another. And the last question for you, Trida, and again, thank you for joining the Trend Journal. Gaza, right now we’re seeing the ceasefire. It’s still holding technically. Both sides are dealing with the ceasefire at the moment, but another 28 Palestinians were killed yesterday. And then also you had Hamas reject Trump’s idea for an international security force within Gaza where Trump would essentially be the supreme ruler.

What do you see unfolding in Gaza? Do you see this as a viable trajectory, a viable path to a longstanding peace? Or is this a tinderbox? This is not a viable path. It was right to pursue a ceasefire. There’s a reason why almost all of these countries joined in and supported it and praised Trump for it because finally Trump was willing to say no to the Israelis and obviously he’s willing to do so. All of these countries would try to encourage that as much as possible. But there is really no ceasefire at this point because the Israelis are continuing to kill, as you mentioned, 20 to 50 Palestinians on a daily basis.

If the Palestinians were doing this to the Israelis, no one would call that a ceasefire. And at the same time, the Israelis are now about to start a major offensive against Lebanon as well. So it’s really Trump’s credibility that is now being hollowed out by the Israelis because he claimed that he had created peace, he claimed that he has this ceasefire, he did. But in order for that to be sustained, for that to endure, he needed to continue to put pressure on the Israelis. And we’re not really seeing him doing that, not to the manner that is needed.

And when it comes to the UN Security Council plan, again, a lot of countries were taking a bet on Trump that since he’s willing to do certain things, they wanna encourage that. But the plan increasingly is looking as if the United States is going down another path of nation-building, occupation, colonialism, frankly, in the Middle East that resembles much, much more of what the US did in Iraq, which was a huge mistake, which Trump himself says was a huge mistake, than anything that actually resembles a true establishment of a state or of peace or a pathway for the United States to be able to bring US servicemen and women home from the Middle East.

Mr. DeParsi from the Quincy Institute, thank you so much for joining the training journal. I appreciate it. Thanks so much. [tr:trw].

See more of Trends Journal on their Public Channel and the MPN Trends Journal channel.