Iran, Gaza, Trump and Netanyahu: Understanding the Middle East's crises

Hello, and welcome back to Independent Thinking, the weekly podcast from Chatham House. I'm Bronwyn Maddox. It has been a tumultuous year in the Middle East, and it's not over yet. Today, we're looking at the big picture in the Middle East and how the various conflicts are shaping the region. It's now been six months since the US and Israel launched their major offensive against Iran. With a June ceasefire long shattered, US President Donald Trump has now turned his attention to trade sanctions, promising an economic D-Day for Iran as America seeks the reopening of the Strait of Hormuz and a way out of a war which has spiraled out of US control. Those ripple effects have been huge. Iran's retaliation has expanded the war to its Gulf neighbors, it's disrupted global trade, food and energy security, and the conflict has driven up prices in many countries. All of this while other deep conflicts in the region remain unresolved. Despite an announced ceasefire in Gaza, violence continues there. So does the humanitarian crisis, but political agreement seems far away. In Israel, facing widespread international backlash over its actions in Gaza, the West Bank and Lebanon. Political views have coalesced around opposition to a Palestinian state, as Benjamin Netanyahu, the country's longest-serving prime minister, seeks re-election in October. Meanwhile in the US, the unpopularity of what threatens to be another forever war may well have consequences for the Republican Party in November's midterm elections. To discuss the profound implications of all of this, I'm joined by Sanam Vakil, the director of the Middle East and North Africa program here at Chatham House. Good to have you here, Sanam. Thank you, Bronwyn. Nice to be with you, Bronwyn. Very good to have you. And I'm joined also by Dr. Julie Norman, an associate fellow in that program. Great to see you. Thank you, Bronwyn. Nice to be here. And finally, here with us, but by here with us, I mean in Israel, is Ksenia Tsvedlova, also an associate fellow in our Middle East and North Africa program, a former member of the Israeli Knesset, and executive director of R.O.P.E.S., the Regional Organization for Peace, Economics and Security. Welcome, Ksenia. Thank you, Bronwyn. Good to be with you. Well, very good to have you all here. Let's start by talking about the Iran war and its effects before we go on to Israel itself. And I wonder if we can start with the state of the conflict. Sanam, where are we? Well, the conflict, I would describe it as very much in stalemate mode. The military dynamics have ceased for the time being, but I would caution everyone to think that this is over, the war could flare up at any moment. But all of the parties for now have pivoted to negotiations that are taking place behind the scenes to open the Strait of Hormuz and to get back to the negotiating table. And in tandem to that, also, the U.S. is concentrating on a renewed maximum pressure campaign, thinking perhaps uncreatively or not learning from experience that maximum pressure could produce a better outcome and deplete Iran's resources and force it to make concessions. Is the U.S. stuck? Trump still seems to be struggling to define his goals, never mind achieve them. I do think the U.S. is stuck, but it does have the luxury of pivoting and focusing on other issues. This war has been, I think, a strategic failure for the United States. But President Trump continues to distract by focusing on domestic issues, by perhaps pivoting to Russia. The CIA director has just visited. He visited Moscow unexpectedly. And for the U.S., that luxury is important going into the November midterm elections. For Iran, it doesn't have the luxury. This is an existential crisis. This is all the Islamic Republic can think about and focus on. And so it's quite likely that while the U.S. would like to move on from this war and focus on the sanctions piece of this economic war that is now brewing, that Iran will try to drag the United States back in. Either diplomatically or militarily. Julie, is Iran weakened by this or strengthened in the sense that it now seems likely that it can extract some kind of toll for ships going through the Strait of Hormuz, something that was not true before this war started? Sure. Well, I think both things can be true in some ways, in the sense that initially, obviously, the U.S. and Israel did have some tactical successes and they did weaken Iran a bit in the beginning. In terms of some of their military capacity. But certainly, Bronwyn, Iran is coming out of this much more emboldened, being able to control the Strait of Hormuz in the way that they have as just an extremely new political lever that they have and will have moving forward that might bring economic concessions. But even more so, it just changes the state of play in the Middle East with what used to be considered the nuclear option. So for Iran, now they have something else. They have the Strait of Hormuz that they can use to great advantage. I think, if anything, and Sanam can speak to this as well more than I can, the new government in Iran, you know, is going to move in directions that perhaps the last wouldn't have. And I think, if anything, we can expect Iran to take bolder moves than they would have in the past in many ways. I'll come back to some of those detailed points. But Ksenia, from Israel's point of view, has this achieved what Israel wanted? It has been very, very keen, not just on leaving U.S. strikes against Iran where they were last summer, but taking this war forward. Well, I definitely think that Prime Minister Netanyahu and his Minister of Defense Israel Katz would rather prefer to go to this fateful election in the end of October with a decisive victory over Iran, preferably with the Iranian regime gone and this spectacular victory that is shared by Israel and the United States. But that's not where we are. Nevertheless, there is still a conscious attempt of the current government to present this military effort as successful because many military capabilities of Iran were degraded significantly. And that's how Prime Minister and his milieu, how they try to project on things, you know. So we were successful. So we did not go all the way because the Americans stopped us. But this is the common theme for Netanyahu. And everything leads to Trump. So that's the attempt. I think that generally, Israelis do support the continuation of the war with Iran, but only if there would be some kind of victory ahead of us. Because right now, the feeling is definitely that he should stop on the first war with Iran in 2025, and that the second war really did not change much for the best Israeli security situation. So just to be clear, at this exact moment, with the regime in Iran not changed, does Israel regard this as a success or a setback? You know, this depends really who you ask in Israel. Because if you would ask, you know, professionals, if you would ask the leaders of the opposition, and you have many, many generals among them, they would definitely tell you that's no success. And Israel lost the ability to initiate anything in this regard. This is the most important thing, something that Israel did enjoy before this war. And now it seems that the decision making is solely in the hands of Donald Trump, the President of the United States, not Israel. That is a really important point. All right, I want to go on to effect on Iran itself. And just dig into a bit of the detail and then the wider region. So now, what do we know about who is running the show in Iran and what they might want? It's an important question, because there is perpetual misinformation, I think, being fed to the US President who continues to say that the Iranians are divided amongst themselves and they can't make a deal. So to be clear, Iran's system has and always been very factionalized. This goes back decades, I would say. I would even say before the revolution. But this is a system that is collectively managed by security officials as well as technocrats. You know, the principal decision makers sit in a body called the Supreme National Security Council. This brings together the President, Speaker of the Parliament, head of the IRGC, and representatives from the Supreme Leader's office. There are many more people in the room. And there are differences among these groups. The President and his team have argued that the economy is a huge factor that should influence decision making. And the economic conditions before the war were grim. It's important to remember there were massive protests in January that were brutally suppressed. And this will continue to drive popular unrest, I think, over time. The other side, IRGC dominated, but are very realistic about President Trump, his capability to actually make a deal. They see the United States as equally divided in their approach vis-a-vis Iran. This is, by their view, the hardline or security-oriented view, just a pause between another war. U.S. munitions have been depleted. Again, President Trump is focusing on the midterms. And so these divisions play out within the Iranian system. Above all of this does sit Iran's Supreme Leader, newly put into place. And his health remains compromised, but his security is above all why he hasn't been public. You're convinced of that point, are you? Not that he is so frail or so injured that he cannot appear in public? I'm convinced that it is. driven by security concerns above all. At least that's what the system in Iran is thinking. But he has asserted more control over the past few months. He has put in place new figures from the offices of the Supreme Leader. So the system is functioning. What is perhaps missing is the influence of a strong Supreme Leader. And so there is perpetual debate amongst these factions and figures as to how to move forward. So many weak points, but also a strength in the way that is approaching this. And what about the nuclear program, which we're not hearing an awful lot about these days? And what a point in the negotiations. Suddenly it's all about the Strait of Hormuz, not about the nuclear program, which it seems to have created a sort of negotiating space to keep on with. Well, I don't think we have enough intelligence as to what exists and what doesn't exist. And that works very much towards Iran's face. The argument for diplomacy here is that there should be a sequenced opening to address the Strait of Hormuz, but to get back to discussions and diplomacy on the nuclear program, which was what this war was all about in the first place, supposedly. The fact that there is no transparency as to where that enriched uranium is. Remember, President Trump said it's dust at this point. So there's just a lot of misinformation. The fact that the IAEA, the International Nuclear Watchdog, has got no boots on the ground in Iran and hasn't been allowed to inspect Iran's facilities is hugely problematic. And I think there should be a huge focus put on the nuclear program again. Without that, this program is going to go dark and will regenerate. And the leverage Iran has to negotiate with its nuclear program could quickly translate into something much more dangerous. Really interesting point. Julie, in terms of the wider region and the impact that this has had on it, Iran targeted with its missiles all six Gulf Cooperation Council members are in Kuwait, Oman, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, the UAE. Is there a sense of consensus among them? It took them by surprise that Iran would take this move. Yeah, you know, I would say one thing that's important is that the GCC obviously functions as an organization, but the states within it have always had and will continue to have very different interests and very different playbooks. And how they move forward from this point. And this is not, I think, going to result in some sort of, you know, united GCC security pact or something like that. But what it is doing is forcing these states to really rethink their defensive posture and hedge in different ways and start looking for many different options. Obviously, the U.S. umbrella was always what was seen as the key to security there. And not only was it not useful for defense, but it actually put these states, you see, at greater risk for having these American-based forces on their soil. And the other thing it's done, Bronwyn, is simply distract from other things in the region. It's pulled the energy, it's pulled the momentum away from Gaza, away from Palestine, away from Syria, away from many of the other places and issues that many of us have been and will continue to focus on. But the diplomatic, the economic and the political focus has just been swept into Iran for very obvious reasons. And what has it done to the positions of the UAE and Saudi Arabia in particular? The Saudis were on the edge, we understand, of a deal with the U.S. before all this happened. But the U.S. has now made that conditional on progress on recognizing Israel, which is not at the moment going to happen unless there's a Palestinian state. And the UAE is looking very agile, isn't it, in all kinds of regions. I'm thinking also of Africa. Indeed. And I would say again, Bronwyn, this predates the current war, the current conflict that we're seeing in Iran with a emerging rivalry between the region, but also in other parts of the world. And we see the response right now very different. I would say I don't think the Saudi change on normalizing relations with Israel or entering the so-called Abraham Accords is really a result of the Iran war as much as Gaza and what happened in the two years prior to this. Saudi was very clear that they would not move forward on that without some kind of meaningful movement towards self-determination for Palestinians, a Palestinian state. Israel obviously is not going there. So that position was stated before. And the events in Gaza, I think, reaffirmed that even more. But what we're seeing now with the UAE is, I would say, a closer movement towards Israel in many ways. The UAE, obviously, one of the major states part of the normalization agreements before. But that does not mean they're bringing the rest of the Gulf or the region with them. And the UAE is playing, I would say, many different options right now. They're keeping a lot of different options open. But that relationship is certainly one that they are leaning into at the moment. Kazania, let's go to Israel, which many people are saying, you know, has emerged as one of the big powers of the region in a different way from before this conflict. You and I were discussing how it hasn't got everything at once out of the attacks on Iran, but it's been doing a lot in Lebanon and Syria as well. How do you see its footprint, its influence in the region now? Well, I think that it's a mixed bag, because certainly Israel had its moment soon after the end of developments. It was incredible, the speed with what everything moved and changed in Lebanon and Syria. And it seemed that the Iranian axis is bleeding. And perhaps it was inevitable for Israel to clash with Iran, because after Israel went, after almost all of the proxies of Iran in the Middle East, why not to target Iran? So I think that it was something that was debated in the closed rooms. And in 2025, it became a reality. In this regard, yes, definitely there is a huge footprint. So in this regard, yes. But Israel is being perceived as this huge force, military power, one of the strongest states, perhaps the strongest states in the region, but also increasingly more and more as an agent of chaos. And we hear it and we see it not only from the traditional critics of Israel, but also from its friends. And when, for example, you know, we see more and more criticism also from the UAE against the settler violence, for example. So in the unwillingness of Israel to move along, you know, with some kind of normalization, some kind of arrangement in Syria and also in Lebanon, Trump, who is pushing these processes, both of them. And I think that it makes Israel friends and allies very frustrated. And across the region, more and more, there are doubts that Israel, with all of its might, that it actually knows what's to do with this might. You're referring to the UAE there, which is obviously one of the signatories of the Abraham Accords, a pact with Israel. And those accords have held good through October 7th and everything that has followed in the nearly three years since then. And we'll come on to talk in more detail about that. But do you think those accords and in particular the relationship between Israel and the UAE is now at risk? I think that they could be at risk. Everybody in the region, and in the world, is waiting for the outcome of Israeli elections. They are set to take place in the end of October. And if there will be no significant change in the shape of the next coalition, if it will resemble the current coalition, which is extreme right-wing coalition, and it's being also driven by these forces, it doesn't only include two radical parties. It's the living spirit of this current government and the current coalition. If there will be not much change, yes, I do believe that there will be a change. But I don't think there will be much change. I do believe that there can be also some consequences for relations between Israel and the UAE, and what perhaps even more crucial for Israeli security between Israel and Egypt. We rarely speak about Egypt, but it's very important. And since we hear more and more Israeli politicians now before the elections talking about forced transfer of the Palestinians, or how they call it, voluntarily immigration, okay, so from Gaza Strip, the Egyptians become more and more concerned. I think it's very important. I think it's very important that by what might happen also after the elections. So let's go on to our second question, which is about Israel-Palestine and the implications for what is happening in the region more broadly. Sanam, let me ask you directly, are these separate conflicts, I'm talking about the Iran one, and the implications of that in the region, and the Israel-Palestine one, or do you see the second, the Israel-Palestine one, as really central to lots of the other turmoil in the in the region? Well, I'm an analyst, so I'll say always in the middle. They're separate, but they are intimately connected. And that's because of the Israel-Iran rivalry. It's because of Iran's sponsorship of the Axis of Resistance groups. So states and leaders have also connected the conflicts, even though we should treat them as separate. Ultimately, for the Middle East to become a stable place, both of these conflicts must be dealt with in a proper political settlement. And, you know, we're very far from each other, we're very far from each other, we're very far from that. Back to your actual question, Gaza and the West Bank have been lost in the news and not been prioritized and in such a public way, through the period of the Iran war. And that has been, I think, a real consequence of this conflicts blending and metastasizing. Regional states that are very important players in providing pressure and incentivizing all of the parties to think about a broader political settlement are also distracted. They have limited bandwidth. They're dealing with a war that's has come to their shores, to their populations as well. And so it's further fragmenting the political process at the same time. Ksenia, these are Israeli elections on October the 27th, the last day permitted in law. And that will be just over three years since October 7th, the Hamas-led attacks, which killed 1,200 people in Israel and 250 were taken captive into Gaza. And led to the Israeli response, which has left tens of thousands of Palestinians dead. Where is the debate about Palestine in these elections coming up? Well, I would describe it as, you know, it's no debate at all. It's remarkable how little, you know, there is genuine debate and discussion about the possible solutions. What should happen to Gaza? What is the vision of Israel for Gaza and the West Bank in, let's say, five years? Five years, 10 years, 15 years. The only ones who have a vision and who openly talk about it, it's the extreme right-wing parties and movements. They definitely have a vision. So the consensus among their most right-wing Israeli politicians is that Gaza should be Palestinian-free. And more and more, of course, settlements in the West Bank and also in Gaza's trip, by the way. And perhaps also in some in South Lebanon, but that's for another issue. But it's something that astounds me every time, you know, that there is a fear, this genuine fear among the candidates to discuss possible solutions. They excuse themselves and they say, well, we know that there will be no Palestinian state during the next government, which is probably true, even if they support it. But what kind of Palestinian state would you like to see? How the separation process should take place? What should be done right now in order to safeguard, you know, this reality of the two states and so on? Nothing. You hear, nothing. These elections are more on the Israeli internal debate, Netanyahu or not Netanyahu. This is the forever debate that is going on for almost 30 years now since his first term in power. And of course, the painful issue of the draft of the Haredi ultra-Orthodox, which is, of course, essential since Israel is still fighting on many fronts. And there is the lack of manpower. So there is, you know, there is that. But there is no genuine debate about the future of relations between Israel and its neighbours, Palestinians, Syrians, Lebanese and others. It is very striking, as you said, Gabby Eisenkot, opposition leader, saying the other day, look, under my government, if I were leader of the government, there would be no Palestinian state. Is that because of Israeli public opinion? Would you say Israel has changed profoundly since October 7th and that national trauma that it brought? Well, you know, I think that the trauma of 10/7, it perhaps made the wounds deeper and it enhanced the existing trends. It did not set some new trend. But I think also prior to 10/7, any kind of political debate about the possibility of creation of the Palestinian state, you could also not anticipate something like this also back in 2022. And when the normalisation of Saudi Arabia was on the table during 2023, personally, I was sceptical. I didn't think that the Saudis would go for it without some kind of a vision for the Palestinian independence, even if they were not very keen to specify what would they demand. But, you know, I didn't think that we are going to celebrate peace with the Saudis anytime soon. Even then, politicians on both sides of the aisle were reluctant to say, what are they, you know, ready to give for the sake of that peace? You know, so I think that, you know, we are still basically living the trauma of the Second Intifada that definitely set the trends. And you can say, well, but after Second Intifada, there were also peace negotiations between Yehud Olmert and Abu Mazen. But in the end of the day, they did not come to fruition. And we do not know what would happen in the society if there would be some kind of attempt by Olmert to really disengage from some parts of West Bank, evacuate settlements there and so on. You know, it could be very, very difficult. The what-ifs of looking at the history of the Israeli-Palestinian negotiations are painful and endless. Julie, what is your take on the implications of this? Because Kassini has described what I think you could say at many points, actually, of Israeli politics, a sort of, I'm going to use the word bubble-like mentality, the country very absorbed in a set of issues, very separate from how the region and indeed much of the world is seen. And I think that's a very important point. Because as we're seeing on the news all the time, the level of violence by settlers, Israeli settlers on the West Bank has gone up enormously, apparently sometimes with support of members of the IDF who may, the Israeli defense forces who made themselves be settlers. So this level of violence, I just love your take on the implications of this. And even, let me say to you directly, are we looking at the annihilation of the possibility of a Palestinian conflict? Or are we looking at the possibility of a Palestinian conflict? Well, thanks, Bronwyn. I just got back for about six weeks in Palestine and Israel, mostly in the West Bank, but Israel as well. And I would say in the West Bank right now, especially in areas B and C, the areas where Israel has partial or full control. I've been going there for about 20 years, I've seen it bad before, but I've never seen it as bad as it is now with the extent of settlement expansion, the extent of settler violence and the extent of impunity for that violence when it happens. It is extremely in threat right now. On top of that, we had the announcement last week of tenders being issued for E1, the controversial corridor that would essentially sever the West Bank even further by taking over this very strategic area of land just east of Jerusalem. So all these things combined, I think if one didn't think a Palestinian state was threatened before, it certainly is threatened now. And I do see the coming elections. You many Israelis describe it to me as existential for the future. The potential for Israeli democracy and Israel to get back on a track that many of them believed in before. But it's also going to be existential for a future Palestinian state. And states like the UK, European states that have recognized Palestine as a state are going to have to reckon with this very soon about what that meant with that recognition and how they're going to preserve it. You talk about the significance of these elections. And indeed, our very owner, Yossi Mekelberg, part of our program describes them as the most consequential in Israel's history. And what Kazeni is describing is also on this particular issue of Israel-Palestine, a degree of national consensus, and certainly among the politicians. So how do you see the election result actually having a bearing on this question of what happens in Gaza and the West Bank? Yeah, it's an important question, Bronwyn. And what I would say is, as much as I think much of the world and many Israelis need and want to see a shift from Netanyahu, and I think that will be on Palestine, the Palestinian state, that probably won't change that much, even with a new government. I think where we'll see the most change, though, is on the reigning end of settler violence, what even many in Israel have called settler terrorism, that sense of impunity there. There has been more attention to that even in recent weeks of just who is in control in the West Bank. And the other thing I think that will matter more is I do think international pressure would matter more in a new government. The current government, I wouldn't say relishes, uses that to its advantage to suggest more of a siege mentality that Israel is kind of being ganged up upon by international actors. And I think a new government could be more amenable to, or just have to be more answerable to international pressure. But in terms of Palestine more broadly, in future governments, I do think that could be possible. But just this next time around, I don't see a lot of movement on, say, peace negotiations in the way that many think of them. Yeah, so very briefly, although, you know, not coming from the candidates to become a prime minister, Eisenhower, Bennett, but there is an important voice that has to be also singled out of the Democrats, the Democrats party. I would say, you know, it could be the surprise of this elections, I would say, yes. So now they're going for 11 seats, but, you know, they can also increase their presence. They are the only one that, to my knowledge, that also have a tangible plan of not only saying that we need to deal with settler violence, but how to deal with it step by step. And this is something that I think is a good question, whether the next coalition will have enough authority and enough legitimacy to actually go against the perpetrators. But it means not only putting those who beat up the Palestinians in jail, no, it means dismantling the so-called farms, they take over, you know, Palestinian property and Palestinian lands, and dismantle a lot of things that were created by the current government. Julie was mentioning E1, which sounds again, very, very technical, but I remember it was a really, really, really, really, really, really, really, really, really, really, really, really crucial site between the north and south of the West Bank. And a succession of U.S. presidents had said for years, you will not build on it to Israel. And so Israel sort of snuck up a road and then a police station, but not houses. Now tenders have gone out for those houses. Sanam, what about this question of international pressure? Could you take us through the relations with Israel, U.S., Europe, and indeed the region like Jordan and Egypt? Well, it's striking that today, Israel, I think, is most isolated from its closest partners and allies. In the United States, there's mounting and probably generational shifts and debates going on about the U.S.-Israeli relationship, and it's in reaction to the war in Gaza, the settler violence, the wars in the region where Israel, of course, has ridden a side saddle to the United States. And I think that that will be consequential also in the midterm elections where Israel is being discussed among the Democratic Party and to a certain degree in the Republican Party, where candidates have asked AIPAC, the Israeli-U.S. lobby, not to support them in the midterms. And I think that suggests the direction of travel for Israel and that there are problems in that relationship that need to be addressed and unpacked. Those become bigger and wider, as Julie intimated, in Europe and in the U.K., where I think relations are at an all-time low. We haven't seen tensions this wide. And in the region, while Israel sees itself as a preponderant military power, it is really alienated. And it's alienated governments that have wanted to be pragmatic and realistic and engage covertly or overtly with Israel or have kept their peace agreements going back decades. But it's alienated populations. And that pressure in the region is something that I think we have to be mindful of. And the Israeli system is not, I think, conscious of the impact of another generation of siege and being, isolated in the region. This is a really important point about the way Israeli isolation can leave the Israeli voters themselves not conscious of some of the pressures building up, including from their allies. So as we're coming to the end of this, I want to ask all of you about the various options at the moment on the table, or apparently so, for trying to get some kind of peace. And I'm thinking of both the board of peace and then negotiations with Hamas about whether they will or won't lay down their weapons to progress some kind of peace in Gaza. And I would like to know what you're each looking for in this. Julie, what about you? This is very much what you're working on. Yeah, so I would say, you know, Bronwyn, the agreement is there now with Hamas. And, you know, people can have their criticisms of the board of peace. And on this particular agreement, I think some of us here even do. But there is an agreement now with Hamas. The thing that took so long to get that many regional actors, I would emphasize, have been put into negotiations into. Hamas has now said they are open to a decommissioning plan. This, of course, refers to Hamas's laying down of arms or storage of arms. Where the holdup right now is, again, with Netanyahu, with the Israeli government saying they are not going to play ball with this, and the board of peace and the U.S. essentially saying, OK, at least for right now. I think the question is how long they will let that go if after Israeli elections and also U.S. midterm elections in early November, if the U.S. will be willing to put the pressure on Israel to engage with this plan in some way, shape or form, because otherwise this is at best going to stay a stalemate and at worst going to escalate yet again. Ksenia, do you think Hamas will ever give up its weapons? Well, not voluntarily. I don't think so. Although there is, you know, an example in history of the Islamic jihad, not the Palestinian, the Egyptian one that laid down its arms. But it was a different story and a very strong central state, something that is, of course, lacking in Palestine. So I think that they would try to use the Israeli behavior and Netanyahu's reluctance to do any kind of moves and to allow the Palestinian technocrat committee into Gaza in order to just continue with what they do right now. It's another day and another day and then another day. And for now, what they're doing, of course, muting all of the opposition to them, killing Palestinians and assuming full control over the Gaza Strip. We are back in this sense, to where we were prior to 10-7. That is a really important point to remember about Hamas, how Hamas has used this period. Tanam, should we take the border peace seriously? I remember at Davos this year, Trump announced it and put out loads of chairs on the stage and no one knew who was going to sit in them and be part of this border peace. Well, we know a little bit more. What do you make of it? Unfortunately, I think we have no choice but to take it seriously and support it and rely on the structure that's in place. Without it, any prospect for conflict management, let alone settlement, will evaporate. And right now we are just effectively buying time until these elections are done in November and hopefully there won't be an explosion of violence and the system can continue to crisis manage in the hope that it can be translated with better outcomes in Israel and Palestine and the United States. And pressure is ultimately what is needed on all of these parties. We're going to have to leave it there, waiting, as you said, for elections, election results, and something that will break the deadlock that we've been describing. Thank you very much, Tanam Vakil. Thank you, Bronwyn. Good to be with you. Great to have you, Julie Norman. Pleasure to be here, Bronwyn. Thanks also, Ksenia Svetlova. Thank you so much. Great to be with you here. Great to have you with us. And great to have all of you listening. Thank you for joining today. We'll be back next week. Goodbye until then. you