‘West Will Be in Jeopardy’ If the ‘Enemy’ Wins Israel-Hamas War, Jerusalem’s Ex-Envoy to US Warns

JERUSALEM—Israel’s war with Hamas goes beyond land and borders; it’s a battle for “our common civilization, for our values,” a former Israeli envoy to the United States warns.  

“The enemy we’re fighting against is an enemy that detests everything that you stand for, everything that we stand for,” Michael Oren, who served as Israeli ambassador to the U.S. during the Obama administration, told The Daily Signal following a Memorial Day commemoration event in Jerusalem on Tuesday.  

More than 18 months have passed since Hamas attacked Israel on Oct. 7, 2023, killing 1,200 people and taking 251 men, women, and children hostage.  

“And if that enemy wins, then the West, and America’s part of that West … will be in jeopardy,” Oren said.

Oren served as the Israeli ambassador to the U.S. from 2009 to 2013, and is author of a number of books, including “Six Days of War: June 1967 and the Making of the Modern Middle East.”  

Israel has, “at a cost of an immense amount of blood and treasure,” managed to “humble” Iran, “disintegrated” Syria, defeat Hezbollah, and nearly defeat Hamas, according to Oren. Now, as the U.S. engages in talks with Iran over its nuclear program, he is warning against snatching defeat from the jaws of victory.  

Steve Witkoff, U.S. special envoy to the Middle East, has now met with Iranian leaders three times in a series of talks over Iran’s nuclear program. A fourth round of talks is slated to take place in Rome on Saturday.   

The only way America can “win” the negotiations with Iran is if “the entire nuclear program of Iran is dismantled,” Oren said.  

“And in addition to that,” he added, “the ballistic system that Iran has developed that can reach central Europe now, [and] in another 10 years, it can reach Washington, D.C., that also has to be dismantled. And finally, Iran has to stop … its role as being the world’s largest state sponsor of terror.”  

The U.S. designated Iran a state sponsor of terrorism in 1984.  

The current tension across the Middle East can either “go to stability, it can go to peace, or it can go to further warfare,” Oren said. “It hangs in the balance.”   

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