Hi there, I'm Kristen Welker. I just stepped off the Meet the Press set, where I interviewed national security adviser Jake Sullivan, Republican Senator Lindsey Graham, and House Democratic leader, Hakeem Jeffries. We led our broadcast with our continuing coverage of the war between Israel and Hamas. Throughout the week, Secretary of State Antony Blinken visited with leaders in the Middle East in a diplomatic effort to try to contain the violence from spreading as some analysts in the global stage worry about the possibility of Israel getting caught in a multi-front war.
And as the U.S. dispatches a second-carrier strike group to the Eastern Mediterranean, some onlookers are left wondering whether America also might find itself pulled into the fight. So to get the very latest on what's really happening, I'm sitting here now with NBC News, Chief Foreign Affairs Correspondent. She's also the Network's Chief Washington Correspondent, Andrea Mitchell.
She's fresh off the panel as well. Andrea, thank you for being here. It's so great to be with you, Kristen. It's great to have you because no one knows this region, as well as you.
And I know you've been working your sources throughout the week, tracking the Secretary of State's moves on the Middle East. Where do things stand right now? Because the focus is on trying to rescue the hostages and trying to secure a safe passage for the civilians who are in the region. Right now, it's still critical to try to get that safe passage out and to try to get some humanitarian aid in.
It appears from Jake Sullivan that they are going to restart the water to South Gaza. That is really important because the images and the prospect of people without water, without fuel generators and hospitals, not being able to operate the ports of 50,000 pregnant women in Gaza. That is what people are watching around the world. That is what has been in the last 24 hours, assuming the coverage, the important coverage of what happened in Israel, of who started the war, of Hamas and the savagery, ISIS-like savagery.
And the warning from the U.S. privately, as well as publicly to a less recent, but certainly privately, is that you've got to get your arms around this. You're losing the Arab street and you're losing the sympathy in Europe, in European capitals, the pro-Palestinian protests, which are only get larger when within the next 24 or 48 hours from where we sit right now on Sunday morning. There is going to be a ground invasion, whether in other things may have intervened, may have slowed them down.
They did some reconnaissance on Friday, but those tanks are ready to roll. They're not rolling yet, so we don't think it's going to happen in the next 24 hours. But maybe after that, you're going to see a ground invasion, and it is going to be the ugliest kind of battle as James David East, our colleague and the retired Supreme Allied commander who's been all over this region and had responsibility for it. He said, there's no urban battle that is going to be worse than what we see in Gaza.
The word about that, they're very worried about Hezbollah in the north because of warning from Iran that they would not be spectators to all of this. Not that Iran would get involved themselves, but Hezbollah is a proxy of Iran. And if Iran sends the signal to Hezbollah to attack from the north, that's another huge challenge for the Israeli Defense Force. Well, Andrew, talk about that a little bit because Senator Graham was very forceful on Iran, and he's effectively saying if they make one move in that direction, that the United States needs to start bombing their oil refineries, needs to take action.
How much concern is there right now about this becoming a wider war that could envelop the United States? The worst case of all would be for the U.S. to be involved or Israel with direct attacks against Iran, attacks against Hezbollah and the country of Lebanon, which has Hezbollah as part of their government and their parliament in their cabinet. That is automatic if there's an attack from the north.
So that would be a tragedy. You would have the whole region engaged. The Sunni Arab leaders don't want that. You see Secretary Blinken with LCC, the Egyptian leader, almost getting lectured by him about the problem of what this is going to look like to the Arab world.
With a dirty secret here, which our colleague Martin Fletcher, the former Tel Aviv bureau chief who's been doing such great duty for all of us this week, is that the Arab leaders don't like Hamas, and they don't really like the Palestinians who were against Kuwait in favor of Saddam Hussein's invasion and desert storm in the first war, the first Gulf War. So there's lip service for the Palestinians. There's the symbolic importance of the Palestinians to the Arab leaders, but they really want the regional peace that the Saudis have been proposing, the Saudis want it because they want the US nuclear and strategic and security agreement. They want the economic benefits and the technology from Israel.
They want the IT to help transform their economy, but that's it's not totally unhold, but it's certainly on the back burner as this war is progressing. Yeah, absolutely, Andrea. And we know that the Secretary of State just spoke with the leaders of China, the leader of China, I should say. What is the significance of that and this outreach to China?
What if any role can they play at this critical moment? They could play a critical role in influencing Iran not to get involved. He spoke to the foreign minister, Wang Yi, who's a really important national security advisor as well. His counterpart in China, he spoke with his counterpart.
He's more power than most foreign ministers because of other shakeups in that cabinet. He's the all powerful advisor to President Xi. And the message is, restrain Iran. China needs oil.
Oil prices will go off the charts, which, you know, if the war expands throughout the region, that benefits Russia, not China, because Russia is an oil producer. So if the price goes up, even though there's some caps on Russian oil as part of the US sanctions, they still benefit. They're still making huge profits from oil, but China needs oil and they do not want to see an energy crisis similar to what we saw in the 1970s, globally, just from a Middle East war. And Andrea, just a big picture, we're talking about the talks that have now been sidelined, the talks to normalize relations between Saudi Arabia and Israel that were aimed at isolating Iran.
What are some of the big picture influences that may have played, and I stress may have, because it's a multi-faceted moment, but may have played a role in intentions reaching this point. It's such a good question because we have intelligence now and the documents taken from Hamas terror fighters, from the dead bodies, that they were planning this from months. They were doing exercises that we now realize were a rehearsal. And when they back down, the Israelis erroneously fought, you see, they're not going to be a threat, so lull them into complacency.
And Israel was also completely absorbed in its domestic problems. The failure of reservists to show up for duty because of their objections to the prime minister's attempts to change the independence of the judiciary in the Supreme Court there. And also because Netanyahu is personally, as you well know, completely focused on the Saudi deal and on transforming the whole region, which it would have. So did not see the neighbor next door that was getting ready, but Iran saw it and Hamas saw it.
And after the UN meetings, when that Saudi deal began to progress with a face-to-face meeting between Biden and Netanyahu. And with an interview on camera from Mohammed bin Salman, the Saudi leader, also saying he wanted to have all three players ratifying it during the UN General Assembly meetings, the whole world saw that Iran saw it. And that's when Hamas had to realize that that was an existential threat to them. If that deal were done, Hamas would be history.
It's so fascinating to hear you give that broader perspective, Andrew. And just finally, speaking of an existential threat to Hamas, Israel has said its goal is to wipe Hamas off the face of the earth. The question though, what happens next? What if they achieve that goal in Gaza?
Who governs Gaza? I put that question to National Security Advisor, Jake Sullivan. I put that question to Senator Lindsey Graham. There's still no answer.
There's no good answer. They say the Palestinian Authority, Lindsey Graham suggested that with younger leadership, better leadership. And they now have leadership has been diminished and made powerless really by successive administrations, not dealing with them. And there haven't been negotiations since 2014.
So that they have been seen as powerless compared to Hamas, which Palestinians in West Bank see as strong in a horrendous way. So having the Palestinian Authority try to take over Gaza as they now exist is not even possible. So the question is unanswerable. What comes next?
Will the Saudis and others try to figure something out if there is that deal in the prospect, which they want so much? But to even think about the day after becomes a contradiction, because it signals to Hamas and the other combatants, oh, you're seeing an end, you know, you want this to end so we can get you to back down and go for a ceasefire, you know, all of the above and to give up the ground there. So they can't project publicly that they want this so badly. But the day after is what we faced in Iraq, Afghanistan, you know, eliminating the bath army in Iraq.
And then we got, you know, we got ISIS out of that and 10 years of civil war. And now the Taliban is back in charge in Kabul because we didn't envision what would happen after we had occupied for 20 years. This is what former Obama National Security Advisor Ben Rhodes warned about. He said this should be the message to Israel.
You can't afford to not think about the day after. Exactly. Well, you've got it all covered on me the press today. What a fabulous program it was.
Well, thank you for being a part of it really Andrea, really appreciate you were here last weekend. We had you back because there's no one better. Thank you. Thank you.