Day 463 - Israel's wish list for US President-elect Trump

The Times of Israel Daily Briefing

The Times of Israel

News

4.4 • 864 Ratings

🗓️ 11 January 2025

⏱️ 44 minutes

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Summary

Welcome to The Times of Israel's Daily Briefing, your 20-minute audio update on what's happening in Israel, the Middle East and the Jewish world.

Senior analyst Haviv Rettig Gur joins host Amanda Borschel-Dan for a bonus episode of our weekly What Matters Now series.

This week, a committee appointed by Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to examine defense spending and IDF military force design for the future announced that the election of Donald Trump as US president offers an unprecedented opportunity to remove the threat Israel faces from Iran.

Trump’s return to the White House, said the Nagel Committee on Monday, “creates, for the first time, the potential for a fundamental change, and the removal or meaningful reduction of the Iranian threat.”

Likewise this week, incoming US envoy to the Middle East Steve Witkoff announced that he would travel to Doha, saying a hostage deal being mediated by Qatar is on the verge of completion, as Trump again warned “all hell will break loose” in the region if an agreement between Israel and Hamas is not reached by his January 20 inauguration.

We all know that Trump is one to talk tough, but the question is -- how much of this rhetoric will translate into action? And will he aid Israel in its effort to prevent a nuclear Iran?

For news updates, please check out The Times of Israel’s ongoing live blog.

Subscribe to The Times of Israel Daily Briefing on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, YouTube, or wherever you get your podcasts. This episode was produced by the Pod Waves.

IMAGE: US President Donald Trump (left) and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu shake hands at the Israel Museum in Jerusalem, May 23, 2017. (AP Photo/Sebastian Scheiner, File)

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Transcript

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0:00.0	Welcome to the Times of Israel's What Matters now, a weekly podcast looking at Israel and the region and the world at large. I'm Amanda Borschal Dan, here with our senior analyst, Javiv Rettigur. Hi, Khabiv, thanks for joining me today.
0:18.4	Hi, Amanda. It's good to be here. It is so great to let you virtually
0:21.8	into my home. And as you can probably hear, there's a kindergarten next door, which brings a lot of joy to life.
0:27.6	But we are going to talk about the Trump administration, which a lot of people here in Israel are really
0:33.9	counting on to bring even more joy of life into Israel.
0:38.1	I don't know if it's a false dream, some kind of hope that we're pinning everything onto.
0:44.8	But we're going to talk about the different seven fronts of the war
0:48.7	and what we kind of expect from the Trump administration in each of these different fronts. But all of that,
0:55.6	of course, because I'm here with Chaviv Rettigur, ties into an overarching theory. So here you go,
1:02.3	right? Kaviv, first off, I think most people have really been impressed or at least startled by what
1:09.8	Trump has been saying about the hostages. And of course,
1:13.4	the incoming U.S. envoy to the Middle East, Steve Whitclough, announced on Tuesday that he will
1:19.0	be traveling to Doha later this week. And he said that a hostage deal being mediated by Qatar
1:25.5	is on the verge of completion as U.S. President-elect,
1:30.7	Donald Trump again warned, quote, all hell will break loose in the region if the hostages
1:37.9	are not let go, if there is no agreement between Israel and Hamas by the inauguration on January 20th.
1:46.1	All eyes are on January 20th.
1:49.0	So, Kaviv, you know, we all know that Trump likes to talk tough, but do you think there will
1:56.0	be some action behind these words?
1:58.7	That's a great question.
2:00.3	You know, will the Americans be able to do great damage to Hamas and Hamas's allies in the region?
2:06.6	Can they pressure Qatar?
	...

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