This is CBS Iron the World. I'm John Batchel. Malcolm Holine Conference of Presidents is here with me,

and we're very pleased to be joined by Yalkov Lapin, the host of Lapin assessments on Patreon.

He's at the Jewish News Service. He also participates in Alma, which is a research bureau in the north of Israel especially.

And he's at the Miriam Institute.

I go immediately to the report, Yaakov, that a major representative of the Trump administration visiting Israel, who is he?

And what was the mission?

Good evening to you.

Good evening, John.

It's great to be with you and Malcolm as always.

So Steve Whitkoff, the U.S. president's Middle Eastern Envoy.

He's been in Israel since Wednesday and he became the first U.S. official reportedly

in 15 years to enter the Gaza

strip during this visit. And look, I think his agenda is pretty clear. He's also going to Saudi Arabia.

He wants to push stage one of this ceasefire into stage two. And I think that that is his mission,

that is his goal. that's the goal that was

assigned to him by President Trump. And that is the really sort of the grand objective that

he's been pursuing during his entire shallow diplomacy. And I think that there's good reason to be

skeptical that he's going to succeed. Because stage two of this ceasefire is about many things that Hamas looks like it's in very serious doubt that it can deliver, such as releasing all of the hostages, not clear that Hamas is interested in doing that because it you use hostages as an insurance policy,

Hamas' interest is to drag out stage two for as long as possible so that it can retake the

Gaza Strip. And also Israel is demanding that in subsequent stages, Hamas is going to disarm.

I don't envisage jihadists who have been waging war for the past 50 months willingly disarming

themselves and so i think you know at the end of the day what we're seeing is is wickoff trying to

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