Welcome to this episode of The Libertarian with Richard Epstein. I'm Charles C.W. Cook.

This is a production of the Civitas Institute at the University of Texas at Austin. Richard,

welcome to your own show. It's always nice to be here with you, Charles.

Likewise. Well, we had huge news since we last recorded an episode,

and that is that there was a deal, peace, in perhaps not the whole Middle East,

but between Israel and the Palestinians, particularly Hamas.

This is not a false story.

We have already seen the release of the remaining 20 hostages.

And some people are even calling for Donald Trump to receive the Nobel Peace

Prize. First off, Richard, tell me how we got to this position. This was not inevitable. Not

everyone saw it coming. How on earth did we get to the point

at which Donald Trump, of all people, could broker this deal? Well, first of all, the Trump aspect,

and the word is brokering. He's very good at. The one word in the description I would disagree

with is I don't think we got peace. I think we

got a ceasefire and it's quite different. And so then the question is, how is it that we got to

all of this stuff? And the answer is we got rid of the ghost of Joseph Biden. What happened when

the Israelis had to deal with Biden is he was always in the opinion that you had to

keep everything under wraps and that any form of escalation that took place would lead to

essentially mutual assured destruction. And so when the Israelis were able to fight off pretty

effectively, all of the drones and various rockets that the Iranians send to Israel after their own invasions, attacks on Iran, Biden said, take the wind. The Israelis did not take the wind. If they had taken the wind, we'd still be involved in this endless conflict. What happens is the key insight to understand is that in a war of attrition, Israel loses.

There are too much space in Iran, too many people in Iran, too many rockets in Iran, too much

support from external places.

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