Welcome to the President's Inbox, a CFR podcast about the foreign policy challenges facing the United States.

I'm Jim Lindsay, Director of Studies at the Council on Foreign Relations.

This week's topic is the Israel Hamas War.

With me to discuss the context and consequences of Hamas' surprise attack on Israel are Elliot Abrams and Stephen Cook.

Elliot is a senior fellow for Middle Eastern Studies at the Council on Foreign Relations.

He was special representative for Ron in Venezuela in the Donald Trump

administration, and he served as deputy assistant to the president and deputy national security

advisor in the George W. Bush administration, where he handled U.S. policy in the Middle East.

He recently wrote, the Hamas attack changes everything for the National Review.

Stephen is the E.N.I. Enrique M. Tai, Senior Fellow for Middle East and Africa Studies here at the

Council on Foreign Relations and a columnist at Foreign Policy Magazine. He recently wrote in

brief for CFR.org titled, Surprise Palestinian Attack spawns fears of a wider Middle East War.

Elliot and Steven, thank you for joining me.

Thanks for having you.

Thank you.

Let me begin by noting we face a fluid situation in that the state of the fighting could change significantly by the time our conversation airs. With that caution

out of the way, Elliot, I'd like to begin with you. Can you help us understand why this attack,

why now? This attack obviously was planned, and I would think it had to have been planned for a year.

This is not two weeks of planning. Therefore, the logic suggests

to me it's for the 50th anniversary of the 1973 war. If you think about timing it for

trying to block the Israeli Saudi rapprochement, they didn't know about that much a year ago.

They didn't know where it would be a year later. So it's, I think, a benefit to Hamas and to Iran. But I think it's the 50th anniversary that explains the timing. And I think

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