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• 00:00Israel says it won’t stop fighting until all Gaza hostages are freed after launching a series of military strikes on Hamas targets. Gaza’s health ministry says at least 200 people have been killed in the fiercest bombardments since phase one of the cease fire deal expired. Joining us now is Ryan Bohl, senior Middle East and North Africa analysts at Rein. So the death toll continues to climb this morning. The latest show figures of more than 200 as Israel have resumed these airstrikes on certain positions in Gaza. Is the cease fire for all intents and purposes, that. I think that that’s a safe thing to say at this point. The humanitarian situation is catastrophic. The aid has been suspended and now we have a resumption of hostilities. But while it is dead, it can also be resurrected rather quickly, particularly from the Israeli side. And the Israelis have signalled that they would carry out phases of pressure. And so it may not be that what we see is an extended another long term or long period of war in which there’s airstrikes and ground invasions, but instead phases of these and then the Israelis will then re-up their demands, the central one being that Hamas has to give up power in the Gaza Strip to see if they can restart negotiations and find a final settlement that is in Israel’s favor. You mentioned the word negotiation there. I just want to bring you some lines that we got from the Israeli defense minister, Israel Katz, and he said that they will not stop fighting until all Gaza hostages are freed. So the thinking, at least from what we can glean in the last couple of hours, is that Israel do not think that Hamas will free up the hostages unless they are under duress. How likely is it that this objective actually is achievable? I don’t think it’s terribly likely. Hamas has shown a remarkable resiliency in the course of this campaign, has been able to shield most of the hostages from very intense Israeli military pressure. So I suspect that at least in the near term, for the next few weeks, Hamas will attempt to absorb this military pressure and hold onto those hostages as the last bits of leverage that they still have over the Israelis. And, you know, it’s important to note that Hamas’s vast arsenal has been exhausted. They really can’t strike the Israeli cities like they used to. So in terms of leverage, these hostages, the hostages are it. And I think that they will hold on to them as long as they can. Yeah. What conditions do you think Hamas should be looking for then, in order to transition from phase one to phase two? Well, Hamas was very clear about that. What they wanted was the Phase Two’s original details, which is that the Israelis would steadily withdraw from the strip. A few exceptions being made here and there for buffer zones. And then the corridor, the Philadelphia corridor along the Egyptian border. And then that would then lead to phase three. That would see the Israelis exit the strip entirely. It’s really been the Israelis who want to rewrite the deal. And what they want is to have a phase two in which Hamas is also on their way out of the strip. And this is obviously unacceptable to Hamas right now. And Israel believe that through resumed military pressure and the unity between the United States and Israel on this position will be strong enough pressure to eventually force Hamas into some sort of exit from Gaza. Yeah. And at the same time, the Trump administration has been talking about the ultimate reconstruction of of Gaza, you know, the Riviera, whatever he called it at the time. But then also you had Arab leaders meet together for an Arab summit to talk about the eventual reconstruction plans as well. Is that just all a little bit too soon, given that the situation on the ground is still as bad as it is? Yeah, the prime agent of driving events there are the Israelis. And as long as the Israelis believe that Hamas must exit Gaza, as long as that is a war objective, all reconstruction plans are too premature. It almost doesn’t matter what anybody promises at this moment, because war is the outcome of that demand until at one point either the conditions within the Gaza Strip get so extreme that Hamas decides to exit or Hamas has been devastated militarily and the population has been, as President Trump has suggested, suggested, moved elsewhere to the point where they’re more or less isn’t a Gaza Strip anymore. Yeah. And it’s not just Gaza where the situation has deteriorated. There were U.S. airstrikes on Houthi Houthi assets over the course of the weekend. What message do you think the Trump administration is sending to the Houthi militants? Well, I think they’re sending a few messages. The first is rhetorical. They’re trying to signal that they’re stronger than the previous administration under Joe Biden and that they’re more likely to to respond harshly to provocations, even rhetorical provocations. Because, after all, the Houthis had not begun enforcing their new blockade that they had declared just a few days ago. The Trump administration was willing to strike them just for the mere threat of it. So there’s a rhetorical element to this. But there’s also an element of aiming towards Iran, which is trying to the Trump administration is trying to go to Iran, that your proxies and your allies are not enough to deter us from military action. We’ll take on difficult campaigns like in Yemen and that these campaigns could come back to to haunt Tehran if it continues its own foreign policies and, of course, its nuclear program. And of course, the Trump administration did deliver a letter to Iran via UAE diplomat. What do you think President Trump is trying to get to that? We know that he likes to procure deals. He’s obviously got other things, other priorities for now with Ukraine, with Russia, with Gaza. But ultimately, what is the contours of a deal with Iran? Look like? Well, there’s the realistic version and then there’s the Trumpian version. Then we can start with the Trumpian version, which is that it would be a wholesale rewriting of Iran’s foreign and military policies. It would mean the end of Iran’s support for its proxies, the end of its ballistic missiles that are used to threaten its neighbors and the end of its nuclear program that could eventually be used to develop a nuclear bomb. Those are the at least two of those are more or less nonstarters for the Iranians. And it’s important to note the Iranians still haven’t made that decision to develop a nuclear weapon. We’ve been waiting some 13, 14 years for for that day to happen. And so the Iranians are willing to negotiate on the nuclear program, and that’s where the realistic deal would come out of it. But the problem is a complete lack of trust. After all, the Americans signed the JCPOA, the Iran nuclear deal in 2015, and this very president pulled out of it in 2018. And so they don’t believe that anything that comes out of this White House will necessarily be something that they adhere to so long as the White House is pushing for this maximalist goal to more or less rewrite all of Iran’s geopolitical behavior.