Did Trump just secure peace in the Middle East? (10-09-2025--Hour3)

What's going on. Thank you so much for listening to this podcast. It is heard live every day from noon to three on WBT Radio in Charlotte. And if you want exclusive content like invitations to events, the weekly live stream, my daily show prep with all the links, become a patron, go to dpeteclendershow dot com. Make sure you hit the subscribe button. Get every episode for free right to your smartphone or tablet. And again, thank you so much for your support. All Right, one last thing. I'm not going to go back over this. If you want to hear more about the Katie Porter saga, listen to our two on the podcast. But the line that this congresswoman is running for governor said after this video dropped of her berating her staffer for getting into her zoom call camera shot in the background because the staffer was trying to correct something that Katie Porter said that was not true, and so they were recording something for like some peace deal, and so she wanted to stop it so they could retake it. So the staffer comes in behind her in the background and Katie Porter yells at her, out of my shot. Yeah. And she then put out a statement saying it's no secret. I hold myself and my staff to a high standard, and that was especially true as a member of Congress. I have sought to be more intentional in showing gratitude to my staff for their important work. And if you weren't aware, I wasn't. But according to the Washington Post, that is the same thing she said back in twenty twenty three when the Washington Post did a story about how she abuses her staff. It was the exact same boilerplate statement that she uses. So like, you know, you're a terrible boss when you have a standard boiler plate response when stories come out about how bad of a boss you are, Right, Okay, moving on. Do you know what today is? On this day in two thousand and nine, so that would be what sixteen years ago, right, sixteen years ago? On this day, President Barack Obama won the Nobel Prize, the Peace Prize, for what the Norwegian Nobel Committee called, quote his extraordinary efforts to strengthen international diplomacy and cooperation between peoples. On this day in two thousand and nine, he had been in office for like three months. Yeah, he got the Nobel Peace Prize for not actually doing anything. And then he proceeded to like drone strike a bunch of people all over the world. That's the Nobel Peace Prize winning president of my lifetime. Although I guess Carter did get one too, but I was a baby, so I don't remember that at all. I don't think. I think there's a there's a rule with the Nobel Committee that Republican presidents can never win. I think that's in their rule book. But if I am going to have to make a case for a Republican to win a Nobel Peace Prize, I'm thinking Donald Trump might get one. Oh. Actually Bill Clinton may have gotten one too, so yeah, so hm, oh, you know what, I found a loophole. I'm just thinking of this right now for real, Like this just came to me right now. I think I have a loophole for the Nobel Committee to give Donald Trump the Nobel Peace Prize for apparently brokering a ceasefire maybe long term peace deal we shall see between Israel and Hamas that Donald Trump was a Democrat, so so you could say that he was like he was a Democrat for more of his life than a report publican, and so you could use that as sort of an end run around the rule that you're not allowed to give Republicans the Nobel Peace Prize. So I throw that out there as a suggestion. You know, if the Nobel Committee, if they're scratching their heads, thinking, man, this is a really big achievement, and we really want to give it to Donald Trump, but he's a Republican. So we can't because of the rule that obviously exists. But I've never actually seen, well, this might be a way around it. There may be a loophole there. You could just say that Donald Trump being a former Democrat, now he is eligible. Four. Well, no, because Reagan was a former Democrat too. Oh well, so President Donald Trump says the remaining Israeli hostages in Gaza may be released soon. As soon as Monday. We shall see. I have made no secret of the act that I don't trust terrorists. I don't know why anybody does. I don't trust trust terrorists. And in the categories of terrorists, the crusader types are the least trustworthy. See criminals. There are three types of terrorists. In case you aren't aware of this, I learned this long ago. After nine to eleven, there was a woman expert on terrorism who did a big presentation. I think it was up at Davidson College at the time, or maybe she was a professor at Davidson. Either way, she talked about the three seas of terrorists, and the three seas are the criminals, the crazies, and the crusaders. Okay, And the difference between the criminals and crazies is that they both expect to live after the terrorist event. Okay. They are doing it for different motivations, but they're not trying to kill themselves in the process. Okay. That's the main difference, she said, or one of the main differences. There are others, like the criminals are trying to do it for money, right, there's some personal gain. Crazies are doing it for some irrational reason. The example I think she gave at the time was a true story of a guy who hijacked an airplane and wanted it diverted to some other country. And the reason that he wanted it diverted there was because he had seen a billboard, like an advertising billboard for this other country, and so he thought that that meant he needed to go hijack this plane and take it to this place because the billboard said to do so. Right, So not mentally well, but in both cases, right, they're trying to live through the incident. Crusaders do not. And when you're talking about a religious terrorist organization like Mas, which it is, it's inspired by the ideology. We talked with Raymond Ibrahim about this Islamic ideology, how it animates, how it informs, how there is this through line in tactics, in behavior, in rhetoric, in justifications. Right, there's this through line there, and so they cannot be reasoned with. There's nothing you can offer them in this world because their reward is in the afterlife and they don't intend to survive it. The highest thing that they can do is die as a martyr because then they get immediate entry into their celestial afterlife. With the really weird like sex things that they got going on there, like people like have you ever read up on like what exactly the whole seventy two virgin thing is. It's not just like it's not just like women that are there, it's like these it's like a really weird and very very specific like they don't they don't well, they don't have the normal bodily functions as human women. It's weird like this is what they're told is waiting for them. It's just like this constant sex machine kind of a thing. So yeah, which and when you read through like like what they're being offered, like this is what awaits you in heaven if you die for the cause. It really does make sense if you're thinking in terms of like a seventh century recruitment campaign for young men who have got nothing else going on for them. You know, it's like, hey, join our army, and if you die in combat, you're going to get this woman who like doesn't sweat, doesn't poop, doesn't pee, like nothing like that, and they're just gonna want to have sex with you forever and ever and ever all the time. And they're like, Okay, And if I live, I get some of the pillaging. You know, I get to do a bunch of raping and I get to murder a bunch of people too in the process. But if I die for the cause, then I'm you know, with these sex spots. Anyway, Trump offered this timeline yesterday in a phone call with the families of hostages. He then went on Fox News. There are a total of twenty Israeli hostages believed to be alive in Gaza. That's it, just twenty left while Hamas holds the bodies of an additional twenty eight Israelis. So they got twenty eight dead hostages and twenty living hostages, or so we are told. We do not know this to be true. And just because the Hamas Holays have agreed to this deal and we'll turn over these hostages within seventy two hours, doesn't mean they're actually going to do so. I'll believe it when I see it. Here's a great idea. How about making an escape to a really special and secluded getaway in western North Carolina. Just a quick drive up the mountain and Cabins of Asheville is your connection. Whether you're celebrating an anniversary, a honeymoon, maybe you want to plan a memorable proposal, or get family and friends together for a big old reunion, Cabins of Asheville has the ideal spot for you where you can reconnect with your loved ones and the things that truly matter. Nestled within the breath taking fourteen thousand acres of the Pisga National Forest, their cabins offer a serene escape in the heart of the Blue Ridge Mountains. Centrally located between Ashville and the entrance of the Great Smoky Mountain National Park. 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Yeah, I think I saw somebody else make this point that it was that they could very was that an email. Yeah, here it is. This is from Ken, who says, I really really enjoyed the show today, sir, Thank you Ken. I think the Nobel Committee cannot have avoid the President's peace deal. However, I predict they will award it to a group of recipients, maybe net Yahoo, Donald Trump and the people of Palestine. Right. I think that they could do something like that. Yeah, they could give it to Trump along with you know Qatar, sorry cutter, I think it's how that's pronounced. And you know, whoever else are the intermediaries, whoever else was involved in the cobbling together of the coalition and all of that. Yeah, they could do a group deal, So it's not just Donald Trump that Yeah, that's possible. So from UH news Nation, it's actually well it's next Star, which owns news Nation and the Hill Publication. So questions remain whether longer term aspects of the US broker peace deal, including the disarming of Hamas and a different political body to govern Palestinians, will come to fruition, But for now, leaders across the globe express hope that Gaza was on the cusp of peace. Two years after the deadly October seventh, twenty twenty three Hamas incursion into Israel that triggered the war, where they murdered twelve hundred people and raped and pillaged their way through and then stole two hundred and fifty people kidnapped them back into Gazam, where most of them were killed. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Ntonyah, who under pressure from Trump, agreed to the president's twenty point plan for ending the war with Hamas. Trump relied on a coalition of leaders from Arab, Gulf and Muslim majority countries to pressure Hamas to also accept the deal. So, look, I know this is going to be something that what I'm about to say is not going to be believed by the people who just hate Donald Trump with the passion and fire of a billion burning suns. I get it. Okay. However, one of the things that Trump supporters and Trump himself have always said is that he does deals. And I agree with that. By the way, whatever personal opinions I have about Donald Trump, or whatever opinion I have about him on you know, whatever position he takes on any given day, on any given issue, whatever that, all of that's irrelevant. I watched The Apprentice, Okay, the guy does like to do deals. He it's and I have met people like him in business. They live for the deal. They're always on the hunt for the next deal. And I have no doubt believing he is like that. And so maybe this might be something he's actually good at doing, and maybe this is what the results look like. There is a guy named Ahmed foud Al Kati. He's a American, but he was born in Gaza. He's pro Palestine but also pro peace, anti Hamas. He is the head of r F Palestine, a senior Fellow with the Atlantic Council and a term member at the Council on Foreign Relations. Okay, and he's got family in Gaza that have been killed. He's lost like a dozen of his family in Gaza. But he's anti Hamas. He says, what caused Hamas to agree to give up its chief bargaining chip, which is the hostages? Right? Why do they give up the hostages for phase one of the deal? It was the unprecedented pressure against the terror group from Turkey, sorry Tokeia. Is how they pronounce that now Judder and Egypt. I think they still pronounce it Egypt for the time being. The Turks want sanctions relief the F thirty five stealth fighter. They want new F sixteens and greater cooperation with the US. The Kataris got the apology from Israel for that failed airstrike and a US commitment to Doha's national security through a new agreement, and in exchange, Cutter had to deliver the hostages, which means delivering Hamas. Egypt has been terrified of the specter of forced displacement of Gozans into Sinai and its mobilization of the Egyptian army on the country's eastern border, raised tensions with Israel and threatened the peace treaty between those two countries not to mention US foreign aid. So those were their incentives, Turkey, Cutter, and Egypt, they all had incentives that Trump was able to suss out to leverage against them, so they put pressure on Hamas. Okay, you add all that together. This meant that those three countries applied pressure to Hamas, which is isolated, militarily weak, its allies are defeated, and they really don't have any more options because of the military success. Also, I would add the military success that Israel has realized in the last two years, like they have obliterated Hamas's command structure. You still have these little basically gorilla cells that exist, right, but you have nowhere near the command structure that Hamas used to have. I mean, they wiped out like twenty four battalions and their leadership. There isn't anything there and they can't go to Hesbala because all of them are rolling around in wheelchairs because of the Beeper operation. Right, they took out all of the targets in Iran. Syria has been defended. They went after them, they bombed those sites along their border there. So like Israel's military success has paved the way here, Hamas is now isolated and Trump is able to then leverage these things that these other three countries want in order to get them to pressure Hamas. So that's what this guy is saying led us to where we are now. 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Also, I'll be am seeing the Gastonia Walk on October eleventh, and so you can make a team and join that one too, or make a donation and help me hit my goal of five thousand dollars. If you do, I really appreciate it. There are a bunch of other walks all over the Carolinas. You can go to alz dot org slash walk for all the dates and locations. We're closer than ever to stopping Alzheimer's. Can you help us get there? Will you walk with me? For a different future, for families, for more time, for treatments. This is why we walk. I'm seeing some breaking news. Judge Boasberg has now reportedly blocked Donald Trump's peace deal, ruling that Hamas and Israel must continue killing each other's. That is from C three C three, some random person on the Twitter machine. Okay, if the it's not accurate, Okay, it's just a joke, people, Hence the use of the rim shot. This from the Jerusalem Post. If the current Israel Hamas deal holds and the war is in fact over, I'm not like, I'm not there yet, Like I'm very encouraged to hear this, but I'll believe it. I'll believe it when I see it. When these Hamas holes release hostages that are still actually alive, then I'll believe it that they're going to release them. And when they allow for the recovery of the twenty eight dead hostages, then I'll believe that they will allow for the release of them. If they're going to stop fighting, and they stop fighting, then I will believe that they are stopping the fight. Do I And even if they do that, do I believe that that this is an end of the war. I do not. There is no there is no off ramp here for this ideology. Hamas has been very clear and the Islamic ideology is very clear. I have it. What we're seeing I suspect is a little thing called the Hudna Hudna, Hudna or Hudna, named after a village outside Mecca. It means ceasefire or truce, and it came six years after Mohammed and his followers abandoned Mecca for Yathrib today's Medina. Okay, this move, known as the hidra or emigration, is of enormous significance for the classical understanding of jihad, inasmuch as it sets a pattern of retreat followed by regrouping and re arming, which permits an attack on the territory previously left behind. Okay, this is a red in fact, don't take my word for it. Here is Abu Baker Abed, a quote unquote journalist for a website called drop site News, which is the a propaganda arm for Hamas. And here's what he tweeted out after news of this came down, that there was this deal that was agreed to quote, I understand your frustration, but there will be no disarmament. Believe me. It's not like what you think. It's a pause to rest, that's what's happening. It's a hudna, that's what they are doing. It's a pause so they can rest, they can regroup, and then they can attack again. Back to the Jerusalem Post. The final sequence to end the war was completely different from both Israeli and Tamas position at other key points, such as summer of twenty twenty four and then early twenty twenty five, when the war might have ended. Qatar, Turkey and US President Donald Trump brought new levels of pressure to bear on both sides. A scorecard of concessions, wins for both sides, losses for both sides, and ties for both sides shows that both are making concessions now that they did not make in prior rounds, though ultimately Israel has more of the upper hand in terms of leverage. Israel conceded on holding its fire. While this was little discussed. Israel actually stopped shooting and bombing on Saturday, okay, and they got nothing in return for that. In fact, this situation of Israel holding its fire for nothing concrete and only the promise or possibility of a deal lasted for five days until early Thursday morning. Going even further, if the first hostages come home on Monday, Israel will have given Hamas nine days without being attacked before receiving the first hostage back. In all of the past negotiations for the hostages release, Israel's position was that it would not hold its fire until Hamas signed a deal to return the hostages on a specific timetable, with the timetable usually starting almost immediately after the fighting was halted. Okay, So Israel agreed to stop fighting or stop firing on Hamas stop attacking while Hamas was still deciding whether or not to agree to the deal. That was a change. Hamas conceded on giving up all of the hostages and doing so all at once. In the other rounds of negotiations, Hamas leaders either wanted to hold on to some of the hostages as an insurance policy against being killed, or to force a complete Israeli withdrawal from Gaza, which we have all known, right, I mean they use their own people for human shields. Of course, they're going to use the Israelis for human shields and bargaining chips, right, But that changed when Katar Turkey in Egypt all ordered Hamas to release all the hostages and to do it all at once, for just a partial Gaza withdrawal, along with general promises from Trump that he would guarantee Israel would not restart the war. So that's what Trump has promised Hamas, that he's going to guarantee Israel won't resume fighting as soon as they get their twenty live hostages back. Right. And by the way, I don't believe there's still twenty of them alive. Again. I hope I'm wrong. I hope I'm wrong. But here's the thing when dealing with Hamas, they're liars, and so the fact that they say there were twenty alive doesn't mean there were actually twenty still alive. Israel has killed most of Hamas's leaders over time, the chiefs in Gaza Yahya Sinhwar, Mohammed Dieth. They also whacked Mohammed Sinhwar and a lot of the other top Hamas officials like Marwan Issa Ismael Hania. Four out of five Hamas brigade commanders and almost all twenty four battalion commanders were also killed. Over the last two years. The main survivors in Gaza are Gaza City Brigade commander Azadeen al Hadad, who is now Hamas's military chief, along with senior Hamas official Raid Sad. Despite promises to expel all of the Hamas leadership, it appears that the small number of senior Hamas commanders who have survived the war until now will be allowed to remain in Gaza, though it is still possible that Israel may seek some symbolic expulsion of some officials where they will be hunted down and kill I suspect at some point. Israel has a long memory for this stuff. You know. Stories are powerful. They help us make sense of things, to understand experiences. Stories connect us to the people of our past while transcending generations. They help us process the meaning of life, and our stories are told through images and videos. 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You know, who made what concessions, who came out ahead, that kind of thing. On this Israeli Hamas quote cease fire, which I don't know if it's an actually, I mean, I guess it's a ceasefire, but it's not the end of the war. It's been going on for fourteen hundred years. It's not going to end because of this. Israel conceded on ending the war without having fully disarmed Hamas. This is Israel's largest concession long term. Right, this was one of the things they said. They had two objectives, right, get all the hostages back live and dead and to annihilate Hamas. That was the initial promise war Aims offered by Benjamin Netanyahu. And while Hamas has been decimated, true, they have not been annihilated. All of Hamas has not been wiped out. Hamas's military numbers range somewhere in the two thousand to twenty five hundred hardcore fighters range. So two thousand to twenty five hundred hardcore fighters, there's another twenty thousand or so that are not so well trained but potential fighters. And then it says to support, it's got a support base in Gaza of around seven hundred thousand Palestinians. Okay, they have seven hundred thousand Palestinians who are so themselves with the movement, either by tribe or by ideology. Now, the good news is that all twenty four of Hamas's battalions were already militarily defeated back in August of twenty twenty four, and so what remains are loosely aligned small gorilla warfare cells. Okay, there are still a lot of dangerous people in Gaza, and they could grow and they could reconstitute themselves if they are not properly neutralized. And like this is what's going to be coming later, is this, you know, international force, the technocratic leadership, and like all of these other parts that are a part of Trump's plan. There are all these other things, and we have no idea if they're going to work. But right now, like like I'm I'm hopeful to take the win, but again I'm not taking a win that sound like mine take, but like I'm not seeing this as as a positive, tangible success until Hamas actually makes good on the thing that they have been saying they would not do, which is to release the live hostages. Now, part of this is also a swap, you know, like Israel is turning over I think the number I saw was like two thousand or something quote unquote prisoners. And these are like some of the hardest core terrorists that Israel has in custody and they're getting they're releasing them back into Gaza in exchange for the for these prisoners, or for the hostages rather the Israeli hostages. So we'll see how that turns out. In fact, I think one of them is one of these terrorists that Israel has agreed to turn over, is like this guy, this guy is such a bad ombre that they did not release him in a previous swap, even though it meant I think this was it may have been part of the the attempted swap with the IDF soldier. Uh Gilliad. I'm trying. I'm drawing a blank on his last name. This was the poor guy that got kidnapped, dragged back into Gaza and then murdered. And then the guy you know, comes to the window. The murderer comes to the window, and everybody's in the streets celebrating the bloodlust, you know, yay, he killed the Jews and all this and uh and he, you know, holds up his hands out the window and they're just dripping blood from this kid, this IDF guy. And that's why, by the way, whenever you see the Palestine the you know, the the pro Palestine crowd, you know, with their tentifaddas marching around and they have these red handprints, that's what that's a reference to. It's to the murder of that soldier. That's the iconography that they have adopted. So no, I don't trust them. They're terrorists, okay, or terrorst sympathizers. So Hamas conceded on a partial Israeli withdrawal. This is Hamas's largest concession long term, because the Israelis are not going completely out of the Gaza strip. They've got these different lines. If you looked at the plan that Trump released, they're like these different lines drawn, and so they're like, Okay, in this phase, you're going to go back here. You know, you're going to fall back to this position because Israel will never allow there to not be some sort of a buffer zone any longer. Like you're not gonna like you're going to have a good bit of distance, so we can have these different zones policed by different you know, international forces or something whatever. There is all also a wide range of uncertain diplomatic issues. The Jerusalem Post says, who's going to run Gaza politically regardless of what the ceasefire deal says on paper about the expected Gaza International Transitional Authority or the gi TA or the GETA. How much will the get how much will GETA the US, the West Arab Allies, Palestinian Authority, Israel right, how much are they going to be able to talk the seven hundred thousand Gazans that are associated with Hamas out of supporting Hamas how does that work? How do you de radicalize seven hundred thousand people in Gaza that have grown up multi generally generationally watching you know, morning cartoons, watching children's programming, being taught in their schools that there is no higher calling than to murder Jews? How do you do that? Right? Like they did, They did knockoffs of Barney the Purple Dinosaur guy singing about murdering Jews, and they were teaching this to their children and they've been doing it for like twenty five years. So like, where do you, like, where do you even begin on that deradicalization? So we'll see how long is it going to take to make political progress against Tomas, how long will it take to rebuild These are all still questions that have to be decided now. The process, real quick is that if the government approves the ceasefire, then you got a twenty four hour period will commence, during the which the decision will be able to be appealed to the High Court of Justice in Israel. Once the period ends, Hamas will have seventy two hours and that puts it on a Monday expected deadline for the release of the living hostages. All right, that'll do it for this episode. Thank you so much for listening. I could not do the show without your support and the support of the businessinesses that advertise on the podcast, so if you'd like, please support them too and tell them you heard it here. You can also become a patron at my Patreon page or go to dpecleanershow dot com. Again, thank you so much for listening, and don't break anything while I'm gone.