The Middle East is a tinderbox.

0:00 Speaker 1 With us today is Victoria Coach, Deputy National Security Advisor, and she’s also was on the National Security Council. Well, Victoria, there’s so many things happening in the Middle East, and give us an update in Ukraine Israel, I mean, what a mess we have on here is.

0:22 Speaker 2 Well, John, good to be with you. And unfortunately, these are probably the darkest days I’ve ever seen for the Middle East in recent memory. And we did the basis of it is a real fracturing of the US Israel alliance, which is in a very perilous state. We have the administration doubling down the Binn administration on their support for

0:47 Habas and for the Palestinians and being extremely aggressive toward Israel. And it’s extraordinary to me because you know, we still have Americans being held hot hostage in Gaza. We were attacked there as well, and you know, the Palestinians are the ones who are supporting Kamas, who are keeping the hostages for them and participating in the ongoing fighting. So

1:12 I don’t understand the approach and what it is doing is emboldening throughout the region, not just Tamas, but the other Iranian proxies and so got two other fronts that the Israelis have to worry about. We have Hesblah in Lebanon in the north, which is threatening a straight up war with Israel, and that it’s pointing rockets at Israel,

1:37 and you know Iran is pouring money and material into that country. And then to the south you have the Huti in Yemen who just blew up a ship this week. They are not in any way deterred by the Administration’s actions against them. They have and they.

1:53 Speaker 1 Still have the Suez Canal, the Suez Canal and the Red Sea is still close through shipping.

1:58 Speaker 2 Isn’t it essentially? And I mean if even if you’re daft enough to go into the Red Sea, I was told this week that insurance premiums have gone up fourteen hundred times.

2:10 Speaker 1 It’s simply nobody’s got nobody’s going to go into the Red Sea. It’s up to the commander or chief of the United States of America to use the FLUS, to use the use the Navy and just do away with those hoodies. No.

2:25 Speaker 2 Absolutely, And the problem is is right now the administration does not have the authority from Congress to do that. They under the two thousand and one authorization. They can go after al Qaeda and affiliates, which would include groups like ISIS, but nothing about the Iranians or their their proxy groups.

2:44 Speaker 1 So in a way, I don’t know if any president, I don’t know if anybody any president that has been stopped from doing it other than President Biden.

2:55 Speaker 2 Well that that is their excuse. But the funny thing is, John, if they went to the Congress, I bet they could get authorization to take out the hoodie. I don’t think they would have a problem with that. But they’re not doing it. They don’t want to inconvenience the Iranians. They’re still hoping to get to another deal with them.

3:13 Speaker 1 That’s very, very sad. Tell us what else you’ve concerned? What else keeps you up at three o’clock in the morning that you worry about about country?

3:22 Speaker 2 Right now? There are just too many things, And I would say, first and foremost, I am deeply concerned about what’s happening in our own backyard. We have aggressive Russian and Chinese actions throughout the Caribbean, Latin America, South America.

3:37 We have the Chinese building a port, major port in Peru. We have the Russians running worships into Havana Harbor, and we have a wide open southern border, and so you have both Ji and Putin not feeling constrained at all by what you might call our normal sphere of influence.

3:55 They’re very sensitive to that around their countries, but perfectly happy to fly X in our backyard. And I think that is very provocative, very dangerous, and what may or may not be running up through the southern border UH is also a deep concern, understood.

4:15 Speaker 1 My My other concern is a lot of foreign money. You know, we’re giving the Iranians, We’re giving Opic uh trillion dollars, and some of that money is going to UH, the the some of these groups that that terrorist groups, and some of the other money is going back for dark money going to the to Washington and foreign influence

4:42 to Washington and our universities. Does that bother you hugely?

4:47 Speaker 2 And it’s it’s a new project that we have at the Heritage Foundation actually detracts a lot of that money that’s going into American higher education and how it’s being deployed, both in terms of direct grants to universities in terms of very high tuition payments by foreign students, but then also funding to what you’d call non governmental organizations NGOs,

5:14 so Justice for Palestine Now this kind of group which organize on campus and they’re very well funded. Everybody remembers all those green tents from the encampments. Those didn’t just materialize out of nowhere. Somebody bought those, and they bought them in bulk and they distributed to them so that disruptive behavior could be supported. So we are working on

5:34 a map of this and then figuring out ways to freeze the funding and cut it off. And there are a couple of different actions that we’re going to recommend on both the state and federal level to enact new legislation that would enable this.

5:48 Speaker 1 Understood, we got thirty seconds left. What else you want to tell the American people.

5:54 Speaker 2 I want to tell the American people that this is a critical year. We need change in this country. And that’s what I have seen over the last three and a half years in terms of national security policy I have never seen before, and I want everyone to think very very seriously about that as we go into the

6:10 high swing of campaign season.

6:12 Speaker 1 Thank you so much, Victoria, Coach. Thank you for your service to our country and continue to continue to speak out for our country, and we’ll catch up with here again real soon.

6:21 Speaker 2 Thank you, John, Take care,