Middle East update: Hamas disarmament deal reportedly faces Israeli concerns

Let's track the latest in the Middle East.Let's get to some of the most recent posts from U .S.Central Command.Today, the U .S.

military posted this video showing a U .S.Marine Corps F -35C stealth fighter jet launching from the USS Abraham Lincoln as the aircraft carrier transits the Arabian Sea and supports the U .S.blockade against Iran.CENTCOM says as of August 2nd, CENTCOM has redirected 35 commercial vessels disabled to and boarded another two.

Meanwhile, we're waiting for more word from President Trump after he ordered American forces to hold off on new strikes against Iran last night.Trump says regional allies reached the parameters of a deal to end the five -month -old war.However, today, Iran's foreign ministry spokesperson said on state television that the Strait of Hormuz will in no way return to the status that it was before the war started.Iran and that Iran is discussing shipping through the strait with Oman, but there's no current talk about reopening the strait you've been looking at pictures that US CENTCOM has posted within the last week or so as well as that video of the F -35C stealth fighter.Professor Ilone Burstein is here with me to discuss the latest.And Ilone, we kind of had a bit of a whiplash last night.

There was an expectation that the U .S.might carry something large out, and then President Trump putting the brakes on it.I want to show you something I saw from the Saudis.Trump and Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman had a call before the strike was called off.This statement is coming from the Saudis.

It says, in part, the Crown Prince stressed the need to prioritize dialogue to reduce escalation and the importance of making every possible effort to achieve calm that paves the way for diplomatic solutions, preserves the region's security and stability, and prevents a warconflict whose repercussions would affect regional and international security and stability.So, Lon, how important were regional allies in preventing an escalation this weekend?

Thank you for having me, Austin.As always, it's complicated.We have lots and lots of conflicting reports.Iran and the United States have been talking.Despite all the denials coming out from Iran and the power struggles within there, and then the denials, then confirmations from the United States, there's been constant ongoing talks between the sides on a back channel.Not the highest level, but on back channels.

That's one of the avenues that contributed seemingly to this conflict.I won't say de -escalation, but at least pause in the expected escalation.That's one facet.Another facet is the region is right now divided between the sides that are pushing the United States towards carrying out what they call one final blow, and that is primarily Israel, and rumors are the United Arab Emirates are also pushing the United States to escalate.Trump said something different, but those are the rumors that are coming out from the Middle East.In turn, on the other side, we have Saudi Arabia, Qatar, Kuwait, Bahrain, all of these countries, and particularly Qatar and Saudi Arabia, have a direct line to the ear of the President, and all of them are trying to pressure Trump to de -escalate and find a way out of this.

I want to put up something here, which also is something that added pressure, because to the region.And that is an image that Iran published.Iran put this out on Friday night, Saturday.It is their response, essentially, to Trump's threats.And they are showing here a list of energy facilities and targets, the ones it alsoin the United Arab Emirates, in Qatar, in Kuwait, in Israel, that they say their missiles are poised and ready to attack if and when their energy facilities are attacked.

So what Trump has been saying all along is that in one foul swoop, Iran is going to lose all of its power plants and bridges.Iran is saying the region needs to brace for the fact that the retaliation is going to be not against the United States, against all of Israel.the energy production in the region also.Iran put this out on Friday night, Saturday, reports of a lot of calls between Qatar and Saudi Arabia and Trump throughout the weekend.Trump now puts a halt and says talks are going to resume.He just put out a thing on Truth Social saying talks are going to resume tomorrow.

One more thing that I want to say about where things stand with regards to the possible deal between the sides.Over the last week, Iran and Oman have been holding talks about how to negotiate travel through the straits.And essentially what Iran is trying to do is come up with a local deal with the partner, so to speak, on the other side of the strait, and therefore cut the United States out, say both countries agree this is not just Iran imposing its own deals here.The latest thing that was published is that Oman proposed to Iran that they have a sort of joint monitoring mechanism.And Iran responded by offering that Iran will control one way of traffic and Oman will control the other way of traffic, which again would give Iran and theoretically Oman the possibility to cut off the waterway whenever they want.Now, over the last 24 hours, lots of rumors that the sides have come together

there is progress being made.I don't know on which of those versions, if any of them, but that's all that we've had about the ongoing negotiations between them.And when Trump is saying that the regional allies have informed him that there is progress, all we know about what's being negotiated is so far those rumors.So maybe it's progress on that, or maybe there's a new deal we don't know about.

Are there signs that Netanyahu's ability to influence Trump is diminishing?

Absolutely.I think there's a lot of reasons to believe that Israel's ability to influence Trump in this war has diminished or, I mean, obviously with Trump you never know because he says one thing and then says another.And very often some people say, you know, there's no strategy behind this.I think there's probably a lot of strategy behind this.It's meant to confuse you so you don't know exactly what he thinks.But if we look at the, I know we're going to talk about Gaza a little bit later, but if we look at the way other deals have developed in Gaza, in Lebanon, ultimately these things went not the way Netanyahu wanted.

Ultimately, Trump has, over the last year, developed close relations with lots and lots of people who Israel and Netanyahu personally has a dreadful relationship with.Trump repeatedly calls Turkish President Erdogan a wonderful leader, a great leader, a great friend, and is pushing forward a deal to sell him F -35s.Erdogan has said that Netanyahu is worse than Hitler and needs to end up in jail.Similarly, the leaders of Qatar.Trump has developed an extremely close relationship with them.Leaders of Saudi Arabia.

Leader in Syria, which Israel was trying to tell Trump he's a jihadist, don't talk to him.Trump has called him a wonderful guy and a partner for the future.So with all these things coming together, we saw what we're seeing now on the screen is images of the meeting between Trump and Netanyahu last week.Netanyahu asked for a one -on -one meeting with Trump.Trump refused.This is the only thing that happened, the pictures of them together here.

Everyone else is in the room, including JD Vance, including lots of people who are telling Trump, don't listen to Netanyahu anymore.And the closer we get to the end of October, the beginning of November, this is probably going to get worse because Netanyahu is beholden to Trump for the elections in Israel at the end of October.And Trump has the midterms at the beginning of November and does not want any more trouble in the Middle East.

Let's talk about the parameters of a deal that Trump talked about yesterday, although I believe in the statement he erroneously wrote perimeters of a deal.The parameters, how clear are they to us alone?Does it immediately change anything on the ground other than preventing the US from carrying out some sort of big strike over the weekend?Is it actually changing anything now?

Quite frankly, we have surprisingly little leaks with regards to what this new advances in the deal may include.Usually, specifically news sites coming out of Saudi Arabia, Al -Hiyat, and others, the Arabi, they have a lot of leaks that usually come from the different governments in the Middle East, and we have very little coming out this time.This can be interpreted in two ways.It can be interpreted that, in fact, there's nothing new here.The sides are maybe coming back to the Memorandum of Understanding, which completely got derailed, and maybe they're just coming back to that.So there's very little new leaks about how the region is going to look, or at least how the Straits of Hormuz and the ceasefire between the sides is going to look.

One possibility.Another possibility, and this is what Iran is saying, Iran is saying no progress has really been made.While Trump is saying everything has moved forward, Iran is saying no progress has been made.We don't know what Trump's talking about.Trump's just afraid to carry out this attack.Now Iran said that last time also, right before the Memorandum of Understanding.

So we have to also bear that in mind.Iran has always said no progress has been made.But at this point, we don't really have any information on if this is a new deal being negotiated, or if this is something that is just going to go back to the memorandum of understanding.I remind you, the memorandum of understanding has a two -month deadline to it.Those two months are coming up.They're coming up in a week.

Now, obviously, the memorandum is history, so maybe we'll restart it again.We have to always consider the deadline.The beginning of November is what Trump is looking at.If there was even a temporary deal for three months, he may take it, get oil prices down, get gas prices down, leading into that.That may be looking at another temporary resolution.Again, we'll know more probably in the coming days or even hours.

Talking about the beginning of November, because that's when the midterms are.

Of course, yeah.The internal political pressures are really what are dictating right now the different balances of power.If we look also just one moment, I want to pull up just as something I've shown in the past.And within Iran, I'm not going to go through the whole list.I'm just going to say we also have a balance of power in Iran, which is also dictating the way Iran behaves.On this side, we have the more extremists, the ones that are more hawkish, more seeking military confrontation, the Supreme Leader, Mojtaba Khamenei, and really the strongest man in Iran right now, Ahmad Wahidi, the commander of the Revolutionary Guards.

On this side, we have the more, I don't want to say moderates, I mean these are the leaders of Iran, these aren't people who love the West, but they are seeking political accommodation.And there, Massoud Farzashian, the president, and Abbas Araki, the foreign minister.In the middle, Mohammad Lalibaf balances them all.But the reason why I bring this up is because We tend to often look at Iran and in general at the other side, whatever the other side is, as though it's cohesive.By us, we understand there's Republicans, there's Democrats, it's complicated.In Iran right now, there's a power struggle, and that's also one of the reasons that we're not getting a clear picture.

These guys are saying, we're going to war.They're publishing those images.We'll attack the entire Middle East.These guys are saying, we're negotiating.We can make a deal.We don't know at this point.

Maybe we'll know later.And just like the United States, we're looking towards the midterms as something that's pressuring the president.In Iran, it's internal politics that are pressuring the different leaders.

Alon Burstein with us tonight.We do have to step away for a quick commercial break.Alon and I are going to stick around.We have to discuss Gaza as well.Lots of big news coming through relating to the disarmament of Hamas.New details coming through saying that the Israelis might not exactly be seeing eye to eye with the United States on the news that was announced.

We're going to get into that more with Alon in about two minutes.Okay, let's talk about Gaza.These are the videos that are shared by the Israeli Air Force in the last day or so.They say they struck Hamas members.members of other terrorist groups, and they destroyed five Hamas weapons storage facilities.This comes as Israel is reportedly sharing serious security concerns with the White House regarding the proposed disarmament deal with Hamas.

An Israeli spokesperson told the Associated Press that Israel's intelligence assessment is that Hamas remains committed to rebuilding its military rather than genuinely demilitarizing.They said that the Israeli military would not withdraw from Gaza before Hamas disarms.Let's bring in Elon Burstyn.He's still here with me.Thanks for sticking around, Elon.You know, when President Trump's announcement originally came through about Hamas's disarmament, we were all kind of looking at Israel to see what they would say about this announcement.

Why did Trump announce this disarmament alone if the Israelis still have serious concerns?Is there a disconnect?

peace has not been achieved.Trump likes to make grand statements.He likes to make grand statements about how these deals are going to usher in a new era.It's part of his persona, part of the way he does things.So the fact that he declared already that it's a done deal is itself less surprising.The fact that you bring in that Israel still has a lot of concerns is one of the things, though, that has been pointed out, that Trump went forward with this deal essentially without Israel's approval.

Israel was not part of the negotiations in the final round of what the Board of Peace has come to with Hamas.Israel sent a delegation to El Alamein where they were negotiating this, but before the Israeli government agreed or approved, the sides said that they reached a deal.Now the reason that they did that is because technically, Israel's not a part of this.Israel already agreed to all of these terms when it agreed to join the Board of Peace, when it agreed to the 20 -point plan back in October.Why everything got stuck was that the 20 -point plan had release of hostages, Palestinian prisoners, and all kinds of other things immediately, then Hamas disarming and Israel withdrawing, and Hamas disarming and Israel withdrawing.However, Hamas refused to disarm.

There was no way to move forward.Israel didn't withdraw.Things got frozen.Things got stuck.That's why we've ended up in the last 10 months.So theoretically speaking, as far as the administration is concerned, now Hamas has agreed to disarm.

Great.Israel doesn't need to be active.what its view is on that.That's the way the United States is seeing it, the way the Board of Peace is seeing it, and much to Israel's dismay, it has a lot of grievances about this deal, but it hasn't been asked and it's moving forward.

Help us understand.How many weapons are actually in Gaza?

I know you can't give us a precise number or quantity, but help people understand, because nobody can get in or out of Gaza.

Presumably weapons can't get in or out of Gaza.So explain to us why it is so hard to disarm an entity like Hamas, even if they're restricted to the small area of the Gazan borders.

So one of the things, a common mistake that is made by people when it comes to trying to understand Hamas is they assume that even over the last 15 years that most of the weapons were smuggled in through Rafah, through tunnels.That is not true.Hamas has spent the last 15 to 20 years building an infrastructure to produce weapons in Gaza.Hamas was the government.They had all kinds of outside help, knowledge, know -how, equipment that was smuggled in, money.But the vast, vast majority of guns, missiles, rockets, anti -tank missiles, the equipment to build tunnels was all made in -house.

Hamas has the knowledge, it has the know -how.Now, Hamas has been governing, give or take 40 % of the Gaza Strip, but 90 % of the population over the last 10 months, again, rebuilding itself.Not only does it have all of these weapons that we're seeing here on the images, this is recent, this is not history.Not only does it have all of these weapons from warehouses and storages that it's been making for 15 years, it is producing them.It's producing them.right now.

There are factories that are back in play producing rockets, producing guns, producing ammunition.Hamas has the know -how, has the knowledge.According to the estimates that came out within Israel, and this is now as of two months ago, Hamas still has in its possession, give or take 60 ,000 guns, AK -47s, these guns that we're seeing on camera, in the Gaza Strip.It has recruited and trained 25 ,000 fighters.Then that number of fighters is only sort of less than what Hamas had at the beginning of the war.These aren't as well trained, they're not as well indoctrinated, but there are people who are ready to fight.

It still has, again, this is based on Israeli intelligence, still has hundreds of short -range rockets and dozens of long -range rockets.But most importantly, it also just has the drive to do this.And that is ultimately going to be what makes it or breaks it.Because within this deal, Hamas may give up some of its weapons.And again, as you said, no one knows how many it has.If Hamas gives back 20 ,000 guns and says, that's all the guns we have, who is going to say, no, that's not true?

Is it Israel?According to the deal, it's not Israel.Who's going to say that?But even if Hamas were to give back a large contingent of its weapons, As long as the organization has the capability to produce more weapons, as long as it has its people in governing positions that they can be in charge of producing more weapons, it's not over as far as it's concerned.And that's why this idea of disarming Hamas is not something that you can do by just collecting all the guns and saying goodbye.One last thing I'll say.

The deal differentiates between collecting the guns and decommissioning them.That is a model that is taken from Northern Ireland.In Northern Ireland, after the Good Friday Agreement, they also had a process of collecting weapons and decommissioning them.The big difference... is that the vast majority of the IRA at that time was willing to go along with the deal.It supported the deal.In this case, Hamas is saying it's willing to disarm, but they're not considering the war over, they're not considering the situation now at peace and in a resolution, and that creates the big problem, that even if you collect 50 % of the weapons, Hamas can still produce more, make more, it has the knowledge, it has the know -how, and that's where you're really stuck.

Yeah, I want to go back to these images of the strikes that the Israeli Air Force has been posting on social media.As I read at the top, Israel is continuing to strike and kill people in Gaza.They've confirmed that they continue to eliminate terrorists who are threatening the IDF and threatening Israeli citizens.But there are also reports of civilian casualties alone.Have Hamas and the IDF, both Hamas and the IDF, have they been abiding by the terms of the ceasefire?

Neither side has really abided by the ceasefire.Each one has violated it differently.And again, this usually gets people when they favor one side of the political map versus the other to say, how can you compare equity blame?Because the ceasefire says both are obligated to stopping attacks, stopping military activity.Now, the question then becomes, what does that include?Israel has said the fact that Hamas is producing weapons and Hamas is training its operatives and planning attacks is a violation of the agreement because it says stop all military activity.

So as far as Israel is concerned, each and every time it carries out one of these attacks, it says this was a member who was violating the ceasefire because they were still preparing militant activity.In turn, Hamas says every time Israel carries out one of these attacks, it's in violationbecause Hamas itself... has not actually carried out violent attacks in almost six months.It's actually one of the interesting things.It's a flip around of the way things were immediately after the ceasefire was declared.And we had the yellow line, right, this demarcation line between the areas that the Israeli military controls in yellow and the areas that Hamas controls in green.

The orange areas are where Israel has pushed the yellow line further in.Immediately when the ceasefire was declared, Hamas carried out cross border insurgencies, cross the border, the yellow line border.There were at least 10 Israeli soldiers who were killed in those different operations.And there were rumors that Hamas was trying to plan the kidnapping of another soldier.However, in the last, basically since the beginning of 2026, since the border of peace started to develop itself, Hamas made a strategic decision.It has not retaliated once to any of these Israeli attacks.

Israel has carried out a lot of assassinations and attacks.It has not carried out any violent response because it wants to be seen by the United States and the Board of Peace as the one who, yes, maybe we're producing weapons, but we're not actually violating the agreement.And in fact, the Board of Peace issued a statement today after those attacks condemning Israel, saying that Israel is violating the ceasefire, Israel is trying to hamper with the deal that has just been reached.So Hamas's strategy is to a large extent succeeding.According to the Board of Peace, neither side has really lived up to it, but the one that's carrying out the strikes is the Israeli side.

Professor Lumberstein with us today.I know you got to go alone.I appreciate the analysis.As always, double duty today.How can people keep up with your courses and your content?

Look me up on YouTube primarily, the Israel -Palestine report.We have lots and lots of things.I will say, if you're interested specifically in the disarming agreement, look at the video I uploaded last night.They did an hour and a half analyzing each and every one of the articles and how feasible they are.Happy to see anyone there and happy to take any questions.

Alone.

Have a good rest of your Sunday.

See you soon.Thank you.Have a good night.