Former US Ambassador Ryan Crocker says what he fears most is “Israeli overconfidence in the wake of the killing of Hamas leader Yahya Sinwar.”

In a lengthy interview with Politico, Crocker, a veteran diplomat known as “America’s Lawrence of Arabia” for his deep understanding of the Middle East, believes that “the killing of Hamas leader Yahya Sinwar presents an opportunity that could lead to the release of Israeli hostages and a ceasefire, but history suggests that Israel and its enemies will not take advantage of it.”

It is noteworthy that Crocker spent nearly four decades representing America's interests in the Arab world, where he served as the US ambassador to Lebanon, Syria, Iraq and Kuwait, as well as to Afghanistan and Pakistan.

Crocker, now retired, believes that Israel’s war on Hamas and Hezbollah — as well as Iran — is nowhere near over. Sinwar’s death, which follows the assassination last month of Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah and several other top commanders, “will essentially continue the guerrilla war unless the United States and Israel work hard toward a ceasefire,” he says. “It also increases the likelihood that Iran will ramp up its nuclear weapons program.”

The current situation, Crocker says, is strikingly similar to what happened four decades ago when the Israelis invaded Lebanon. “That invasion and subsequent Israeli occupation created Hezbollah, and that invasion will not end it,” he says. “One thing I’ve learned over the years, particularly in Iraq and Afghanistan, is that the concept of defeating an adversary only has meaning in the mind of that adversary. If that adversary feels defeated, they’re defeated. If they don’t, they’re not.”

What does the death of Yahya Sinwar mean? “I imagine that the reason Sinwar has survived so long is very similar to the reason Osama bin Laden has survived so long,” Crocker says. “In other words, these organizations have been operating without the direction of a leader. I don’t see much change on the battlefield itself. However, we know that Hamas has largely lost its organizational capacity, but that would be the case with or without Sinwar.”

On Israel’s claims of dramatic victories, including the killing of Hezbollah and Hamas leaders, culminating in Sinwar’s death this week, and Netanyahu’s claim that the “balance of power” in the region has shifted in Israel’s favor, Crocker says: “I would say that’s premature. Hezbollah is clearly continuing to fight. Rockets are still flying across the border, drones are still flying. It’s decentralized. Hamas and Hezbollah are clearly decentralized. They’ve certainly been reduced in their ability to provide anything resembling a meaningful response. But I expect a prolonged insurgency by Hamas.”

The dynamics in the north are quite different, notes Crocker, an expert on irregular armed movements, where Netanyahu has set expectations very high and is trying to stop the rocket fire in a decisive way so that 60,000 Israelis can return home. All Hezbollah has to do is keep enough rockets crossing the border to make that difficult. It’s a fog of war, and it’s very hard to see how strong Hezbollah is right now.

“I was in Lebanon in 1982 when Israel invaded Lebanon,” the former US ambassador notes. “They called their operation ‘Peace for Galilee.’ Forty-two years later, Lebanon is further from peace than it was in 1982 when that invasion began. That invasion and the subsequent Israeli occupation created Hezbollah, and this invasion will not end it.”

Crocker answers a question about the Israeli response to last week’s Iranian missile attack, where recent reports have suggested that the Israelis might not hit Iranian nuclear or oil sites, but rather military or intelligence targets, which would be less escalatory. “Assuming that analysis is correct, and that they won’t hit Iranian oil or nuclear facilities, that leaves them a lot of room for what they might hit, but wherever they hit it won’t materially change any power equation. What I think it will do is push the debate inside Iran toward nuclearization sooner rather than later.”

“I think so,” he added. “Again, they [the Israelis] just have to look at the world stage: You have the Libyan example of what would happen if you gave up nuclear capability, and the North Korean example of what would happen if you kept it.” So “if a country gave up its nuclear weapons program, as Libya did under Muammar Gaddafi in 2003, it’s all over. He was eventually overthrown and killed. But if you have nuclear weapons, you can prevent regime change, as North Korean leader Kim Jong Un seems to have; I think so. The more the Iranians look at non-nuclear options, whether it’s proxies like Hamas or Hezbollah, or a conventional missile capability, the more incentive there is in Tehran to choose that nuclear capability.”

“I worry that the Israelis have become overconfident,” Crocker says. “They hailed Operation Peace for the Galilee in 1982 as a great victory after the PLO withdrew from Beirut. And of course, what they got was Hezbollah, a more lethal enemy than the PLO ever dreamed of. So the idea that a ground invasion and subsequent occupation would make the Galilee safer is a fantasy.”

On the defeat of Hamas or Hezbollah, Crocker says, “One thing I’ve learned over the years, especially in Iraq and Afghanistan, is that the concept of defeating an opponent only has meaning in the mind of that opponent. If the opponent feels defeated, he’s defeated. If he doesn’t feel defeated, he’s not defeated. Do these beheadings make the opponent feel defeated? I think time will tell, but I’d bet against it.”

“I was in Lebanon when Hezbollah was being created, which we paid a high price for and the Israelis paid a higher price for,” he explains. “I was in Lebanon as the US ambassador when the Israelis first decapitated Hezbollah by assassinating Abbas Musawi [Hezbollah’s secretary-general who was killed in 1992 when Israeli helicopters fired missiles at his convoy]. I had to be evacuated because of credible intelligence that there was a plan to assassinate me in retaliation. Well, the decapitation didn’t completely weaken Hezbollah.”

On what the Israelis should do immediately, Crocker says, “Israel should accept victory; declare victory and let us work on the cessation of hostilities. In the north, there is UN Resolution 1701 on the table, as it has been since 2006 [calling for Hezbollah to withdraw from south of the Litani River in Lebanon, disarm and withdraw Israeli forces from Lebanon]. There is another UN resolution from 2004 with similar wording. These are the benchmarks, the texts that all parties involved should take into account. There may be some tough American diplomacy needed to broker a ceasefire in the north at least. In Gaza, I think everything should be geared toward getting the hostages back.”

“And that’s something we have to work toward. And maybe this is a period of time where Hezbollah and Iran for their own reasons might want to reach a ceasefire. But if you can get that — enough of a cessation of hostilities to allow the Israelis to go home — then you might be able to build toward some kind of implementation of Resolution 1701. And that, too, would be the best way to deal with Iran.”

What should be done to deal with Hamas? There are questions about who might take over the leadership of Hamas. Some suggest it could be Khaled Meshaal, the former Hamas leader living in Qatar, or Sinwar’s brother Mohammed, if he is still alive. “Any avenue that Sinwar’s death might open in terms of resolving the hostage issue is something that the Israelis should seize,” Crocker says. “Again, the insurgency will not stop. But the capacity that Hamas had to operate with has been largely eliminated for now. I would hope that Israel will indirectly work to arrange a ceasefire that would allow for the return of any remaining hostages. But we have no idea what is happening with Hamas inside Gaza. We have no idea how many hostages are still alive.”

“It’s very hard to know from the outside what the prospects are for some kind of political settlement,” the former ambassador says. “I’ve seen the reported reactions of the Palestinians in Gaza. Some say they are obligated to fight to the last Palestinian, others hope that Sinwar’s death will mean an end to the misery. If I were an Israeli policymaker, I would put all the resources and imagination I could into returning the hostages.”

“Expanding diplomatic relations between Israel and the region is certainly possible,” Crocker said of the prospects for Saudi-Israeli normalization. “One of the things that has not happened in the year since the Gaza war began is that any Arab country has severed relations with Israel. I think Saudi Arabia will gain momentum to move toward normalization with Israel, especially if Iran moves toward nuclear weapons capability. But that will not, of course, move anything toward a Palestinian settlement.”

“I doubt very much that anything meaningful will come out of the Israeli-Palestinian negotiations. What is missing in the current crisis, but has become somewhat more apparent given the severity of the situation in Gaza and Lebanon, is the West Bank. The Israeli actions there [in its attempt to forcibly uproot the Palestinian population], whether by the settlers or the IDF, do not bode well for any meaningful negotiations with the Palestinians.”

“Again, I remember when we thought that the Israeli invasion in 1982 and the evacuation of the Palestinians, brokered by the United States, would pave the way for a comprehensive peace in the Middle East. That was Reagan’s famous initiative. But it ended almost before it began. I don’t see this initiative as more optimistic. I go back to what I learned through bitter experience. Unless your enemy feels defeated, he isn’t.”

“If the Israelis convince themselves that their amazing achievements in weapons and intelligence actually constitute a victory, that is very dangerous. And it becomes even more dangerous if we start to believe that. Let’s go back to the Reagan initiative. If we think that the damage done to the leadership of Hezbollah and the elimination of Sinwar and other Hamas leaders somehow translates into a new dynamic for peace, and that we can somehow turn that into a far-sighted global settlement – that is madness.”

“I don’t see anything good coming from this,” Crocker explains. “I think the Israelis are thinking in terms of a long-term military occupation of Gaza, and that would simply lead to a long-term insurgency. One of the things that has fundamentally changed since October 7 is Israel’s willingness to accept a certain number of IDF casualties in the long term, a number that they could never have dreamed of before October 7. In the 18 years they spent in Lebanon, from 1982 to 2000, they lost about 1,100 soldiers. As of October 6, 2023, that was a huge number that no Israeli government would ever imagine losing again. But losing another 1,200 in a single day, soldiers, men, women, and children, has changed that calculus. So Israel’s willingness to accept a long-term insurgency in Gaza and an indefinite occupation is much higher than it was before October 7.”