Benjamin Netanyahu

Well, Riyad Mansour is looking at this from his particular vantage point as a diplomat who has spent years, if not decades, lobbying countries to recognize a Palestinian state.

And in that, he and they have been remarkably successful.

You now have...

150-some countries that recognize a Palestinian state, and they include some of the most important and powerful countries in the world.

So from that point of view, the Palestinians have been remarkably successful.

But in the nuts and bolts sense of building a state, I think it's a much different story.

You have in Gaza a state of war and an enclave that's largely in ruins, where Gaza health officials put the death toll at more than 65,000.

In the West Bank, you have a territory that's been carved up by the Israelis into an ever-expanding set of Jewish settlements.

You have a Palestinian authority whose control and credibility is in question.

So from the point of view of a viable and functioning state, I think the Palestinians are further away from that than they've been for a very long time.

Thanks, Rachel.

In fact, I think we have, because I think the Knesset passed a resolution to that effect.

Yeah, I just did.

Thank you for doing that.

Well, the big difference is the Islamist revolution that basically took these very gifted people.

The Iranian people are enormously gifted.

First of all, they have a tremendous historic culture, and you won't be surprised, but maybe your listeners would be surprised, that in antiquity, in the time of the great Persian king Cyrus,

there was a honeymoon between the Jews and the Persian people.

And that relationship actually continued in modest ways, but in significant ways under the Shah.

When the Shah went down and these theological thugs took over Iran,