By — Nick Schifrin Nick Schifrin By — Kaisha Young Kaisha Young By — Claire Mufson Claire Mufson Leave your feedback Share Copy URL https://www.pbs.org/newshour/show/defense-secretary-austin-says-u-s-will-do-everything-we-can-to-support-israel Email Facebook Twitter LinkedIn Pinterest Tumblr Share on Facebook Share on Twitter Transcript Audio U.S. Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin says the Pentagon will give Israel everything it needs to wage war on Hamas, even as it continues its support of Ukraine in its war with Russia. Foreign affairs and defense correspondent Nick Schifrin sat down with Austin in Brussels for an exclusive one-on-one interview. Read the Full Transcript Notice: Transcripts are machine and human generated and lightly edited for accuracy. They may contain errors. John Yang: Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin says the Pentagon will give Israel everything it needs to wage war on Hamas, even as it continues its strong support of Ukraine in its war with Russia. Austin visited Israel yesterday and this morning in Brussels before the deal to allow U.S. citizens to leave Gaza. He sat down with Nick Schifrin for an exclusive one on one interview. Nick Schifrin: Mr. Secretary, thank you very much for your time. Welcome. Lloyd Austin: It's good to see you, Nick. Nick Schifrin: We're about 36 hours after Israel called for an evacuation of Gaza City, 1.1 million people. Do you agree overall with Israel's evacuation order at this point? Lloyd Austin: Well, I'll — let Israel speak to its decisions. It's not my place to evaluate their approach to anything. What I'm focused on, Nick, is making sure that we provide them the security assistance that they need to protect their sovereign territory and to protect their people. And that's why I was there. I had a good day with Minister of Defense, spent some time with the prime minister.As you saw, I spoke to Minister Gallant on Saturday of last week. Nick Schifrin: Right after the attack. Lloyd Austin: Right after it's happened. He expressed a need for air to ground munitions, precision guided weapons, and we're going to continue to do everything we can to provide them the support that they need. Nick Schifrin: Yesterday, a senior IDF official was talking to me during our visit, and he dismissed any concerns, humanitarian concerns about the evacuation. He said, look, we're at war. The evacuation is Hamas's problem.Do you think that the evacuation is Hamas's problem, or does Israel need to consider the humanitarian effects of the evacuation? Lloyd Austin: I think any time you construct, you know, plan an operation, you have to account for civilians that are part of that landscape. And we talked about that, and we talked about the need to make sure that, you know, as you conduct your operations, you construct safe zones and corridors so civilians can transit the area and move out of the way of the hostile. Nick Schifrin: Did you ask them to create those humanitarians corridors? Lloyd Austin: We talked about that, yes. Nick Schifrin: Are you asking Israel to delay a ground invasion until those safe corridors can be established? Lloyd Austin: We are not asking Israel to delay or to speed up. That's their call, Nick. My focus is to support them, provide them security assistance they need so that they can be effective in the battle space. Nick Schifrin: Zooming out. Do you think that Israel can accomplish its stated goals — which are capturing or killing all Hamas leaders, destroying the group's military units, and making it impossible for Hamas to govern Gaza — at a reasonable cost to human life in Gaza? Lloyd Austin: Well, I won't assess their goals or speculate as to whether or not they're going to be successful. What I have asked them to do is to be thoughtful about how they select their objectives and, you know, taking into consideration the entire battle space, what's in that battle space, civilians, you name it.This is a very complex environment, potentially, Nick. This is an urban environment, and this is probably a three-dimensional battle, because, as you know, Hamas has constructed a number of tunnels under the city.And so if they conduct a campaign into the city, a land campaign, they'll have to account for that. They've done this before. They've learned lessons, and so they really have to think this through, and I think they will. Nick Schifrin: Yesterday, standing next to Minister Gallant, you said, this is time for resolve, not revenge. And you reiterated what President Biden said, that it was important to uphold the laws of war. Do you believe so far Israel has upheld the laws of war? Lloyd Austin: I haven't been in the battle space, Nick. I can only just see the images that you've seen. And again, this is very complex, and we'll have time to make those assessments going forward, but I would continue to encourage them to be professional, leaders to do the right things and to remain focused on the right things and keep in mind all those things that they were trained to do and conduct our operations in a very responsible manner. Nick Schifrin: I spent a lot of time in Gaza, and a lot of Gazans do not support Hamas. Do you believe that they have to pay the price, though, given Hamas launched the attack from that territory? Lloyd Austin: As you pointed out, Hamas is not the Palestinian people. These are separate entities. And so, I do not think that the people should pay the price for the actions of this terrorist organization. Nick Schifrin: What's your assessment right now of the chances of Lebanese Hezbollah opening up a second front? Lloyd Austin: Well, that possibility is always there. We would highly discourage any entity, any country, any organization from doing that. As you saw, Nick, when this happened, we rapidly moved a carrier battle group into the region, and that carrier battle group provides us with a number of options.So, you heard President Biden say the other day that if anybody ever is thinking about this, you know, we would say, don't. Nick Schifrin: Is the U.S. prepared to attack Lebanese Hezbollah if it opens up a second front? Lloyd Austin: I won't speculate on what we will or will not do. But again, the important part is we have options. We have the combat capability to deter. Nick Schifrin: Does deterrence get more difficult as the fight in Gaza gets more protracted and gets even more bloody? Lloyd Austin: It certainly will. Nick Schifrin: Israeli government officials have embraced the idea that this is their 9/11. You were in the middle of two wars that the United States has fought since 9/11. And I wonder if you have any lessons learned over the past 20 years from your own experience that might apply to Israel's moment today and going forward. Lloyd Austin: One of the things that we learned is that you have to really think through next steps. You have to be very thoughtful about that because they will have long-term implications. Don't operate on reflex activity. Think through what you're going to do, what implications it's going to have for the country, for the region and beyond. Nick Schifrin: Mr. Secretary, thank you very much. John Yang: Nick also spoke with the Defense Secretary about the war in Ukraine, and we'll have that tomorrow. Listen to this Segment Watch Watch the Full Episode PBS NewsHour from Oct 14, 2023 By — Nick Schifrin Nick Schifrin Nick Schifrin is PBS NewsHour’s Foreign Affairs and Defense Correspondent. He leads NewsHour’s daily foreign coverage, including multiple trips to Ukraine since the full-scale invasion, and has created weeklong series for the NewsHour from nearly a dozen countries. The PBS NewsHour series “Inside Putin’s Russia” won a 2017 Peabody Award and the National Press Club’s Edwin M. Hood Award for Diplomatic Correspondence. In 2020 Schifrin received the American Academy of Diplomacy’s Arthur Ross Media Award for Distinguished Reporting and Analysis of Foreign Affairs. He was a member of the NewsHour teams awarded a 2021 Peabody for coverage of COVID-19, and a 2023 duPont Columbia Award for coverage of Afghanistan and Ukraine. Prior to PBS NewsHour, Schifrin was Al Jazeera America's Middle East correspondent. He led the channel’s coverage of the 2014 war in Gaza; reported on the Syrian war from Syria's Turkish, Lebanese and Jordanian borders; and covered the annexation of Crimea. He won an Overseas Press Club award for his Gaza coverage and a National Headliners Award for his Ukraine coverage. From 2008-2012, Schifrin served as the ABC News correspondent in Afghanistan and Pakistan. In 2011 he was one of the first journalists to arrive in Abbottabad, Pakistan, after Osama bin Laden’s death and delivered one of the year’s biggest exclusives: the first video from inside bin Laden’s compound. His reporting helped ABC News win an Edward R. Murrow award for its bin Laden coverage. Schifrin is a member of the Council on Foreign Relations and a board member of the Overseas Press Club Foundation. He has a Bachelor’s degree from Columbia University and a Master of International Public Policy degree from the Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies (SAIS). @nickschifrin By — Kaisha Young Kaisha Young Kaisha Young is a general assignment producer at PBS News Weekend. By — Claire Mufson Claire Mufson Claire Mufson is a journalist and general assignment producer at PBS News Weekend. She produces stories on a wide range of topics including breaking news, health care, culture, disability and the environment. Before joining PBS News, she worked in Paris for French public broadcasting channel France 24 and for The New York Times.