Why America Keeps Failing in the Middle East: Steven A. Cook Explains

00:00:00:00 - 00:00:34:09
Unknown
And we have very different viewpoints on many things. But a lot of these issues are American issues. They're not Republican or Democrat issues. Welcome back to Elevated Thoughts. Today we are joined by Steven, a cook, the Emmy and Rico Mater senior fellow for Middle East and Africa Studies at the Council on Foreign Relations. Stephen's also the author of the recent book The End of Ambition America's Past, Present and Future in the Middle East, of which Mike and I sort through Stephen because it was so relevant and in many cases, cases precious.

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Unknown
Awesome for reading. Yeah. Well, thank you for joining us today. I already know is going to be an insanely valuable conversation. So how are you doing today? I'm doing well. How about you guys? I mean, as we were discussing beforehand, I had a brisket sandwich today, and that makes it a good day. Awesome. And we all have a history on Long Island to some degree.

00:00:54:12 - 00:01:15:17
Unknown
So small world, very intuitively. Yeah. Well, no. Thank you again for coming on. Your book was eye opening to me especially. I'm someone that's kind of still getting my feet wet on geopolitics, foreign relations, especially in the middle East. And it's such a crazy place. So the average American has been hearing for years and years our military involvement.

00:01:15:17 - 00:01:39:21
Unknown
Or maybe it's our military withdrawal and you combine that with this extreme fervent support from so many, it's we must protect Israel or we must invade Iraq. And then you've got this other huge contingency where it's like apathy. And no, we have these nationalistic interests in mind. So get out of the Middle East. And so we've been hearing all of this mixed messaging on and off and on and off, literally decades.

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Unknown
So today, Mr. Cook, someone with a bit of experience, actually, to start, why don't you tell us a little bit about your background and, maybe your involvement with the Council on Foreign Relations, so. Well, first of all, thanks so much for having me. I really appreciate it. And I appreciate you guys, delving into the book.

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Unknown
It's really nice for an author, to know that people are reading the book and that it's thought provoking and that that's the best thing. Like, I could sell a million copies, but no one give me any feedback. It would be great to sell a million copies. Obviously, I got a daughter threatening to go to medical school, but at the same time it's it's a great threat.

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Unknown
It wouldn't be as terrific. I could tell a lot less, but hear from from readers and that's that's extraordinarily gratifying, whether they like it or not. Like it. You know, that's. I'm not here just to write for an echo chamber. Anyway, my background, I'm an academic by training. I have a PhD in political science from the University of Pennsylvania.

00:02:36:20 - 00:02:56:22
Unknown
I grew up on Long Island. That's the Long Island connection here. And have been interested in the Middle East. I think probably since the hostages were taken in Iran in 1979. I'm a bit older than you to. At least it looks that way from, from the looks of it, you and that was really my introduction to the region.

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Unknown
And it was fascinating to me because my parents were kind of World War Two generation. They were born during World War two or just before and were Kennedy and Johnson liberals. And so, you know, there was this idea about the positive use of American power around the world, not the you know, we didn't raise the flag on the front lawn and Plainview, Long Island every morning.

00:03:16:12 - 00:03:36:05
Unknown
But, you know, there was this idea about, America. And it was quite odd to me as a kid who was in sixth and seventh grade, that there were millions of people in the streets of this country called Iran calling, you know, calling for the death of America. What was this all about? And so it really launched me into this kind of fascination with that part of the world.

00:03:36:05 - 00:03:55:23
Unknown
And I had always been a kid who was interested in international affairs. Anyway, fast forward college, grad school, and, I was fortunate enough to be noticed by the leadership of the Council on Foreign Relations who asked me, not that long after I finished my PhD, to come join the staff of the council. And I've been there ever since.

00:03:55:23 - 00:04:21:10
Unknown
Four books and hundreds of articles later, I like, say, four books, two kids, hundreds of articles later, I'm still there and the Middle East is remains, fascinating, frustrating place. Every single day. Yeah. So I'm really excited to have you on actually, foreign Affairs magazine is is one of my main staples. I enjoy it because, you know, you get both sides.

00:04:21:10 - 00:04:37:04
Unknown
You know, there's, there's authors who take, you know, different positions, and it really challenges your beliefs. But I think what's also really important and the goal of our show here is we try to ask the dumb questions, you know, get, you know, we try. It's no such thing as a dumb question, only dumb answers right now.

00:04:37:08 - 00:04:57:03
Unknown
But the, the, the, you know, we try to speak for the layman and also provide context. I think that's what's really important. And there's a lot of folks, you know, they know what happened as far as just a couple of months ago, you know, their optics are just October and that's and they don't really caught on because I have been going around the country over the course of since May, really took some time off during the summer to promote the book.

00:04:57:05 - 00:05:23:17
Unknown
And, you know, for things for me, there are things that are just kind of like common sense and things that I know about. And, I often forget that people are missing huge amounts of context in the story. And when they hear the context, it's either complexity wise, the situation for them, which is really good because it forces them to think about it or it clarifies in the sense of, oh, I didn't know that I was operating under a whole set of different assumptions, which is also very gratifying.

00:05:23:18 - 00:05:49:17
Unknown
Yeah. So I think what's important, right. I don't mean to cut you off, Cooper. I just want to set up one thing is just, you know, what's really nice about your book is, you know, your sobering analysis, and we kind of get into the, the, the, the transformative agendas that come later in US policy. But maybe you could set up a little bit about how the US kind of got into the Middle East to begin with, and starting a little bit about, you know, what the Carter Doctrine and the Reagan core is for most, most folks, those are just something I need to Wikipedia, because I know I'm not gonna sound like

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Unknown
Reagan Carlin. There's a Wikipedia Reagan Carter that I have to look that up. Maybe because it's not written down, it's not run down. But sure, you know, you can go back further than the Carter Doctrine. You go back further than the Reagan Corollary, on the Middle East. There's there are really three reasons why the United States has been so, involved in the Middle East.

00:06:09:05 - 00:06:30:07
Unknown
And, of course, we haven't been as involved in the Middle East as we have been in the last 30 years as we were in the 30 years prior to that. But the three core issues, the three issues that I lay out in the book are one, the first thing I call the prime directive for Star Trek fans, and that is the free flow of energy resources from Middle East.

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Unknown
You know, oil was critical to the healthy functioning of the global economy, but particularly during the Cold War, Western economies, it was Saudi oil that rebuilt Europe after World War two. And so the free flow of these energy resources were absolutely critical to the security of the United States, rebuilding Europe, a Europe that is whole that is free during the during the Cold War that is aligned with the United States was, a core, as I said, core global interests in this second, interest of the United States in the Middle East was helping to ensure Israel's security.

00:07:08:07 - 00:07:33:13
Unknown
Now, this has become very, very controversial after many years of it being, you know, a bipartisan consensus. And it's and lots of people want to say, oh, it's all about politics or it's all about, you know, strategic interests. It's about whatever. It's actually bound up in a number of factors which are really hard to pull apart. Yes, there's a political aspect to it.

00:07:33:15 - 00:07:58:16
Unknown
There are influential groups in the United States that are very strongly pro-Israel, parts of the American Jewish community, evangelicals who form a critical base of the Republican Party, are probably the most solidly pro-Israel group of people in the country and quite politically active there. Yes, there are strategic interests involved. Israel has become, particularly since the 1970 3rd October 1975.

00:07:58:16 - 00:08:30:11
Unknown
You were a critical strategic ally in the Cold War and a partner in a variety of of other things. And then there are things like the historical moral case for Israel, which has shaped the American view of it post-World War two. The revelations of the horrors of the Holocaust. President Harry Truman, who was the president who recognized the provisional government of the State of Israel in May 1948, said that it was a matter of justice to, and he overruling many of his advisors who did not want to recognize Israel.

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Unknown
And then there is religious interpretation. The aforesaid evangelicals interpret the restoration of Jews in their biblical homeland as a piece of prophecy that that that's that it is it is part of the theology of evangelicals and a step towards the redemption of the world. And so all of those things kind of put together, which, again, are very, very hard to pull apart, have rendered the relationship what President Kennedy, who first used the term a special relationship.

00:09:03:05 - 00:09:30:02
Unknown
And then the third thing was, the way I talk about it in the book is they say that the United States endeavored to prevent one country or some combination of countries from challenging American predominance in the region in the service of those two other things, the Prime Directive and Israel. It was easy. During the Cold War, we wanted to keep the Soviets out of the Middle East, but particularly the Persian Gulf.

00:09:30:04 - 00:09:55:07
Unknown
And that's where we really get. And so but we weren't so active in this until really the 1970s, when it came to oil. That was the job that the Brits had. And it wasn't until they withdrew, from the Middle East, east of the Suez, as they say, that it became more and more of an American responsibility.

00:09:55:09 - 00:10:26:02
Unknown
We had a policy. President Nixon had a policy, the Nixon Doctrine, which was to basically what they call the Nixon Doctrine. Now, something called offshore balancing, which is basically to give our partners in the region enough weaponry and political and financial support to establish an equilibrium in the region so that they can basically take care of themselves, and that if the region comes, you know, if there's a war or something, we can come in, we reset the equilibrium, it's there, and we start over again.

00:10:26:04 - 00:10:50:06
Unknown
The problem in the Middle East was that the Nixon Doctrine are two pillars. They call them pillars of of our policy. There was he was the Shah of Iran. Shah was overthrown in revolution in 1978 and 1979, and Saudi Arabia and Saudi Arabia was really about ensuring their internal stability because their vast oceans of oil underneath Saudi Arabia.

00:10:50:08 - 00:11:28:07
Unknown
And then also in 1979, there were a series of events that shook the, stability of the Saudi kingdom, notably the siege of the Grand Mosque in Mecca, which raised a whole host of questions about the stability of the House of Saud. And as a result of these two things, in 1979 and the invasion of Afghanistan, the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan, Jimmy Carter in 1980 articulated what is now known as the Court of Doctrine, and it was a part of his state of the Union address in which he said the United States would defend the oil fields of the Persian Gulf from external threats.

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Unknown
That external threat was the Soviet Union. The Soviets in Kabul were actually not that far from the Persian Gulf, where, you know, huge quantities of oil that, the West depended on was located. And then in the 1980s, there became something known as the Reagan Corollary, which was, as I said before, not down, but it was a policy which eventually kind of got rounded out and filled out.

00:11:58:09 - 00:12:35:13
Unknown
And it was to add to a corollary to the Carter Doctrine, which was the United States would defend the oil fields of the Persian Gulf from internal threats internal to the Persian Gulf threats. So that meant revolutionary Iran, and other malign actors. And that has really set the course of our policy in the region ever since. Well, your response was very comprehensive, and it sounded as though the strategy that these presidents, as they changed, was comprehensive or coherent, or it stayed as one strategy.

00:12:35:19 - 00:12:54:12
Unknown
But as we kind of understood as reading your book, the underlying theme was that, well, every 48 years when a new party came in or a new president sat in that Oval Office, the policies kind of changed, whether it was towards assisting Iraq or invading, sorry, it's assisting Israel or invading. Well, we did assist during the Iran-Iraq war.

00:12:54:14 - 00:13:16:17
Unknown
So for example. Right. So but something we talk about a lot on the show is how there's so much changing in the United States between party this and that, that we actually are at this kind of a deficit or a weak point, in my opinion, because the other nations who were adversarial China, Russia, Soviets, Saudi Arabia, and they all have these long term ruling structures where they kind of have these expectations, what we're going to do.

00:13:16:17 - 00:13:41:21
Unknown
But their expectation has become they have no idea what we're going to do. So there's a couple things that are going on in this question. And then I want to address it. You know, earlier on in between, you know, let's say the end of World War Two and up to, you know, the late 1970s, all the way through the 80s, there was pretty much consistency in American foreign policy in the Middle East.

00:13:41:23 - 00:14:08:08
Unknown
We pursued those three goals, helping to prevent threats, preventing threats to the free flow of energy sources, helping to prevent threats to Israel, and preventing threats to American predominance to provide stability and security in the region. And this really picked up in the 1970s. And then two momentous events happened in 1991. And I asked this question whenever I give talks on this book and nobody remembers, it's amazing to me.

00:14:08:11 - 00:14:26:18
Unknown
This is one of those things. It's like complete common sense, like part of my everyday life kind of thing. And I'm constantly stunned when people don't remember this. So I always ask, no, you won't, you won't remember you guys. Actually neither. You were kind of old enough to remember this. I was born in 92. Okay, so you really don't remember this?

00:14:26:21 - 00:14:55:15
Unknown
So I ask you. Excuse. You do in a book talks like who buys books? Older people. And so, I mean, maybe they don't remember because they're older people. But anyway, I always ask people what happened on February 26th, 1991, complete blank stares. It's when Saddam Hussein waved the white flag in what is known as Operation Desert Storm, after the United States kicked his army out of Kuwait, and the United States and its coalition partners restored Kuwaiti sovereignty.

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Unknown
Huge demonstration. Awesome demonstration of American force. The United States put together a coalition of 27 countries, including 500,000 American troops, into Saudi Arabia. And then in, you know, relatively quick work pushed Saddam's army out of out of Kuwait like no one expected. This, the proficiency of the United States military with remember, this is not that long after the ignominious withdrawal from Vietnam, etc., etc., etc..

00:15:26:14 - 00:15:56:08
Unknown
So we do this awesome demonstration of American force. Then ten months later, what happened exactly ten months later? What happens? December 26th, 1991. You guys don't remember this? The Soviet Union comes to an end. All right, you do that. Okay. Good history classes. Go Hofstra. And so then you have this awesome demonstration of American force at the beginning of the year, and then it's the end of the year, America's one global aberration.

00:15:56:08 - 00:16:25:20
Unknown
I mean, China was this backward, backward country at the time, one global adversary gone. So the United States has all this power in the world. And what are we going to do with it? We're going to transform it. We're going to make everybody look more like us. And one of the and I mean, I can go on and on and on about this, but one of the places and the place that I think policymakers on both sides of the aisle believed was most in need of change, American help was the Middle East.

00:16:26:02 - 00:16:53:18
Unknown
So we went from a policy prior to 1991 of trying really to kind of prevent bad things from happening. And we had these three goals and everybody agreed on those goals. And so we had limited objectives, limited things. And we were by dint of what policymakers wanted to do, quite successful at that. Oh, there were setbacks. The Iranian revolution, the 1973 Arab oil embargo, there were moral costs.

00:16:53:18 - 00:17:13:11
Unknown
I mean, we were supporting governments that didn't share our values. We contributed to the statelessness of the Palestinian people. But by dint of what policymakers wanted to do, we were pretty successful at post 1991. You get into the Clinton years, you know, like it was the Zeit Geist of triumphalism, right? Remember, Clinton, you guys don't remember because you're too young.

00:17:13:11 - 00:17:36:09
Unknown
But Clinton's theme song in his 1992 campaign was Fleetwood Mac's Don't Stop Thinking About Tomorrow. I mean, like, this was a really positive moment in American foreign policy and global system is kicking off it. Doesn't everybody want to be like us? My friends went to Eastern Europe to turn everybody into, you know, like Democrats and good journalists and so on.

00:17:36:09 - 00:17:58:12
Unknown
And so forth. And like I said, one of the things that we wanted to do was transform the Middle East, and the Clinton team wanted to do that. They figured if they got peace between Israelis and Palestinians, it would be have this transform into effect and transform the politics of the authoritarian governments of the Arab world. Sounds great.

00:17:58:12 - 00:18:24:10
Unknown
In a conference room in Washington, DC. Realities very, very different. And and that's when you start getting the swings in policies. Add to that you start getting like kind of changes. Although consistently post 1992, you have this transformative impulse on the part of policymakers, but they have different rationales. So Bush said no, no, no. Do we get pieces to do reform?

00:18:24:10 - 00:18:45:00
Unknown
First you have to transform the region, etc., etc.. Sorry, but it's around the time you start getting political polarization in this country, so you get anything. But where Clinton did anything but what Bush did, anything but what Obama did, etc., etc., etc. so that's when the Chinese look good. They have a long view. The Russians have a long view.

00:18:45:00 - 00:19:16:00
Unknown
Others have long views and we get it. We Democrats in power is going to undo everything that the Republicans did. Republican gets to undo everything. We're about to see that President Trump is about to be inaugurated, and he's going to undo a whole host of things that President Biden did. But let's just take the best example of this was the what's called the known by its acronym, the JCPoA, the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action, which is this awkward title for what everybody basically refers to as the Iran nuclear deal.

00:19:16:01 - 00:19:35:14
Unknown
So we had the Iran nuclear deal under President Obama. It's great. Oh everybody's wonderful. Are you hated? It was the worst you'll ever. And so and Americans elected Donald Trump and it was the worst. And he got rid of it. So our parties in the region are like okay, they they weren't in love with the Iran nuclear deal, but they were accommodating themselves to it.

00:19:35:16 - 00:20:04:03
Unknown
Well, then we got out of it and we're doing maximum pressure. Well, then President Biden is elected and he's like, oh, we should get back into the JCPoA so no one knows what we're doing. And the problem with this era and I'm no, no, shut up. But you guys dropped a quarter in me. The the, the problem with this era beginning in the mid 1990s is that we lost an understanding of what was important to the United States.

00:20:04:05 - 00:20:43:00
Unknown
So everything became this critical interest of the United States, so that everything, nothing was important. Right? Everything. So this wildly overambitious effort to transform the region and and we were never able to discern it officially, discern what's truly important to United and what we should devote resources to, and what would be nice to. And we get this mess that we create for ourselves between 1992 and arguably, you know, up through the invasion and occupation of Iraq under the vague umbrella of spreading democracy is what, you know, colloquially we call it.

00:20:43:01 - 00:21:02:22
Unknown
So I think you summarize it nicely that the US has been very good at preventing bad things happening to our core interests, but we were not very good at making good things happen or in action of our interest. Right. And I think it's important, you know, we we look at our successes in the region and we look at our failures and understand the costs in both those scenarios.

00:21:03:04 - 00:21:15:22
Unknown
But I think, you know, there's this this a lot of feeling of folks who, you know, we went through a lot of the history and context now, and maybe they can kind of digest that a little bit. But there's still a lot of folks who are just kind of apathetic. And they say to themselves, you know, why are we in this region?

00:21:15:22 - 00:21:30:17
Unknown
Why are we so involved? So I guess for us, you know, try to summarize a little bit of the case against retrenchment, you know, and talking about this kind of in the context of a multipolar world, right. Because there's lots of options in the market if the US isn't involved in the region, it kind of opens it up to other players.

00:21:30:18 - 00:22:04:00
Unknown
Well, okay. What kind of cars you guys drive? I, I'm actually driving a German car, though. I do like my Japanese cars. Okay, I we've got a Subaru over here, a Subaru Crosstrek. Okay, so, you know, it's a global energy market, right? And even though the United States is the biggest producer of oil and gas in the world, if one part of the world goes offline, it's a simple problem of what?

00:22:04:00 - 00:22:30:03
Unknown
Supply and demand. So when supply goes down, prices go up. And there is, connection between that core interest in the region and the free flow of energy resources in a obviously put president's parochial political interests. Right. Like I remember I remember 2021, we're coming out of the so-called Covid lockdown, which like Americans are like, oh my God, we're locked up.

00:22:30:03 - 00:22:51:13
Unknown
This is crazy. You take up arms, whatever. Like I've been to South Africa and they were telling us about their lockdown insanity, like total insanity. But anyway, we're coming out of it. We're traveling, revenge, travel, drive everywhere. But, you know, whatever you can you say that on your podcast. I'm sorry. Yes. Okay. Cool. And like gas prices are steadily going up.

00:22:51:15 - 00:23:14:03
Unknown
And then Russia invade Ukraine and everybody goes bananas. And in that summer, after Russia invaded Ukraine, gas was like five and a half dollars, $6 a gallon and so on and so forth. And the United States desperately wanted the Saudis, who even though the United States is the biggest producer the Saudis can produce cheaper. They have so much oil, it takes them a lot.

00:23:14:03 - 00:23:29:01
Unknown
They just need, you know, for a tap in the ground and it comes up. And so it's cheaper. And so if you want to put more oil on the market fast to bring prices down, you want the Saudis to do it. So we want to have the kind of relationship with the Saudis where like not not wink, wink.

00:23:29:01 - 00:23:54:00
Unknown
You do this for us when we do it turns out President Biden didn't have that relationship with the Saudis. The Saudis have been willing to do that in the past. And but think about this. Imagine the Iranians who have a revolutionary view of the region, even after all these years, after the revolution, the leaders in Iran want to spread their revolution and destabilize the Middle East.

00:23:54:02 - 00:24:16:18
Unknown
Saudi Arabia, a close ally of ours, the United Arab Emirates, close ally of the United States, Bahrain, Egypt, Israel, all these countries, they are status quo powers. They benefit from the regional order that the United States has essentially created and that they helped create. The Iranians don't like that. So the Iranians engage in malign activities all over the region as they destabilize the region.

00:24:16:18 - 00:24:34:01
Unknown
This has implications, potentially for global oil prices and for what you guys are driving. I drive the TV. I'm not superior about that. I realize what the carbon footprint of actually producing an EV is. I think if I had this EV for 20 years, I won't make it back. But whatever, it's a cool car. It is cool. Yeah, you're faster than the pickup is.

00:24:34:01 - 00:25:00:02
Unknown
Pretty cool. Hey. And so the bottom line is, is that because of this interdependent global oil market, what happens in the Middle East, what happens in Russia, what happens in other places has an impact on you guys in what you pay at the pump. That's one reason, why we're the second reason why we're there. Where were you guys on 911?

00:25:00:04 - 00:25:24:15
Unknown
What grade? Yeah, I was in middle school. Okay. I was in Washington. My dad, I was really. I was really concerned because I was the second person I called after my wife because my dad was a lawyer in New York. And on any given day, he could have been downtown. Yeah, yeah, in any event. So, 911 now seems like a very long time ago, but it's not.

00:25:24:15 - 00:25:57:11
Unknown
And those threats are still out there. And the threat of Islamic extremism exists for a variety of reasons. We can do another podcast where we can get into that, but our security relationships with these governments of the region, our involvement, I think and what I say in the book about counter-terrorism is, yeah, I wish we just read our own counterterrorism strategies, because it would be much better than the things we've done before, which was like, let's transform the region because democracy is an antidote to terrorism, which actually isn't true.

00:25:57:16 - 00:26:27:05
Unknown
But there is something to be said for our intensive diplomacy, our sometime use of military force to keep America and Americans safe. And that's going to be an ongoing problem. And we see that in the recent changes in Syria that these kinds of terrorist groups thrive in ungoverned and unstable spaces. The Islamic State, al-Qaida, which attacked the United States, and 911 have sought to regroup and rearm in these types of spaces.

00:26:27:05 - 00:26:57:06
Unknown
And they continually, continually seek ways to damage the United States. Israel, like I said, Israel had. There are multiple factors that have led to our ongoing close, special relationship, as presidents like to call it. I do think that that's likely to change in not two years, five years, but ten, 15, 20 years for a variety of important reasons.

00:26:57:08 - 00:27:32:17
Unknown
Changing nature, politics, changing nature of economies. Israel's a wealthy, industrialized democracy or it has problems democratically but more democratic than its neighbors, etc., etc.. So those are the reasons, essentially why we are. And then now bring it back. One more thing. Great power competition. A back in theory, the Chinese Communist Party and the United States have a common interest in the free flow of energy resources out of the Middle East.

00:27:32:18 - 00:27:54:20
Unknown
And so far, the Chinese have been perfectly happy to benefit from the security umbrella that we provide in the Persian Gulf to ensure that. But there may come a day where that isn't the case. And that's why we, the Biden administration, was involved in negotiating a security pact with the Saudis. Maybe the Trump administration will do that.

00:27:54:20 - 00:28:17:12
Unknown
I don't know, it's very hard to tell. We'll know more about what the Trump administration policies are in the coming months. But those are some of the compelling reasons that keep us here. Now, if we this just some examples of like too little United States that that's my doing why we should be there but like why you know, people like, those aren't good enough reasons we should leave.

00:28:17:13 - 00:28:37:09
Unknown
Well, think about this. Go back to the first Trump term, and I'm just using this as an example. I think, like I you read the book, I am a criticism of everybody. You are everybody. There's no one who's who is spared by me. There's no I, I say, wow, that was great. That was really well thought out. No, that was really fricking dumb.

00:28:37:09 - 00:29:11:03
Unknown
Why did you do that? So why do we do it? That way? Is my my question all the time. So. But in the summer of 2019, the Iranians took oil tankers hostage, mined the Persian Gulf, shot down an American surveillance drone operating in international airspace, and bombed two major oil facilities in Saudi Arabia, taking temporarily 50% of Saudi supply off light.

00:29:11:06 - 00:29:34:22
Unknown
Now, it just so happens that the Saudis had a lot in storage, and they're much more proficient in fixing things than we thought they were that we didn't have a crisis where people were lined up for miles trying to get gas based on the weather. Their license plate started with an even number, an odd number. You guys are way too young to remember that, but in 1973 and 1979, your parents totally remember that.

00:29:35:00 - 00:30:12:02
Unknown
I even remember vaguely remember 1973 being in the back of my father's like 1969 Chevy, waiting for hours in the cold, for a gallon, for a tank of gas. And the president of the United States did not respond to these Iranian provocations. Did that a total violation of the Carter Doctrine and the Reagan Corollary, and it gave the Iranians the permission structure to do more of this kind of malign, activity, which has had massive negative impacts on oil prices, security and so on and so forth.

00:30:12:04 - 00:30:45:13
Unknown
And had he been more active in responding to it, maybe we would not be in this situation. Another another example. Let's take let's take your bomb administration. Obama administration was deeply, deeply ambivalent about what the Saudis did when they intervened in Yemen's civil war in 2015. They thought that this was not a good idea. And the Saudis were saying, look, these guys who've now taken over the capital of Yemen are these fanatics called the Houthis.

00:30:45:15 - 00:31:12:06
Unknown
And no good can come from this. They exaggerated the extent to which the Houthis were in cahoots with the Iranians, although that eventually happened. And we said, no, you're the problem. The Emirati is the problem. You should just, you know, not walk in this. If you were just nicer, the Houthis would be okay with you. I'm obviously simplifying it.

00:31:12:08 - 00:31:33:21
Unknown
No. Okay. So we kind of. We blame the Saudis. We turned a blind eye to what the Iranians were eventually going to do, which was to resupply the who is and give them the ability to manufacture their own weapons, because we desperately wanted this Iran nuclear agreement. And then once we had the agreement, we wanted to keep the agreement.

00:31:33:21 - 00:32:07:20
Unknown
So we were willing to look the other way. So now, here were a ten years later, the Houthis have been able to shut down the Red sea, which is shown to some shipping to mostly western shipping. How much trade goes through the Suez Canal at one end of the 16% of world trade. Now, fortunately, we don't have the kind of supply chain issue with the Suez Canal that our Europeans have, but we are interested in Europe being prosperous, whole and free.

00:32:07:20 - 00:32:30:17
Unknown
That is, again, a core global interest, and freedom of navigation is a core global interest of the United States. The Chinese look at this and say, the Who? These can intimidate the United States. Well, we can do that in East Asia, right? Right. So a lot of these things are interconnected. So what I called for in the book is not too much united.

00:32:30:18 - 00:32:58:07
Unknown
So let's not try to remake the politics of the region. Let's not let's not try to do regime change again, but also let's not try to withdraw from the region. Let's try to understand what's important to us in the Middle East and resource ourselves appropriately to those limited things that are important to us. Beautiful. Amazing. Well, one of the things I know we we do much better in our episodes when our guests talk.

00:32:58:07 - 00:33:32:06
Unknown
So, yeah, hopefully we shut up and you keep going. Okay? Okay. What we're seeing today, right, especially after the events of October 7th in Israel, is this fraction, between not only parties but within party is changing their support for Israel and something you put on your book. In fact, I have a book dog eared. But maybe you'll remember the statistic better than I will if something like half of young people said not only that, they supported Palestinian people, but I believe this statistic was that almost half supported and said that the attack by Hamas was justified.

00:33:32:08 - 00:33:55:20
Unknown
Yeah. I mean, when I, when I saw that, I immediately took a picture of the page. I but dog eared it and I said, this is insanity. I, we interviewed, last week, a woman named Brianna Wu. Oh, yes. Sure. Of course. Strategize for the Democratic Party. But she's been a very outspoken person in support of Israel. And and it was interesting how the trans movement and the supporting Hamas movement have kind of overlapped in many ways.

00:33:55:22 - 00:34:20:05
Unknown
It almost doesn't make sense, and I don't know how to level it, even just the fact of supporting it. So here's I guess the question is, how will these divided U.S. politics going forward impact our support for Ukraine, or even maybe as a, not Ukraine, Israel and I think Israel is maybe seen as one of our last really, really strong relations in the area.

00:34:20:05 - 00:34:49:02
Unknown
So if we have a problem there, that's going to be bigger. Yeah. I mean, it's it's sort of mind blowing. I mean, even before the October 7th attacks on Israel, there was a poll the Pew Research Center quality poll did a poll, and it demonstrated that for the first time ever, this is March 2023, I think it was March sometime in the spring 2023 demonstrated that for the first time ever, more Democrats were supportive of the Palestinian cause than they were of Israel.

00:34:49:04 - 00:35:20:14
Unknown
It wasn't a huge number, but it was the first time it had flipped. And that was a really important marker of the changing politics of the US-Israel relationship. In the years since. And then, of course, October 7th happened. And then you point out some of these, like, mind blowing types of things, like it was half of young people, but it was like some huge number of 18 to 24 year olds who saw Hamas violence, Hamas terrorism of October 7th.

00:35:20:14 - 00:35:50:06
Unknown
There's justified. And then you talk about you know, the trans movie, the LGBTQ community, which is like Tel Aviv, has like the wildest, wildest pride for it. Now. I used to live in the DuPont Circle neighborhood of DC, and that's the, you know, very gay area of DC. It was such a wonderful neighborhood to live in. And so and so my wife and I used to go to the pride parade and all the kind of like fun things that would happen in this neighborhood, and it was really fun.

00:35:50:06 - 00:36:21:00
Unknown
But like, what was happening in this predominantly gay neighborhood of Washington, like, pales in comparison to, like, Tel Aviv Pride Parade. Like it's all over the world, like Arab gay Arabs would like, sneak into Israel, go to the pride parades and stuff like that at the Israel's Open. Yeah, especially Tel Aviv and so on and so forth. We had the pleasure of interviewing for someone from Tel Aviv, and that's kind of what the shocking juxtaposition is, is, is and that's what they said, is that Tel Aviv is the party city of Europe, as they call out, because so many Europeans even go to travel there.

00:36:21:01 - 00:36:49:07
Unknown
Right, including for the pride month. Yeah. Right. Right. Exactly. And, like some, some travel writer called Tel Aviv, like said, like a New York and a visa had a baby. It would be Tel avi and it's like. But anyway. So but the Israel's opponents, you know, anti-Zionist, human rights groups called this pink wash like that, you know, this gay friendly, this was a way to, like, mask Israel's, Israel's human rights violations in the West Bank and the Gaza Strip.

00:36:49:09 - 00:37:10:06
Unknown
I don't think that they were actually connected. I think Tel Aviv, Israel, is very gay friendly, and there are human rights violations in the West Bank and Gaza, and it didn't seem like there was a conscious effort to kind of bring the two together. But whatever. But it was amazing how the LGBT community responded to to this terrorism because of that.

00:37:10:08 - 00:37:38:21
Unknown
And people kept saying, like, it's like it's like saying you're a chicken for Chick-Fil-A. Like what? What Hamas has done to homosexuals, homosexuals that they have found within their ranks killed them. I mean, it's you it's it's not easy to be gay and Palestinian in any part of the Gaza Strip or the West Bank. And that's why you find Palestinians who have gone to Tel Aviv and and so on and so forth.

00:37:38:23 - 00:38:07:17
Unknown
The only thing that I can explain this by is the this idea of settler colonialism, this, this binary that people set up between oppressed and oppressor and what this has done is and you see, this, it's not just I mean, I'm not picking on the LGBTQ community. It's like you see this with young people. You see this with lots of different activist groups, is that there's demand for moral absolutes.

00:38:07:19 - 00:38:39:02
Unknown
And what this does is it flattens the conflict and it doesn't allow for the nuances and complexities of conflict. So you can't talk about those nuances and complexities. There shouldn't be any. There is oppressor Zionists and oppressed Palestinians, and as an LGBT community, they should stand with the oppressed because they themselves have been repressed. And that's how you get this kind of psychic connection, but kind of confused view of this.

00:38:39:02 - 00:38:57:01
Unknown
And it because it is this demand, and the demand is not just a political it's it's a social demand. So if you are someone like Brianna Wu and you say, hold on, wait a second, let's think about this for a second and understand that this is actually super complex. You have to be brave because you will be shunned.

00:38:57:03 - 00:39:13:11
Unknown
You will lose your your social group and so on and so isolated and so on. People don't want to do that. So I have to believe there are a lot of more thinking people out there who understand the complexities of this, but the demand of the in-group is that they don't. And this is very, very bad for our debates.

00:39:13:13 - 00:39:39:18
Unknown
And it's having an impact on a politics within the Democratic Party, in particular, over the question of support for for Israel. That's not to diminish the excesses of Israel's military operations in the Gaza Strip. The the numbers killed in Gaza are disputed, right? Israeli security say it's not 45,000 people, although there's a new study by the Lancet that says it's actually 64, whatever.

00:39:39:18 - 00:40:08:20
Unknown
The numbers are totally disputed. But let's say the the numbers are inflated and it's half the number that everybody's going used to 45 times. That's still a huge number. I've been to Gaza and it's kids, kids, kids. And this is unbelievably tragic. So I'm not excusing that. But there is this kind of weirdness in which, like I said, 18 to 24 year olds, see, this is see what Hamas did, which was genocidal.

00:40:08:20 - 00:40:39:15
Unknown
I have I have the English translation of the announcement of operational Aqsa flood. It is a genocidal document. And that's sort of gets shunted aside over accusations that Israel was engaged, in genocide. In any event, what was your question? I I'm I'm, I would like you to, explain a little bit more about that document and their impetus for the invasion, because maybe that kind of information will change the minds of the people who maybe say this was a justified in fact.

00:40:39:15 - 00:40:59:06
Unknown
And I just want to add, I don't know too much about the impetus, because normally, a lot of times if something important happens in someone's lives, maybe they'll save a copy of the newspaper. Right? My son was born October 8th. We chose not to save the newspaper the following day last year. So I was out of the loop, and maybe you could tell me it was purely genocidal.

00:40:59:06 - 00:41:23:08
Unknown
It was purely retaliatory, was it not? Yeah. So let me just say you have a little baby. That's wonderful. Have teenagers and it's wonderful, and they're thriving. And my other daughter is in college. Who owns a plant? Is it? I miss the babies. I do, and at this point in my life where I basically like coffee, my golden retriever and other people's babies because like, the world is pretty bad.

00:41:23:08 - 00:41:44:14
Unknown
So that's really wonderful. Oh, you're talking to two brand new, oh, God, that is 55. Amazing. Amazing. Yeah. There's actually there's a London connection, by the way, as an aside to October 7th for me, that night, my wife and I went to MT Bank field, which is where the Baltimore Ravens play to see Billy Joel.

00:41:44:16 - 00:42:11:16
Unknown
There you go. And I was checking my phone the whole time. We're like, oh my God. Yeah, yeah. So look, you have to go back 20 plus years before October 7th. You have to go back to 1988. I don't know, do the math. It's more than 20 years, obviously. It's like 40 and read the Hamas charter, and the Hamas charter calls for the destruction of Israel and the murder of Jews.

00:42:11:18 - 00:42:36:15
Unknown
And then in 2017, they said they amended the charter. Now, I for the book, I read both and the amended charter is not really they say, we want to destroy Israel and kill Zionists, not kill Jews. And they say things like, there is some massaging of language. But clearly Hamas attacked Israel on October 7th, 2023, under the terms of the 1988 Hamas charter.

00:42:36:17 - 00:43:03:05
Unknown
And and now the official announcement, which went out by a guy named Mohammed D, who was the military commander, of Hamas, along with this guy Yahya Sinwar. They're now both dead, killed by the is by the Israelis. Announcing this reflected the genocidal intent. This was not about liberating Gaza. This is not about liberating the West Bank.

00:43:03:05 - 00:43:23:23
Unknown
It's not about a two state solution. He talked about ending the longest occupation in history. That's not the now the occupation of the West Bank and previously the Gaza Strip, although the Gaza Strip is like kind of sort of occupied because it's the Israelis control it on three sides and the Egyptians it control and on the other side, but not that well.

00:43:24:01 - 00:43:52:07
Unknown
And it's been long right older than me, 1967. It's one year older than me. But when he talked about the oldest occupation in the world, he talked about the establishment of Israel in 1948. And there the IDF uncovered all of these plans that they had that had they succeeded, you know, they would kill all these people if they didn't want to kill doctors and whatever, because they needed that to, to build Palestine.

00:43:52:09 - 00:44:26:19
Unknown
And so it's, it's so the, the announcement of operational support is, is deeply, deeply disturbing and deeply as much as the 1980 charter is. I also watched the an hour and a half of the raw footage from October 7th. I was asked to watch it. I felt like it was a professional responsibility. I have to tell you, the week in between, being asked to come see it and seeing it was very, very hard because I was sweating bullets.

00:44:26:19 - 00:45:02:17
Unknown
I've never I mean, I, I've been, I've never seen I didn't know what I was going to see. And I tell you, I saw it in December 2023 and I there are parts of it that I can never unsee. There are parts of it that still wake me up at night and. Again, I mean, I see myself as an objective analyst and you can gain some insight into the rage and the, fury of Palestinians and the rage and fury of Israelis in response.

00:45:02:18 - 00:45:38:13
Unknown
Look, the Gaza is not a great situation. People have been living for since 2007, basically locked up. It's not as bad as some people say. It's not as great as others say. And then and then they've been. And Hamas has enforced a kind of conformity because it's a extremist Islamist movement, etc. it's really bad situation. And Israelis have never, I think, in a very long time, seriously considered accommodation with the Palestinians any sense of justice for the Palestinians.

00:45:38:15 - 00:46:01:15
Unknown
But the attacks, the video of the attacks, they refer to these kibbutzim and towns within sovereign Israel that they attack as settlements and they refer to Israelis. Now, they don't make any distinction. Oh, I killed a Zionist. They say I kill Jews. And there's there's footage of people calling their mom and dad and said, I killed my first Jews.

00:46:01:17 - 00:46:33:20
Unknown
And like, I mean, in your face kind of stuff, like hacking someone's head off, really, really, really kind of terrible personal violence. So I think these are things that have been missing because this conflict, the current war, has gone on for so long. There's been so much political controversy about it. Again, it doesn't excuse the excesses of the IDF.

00:46:33:22 - 00:47:07:03
Unknown
It doesn't excuse a lot of things, but it gives you some more insight into how this war between the two parties was waged against each other. And, I think that that would suggest that going forward, the idea was speaking on the day that a ceasefire was finally agreed to. And there'll be, you know, signing it'll go into effect in a couple of days, today, meaning today as we record right today as we record.

00:47:07:03 - 00:47:42:09
Unknown
And then in a few days it will go into effect that and that's good. That's going to save lives. And Israeli hostages will go back to the warm embrace of their families. And humanitarian aid will go to Gaza, but doesn't end this conflict. Doesn't set doesn't set Israelis and Palestinians on the direct ocean of peace. It's a cessation of an ongoing war that's been going on for a very, very long time that we in the United States for 30 years tried to reconcile the two parties, only to discover that they don't want to be reconciled to to nothing.

00:47:42:09 - 00:48:04:19
Unknown
Everybody. There are obviously people of goodwill, but those numbers have diminished greatly over the last 15. Yeah. So I think it's important to talk about some of the thorny issues. Right. So so what are some of the impediments to this kind of agreement. Right. Because there are these long standing issues. And, you know, one of them is, for instance, Israel is seeking, you know, total control of the security situation in Gaza.

00:48:04:19 - 00:48:23:02
Unknown
And obviously that's like a, you know, huge nonstarter for them. So there's a quite a few others. So I'd let you, kind of know I fleshed out a little bit more. The ceasefire is, a complicated document, and it's going to unfold over the course of many, many months. And I'll just give you an example of the complications of it.

00:48:23:04 - 00:48:52:14
Unknown
The first phase, in which there will be 33 Israeli hostages released over a six week period, it's like. And in exchange, Palestinian prisoners in Israeli jails will be released. It's not until and so that happens over of course, six, six weeks. Then on the 16th day of this first six week phase, only then will the negotiations begin covering the second phase of the ceasefire.

00:48:52:19 - 00:49:14:17
Unknown
Now, how long is it taking us to get to some framework that there's a three phase ceasefire and then only on the 16th day, and it's the reason for 16 days is to so each side can test that the other one is performing. I mean, the opportunities here for opponents on both sides to wreck this are enormous, enormous.

00:49:14:18 - 00:49:35:13
Unknown
And the Israelis had said for months, the surprising aspect of this to me is that the Israelis say that they will withdraw from what's called the next stream corridor, which is this East-West axis that essentially divides the Gaza Strip in two from which the Israelis have been conducting military operations. And something called the Philadelphia Carter, not the Philadelphia Carter.

00:49:35:17 - 00:49:58:12
Unknown
The Philadelphia Corridor, which is right up on the Egypt border. They said, we're not getting out of that. And so in their place is is something called security mechanisms, like something vague. No one actually really knows how those work. And there's going to be an implementation office in Cairo. I this thing is ripe for being underfoot. So is it good?

00:49:58:14 - 00:50:22:09
Unknown
Like is it good intentioned or is it set up to fail? Are they going to send in? You know, should I put my tinfoil hat and we're going have some other ideas. Basically have had two parties that really haven't wanted to have a ceasefire. Right. Hamas thinks it's winning. Do you de-legitimize Israel in the international community? It's basically now able to with the humanitarian aid that it has basically taken.

00:50:22:11 - 00:50:47:05
Unknown
It's enticing new recruits by saying, we'll give you and your family more aid and medical care if you fight for us. So the Israelis are just killing Hamas fighters at a rate that Hamas can replace them, basically getting nowhere after many months of getting very far here. And so there was real diminishing returns to scale, especially as like 4 or 5 Israeli soldiers are killed every day in, in the Gaza Strip.

00:50:47:05 - 00:51:06:16
Unknown
But they didn't really want it. And Prime Minister Netanyahu has his political props. The settler movement is both part of the government and opposed to the government, and they don't want an end to okay, Hamas. Like I said, Hamas is engaged in a total war. It's not about necessarily defeating the IDF right here and now, but they've scored a number of goals.

00:51:06:18 - 00:51:27:16
Unknown
Do you get amazing Israel in the international community? There's an ICC case, for God's sake, against the Israeli prime minister and the former defense minister. You have the Lgbtiq community in the West advocating for Hamas. I mean, you know, and, and, and everything in between. So that's a real victory for Hamas to put a point on it, though.

00:51:27:16 - 00:52:02:21
Unknown
So we know okay, that so but this point is, is that the other side really wanted it. So negotiators had to go to extraordinary lengths to like, oh, there'll be a security mechanism. It's like this Rube Goldberg contraption that could end up collapsing it on itself, especially with enough pressure applied by opponents. So like I said, in this first moment, like for the first time in 15 months, Palestinians don't have to worry about being bombed tonight, and Israelis don't necessarily have to worry about running to their bomb shops at night.

00:52:02:23 - 00:52:34:00
Unknown
That's a good thing, but I'm not sure it can end this conflict. It's certainly not necessarily going to set Israel and the Palestinians on the path of peace. Early on in the conflict, people say, oh, from from crisis comes opportunity. And I kept saying, well, why are you assuming the opportunities will be for good things? Clearly, the settlers and the right in Israel want to use the opportunity to resettle the Gaza Strip and establish sovereignty there.

00:52:34:01 - 00:52:51:04
Unknown
Yeah, yeah, they want to wipe it out. I so on Twitter, I'm seeing this hailed as an accomplishment for Trump, though, saying Trump's coming into office. They're turning up the power and the pressure here. And then obviously Biden is still in office. And you know, we hear about Ukraine, for example. Oh, the United States is negotiating a deal, China stepping in to negotiate a deal.

00:52:51:07 - 00:53:10:08
Unknown
That's why I'm kind of not I honestly I'm not understand that who I think was the one that said we need this to happen today. Fair minded people would say to you there's multiple factors that led us to that. One is, I think the Israeli realization that they've gotten to the point of diminishing returns from their military operations.

00:53:10:08 - 00:53:33:20
Unknown
Right. 835 IDF soldiers have been killed in the Gaza Strip since major military operations are there. That I can't do the math, but like that translates into like some enormous number of Americans killed in combat, right? Right, right, right. And and if Hamas is replenishing its ranks at 1 to 1, what's the point of being there? Right? War of attrition.

00:53:33:20 - 00:53:56:09
Unknown
You can't do. Right. So there's a certain amount of exhaustion. The Palestinians, even though they hate Hamas, even though they haven't really wanted a ceasefire, can kind of win or claim victory, that they haven't been destroyed, which was Israel's war goal, and that they still very much remain influential in Gaza and they have to be dealt with. It's not like they've been so destroyed that you can now ignore that.

00:53:56:11 - 00:54:19:10
Unknown
It's like in Lebanon, Hezbollah has been basically sidelined, at least for the moment. And then finally, there was the Trump fact. I think, again, objective analysts have to say, look, Trump said there's going to be hell to pay. And I don't think he was just focusing on Iran and Hamas. I think he was basically saying to give anything out.

00:54:19:12 - 00:54:39:00
Unknown
I'm not I don't want to deal with this. And, you know, previously he'd said, why is it taking them so long? Wrap it up, wrap it up. It's bad for them and it's bad for us. I think Trump's not doesn't have the kind of emotional commitment to Israel that Biden had, and maybe some of his advisors do.

00:54:39:02 - 00:54:59:01
Unknown
But the word out on the street is that, you know, his envoy, Steve Wyckoff, came in and like, basically on a Saturday, said, I got to meet with Netanyahu. And they're like, sorry, I doesn't do that. I tell you, it's like, no, actually we do. And it kind of read him the riot act and presidents at the beginning of their terms are maximally powerful.

00:54:59:03 - 00:55:20:03
Unknown
Netanyahu had to maneuver around Obama when he was first elected in 2009. He was wildly popular. He had a mandate. Members of Congress were afraid to defy him. And so the Israelis couldn't work the refs then. And they're they're going to have a hard time working the rest out in private. A lot of Republicans are questioning this cease fire deal, but they're not going to oppose the president.

00:55:20:03 - 00:55:41:09
Unknown
So there was, the president's prestige coming off of his rather resounding electoral victory, certainly, focused the minds, of people in Doha. There's one other thing which hasn't come up, which I think is an important factor here, too, is also part of the Trump factor. You know, the Biden administration had really relied on the countries as mediators.

00:55:41:11 - 00:56:09:00
Unknown
Trump has really good relations in the Gulf with the Saudis and the Emiratis, but not necessarily the countries. And I have a I have a sneaking suspicion he also put a lot of pressure on the countries who have been sort of playing it like, oh, we're just the mediator, not as if they're actually a party here. Given their relations with Hamas, the fact that they had throughout all these years, a senior diplomat in Gaza, who's the bagman for them, and so on and so forth.

00:56:09:02 - 00:56:34:06
Unknown
And the president's like, man, get it together, because there are things an American president, especially early in their term, can do that they can't do as time goes on. Yeah, it was a recent conversation I was having with somebody kind of framed it very nicely and made a lot of sense to me. Is that, you know, Trump is actually the only president for the next 11 months because then the midterms are right around that corner and that election cycle.

00:56:34:10 - 00:56:57:05
Unknown
And as you said, you know, he actually gets politically weaker. And he has. That's exactly right. And I think pressures you know, look we live in this highly partizan moment. But if we want to really get the story here, you know, love him or loathe him, he definitely played a role here. And as you guys know, from reading my book again, I'm I'm an equal opportunity criticize her.

00:56:57:07 - 00:57:17:06
Unknown
But there was actually something that Trump did in his first term that I thought was pretty interesting in his own way. He asked people like me, people who make up the American foreign policy community. I won't say establishment because it's so pejorative. And I'm a member of it. Yeah. This is why we do what we do. Why does the United States do what it does?

00:57:17:08 - 00:57:42:22
Unknown
And our answer to him was because that's what we do. And whether it's intentional or not, he was asking us to check our homework and like, shouldn't we check our homework? But we took great offense to that. And that's part of the inspiration for when the Trump was in his first book. But like my own feeling that we were walking around with this set of assumptions that actually weren't true, and you can't have a good foreign policy unless you have good assumptions about the world.

00:57:43:00 - 00:58:02:06
Unknown
And like in a weird, odd way, not necessarily with the Middle East, but he'd be like, why do we do this with NATO? Why do we, you know, and people be like, I don't know, but you're an ignorant moron. I mean, I don't know, maybe I've never met the man, but it was actually a pretty good question. So one of other words you use a lot is realism, right?

00:58:02:06 - 00:58:18:18
Unknown
Or being realistic with with what we say. So Mike. Sorry. Go ahead. That's I was just going to say, well, what's what's the you know, this is a good final point to kind of end on is I know we don't have a lot of confirmations yet in the Trump administration, you know, especially the big secretaries. But, if you had to guess, what is some of their policy shaping up to look at?

00:58:18:18 - 00:58:38:18
Unknown
We have the unique situation of having a nonconsecutive president actually hopefully going to try to, you know, apply some of the things he learned from his first term. What do you think the Trumpian policy looks at this time around? What does that look like? It's it's really hard to know because he is kind of why I'm asking hopefully give a sense like so you know Marco Rubio, you know, he's going to sail through his confirmation hearings.

00:58:38:19 - 00:59:05:06
Unknown
Right? Right. The I a friend of mine, a good friend of mine who's very smart, very confident, like knows the region. He was named the National Security Council senior director for the for the Middle East. That's great. That's awesome. I'd rather him than like most everybody in this town. But you also have a president who, by his own admission, is mostly listens to his own gut.

00:59:05:08 - 00:59:31:18
Unknown
So Secretary of State designate Marco Rubio could say during his confirmation hearings, well, we're going to do X, Y, and Z. And President Trump has who keeps his own counsel and wakes up the third day in office and says, actually, we're going to do six. So it's very, very hard. It's very hard. You know, I think that they have signaled a number of things for the middle East.

00:59:31:20 - 00:59:51:17
Unknown
One maximum pressure on Iran is back. There's a lot of debate, though. Maximum pressure to what end for a nuclear deal. The guy's a dealmaker. He wanted a deal in his first term. He wanted a more comprehensive, broader deal. And also to say, I got a better deal than Obama. Right? Right. I of course, I mean, that was probably the driving force here.

00:59:51:18 - 01:00:15:11
Unknown
Absolutely. Then, he wants to loop the Saudis into normalization with the Israelis and an expansion of the circle of peace, part of the Abraham Accords and so on. And so. Right. I was just in Saudi Arabia. That's going to be a, a big lift, a big lift. A lot's happened in Saudi Arabia with regard to normalization, which the Saudis officialdom says it's still a strategic goal for us.

01:00:15:13 - 01:00:59:13
Unknown
But look at what's happened in Gaza. How could we how could we do that? Even Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, who rules with an iron fist in ways, can't pull that one off. Not after he could probably pull it off on October 7th, but not after October 7th. Before October 9th. Right then. There's likely to be I think, Trump's going to go for the deal of the century again, which is his version of the two state solution, which is I mean, I think that's a real possibility because once again, for him, it it's, you know, I as someone who, like, is steeped in this, I think about, you know, nationalism, identity, historical memory,

01:00:59:13 - 01:01:24:01
Unknown
religion. Trump looks at it through state thing. We can work this out. Remember in his first when first time he met, I think it was was it Netanyahu or Mahmoud Abbas? I you said yeah. He said one state, two states, whatever you want. We'll figure it out kind of thing. So which is a very York thing, I don't know, you guys are younger that but like I see Donald Trump as I saw him in 1985.

01:01:24:01 - 01:01:45:04
Unknown
It's like some dude in New York, like, who was like out and about, like, it's so bizarre to me. Like he was in on his own joke. Just to contrast that the way I honestly see Trump is watching him on apprentice and Celebrity Apprentice, like, so that's not it's a little different. It's totally different. At some point he like like apprentice in Celebrity Apprentice.

01:01:45:04 - 01:02:08:20
Unknown
When it started, he was still in on his own joke. And then at some point you start doing so seriously, like Howard Stern would have a month to talk about, like politics, like Morning Joe. He would call it like crazy. Anyway, we're totally off topic. So anyway, but I think those are kind of three things that we're going to kind of maneuver around and hover around, even though like two state solution.

01:02:08:20 - 01:02:34:00
Unknown
That's like what I mean, he appointed governor Mike Huckabee as his ambassador as well. This guy's like, there's no such thing as settlements. It's Israeli sovereignty. So but which I think underscores what I'm saying, which is that it doesn't really matter what the people around him say. He doesn't really take their advice. It's what Donald Trump wants to do.

01:02:34:01 - 01:02:50:11
Unknown
Sure. It's the it's one thing. The night before and then it's another in the form of, well, there is that problem. It's like the last true social post in the middle of the night. Yeah, exactly. Well, listen, as the right wing pundit here, I'll just stand up and say, maybe they're having conversations and they're making plans and plotting and they're just not sharing it.

01:02:50:11 - 01:03:13:11
Unknown
But I mean, I think that there is something that's going on here where there is that normal kind of transition documents and paperwork that's being done. And at the working level, there's definitely good things that are happening between the Trump and Biden people and hand over and stuff like that. I absolutely know that's the case because I know people who are involved in it on both sides.

01:03:13:13 - 01:03:36:03
Unknown
I know the guy who's handling the State Department transition for Trump is like, really smart, like high quality dude. And so I know that that's happening. The question is, how much of an impact does that have on the president's actual decision making process? Right. And we don't have a lot of evidence that he does. In fact, in your book, you shared evidence of the contrary, right?

01:03:36:03 - 01:04:02:12
Unknown
When he, took out bin Salman, I think, right. He took a custom. Suleimani. Yeah. So that's a no no. I mean, a man's a better example of that, actually, is just like my friends who are part of the permit, foreign policy bureaucracy, civilian staff, Defense Department, Treasury, CIA. They were like, Trump would tweet something and we would have to scramble to catch up with the policy.

01:04:02:13 - 01:04:20:04
Unknown
Yeah, yeah, yeah. Right. And this is the last thing. And then I'll let you guys go, because now I feel like I'm like hosting here because I'm talking so much. Thanks for having us on. Well played. Well but know like the coffees they love Trump because he runs the U.S government like they run their countries. Five guys on.

01:04:20:04 - 01:04:42:08
Unknown
What's that. Yeah. So there's no drawn out policy process. There's no interagency after the principals meeting. And I have to go back to this and oh, we better have another principals meeting. And before we bring it to the president and the left. No, it's like I said, five guys on WhatsApp. Sure, sure, I like that. Yeah. No, it's definitely we're going to see a transactional foreign policy moving forward.

01:04:42:08 - 01:05:00:12
Unknown
And the Middle East responds to that. Well as in a lot and a lot of ways. So necessarily opposed to a transactional foreign policy, we get ourselves wrapped around the axle like they should love us. We should love them. Not only should we share interests, but we should share values like that's unrealistic. Yeah, untenable. I used to think that's like that.

01:05:00:12 - 01:05:20:15
Unknown
That was okay. Yeah. It's unrealistic to think those things. So I think a final place to finish is is where can we find you? Where can we find some of the other work? Where where can folks look for you? Everything I've written in the last 21 years is located at the Council on Foreign Relations website cfr.org. You can find it at my expert [email protected].

01:05:20:15 - 01:05:41:11
Unknown
But if you don't want to go to the homepage, you can just Google me. You can also read me. I have a, column twice a month, but sometimes it's it's more at Foreign Policy magazine. And every now and again I pop up on CNN and other news outlets, talking about the Middle East. I get phone calls from, like, friends from, college.

01:05:41:11 - 01:06:06:19
Unknown
Like, dude, you're on Bloomberg this morning. I was on the trading floor, things like that. So if you see me, you'll be doing the same about elevated thoughts and all your friends are going to be calling to get you on this recent episode, like, well, send them our way because guys like you are invaluable. I mean, Mike and I, left wing and right wing, maintaining a friendship, maintaining discourse, trying to love and educate ourselves and be analytical, which you described yourself a few times.

01:06:06:21 - 01:06:26:16
Unknown
That's been our mission. What? I've been a wonderful asset. Yeah, I love that. Like, because that's the way Washington used to be. You could like. Yeah, be fight like cats and dogs ideologically, but still be pals, still watch the football game together and stuff like that and do all kinds of fun things. Yeah. And that's increasingly rare, not just in Washington, but everywhere.

01:06:26:18 - 01:06:43:10
Unknown
Right. So, it's, it's why I jumped at the chance when you guys invited me on and let me know if you need recommendations of people for topics and so on and so forth. I'm I'm really happy to help. I'm a big fan. Very excited and looking forward to it. Awesome. Stephen a cook everybody. This has been elevated.

01:06:43:10 - 01:06:53:18
Unknown
Thoughts. Thanks very much guys.