Middle East Roundtable: Rude Neighbors.

Hello and welcome to the Middle East Roundtable. I am Evan Maloney with Fronts.co. I am here with Kyle Moran, joined back once again by Evan, who has recently returned from the Strait of Hormuz, shall we say. Yes, I spent the last several weeks in a little cave on the Amani Coast, just kind of perched into a little hideaway.

Lots and lots of Clif Bars, few energy drinks very quiet, picturesque, occasional bombings, otherwise just a lovely time. Unfortunately, I have been mandated to return, but our dear friend Wilfred has now gone over in my stead. Now, I can't tell you what he's doing. He's I'm the guy you send to watch things. I just kind of camp out.

But he is the guy you send to, well, I don't want to say too much, but break into some top secret facilities. Not that you will. Not who they belong to. But he's, he's in a bunker somewhere. And if you're hearing this and you belong to an intelligence agency tied in any way to this conflict check your locks. See who's in there. You won't find them.

I promise. So back here on the on the U.S. home front, I guess, since it's just the two of us. We are currently sitting and watching as this Iran war seems very close to turning hot again. Over the last few days, Iran sent over a proposal that Trump says, according to him, he did not read in full before crumpling it up and tossing it in the waste bin.

And according to him, we are on life support on this peace negotiation. So you've been following the conflict very closely. I obviously have been doing it from a cave so I can see a lot, but I don't really get news access. A lot of sat phones. So in my stead, what have you seen evolving in this conflict in the last few days?

We've been in an absolute holding pattern over the actual ceasefire where it's this almost predictable series of back and forths where they'll, the two countries will variously be saying that they're not even willing to negotiate. And then somebody will send a deal.

Usually the Iranians will send a proposal to the United States who says this is totally unacceptable, rips it up, throws it in the garbage. That's at least the third time by my count that an Iranian deal has wound up in the White House trash can.

And then send back a different version, which I assume gets swiftly delivered into the Iranian equivalent somewhere in a bunker in Tehran.

So we have not had any progress on any of the substance, which brings us back to what we've been discussing here on the Middle East Roundtable and as well as our coverage on war fronts for weeks at this point, where even if these two can agree to sit down and actually talk about this stuff, it doesn't get them past the fact that they don't agree. on

Significant areas of substance.

Once you're actually talking about what a long-term peace plan would look like, there's very little overlap because both sides are still maintaining what is largely a maximalist perspective. From the U.S., this is a focus that is more expansive than JCPOA, essentially.

Iran wants a JCPOA that's even lighter as well as recognition over their claims of sovereignty to the Strait of Hormuz, which includes setting up tolls in the Strait, which has been a long-term red line for me in terms of both this being a potential disastrous outcome if it actually materializes long-term and also would be just detrimental to the

International shipping industry.

Sure. So it seems as if we're in a moment where one side is going to have to make concessions if this peace deal is going to hold at all, and we're very far from that on either side.

So as we're wrestling with that, one of the reports that have come out in the last few weeks is that Mostav Khamenei is not only alive, not only conscious, but is apparently weighing in regularly on these decisions on the Iranian side, but seems to be taking forever.

There have been some discussions of how the U.S. will often wait for several days as peace proposals are passed through different interlocutors and brought to Khamenei and then eventually brought back. How large of an impact is that having on the conflict now, or on the negotiations now?

And is that tenable for the U.S. to be waiting for these protracted periods of Iranian internal debate if these kind of peace deals without any concessions are what they're getting out of that? It's part of an ongoing issue with negotiating with Iran.

This has been a frustration of American negotiators under Obama's administration as well to a lesser extent because how many the elder was slightly more accessible, shall we say, back then. But the bigger issue here is when you're negotiating with Iran, who are you negotiating with?

A lot of times Iran will send its diplomatic corps who will sit down and talk with the Americans and they'll work out this great series of proposals.

And then the foreign minister, whether that's Zarif back then or Aragji now or somebody in between the two, will ultimately come to the Americans and say, look, I love the idea, but I just can't get this past my guys back home. And so all of the negotiation has been for naught. This has, like I said, been an ongoing struggle.

So when it comes to anything going on right now, this is even more of a case because it's so hard to even get in touch with most people. Many people in the Iranian government were only loosely informed as if he was even alive. So this was not something that they were on any sort of a regular communication with.

It seems that the IRGC's Vahidi has been very much gatekeeping any access to Mostaba. So their Iranian president, Masoud Pazeskian, met with him for the first time since the war broke out for 90 minutes while you were gone, Evan, or maybe right after you came back.

But other than that, I mean, the president of the country hasn't even spoken with the supreme leader. So that's sort of where we're at with all of that. It's a very difficult dynamic to actually get anything accomplished in. Yeah, and let's talk about Vahidi for a second, because he is, like you say, this gatekeeper now.

He is sitting between the Iranian military, its military apparatus, and seemingly the supreme leader. He is in the way of what should be, I mean, you would think should be, an unbroken chain of communication from the diplomatic negotiators to Mostaba himself. And we have Vahidi in the middle of that. He is the hardliner's hardliner, right?

He is every Iranian hardliner's favorite hardliner. He is obviously very confident in the ability of the Iranian military, maybe not to defeat the U.S. in open warfare, which is, as we've seen, not really on the table for Iran. But certainly its ability to hold out, its ability to continue to kind of nip at the heels of U.S. and Israeli air power, and so on.

So as Vahidi is standing in the middle of this, right, how large would you say that an Iranian contingent is that is looking to either tank these negotiations outright to clear a path to return to conflict, or otherwise is just disinterested in any of this going well?

Well, it's a significant faction, because even the more moderate approach doesn't make a whole lot of sense. So I'm not saying that the hardliners are exactly the embodiment of rationality here, but the moderate's case is, okay, well, let's just sit down and talk and work something out, you know?

It's this, like, general appeal to this platitudinous, if we can talk to these people and reach a deal, that will be great and we'll all be singing kumbaya. Perhaps not quite that far, but what does that actually mean? So does Iran keep the Strait of Hormuz or have its recognition, its claims of sovereignty to the Strait of Hormuz recognized or not?

The hardliners say absolutely. The moderates seemingly want that, but again, this is going to be such a barrier to any negotiation. The hardliners think that the moderates will simply give it up. So I think... think that's a fair concern on the hardliners' behalf.

Now, from the U.S. perspective, I don't think that any Iranian control of the Strait of Hormuz should ever be recognized, or any country, that matter. It is an international body of water and must be treated accordingly.

But in terms of reaching these negotiations, what are the moderates actually looking for here, other than to say the Iranian economy is really suffering because of the blockade? We have to do something, so let's just sit down and talk about it. Right, and then my other question is, what are they really offering in substance to the Iranian hardliners, right?

Because as they work to step around off this ledge, their argument seems to be, right, protection of the Iranian economy, protection of the Iranian people, so on and so forth, don't allow this to get any worse. Where that doesn't really play into the logic of the hardliners, right?

Getting worse, this situation deteriorating is the price to be paid, it is the cost to be exchanged for what they believe to be either U.S. withdrawal from the region or some other sort of grand concession from the U.S. that it's not achievable now.

So I suppose if we're going to put ourselves in the heads of these Iranian factions, right, do the moderates have anything at this point to offer to the hardliners as a credible off-ramp that also achieves any of the hardliners' goals, or are they just kind of counting down the clock, hoping that some outside factor comes in to relieve pressure here before

The hardliners can have their way?

Not only do they not have anything to offer the hardliners, I don't think they have anything to offer an achievement of their own goals. I mean, the gulf between the U.S. and the Iranians, whatever faction in the Iranians you're speaking of, is just simply so large. It was incredibly large during the JCPOA negotiations, and it hasn't shrunk during this war.

So as of right now, it's very difficult to see how any of that actually materializes. So that gets back to something I had been talking, and the three of us were all in agreement back a month ago, I believe, that any long-term ceasefire is inherently likely to just break down on these lines.

Because even though war may not necessarily be in, as I argue in an article over on fronts, that it's not necessarily in the U.S. interest to start any bombing campaign again, the Iranians recognize both that the blockade is doing economic damage to them, as well as the ceasefire is no longer particularly helpful.

So if the calculus has changed that it's no longer the Iranians who are content at waiting out the U.S., then okay, what's the next? logical step from that conclusion and i think you see where that goes absolutely and it's it's kind of the quiet question in the background throughout this whole ceasefire negotiation debacle that it's been right which is what

Is this for who is this for right because at the end of the day yes iran would prefer not to be in a state of open warfare yes the u.s would prefer not to be in a state of open warfare right but there are the long-term inceptivist toward peace which very much exists here right iran would like to preserve its regime would like to maintain sovereignty the u.s

Obviously would like to or says that it would like to move away from foreign interventions cuba notwithstanding venezuela notwithstanding nigeria notwithstanding somalia notwithstanding etc but in principle right like to be moving away but the short-term incentives here all seem to push against the idea that a ceasefire can be reached so looking at this and

Then looking at the persistence of iran's moderates that to me seems like a disconnect right where we have very little chance of a breakthrough as it stands now to reach a more permanent ceasefire we have very few off-ramps for iran or the u.s that don't involve substantial compromise and it seems as if the writing is on the wall it has been for a bit so

Maybe this is asking to prognosticate a bit much about what's going on inside of the heads of iran's moderates but is there i mean not only is there a play here because there must be somewhere but what is the play at this point well for what's worth i don't even think that the irgc opposes going back to war i think that they'd be willing to take that cost in

Terms of what that actually means though i think that this is going to ultimately result in a more hardline faction consolidating power even more than they already have because even though we may find their positions to be not at all in the international communities interest shall we say but they at least have a more from iranians from the iranian regime's

Perspective a more intellectually coherent approach to this because like i said the civilian government side of the equation is essentially arguing against itself where they have stated goals and are ostensibly much more willing to negotiate with the u.s in terms of compromising on them so ultimately this is going to result in vahidi being able to

Consolidate power even more which brings us back to bombing once again taking off yeah and to jump in with a bit of added substance here as well one of the things that struck me since the early days of the u.s decapitation strikes where you're taking out Khamenei, you're taking out most of his inner circle, according to the U.S., taking out most of the

People they thought they were going to negotiate with, right?

From that point forward, it's always struck me that institutionally, the IRGC is in a much better situation to respond to decapitation than the civil-slash-moderate side of the Iranian government, right? The IRGC has its command structures in place. Everybody understands who reports to who. They are deeply embedded across the entire country.

They are embedded with Iranian intelligence, with the paramilitary besiege, right? They have all of these command structures. They have all their connections.

They have their ability to more rapidly react to a decapitation strike like this and fill in the void versus civilian leadership that has to kind of jump through more hoops, is more prone to internal power struggles and different things.

So it's hardly a surprise that now, a couple of months in, right, especially with a weakened Supreme Leader who seems to be mostly out of the loop on day-to-day decisions, that the IRGC would be kind of taking the reins here.

But it's equally important, I think, to really point out, especially for our listeners in the U.S. and for Europe, who obviously we, and I think we're probably similar in this, that we were raised with a very distinct idea of what Iran is, right? Discourse here works with a very distinct awareness of what Iran is. Say what you will about Iran.

To this point prior to this conflict, it was not a military regime.

It was a regime deeply influenced by the military, but there is a massive void between the Iranian state as it existed under Ali Khamenei and what is possible if the IRGC simply takes control of the state and is similar to the military regimes that we see around the world, whether it's in Myanmar, whether it's in Sudan, whether it's in Mali, wherever, right,

Is just orchestrating it and exerting direct control over the state's levers of power with no civilian involvement.

So I suppose my question to you would be, as we look toward what will probably be the unraveling of the ceasefire, has this process strengthened the IRGC to the point where a return to war is going to cement their hold on power now? Well, first, I question how much better a theocracy actually is, though. Oh, better is in the conversation, just to be clear.

Not saying it's better, just saying whatever it was, it was not a military governed regime. Yes, completely agreed on that. The only point that, the reason that I take it, I understand that you're not advocating for theocracy here, but my point in...

My point in bringing that up, though, is to say for people on the ground in Iran, I do understand the idea of an IRGC-dominated Iran is... for us here more concerning when we get to the actual people on the ground in iran though i have to wonder how much different would an irgc dominated islamic republic be than the previous islamic republic now i do i do

Understand they had the elections they have a civilian elected government the president has never had power i mean he was a he's a figurehead so in terms of the irgc they have long been able to just sort of do whatever the heck they wanted and khamenei the elder was able to exert some restraint on them when jalili ran for president as the hardliners

Hardliner back in 2024 i believe khamenei essentially asked him to drop out and when he didn't khamenei backed the more moderate in quotes here possessed kyan on all of these issues for that reason but even still 40 000 of them died in two days just for some context i mean that's a that's more than the entire death toll in gaza for the first i believe year

And a half of the war with israel and that was done in two days so when we're talking about like the implications of an irgc dominated islamic republic for iranians i don't know how much of a difference it actually makes for them on that front now for the international relations fronts i do think that makes a much more substantial difference and i think that

Could be much more of a of an obstacle so this brings me back to my thesis from the outset of this war the u.s should not half-ass these if we are going to go at these operations it has to be clearly laid out in terms of what we want to accomplish and how we want to do it the idea that you can just sort of do a venezuela style approach to iran never made

Sense to me and i never thought it was going to work and i think that this is really starting to show the flaws of that logic so if the u.s needs to go at this in terms of or decides that it wants to go at this it really has to think are we talking regime change or not because at this point i don't think you can just simply have a conversation where you're

Saying you know maybe we'll just bomb them some more and then hope it goes well because that's how you wind up here so on that front i mean it's it's a much more complicated topic because the appetite for any sustained ground campaign in iran is very slim even lindsey graham has only backed taking karg island and not the actual mainland so that is where

Washington finds itself in a bit of a holding pattern its current approach the only saving grace it may have the ace up its sleeve if you will is operation economic fury which i do think has the chance of having a much more impactful result on the regime there because for the first time it is actually choking off some of its most important economic pathways

The blockade even though it has missed a few ships here and there thank you shout out to the wall street journal on some of the reporting there and perhaps evan from the first first person view i was gonna say i knew before the journal did thank you very much i can only imagine you're out there standing pointing saying you missed one but aside from that the

Blockade has cut off significant amounts of energy exports out of iran so not only are they losing the revenue they're actually running out of space to store this stuff and for some in the audience who haven't been following this as closely the thing that shocks some people is that during the actual military campaign of operation epic fury either the first

Month or so iran was actually exporting more oil than they were prior to the war and they were doing so at elevated wartime pricing so that means they were they were just raking in this money even though they were in the middle of getting bombed of course so this blockade has really been able to do something that probably should have been implemented from

Day one let's be honest and also has really started to show that iran that the timeline is not as on iran side as it may think sure and as you point to the economic side of this i think it is worth re-emphasizing again the point that one this probably should have been done a while before we i think have been very similar in our approach to the idea that if

You're going to do this right either don't do it or do it till it's done do it right the first time right yeah i mean i think we can you know we can have a very long conversation about whether or not this war should have happened was necessary was well thought out was any of that but i think at a bare minimum if you're going to take the leap right get it

Right the first time and speaking on the iranian oil side of this now where iran is having to kind of burn through its existing storage capacity and try and fill whatever storage it can before it has to risk damaging these wells risk kind of just wasting oil right iran is in a situation now for listeners who may not be totally following along with it's very

Much a situation of like you're renovating your house your sinks out whatever you're trying to do the plumbing and you hit something and water just starts spewing out of you right iran has this flow of oil that it can't stop and you're just trying to find buckets and anything you can put this water into before it starts like seeping into everything right

Where's a bucket where's a bucket and iran is now working its way through these large oil storage containers which seem to be mostly full at this point if not completely full they're repurposing old oil hardware some of which is like rusted out ships that have just kind of been sitting in docks for however long or sitting off the coast for however long,

Really anything with internal storage capacity is now being repurposed to hold this Iranian oil as it comes out.

The issue being, well, the issue being threefold, right? One, nobody but Iran knows how many containers they're going to be able to find and repurpose. Two, nobody but Iran really knows how quickly those containers are going to fill.

And three, nobody really knows how much excess oil production Iran can divert, whether it's through the Caspian Sea, whether it's through consuming it domestically in ways that it typically wouldn't, whether it's through simply just sending it over the border in trucks if possible, right? So it's tough to know how long this process is really going to take.

You can calculate available storage capacity, but that only gets you so far. So at this moment, it sets up this ticking time bomb on both sides, right? Where the US, the calculation here is much more on political will to continue this rising gas prices, economic pain for the people of the US, the political costs of allowing the status quo to hold, right?

Whereas Iran is dealing with a physical capacity issue, right? So in your estimation, I suppose two questions. First, based on what you're seeing, how quickly is Iran moving through this available capacity and how much does it have left? How much can it offset?

And then two, are we in a situation now where both sides are trying to kind of extend the timeline on which they can outweigh the other? On the presumption that a ceasefire will, on the presumption that whoever loses that contest has to make concessions in the ceasefire. And is that even the right way to be looking at this? Sure.

So estimates on the Iranian side of when they hit maximum storage capacity are a little all over the place. So on the short end of the equation, the Eurasia group has put it, I believe, at two weeks. It was stated at three, but I read that at least a week ago. So roughly two weeks. That's very short, though. I don't I don't think they're that low.

That's only my own personal hunch. But I would be shocked if it's that short. The CIA has reportedly put it at three months. And I think we're probably closer to that period than we are the few weeks from the Eurasia group's report. But the ultimate thing here being nobody's entirely sure of when this is going to happen.

And Iran has begun to scale back its oil production in preparation of running out of storage. So that is worth noting. They're able to reduce production without damaging their wells, because once you actually do a hard shutdown, though, it actually does damage them.

So if they are faced with having to fully shut down this these drilling operations, that's going to be a much more serious conversation, which they would be if they do run out of storage. So that's the long versus short term approach here.

As to your second question, outweighting each other is, I think, at least what both sides had been trying to do, but I do think it's setting into the. Iranians that this is not a very valid perpetual approach because of this ticking time bomb.

By the way, not only are they running out of storage, despite the fact that they produce all this oil, their refineries do not produce enough gasoline for their own domestic consumption. So they need, I think, in the ballpark of 10 million gallons per day of imports, which before the war they were getting from their Gulf neighbors.

Not sure how willing they're going to be to sell to Iran after all of this. Speaking of which, it has come to light that both the UAE and Saudi Arabia were both involved in attacking Iran. We can get to that in a moment. But I do just want to also add that Iran does appear to be basically gearing up for another campaign.

Just the other day, there was a failed IRGC attempt at infiltrating the Bubeyan Island. off of Kuwait's coast on May 1st. It just came to light yesterday. It wasn't entirely clear what the IRGC's basically rationale for it was. But it's very close to Iran's Mashahar port, which is where they're going to be conducting even more exercises.

I think that they're ultimately going to go for this once again, because they already went for it the other day. And I can easily see them trying to do this again as a sort of alternative way at getting the Gulf countries' attention. The second invasion of Kuwait was not on my 2026 bingo card. I will give that one to Iran. Fair play.

You'll have to ask the first invasion how that ended up going. Yeah. Something about not going very well. But, you know, we're a current events channel here. We don't do the 90s. 90s? Did I just completely get that wrong? No. 90s, right? 90s. Yeah. 90s. Good. Good. Good. Good. Cool.

So I do want to ask about the building up violence that we're seeing now in the street. But before we get into the specifics of it, obviously the US and Iran have each engaged in limited but substantial kinetic action over the last couple of weeks.

Going back to our conversation on divide within the Iranian regime, to what degree do you believe that these attacks are coordinated with the whole of the Iranian government? To what degree do you believe that they are the IRGC kind of acting of their own accord?

And if the latter, do you believe that these are kind of an accelerationist attempt to start moving the region back toward the state of conflict that at least the IRGC seems to believe is inevitable?

Yeah, I do think that they're trying to push a very militant approach to the issue because when it comes to the divide between the IRGC and the civilian side of the equation, this is best personified with the apology tour that Massoud Pazeshkian briefly put out in the early days of the war where he was apologizing to the Gulf countries for Iran launching on

Them.

It lasted all of 10 minutes. and the IRGC just started launching once again. So you can see how much of an impact the civilian side of the government actually has. Unfortunately, not a great deal.

Now, in terms of what the IRGC is actually trying to accomplish with this, I do think they see a strong showing that they're willing to return to war as being something that can sort of wear down the Americans.

There's a good op-ed in the Wall Street Journal today saying that the Iranians think that they're winning this, essentially, and that they think that Trump is bluffing. So ultimately, if they're able to continue pursuing this, it's sort of a self-fulfilling prophecy.

But again, that ticking time bomb on the economic front, that is the sort of one thing I could see being something that upends this. So in that case, let's ask about the Iranian perceptions now. Is Trump bluffing?

Is this idea of a return to warfare either a kind of a carrot and a stick thing where we're not actually intending to go to war, or alternately, is it, yes, a legitimate threat to resume the U.S. bombing campaign as it was before the ceasefire, but is it a bluff that there would be any sort of expansion in scope or scale of U.S. operations? Perhaps.

I don't want the U.S. to return to a bombing campaign, though. If we're, even if we're approaching this from the perspective of trying to shake the regime, it's not going to have the impact that Trump thinks it will.

Because if we're going at this with anything other than full regime change, which, let's face it, this is not what's on the table now, we will be doing something related to just increasingly bombing them. And we've already taken out a significant share of military production as well as drone production and whatnot.

So when we get to the darker side of the equation, when we're talking like bombing civilian energy infrastructure, which I'm so glad was not followed through on, I think this ultimately will have very little impact on the regime's willingness to stay or go. They have made abundantly clear, they do not care about the people in the country.

Their survival is a price they're willing to have Iranians pay. So they will do just about anything to stay in power. And if that means Iranians sit in the dark, I mean, they're more than happy to have that happen. I don't think that any of that will change the dynamic at all.

So ultimately, what I think, because I know we've had some back and forth on this, ultimately, the Operation Economic Fury at this point seems to be the U.S.'s, not just ace up its sleeve, but also its sort of only viable option, as far as I can see.

Because when you go back and revisit the ending days of Epic Fury, it wasn't really moving much on the ground at all. It was after taking out Larajani. And that would give aperson ания category for us to go next time. management olacak moment, That was like one of the last big names to go.

But since then, there wasn't anything of substance that really like shook the regime too much. And that's inherently part of bombing campaigns where you start out with the huge targets. Day one, they got Ali Khamenei. That was huge. People thought it would take weeks. They did it in one day.

And it's like, wow, that's a huge, whether or not that's ultimately worked in their favor is a separate question, but that's a huge conventional military achievement at least. So you can see the diminishing returns on that. So then let's get to the other side of this US ticking time bomb, right?

Because just as the US believes that it can stretch Iran to a point of failure, Iran believes the same for the US. Now, the US obviously, as we've mentioned, has different standards of victory or concern or defeat or whatever it may be, right? It's based on political will.

But you look at political will here, the numbers are not great for the Trump administration. Yesterday, we got some new inflation numbers for the month of April. I believe it was like 3.6%, maybe 3.8. 3.8, okay. Economic trust for Trump is going down across basically every polling metric out there that is looking at that at this point.

I mean, it is very rare to see US Democrats polling higher on economic issues than US Republicans in kind of a generic vote untied from politicians. And that is beginning to show up in these polling results more and more often, right?

We're seeing real attrition in public support for this war to the extent that it existed in the first place, which it was already, it started out at a very low point and it's only grown lower from there. So it started out at a very partisan perspective.

So there were different pollings done on this and you really had to sort of dig down into the details on it to get a good feel. But within Republicans broadly, it was like 90 something percent supportive. And whatever the heck MAGA Republicans even means anymore, was that I think it was like 98% supportive or something like insanely high like that.

Democrats, complete opposite. It was like super, super low. And then independence, I believe, leans softly negative on it. But overall, it was like, it was more partisan than anything, which is unfortunately a reflection on the broader state of the American political system. Right.

But even still, right, point being, you compare that to immediately after 9-11, for example, right? You look at the public support that the early days of the US interventions around the world went at that time. Typically, that starting point is going to be the high watermark.

It is very rare that the public in any nation is more supportive of a war a few weeks, a few months, a couple of years in than they are at the start, right? Cost of war start coming home. You start to see economic disruptions. You start to see soldiers dying abroad, right?

It's only going to get worse. whatever the starting point was and they were not starting from a very good point by any means in the u.s we're seeing obviously we have these redistricting wars playing out right now we're seeing lots of controversy around supreme court decisions all kinds of things right this is a very fraught political moment for the u.s in

Ways that go well beyond the iran war but the iran war is very much a stressor of that and the political costs depending on how the midterms in november go right the costs of the war especially the long-term economic disruptions that seem to be kind of queuing up to really hit around this fall could have really severe political implications for trump and his

Broader mega movement so looking at it from that perspective where damage to trump's political prospects seems to be a real pain point for the us's decisions whether or not to continue in this war right does iran's side of this calculus have any merit to it that by extending this ceasefire period extending this period of minor not quite yet open conflict and

Threatening return to open conflict can iran stack incentives against the u.s that caused the u.s to begin to back down well what there's many things you can say about donald trump patience the patience is not usually one of them although i do have to say he has stuck this out longer than i may have originally thought he would to the point on the midterms

This may be something that moves him in terms of like a second term american president i it's it would be so extraordinarily unprecedented for a second-term president not to lose congress in the midterm of his second term i think you have to go back to eisenhower for the last time a second-term president did not lose the congressional midterm election so i

Have this just like once you zoom out of what's going on a day-to-day basis this is just such a like baked into the equation factor for me i don't put a whole lot of stake into it but again this could impact donald trump's thinking because of course he does not want to be seen as losing all of these seats or whatever but i have a hard time making out where

This is actually going politically because at the same time as all of this is unfolding the odds-on favorite for the next president of the united states granted very early don't take this to the bank they will not cash it is marco rubio he is currently leading prediction markets for the next presidency so when we're talking about this like could there are

The republicans going to lose a lot of seats in the midterms probably so when you start looking at this okay is this iran war related is this just historical like exhaustion with a president by the last part of his second term maybe we'll have to see just how high gas prices ultimately go this is a big important factor in terms of managing inflation which is

Why like after the 2020 to Ukraine invasion, the dependency that the United States had on oil was unfortunately high.

We have made some progress on this, but domestic production remains not incredibly high. So this is where you really start seeing, because it's a global market, that these conflicts really do come home to roost.

And so this is what I always point to when more isolationist figures talk about, well, why do we even have to pay attention or care about this stuff? Well, that's why, because Russia invades Ukraine, and now you're paying $5 a gallon for gas. Gas in Massachusetts, at least, has not been anywhere near that bad. Right now, it's about four.

I don't know where it is where you are, Evan, but where I am, at least, it's around low fours. Yeah, we don't want to live in California right now. I will say that much. Yeah, exactly. But the low fours is what I consider to be like the upper end of what people will tolerate as expensive but not holy shit level.

When the Ukraine invasion happened, when it shot up to five, almost six, that's a different level of being somewhere between double and triple what people are used to paying. Right now, we're at absolute maximum, a little less than double what people are used to paying.

So definitely significant, but I don't think it's having quite the same impact that the Ukraine did in the first week or two. We'll have to see where that goes ultimately. But I am curious as to your thoughts as to how that will play domestically.

Yeah, I think the estimations that I'm seeing now expect the costs of this long-term economic disruption to really begin hitting around late summer, early autumn, which, I mean, just looking at the U.S. political timeline, that's going to be a real problem, right? That is not when you want a major spike in gas prices to hit.

I think on the question of whether or not this midterm vote really matters in Trump's thinking, one, I think the dedication to which both Republicans and now in response Democrats have gone about redistricting would suggest to me that holding control of the House and Senate is very important to them this time around, or at least not allowing very much

Attrition.

Now, this is going to get a little bit granular for folks outside the U.S. who don't really pay too much attention to U.S. politics, I apologize, but the issue when you're redistricting in this way, right, you're taking votes from areas that lean very strongly one way and kind of peppering them into other areas to offset results, right?

And while you can create voting districts that will predictably vote, let's say, 60-40 in an ordinary year for your preferred candidate, right, that's also a much thinner margin of victory than a lot of these really safe Republican seats have had, where we're seeing, on a typical year, like 80-20 disparities, right?

Like, odds. very, very few Democrats in these areas, or vice versa, right? We can talk about these districts in urban areas that are now being broken up to kind of attrit away democratic support. Now, the reason why I bring all that up is because you're essentially sacrificing safe districts to make districts that predictably lean a certain way.

And the issue is, if you encounter, say, major economic disruption or major political scandal or XYZ at the wrong time, and you've created a bunch of mostly predictable, but kind of fragile voting districts, that can very quickly swing back the opposite way.

The reason why that is important is this war has gone in no small part because of the Trump administration's ability to avoid kind of the legal questions around its legality, around the ability of Congress to weigh in and need to either approve this or not, and so on, right?

The idea that the Democrats can come through and hold the, or take the Senate, take the House, right? Probably going to take the House, taking the Senate seems to be on the table at this point. Not necessarily too likely, but much more so than it was thought to be, say, a year ago, right?

If you're looking at that and you're looking at the ability of this White House to hold its mandate for a war, that may well come apart after this vote concludes, in which case it doesn't matter, right? It doesn't matter whether you played the waiting game very well at all. Because you played it, you've now sacrificed this remaining political advantage.

So to take this and kind of look at the counterpoint then, let me run this by you. If the U.S. has evaluated, if Trump has evaluated and his team has evaluated that the midterms were to be a lost cause, we know that Trump is looking at other military options as they stand now, right?

We know that an invasion of Kargisland, as you mentioned, may be on the table. It's on the slate of options, right?

Various other operations to reopen the Strait Reformers by force, etc. If this war is not going to be politically sustainable for the long term, and that is an accepted point in this White House, does that then create incentives that are a little bit accelerationist on the U.S. side to say, hey, we have, looking at the calendar, we have six months to

Prosecute this war.

We have six months to achieve something here that, one, hits all of our war aims, two, maybe reverses our fortunes politically? Who knows? But we have six months to do it, right? Does that change Washington's calculus as it's looking to consider options to potentially reopen hostilities? Yeah, so there's a term for what you were talking about there.

It's called, instead of gerrymandering, it's called dummymandering, because you take these districts that may otherwise be originally 80, 20, or 70, 30, or something, and when you redistrict the state, you wind up with more districts being like 60, 40, or even 55. 45. So when you wind up with these swings, you can actually end up just screwing yourself over.

And that works in both directions. To be honest on this, I would like to propose the Israeli method where they just said to hell with it. They don't do districts. Their country is the size of New Jersey. So it works in terms of a national scale. So that would not be the approach the United States should take.

But in terms of when I look at this, if the states just have a statewide race and then the seats are divvied up proportionally, that would make more sense to me than doing this system where everybody has a problem with it.

Because Democrats, all of these districts look like they're gerrymandering, to be honest, like so many of them in states up and down the United States. So that's one approach that I think should at least be considered. It has worked in Israel to some extent, at least.

But when we're talking about the War Powers Act, which I assume you were talking about there with Congress. Okay. So the War Powers Act is sort of complicated because in order to actually revoke the president from doing this, from doing a military campaign, they have to pass it by majority. And then the president will veto it, obviously.

And then it goes back to Congress and then they need a two-thirds majority. I think the Democrats will take back Congress. I don't think they're going to get a two-thirds majority in both chambers. That would be extraordinary. So I don't think... Yeah. So in terms of congressional authorization, this is such an easy thing to loophole around, though.

Rubio, the other day, he was saying Epic Fury is done. So now if we go back to War... The clock starts again because it's a new campaign. None of this... This is why the hyper-legalistic approaches to these things have never made a great deal of sense to me because there's so many ways around it.

And ultimately, the War Powers Act, just for a quick history lesson here for our audience, this was passed back in 1973 after Vietnam, basically saying, okay, the president can't just go about this unilaterally.

But it tries to have it both ways because it recognizes under Article 2 that the president has the authority to do this, but they set a time limit for 60 days plus an additional 30 without congressional authorization. This sort of argues two separate things at once, which is the conflict of the U.S. Constitution on this.

The Constitution gives Congress the ability and the power to declare war, not the president, but it puts the president as commander in chief of the armed forces. Those are two very contradictory things that initially may not sound contradictory. But when the president is commander in chief, what do you do if he starts sending these people over to war?

So ultimately, I know the president... can't unilaterally declare war, but obviously, as we've seen throughout recent conflicts, he doesn't necessarily or ever really need to anymore. And it is worth noting that every president since Nixon, who vetoed the thing in the first place, by the way, Congress overrode him on it.

Every president of both parties has rejected it. They've said it's not constitutional for the reasons I was just saying, because it both recognizes the president's Article 2 powers and then says, actually, you only have Article 2 for 60 days. I don't think that's going to hold up at the Supreme Court because it tries to have it both ways.

And I just don't think that any serious constitutional scholar is going to be able to sit down and be like, yes, that makes sense where there's two different constitutional approaches depending on a timeline that was agreed in the 1970s. You know what I mean? I do.

And I do want to move us on because I don't want to get too bogged down in U.S. domestic politics. But just as a counterpoint, the loophole-seeking approach to hyper-legalistic approach to legislation is a weapon that cuts both ways, right?

There's a lot of talk about the War Powers Act right now, partly because the deadline was there, partly because it's one of the few things that the Democrats as a minority party in both houses, right, is able to at least raise the issue of, even if they're not going to win that battle, right?

That is a small fraction of what is possible if the Democrats were to attain a majority in either or both houses. We've seen this with, obviously, both Bush and Obama's conduct during the War on Terror, right? We saw it during the first Trump administration to a lesser extent, during the Biden administration to a lesser extent.

There are a lot of ways to gum up the works if you have legislative power many, many, many ways. And that's not to say that, you know, Trump is going to be dragged to The Hague or whatever for this war because the Democrats got power, right? But there's a lot of room in between that and what we're seeing now.

Now, the conversation on whether or not the Democrats have the political willpower or the legal creativity to do some of those things, I think, is a different conversation and possibly for a spinoff U.S. political reform podcast. So I'm now getting the vibe that we need to start. But barring that, just to move back to Iran, right?

Let's assume, let's make the assumption that in six months, this war gets much harder to prosecute on the Trump side, right? So going back to that base assumption, how does that change Trump's understanding of his priorities at this stage, his understanding of the combat operations that may be politically and logistically feasible, right?

And is there a risk here that looking at that problem, the White House just kind of goes, okay, send it, see what happens, right? Let's really try and do this. If we're losing the House, losing the Senate anyway, let's make this play, see if we can turn some things around.

And if not, at least we account. or war goals i don't think so because trump is just so focused on optics at all times in all ways so i mean he has to be winning in his mind constantly and i just can't see him sacrificing too much political capital on this so again i think like the oil prices staying where they are now is going to be sort of the upper

Threshold of where it could be without causing a huge uproar because as we've seen to your point the war is generally unpopular but in like a it's like a soft unpopular way it's not like this it's not vietnam exactly exactly it's a oh that's still going on sort of thing but when you start talking about gas over five dollars a gallon and again the american

Economy very energy dependent so this has trickled down impacts in terms of shipping just driving up cost of inflation which that's why we're seeing inflation tick up it's all energy stuff so i think if prices go too much higher we will be having to talk about a different a different political calculus to this so far and again this has now gone on what two

And a half months yeah where it has held and as long as he's able to sort of hold it where it is now i think this like soft unpopularity of the war will be like borderline acceptable for his political calculations where i think it would just be truly unfathomable for him would be like a any full ground invasion or anything like that as well as if we're

Talking about gas much higher and we've talked on more fronts in the mid-channel about how some of these propositions invasion of kark island etc are really just a losing game for the u.s no matter how you slice it so i tend to agree with you i don't think that we're going to see any real explosion of wartime ambition from the white house beyond what we've

Seen they still seem to be really governed by this cost averse approach really at all costs right avoid human losses no matter what else you got to give up in many ways and as much as that has kind of gotten us to this point i don't think that it's going to change anytime soon now i do want to bring in one other point before we log off for the day because we

Are going over i think on issues that deserve lots of consideration and also we're like a very small part of my agenda for the day so it just kind of shows how really much we can poke into these topics but i do want to bring up as you mentioned before we have seen now reports confirming what was suspected for a few weeks which is the entry of both saudi

Arabia and the united arab emirates to this conflict now for those who may not have been spending all of their waking hours watching this war as it was unfolding there were a few issues signs that things were happening here there were a few sightings of french made mirage jets over iran bombing targets us and israel do not have those it would be strange if

The us and israel were flying those somebody else had to be right saw other there were some reports of like heat signatures coming from various places that didn't really match up etc but now we do have these reports suggesting that iran sorry that saudi and the emirates really have entered the conflict to conduct at least limited bombing of iranian targets

So what are the strategic implications of that as it pertains to the war moving forward and what does that mean for the gulf it is a continued move towards gulf independence shall we say on the global stage because what we have seen is something that at least war planners in tehran did not imagine i don't really understand why they thought the gulf would be

So willing to just absorb a seemingly never-ending series of strikes but be that as it may the gulf has been furious with iran over its handling of this now some of them like saudi arabia were never particularly fond of iran to begin with but the uae had developed a much more friendly relationship with the islamic republic that's gone that's long gone as

We've been covering for quite some time but this is a totally different level emirati jets striking iranian soil is a big escalation in terms of where you where this actually comes down in terms of what side they actually view themselves on and saudi arabia as well and especially now that iran was trying to invade a kuwaiti island i'm going to predict that

They may not be the last arab state to jump into this fray but i have i have a question for you on all this because in the early outset of the war the economist ran a front page that was attention grabbing it was a lone israeli flag in the middle of the desert and it was attached to this flagpole that was like flopping over and it looked just sad it was all

Alone and the caption was israel alone the point being israel had chosen to start this war and it did not have international support now there are and so it was going to be even more isolated than it was before there are two ways of viewing this or potentially more two ways i can see and i'm curious as to which side you come down on the first is yes israel

Isolated itself in terms of engaging in terms of engaging in this and the second is that the economist was actually misreading the situation and that israel actually has emboldened its alliance in the region and beyond and that europe has sort of lost the connection with the gulf countries so i'm I'm curious as to which side you come down on or if there's a

Third option there that I have not seen.

There is indeed a third option. So this is really poking at one of my deep areas of research in the last couple of months. And we've covered this a bit on the main channel as well, if you've seen our coverage on the Emirates specifically.

So right now, there's kind of a separate thing happening in the Middle East where we are seeing a couple of different, you could say alliances, really softer than that, right?

A couple of geopolitical axes starting to form where you have the United Arab Emirates kind of joining forces with Israel on military cooperation, on intelligence cooperation, economic cooperation. Even prior to this conflict, Israeli intelligence has started operating out of Emirati bases all across the region.

Like this has been a developing thing for a little while. Morocco is on this, is kind of in on that triad. Ethiopia also was part of it. If you saw a couple of months ago, the whole debacle over Somaliland in Somalia, right?

Not to get too deep into the geopolitics of this, but this was very much a result of that axis kind of coming together and taking coordinated action. So too has some of the movement around the disputed territory of Western Sahara in Morocco, right? So too around Yemen, around Libya.

Point being, right, these four countries are operating together in an increased level of coordination. So too can we say for the opposite side that Saudi Arabia, Pakistan, Egypt, Turkey are kind of starting to coalesce into a rival axis. Qatar is a part of this and so on.

And this really hits at a lot of old and new rivalries that existed a long time before this. So Saudi and the Emirates are on opposite sides. Israel and Turkey are on the opposite sides. Egypt and Ethiopia are on opposite sides.

And these two groups are coming together more over common interest in collaboration against the other than in any kind of formalized alliance, right? Now, the reason why I bring all this up is the one thing that these two sides seem to be able to agree on is that they would like to exist in a post-Iran Middle East.

Iran is not, in either of their broader strategic calculus, a meaningful or interesting player in the future of the Middle East. It is better to get them done with, get them pushed off to the side, get them sidelined, whatever, and just move on with business. Because these other countries, in their own estimation, they're the ones doing business right now.

Iran is on some theocratic, I don't know. Sorry, right. Yeah, exactly. And so you look at this, right, and in context to this conflict, and yes, some of these regional affiliations are holding true, right? We've seen more collaboration between the Emirates and Israel than we've seen between Israel and any of the other Gulf states.

We've seen, again, we've seen, again, the Gulf kind of take a unified but distinct and separate approach from Israel and the US for the most part. But as this time has gone on, it seems as if the Gulf states have kind of started to agree, okay, this was not the circumstance under which we wanted to move toward a post-Iran Middle East.

We didn't choose this conflict. We would have much rather not had our oil infrastructure be bombed, not have our LNG facilities bombed. None of this was our idea, right? But as long as we're here, and as long as we are, because apparently Israel wants to move toward this brave new world in the Middle East pretty quickly and pretty aggressively.

So I suppose we're here now. Let's do it, right? That seems to be the, because right up until the US began its strikes, the Gulf states were pushing very, very hard against this conflict. A couple of months later, as you have mentioned, they are in a completely different spot.

It seems as if these early Emirati and Saudi strikes took place during the bombing campaign by the US and Israel, right? This was not something that they started to do after the fact. They, within the space of a month, decided, you know what? We're here now. This has devolved past the point of being salvaged. We need to now pivot toward the future.

And the future for all sides seems to be a future in which Iran is at the very least defanged, at the very least does not possess substantial offensive capabilities, and probably in an ideal world is permanently sidelined.

So that I think is what we're seeing now, as well as the increased willingness to admit this, maybe not officially, but at least to allow certain amounts of leaks, certain amounts of information to get out for what was previously a very well-kept secret on the Emirati and the Saudi side. So it seems as if that's the progress that we're seeing.

I agree with that, almost all of it. This is the power of national interest. So the Gulf states were opposed largely. Saudi Arabia was lukewarm, supportive behind the scenes before the war. But as soon as soon as they were on the receiving end of the Iranian missiles, they changed sides real fast. Yes. And so now they've launched.

That's a way of causing that change. Exactly. Which is why I have been saying for so long, this Iranian approach of just striking everybody. They were striking Oman, who they now need to set up this toll in the Strait of Hormuz. Lo and behold, they had been bombing them for a month. So it just didn't make any sense.

But the point here being, this is a marriage of convenience, for sure. But when you think about in just six years where this has gone, the UAE didn't even recognize Israel six years ago, okay? The Abraham Accords weren't even a thing then.

So the progress that the region has made in terms of moving towards recognizing Jerusalem, which was for so long considered such a politically toxic thing in Arab Gulf politics, it is shocking to me. Israel now has Iron Dome deployments in the UAE, and they've been assisting the UAE in their defenses.

And I suspect that just as with the Abraham Accords, the UAE was the first, along with Bahrain, but they won't be the last.

And I ultimately see the economist Israel alone piece as almost sort of wishful thinking in terms of, I almost think that they want that to be the way the world's working, but I don't think it is, because the region is not moving in the way that they may wish it was. Absolutely.

And I do want to point out, because there is a larger discussion here, that I don't think we have time to really get into today, but I do at least want to hint at it. The Middle East was supposed to be very different in 2026, if you wind the clock back to, say, May of 2023.

At that time, the U.S., not the U.S., Israel and Saudi Arabia were on the brink of what was supposed to be a huge normalization deal, right? That was going to rewrite geopolitical dynamics across the entire region. Saudi Arabia had also just normalized with Iran after several years.

So really, we were working toward a situation where not only is there this unbroken diplomatic chain now running between Israel to Saudi Arabia to Iran, right? Which is unheard of, unprecedented for those sides to be able to even really work together substantively through an indirect interlocutor, right?

You have the Emirates coming on board, you have Morocco coming on board, so on and so forth, Egypt, Turkey, and then you have October 7th, right? And we can talk for however long we want to about what Hamas' true incentives were there.

I personally have always suspected that normalization was a major, major factor in their decision to accelerate timelines and to attack in a way that Iran may not have expected.

Reason being, right, if you're Hamas watching this, right, and you're watching Israel strike up a conversation with Saudi, who's striking up a conversation with Iran, and everybody's trying to make the Middle East more peaceful, who's on the chopping block, right?

Hamas does not come out of that situation very well at all, and likely is abandoned eventually by Iran because of the economic incentives that outweigh it, right? Putting that all aside, I think the evolution of the security situation in the Middle East much more broadly has been very far from what these capitals were drawing up in 2022, 2023.

And while there really isn't a path back to the kind of everybody holding hands, Abraham Accords slowly taking hold, environment that existed at that time, right, the thing that seems to hold true is that the pre-2023 Middle East is something that all sides are looking to get away from, that most sides would like not to include Iran, and that's the table

Set, right?

I see you wanting to jump in, by all means. I think this conflates two different things, to be honest. I think this conflates two different things, to be honest. You may be right on, I mean, 10-7 absolutely upended the prospect of Saudi normalization with Israel, which was Hamas' stated goal. They were successful in doing that so far.

The normalization with Iran was not part of that. I view the Abraham Accords as being a Gulf reaction to the issue of the JCPOA.

They were quite concerned and quite alarmed that the U.S. was, in their views, and our own personal view of this aside, they were pretty explicit that they were concerned the U.S. was abandoning them in order to pursue a deal with Iran on this.

They were concerned that the Iran nuclear deal would allow them to build up conventional ballistic missile programs throughout the next decade, and their concern was that if something happened with Iran, Iran would then use that expanded missile program to launch on them and, gee, who could have seen that coming?

So just to jump in here, just to jump in and clarify the timeline of what had been happening at the time, you're absolutely correct. Israel-Iran normalization was not on the table. That was not going to happen, at least for a very long time. The issue at that time was, instead, Saudi has kind of this new...

And if you remember back to what Saudi was doing in, like, early 2020s, right, where it was really the height of, like, Neom is going to be a thing, right, and Saudi is going to take us into this, like, crazy new future, whatever, right? All these things that have since been kind of exposed as vaporware, but that's a separate conversation, right?

The concern at that time, well, not even the concern, right, the hope at that time was that by kind of centralizing these intermediary points, specifically Saudi, but also to a degree the Emirates, to a degree Turkey, right, these nations that could keep up in an ideal world fairly decent ties with both Iran and Israel and provide both of them with economic

Incentives that essentially would have caused them to pursue a continued peace in the Middle East and even to reinforce peace in the Middle East rather than to return to open conflict was kind of the longer-term play that seemed to be developing at that time, right?

Also encouraged by the idea that, oh, well, if we don't do this, if we don't grit our teeth and find some way to make sense of this, Iran will build up more of its stockpiles. Iran will go nuclear. Iran will XYZ, right? So just to clarify, Iran-Israel normalization has never been on the table, to my knowledge, and certainly was not at that time either.

It was much more of an indirect thing. Yeah, I think that's generally speaking true. I just, I have qualms about the presentation that Iran was necessarily even part of that. I think that the normalization process was going to go ahead prior to 10-7, and I think that after this Iran war, it's going to go ahead now. I would not agree.

The reason I say this, though, is because the Gulf has already been... The Emiratis were fighting alongside the U.S. and Israelis. I mean, this is unthinkable in pre-2020 Middle East. At least to me, they didn't even recognize the state of Israel. Right, but even at that time, recognition only went so far.

By that time, the Emirates and Israel had already built a fairly deep intelligence relationship. Yeah, that's fair. They were cooperating on security matters a while before. And point being, in this kind of emerging two axes that we see now, the Emirates and Israel are on the same side.

Not only that, but they are operating contrary to Saudi Arabia, contrary to Turkey, and in line with the U.S. Because that U.S.-Israel bond is among the more unbreakable of international politics. Well, when it comes to Iran, though, they are on the U.S. and Emirati axis, not Iran. Sorry?

When it comes to the Iran war, Saudi Arabia is very much on the U.S. and Emirati axis, which puts them in line with the Israelis. Right, so that goes back to what I was saying prior, which is the one thing that everybody can agree on is, let's get Iran out of the picture.

Because the last thing that any of us need for our economic collaboration, our proxy competition, whatever we want to do in the next little while competing with each other, it would be a real shame if they all nuked us to hell. Oh, yeah, I completely agree.

But my point is, it's a hell of a first date to just have that and then leave it like it never even happened. I think that's a really solid entry into Saudi normalization. Now, I don't think that's going to be happening in the next six months. I don't think it's going to even happen until they square away Gaza, at least better than they have now.

But I do think that we're headed back in that direction. I don't think this has upended the pre-2023 stuff in terms of the Iran war. 10-7 did, but this not so much. If anything, I see it pushing Saudi closer to Israel for those reasons.

And I do think, ultimately, Syria, which originally was potentially lukewarm about it, and then Israel bombed them, so everyone's like, ah, that's not going to happen. Now they're potentially floating it again. This could really happen. Again, I don't think this is going to be the next six months, so don't hold your breath on this stuff.

But I see the region as essentially realizing, like, when you look at the countries that have made peace with Israel and the countries that have not, there's a clear discrepancy in terms of successful outcomes there, on which side you want to come down on. Interesting. I would be very surprised if normalization happens. Well, okay, let me say this, right?

I would be very surprised if Saudi Arabia, Turkey, Pakistan, etc. move into substantive geopolitical alignment with Israel. right normalization can be the most important part of that or it can be a political problem depending on the day depending on the situation right they may normalize they may sign a piece of paper and then just never do anything about it

Right they may also like hold that as their you know last bridge that they will never cross and whatever it may be right so whether or not the piece of paper is signed right if we can kind of separate that from substantive collaborative partnership between israel and saudi turkey pakistan qatar that i think is much less likely especially because erdogan's

Going to have quite a bit to say about it especially because qatar also within the last year was targeted in an israeli airstrike that's not going to be very easily forgotten qatar is not is not going to be on board with any of this i am under no illusions but saudi arabia has a long-standing tension with qatar itself they threatened to turn them hilariously

Into an island back in yes in 2018 which is one of the greatest geopolitical threats i've ever seen in my life because that strip of border between qatar is just a peninsula and saudi arabia is theoretically narrow enough whether or not that could bypass the strait or hormuz that would be a two for one shot we'll have to we'll have to do some digging as to

What could happen there but that would be i don't see that as being particularly a problem but we will have to see ultimately where it heads again i think my the thing i'll rest on here i think this is a hell of a first date for saudi arabia and israel and i suspect it will not be the last because as you can see with the emirates those intelligence alliances

Don't just end with intelligence we gotta put this stuff on social media that was a great clip quote that was excellent and i think on that on that high note that little visual of netanyahu and mbs like sitting over a coffee table and just kind of sipping on lattes i think we're going to shut it down for the day for the middle east roundtable at fronts.co

Before we do any closing thoughts any notes anything to watch in the upcoming week do the iranians decide that saddam hussein's approach to kuwaiti relations was actually a good idea a real will they won't they exactly that is just about all on my list as well so to those listening thank you very much for tuning in if you stuck around to the end thank you

For that we appreciate you listening to both of these american vagabond geopolitical watchers just trying to make sense of this whole thing it's been it's been a year we're not even halfway through it's only gonna get crazier from here but we'll be here for all of it for those who subscribe and who support with a premium subscription thank you very much for

Your support we truly could not do what we do here and on war fronts and on home fronts in our upcoming offerings you so thank you very much and we will see you next week at the Middle East Roundtable