Transcription
And we're recording this exchange late on Sunday afternoon, a July 12 US Eastern Standard Time. And the renewed cycle of tit-for-tat US-Iranian strikes continues. Now, the central question today is whether the Trump administration can compel Iran to allow commercial shipping to pass through the Strait of Hormuz without requiring Iran's permission. Now, Iran, of course, has categorically rejected that proposition, insisting that all vessels transiting the strait must do so with Iran's explicit approval. So, is there any realistic prospect that Iran will back down? Does Washington have a credible military strategy capable of changing the Islamic Republic's position? Well, we have a terrific panel. Steven Waltz is professor of international relations at Harvard University and Joshua Landis is professor of Middle Eastern studies at the University of Oklahoma. Steve, Josh, always great to see you.
>> Pleasure. Nice to be with you.
>> Um, Steve, let's just start with you. Senior US officials continue to warn that there will be serious consequences if the Iranians don't open, uh, the Strait of Hormuz. They need to guarantee safe passage of ships through the Strait of Hormuz. What do you think is most likely to happen?
>> Well, I don't think this is going to change the overall situation, actually, very much. Um, you know, as we saw at the beginning of the war, and we've seen a couple of times since it started, each side is now trying to inflict some pain on the other. As you said, tit-for-tat, we're back to bombing Iran. They're back to attacking American facilities in the region and attacking ships in there. Um, and of course, this is what we saw happen once before there. Both sides are hoping that the other will say uncle and, uh, and concede, which is what the United States did back on June 17th when it signed that memorandum of understanding. But I don't think this is going to alter the situation because there's no reason to expect it to produce a different outcome now than it produced a month ago or two months ago. A couple of other just points here. I mean, as you, as you laid out in your intro, uh, we didn't have an end to this war. All we had was a 60-day ceasefire. And the agreement, the memorandum of understanding was vague about the management of shipping in the straits. It called for the ship, for the straits to be opened, but the language of Article 5 said that Iran was going to make arrangements and dialogue with the Sultanate of Oman to define the future administration of the strait. In other words, Iran was going to be able to set terms, uh, for managing access to an open strait. And Iran doesn't want to give up the leverage it has gained by being able, to open it. So when the United States started trying to promote an alternative route close to Oman, uh, Iran saw that as a violation of the spirit of the agreement, if not the letter of the agreement, and began attacking the shipping. Again, the memorandum of understanding is now, I think, hanging by a thread, and we're back to a much more serious exchange of strikes that I think is likely to continue for a little while longer.
>> But the supporters of the campaign, and they've included over the years, uh, the late Republican Senator Lindsey Graham, they keep making the argument that that the US has a unique opportunity to shift the balance in the region. And this is their argument, Steve. They contend that the US can reopen the Strait of Hormuz by force, enforce a naval blockade on Iranian ports, Iran's oil infrastructure, and destroy the remaining nuclear facilities. If that's the case, wouldn't that leave Iran weaker, and ultimately strengthen America's bargaining position? Steve?
>> Uh, if, if we could do those things, we would have done them already, right? Uh, the problem is we can't eliminate Iran's ability to attack shipping or to attack other countries in the region, and they can escalate by attacking infrastructure throughout the Gulf, including American military bases there. Uh, if necessary, desalination plants in, uh, in other Gulf countries on which those societies are completely dependent. Getting the Houthis to cut off shipping in the Bab el-Mandeb over in the Arabian Gulf, which, of course, is one of the places where oil is still getting out. So Iran has escalatory options. And the problem we face here is one of leverage and motivation. This was a war of choice for the United States. It's not a vital interest ultimately for us. It is an existential conflict for the Iranian regime. Their survival's at stake. Ours isn't, and they're therefore willing to accept a lot more pain. You know, time is not on Trump's side here, given the economic consequences of keeping the strait closed, which is why we caved in June and why I don't think this is going to change the bargaining situation between the two sides. Last point, neither side trusts the other here. There's no reason why they should. Remember, we started the war by killing many of Iran's senior leadership, which doesn't exactly build confidence. And that means any deal that's ultimately reached is going to be one where Iran wants to get its concession or wants to get its benefits up front. It's not going to agree to make changes on the basis of American promises of things we might do for them later down the road. And that, I think, gives them every incentive to bargain very hard here, even if we're hitting them with military force in a variety of different ways.
>> And yet the overwhelming conventional wisdom in Washington, Josh, is that the memorandum of understanding is effectively dead? Um, or do you believe diplomacy is still salvageable, Josh?
>> Yeah, I agree. I agree with Steve here. It is salvageable. The United States miscalculated, and they miscalculated terribly in going into this war thinking that they could overthrow the regime. That hasn't proven itself. The Iranian people did not rise up and overthrow the regime. And Iran had much better technology than we thought. The drones and the missiles which allow it to escalate with us and to attack these 18 American bases or that, that it sites that it has attacked and drive America out of the Persian Gulf, at least from those fixed bases, uh, has been devastating, and they can continue to do it, even though President Trump has repeatedly said we've destroyed their military and so forth. That's clearly not true because their military is still striking, and that leaves them, um, with military options. We clearly haven't come to grips with the fact that we need to have this diplomacy, and, um, and I think, you know, I think that's going to be hard because America is really caught in a, it's had a schizophrenic attitude towards Iran, right from the very beginning of the revolution, which is that we've wanted to overthrow this regime, and then every once in a while, we'll talk about diplomacy. But it, it's very difficult for our foreign policy establishment to accept that Iran is a normal country with, um, with national interests that it's going to bargain for. And so we keep on going back to this idea that we can overthrow them. And I think, I think President Trump, you know, even though he said just a little while ago, he said if the war kept on going, there would have been an economic catastrophe, so we had to end it. He said, if the Iran didn't open the Straits of Hormuz, our oil reserves would have run out in four weeks. We had to make a deal. So, what he said, you know, a few weeks ago when the, when the IM, when the memorandum of understanding was first struck, is still true. Our reserves are down 100 million barrels. And it's by using those reserves, China's reserves, and other reserves that, that we've been able to keep the international economy afloat and keep gas from going through the roof, and that's kept the stock market up. But it can't go on forever. So,
>> Yeah, I know. But the, the, and it's a fair point. I mean, John M. Shammer and Doug Bandal were on this program a couple weeks ago making the very point that Trump doesn't want to be the next Herbert Hoover who triggered the global depression. I get all that. But see, the critics, the hawks, Josh, they'd say the whole rationale behind the MOU was that it would restore freedom of navigation through the Strait of Hormuz while the negotiations over nuclear issues continued. And they would complain that Iran, it's Iran that's resumed the attacks on commercial shipping, even as those talks remain incomplete. So the question I put to you, Josh, if Iran is unwilling to honor even that basic understanding, why should Washington believe that another round of negotiations will produce a different outcome? Josh?
>> Well, you know, let me, let me use a little anecdote here because I think it's illustrative. We just saw Trump, President Trump at the NATO conference where he did, um, he met with the president of Syria, Ahmed Shara. And they had a signing, a memo signing because President Trump has agreed to lift Syria's designation as a country that supports terrorism. That's been on since the 1970s. Syria has been under stricter and stricter sanctions for, you know, 50 years. And if I dial back, I want to tell you a little anecdote which talks about what sanctions and what America has done to Syria because he was sitting next to Shara. They were lauding each other and calling each other good leaders and congratulating themselves. At the same time as President Trump then said when he was asked by, by, you know, what Israel thought, he said, America has been better to Israel than any other country. We gave them the Golan Heights. We gave them this and that. And he was sitting right next to the Syrian president whose nomair is Mr. Golan. And he said, uh, we gave Israel, and, and the, the guy had to sit there with a straight face. You could see not to, you know, blanch, but that was the price. And he went home that evening and he said, "We're out of sanctions." And Damascenes were thrilled. They didn't care if he had to give up the Golan Heights. They had suffered so much. And Washington got its way. And I, I, I take this back 20 years when Obama was running for president, and I was at a confabulation that was designed to allow Israeli security personnel in the defense and intelligence to talk to both Clinton and the Obama foreign policy people. I was brought in there to play Assad, of all things. And, you know, I made my argument, you need to get back the Golan Heights. It will make, bring peace and so forth. This as an opportunity. And the Israeli security people there laughed at me, needless to say, laughed at Syria and said, "Why? Syrian border has been the safest border. It, there's been no war since '73. Assad's a good guy, but we don't want an embassy in Damascus with a flag in exchange for the Golan Heights. We've got everything we want. So why would we make that deal?" And the conversation ended with a top State Department person saying, "Well, guys, let's, um, we have sanctions on Syria, and that's reducing Syria's GDP by 2% a year. That's almost half of what it should have been. And eventually, they're going to go bankrupt, and they're going to come to us, uh, you know, on bended knee, and they're going to ask us for a deal." Now, Assad never did come on a bended knee. Syria went bankrupt. It broke into civil war, and the country has been destroyed. 90% of the people live under the poverty line, and, and they have a new president who has come to America on bended knee and said, "Yes, you can take the Golan, but lift the sanctions." And I think that experience that Trump just went through and sort of pushed in Shara's face is the American modus operandi that they thought they could reproduce in Iran. And they still, in a sense, many of the hawks believe that if they just hold out a little bit longer, Iran's tether is going to run at the end of its leash, and it's going to break.
>> Yeah. Well, I heard, I heard General, the retired General Jack Keane on Fox News Channel the other night, um, Steve, and he was just looking at, you know, the previous attempts at diplomacy. His argument was that just gives Iran time to regroup and rearm and continue its regional ambitions. And this was his argument: If military pressure is not intensified on the Iranians, um, why won't the US simply face an even stronger and more dangerous Iran in a few years' time? That was General Jack Keane. Steve, your response?
>> Well, the United States can certainly do a lot of damage to Iran, particularly if we're willing to keep attacking civilian targets, which, of course, is a war crime. Um, but remember, they can hurt us, too. That's the point that Josh was making about Trump saying that this could be an economic catastrophe. So, it's not as though this is cost-free for the United States. We've spent, you know, somewhere between 50 and 70 billion on the war so far. American consumers have spent an extra $60 billion in energy prices and gas prices since the war began, and it's only three months, uh, three months in. So, this is expensive for the United States. And if we get a global recession out of it, then the cost is really enormous with lots of political consequences. So the idea that we can sit here in Washington, inflict massive damage on Iran, and not suffer any damage ourselves, I think, is just fallacious. Uh, the other point to make is that that someday this war will be over, and Iran, a country of 90 million people, quite sophisticated, is going to be able to regroup and rearm. The idea that you can smash it back to the Stone Age and it never recovers again, I think, is is completely, uh, wrong. This belief that we can always bomb our way to victory is an illusion. And, and apropos Josh's anecdote, remember, Iran's been under the most, uh, strict sanctions of any government in world history, right, for 30, 40 years, and they have not caved. Uh, they didn't cave when they signed the JCPOA. They got some of the things that they wanted. They got a much better deal in the June 17 memorandum of understanding, for which Trump was criticized, but he really had, uh, no choice here. And as I said at the outset, because they regard this as existential, whereas we regard it as something that would be nice to have, um, their willingness to hang tough here, I think, is likely to be much greater than ours.
>> But at what point does the regime start to really feel the pain of hyperinflation and the very weak economy? Um, surely Washington has some leverage here with respect to sanctions relief.
>> Yeah, that's a very powerful source of leverage. Um, but a couple of things. One is sanctions tend not to weaken authoritarian regimes as much as you might think because, of course, they control the means of coercion. They're the least affected by, uh, economic pain as well. The second point is, in order to make sanctions relief an effective bargaining tool, you have to be able to convince the other side that you're actually going to deliver the relief if they give you what you want. The problem we face with Iran is based on past experience, and especially their dealings with Donald Trump. They have no reason to believe any of his assurances. As far as they're concerned, he's the guy who tore up the JCPOA, even the nuclear deal, even though they were abiding by it. He's the one who launched a war in which their senior leadership was killed while negotiations were going on with Iran. They have no reason to accept any of our assurances. So, yes, sanctions relief, I think, would be an important part of any deal, but they're going to want to get that relief up front. They're not going to accept a promise that it comes down the road after they've given us what we want.
>> Josh, you mentioned earlier, uh, Syria and the Assad analogy, and that brings to mind Iran's so-called Shia crescent. Now, Brett Stevens, the award-winning columnist from the New York Times, past guest on this program, his argument is that whatever one's reservations about the war, he says that the strategic balance has shifted dramatically against Iran. This is his argument: Iran is further from a nuclear weapon. Its regional proxies, so Hamas and Hezbollah, have been badly weakened. Syria, again, a country you know well, you're arguably one of the world's leading experts on Syria. Syria has slipped from Iran's orbit, which is true. Its economy is in dire shape, and the regime is ruling over an increasingly discontented population. Um, aren't those strategic, uh, losses for Iran and its so-called Shia crescent, aren't they serious enough to think that they may be in a weaker position than many of us think?
>> Well, Iran is in a weaker position. There's no doubt about it. Uh, but with Israel, in a sense, the hegemon, if you will, in the Middle East, or the, the supreme power in the Middle East, as we have seen it, it is able to now take big chunks of Lebanon, Syria, and, uh, and now attack Iran with American support. Um, this frightens the rest of the Middle East because it's, it's thrown all of the powers in the Middle East into a situation of insecurity, and, um, and, and they're beginning to form a new coalition, if you will. We are seeing emerging this new friendship between Turkey and Saudi Arabia, which had always been, in a sense, competitors. Egypt, Pakistan, Qatar are worried that Israel is going to destabilize the Middle East, and America, for that matter. And they're going, they're they're beginning to close ranks in an attempt to balance Israel. And this, you know, this comes back to an anecdote from Kissinger, who after the '73 war, Israel had won a very lopsided victory. President Nixon wanted to un-lopsided that. He did not want Israel to conquer a lot more territory because he thought it would lead to to endless wars. And, um, and Kissinger said to Golda Meir, you know, you cannot, you need a balance of, we need a balance of power. If, if you, Israel has absolute security, which is what Israel is searching for now, it's going to turn all of your neighbors into, they're going to have absolute insecurity, and they're going to begin to bandwagon together. They're going to begin to form alliances in order to, in order to balance you. And that's what we're seeing here. We're seeing this balance of power, people shuffling to try to figure out how do we do that? Now, Israel is convinced that it, it can avoid that. It can avoid that by continuing this war with Iran. And in many ways, it's in Israel's interest to get America to to stay in a forever war with Iran and to do to Iran what Israel has done in Gaza and other places, which is to mow the lawn and periodically attack Iran. Why? Because then Iran will counterattack against the Gulf countries, and it'll force the Middle East into these divisions, and it'll force the Gulf countries to fight Iran, in a sense, to join America in this fight against Iran. That's one thing the Gulf countries did not really do. Yes, they were allied with the United States, but they didn't want to attack it. They, they, they were reluctant to attack it directly. A few did, but, um, really as a show of force. But that, that's the danger that America can fall into unless it uses diplomacy and, and, and creates a stable Middle East where there can be a balance of power. And that balance of power may not come from Iran alone. It'll come from these other countries that are worried that Israel is going to continue to attack countries like Qatar or destabilize the Middle East when they need economic growth. All of their plans depend on stability and economic growth.
>> Can, can I add just one, one quick point here? Josh, you made the point about Iran worrying about the sort of mow the lawn scenario that, uh, the United States and Israel come back and attack it every few months or so. I think that's a real problem given our past behavior. Um, and again, it's one of the reasons why they are bargaining so hard now, why they're so resolute, and in particular, they have an interest in making the United States pay a large price here because they want to teach us a lesson. Don't do this sort of thing. There's real consequences for Americans. There's consequences for our allies. So, they, in fact, have a strategic incentive to keep this war going. This is Iran, until they think the United States has learned that mowing the lawn is not an approach we should be following for the next few years.
>> Yeah.
>> And yet you all too often hear, notwithstanding all the points about the, the, the weaknesses and limitations of Iran's Shia crescent, you all too often hear about this so-called, um, Pax Iranica. I think it's called Pax Iranica. The Wall Street Journal has a piece, uh, today talking about aspiring to regional domination. Iran is ready to escalate over Hormuz, and they talk about this Pax Iranica. Um, is that really feasible given that the rest of the region pretty much is against Iran, not just Israel, but all those Sunni Gulf states?
>> You know, Iran is going to have a role, but this Pax Iranica is, is a bit of an exaggeration. Saudi Arabia is a powerful country. The Gulf countries are powerful. They're going to find a way to balance. Yes, they'll have to negotiate. And in a sense, they haven't had to negotiate because the United States has held Iran down and been sitting on its chest for the last 40 years. We have, you know, put them under these severe sanctions. This, this is unsustainable for, if there's a hundred million people in Iran, and trying to drive them into such poverty that the country collapses is not, um, you know, it's not a forever policy, and, and it shouldn't be a forever policy because the Middle, the Middle East needs to grow, and they're going to need to find their own balance of power, and the Gulf countries today are certainly capable of that. And, and the United States had built up the shop to be our gendarme in the Middle East. That was the Nixon Doctrine. And when the revolution took place, America jumped, you know, was terrified that they would lose control. We jumped over to Saudi Arabia. We helped build them up with hundreds of billions of dollars, not our dollars, their dollars, to build eight nuclear-hardened air bases around Saudi Arabia. And we changed that balance of power. So today, Saudi Arabia can stand on its own two feet. We saw that in 1990 when America helped Saudi Arabia destroy Saddam Hussein, uh, and pushed them out of Kuwait. But that balance, it's not going to be an Iranian-dominated Middle East. Iran will have a role, but it won't be the king.
>> One of, um, Senator Lindsey Graham, who died just, uh, earlier today, uh, one of his big ambitions was to get the Saudis to join the Abraham Accords. Now, of course, many Sunni Gulf states continue to be targeted by Iranian missiles. Think of Kuwait, Bahrain, Qatar, but also even, um, Jordan. Uh, Steve, what's your sense of all this? How is this conflict likely to reshape their relations, the, the Sunni Gulf States, their relations with Washington? And can you see any sign of an accommodation or recognition that notwithstanding Josh's points, Iran might have more leverage and influence in the region in years to come? Steve?
>> Well, I think there's already lots of evidence that these are states recalculating their relationship with the United States. You know, before the war, they had to a large extent thrown their lot in with the United States. We would provide security. We would provide access to various types of technology. There were a bunch of deals being done in lots of different ways. We had a special relationship with the UAE and with the Saudis as well. And I think now they're starting to rethink the wisdom of that policy. They obviously are not turning anti-American. Uh, but they are distancing themselves. They now realize, first of all, this is an administration that really has no idea what it's doing in the region. It's making it up as it goes along. They're learning that American protection, having military facilities there, is not a reliable guarantee against attack, that we cannot protect them against, uh, this exposing them to risk. The reason they're being attacked by Iran is because the United States is there and has been using its territory or their territory in part to to wage a war against Iran. And finally, and this is the point that Josh made, they have a long-term interest in having at least an amicable or a tolerable relationship with Iran, a business-like relationship with Iran at a minimum, because Iran's not going anywhere, and neither are they. They're going to be neighbors forever. Um, and that means what they have is a long-term interest in a reasonably stable relationship there because, as Josh said, um, their whole economic model is based on having a stable region, not one where people are worried about things, uh, exploding every few months or every few years. So for all of those reasons, you know, you're already seeing them distance themselves somewhat from the United States and be open, I think, to an accommodation, uh, with Iran, uh, in the relatively near future.
>> And what does all this mean for relations with Israel, Washington's relations with, uh, Israel? Josh, could there be a realignment in the United States over the Jewish state?
>> Well, I think many people are, you know, are, we're seeing cracks in both the Republican and Democratic party with these sort of renegade re wings that are turning against AIPAC and turning against spending so much money, and saying, why aren't we spending that money at home? We want healthcare. We want education. We want these good things that Europeans and other countries get. So that is going to happen. But I think the power, um, I think it'll take a lot longer than most people think. And we've seen, you know, we saw this with Netanyahu's famous, uh, speech where he spoke to a big audience of Jewish, um, backers of Israel. And he said, you know, where is the real battle? The real battle is not on the ground. The real battle is social media. And he said, you know, and TikTok. We've got to get TikTok. And, and in, in a sense, pro-Israeli groups now do have TikTok. They've got it. They've got, you know, they've got CBS, CNN, uh, you know, pro-Israeli Americans have bought these things. So, I think that battle, um, is a going to be a long battle, and it's going to be a difficult battle for Americans to understand and to, uh, to, in a sense, right their ship so that we don't engage in these Middle Eastern wars which have spent trillions of dollars and,
>> Well, Steve, I was just going to say, we've already seen a profound shift among Democrats, particularly the younger generations. Young folks in their 20s and their 30s, um, they obviously express greater sympathy for Palestinians than for Israel. But also, what's striking, as I'm sure you're aware, is how young Republicans are turning against Israel. How significant is the, are these trends?
>> Yeah, I think they're quite significant, and they began before this war. I mean, this was happening as, uh, I think the outgrowth of many developments, most obviously the war in Gaza. So, this is a trend that was underway already. Um, of course, it is now well-established that this war happened in part because Benjamin Netanyahu came to the White House and was able to persuade Donald Trump that the war was going to be a cakewalk. It was going to be easy. He'd have a great victory as well. That doesn't absolve Trump of responsibility, but it does mean that being joined at the hip with Israel and following their blueprint for the region wasn't good for the United States. It's proven to be disastrous. And as you said, this has caused, I think, a backlash, a split among parts of the MAGA world, right? Suddenly, there are Republicans who also are distancing themselves in a variety of ways. You've also seen a split in the Israel lobby itself, right, which is not a completely homogeneous group. So, AIPAC, very supportive of the war, uh, still is. Some other groups as well. J Street, a more liberal pro-Israel group, condemned the war from the very beginning. Right? So, we're not seeing the same kind of, uh, unity you might have seen, uh, there as well. I'm a little bit more optimistic than Josh is about how rapidly, uh, things can change here once people are talking openly about it, once they're talking freely. And social media, yes, they're certainly trying to manipulate social media in various ways, but that's almost impossible to control. There are just too many channels, too many voices out there. And that means that if people want to know what's going on, there's lots of places they can get the story. I'm a little bit more optimistic that things could move more quickly.
>> Well, political and diplomatic circumstances can change very quickly. And you're both well aware of the, the former, the British Lord, the 19th century British Lord Palmerston's edict: There are no permanent, um, enemies or permanent allies. There are only permanent interests. And who would have thought? I mean, Josh, you mentioned just last week the Syrian president appeared alongside President Trump, uh, at a conference at the, the NATO summit in Ankara. And this comes as Washington moves to delist Syria as a state sponsor of terrorism, uh, extraordinary given the nature of US-Syria relations over the last few generations. But is this rapprochement, um, between Washington, uh, and Syria, is it really justified given that there's a lot of evidence to indicate that this Sunni government, the post-Assad regime in Damascus, has presided over increasing attacks on ethnic minorities, most notably the Alawites, which of course was the ruling form, the ruling government under the Assad era for the last 50 years? Is this rapprochement justified, Josh?
>> Well, you know, you can see Washington has is not worried about human rights in Syria today. And President Trump has said, "We're not going to measure Middle Eastern governments by human rights." He is looking, you know, lifting sanctions off of Syria is a good thing. Sanctions are crushing. Many Syrians have been deprived of many good things because of sanctions, and many have died because of sanctions. Many are going hungry. 70% of Syrians today are living with food insecurity, and, and a lot of that is the afterglow of sanctions. So saying that, but yes, minorities in Syria are getting clobbered. Um, there's no doubt about it. The Kurds, the Alawites, the Druze, and Christians are all very unhappy because this new Sunni-dominated regime is supremacist, and it looks down its nose at the minorities and has been, um, and hasn't been protecting them the way it should.
>> They're seeking revenge in many respects as well, right, Josh? There is a, you know, the Assad regime, I've got to say, the Assad regime was a minoritarian regime, and they depended on these minorities and the fear of the Sunni majority that Islamists would take over and persecute them. And that anxiety, that fear, um, has created a cycle of, uh, of violence and anger and vengeance, as you say, and it's very difficult to overcome that fear. Um, so Syria is going to have to work through that. We, we were just seeing the parliament now, at a parliament that's been, that's been largely appointed by the president, but it's meeting for the first time. There are some, there are many good signs in Syria, and America and the Europeans need to, um, focus on those good signs and encourage best practices, and they can do that. They have the leverage, and they can do it. We shouldn't just sweep human rights under the rug.
>> Steve, your concluding thoughts?
>> Oh, well, on Syria, I'm of two minds here. I agree with Josh. We should not be ignoring the human rights considerations there. But on the other hand, the United States is increasingly not in a very good position to criticize the human rights conduct of any other country, given our willingness to start wars, our willingness to impose punishing sanctions on others, not to mention some of the things that are happening inside the United States, uh, itself these days. So maybe we should focus a little bit more on fixing our own house before we start lecturing other governments. Uh, more generally, I think this conversation, you know, reinforces the idea that the United States needs to get over the belief that it can orchestrate the local politics of lots of other countries. And, uh, by the way, I think this also means that Trump needs to establish a much more disciplined decision-making process. Stop relying on unqualified amateur diplomats like his son-in-law or Steve Bannon. And finally, our long-term goal in the Middle East, as in other parts of the world, should be to have business-like working relationships with everyone, instead of having special relations with a few countries and no relationship at all, uh, with the others. You know, we don't need to control the Middle East. We just need to make sure nobody else controls it. So, we want, as we've already discussed, a balance of power in the region, an end to open warfare. Uh, the days when Washington could try to run the whole region and transform it in our image, I think, are long gone, and the sooner we recognize it, the better for all concerned.
>> So, the days of global social engineering by Uncle Sam are over. Steve, Josh, we've done this before. Let's do it again. Great to see you both. Thanks so much.
>> Pleasure.
>> Great talking with you. Great to