Chas W. Freeman Jr.

Welcome back.

We are joined today by Ambassador Chas Freeman, uh, former US Assistant Secretary of Defense and also the former US Ambassador to Saudi Arabia.

Uh, great to see you again.

Great to see you, Glenn.

supply?Well, let's look at it from a purely Middle Eastern standpoint.

And you've had, I'm sure, uh, between Alastair Crooke and Ambassador Chas Freeman probably the two men with the best insights into the region that you're gonna find anywhere.

What I would add to their remarks is that this signals a strategic, uh, shift in the tectonic plates.

In other words, we're watching the end of the old Middle East.

Today is Tuesday, September 15th, 2026.

Ambassador Chas Freeman will be with us in just a moment.

Is Saudi Arabia still an ally of the United States? But first this...

Today's headlines aren't just bleak, they're an indictment of a government that has abandoned the Constitution.

Well, uh, coming up tomorrow, I guess we're gonna be doing more of AI as this gets closer and closer to some crisis point.

Uh, at 8:00 in the morning, Ambassador Chas Freeman.

At 9:00 in the morning, Professor John Mearsheimer.

At 10:00 in the morning, Aaron Maté.

So when you look at the Mecca, uh, agreement, which is, uh, something akin to a mutual defense pact, frankly, but it hasn't become that yet, but it looks like that's where it's headed.

Right now, I think it's Chas Freeman talked about it as being a kind of entente, comparing it to what the British, the French, and the Russians had before World War I, and we all know where that went.

So I think we have to look at the Mecca, uh, agreement as essentially, uh, potentially becoming that kind of military organization or military coalition.

But in the short run, there are two things happening.

The rest of the region, in the meantime, we have the new Mecca Agreement, which is producing what is effectively a kind of entente.

I think it was Chas Freeman who first used that phrase, but it's similar to the entente that exists between France, Great Britain, and Russia before World War I.

It wasn't really an alliance, but that's exactly what it turned out to be.

I think we now have something similar with Pakistan, Turkey, Saudi Arabia.

And I don't know what does that mean, because this is not a diplomacy, you know, is the art of diplomats, is not the art of dealmakers, real estate dealmakers in New York.

When you want to learn that, you have to, I'm sure that you know Ambassador Chas Freeman.

Just sit and listen to him, the way he's talking about the political issues, geopolitical issues.

He goes deep.