Mm

... their own separate peace with Iran or, or, you know, go to a truly multipolar world or all these ideas about what could happen because the paradigm, the story that the Gulf was telling itself about how it was navigating this moment, uh, really came, kind of collided headfirst, uh, with the Trump administration's desire, and, and frankly, I think in some ways, uh, with an Israeli project of, uh, conflict with Iran, that, uh, that, that basically, taken together, the president's decision and the Israeli decision last summer to initiate this war led to a place, uh, where the Gulf's vision of calm, uh, and the steps that they'd taken to protect and insulate themselves, which held for three years after October 7th-

Mm-hmm.

Mm-hmm.It has some very negative effects.

I think the administration was wise to impose a counter blockade and probably should have done it sooner to make sure that the rest of the world, including China, feels the pain, uh, as much as our trading partners and allies do.

The idea that America doesn't need the Strait of Hormuz to be open simply because we, uh, have our own domestic oil supply, which in turn is pli- priced globally, uh, is a fantasy.

Of course, we need it to be open.

We're gonna talk about a global recession here, global demand destruction, including for the oil that the United States is producing.

As you mentioned, oil facilities can be repaired airports can reopen but confidence is much harder to restore and yet despite that you still seem quite optimistic about the gulf's recovery so what does recovery realistically look like from here and how long could it take for investor confidence and a sense of stability to fully return

Well, I think you're already seeing U.S. businesses that are really eager to get back to work in this region.

They see the value of this region, the long-term value.

They want to partner with the leadership.

They appreciate the pragmatism and vision of a lot of the individual leaders.

They want their capital.

They want their partnership.

But tell me, how do you see this war ending? Do you have a particular timeline in mind?

Do you think I'm overstating that, Dan?

Look, I don't think you're overstating it.

I think that, uh, y-you know, Iran obviously, even under a nuclear regime, posed a lot of other threats, and those threats had to be dealt with one way or another and, uh, but it's hard to look at what's happened on the nuclear file in particular, and then the decision to go to war, which after all was, uh, the, the JCPOA's critics when they were told that the alternative to the JCPOA was war were, were outraged by the accusation, but we've now had two rounds of war, uh, here.

And the problem with war is that it begets more war, uh, as opposed to some of these diplomatic solutions which at least leave more options open.

I think it's probably, you know, they're just telling people that they should have done something different in twenty eighteen or twenty nineteen may be sort of politically unsatisfying compared to some of the more recent, uh, uh, uh, decisions like getting into this misbegotten war.

Uh, but I, I do agree with you that a nuclear agreement was the way to deal with this problem in the past, and frankly, was the way to deal with this problem on February twenty-seventh, uh, whe- in one of the two instances when we were having nuclear negotiations with Iran, and they were offering things that were in some cases far beyond what they offered during the JCPOA.

Uh, and, uh, instead of, of doing that, we chose the path of war.

Where, where, where do you see them with regard to their neighbor in this new situation?

That's fine, yes.

No, but thank you very much, Smita, for the question.

And my greetings to all of your listeners.

Look, I think that this war began, this round of this war began because the United States and Israel saw a chance to weaken Iran.

And for the perspective of the United States, they didn't have as much of a fleshed out plan beyond that for what would happen.

They thought they could weaken Iran at an acceptable cost.

Mm-hmm.

Do you think Donald Trump miscalculated or underestimated Iran's response? And if there was a miscalculation and underestimation, was he led down that path by Bibi?