Well, look, you, you've done a bit of live, uh, folding phone evangelism for us here in the studio, but how, how convinced are you that there will be many new converts after this?

Well, it's, it's difficult to say.

I mean, Apple has a kind of enduring, uh, goodwill with the British public as it does in America.

I mean, I, I grew up, you know, ten to fifteen years ago, my, my parents would take me to the Apple store as a day out, and that sort of goodwill sticks with people.

So I think if people haven't been converted to folding phones yet, this might be the one to do it.

Um, but with how expensive they are and the issues that do come with them, such as that fragility, that, uh, the screen issues that plagued other folding phone devices, it might still take a bit of effort for Apple to convince people who are used to slab mobile phones.

Do you su-suspect, though, he will weigh in between now and the election? He, he, he tends to, to do so in elections.

Um, no, actually, because I think a, um, much of these sanctions are gonna be implemented in six to nine months from now, and there's a real possibility that they could be calibrated based on what happens in Israel's election.

No,

okay.

So this has been going on for decades, generations.

It's a really old school sort of thing where you start with, well, now we start with Gilgamesh.

And I think we go in four semesters up through Toni Morrison.

It's a humanities.

It's literature, philosophy, history, art, music.

Please tell everybody what was this glorious event celebrating you?

How should America respond to this, to the deaths particularly of service members?

It is tragic, but we are in a war.

I think relatively speaking, 17 American military casualties, what, five, six months into this is, I think, not a great number, but it's, I think, lower than one would expect from a war.

The United States adjusted early on.

We had these contingency plans called the Western Basing Initiative, knowing that all of our bases in Qatar, UAE, Kuwait, Saudi Arabia, on the East Coast, all these were extremely vulnerable to Iranian short-range missiles.

And so we have some positions in western Saudi Arabia near the Red Sea and in Waffig Salty Air Base in Jordan, which is where the two, three Americans were recently killed.

I think you're gonna get a, a little spike in US retaliation, and we've seen the president and Marco Rubio talk about this.

What do you think this war is doing to America's standing in the Middle East? And I'm thinking of particularly with its allies there.

What does that even mean?

Well, they're trying to condition release of frozen assets, right? They're doing the lifting of the oil sanctions up front, which, of course, billions, untold billions of dollars, right? Wow.

It is the number one source of revenue for the state.

and will be a real boon to the economy and also to the regime's ability to provide largesse funding for its terrorist proxy militias.

But what they're going to do is say, well, the Iranians are engaging on the nuclear front.

They are negotiating in good faith.

They have agreed to down blend their 60 percent highly enriched uranium, therefore will release more frozen assets.

Tell us in your view, what are some of the big things that were missing?

Uh, but why would they feel so secure in doing this? What's, you know, what's the disconnect here?

Well, the US and Israeli militaries have hit something like 13,000 or more targets in Iran.

Um, uh, everything from the, uh, ballistic missile industrial production base to, uh, weapons sites, the IRGC, the siege, the sort of apparatus of repression, uh, in the state, um, uh, nuclear sites.

The list goes on and on.

Um, the navy is sunk.

The air force is, uh, uh, destroyed.

Um, and, and yet, um, uh, and of course, on the first day of the war, uh, Israel, you know, uh, killing of the leadership of, of Iran, uh, the, uh, Ali Khamenei, the supreme leader.

It, it, it seems like it would be antithetical to everything else he's said in the past about Iran.

Uh, but why would they feel so secure in doing this? What's, you know, what's the disconnect here?

Well, the US and Israeli militaries have hit something like 13,000 or more targets in Iran.

Um, everything from the, uh, ballistic missile industrial production base to, uh, weapons sites, the IRGC, the siege, the sort of apparatus of repression, uh, in the state, um, uh, nuclear sites.

The list goes on and on.

Um, the navy is sunk, the air force is, uh, uh, destroyed.

Um, and, and yet, um, and of course, on the first day of the war, Israel, you know, uh, killing of the leadership of, of Iran, uh, the, uh, Ali Khamenei, the supreme leader.

Um, notwithstanding, um, the Iranians, um, made contingency planning, um, uh, something that could have been predicted.

It, it, it seems like it would be antithetical to everything else he's said in the past about Iran.

David Schenker, what's the impact of that? Do you agree with it? And, and if that's the case, is there a threat to some of the Abraham Accords work that, that you yourself did?

Well, there was, there's no threat that, uh, Qatar will now not be joining the Abraham Accords.

Uh, they, they were not on the list or, or, uh, even remotely, uh, uh, have the potential for being there.

But, um, I think there's other things that are actually, uh, more of a threat.

Uh, you know, the... just last week, United Arab Emirates said they would, uh, slow down normalization, maybe suspend the Abraham Accords, withdraw fr- their ambassador, uh, from Tel Aviv if Israel decided to annex territories.

We've heard, uh, really bellicose statements toward Israel coming out of Jordan, uh, in response not only to the threats of annexation of the West Bank but also, uh, the impending dig ops and operations in, in Gaza.

Um, so at a minimum, um, Abraham Accords aren't gonna be expanded any time soon.

David Schenker, if you were still assistant secretary of state right now, would you, uh, advise? Should the president impose any kind of penalty on Israel for targeting a US non-NATO major ally?