I, ho- how much does, has this war sort of rattled that whole idea?

Look, I think it's rattled it significantly.

If you, you think about the United Arab Emirates, this was a country that, you know, when I was living in Saudi Arabia in the mid-1980s, nobody would have predicted that this would become sort of the, you know, emblem, emblem of openness and modernity that it has become.

And you know, I, I like to say that the UAE was close to achieving escape velocity from the Middle East.

It was a country that many people forgot was located in this pretty troubled region.

It's a place that people thought was secure.

Uh, expats were making their lives there.

You mean of, of, of, of the problem is American unreliability.

I, I- H- how much does-- has this war sort of rattled that whole idea?

Look, I think it's rattled it significantly.

If you, you think about the United Arab Emirates, this was a country that, you know, when I was living in Saudi Arabia in the mid-1980s, nobody would've predicted that this would become sort of the, uh, you know, emblem, emblem of openness and modernity that it has become.

And you know, I, I like to say that the UAE was close to achieving escape velocity from the Middle East.

It was a country that many people forgot was located in this pretty troubled region.

It's a place that people thought was secure.

Uh, expats were making their lives there.

Meaning of, of, of, of the problem is American unreliability.

Um, tell us, uh, wh- at the start of this war, what had the Gulf states been telling Washington?

You know, there's a lot of reporting in the, uh, uh, lead up, uh, or once the war started, when the narrative was that President Trump had been snookered into this war by, uh, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, that in fact, uh, the Saudi, uh, crown prince, who's the de facto leader of that country, had also been pushing, uh, the president to get into this war.

Uh, my understanding from talking to some of, uh, my Saudi sources, and talking to Gulf sources more broadly, is they actually did not want a war.

There was definitely a spectrum of Gulf opinion with respect to Iran, and that spectrum is anchored on the one side by Oman, which has basically been a mediator with Iran and, and lately has almost sounded a bit like the Iran, uh, Iranians' lawyer.

And then on the other end of the spectrum by Bahrain, which has a large Shia population that the Iranians sometimes incite, and for more than a decade they've had no diplomatic relations with Iran.

But all the other countries were somewhere in the middle of this spectrum, and broadly not wanting conflict, the, the war that has started basically on October 7th, to come to their shores and disrupt their region.

Right

... of these countries are pro-American.

Is- is that- what do you think of this?

So look, I mean, there's something about Bibi's plan which I- I agree entirely with Bret that it is solely a recipe for more death and destruction.

But there's something about it that at least, um, is an improvement on the status quo, which is that Israel is finally- would be finally admitting that it already controls Gaza.

You know, in Bret's proposal, which is, you know, a variant of Naftali Bennett's proposal to like squeeze the- squeeze Hamas, it- it proceeds from this fiction, right, that there are two entities at war and each entity has a home front and they meet on the battlefront.

Well, in this case, there is no home front in Gaza.

The entirety of Gaza is a battlefront and Binyamin Netanyahu has had more control over every square centimeter of Gaza than Eric Adams has over, uh, any, uh- uh, part of New York City.

So there's something at least clarifying in Bibi Netanyahu's, um, f- you know, uh, willingness to finally declare, "We are gonna own Gaza." The problem, as Bret points out, is that it will bring, I think, you know, untold, uh, additional suffering.

Uh, and so even though you dismissed it, I think that the long-term solution, the way to get to a Palestinian state is to create what might be called an Arab mandate for Palestine in which players like the UAE who are trusted by Israelis and who have created a model of sustainable, genuinely progressive governance take a guiding hand even if they're holding the hand of someone in the PA, take a guiding hand in creating conditions in which Israelis can say, "You know, we can live with this kind of state as our neighbor." Otherwise, the group that's gonna be most, uh, uh, uh, that's gonna rise in Israel is the far and farther right.