Reacting to the Fox interview with MBS

I thought that I would do a review of the complete interview or, anyway, it's a clip that's going around of the interview by Fox News of Mohammed bin Salman. It's quite interesting to me that this interview was even done at all by Fox News. And that in and of itself is something kind of revealing about the relationship between Saudi Arabia and say the the right wing or the Republican Party in The United States. So I'm just gonna go through the interview and react more or less spontaneously. I have seen the interview before, but I so there are a few points that I know are noteworthy, and I'll discuss those inshallah.

But I'm just gonna go through the interview now and sort of react in the moment.

You know, a lot of people have described you as a visionary leader. I talked to a number of your citizens, and that's how they describe you. And you didn't even plant them. That's really how they talk about you. And world leaders are saying the same thing.

You've had this transformational change, every aspect of the kingdom, economic, social, cultural, religious. Can you give us some specific examples of what your goals are and how you think all of this is going?

Well, simply, we have in the past few issues in Saudi Arabia and a lot of opportunities that we didn't use. We're trying to capture that and to go forward for better Saudi Arabia, and that's what we're

trying to do. And it's a big vision.

It is a big vision, and we we get, like, surprised every day that we reach our target faster, and we extend that to a newer target and a bigger ambition. So it's really exciting. Your minister

This really reminds me of interviews that you've seen in the past from Mohammed bin Rashid in Dubai. And it's it's talking about your country like it's a company where the company has goals and it has market share and it has innovations and so on and so on, and you're trying to bring investment. You're trying to bring investors. And you talk about it that way, and you talk about, oh, we're achieving. We're achieving.

We're achieving, and it's so positive. You know, the the the way of talking is so positive that it's, you know, it's a little fake, you know, the way they the way they talk. It's a very it's a very forced optimistic positivity, that is designed to try to build enthusiasm in investors and and supporters and so on. And and it's it's like it's almost exactly like interviews that you would have seen from Mohammed bin Rashid in Dubai talking about Dubai is moving to, you know, from excellence to excellence to, you know, from greatness to greatness and achievement to achievement, and it's just amazing and how fast we're able to do it and so on and so on. And it's just it's so self promotional, transparently self promotional and transparently marketing.

It's not to be taken particularly seriously because it's a it's almost like a motivational speech or, you know, a motivational pep talk to your investors and to your employees, you know, like a a like a meeting at at a at a at a company where the where the boss or the CEO comes in and talks to the employees and talks about how many sales we've had in the last quarter and let's make more sales in the next quarter and let's really achieve and so on. It's like that kind of talk. It's that sort of language. It's that sort of attitude. It's that sort of tone.

The obvious first impression that you get from watching this interview is that this is a paid PR piece. Now I can't find any direct connection between Saudi Arabia or between bin Salman and Fox News or News Corp in terms of investment or financing or funding except for the the previous holdings that prince Al Walid bin Talal used to have in Fox News, but he mostly sold all of that off. So I don't I'm not aware of any direct investment by Saudi Arabia or the Saudi Arabian sovereign wealth fund in Fox News or in News Corp, and I'm not aware of even a direct connection between Fox News and Jared Kushner and his investment fund, which Saudi Arabia just gave, I think, $2,000,000,000. And they're using the Jared Kushner investment fund to also increase their economic and investment influence in other parts of the world, including Europe and, of course, also in Israel. But the interview certainly appears to be scripted.

It certainly appears to be choreographed. It certainly appears to be a, you know, a PR promotional produced and, you know, you would normally say paid for puff piece to promote Saudi Arabia and to promote bin bin Salman and to sort of rehabilitate his image in the West and in The United States. And the fact that this is being aired on Fox News, sort of demonstrates what we already know, which is that there's a very sort of collaborative relationship between the Republican Party and Saudi Arabia and between the Republican Party and bin Salman himself, specifically, individually. I mean, the Saudi spent tens of millions of dollars on PACs, on political candidates, on political campaigns, political parties, and lobbies in Washington. That's the money that we know about.

And then there's the so called dark money that they spend as well. So they're they've been spending for a long time, and I I I think they spent, you know, within between the last couple of election cycles, I think they've spent up upwards of a $100,000,000 to influence political outcomes in The United States and to influence political policy in The United States. And disproportionately, they're spending that money on the Republicans. So they're very close to the Republican Party. And being close to the Republican Party means, because political parties are just front organizations for the business interests that fund those political parties.

So, when I say that bin Salmano with Saudi Arabia is close to Republican the Party, it means that they're close to the business interests and the business the industry sectors that finance and fund the Republican Party in which the Republican Party serves. So that's obviously going to be sectors like oil and gas, the defense sector, the defense industry, construction, mining, and so on. All of these are sectors which would have an obvious reason to be interested in the development projects that bin Salman is undertaking in Saudi Arabia. And these are all sectors that bin Salman himself and that Saudi Arabia would be very interested in obtaining an interest. American sectors of the economy that that Saudi Arabia would be interested in obtaining some interest and influence, that they'd be interested in partnering with.

And in terms of this interview, I think you also have to consider the fact that the CEO of Aramco, the Saudi oil company, was recently appointed to the board of directors of BlackRock. So all of these factors contribute, I think, and have to be considered as to why we're seeing really a puff piece, a PR piece, a promotional video, a promotional interview promoting Mohammed bin Salman and Saudi Arabia on mainstream primetime network television by Fox News. Why specifically Fox News and not another? This is showing the alignment of the Republican Party and the American conservative right wing with Saudi Arabia. And again, like I said, the specific sectors, economic sectors, industrial sectors in America, financial sectors that would have an interest in what bin Salman is trying to do in Saudi Arabia in terms of development and infrastructure and so on.

There's an obvious coalescing of interests. And it's, you know, it's noteworthy that this demonstrates a level of of, influence that Saudi Arabia has obtained in The United States through their investment strategies and through their, campaign funding and political donations and lobbying that they weren't this surpasses Dubai. This surpasses The UAE. And The UAE is has been incredibly successful in promoting a positive image of their country around the world and particularly in the West despite many scandals, despite many human rights violations, despite many highly publicized cases of wrongdoing and judicial wrongdoing in the criminal justice system and abuses by the criminal justice system and interpol abuse and so on. Even though all of these cases are well known, The UAE has successfully crafted a positive public perception of The UAE and of Dubai despite all of this, and and that's not accidental.

That's through considerable spending and considerable coordinated effort through the media, through PR companies, and through lobbying and so on. And what Saudi Arabia has done even surpasses that because Saudi Arabia has had a fairly bad reputation even before Salman came bin Salman. They have to overcome the fact that you have the the current president of The United States saying that he was gonna make Saudi Arabia a pariah state. So they've turned around the negative press about Saudi Arabia and the negative press about bin Salman, after the murder of Jamal Khashoggi. They've turned that around to where now you can actually have on Fox News a blatantly scripted and choreographed positive PR piece about this is marketing.

This is a commercial for Saudi Arabia. It's a commercial for Bin Salman. So that's quite interesting and informative about the level of influence, that, Saudi Arabia has been able to purchase in The United States.

Well, you can see in 2022, we are the fastest g 20 country growing. And, also, in this year, if you if you take just an oil GDP part, we are the second fastest in the g 20 growing. So it's like a fight between Saudi Arabia.

See, the interviewer's job is to give bin Salman the opportunity to say all of these positive things. That's the whole point of the interview, or at least this section of the interview. The whole point is to give bin Salman the opportunity to say all of these positive and enthusiastic things about his country, you know, to provide all of the data and the statistics and so on about how Saudi Arabia is growing.

I will give you example. If you if you look to the to late seventies, Saudi Arabia GDP is bigger than South Korea. And now South Korea, it's I think it's the tenth or twelfth eleventh largest GDP in the world in 2016. And 2016, we are number 20. So that's a shame.

In in ninety eighty nineteen eighty, we we was GDP number, I think, 12 globally, and then 2016, we are number 20. So we believe if Saudi Arabia and really the perfect track since that time, we would be among the top seven GDP globally. I'm trying to get Saudi Arabia back on the right track.

See, the whole interview is designed to showcase Harriet Bensalemann as a visionary. I mean, the interview starts that way, calling him a visionary. And this is a message, you know, obviously, for the Fox News audience, for the American conservative audience, to win them over to the idea that this is a man who's trying to bring Saudi Arabia into the future, trying to achieve, trying to you know? And he is he is sort of implicitly suggesting that the past governments of Saudi Arabia were negligent and, were not focusing on the right things. And he's implicit in that is he's saying that the previous governments were perhaps overly focused on religious matters and we're not focusing on economic development and diversifying the economy and so on.

And he's trying to send a message, that's not what I'm about. I'm trying to develop the economy, and that's my focus. I'm interested in growing the GDP of Saudi Arabia, growing the country economically, and becoming one of the major economies in the world. So obviously, the Fox News audience is going to be very capitalist in their mindset. So he's using a language that will appeal to them and that they will recognize, and he's almost acting as if Saudi Arabia is an entrepreneur that's trying to overcome formerly poor management.

Like, it's a it's a company that was poorly managed but has a lot of potential, and I'm now the new CEO of this company, I e country, and I'm going to bring it to its full potential and and achieve and innovate and, bring the country to prosperity. And it's it's a, you know, it's a very business like I said in the beginning, it's a very business type language. It's a it's a business motivational talk, you know, that a CEO would give to his employees or to his investors. And this video almost looks like it was shot in order to be a a promotional video that that Saudi Arabia will now show to potential investors and potential business partners to show, you know, this is our new young CEO. He's dynamic.

He has vision. He's trying to achieve and so on. And he's not like the old CEOs and managers of the past who were not focusing on the economic bottom line, the financial bottom line. So now you can you can invest in Saudi Arabia and you can participate and partner with Saudi Arabia, and everyone should support it the same way that you would support a young entrepreneur who's trying to turn a company around. It's it's creating a narrative here.

You really have become a big player on the world stage.

Okay. Now this is the this is one of the points that's actually important in the video. This actually has some substance to it. It's not just PR about what a great visionary MBS is. You can really see maybe it's because I work in the PR business, but you can really see that bin Salman clearly has had some kind of publicist or PR advisers explaining to him how important it is for him to try to come across likable and relatable in this interview.

I mean, he's putting on this very sort of jolly and energetic and smiley persona that you don't really see from him in his Arabic interviews. This is not his personality. He's trying very hard to seem, you know, non authoritarian. He's trying very hard to come across this sort of, you know, young and enthusiastic and to not look like the guy who ordered the murder of Jamal Khashoggi. He's been advised about what sort of personality he needs to try to come across as in this interview that would be appealing to the American Fox News audience.

Now this part is actually important and has some substance to it, and it's not just the sort of PR marketing of the personality of bin Salman. And that has to do with the g 20 rail and port initiative, the g the the rail and port deal that's connecting Europe, The Middle East, and India. This is Saudi Arabia positioning itself exactly what I've talked about in the past or what I've advised or suggested in the past or recommended that Muslim countries do and that Gulf countries do, which is to sort of position themselves as middleman countries that can have influence and control over the movement of goods from the global South to the global North, from India and Asia to Europe to the West. Now with this deal, with this rail imports deal, goods will be passing through Saudi Arabia and The UAE each way from Europe to India and from India to Europe. That's gonna give both The UAE and Saudi Arabia a degree of gatekeeper control over the economies of Europe and India, and I think more importantly, India.

This is a mechanism for creating leverage. Positioning yourself as necessary creates leverage. Bensalman is gonna have his hands, on the valve of imports and exports between Europe and India, And that's not being done, through pressure or through politicking or through deal making, but through, just by providing logistical infrastructure to facilitate and ease trade and imports and exports between Europe and India. He's providing a service. He's providing a, like I said, a logistical infrastructure to facilitate the trade between these countries, but making sure that that trade has to pass through them.

So it's creating a kind of dependency. So you're having a degree of control a degree of control over other countries' prosperity while also benefiting from their prosperity. I think that's a very good strategy, and I think it's something that other countries could learn from and could potentially replicate for gaining some degree of economic leverage. I think we're all concerned about to what extent the economic rise of India can potentially pose problems for the Muslim world and can potentially pose problems even for the global south itself. And this rail and ports link, this rail and ports deal is creating a mechanism to offset or to potentially mitigate, any threats, by India in terms of its economic power because their economic power is going to be to one degree or another connected to Saudi Arabia.

The UAE and Saudi Arabia will have a degree of control over the extent to which India can import and export, to Europe and the extent to which Europe can import and export to India. Obviously, it's not just India. That's gonna be goods moving from Europe, moving from the West to India, and from India going beyond, re exporting, as well as goods moving to the to The Middle East and Africa. It will only make sense for India to use this same infrastructure, this same logistical infrastructure, to also export goods and to import goods, between India and The Middle East and between India and Africa. So this is positioning Saudi Arabia and positioning The UAE in an in a very strategic position that will give them a degree of control and leverage, over the Indian economy.

We will often get upset. Muslims will often get upset when a Muslim country, when a Gulf country or any Muslim country, provides some kind of benefit to a non Muslim country, particularly if that non Muslim country, is viewed as or is actually hostile to Islam and to Muslims. But you have to understand what benefit is, what the function of benefit is. When you're providing benefit, you can also deny benefit. When you provide benefit, you create dependency.

When you provide benefit, you create leverage. You provide benefit to a country or you provide benefit even to an individual, strategically speaking, what you are doing, you're creating vulnerability because that nation, that country, or that individual will not want to be deprived of that benefit. So whatever you provide, you also have the ability to deprive, and that creates power. So that should always be understood. There's a strategic value in gift giving, and this is something that the Arabs understand very well, and it's something that also is embedded in Islam.

Gift giving not only can win over your enemies by means of goodwill or creating goodwill in them from a strictly real politic and if you wanna call it Machiavellian point of view, gift giving, creates dependency. Gift giving creates need, where there even wasn't one before because a need can actually be created by providing someone with something. They don't know they need it until they have it. And then once they have it, then they need it. And then you have the ability to deprive them of that or to to deny them that.

So you can actually, to a certain extent, subdue people and get the obedience of people by providing for them, particularly if they're materialistic. There are certain kind of people who will become the slave of whoever can provide them with convenience and ease and comfort because they are slaves to ease convenience and comfort. And they're slaves to profit. They're slaves to money. So whoever can provide that, whoever can facilitate that will be in control of those people.

Also mentioned in this deal is Israel. What would it take for you to agree to normalize relations with Israel?

When he asks when he asks, what will it take for you to normalize with Israel? This this is where there's some interesting points.

Well, there is a port from president Biden administration to get to that point. For us, the Palestinian issue is very important. We need to solve that part, and we have a good negotiations continue till now. We're gonna see where it will go. We hope that it will reach a place that it will ease the life of the Palestinians and get Israel back as a player of Middle Middle East.

There were reports that you had suspended talks. No. No. That's that's not true.

Not true. So you think if you were to characterize it, are you close?

Every day we get closer. It seems it's for the first time a real one, serious. We're gonna see how it goes.

Can you make a deal with Israeli prime minister Benjamin Net Net Net

Net this part? This is

Is that somebody you can deal with? Well, in Saudi Arabia policy, we don't interfere who's running each country, who's there. We work with him. Now we don't have a relation with Israel. But if

Now just just to interject here. In Saudi Arabia, we don't interfere with who's running what country, but you spend a $100,000,000 to influence who's running America and and to influence policy in America. So, obviously, if you're doing that in America and they're doing it in Europe, you're doing it in Israel too.

Biden administration succeeded to make, I believe, the biggest historical deal since the end of the Cold war.

See, listen to what he did there. He's putting the ball in Biden's court, saying that if Biden can make the deal, if Biden can secure the right deal, then this will be the biggest breakthrough since the end of the cold war. What he's doing there, in my opinion, is actually setting Biden up to fail. Because, obviously, if the deal is gonna be done, it's gonna be done between Saudi Arabia and Israel. The decision is gonna be with, MBS.

So the only question is, who, is gonna be able to get credit for that deal? Who's gonna be able to take credit for making that deal? So in my opinion, what he's actually doing is handing to the Republicans a Biden failure, the potentially the biggest failure since the end of the Cold War by saying Biden couldn't make this deal because he's in a position to either, grant or deny, Joe Biden and the Democrats the opportunity to take credit, for a peace agreement. This is manipulation on his part. What he's doing is telling both the Republicans and the Democrats, basically, how much is it worth to you, Republicans and Democrats, how much is it worth to you that Biden will either get credit or get blame for either making or not making a normalization deal between Saudi Arabia and Israel.

This is a ploy by Mohammed bin Salman for to to try to get both political parties, the Republicans and the Democrats, to ingratiate themselves to Saudi Arabia and to compete, in giving Saudi Arabia what they want. And more than that, he's sending a message to the defense industry lobbies, in Washington to push for Saudi Arabia's interests with both parties. And that becomes a little bit clear later on when he's talking about, Saudi Arabia's defense purchases. But clearly, he's doing here to me is saying, if Biden can make the deal he's he's he's taking himself out of it. He's saying if Biden can make the deal, which is the same thing as saying Biden is not gonna make this deal.

It's not gonna happen. I'm not going to give this to Biden unless Biden does a really good job of accommodating Saudi Arabia, then I will give him credit for this deal because the deal will happen when I decide it will happen. It just depends on which party is gonna be in office and gets to take credit for it. But he's also saying, when he talks about later, he talks about the agreement between Iran and Saudi Arabia, and he it's very important to him to say that, this was brokered by China. We all know it was not brokered by China.

The negotiations were already taking place. They brought China in at the end as a gift to China to let them take credit for making this historic, deal between Iran and Saudi Arabia. China had almost nothing to do with it, but the point was to give China that, prestige. So bin Salman is saying, who wants to get the prestige for this deal? Who wants to get the prestige for the biggest deal since the end of the Cold War between Saudi Arabia and, Israel?

Who's gonna get the prestige? That's starting basically a bidding war with the Republicans and the Democrats. Which one of you is gonna accommodate Saudi Arabia enough for me to decide whether or not I give this the prestige of making this deal to Biden or to the Republicans. But he's also saying, when he talks about Iran, he's also saying, it doesn't actually have to be either one of you. I could end up giving the prestige to China and say and bring China in on this and say that China has brokered a normalization deal between Saudi Arabia and, Israel.

But the one thing that he knows is that he needs to bring somebody else in because it can't look like it's from his own initiative. It has to be something where there's a third party that has brokered this deal because the Palestinian issue is the most emotional issue and the most resounding issue across the Arab world and across the Muslim world. So he can't just make the deal unilaterally or bilaterally between him and Israel. There has to be a third party. And he's offering now it's basically a bidding war as to who that third party is gonna be because it's a a purely a formality about who the third party is going to be except in terms of which third party is going to offer Saudi Arabia the most incentive to to gift them with the prestige and the credit for making a deal.

He's offering it to America. He's offering it sort of to Biden, but I think more or less he's basically going to deny it to Biden. But he's, he's offering it to the Democrats and to the Republicans. Which one of you is going to accommodate Saudi Arabia enough for me to to to you win the contract. You win the award of getting to take the prestige and take the credit for making a normalization deal between Saudi Arabia and Israel.

Because if you're not going to give me what I want, then I can just bring in China and they'll do it. But I we should also say that bin Salman is saying that, the condition for a deal between, Israel and Saudi Arabia is going to be, a sort of a vague notion of a good life for the Palestinians. He can't not say that. The extent to which he actually cares about the lives of the Palestinians, I think, is dubious. But he cares, and all Arab rulers care about the lives of the Palestinians in terms of, their own standing, as leaders in the Arab world and in the Muslim world because they know that the populations care about this issue.

They know that the Arab populations and the Muslim populations in the world care about this issue. So because that's a fact, they do have to care about it. Whether they personally are invested in it or not, I think is anyone's guess, but most likely not so much. But any Arab leader would be happy to achieve positive outcomes for the Palestinians for the sake of, again, their own prestige and their own standing in the Arab world and in the Muslim world and having a good reputation and having the the respect and the honor that that would afford them in the Arab and the Muslim world. If they can actually achieve something good for the Palestinians, it's good for them.

It's good for their for their own standing. It's good for their own legacy and reputation.

Not to go too far, but the concessions Israel would have to give the Palestinians, what would that look like?

That's part of the negotiation. Okay. Yeah. I I don't want to describe things because I I I want I want to see really a good life for the Palestinians. So I I want just to continue the negotiation with them with the by the administration to be sure.

Well, on The US side, would there be a defense pact maybe between the Saudi Arabia and and The United States? And what would that would it look like, article five and NATO? Yeah.

What first of all, we we have some sort of that in the past eighty years. We are the biggest buyer from American manufacturing. I believe Saudi Arabia a lot is bigger than the next five buyers from America. So so Saudi Arabia is critical in your own import economically. And we have a lot of security military ties that really is strengthening the position of Saudi Arabia in Middle East and strengthening the position of America globally, especially in Middle East.

You don't want that to be shifted. You don't want to see Saudi Arabia shifting the armament from America to other place. So that

See, look what he just said there. That's a very, very thinly veiled threat. He's saying, look at all of the money that Saudi Arabia is spending on American weapons, all of the money that we're giving to American to the, defense industry in The United States. Look at all the money that we're giving you, but we have options. We could always buy our weapons from someone else, And wouldn't that be a shame?

So he's also sending a message here. By saying that, he's sending a message to the defense industry lobbies. Get us what we want or we'll take our business elsewhere. So, again, that's bin Salman using Saudi Arabia's economic and political leverage that they have obtained through making those arms purchases, through becoming America's, you know, number one purchaser of weapons. When you buy American weapons, and I've talked about this before, you are also buying the political influence, and the support for your own policies and your own agenda.

You'll be supported in your own agenda and your own, policy objectives. You'll be supported by the defense and aerospace industry political lobbies, which are some of the most powerful, the most persuasive, and the most successful, and the most effective, political lobbies in Washington. So when you become the number one, customer for the defense sector, for the defense industry in The United States, their lobbies support you, and we've seen that happen many times. So they're not only spending money the Saudis are not only spending money, on their own lobbyists to lobby for their for their country and for their country's interest in The United States. When they buy weapons from The United States, that's essentially also them putting money into the, to another lobbying sector that will then lobby for their their interests and their objectives, and that's the defense industry lobby, which as as I said, is one of the strongest, and most effective lobbies in Washington.

So I'm not gonna continue with the interview. Those are the most important parts. You know, the rest of it is really, again, just marketing for bin Salman and marketing for Saudi Arabia. It's a it's a puff piece. It's a PR piece, very clearly intended to portray bin Salman in a positive light for an American conservative audience.

And this is one of the reasons why I think that it's unlikely that they will normalize that that that Saudi Arabia will normalize with Israel under the Biden administration because he's appealing now to the Republicans. He's appealing now to the Republican audience. He's he's he's appealing to the Republican constituency who watches Fox News. So he's interested in doing deals with the Republicans. And so what he's doing is telling the Republicans, I am setting up a situation to show that Biden was incapable of making a deal, for normalization between Saudi and, and Israel, but maybe you guys can do it.

All of this is political manipulation. All of this is political maneuvering. All of this is the use of leverage in Washington. Now to clarify on my own personal opinion about bin Salman and Saudi Arabia, I think he's driven by nationalism. I think he's driven by wanting his own country.

He wants Saudi Arabia to be dominant. He wants it to succeed. He wants it to have prosperity, and he he wants it to move forward and to be successful. And he's looking at his own legacy and his own reputation and his own prestige. And I think that he genuinely wants the region to be stable.

He genuinely wants the region to be prosperous, but he wants that to be under the auspices of Saudi Arabia. He doesn't want any of these countries to prosper and to benefit and to be stable except under some degree of Saudi dominion. He wants to see Iran do well. He wants to see Lebanon do well. He wants to see Iraq do well.

He wants to see all of these countries do well. But within some degree and under some degree of Saudi dominion. I don't think that's necessarily nefarious. I think that's realpolitik, and I think it's actually logical to to a certain degree. Now another interesting thing here is when the reporter refers to Yemen and he talks about the the Iran's proxy war with the Houthis in Yemen, it's interesting to see someone finally mention the Houthis and Iran, in the context of Yemen because normally, what you hear is you get the impression that Saudi Arabia has been attacking Yemen for no reason just because they want to, you know, attack and kill Yemeni babies and women.

As if the Houthis don't exist, as if Iran doesn't exist, as if Iran's influence and Iran's funding and arming and supplying of the Houthi rebels doesn't exist. As if that's not a direct Iranian intervention in Jazirat al Arab that is supposed to just go unmet. So it's interesting that that Fox News is presenting the the war in Yemen very clearly from the perspective of Saudi Arabia and the Gulf nations who are who are leading the war in Yemen against the Houthi rebels. Again, hopefully, inshallah, this war will end and the agreement between Iran and Saudi Arabia will bring that war to an end. And finally, the people of Yemen can live in peace.

But I do believe that bin Salman is genuinely interested in stability across the region, and I think he's genuinely interested in prosperity across the region. He's genuinely interested in, as he said, making the Middle East the new Europe economically in terms of that's what he was referring to, making the The Middle East, have more robust economies and, coordinated economies and, powerful economies, and a center, of the world economy. I think he's sincere about that. But he wants all of that to happen to one degree or another under Saudi dominion. He doesn't want it to happen independently.

He doesn't want countries to do this independently. He wants it to be under some degree of Saudi coordination and control. And I don't think that that's necessarily nefarious. I don't think it's necessarily a bad thing, but it certainly is, an imperial type of ambition and an imperial type of a strategy, which is what I've talked about in the past that I think The UAE and Saudi Arabia are building a soft empire, across the Middle East and North Africa and beyond. And I think if if anyone is actually interested, in some sort of Muslim coordination and Muslim unity, then this is a good thing.

It comes at a cost and it's difficult, and there's a lot of trade offs that go on. But I think that that's what he's doing, and I think it's very interesting to see that, there's clearly, one of the major factions, political factions in The United States that appears to also be on board with that. And you have to also understand all of this within the context of the pivot south. All of this has to be understood within the context of the transfer and the transition of the global economy to the global South and to the East and what role the Middle East will play, in that transition. And, Saudi Arabia and The UAE and Qatar, the Gulf countries, are trying to, jockey for position, of how the global economic order will take shape amidst and after the transition to the global South.

So those are just sort of my takeaways from the interview.