https://youtubetranscript.com/?v=IktpeBrl_0c
I also wanted to talk to you about the Abraham Accords, their current status, how you evaluate them overall, and how they might be extended. Maybe you could just start by reminding people who are watching and listening what the Abraham Accords were and what they signified and how it was that they were successfully negotiated, which was somewhat of a miracle. And then what you see them having produced and may still be capable of yet producing. Well, look, I think it was one of the great accomplishments of the Trump administration, but I think it’s an American accomplishment. I don’t think it’s just a Trump accomplishment or a Jared Kushner or Mike Pompeo or Steve Mnuchin or Robert O’Brien accomplishment. I think it was an accomplishment for our country that we were able to use America’s influence to bring peace. And it goes back to what we talked about earlier in the show about peace of strength. A strong America is good not just for America, but it’s good for the world because it allows for peace to break out. The Abraham Accords originally started out as a deal between the UAE, the United Arab Emirates, and Israel to bring peace to those two countries, both strong partners of the United States, both small countries, but the small countries that punch way above their weight in international affairs and certainly in the region. And every effort to get peace in the Middle East up until this time had been stymied because the idea was if Israel couldn’t do a deal with the Palestinians, they couldn’t do a deal with any other Arab country. So we started out with Palestinians and we gave them a proposed a great deal as the kind of neutral mediator in the deal. We proposed a great deal with the Palestinians. We had to put a lot of pressure on the Israelis to accept it. The Palestinians, one diplomat once said, never miss an opportunity to miss that opportunity. We were able to then have the Israelis go to the UAE and say, look, we gave this awesome deal to the Palestinians. They turned it down. Why are you going to allow them to keep us from having a deal, keep us from having peace between our two countries? And it took a lot of negotiations with the Saudis and because none of this would have happened without Saudi approval. The Saudis didn’t ultimately sign the deal, but had the Saudis been totally opposed to it, it wouldn’t have happened. We did a lot of negotiations with the UAE, Bahrain. And I think the parties made a courageous decision because it wasn’t just a political decision to make peace. It was really a physical security situation because we look at what’s happened to past leaders in the Middle East that have made peace to Dada or Rabin or you could end up dead very quickly. And so I think it took a lot of courage from the Crown Prince Mohammed bin Zayed, from Bibi Netanyahu to the King of Bahrain, to King Mohammed in Morocco, who all entered in this peace deal. And it was improbable. It was improbable from the American side. We had to pull together our whole team. And the power that the National Security Advisor has isn’t so much as a line. You don’t have line authority. You can’t order people to do things. You can’t order ambassadors to do things. That’s the State Department. That’s the Secretary of State. You can’t order generals to do things. That’s the Department of Defense and the Secretary of Defense. But you can convene people. And we brought together a great team of Mike Pompeo and Secretary of State and Steve Mnuchin and Jared Kushner and our team at the NSC and others. We got that whole team all running in the same direction, in the same boat, which doesn’t always happen in the US government, unfortunately. And we got the president behind it. And we knew it was a long shot. I mean, we’d been counseled by very senior former officials that said, don’t waste your time with Middle East peace. It’s a mirage that every administration goes for. No one gets it. And you waste all your time and energy. We pursue other priorities. But we thought we could get it done. And the parties took big risks to make peace. The Israelis gave up, you know, settlements, annexing settlements in the West Bank. The Arab countries risked their street rising up or being upset with them. There is potential terrorism from Iran or from the Palestinians. But we got them together. And what does it mean? I mean, number one, militarily, it’s an intelligence-wise, it’s a great alliance to these countries or not quite a military intelligence alliance, but a partnership against Iran. Iran wants, like China and Russia, Iran wants to change how the world operates. And they want to place themselves with their Shia ideology, their end times ideology at the top of the region in the Middle East, dominate the entire Middle East, and ultimately have great influence all over the world and change the way we live our lives. And this Abraham Accords took a very strong UAE, a strong Israel and other countries and put them together and helped them stand up to the Iranians. So number one, militarily, it was a, and intelligence-wise, it was a great deal. Number two, economically, you know, we’ve got the most dynamic country in the world outside of America, outside of Silicon Valley, is Tel Aviv and Jerusalem and Israel. The tech sector there, both on the hard tech side, the computers and chips, the soft side with software, but then the egg tech and figuring out how to make the desert blossom and grow the food that we need and to manage the water, which is going to be as important as oil in the future. That’s all coming out of this little tiny country of Israel is just blossoming. But they need investment. And so the UAE has almost an unlimited amount of capital to invest. They’ve got a very wealthy country. They’ve got very well-established capital markets. They’re the crossroads of trade and not just for the Middle East, but for Africa and Asia. So to put the UAE and their capital and their trading expertise together with the Israelis and their tech is just going to create an economic dynamism that it’s not going to be one plus one equals two, it’s going to be one plus one equals like five. The benefit it had for us as Americans is as we’ve pushed the Chinese out of our tech sector using the CFIUS process and other tools, the Chinese were starting to invest heavily in Israel because they were going to, you know, the Chinese are good at mimicking and copying, but they’re not great at innovating. And so they were going to go where the innovation was happening. Well, now what’s happened is this Arab money, this UAE money capital is being invested in Israeli startups and it’s pushing the Chinese out of Israel, which is another great benefit to the United States. So you’ve got this military, you’ve got this intelligence, you’ve got this economic benefit. But the intangible is peace for peace sakes. We always kind of look at things in my world, national security and foreign policies. How do we advance American interests? How do we protect ourselves? How do we keep ourselves safe? It’s kind of a hard analysis. But for human beings, every time I see a friend send me an Instagram photo of somebody having their bat mitzvah or bar mitzvah in Dubai and say, isn’t this great? It’s pretty amazing when you think about it that this just happened, you know, three years ago. I mean, in September of 2020 and you’ve got all these Israelis kids wanting to go do their bat mitzvah or bar mitzvah in Dubai. I mean, that’s good for the human spirit. It’s good for the soul. When you see Emiratis up on the Temple Mount in Jerusalem going to the Al Aqsa mosque or the Blue Mosque and making the pilgrimage to what they believe is the third most holy site in Islam, and they can now go fly directly from Abu Dhabi to Jerusalem, to Ben Gurion Airport in Tel Aviv and drive up to Jerusalem, up to the mountains and go have their pilgrimage. These are things that were just, that were unheard of. I mean, no one would have even believed that they’d happened. When I was a hostage envoy and doing work in the region, he would have told me that the peace would be breaking out. You know, it was something that you wouldn’t have thought possible, and yet it is. And so there’s a human element and an example to other places in the world that no matter how intractable the problems are, and maybe even Russia, Ukraine, you know, that you can come up with an accord. And I’m proud of the United States that we were the ones that brokered it. There was nothing we gained directly from it. We gained indirectly, obviously, from the security and the economics and just the goodwill for brotherhood of mankind. But this was us putting all of our political capital on the line, the president taking big risks and putting his political capital on the line. You know, our departments and agencies don’t always get along well together, playing together to make this push. And then, you know, again, I want to give credit to Netanyahu and Mohammed bin Zayed and King Mohammed and the others that actually signed the deal and put their own lives on the line. It was really quite an accomplishment. And I hope there’s now some talk that the Biden administration is pushing for the Saudis to join the Abraham Accords. I mean, putting all politics aside, it would be great if Saudi joined the Abraham Accords. Yeah, that’s for sure. That would be a real coup. I wish Tony Blinken and Jake Sullivan and President Biden, I wish them luck. Because putting aside the politics of how, of course, President Biden will get the Nobel Prize for it, which President Trump didn’t get, but that’s okay. Right, right. Well, he should have got it. The team should have got it, clearly. But it’s, look, it’d be good for the region, good for the world and good for America if Saudi joins the Abraham Accords. And if Saudi does, then you’re going to have a good chance of Kuwait and Oman and other countries, certainly some of the Islamic countries in Africa will join. And I think you can have a real kind of gold rush for peace here and change the way that… And then hopefully the Palestinians come along and get on board and have their own state. And they’re creative people, they’re smart people, they’re doctors and businessmen and well-educated folks, literate folks. But they’ve been kept down by these leaders, these corrupt leaders in the Palestinian Authority or the Islamic extremists in Gaza. And if they get rid of the corruption and the extremism, the Palestinians would have a chance for a tremendous future in the Middle East and a free and prosperous Middle East. So there’s a lot of good that can… We did a lot of good, but there’s a lot more good that can happen. And I wish the Biden folks luck as they pursue the next peace, which is clearly Saudi Arabia.