Welcome in. Talking about a topic that we haven't quite gotten to yet, and that's because the war in Iran is obviously in its infancy. At least I think it's in its infancy, and we're not going to necessarily be done with this anytime soon. Maybe it's victory achieved and we back away. And the best case scenario, everything just starts humming along and functioning like a functional

society with no following issues. I am a skeptic. I'd be curious to get your thoughts, and you can

drop those down below. But we did a newsletter on this. And this is the U.S. base problem, which I think

might rear its ugly head at some point in the near future, realizing that the United

States, we have had military bases in the Middle East for quite a while. And we have a lot of

them, some being more permanent, built-up bases, other ones down to more or less an outpost. But

by having a foothold in the region, it obviously gives the United States the ability to quickly surge in the region, conduct operations that are critical of national

importance to the United States and our strategic plan. But ultimately, these nations have allowed

us to operate here because it's a win-win for both parties, for the most part. So the U.S. military

operates roughly 19 sites across the Middle East, eight of which are considered permanent.

These are the big bases that you might see such as Al-U-D Air Base, which is, I use in quotes,

the crown jewel. I did put in the newsletter, the one-star review on Google of Al UD, which I don't disagree with,

having spent just a short stint there myself, only three weeks as a liaison when I was last

deployed. This is a big hub for U.S. military operations, and it's home to the Kayok, and that's the

combined air operation center. You typically see a lot of tanker aircraft and

cargo aircraft that are operating out of this facility, as well as the B-1 has been operating out of

this for quite some time. Now, the Iran conflict has changed all the force lay down drastically,

but if we looked at Operation Enduring Freedom, Operation

Inherent Resolve, Operation Iraqi Freedom, that's typically what went on here.

Al-UD'd home to two runways, big runways of that, 12,000 feet, and over an $8 billion

investment by Qatar since 2003 specifically, just to keep and attract U.S. forces. Now, the U.S. does pay a lease

to have this as well. So it is a two-way street when it comes to this. But regional security,

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