Saudi & UAE: The Cold Gulf War - with Yonatan Adiri and Yael Wissner-Levy
Call Me Back - with Dan Senor
Ark Media
4.8 • 3.2K Ratings
🗓️ 16 February 2026
⏱️ 45 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Hey everyone, Dan here. Before we start, I really appreciate five minutes of your time to fill out our listener survey. |
| 0:06.5 | Your feedback helps shape what we do at Arc Media and what we try to accomplish here, which is to build a place for serious conversation, respectful disagreement, and real connection. |
| 0:17.5 | The survey is anonymous, but you can opt in to win a gift, which we will surprise you |
| 0:22.1 | with. The link is in today's show notes. Thanks so much. I'm looking forward to hearing from you. |
| 0:31.5 | You are listening to an art media podcast. In the last few weeks, we've seen a failure of Saudi Arabia's vision 2030 to meet its |
| 0:41.7 | foreign direct investment goals significantly below target. We've seen Saudi Arabia recalibrate its two |
| 0:47.4 | big national projects, Naeom and the line, cutting them down by 30, 40, 50 percent. And the question I think he's asking himself is, |
| 0:56.0 | how do I balance that? |
| 0:57.0 | Everybody's seeing that I'm failing in this path. |
| 1:00.1 | I cannot be seen as weak. |
| 1:02.2 | And which of the other parts can I push against |
| 1:05.0 | to be seen as a strong monarch and so on? |
| 1:08.1 | And he chose to push against MBZ. |
| 1:10.0 | MBS is a lot on his plate. He's attempting |
| 1:12.1 | maybe the most ambitious political pivot in modern Saudi history. And his numbers aren't |
| 1:16.9 | cooperating. At the end of the day, he's a political figure. There have been Saudi-linked |
| 1:20.6 | narratives that have been framing the UAE, for instance, as Israel's Trojan horse and even as |
| 1:25.3 | Israel's proxy executing Zionist plan. So that's rhetoric that |
| 1:29.3 | is risky. It's turning normalization into ammunition and really becoming a political tool more than |
| 1:34.7 | anything else. |
| 2:04.0 | It's 9 a.m. on Sunday, February 15th, New York City, as Americans across the country get ready for President's Day on Monday. It is 4 p.m. on Sunday, February 15th in Israel as Israelis get ready to wind down their day. |
| 2:09.2 | Today, in an interview with the BBC, Iran's deputy foreign minister said that Iran is ready to consider compromises to reach a nuclear deal with the United States if Washington is willing |
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