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This is Deep State Radio coming to you direct from our super secret studio in the third sub basement of the Ministry of Snark in Washington DC and from other undisclosed locations across America and around the world.

Hello and welcome to the podcast. It's that time of the week for we're all going to die radio. Yes, that show where we deal with those issues that are so terrifying that typically you can only listen to the show with an alcoholic beverage and head.

The person who originated this content concept is my co host, I'm David Rothkopf, my co host is John Wolfstall, who is, I don't know where are you, John, here's far away.

I mean, beautiful cloudy, Helsinki Finland today, David. Nice, very, very nice bleak, perfect setting for this kind of exactly right, Scandinavian war podcast.

But we are going to talk about some of your places, although sometimes darker and other respects and that is the Middle East. Unfortunately, we are able to have with us two leading experts on issues pertaining to the Middle East.

One is Barbara Slaven, she's a distinguished fellow at the Stimson Center and a lecturer in International Affairs at George Washington University. Prior to joining Stimson, she founded and directed the Future of Iran initiative at the Atlantic Council. Hi, how are you Barbara?

Hi, it's it's an honor to be with two such distinguished hosts. Well, you're very kind to say so, but the real honor is being with your other guest.

Who is formerly was Israel's consul general in New York and was the chief staff and foreign policy advisor to one prime minister and four foreign ministers of Israel and is one of our friends and regulars here who I know happens to be an extremely soggy New York city.

How are you doing otherwise a lot? Otherwise, I'm doing fine. I mean, you know, we can Washington a week in New York and now I go back to the tranquil.

Yeah, and and welcoming and welcoming environs of the Middle East. Yeah, and with that in mind, I should have also said he is not only a calmness, but maybe the best calmness for our it's and you should read his stuff there.

And I suspect his calmness has made him very unwelcome in certain parts of Israel, but we can get to that later since a lot tells the Hebrew, the Hebrew ones, the English they don't bother with.

Well, anyway, I've seen things you've written recently and things you've tweeted about one of these subjects that I find most baffling.

And this after sort of 35 odd years of being involved in foreign affairs, and that is the apparent zest here in Washington, DC for striking a deal between Israel and Saudi Arabia.

A deal that is called normalization, although I saw a Farid Zakaria calm today that called it a major piece breakthrough, which I found baffling.

And, you know, that the Saudis seem to be interested in it for two reasons, one being, you know, it's sort of the redemption of MBS and the eyes of the Americans.

And the other being a security guarantee, which again, I don't get it, like why would we provide that and and how would we do that?

And with the Israelis, where again, baby Netanyahu sees it as a form of redemption, but it's also part of his desire to counterbalance Iran at all times.

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