What Witkoff Has Learned as Trump’s Global Negotiator Tucker: Steve, thank you so much for coming. So I think you’ve had one of the most, maybe the most remarkable life trajectories of anyone I’ve ever met. Um, and you wind up, you know, close to Trump, you campaigned with Trump. You’ve done, I mean, you’re an intimate friend of the presidents and you could have had any job you don’t want any job, um, cause you’re doing your own thing and then he taps you as a, as a, as a diplomat, as a negotiator on behalf of him and you wind up becoming probably the most effective negotiator in my lifetime.

And you speak for the president, I think everyone acknowledges that you’re honest and people like you personally. So those are obviously the foundations of effective diplomacy. But what have you learned negotiating on behalf of a country in the last couple of months? Steve: Well, first of all, I think President Trump sets the table for all of us. He really does. This whole peace through strength thing, it’s not just a slogan, it actually works. And so when he dispatches you to go to the Middle East, people are almost a little bit intimidated before you get there. And this goes for me and other people who are doing a similar job. So he sets the table in a pretty powerful way.

But negotiating is being outcome oriented. I talk about this a lot. It’s figuring out where you want to get to. That’s Trump’s game plan all the time. I sit with the president and we talk often about what the end game is. Where does he want to get to? And once you decide where you want to get to, then it’s all about tactically figuring out what that pathway is. With the Middle Eastern, you know, Tucker, when I first got in, and I was talking to Brett McGurk, who was the envoy on behalf of Biden. He was a smart guy. Yes. He just didn’t have a great boss giving him direction. So he couldn’t really speak on behalf of Biden. I was able to speak on behalf of Trump because we talked about it. We had a great conversation about it. He said to me, this is where I want to get to, Steve.

And so when I went in there, I went in with the imprimatur of the president and it became a, you know, that’s the difference maker. But I mean, clearly, and no one doubts that you speak for the president, that you know what the president wants because you know the president. You actually talk to him. You’re not some guy he just hired. And that makes a huge difference. But it also seems like you think through where whoever you’re negotiating with is coming from. Like, what do they want? Well, there’s no doubt I’m always trying to put myself in the shoes of the other person because a good deal has to work for everybody. But I want to just say this, when I say I speak for the president, it’s not because I presume what he’s thinking. It’s because I ask what he’s thinking. He is the president. I’m in my job only because of him. And to me, I give him the respect of always asking the question, where do you want to get to, Mr. President? And so… That’s critical. So now I know where he stands and now it’s about tactics. From the, as you talk about from the other side standpoint, it’s important for me to know or to have a feeling of where the Israelis want to get to. What about the Qataris? They’re the mediators at the table.

What do they want to accomplish here? What about Hamas? Where are they? Will they really demilitarize? Is that something they’ll do? Will they take the golden bridge out of Gaza? All of these are considerations. But first, I have to find out where the boss wants to end up, and the boss is President Trump. Tucker: Feels forbidden for you to say what you just said. So what does Israel want? Negotiating With Israel, Hamas, and Qatar Obviously a critical, the key question, but there are other players and what do they want? And I don’t know that I’ve heard anybody say that out loud ever, any American say that out loud. And I think you’ve been criticized for saying that out loud. Steve: Well, I think it’s important to recognize that everybody may want something. I think in the case of the Qataris, they’re criticized for not being well-motivated. It’s preposterous. They are well-motivated. They’re good, decent people.

What they want is a mediation that’s effective that gets to a peace goal. And why? Because they’re a small nation, and they want to be acknowledged as a peacemaker. And I think the president realizes that, and I realize that today. But we have to know that if they had a different agenda, it would be important for us to know that different agenda. I think if they had a different agenda, it would be fine as long as we weren’t operating blind. And operating blind is really the problem in a negotiation like this. You have to know where everybody stands. Tucker: Just laughing because what you’re saying is so obviously true. It’s a prerequisite to getting a deal. And yet it is so different from the posture that the last couple of generations of diplomats have taken, which is like, here’s what we want, shut up and do it.

And I just don’t think, leaving aside like moral considerations, I don’t think it’s been very effective. Steve: Well, you know, here’s an example, Gaza and what the president set forth is what he wanted to do with Gaza. I came back from my first trip. This is before he was inaugurated, where we had permission from the Biden administration to collaborate with them. Yes. And the president said, when do you think Gaza can be reconstructed? 15 years was my answer, maybe 20. And he said, why? I said, I gave him the battlefield conditions. I was in Gaza, actually, that it’s been decimated, it’s been destroyed.

There are tunnels underneath, so think Swiss cheese underneath, and then they got hit with bunker buster bombs. So there’s no rock there anymore. There’s no place to put footings if you’re gonna build buildings. And yet the whole world thought that this was a five-year reconstruction plan, and why? Because the Biden May 27th Protocol, which is the operating agreement pursuant to which the negotiation between Hamas and the U.S. government and Israel happen, talks about a five-year plan, but it’s those, that’s a false set of facts. Level setting the facts, you have to acknowledge that it’s a 15 to 20 year plan. When we first started talking 15 to 20 years, everyone said that we didn’t know what we were talking about until the journal wrote an article and said 15 to 20 years. Yes, so the president’s plan about Gaza was all about how do we, how do we put people back in a battle zone where there are munitions all over the field?

Or where there are these latent conditions so that a kid could fall into a hole and go 40, 50, 60 feet down and you’d never know that he was there. Who would do such a thing? If we had buildings in those conditions in New York, there would be yellow tape all around and no one would be allowed in. So, and then of course he got criticized for that as if he was looking to create a beachside community, gleaming towers and casinos. It was preposterous, he was being realistic about how you needed to consider Gaza. I think it’s really important that when you’re making these decisions that you level set the facts. And that was my instructions from President Trump. Go out there, level set the facts, figure out what it is, and then we’ll make decisions about where we wanna see Gaza going to. And I think we’ve got a better, that’s a better program. Definitely a better program. I mean, operating on the basis of honesty works.

Tucker: So, okay, I think the president’s goal is pretty clear, he said it many times, he campaigned on it, he was elected on it, which is we want stability and peace in the world. It’s not good for anybody when we don’t have that. But to the extent that you understand it, and since you’re one of the few people who seems willing to say it out loud, can you just describe the three players in the current conflict, the Middle East, the big ones. Can you go through and tell us what you think each one wants? What’s their goal? So Israel, Hamas, and Qatar. Steve: So I think Qatar is a small nation, probably has the highest GDP per capita, per person, of anyone in the world, huge, huge reserves. I think they want stability. I think they want a peace treaty from the United States. Why?

Because, and all the Middle East, all the GCC countries want that, by the way. This is an interesting point. Everybody thinks the peace treaty is about physical defense, what it’s really about is the United States providing a security wrapper so that they’re all financeable. Today, you can’t borrow money in those countries. So if you want to go do a deal in Saudi Arabia, in the UAE, JP Morgan, if they are the hypothetical bank, has to underwrite war risk. They have to underwrite, will the Houthis in Saudi Arabia fire a hypersonic missile and destroy that AI data center that you just bought for $200 billion?

That’s a real problem. So a lot of these countries want defense treaties so that they’re not just building out of their pocket, they’re taking their oil money and they’re actually leveraging it and creating a better economy long-term. So I think the Qataris want stability and they don’t get enough credit for that motivation. It’s a good motivation for their people. Amen. But they’re often accused, almost universally accused in the US media of being agents of Iran. It’s preposterous. Look, they’re a Muslim nation.

In the past, they’ve had some views that are a little bit more radical from an Islamist standpoint than they are today, but it’s moderated quite a bit. There’s no doubt that they’re an ally of the United States. There’s no doubt about that. Tucker: Thank you. Maybe a huge airbase there. Steve: By the way, and they pay for every dollar of it. They don’t have their hand out for a thing. There is nothing that the United States has to fund with regard to that air base. That’s pretty unusual. That’s amazing. So they fund everything. They don’t ask for much. I think I had a conversation with General Carrillo, Eric Carrillo, who runs CENTCOM, an amazing man. And I said to him, what do you think of the Qataris? He says, they’re special people.

So the people in the know know that they’re good, decent people. What does Hamas want? I think they want to stay there till the end of time and they want to rule Gaza. Yes. And that’s unacceptable. So we have to know that. We had to know what they wanted. What they want is unacceptable. What’s acceptable to us is they need to demilitarize. Then maybe they could stay there a little bit, right?

Be involved politically, but they can’t be involved. We can’t have a terrorist organization running Gaza because that won’t be acceptable to Israel. Then we’ll just have the same exact experiences of every five, 10, 15 years, we’re gonna have an October 7th. October 7th, pardon me. So that’s what Hamas wants. That’s not possible. What do they like to deal with? I’ve never really, I’ve never been in the same room as them, which is a little bit weird, wouldn’t you say? Like a negotiation where you don’t have the other party?

Like you don’t even know if the guy behind the wall is the Wizard of Oz or he’s not the Wizard of Oz, right? So. Tucker: So how do you keep, I mean, without, you know, giving away anything you can. Steve: I think we trust the Qataris. If I didn’t trust the Qataris, then that would be really problematic, not meeting with Hamas. And of course, you know, we read— So you can communicate with Hamas through the Qataris. Right, and Sheikh Mohammed, the prime minister of Qatar, is a good man. He’s really— He certainly is a good man. He’s a special guy. He really is, and he cares, and I’ve spent a lot of time with him, and broken bread with him, and he’s just a good, decent human being who wants what’s best for his people.

But also like what you were alluding to before, he’s able to put himself in the shoes of the Israelis, of the United States, and I think explain to the Qataris, excuse me, explain to Hamas where they’re gonna have to get to to make a deal. Tucker: And do, I mean, from an American perspective, like it’s just hard to even understand what Hamas is thinking, or do you, but it’s essential to understand. I mean, just as a procedural matter, we need to know. Correct. So is it hard for you to understand?

Will We Achieve Peace Between Israel and Hamas? Like, do you feel like you can effectively communicate with them, even through proxy, and understand what they want and what their, you know, what their red lines are or whatever? Can you negotiate with them? Steve: Well, it’s hard, you know, I’ll give you an example of what makes it hard. I went to Gaza, and then I had this fabulous lunch with CENTCOM people, you know, military guys. I shook hands with everybody I met, because who doesn’t want to shake the hand of these guys who are out in the field, you know, they protect our country.

I’m talking about our military guys. And then they showed me, this is Southern Command of Israel, then showed me a film of what happened on October 7th. And the film is horrific. It is about mass rapes. There’s pictures of Hamas people cutting the head off of an Israeli soldier. I watched them saw the head off. I mean, it’s really terrible stuff and it’s beyond what I’ve ever seen. And it can taint you, right?

It can taint the way you’re going to, you know, the way you’re going to feel about these people. And I think sometimes as a negotiator, you have to be dispassionate. It’s not easy to make decisions if you’re going to, but I had to see that film, Tucker. I mean, that film is a reality. I mean, we can’t ignore the reality of what happened on October 7th. Now, they would tell you that they’ve got justification, but there’s no justification for what happened that day. There just isn’t. And unfortunately, there were security lapses that day that shouldn’t have happened, that accentuated what happened that day, which shouldn’t have happened. But… Do we understand that? I think we understand that there were security lapses, that there were some mistakes that were made. But we’re humans, we’re not robots, right? We’re not completely overwhelmed by AI right now. So people will make mistakes.

There were intelligence mistakes, but there’s some really good people who were involved. Here, you know, I met some exceptional people in Israel. I mean, really some exceptional people who, yes, and it’s a difficult situation, but I think you have to know what Hamas wants just to go back to your question. Yes, and then you’ve got to figure out what you can give them that allows them to walk out because that’s what’s needed here. You know what we heard in the beginning of this conflict is Hamas is ideological. They’re prepared to die for a whole variety of reasons. I personally, and I talk to the president about this, there’s nothing I don’t talk to the president about before we’re gonna make a decision. Because he is the guy. He was elected, I was not, none of the other people were, he was elected.

And I think that’s how we have to function. With that said, I said to him, I don’t think that they are as ideologically locked in, they’re not ideologically intractable. I never believe that, by the way. I believe they strap on the suicide vest onto young kids who don’t know what they’re doing, right? And they tell them a story. And once you understand that, once you understand that they wanted to live, then you were able to talk to them in a more effective way. That is smart, but it’s how hard was it to come to that conclusion. You know what, I get a lot of intelligence reports so I’m able to read things. And it just felt to me that the rhythm and the cadence of the negotiation, that’s part of it too, right? If I’m not there all the time, I’m getting secondhand information. I had to feel it for myself. I had to be able to sort of live it in real time. And that’s when I sort of came to the conclusion that they wanted alternatives. We’re in a negotiation right now to maybe stop some of these Israeli strikes and maybe finish this conflict with dialog.

And if I don’t have a feeling that we can accomplish that, why would I waste my time? Or the United States’ time? Or, and worse yet, why would I put the, why would I come to the president, recommend to him that we could finish something with dialog? And then effectively, and then we can’t be that effective. That’s a bad policy prescription if I’m not in this thing, making those sort of assessments and being able to come back to the president and say, I think we can finish it with dialog, or not. And those, by the way, those calculations are going to be the same with the Iranians, and they’re going to be the same with the Russians and the Ukrainians, and they’re going to be the same with Azerbaijan and Armenia. So those principles apply to all of these conflicts that we’re gonna maybe talk about today.

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Negotiation can play a role, dialog can play a role. I just, I haven’t heard anybody say that in so long, and you’ve taken an enormous amount of abuse. I don’t even know if you’re aware of it because you’re always on an airplane, but like in U.S. media and social media, attacking you is like an agent of all kinds of different foreign powers. He’s working for Hamas, he’s working for the Qataris. Does that penetrate at all? Why Corporate Media Hates Witkoff Steve: You know, in the beginning I didn’t like it. Yeah, I bet! But one night I was reflecting on what someone told me after my son, Andrew, died, and they said to me, you’re never gonna have a bigger hit than that in your life, losing a child. It’s a bad club to be a member of. Oh, there’s nothing, nothing worse. Nothing worse. And then I began to get like President Trump, not caring what people said. I’d wake up in the morning, read the paper, I’d read some sort of explanation about why I said something or did something. And it was preposterous, Tucker, just preposterous. So one day, what’s that movie, there was some movie where they kept, it won the Academy, I can’t remember the name, I Just Stop Caring? Yes. I just stop caring about what the news media said about me. So I’ve experienced a little bit of this myself, nothing compared to what you’ve just experienced, but it does seem like some of these criticisms of you are not actually sincere, nobody really thinks you’re like, pro Hamas or working for the Qataris.

But the point is to throw you off balance and to sort of put a leash around your neck and control you. No doubt. Right? That’s the agenda. That’s the agenda. No doubt. And it seems to have had no effect. From all sides, of course! Oh, absolutely! I’ve had a couple of experiences where first I was attacked as being pro-Qatari sympathizer. By the way, Qatar is a mediator here. They’re not a party to the conflict. They’re a mediator. And by the way, they’ve mediated all over the world. No different than the Swiss and the Norwegians. They’ve mediated in Russia. They’ve mediated in Afghanistan. And God bless them. I know, and they’ve done an effective job. They’re good at it. So I am. How could I not collaborate with the mediator and be, if I’m not collaborating with the mediator, I’m bound to be ineffective. It’s not even possible that I could do the job. I had to know everything that they knew. So that means collaboration. And that’s how President Trump operates too. I learned the business from him. I went into the business because of him, the real estate business. And this is his ethos. This is how he operates. And so I’m really following him in a certain respect. I didn’t realize you went into that so I didn’t know I knew you’d known him forever. I didn’t know that.

Oh no, I wanted to be him. By the way, everybody wanted to be him. He’d come to 101 Park Avenue where I was a lawyer. He had this swashbuckling style. I used to see him come in and I used to say, well, God, I want to be him. I don’t want to be the lawyer. I don’t want to be the scrivener. I want to be that man. Yeah, I can remember saying that. Yeah, he was like the Michael Jordan to me, you know, of the real estate business. How the Loss of His Son Changed the Way Witkoff Negotiates Hostage Situations Tucker: It’s incredible the turns your life has taken, it’s just incredible. Well, when you have a chance to sort it out when all this is over, I think you’re gonna look at your own life and say, well, that was amazing. Steve: Well, I’ve been blessed. I mean, it used to be that I couldn’t use the word blessing because of my boy, of his death. But now I can say I was blessed but for this overwhelming tragedy. And I think my son, Tucker, allows me to be, to have this sense of, I relate to a lot of the hostage families. Many of these families are never gonna get their children back. The children have either been killed or may in fact get killed if we don’t successfully get to a peace program in Gaza. So I think that this sense of sensitivity or empathy that I have, I can relate to them. They all have my telephone numbers. I talk to them on a daily basis. And I think that’s been a big, it’s been a big help for them. But interestingly enough, it’s been a big help for me. I believe that. And I talked to the president about this. I had hostage families in the Oval Office the other day. The president was tired. And he said to me, he knew they were at my office and he said, bring them up, let me at least say hello to them and get connected to them, but let them know I only have a couple of minutes, because it was a hectic day. He spent an hour and a half with them, talked to every one of them, gave them his challenge coin, every one of them, listened to their stories. People who talked about children who might not come home, many of these people were captives themselves, hostages. You know, it’s a very real experience when you sit there and you listen to what it was like. Some of these people who lived in cages were chained 24 hours a day. Had, you know, we talked about what it was like to find a bathroom, right, or what it was like to live in the dark, or to be starving to death, you know, as some of them were, or to watch people be murdered.

And the president, as a president, he doesn’t have to do that if he doesn’t want to. He could sort of get the information just from me. But he’s, it’s up close and personal for him. And that way of doing things guides people like me who work for him. Now I want to get up close and personal. That’s why I went to Gaza. I was the first US official to go to Gaza in 22 years. But how would you implement a peace deal if you didn’t go to the place where the peace deal was being implemented? I mean, it’s curious, right? Like who would not, who would try to get, who would try to get a peace deal done? And then it’s all in the implementation. So what the contract says, what the writing says, now we have to figure out the battlefield conditions. Nobody had been there. Tucker: It’s kind of crazy. Well, it is crazy. And it’s connected to what you’ve been saying for the last 20 minutes, which is you have to understand all sides if you want to affect the outcome that you’ve decided you want. Correct. Yes. Again, that’s a revolutionary development in American diplomacy. And I just am thrilled to see it. So finally, the biggest player in all of this, of course, is the government of Israel. What is the government of Israel, leaving aside the population of Israel, I have no idea, but what is the government making these decisions? Steve: Well, I think that’s complicated. I think they’re well motivated. I think there are things that they’re trying to get done. You know, as an example, we would not be as effective in what we’re doing there if Bibi did not get Nasrallah out of the picture in Lebanon. Right. If he did not decapitate, because he’s effectively decapitated Hezbollah. If he did not do what he did with Hamas, he’s decapitated Hamas to masses, nowhere close to the terrorist organization that they were beforehand. Both of those events inform on his relationship with Iran and Iran continuing to use proxies and so forth. They are less prone to do those sorts of things today, right? And so that sort of Iranian crescent or that Islamist crescent that everybody thought was going to be effective, it’s been largely eliminated. So he’s done an exceptional job with that, but of course the rap he gets is that he’s more concerned about the fight than he is about the hostages. I think in some respects, I understand how people make that assessment, but I don’t necessarily agree with it. I think that he does wanna get hostages home, if he can, but he believes that pressuring Hamas is the only way to do it. I think in some respects, the nuances here, the changes that happen there on a day-to-day basis.

We were at the Arab summit a week and a half ago, we made a proposal to Hamas. They considered it, they rejected it the next day. We thought it was unacceptable that they rejected it. Three days later, the Israelis went in, guess what, they’re talking again. Stuff changes there, Tucker. Hour to hour. You really have to stay on top of it. I think Bibi feels that he’s doing the right thing. I think he goes up against public opinion because public opinion there wants those hostages home. Public opinion in Israel. In Israel. Yeah, you don’t get that sense, I don’t think from American media, but Israel has always been, you know, there’s been a robust debate since, you know, I started going to Israel, that, you know, they have a very vigorous debate internally about their government. Like it’s, you know, people feel free to say. I went to Hostage Square, and I went with a detail. And my guys were afraid for me to get out. There were, I don’t know, four or 5,000 people there. And we were passing by, and I said, let’s stop. There was no plan to go there, let’s stop. We didn’t have a lot of security with us. I knew it was gonna be fine. I came in there, I spent almost an hour there. It was spiritual. All the families were there. Hostages who had been released were there. People were crying. Look, getting, this has infected Israel. It’s fractured Israel. It’s like a seam cutting right through the soul of the country. We’ve gotta get these people back. I talked to, by the way, I talked to Bibi about it. I talked to Dermer about it, but. You know, they also have a view strategically about Hamas, how they have to be dealt with. I’m not sure, in some respects, there are times that we agree with each other, there are times we slightly disagree, but I think they’re well motivated, is my point. And our policy is that Hamas cannot continue to exist here. That’s the president’s policy. And I’m a, you know, I’m someone who follows the president, because he’s the one who got elected, and I— Israel’s Goals —believe in his policy. And he got elected on, I think, a pretty clear vision of how he wanted to manage the world to the extent that we can. And again, it was, you know, no more chaos. And to the extent you can avoid it, no more wars. And Americans really responded to that. And the world understands that. Like everyone kind of knows that’s the agenda. And you’ve said many times, we talk through what we want the outcome to be before we begin the tactical considerations.

I just in my traveling, there are a lot of Gulf countries that are, you know, have extensive, very, much more than people understand, relations with Israel. Some have signed the accord, others haven’t, but they all deal with the Israelis all the time. They’re not hostile to the Israelis. But not one person I’ve spoken to understands what the long-term vision is. Like, what’s the plan here? What are we, you know, if you get everything you want, what does it look like? Do you understand it? Well, I understand we have to have that notion. I understand that we have to be outcome-oriented. What would be how we’re operating myopically if we’re not outcome-oriented. If we don’t, I mean, peace, stability, the Gulf Coast could be one of the most undervalued opportunities if we get peace and stability throughout the region. If we solve Iran and you can finance in that market, the Israelis are brilliant from a technological standpoint, they’ve got a huge technological base there, they’re in AI, robotics, blockchain, that’s where the UAE is today. That’s where Saudi Arabia is today, that’s where Qatar is today. Can you imagine all these countries working collaboratively together and creating that type of market? It could be much bigger than Europe. Europe is dysfunctional today. Imagine if they became functional and everybody’s a business guy there. Tucker: I completely agree. I think the core question is the map. You know, for thousands of years it’s been about the land. What does the map look like? Who controls what? And it’s clearly had a destabilizing effect on some of the poor, more populated countries in there. No doubt. Specifically Jordan and Egypt, a hundred million people in Egypt. I think it might be helpful for everybody if there was just a clear picture of when this is all done, here’s what we want the map to be and then we can debate that. Do you have any sense of what the map would look like from Israel’s perspective? When you say the map, you mean what? What countries?

Well, what, okay, so Israel’s moved into Lebanon and Syria, they’re not part of Israel, but they control them. So when all this is over, what does the Israeli government hope to control? And then if that were clear, then I think people would say, you know, they can either live with it or they can’t, but it would have a calming effect if people knew what the goal was. Steve: I would say the goal begins with, how do we deal with Iran? That’s the biggie. Yeah. So the first is nuclear. Yeah. We cannot have that. Right. And we can talk about it in this session, how bold it was for the president to send that letter, because many would not, and that’s an important thing, but I’ll leave it to the end. So it begins with Iranian nuclear, but most importantly, because Iranian nuclear, if they were to have a bomb, that would create North Korea in the GCC. We cannot have that. North Korea, where they are, has outsized influence as a very small nation. We can never allow someone to have a nuclear weapon and have outsized influence. That doesn’t work. So if we can solve for that, which I’m hopeful that we can, and we can talk about that too, the next thing we need to deal with Iran is that they’re being a benefactor of these proxy armies. We’ve proven that that’s not existential. We’ve, for all intents and purposes, destroyed Hezbollah. So they’re not really an existential risk. Hamas, same thing. The Houthis, we’re having, you know, we’re in a conflict with them today. I think we’ll prove that they won’t be an existential risk either. But if we can get these terrorist organizations eliminated as risks, not existential, but still risks, they’re destabilizing risks, will normalize everywhere. I think Lebanon could normalize with Israel, literally. Normalize meaning a peace treaty with the two countries. That’s really possible. Syria too. The indications are that Jalani is a different person than he once was and people do change. You at 55 are completely different than how you were at 35. That’s for sure. And I say to myself, I’m a different person today at 68 years old. I’m not the person I knew 30 years ago. So maybe Jalani in Syria is a different guy. They’ve driven Iran out.

Imagine if Lebanon normalizes, Syria normalizes, and the Saudis sign a normalization treaty with Israel because there’s a peace in Gaza. They must have that as a prerequisite. That’s a condition precedent to Saudi normalizing. But now you’d begin to have a GCC that all work together. It would be epic. It would be, and I think it’d be good for the world. For sure, it would be good for the world because Europe is dying, unfortunately. And so the United States needs allies abroad. And those are all potential allies. Well, they are allies already. I couldn’t agree with you more. And remember, Tucker, one more thing as a condition in that region. You have young leadership. You have young leadership in MBS. You have relatively young leadership in the UAE. You have relatively young leadership, new leadership in Qatar, people who don’t have the old sensibilities, people who want to have, want to do business, who realize like Trump’s way is people vote their pocketbook, right? So he wants to bring the bacon home to the United States. I think everybody’s bought into that over in the GCC. I agree. I mean, we’re reverting to like human nature. People want stability and prosperity for sure. Correct. But looming over all of these countries and their remarkable success, both economically and socially, they’re just like great countries, in my opinion, is this, is, you know, is the conflict in Gaza and not just Gaza, but the idea that, wow, this could all blow up tomorrow because we don’t know what the Israeli plan is. And even people who should know don’t seem to know. Do you think at some point they will articulate like, here’s our plan? Trump’s Plan for Gaza Steve: I think so. First of all, I think that the president, President Trump’s approach to Gaza has engendered a lot of lively discussion about different ways to deal with Gaza. We’re now seeing an Egyptian plan. We’re seeing the Saudis put together a white paper. So I think what we’re going to do with Gaza is going to become much more apparent over the next six to 12 months. But Gaza is a flash point and we’ve got to figure that out. And I agree with the president when he said, the old plans don’t work.

The old plans, the last 40, 50 years of policy prescription in Gaza. Rebuild, more war, more rebuilding. It’s just, that’s not something that made any, that made any sense. It was why the president began to say maybe we need to think about it in a different way. Now we got criticized for it because that’s what happens when you begin to go up against, you know, the old way of thinking and you, you want to sort of introduce a new way of thinking. Well, a new way of thinking is definitely needed. I think everybody realizes that.

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