Ben Rhodes

The paradigm for these countries for a long time has basically been like, what they give us is money.

And not just the direct payments to the Kushner and Trump and Witkoff families, because remember, Steve Witkoff's kid is also in on the crypto business.

But also, they buy all this high-end military equipment that you mentioned.

Well, the implicit deal is kind of like, that's good for our economy, in defense contractors in particular, if they're buying tens of billions of dollars worth of planes that they're not really going to use in a conflict.

The kind of implicit thing is the Americans are kind of the security guarantor.

They're the ones that fight the wars.

They're the ones that kind of intimidate our enemies.

We're kind of paying into the deal.

with the defense equipment we buy and the other investments we make in the United States.

And we're also going to spread some money around Trump and his associates too.

And look, that model is going to be something everybody looks at.

I don't think necessarily that Iran is going to be a hegemon because they've suffered too.

I mean, their economy is a mess.

Their military capabilities have been somewhat diminished.

However,

What they've kind of demonstrated is we are not a regime that you can kind of come and knock over with your bombing campaigns.

Right.

We are a country of 94 million people.

We have not just a religious theocracy.

We have a military dictatorship.