Graeme Wood

Yeah, I mean, the idea of taking a pipeline all the way to Israel is, of course, several political steps off, but the integration with Israel is...

It's pretty obvious that that was one of the endpoints of Saudi development.

You know, that whole city in the desert, which so far got not very far, Neom, it's in the upper left corner of Saudi Arabia.

It only makes sense to build it there if you believe that that particular region is ripe for development.

So I think of it as predicated in the long term over some kind of friendly relationship with Israel, maybe including a pipeline.

It just hasn't happened yet, and the money doesn't seem to be quite there for it.

The planning for a post-oil economy, of course, this is still considered fantasy in that region, and it's far enough away that I

They don't blame them for expecting that oil is still going to matter quite a bit in the future.

That would be wonderful.

And that would lower the stakes of the current conflict substantially.

So I'm all in favor of that.

I mean, the 10 years ago discussion and 20 years ago discussion also involved developing American independence in oil, which did happen, and which has eased the stakes of this war for the United States substantially.

So-

It's not as if no planning happened in that direction, but the one that we would, of course, want the most, which is not relying on oil at all, no, that's still in, let's say, early phases.

Yeah.

You know, the Gaza war, of course, matters a lot in this discussion.

There is a whole new wave of, I don't want to call it radicalization, but hatred of the United States and Israel that has come up in the wake of the Gaza war.

But I think the larger secular trend is definitely away from jihadism.

And ISIS represented the high point of a kind of

call it Jihadi Salafi or Wahhabi version of jihadism, where ISIS was so successful in the period of its greatest prosperity and flourishing that