Hussein Ibish
speaker
241 appearances
4 recordings
3 series
first heard May 2025
last heard 26 May
Hussein Ibish’s voice in public audio — every appearance, attributed to the second.
Trend
recordings per month · last 12 monthsRecordings per month over the last 12 months — 3 in all, peaking in May 2026 with 1.
Appearances
We don't know how much and we don't know for how long.
I think it's extremely unlikely, to say the least.
I think the most optimistic scenario is
would be some arrangement whereby more time is bought.
And I think otherwise we will have either emerging by default a stalemated conflict that becomes a grass mowing exercise or a series of ineffective short-term agreements that produce the same result.
I think that's not in anybody's interest and particularly not in the interests of Iran's neighbors, the Gulf Arab countries.
For them, it's a security nightmare par excellence because they expect to be hit more than anybody else.
And they fully expect to be the targets of choice again and again and again.
We are talking about a half dozen countries, and they all have their own perspectives, of course.
But broadly speaking, they're very nervous about how this war might end.
I spoke with Hussein Ibish at the Arab Gulf States Institute in Washington.
So the Gulf countries want to come out of this war with guarantees that Iran can't threaten them.
He is very relaxed. He's home. Yeah. He's come home. This is like outside the U.S. This is his favorite place.
I'm Hussein Ibish, and I'm a senior resident scholar at the Arab Gulf States Institute, and I write for many publications, especially The Atlantic.
He lives in a world of patrons and clients. He lives in a world where Authority is not questionable. And that's very familiar. It's a very familiar space to especially the Saudi royals, but all of them. And he understands them and they understand him and he loves them and they love him. He can be himself, the unedited version. He doesn't have to check his instincts. He just go with it.
And that's kind of unusual for Trump.
Yeah, it's pretty straightforward, right? The Middle Eastern, not leaders, but countries, what they're getting ultimately is protection. They're getting military protection, which is often unsatisfactory from their point of view, But they don't really have a good alternative to the United States, so they have to try to work to make it as good as possible. And that's what they're doing.
They're buying goodwill from the US. They're also buying weapons, which they want and need. you know, purely just gifting. However, what Trump is getting in return is lots of money and more for himself than for the country. There is money coming for the country. There are these large weapons sales of missiles and other things to Saudi Arabia, the biggest weapons sale in U.S. history.
And the UAE is looking at buying over a million semiconductor chips from NVIDIA. and so on. All three countries are buying lots of American stuff, which is a big boon to Trump's bid to revitalize American manufacturing. but there's also a grifting angle here, right? Trump is getting a lot of money for his own company. We've never seen this before.
We've never seen, even in the first Trump term, the level to which this state visit is also a private business visit is amazing because the projects include a Trump Tower in both Riyadh and Jeddah in Saudi Arabia, another Trump Tower in Dubai in the UAE, and a Trump International Golf Course and Resort in Qatar.
Showing 181–200 of 241 · page 10 of 13
← Previous
Next →