Robert Pape

And I'm the one who actually came closest to thinking about strategy the way it should be understood.

which is not how to put a bomb on a target, but what happens when bombs hit targets to the politics of the situation.

And so we were in lockstep here at that point in time.

What you are seeing here, though, is since Vietnam, we have not, we had the Desert Storm, 1991.

Yes, we've had other problems, but we haven't had a disaster like this since Vietnam.

And we haven't, and in Vietnam, America didn't do things that are wrecking the world's economy.

So this could be even worse than Vietnam on that dimension.

What you're seeing with these world leaders is they have learned America can be beat.

Why is the UAE pulling out of OPEC?

They don't want to be tethered to Saudi Arabia.

Saudi Arabia, even though it's a collective, is the biggest one in OPEC, and they call most of the shots in OPEC.

And as we know, MBS was on the phone right next to Netanyahu encouraging Trump to –

Do the regime change bombing?

So if that's true, then you know that this Iranian regime, as it gets more powerful, they're coming at, they want to topple now the Saudi regime.

Why are you in the UAE wanting to hit your wagon to that?

It's not that you want to have any love for Iran, but the last thing you want to do is get sunk by these groups over here.

I don't know for sure.

I have no deep knowledge, but I said on my substack that as this was before they left OPEC, I said that what you're going to see is as Iran emerges as a far more powerful global player here, and it's just beginning in the Gulf, what you're going to see is fragmentation.

that you had unity, you had this with the Abraham Accords, you had Trump, and this was Jared Kushner's idea, really, from going back to the first Trump administration, where you're going to try to counterbalance Iran.

Now, he didn't use that term, but that's basically what's happening here, what was happening.