Robert Pape

And so you're going to build a

coalition where it's it's israel it's the uae it's saudi arabia if you can bring in the other gcc countries that's great and that's what trump's last may you saw he did a wide swing through the gcc countries and what they're basically doing among other things um is they're building a counterbalancing coalition against iran uh and uh but what as iran grows and especially as everybody sees what he is now articulating merits is articulating

is that we can be beat.

This is not going to hold together.

You are not going to be able to keep this counterbalancing coalition together.

And it's not because of Trump's unique.

It's because this is the pattern of history.

This is going to fragment.

And then I explained they would have different countries fragmenting in different ways.

It wasn't going to be a unison, everybody move to Iran.

It's fragmentation or atomization.

And that's what's happening here.

Iraq was actually the beginning of this, as I point out in the substack.

They started to be far more critical of Americans.

And what did Iran do?

They started to let some Iraqi oil go through.

So the more these countries are moving in, even Macron was making statements here that Iran found positive, and they let French oil tanker through.

And that's one of the reasons why Trump decides to do the blockade, because he doesn't want Iran feeling its oats and using its power in this way.

But what you're seeing is, I believe, the beginning stages of what I was explaining would happen is fragmentation of the Gulf.

It's not greater unity in the Gulf.