Trita Parsi

And what happened?

The conventional thinking in Washington would be that if we are abandoning our allies, there will be more chaos in the region.

There will be more war.

The opposite happened.

Once the Saudis realized that the US was not gonna bail them out from every war that they would start or any reckless behavior they did, guess what they did?

They secretly reached out to the Iranians and began a secret negotiation process that eventually led to, years later, the normalization of their relationship through the help of Oman, Iraq, and ultimately China as well.

They opted for diplomacy when they could no longer hide behind American military power.

And if we do the same thing with the Israelis, eventually they will also come to that conclusion that they're gonna have to find a way to manage threats, manage relationships, rather than thinking that domination is the only way for them to be secure.

It's a completely fake domination.

I mean, the talk, clearly there is a perception in the region that Israel is trying to become the military hegemon and their attack against Doha.

You saw how a lot of the GCC countries explicitly started talking about Israel's attempt of establishing hegemony.

But I think we have to be very frank.

Israel doesn't have the capacity to do so.

This is a fake hegemony.

This is the tip of the spear of someone else's hegemony.

It's the US's hegemony.

But the difference is the US has grown tired of being the hegemon of the region because it's not particularly fruitful.

In fact, I would not wish hegemony over the Middle East on my worst enemy.

No, of course not.

What's the benefit of it?