Trita Parsi

Now, American weaponry was very useful for the GCC states, but the bases were not.

So I suspect that going forward, you're gonna see a scenario in which they will continue to buy and probably even buy more American weaponry, but they're not gonna invest in the bases.

And again, many of these bases have been destroyed.

Who's gonna pay for them being rebuilt?

I don't think the US will.

And I'm not so sure that the GCC states will do either.

So if no one is paying for them, they're just gonna sail into the sunset one way or another.

I suspect at least with most of them, that will be the case.

Here's an opportunity.

If the region now understands there is no such thing as an external security guarantor for them, similar to what I mentioned when the Saudis realized that the US is not gonna come in and support them.

They're gonna have to deal with their security issues on their own.

They're gonna have to, through diplomacy, see if they can build a security architecture that intensifies economic integration and other things, perhaps transitions towards collective security thinking in order to create stability.

That I think is a blessing for the United States because it actually enables the US to also extract itself finally from the Middle East while supporting an effort by the region itself to create a security architecture.

So we're not leaving chaos or anything like that.

It won't be Afghanistan 2021.

but it will be stable and it's no longer on the shoulders of the United States.

I think that would be very popular with the American public and strategically, it would be very, very good for the United States.

But it's a nightmare for Israel.

It's the nightmare.

Because again, as you said, 9 million or whatever, the only way you can actually not forget about the hegemony, but just have this type of extended maneuverability in the region is to have the United States artificially put its finger on the scales and tilt the balance