Walter Russell Mead

speaker

379 appearances 1 recordings 1 series first heard Jun 2026 last heard 22 Jun

Walter Russell Mead’s voice in public audio — every appearance, attributed to the second.

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Recordings per month over the last 12 months — 1 in all, peaking in Jun 2026 with 1.

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Call Me Back - with Dan Senor · Trump’s Iran Deal - with Walter Russell Mead · 22 Jun 2026 podcast

I think Israel will be in a very, very tight situation as the sort of armaments levels of various countries in its neighborhood rapidly rises.

Well, I think he needs to draw attention to the reality that, for example, the ceasefire in Lebanon is actually not being threatened by Israel but by Hezbollah.

And Iran would like to make this whole controversy about why can't Washington control Israel when really it needs to be why is Iran still enabling Hezbollah aggression.

That's got to be his consistent line.

And he's got to constantly fight any efforts by people here or anywhere else to portray Israeli action in Lebanon as offense, you know, as Israeli initiated.

And that means when he does – when there is an attack from Hezbollah and he does respond, he needs to do that in a way that telegraphs that essential message to Trump.

This sort of – you can't sort of say, OK, wow, now they've given me an opportunity and I can really knock them out because, in fact, you can't or you would have a very long time ago.

But so you need to kind of be in constant communication with Washington about what's going on, what you're doing.

And you need to be open and responsive both to Trump's need to demonstrate in America that he's the dominant player in the relationship, which in fact he is.

and also that Israel is not blocking progress on the 60-day period out of a desire to destroy it, even if in your heart of hearts you wish you could.

He has a very complex situation to think through.

Most of the assumptions of Saudi foreign policy now and domestic policy now need to be re-examined.

I don't think we're going to see quite the massive influx of foreign investment and economic development into the Gulf that people were talking about a year ago.

That is, it just looks too scary.

And frankly, a certain amount of Gulf capital as well as foreign capital is going to be looking for other places to go.

Now, on the one hand, if you're him, you're going to want to try to change that by looking, you know, groping towards some sort of long-term stability.

But that's really, really hard.

The environment is not favorable.

But you are going to look.

And you're also not going to make a lot of moves that on their own are going to risk that stability or even the appearance of stability.

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