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 the Saudis have now concluded that Israel can't protect them from Iran and the United States won't fully protect them from Iran.

That changes a lot of calculations.

Because I think the warming toward Israel that we saw in Saudi Arabia wasn't simply Saudi dislike of Iran.

It was the belief that Saudi plus Israeli lobbying in Washington and just generally economic power and so on could ensure that Washington would do its part as they see it in the Gulf.

Israel looks less useful today if you're thinking about the impact in Washington.

That's a big change, and it's consequential.

If the dream had come true, and we'd had a Venezuelan scenario, say, in Iran, both Russia and China would really be in a difficult spot.

So I think tremendous relief that that isn't happening.

Probably also, though, a sense of a renewed belief that they're in a zero-sum competition with the United States over the long term.

That what Trump tried in Iran with the Venezuela option, that just shows what kind of people they are.

So I think that will confirm that sense.

He's probably encouraged by the strong public reaction in the U.S.

against the Iran war as suggesting that that might also apply in the Taiwan case.

But as I've said, these military developments in which countries without navies have made navies, you know, we've taken away Iran's navy, but that doesn't mean the U.S.

fleet is sailing happily around in the Persian Gulf.

So the task of taking Taiwan may be getting harder as time goes on, not easier.

And his own military, with all these purges and so on, does not seem to be prime time for a big, complex offensive movement.

So she has got, you know, like everybody else, he's juggling.

Well, Dan, let me let me interrogate your assumption there for one second.

Sure.

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