Putin's Panic Surge? With Richard Fontaine
Vladamir Putin has announced what he called a “partial mobilization” of up to 300,000 reservists.
According to reports, these reservists are basically former conscripts that will need training.
Meanwhile, commercial flights out of Russia are apparently selling out, fast.
The Russian Duma, on the other hand, is passing a law to clamp down on anyone evading their military service.
And then there was Putin’s seeming dangling of the nuclear threat again. All against the backdrop of the Kremlin organizing referenda on whether four occupied regions in Ukraine should fall under Russian sovereignty.
And how do we assess US military support for Ukraine?
Richard Fontaine is the CEO of the Center for a New American Security (CNAS), bi-partisan foriegn policy think tank in Washington, DC. Prior to CNAS, he was foreign policy advisor to Senator John McCain and worked at the State Department, the National Security Council, and on the staff of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee. He serves on the Biden administration’s Defense Policy Board – which advises the Pentagon.
Richard is also just back from a trip to the Middle East – so we also talk at the end about the two-year anniversary of the Abraham Accords (a topic we’ll be returning to from time to time on this podcast) and also the status of the Iran deal negotiations.
Transcript
DISCLAIMER: THIS TRANSCRIPT HAS BEEN CREATED USING AI TECHNOLOGY AND MAY NOT REFLECT 100% ACCURACY.
[00:00:00] The next big shoe to drop would be not a partial mobilization where you call up the reserves, but a full mobilization where you forcibly conscript, uh, individuals and send them into Ukraine. That is about as politically unpalatable a move as one could get, so This intermediate move is where they are now.
Vladimir Putin has announced what he called a partial mobilization of up to 300, 000 reservists. According to reports, these reservists are basically former conscripts that will need training. They're not ready to be immediately deployed to the front lines. Meanwhile, commercial flights out of Russia are apparently selling out fast.
We did a quick search for economy tickets from Moscow to London and could only find an Azerbaijan [00:01:00] Airlines flight with three layovers costing 4, 500 per ticket. I guess that's good news for Azerbaijan Airlines. The Russian Duma, on the other hand, is passing a law to clamp down on anyone evading their military service.
None of this, of course, is exactly a position of strength. However, there was Putin's seeming dangling of the nuclear threat again. All against the backdrop of the Kremlin organizing referenda on whether four occupied regions in Ukraine should now fall under Russian sovereignty. One recent historical note, using a similar mechanism, Russia annexed Crimea back in 2014.
And how do we assess U. S. military support for Ukraine? While we can debate whether it took too long to ramp up, it did, U. S. efforts also now seem to be making a real impact. Lots of questions today, so we called up one of our go tos, Richard Fontaine. Richard is the [00:02:00] CEO of the Center for New American Security, a bipartisan foreign policy think tank in Washington, D.
C., where I am right now. And prior to CNAS, he was foreign policy advisor to Senator John McCain and worked at the State Department, the National Security Council. And on the staff of the Senate foreign relations committee. He also currently serves on the Biden administration's defense policy board, which advises the Pentagon.
Richard is also just back from a trip to the middle East. So we'll also talk to him about the two year anniversary of the Abraham accords. The topic we'll be returning to from time to time on this podcast and also the status of the Iran deal negotiations. Lots to unpack. This is call me back.
And I'm pleased to. Welcome back to the podcast, my friend and a another fan favorite. We've been recently having a lot of fan favorites on Mike Murphy and Muhammad El Arian and Richard Fontaine is one of those fan [00:03:00] favorites. Richard, thanks for joining us. It's so nice to be a fan favorite. So, uh, I appreciate, uh, the opportunity to become one.
But, you know, you were like, you know, most fan favorites don't ghost me. You were like busy bouncing around the Middle East and I tried to get you on and you kind of went dark on me and I got a little freaked out. Look, even big podcast stars have got other obligations that they have to fulfill and You of all people should understand.
Of course, of course. I know next time I, I got your agent's request. Next time you want the trailer, you want catering before you want, you know, I got the, the, the triple, you know, latte cappuccino. I got the whole green M and M's in the bowl. Yeah. Soy milk, not almond milk. Okay. Um, all right. So Richard, I want to talk about your trip to Israel because normally when we have you on this podcast, it's all about bad news and you actually have some good news, uh, from your, from your trip.
to the Middle East, which we'll get to, but it would be, um, unfitting to start a [00:04:00] conversation with you, even if we have good news to start with the good news. So I want to start with the bad news, or maybe it's not bad news, but, um, complicated news in the world, which is, uh, news. That just broke about, uh, Vladimir, Vladimir Putin saying that he and his government are calling up 300, 000 reservists, uh, to conscripts to serve, uh, it sounds like on the front lines, even though they're not really saying it's the front lines, uh, in Russia's war with Ukraine before we get to the news of the call up before you knew of the news of the call up and given your role with the defense policy board and other Projects you may have had a sense something like this was coming, but let's just Pretend you didn't know this was coming.
Where did you think things stood with Russia Ukraine over the last couple weeks? Because there's been a lot of excitement in the press coverage of Russia Ukraine. I'm pleased that there's press coverage [00:05:00] again. There's sort of like a dark period on press coverage or, or a, or a blackout and now there's coverage again.
It was a lot of excitement that Ukraine was on the march. So how did you evaluate things before Putin's latest move? Well, Ukraine was on the march, has been on the march for the last couple of weeks. You know, they had tried to make progress down in the south, uh, around Caran and uh, which had been a pretty heavily fortified area, and the Ukrainians have been trying to break through there.
And so they made this move a couple of weeks ago at the, in the North, and I think the Ukrainians probably thought, well, this might be something of a faint, it may draw some Russian troops away from there, from the south, where, you know, the real action is. And when those Ukrainian troops started pressing on the Russian line, it collapsed.
And next thing you know, uh, they were liberating villages that had been in the possession of the Russians for months [00:06:00] and have something akin to an additional thousand square miles than they had just a few weeks ago under Ukrainian. Possession. And so this really is a major setback for the Russians. It also cuts off part of their force down in the south from easy resupply.
And a lot of the supply lines that would have to cross water and stuff have become very tenuous. So, uh, I think what we heard out of Putin with respect to the 300, 000 call up and other things he said, too, is an admission that the Russians are not doing well in this war. And, um, just so we have the numbers, uh, in proper context, it, the, the estimates are that there are approximately, it's hard to know because you don't know what.
Russia's using in terms of private security forces and, you know, other, uh, non conventional forces he has access [00:07:00] to, but is it understood that he's about 200, 000, Russia has about 200, 000 troops in, in Ukraine, fighting this war? Okay. So this bringing, you know, going up, calling up 300, 000. Personnel is is big.
It's not like incremental. It's a whole other. It's a whole other step level It's it's it is not a cure all certainly and I don't know that it's gonna turn the war around in Russia's favor But by the same token, you can't just dismiss the calling up of 300, 000 personnel Who, according to what they've announced, would come in with military experience.
So it's a sign both of the poor state of the affairs for the Russians, but also kind of what they've got back that they could throw at the fight. It's also worth noting that in Putin's. announcements. So you had the news about the 300, 000 reservists that would be called up. Um, but you also had the announcement of the [00:08:00] referendums in the four areas, right?
So let's talk about that. So, so why don't you explain what what that's about? Well, so the Russians had had a presence in Luhansk and Donetsk, the Donbass region, uh, even before this war started, which they've expanded. And, uh, before the war began. And some of that goes back to 2014? Yeah. And, and so, uh, the proxy war that they had been prosecuting in the east after the seizure of Crimea.
And the Russians at the beginning of the war Um, essentially recognized the independence, the Duma recognized the independence of the Luhansk and Donetsk People's Republics. Um, you know, they were alone in doing so, really, but, um, this was, they were attempting to sort of formally, uh, disunify Ukraine and detach those territories.
They've also made a move on Khersan and one [00:09:00] other area in the south and now are occupying those areas. And so what they have announced. Is that they will hold perhaps as soon as Friday of this week, uh, referendums in each of those four areas where the population under military occupation by the Russians, of course, uh, can vote whether to Uh, be part of Russia or not, and, uh, I wouldn't stay up too late, uh, watching the returns on that one.
I don't think that John King up there with his man, the big screen, a nail biter demand a recount kind of thing. Uh, I think we can be pretty sure the way that these referendums are going to go. Uh, that there are potential implications for this. I mean, one, if after this, the Russians then consider the Russian territories, they're currently being attacked by the Ukrainians.
Um, then they may say, well, we're being attacked not only in the areas we're fighting in Ukraine, but on Russia proper soil. Um, so that's one. And then, uh, presumably they could also, [00:10:00] uh, do things that they, they've said, for example, that they wouldn't use conscripts in, Okay. In Ukraine, although they actually have, but they could move conscripts around into what is what would then be considered in their minds, Russian territory.
So there's some kind of practical potential implications for the sham referendums that they're about to hold. But again, I think that that's a it's an illustration of things not going the Russian way and I'm trying to shake things up. And then the third piece of what Putin had to say was on the nuclear saber rattling, which you hadn't heard since the beginning of the war and sort of making these not very veiled Uh, threats and yeah, let me just quote him for those who, who didn't read about this.
He, he talked about Russia being subjected to quote nuclear blackmail. And then he said to those, I'm quoting the translation here to those who allow themselves such statements about Russia. I want to remind you that our country, Russia. Also has various means of destruction and some components are more modern than those of the NATO countries close [00:11:00] quotes That's Putin basically saying you the West have subjected me to nuclear blackmail I'm telling you I've got these kinds of toys too And we've got toys that the NATO countries don't have so everybody better be careful, right and I can imagine Post sham referendums, the Russian saying, well, this is Russian territory now, uh, that is being attacked by Ukraine with Western, including American weapons.
And if you're going to attack Russian territory, who knows what might happen? Uh, now the most observers, including the Ukrainians that I think the American side aren't taking the nuclear threats terribly seriously. We're not seeing anything move or any sort of. Actions happening. Um, but this combination of call up reservists.
Referendums on the ground, nuclear sable rattling for the first time in six months or so, I think shows a couple of things. One, Putin clearly understands that the war [00:12:00] has not been going his way and that he's been losing and has to do something to shake up the trajectory. And then two, that, you know, he's very far from saying, Oh, this has all been a lost cause.
I never should have done this in the first place. This is a doubling down on keeping this war going into the indefinite future. So, um, you know, heading into the winter, it's going to be. Uh, a particular, particularly critical time. So on the, on the nuclear threat, uh, many, many analysts have argued, uh, that there is a danger that the longer this goes on, Kissinger has made this point, that the longer this goes on, regardless of what one thinks about who's at fault here, the longer this goes on.
The risk of mistakes goes up, uh, and, you know, mistakes could lead to like major escalation. So even if we think that Putin won't ultimately, even if Western intelligence doesn't believe or isn't seeing any signs that Putin is serious [00:13:00] about some kind of nuclear escalation. Do you worry at all that this thing drags out?
He gets a little desperate and, you know, obviously tensions are high and then you can get like this, you know, pre World War I, you know, trip into a whole other escalation of war than anyone is, um, than anyone has kind of gamed out what this could look like otherwise. Well, the chance of Russia using a nuclear weapon is very low, but it's higher than it was before the war started.
And statements like that suggest that it's higher than we would ever be comfortable with. And this is one of these classic, low probability, very high consequence events. And so, um, well, I think it's very unlikely that that would actually happen. If it did, we would be in a new era of world history, uh, and of potential human destruction.
And so, uh, yeah, I think you have to worry. Uh, that, you know, something may happen. A scenario, for example, in which [00:14:00] the Russians conventional capability is so hollowed out, so destroyed, so ineffective that it Putin feels necessary to rely only on the high end of the low end of his capabilities. The high end being nuclear signaling, God forbid, even potential nuclear use are in the low end.
The kind of asymmetric capabilities he has on cyber and special operations forces and information, intelligence operations and things like that. Because the The conventional stuff in Ukraine is just not very effective. So yeah, I think you've got to worry about both ends of that. And I just think for too long, we, there's been too much of playing down what Putin might do based on, you know, Oh, he wouldn't do that.
I mean, that would be really crazy. He's far too shrewd and he's when reality, he typically broadcasts what he's going to do before he does it. I mean, right down to that 7, 000 word or whatever it was, 5, 000 word piece he wrote. When was it, last summer, I think? Yeah, last June. Well, a year ago. Yeah, yeah. So, I mean, a year, right, a year [00:15:00] ago, where he, he basically, it was clear in retrospect when you read that, that he was going to go into Ukraine and, um, I mean, just, you know, in the lead up to the invasion of Ukraine, I mean, he was just broadcasting all this thought that diplomacy was going to slow him down.
It was just so clear that he was going no matter what. And there were other moments in the last couple of decades where we've seen that. So. Again, I don't want to like, um, overreact to the speech today on the one hand, on the other hand, if he has a pattern of, of firing up the bat signal, uh, when he's about to do something, him invoking a nuclear threat as, as concretely as he did is, is pretty unnerving.
It is. I mean, you know, anyone who is really threatening the use of nuclear weapons has to be taken seriously to some extent. If, uh, we start seeing things moving orders, [00:16:00] deployment orders given weapons, moving, uh, nuclear units, moving platforms, moving, then I think you would see an extreme sense of alarm by everyone who is in on that.
I mean, the President Biden gave an address at the U. N. Today, part of the U. N. General Assembly speeches. It was a good speech, and he talked about the gravity of the situation in Russia and Ukraine. Why the implications of what happens there go well beyond Ukraine and also confronted kind of head on this idea that Russia is threatening countries with nuclear war and I think their hope is that to the degree to which their countries that are sort of in the middle kind of You know see how this goes But they haven't really kind of picked sides whether it's on the sanctions or even the diplomatic isolation.
This helps a nudge Some of those undecided countries a little bit more toward the, you know, this is unacceptable behavior position. And I mean, we saw, you know, not that they've [00:17:00] enjoyed the sanctions or anything, but both the Chinese and the Indians just in the past couple of days over in Uzbekistan, when they had the Shanghai cooperation organization did not have nice things to say in the meetings with Putin about the, about the war in Ukraine.
So it's kind of rattling them. Do you, it seemed that When the war began, there was, there was a lot of, uh, coverage and analysis about how Putin intended to really keep this war far from Civilian daily life in Russia and not to really disrupt civilian daily life in Russia. Obviously the economic Pressure on Russia has been considerable.
So so much for keeping Russians totally protected from it dated in their daily lives And then you have this situation where 300, 000 Russians are called up that was apparently never part of the plan and I just saw some coverage today that every one way flight out of Uh, out of Russia is sold out [00:18:00] suddenly, and there's all these Russians who are scattering to try to get out of Dodge, and they can't.
I mean, that, how sustainable is that from Putin in terms of his management of domestic affairs when he, when he launches a war that he intends not to disrupt daily Russian life and the economy is under enormous pressure, Russians are trying to leave. It sounds like they're kind of not letting Russians leave, uh, you know, 300, 000 could easily lead to even more call.
Once you make the decision to do the calling up of reservists, it's like, you know, then it's like turning the dial. They've crossed the threshold of calling them up. Now it's like, do we do a little more and do we do a little more than, you know, Russian people can see what's going on. Well, I think that he's trying to be in the intermediate position now because they've called up reservists, but they're not conscripting.
people. And he tried to avoid the big call up of reservists. And so the Wagner group, these mercenaries that have been fighting there, we're going around to prisons and they were [00:19:00] guaranteeing prisoners, you know, time off their sentences. They go fight in Ukraine and you know, they were trying to take all these kinds of extraordinary measures short of what they announced today.
The next big shoe to drop would be not a partial mobilization where you call up the reserves, but a full mobilization where you forcibly conscript. Uh, individuals and send them into Ukraine. That is about as politically unpalatable a move as one could get. Uh, he, I think for that very reason, hasn't taken it yet.
So this intermediate move is where they are now. I think there's something beyond the war coming home. And I mean, in a way, it kind of mirrors the politics in our country or anything else. Countries tend to be willing to make sacrifices if they think the war is going well. If they think that there's an objective worth fighting for and the progress toward that objective is taking place.
Right now, they're not seeing progress toward that objective. They're seeing the opposite. Um, the state run media's ability to spin this seems to be [00:20:00] diminishing at least here and there. And so you're starting to hear dissenting voices about the conduct of this war and things like that. Now, does that add up to a big policy change or, you know, uh, insecurity of Putin's position?
Probably not. Um, but it is something that he's going to have to take into consideration as he makes all these moves because, you know, the Russians are going to, as every week goes on, they're going to be drawing on, uh, a manpower base that is, uh, less qualified to fight and smaller than it was before a military base that because of the destruction of so much of their equipment.
Is less capable than it was before and an economy that is, you know, ever more susceptible to the coercive bite of these sanctions. So I think Putin really thinks I should say that I think he thinks that he's Playing the long game for two reasons. One is the obvious one that we always talk about, which he thinks he can outlast the West and it's aid to Ukraine and, you know, keep throwing people into the fight and all of [00:21:00] that.
But the other is the economic aspect of this, because as it is right now, Ukraine can't export, uh, the black sea coast is blockaded. Um, you know, the, the, the eastern part of the, and southern part of the countries are in open warfare. And I think the fallback plan for the Kremlin is to try to make, uh, Ukraine into a failed economy that would need huge cash infusions from the west.
And, uh, and so I think going forward you may well see increased attacks on civilian infrastructure. That would need to be repaired at great cost, electricity grids, waterworks, power plants, stuff like that. Uh, with the bet that at some point, uh, the West is going to stop, uh, cutting checks to Ukraine for all of this.
And then Putin will have won through economic coercion what he may not have been able to win on the battlefield. There was talk before, or in the earlier phase of the war, kind of, you know, late February, March, April, May even, that [00:22:00] Zelensky, it was understood that Zelensky would accept a return to the, you know, kind of pre February of 2022 status quo, which obviously means some.
Russian presence in, in some of these, uh, Eastern territories, and this is what many diplomats were sort of prescribing as a way to, among the ways to, um, uh, reach some sort of settlement and a, and a cessation of hostilities, and again, I won't go through all the details of what these, these, Kind of provisional terms, sets of provisional terms look like, but one of them was at least a return to the 2014 status quo.
And now I'm hearing more and more experts argue, well, Zelensky's like, nah, I'm not so sure I'm returning to 2014. Like, we're on the march right now, we Ukraine, Russia's not. So, you know, maybe the status quo we return to is well before [00:23:00] 2014. Um, which actually Relieves Russia in, from a territorial standpoint, in terms of what they're occupying, in a far worse situation than when they started this war.
Is that your, what is your view, both in terms of, what is your sense in terms of what the Ukrainian government, what Zelensky is thinking in terms of, does he have the win? at his back right now, and he's gonna, he's gonna, um, go for a further, a much bigger setback, uh, by, by Putin than, than Putin could have possibly imagined before this started.
It's very possible. The, the Ukrainians, uh, at the very beginning of the war may have been willing to settle for something that give, gave the Russians an advantageous position relative to where they were in February 24th. So in February 24th, the Russians We're either directly or by proxy in possession of all of the Crimean Peninsula, which they've annexed into Russia and portions of the Dalbas, the Donetsk and Luhansk areas in the east, [00:24:00] and they wanted to increase that, um, had the Russians made an offer at the time.
Okay, well, We'll only have that. Plus, we want you to neutralize your country or something like that. Maybe the Ukrainians would have agreed to it in order to stop the fight, stop the fighting. Two things happened. One, the Russian offensive was so much less successful than everyone, including the Ukrainians, the Russians, and everybody else expected.
So there was momentum on the Ukrainian side. And two, these unbelievable atrocities in places like Bucha. And other things where civilians were just lined up and shot and thrown in mass graves. I mean, these absolute atrocities, um, have quite rightly radicalized a lot of the Ukrainian population. And so Things that they would have agreed to with their enemy before, they're not going to agree to now.
And so, uh, then you fast forward to where we are now, for quite a long time, without being completely clear on what the bottom line was, Zelensky and company have suggested that they would fight back to the February 24th status quo ante, so [00:25:00] Again, you know, liberate all the area Russia has taken since February 24th, but not necessarily Crimea and that area in the Donbass.
And then they would negotiate over the rest. They wouldn't accept the Russian possession of those areas, but they wouldn't necessarily fight over it. Now it's unclear. What? Uh, they would stop at. I don't think that, for example, if they're able to make progress, continued progress in the east that they say, Oh, well, now we're back to the February 24th 24th line.
Let's stop now. I think they continue to push. There'll be a military calculation of where they could hold the line. But the Russians have shown themselves unable to defend a thousand kilometer long line and the Ukrainians are pushing through it. So it's unclear what the Ukrainians would accept, but there is a real possibility that even if the only metric of success or failure is the amount of Ukrainian territory under Russia control, Russia could end up Uh, when all this is [00:26:00] said and done with less than it started with on February 24th, when the entire objective of the war was to get more.
What have we learned about the quote unquote pro Russian separatists in the East? Were how, how did those in those Eastern areas, Eastern territories respond? I mean, Ukrainians, but. Some of them were, we were told, were pro Russian separatists. How did they respond to the Ukrainian army coming in? Uh, were they uniformly, universally greeted as liberators, or was it mixed?
Well, I think you gotta distinguish between the partisans, the fighters, and the little, you know, governments that Russia has put the puppet governments. Russia's put it installed and and the people You know for the people they do seem to have greeted the Ukrainians as Liberators or at least a benign force.
I mean Russia's claim that it was invading Ukraine [00:27:00] to Stop Nazis and fascists and sort of help the people of Ukraine seemed to stall out pretty early when it spent most of its time bombarding Towns and villages and civilian areas and apartment buildings and things like that. And so If you're an average ukrainian living in one of these areas that's being fought over Um, you don't have much reason to think that the russians have your best interests at heart whereas the ukrainians are trying to liberate your territory from the very people that have You know waged war in it and have tried to take it over now that said I think you see a bit of Almost panic on the areas which remain under Russian control that have these kind of sham governments in Donetsk and Luhansk.
I think one of the major reasons why they want to have a referendum and they want to do it, you know, this week. It's because they think that they will be better protected if they're formally part of Russia that if the Ukrainian army continues to roll into what is properly Russian or Ukrainian territory, because these guys are not going to have a [00:28:00] future in Ukraine to say the least,
you know, the U. S. Government has. Gone out of its way to say that won't directly engage in this conflict from a military standpoint other than supplying the Ukrainians and obviously putting economic pressure on Russia, but it's increasingly clear that part of Ukraine success is enabled by you know American eyes American intelligence Uh, you know, not just supplying arms, uh, Brett Stevens had a column recently, New York Times, where he says, you know, the Biden administration deserves a lot of credit for what's happening in Ukraine.
I mean, how would you. What do you make of our, of our role? And is it more expansive than you would have thought before this all got started? It's definitely more expansive than I would have thought. And I think the Biden administration has done a really excellent job. Uh, one can quibble and, you know, we all will about, [00:29:00] you know, the provision of particular weapons systems.
How hard do you try to hold the Ukrainians to not attacking Russia positions on the Russian side of the border, as opposed to the Ukrainian side of the border, if they're both attacking them and so on. But in the big picture, the administration has marshaled an unprecedented international effort to supply weapons, intelligence, and other forms of assistance to a Ukrainian army under Russian siege, and an international effort to impose costs on the Russians for its aggression.
And I think in doing so, they are doing this not only because there's affinity for, you know, a democratic Ukraine in the face of autocratic Russia and so forth, but also what this means bigger picture if you accept a world where big countries can just decide that they would like to have the territory of some other country and take it by force and there are no cost to bear and there is no resistance to it, then we're back to the law of the jungle and we've lived it.
Through the law of the jungle before and it hasn't been a happy time in human [00:30:00] history. Um, and so that's really what we're fighting for here. And I think the administration to its very significant credit has seen that and has really stepped up in a number of ways to do it. So Um, you know, for example, as poorly as the Afghanistan evacuation went, and many of us were extremely critical, both of the policy and its execution, then I think you've got to hand it to the administration for having done a good job here.
So speaking of, of successes or partial successes, uh, let's pivot now to the Middle East. You just returned, uh, from Israel and you know, I think you are, you, you were in Israel at a, at a particularly both exciting and fraught. Or uncertain time, obviously the uncertain uncertainties around what's going to happen with Iran and the Iran deal and the return to the JCPOA, but also a time of excitement.
You were there while there was this official visit by Abdullah bin Zayed, the ABZ, the Emirati [00:31:00] Minister of Foreign Affairs, member of the Royal Family, uh, this is obviously the highest level, uh, of, uh, highest, uh, level official from the UAE to travel to Israel since, uh, two years now, I guess the two year anniversary of the, uh, signing of the Abraham Accords.
So, can you talk about both of these issues that you saw firsthand, both the excitement and the promise of Israel's, uh, You know, accommodation and integration into the broader Middle East and yet this, this, the uncertainty around this nuclear threat. It's pretty amazing that, you know, at least over my career, I've tended to, you know, look at different regions, especially Asia, Middle East, you know, some Europe and things like that.
And if you wanted hope or optimism or promise or opportunity, you didn't look at the Middle East very much. I mean, during the Arab Spring you did, but we know the story of how that ended up turning out. And so you look to Asia. You would look to Europe, [00:32:00] maybe. But the Middle East was a fascinating set of very difficult, entrenched problems, and it was usually a policy choice between bad or even worse when you when you looked at what was going on there.
And this time, you know, a lot of problems in Europe. We just talked about a whole bunch of with Russia, Ukraine, Asia. We can talk about China and Taiwan and everything else all day. But there's this huge set of optimistic opportunities in the Middle East around the regional normalization with Israel and its Arab neighbors.
So I was there, as you said, on the second anniversary of the Abraham Accords. And, you know, there's this reception, which at one level was kind of like almost any other reception that one could imagine at a hotel. Uh, but on the other hand, you've got the Emirati foreign minister. You have Bibi Netanyahu.
You have a speech by ABC in Arabic. So this is for home consumption, not for, you know, Meaning it's broadcast, it was being broadcast on television. So people back in, [00:33:00] you know, the UAE watching, you know, Pan Arab satellite channels are going to see him giving a speech in Jerusalem. In Jerusalem, well it was in Herzliya, but close enough, you know.
And, uh, and, and talking about the promise of this relationship with Israel and, and you have Isaac Herzog, the, the Israeli president speaking, saying the same sort of thing. And you had Arab ambassadors to Israel who are at this thing and you have Americans at this thing. And, you know, if you just put your head back, even a few years, this is.
Unthinkable, right? There was a quiet cop. There was a quiet cooperation that increased between Israel and its and its neighbors on the intel side and a little bit on the security side. Maybe some of the counterterrorism side. There was shared worries about Iran, but this has been sort of blown out in the open.
And you know, there was at this reception, there was these two gigantic hearts, one with an Israeli flag and the one next to it with an Emirati flag. I [00:34:00] mean, it's like, you know, a little bit of we're at a completely Different era. And I think that this, uh, my impression after having spent a week in Israel and talking to, you know, some senior officials and a bunch of other people is they see this as not just a set of opportunities to increase security cooperation with some people that otherwise would be less.
So or business opportunities for You know, Emberati capital or Israeli technology or things like that. They see all of that, but they also see this as a as a potentially historic turning point about the way Israel's embedded in the region. This is not about Israel as the outlier. In the Middle East, uh, with its most important relationship being with a country, you know, thousands and thousands of miles away, but rather Israel is a Middle East country that is actively working out in the open with other Middle East countries, which, of course, would seem very normal and has been anything but since [00:35:00] 1948.
Yeah, I would just had a couple points that one when I was in high school and college and I would. You know, I was involved in a, as a activist on behalf of the, you know, pro U. S. Israel, strengthening the U. S. Israel relationship. It's hard for me to explain this to people, I mean, who are younger, who didn't live through this era.
Saudi Arabia and these Gulf states, they were viewed like Iran is today. I mean, as far as, if you cared about Israel, you were worried about, you thought about Saudi Arabia the way we talk about Tehran. And You know, none of this would happen without Saudi Arabia. It's not like, like the Emiratis are out there kind of freelancing and the Bahrainis, I mean, the Saudis greenlit this, which is extraordinary.
And obviously you talk about Israel's integration in the middle East. You know, now that Israel's joining central command and now there's overflight, you know, Israel's being given overflight rights over Saudi Arabia, which again, these. So Saudi Arabia is a key enabler [00:36:00] here, and that in and of itself, it's not just what you saw, it's like, how did that happen, and it wouldn't have happened without Saudi Arabia, and just to think where Saudi Arabia was in Israel's kind of strategic security storyline, not that long ago, it was in a really bad place, so that, that's kind of unbelievable, and then the other point I'd make is, if you look at what happened after the Camp David Accords, you know, late 70s, 80, and then, and then So it was a huge accomplishment, Carter, Begin, Sadat, you know, this incredible peace, Israel returns to Sinai, to Egypt, a piece of territory three times the size of Israel, this, you know, normalization, Sadat comes to Jerusalem, speaks before the Knesset, I want peace, I want normalization, I mean it was extraordinary.
It happened, and then things kind of froze. I mean, the next agreement was until Jordan. It happened, and then Sadat was killed. Right, Sadat was killed. For his services. Right, important. So that was not, that [00:37:00] was, that, that, that had, you know, potentially the, the, the intended effect, which is to show this is the price you get for going to Jerusalem and making peace with the Israeli enemy, the Zionist enemy, right?
So, you know, here you go. And so it's not until 1994. Right. On the Jordanian side of their peace agreement. So you have a long stretch of time. And then in forever it would, you know. But hold on. But just take those two peace agreements. Yeah. They were cold peace agreements. I mean, Israelis traveled, Israelis for tourism purposes traveled to Egypt and Jordan.
It's not clear to me there are many Egyptians or Jordanians traveling to Israel, a little bit I guess. It's on the Jordanian side, uh, to Israel. There was no real joint business activities. There was no real trade. There was no real joint R and D projects. There was some, a lot happening on the security side, obviously, but in the non C on the civilian side on the economic side, very little happening.
And just in these two years, the number of Israelis traveling to the Gulf. On vacation. I mean, these numbers are staggering. Tens of thousands of people [00:38:00] traveling there back and forth the trade going on. I mean, I'm on the board of startup nation central, which is a, which is a nonprofit organization headquartered in Tel Aviv.
That's mission is to deepen ties between the Israeli tech ecosystem and the, um, and the global tech ecosystem They're doing a ton of work with the UAE when the UAE ambassador and the Bahraini ambassador first showed up in Israel their first public events their first public events were at the headquarters of startup, you know, this innovation headquarters at start nation central, meaning they are, they are so public about we're not, this is not like the Egypt situation.
Yeah, we have peace, but we're going to kind of keep it low key and we're going to exchange intelligence and we have a security relationship and, but that's kind of, they are like. projecting, broadcasting, we are in this together, we are doing business together, and I don't mean to sound overly euphoric about this because, you know, you know, good news and diplomacy, especially the Middle East, can crash, you know, on the rocks of, of [00:39:00] reality, uh, which in the Middle East often hits hard.
However, we've, it's been tested, right? There was a, there was a, they're basically, Two Gaza wars, one big one and one kind of flare up since the Abraham Accords were signed. And those were real tests of the Accords and they held. It wasn't like the Palestinian issue like ripped through this. To your point, you know, just there was a flare up with Gaza like two months ago and there you were, you know, a few days ago sitting there as though the Gaza flare up never even happened.
I mean, it's not like. So when you think about the pressure points that could slow down the momentum. Or create the kind of pressure that would push this back into more of a post Camp David Egypt normalization. It seems to be heading in the opposite direction. Yeah, absolutely. It's not a cold piece the way you had, uh, with the way you had it before it's vibrant.
It's, it's, uh, public. It's [00:40:00] designed for domestic consumption is designed to make money is designed to improve. I mean, they're real interest on both sides aligned with that on both sides. Right? So this is not, uh, just something that the Americans cajoled unwilling countries into some sort of Partnership or something like this is paying dividends on both sides and it should the other thing from the American perspective is Um, you know, there's more at stake here than just kind of affinity for Israel and from, you know, some of our, you know, gulf friends and things like that.
I mean, you look around the world and I was sort of alluding to this before, but we got major challenges in East Asia. We got major challenges in Iran. We got major challenges in Russia. There's going to be another major challenge soon in North Korea. And then there's the crisis du jour that we don't even know is going to happen yet, but it will because that's the way the world goes.
And if you can look at the place that has been the cockpit of hostility and instability for decades and say, one dimension of this that has been kind of the, the problem that keeps on [00:41:00] giving for many, many decades and take it off the table, uh, in a peaceful, uh, kind of way. I mean, those opportunities just don't come around very much.
And it's ultimately good for the United States. And before we, uh, let you go. Um, what does all this mean and just kind of where you at generally on where the Iran deal negotiation stands? It just seems to me the closer and closer we get to the midterm elections, the likelihood of any, the administration agreeing to anything in Vienna goes down.
And then obviously the recent Assad, you know, whatever that, however, Iran was involved in this, a recent, uh, attack against Salman Rushdie and other attacks on human rights activists and former U S government officials here in the U S. Um, And not, not to mention Russia's role in negotiations over the Iran deal.
It's just hard for me to imagine that anything happens soon. What's your take? I wouldn't bet. I wouldn't bet on a reentry soon. Um, it [00:42:00] would require the Iranians dropping, uh, the latest of their unacceptable conditions. It previously had been that they wanted to be taken off the list of foreign sponsors.
So they went to the Quds force, delisted as a, uh, as a foreign terrorist organization. Now the issue is the IEA. Uh, in its inspections found uranium residue in two undeclared sites in Iran and have begun investigating that. And the Iranians want, as a condition of reentry to the JCPA, the IEA to drop the investigation into those, just drop the cases, which the United States and the Europeans are just, I don't believe they're going to agree to do that.
They're not going to agree to say, oh, there was. A couple of places where you, you weren't supposed to be enriching uranium and pursuant to the very deal that would require you to only do this in certain places, we will no longer investigate when you may have been doing it anyway. I mean, it's just not in the cards.
And so the Iranians, maybe they will drop this. Uh, and then there could be some. Reentry, but at this point [00:43:00] doesn't look likely at all. The other thing they want the iranians one is is literally impossible Which is some sort of guarantee that the next president won't pull out of this and that they'll get the sanctions relief To which they would be entitled, uh, even if we in the united states elect a president who decides they want to come out And of course you can't tie the hands of the next president.
President Biden will not be able to lock in, you know, governor DeSantis or governor Yunkin in, uh, the fall of, uh, 2022. Yeah, you know, so, so I, I think that just leaves a stalemate and I wouldn't, I'm not, uh, looking to any Senate near term re entry at the JCPOA. And then the last, last question, Walter Russell Mead, who we had on a couple of weeks ago said, even if things are.
Unlikely to happen anytime soon. The administration is unlikely to actually formally declare negotiations are over because it's in everyone's interest to kind of keep the hope alive to, to, uh, to, uh, borrow a phrase from, uh, Jesse Jackson. So what is that your [00:44:00] sense that they're not going to declare them dead or frozen?
It's just going to be, there's no forward movement, but there's no backward movement. It's just. Yeah, I think that's, yeah, that's my take. And, and also the, the Iranian demands, uh, that have been an issue have changed. Well, or at the beginning, the problem was the Russian, uh, demand that, you know, Russian sanctions be lifted.
Uh, if it was with, on trade with Iran, okay, that kind of went away. Then it was the Quds force designation. Okay. That went away. Now it's, uh, this issue of the IEA investigation into sites, who knows, maybe at some point the Iranians Say, okay, we'll, we'll, we'll live with those investigations continuing and we'll try to, you know, stonewall them or something.
But then there may be a new, a new kind of problem here. So it's, it's, it's both not a static negotiation in that sense, but also not getting terribly close to any sort of resolution. All right, Richard, we will leave it there. Thank you. Uh, and, um, I'm, [00:45:00] I'm mostly pleased that we pleased our fans with your, uh, with your return and, um, you know.
Same. All right. And to please the fans of, uh. Call Me Back. So. You, you called me back. All right. I did. All right. Thanks a lot. I'll talk to you later. All right.
That's our show for today. To follow Richard's work, you can go to CNAS. org. That's C N A S dot O R G. And on Twitter, he's at R H Fontaine, F O N T A I N E. Call Me Back is produced by Ilan Benatar. Until next time, I'm your host, Dan Senor.