22 posts from Sunday, October 29, 2023

Welcome back. The attacks on Israel bringing a renewed spotlight to the impact of the 2020 Abraham Accords encountering Iran's influence in the Middle East and beyond. Under the Trump administration Bahrain, Morocco and the United Arab Emirates agreed to normalize relations with Israel while the United States nixed the Obama era Iran nuclear deal and placed stringent oil sanctions on Tehran. There was much speculation that Saudi Arabia was getting close to joining that Abraham Accord as well. President Biden of course reversed all of that easing sanctions on Iran enabling Iran to generate billions of dollars in oil sales and access billions more for the regime that backs Hamas and other terrorist proxies in the region. Joining me right now in this Sunday morning futures exclusive is one of the architects of the Abraham Accords former senior adviser to President Trump Jared Kushner who just returned from Saudi Arabia. Jared thanks very much for being here this morning. Great to be with you Maria. Before I get to your trip and I want to hear about your trip to Saudi Arabia what is your reaction to the attacks on Israel and this spike in anti-semitism across our country? So the attacks were absolutely horrific and they're still ongoing. You have a situation where over 200 hostages are being held by the Hamas terrorists. There's Americans, there's French, there's there's English so this really is a situation that is very very tense. Israel is still under rocket fire and Israel is really conducting a mission right now to try to free those hostages on behalf of the entire world and so really horrific what we've seen. It's something that was avoidable but hopefully they'll be able to do something now to really eliminate the Hamas threat and go back to trying to be a beacon for peace in the Middle East like Israel's been for for many years. And of course this is what you mediated. You mediated the Abraham Accords and for the first time in a long time we were all thinking that we could see peace in the Middle East with those normalized relations with Israel. You're just back from Saudi Arabia. What did you hear from the leadership in terms of potentially joining the pact, joining the Abraham Accords despite this war? Yeah so it was a very interesting time to be over there and I've been there many times before. One of the ironies is that as an American Jew you're safer in Saudi Arabia right now than you are on a college campus like Columbia University. I spoke at the conference they allowed me to speak freely and what I sensed there was that there's obviously a very big disgust at what happened with this tremendous terrorist attack perpetrated by Hamas. The people of Saudi Arabia have a lot of care for the Palestinian civilians and so they'd like to see you know Israel accomplish the mission to make sure that the Hamas could be eliminated. They're against terrorism in the region in general and quite frankly there's still a lot of enthusiasm to try to continue the the trajectory that was set under the Trump administration and that the Biden administration has embraced to try and bring Israel and Saudi Arabia together to complete the regional security and economic architecture that will enable a lot of the Jews, Muslims, Christians who live in the Middle East to come together get to know each other do business together and most importantly have aspirations to live a better life and you know one of the thing I'll say that was very inspiring about being there is you think about the tremendous transformation economically that's happened in Saudi Arabia over the last five years where they've really turned around the country and you look at the West Bank you look at Gaza and you think if only there was proper leadership that cared more about creating opportunity for their people than trying to destroy Israel and perpetuate anti-Semitism the possibility could be really tremendous. So do you believe that the Saudi leadership would like to join the Abraham Accords? Yeah I believe they would like to move forward with the deal with America and with the U.N. with Israel the deal that's being discussed isn't just a partnership with Israel it's also deepening their ties with America which is very important you know we have to keep in mind that if America is not close to Saudi Arabia then they'll go in the other direction to China and and so I think that the the topics being discussed I'm not familiar with all the last details but it's it's a really good deal for America and it seems like it's a very important deal to bring stability in the Middle East and the person who wants to see it happen the least is really Iran they've been in favor of destruction and destabilization before President Trump came into office the the JCPOA which probably was one of the worst deals ever done in history by the Obama administration was was was flushing around with cash and because of that a lot of the money went to their proxies in Hamas Hezbollah the Houthis and we saw a lot of destruction over four years President Trump was able to roll back that money and that really enabled us to create an environment where we can push for the forces of positivity and peace and one other thing I'll just mention as well is under the Trump administration President Trump saw that UNRWA was a corrupt organization and that the money that wasn't being misappropriated was actually going to fund Hamas's organization we just saw an interrogation of one of these terrors terrorists that were captured that confirmed what we've been saying for many years which is that Hamas has their headquarters in these different hospitals and under these schools and quite frankly it's just a situation that could be avoidable and if people learn from the mistakes of the past and they do something different then there is a lot of hope that the future can be much brighter so what do you think the prospects are for your father-in-law in 2024 then President Trump I see every day you know people even people who are not in favor of Trump are realizing that under President Trump we had a peaceful world people said when he got into power he would create World War three well there were no new wars he was making peace deals the Middle East which was one of the thorniest issues for American diplomats and politicians and military for two decades became a very peaceful place with a lot of momentum and in just a couple short years you've seen what happened when there's passive leadership and weak leadership from America and the world and you know we have two massive wars that have the chance to metastasize further and quite frankly the lack of the lack of relationships that we have with with countries right now where we're doing strong diplomacy keeps these keeps these conflicts in a place where they can get much worse so I think people recognize that the economy was great under President Trump the policies he put in place were tremendous we're seeing what's happening now at the southern border which quite frankly is very scary you think about what a couple of terrorists can do in Israel imagine what happens when 10 million people come into our country who are unaccounted for I think a lot of people who may be were against Trump are realizing that we need a strong leader for America and for the world and that his policies made the world safer and more prosperous place I mean you know it's just extraordinary to me that so much of this just goes back to bad policy I mean you oversaw the policy in terms of the Abraham Accords you just mentioned the ability for the Iranians to be generating all of these billions in money because of bad policy that lessened the sanctions tell me about that and how things have changed so dramatically in just a two and a half year period so when President Trump came into office Iran was selling about 2.6 million barrels a day of oil it was a very intense effort led by President Trump his special envoy Brian hook was spent every day trying to take apart the Iranian economy by the time President Trump left Iran was out of foreign currency reserves they had massive inflation they were basically broke and they were selling about a hundred thousand barrels a day the Biden administrations came in I think because of probably the environmental policies they put in place oil prices started rising and one of the ways that they tried to either buy stability in the Middle East or just try to counter the rising prices was they stopped enforcing the sanctions on Iran between the start of the administration and now Iran's taken in almost a hundred billion dollars in in oil sales and that's led to the funding of a lot of these groups and so it's very simple you know President Trump came in and and the way he viewed the Middle East was that if we can contain Iran and we can contain the resources they have to cause trouble we'll be able to create an environment where peace and prosperity is possible you know I guess the the administration came in they allowed Iran to to get back on its feet and what you're seeing now is just the result of that that bad policy so hopefully they learn from this and if they start enforcing those sanctions I think that we can bring things back in a good direction so many important points from you Jared thank you very much for being here Jared Kushner joining us thank you Maria great to be with you and Trump's a son-in-law and the architect of the Abraham Accords we'll be right back

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