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Podcast Host
When I found out I was going to be a parent, I immediately felt a lot of anxiety and worry. So I went on to BetterHelp to try to look for a therapist to
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JD Vance
help me with that.
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Podcast Host
My relationship with my family and with my boyfriend and with myself were suffering. I really needed help. I was ruminating a lot. Really getting those thoughts out to a therapist and getting feedback was just life changing. Discover what BetterHelp online therapy can do for you. Visit betterhelp.com today.
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Kiana
I'm Kiana, and I leveled up my business with Shopify. Once I figured out that Shopify was a thing, I never turned back. I can create a site with my eyes closed. Shopify thinks ahead of us, you know, and it thinks about the customer more than anything. Every day I'm thinking about some other new business, but Shopify is doing it to me because it's so easy to use. It's like, I can't stop. I'm addicted.
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Podcast Host
Start your free trial@shopify.com World leaders have fully checkmated Donald Trump. And as he is mumbling and fumbling around the G7, they're really sticking in the dagger and twisting it. You see, a whole new security architecture has been formed in the Middle east. And Donald Trump didn't even see it coming. While Donald Trump is out there talking about how the United States taxpayers will not be giving Iran any money, the Memorandum of Understanding between the United States and Iran calls for a $300 billion investment fund to be available to Iran. What that fund really is is the new security architecture for Iran. And when you look through the terms of this Memorandum of Understanding, what. What it does is it removes all sanctions against Iran. It allows Iran to open up its markets to other countries in the Middle east in ways that it wasn't able to before, and it encourages other countries in the Middle east and other countries across the world to make major investments in Iran. The Trump regime went from saying, we want regime change in Iran to to now, Iran is a major global power, and Iran is going to be wielding a massive amount of economic influence. Let me describe how the security architecture has now been reformed in the Middle East. Remember when this war started? I mean, you had Donald Trump and Netanyahu invading when everybody was saying, you shouldn't do that. But they were also supported and joined by MBZ and the United Arab Emirates. Oman was staying neutral, and Donald Trump was trying to bring in other countries in the Middle East. He was trying to get Qatar to jump in. He was trying to get Turkey to jump in. He was trying to get Bahrain to join in. And Iran showed that it was able to inflict massive losses and damages on countries that that housed American military bases. And Iran throughout the war kept on saying, we need to make sure we have Arab unity and we need to join forces. And Iran was cutting secret deals behind the scenes as well. A secret deal with Qatar to allow Qatar ships to get through Iran's control of the Strait of Hormuz, where Qatar paid billions of dollars. The United Arab Emirates thought that it and the United States working with Israel was going to be able to end this war and win the war. These war crimes I should really call what this really was quickly. And when the United Arab Emirates saw that Trump was a paper tiger, they immediately switched their calibration. And when you look at the architecture that's been formed, there is a entirely new new system that has developed in a very short period of time. Babak Vad has a great description. My take on the emerging regional framework after the Iran US MoU. One of the less discussed consequences of the Iran war has been the emergence of a new regional diplomatic center of gravity. It was once the United States put its bases in these countries and the United States would work with Israel and try to dominate the Middle East. That's changed, folks. That's basically been flipped on its head. The countries that drove what many now call this Islamabad process, this is referred to as the Islamabad Memorandum ordeal. You had Pakistan, Saudi Arabia, Turkey and Egypt with external active support from Qatar and Oman. And it proved to be more effective than many expected in helping broker this Memorandum of Understanding. This bloc often dismissed as a new Sunni access. But that label misses some important realities for those who call that Pakistan alone hosts the world's second largest Shia population after Iran, which partly explains Islamabad's unique access to Iranian decision makers during the various stages of the mediation effort. More importantly, this is not simply an ideological framework and is a coalition of complementary capabilities. Saudi Arabia and Qatar bring financial power. Turkey contributes a strong defense industry and drone expertise. Pakistan adds missile capabilities, nuclear deterrence and political access to both Persian Gulf capitals and Tehran. Egypt brings conventional military weight, control of the Suez corridor and diplomatic influence across Arab security affairs. The presence of Turkey and Qatar, both historically supportive of Hamas, gives the bloc a regional outlook that is not always aligned with Israeli preferences. Perhaps the most interesting aspect is that this emerging framework appears to be seeking something larger than a traditional alliance. Rather than acting as an extension of any outside power, these countries increasingly seem interested in managing regional crises themselves and creating a more autonomous regional center of Influence. From Tehran's perspective, the emergence of this bloc is a positive development. While often described as a Sunni access, Iran is likely to see it in more pragmatic terms. Relations with Pakistan have improved Significantly since the 2023 Iran, Saudi rapprochement and relations with Riyadh remain strong despite the Iranian attacks during the war. For Tehran, the block represents a potential useful regional framework for a dialogue, mediation, crisis management. Whether this becomes a more formal alliance remains doubtful, in my opinion. But the Iran crisis showed the potential of a regional framework able to mediate conflicts, coordinate on security issues, and balance competing international pressures. Without the United States, these regional mid powers uniting to form their own block, where else have we heard this? Where else have we been talking about this? This is exactly what Prime Minister Carney of Canada has been advocating as well, by uniting Trans Pacific partnerships. Transatlantic partnerships. When Prime Minister Carney gave that powerful speech in Davos calling for and understanding and recognizing a new structure in world power away from the united with mid major powers joining forces together. When Prime Minister Carney was in Yerevan, Armenia for the European Political Community meeting, this is precisely a vision that he laid out as well, with Canada, Europe, Australia and some Asian countries joining together. So do you see what's forming right now? Right, you have Trump's America first is America alone? Look, America's always going to be, at least for the time being, a major power, although Trump has diminished that power just based on its size and economic post World War II structures. Then you have China, and then you have this kind of China, Russia, North Korea arrangement. You're going to have the kind of more autonomous Middle east powers uniting, Europe and Canada uniting. And that's a new structure of an entire world order. And then different alliances being formed, formed with African nations. Trump's ignored, not just ignored, Africa. Trump's given the middle finger to Africa with just his racism and hate. With all of the incredible development, science, technology, economy, culture in Africa, Trump's just totally, you know, ignored it. Trump's obsession with conquering Greenland, you know, has been a disaster. By the way, I heard someone remark humorously, Greenland's like, hey, Trump, you wanna invade us so we can get a good deal? Also, maybe you wanna invade us first. I mean, maybe too soon. But that's what they were talking about. But that's what we have developing and taking form right now. Look, even former Israeli intelligence officer Danny Citronitz writes the following. One of the great ironies of this war is that the very person who built his career around the idea of toppling the Iranian regime. These people, Netanyahu's, these neocon war hawks, are now witnessing the exact opposite outcome develop. Instead of emerging weakened or isolated, the Iranian regime appears more entrenched and in some respects more diplomatically relevant than ever before. The assumption of the Israeli Prime Minister that military pressure would trigger regime collapse, paved the way for regional normalization and allow Israel and Gulf states to bypass the Palestinian issue has largely failed to materialize. I would argue it's backfired in Netanyahu's face. At the same time, the United States, under what many Israelis viewed as one of the most pro Israel administration in recent years, has shown little appetite for long term confrontation with Iran. Washington's priority increasingly appears de escalation and some form of accommodation with Tehran rather than another Middle Eastern military adventure. The result is a strategic reality very different from what Netanyahu imagined in his worst dreams. This is worse than Netanyahu could have imagined for him, although I believe it provides potential stability for the Middle East. Normalization with Saudi Arabia looks more distant than before and Netanyahu was obsessed with that. The Palestinian issue remains unavoidable and Iran's leadership sees further evidence that it is not not going anywhere. In fact, Tehran is now deepening its engagement with regional actors, including Saudi Arabia itself. This outcome raises difficult questions about the assumptions that guided the campaign and whether key decision makers relied on assessments that were disconnected from political realities in the region. Towards the end of his political career, Netanyahu sees everything that he built collapsing and the possibility of increased friction with Trump mounting. On February 28, Netanyahu probably thought he was witnessing the fulfillment of his life's work, the United States and Israel going to war against Iran months later. That moment increasingly looks less like the culmination of a grand strategy and more like the point at which it unraveled. What was supposed to remake the Middle east turned into a house of cards as the assumption underpinning the strategy collapsed with one by one. The result was not regime change, not regional realignment and not breakthrough in normalization, but a stark demonstration of how detached the strategy had become from reality and a real risk that this relationship with the US would deteriorate to a level never seen before. And I would argue there is a restructuring of the Middle east, there is a restructuring of Europe, there is a restructuring of Asia, there is a restructuring throughout the world. And America has put itself in a far less robust position of what it was before, which one might argue that may end up being a positive thing in the long run. We shouldn't have been involved in catastrophic and unlawful wars. We shouldn't be involved in any of this. The American people should not have had to suffer for all of this, that's for sure. But every action has an equal and opposite reaction, if you will. And Trump thought he was going to show up and bully everybody and bully all these countries into submission. And now he's seeing the exact opposite take place. Like just as Babak also explains. Interesting. From Reuters, one detail worth highlighting about the reported $300 billion Reconstruction and Development Fund. It's not a US government compensation package nor a Persian Gulf funded aid program. Our according to Reuters, the fund would be a private investment vehicle with capital commitments from companies and financial actors across the Gulf, Asia and the United States, Africa and Latin America. No government money is reportedly involved. In other words, the idea is not to pay Iran for the war, but to create an economic framework that gives all sides a stake in preserving a future agreement. If confirmed, this would represent a significant shift from sanctions and containment toward investment in economic integration as a tool of regional stability. And so when JD Vance was on Megyn Kelly and he was talking about this, he goes, let's say, for example, the United Arab Emirates, who's been one of our best allies we've had in the region, let's say they want to invest in a nuclear power plant in Iran. They can't do that with us lifting the sanction. Now the Emiratis are going to be able to do that. I know, because the architecture and the structure of the Middle east has changed. You went in there demanding regime change and bullying. And the powers in the Middle east united and came up with a framework that basically cuts out the United States. It will bring in China for sure as kind of the new hegemon protector guarantor, shift the US out and then build these new modalities. Here's what JD Van said when he was on Megyn Kelly. You could hear for yourself. Let's play this clip.
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JD Vance
You know, one of these things that people again have misrepresented. Let's say, for example, that the United Arab Emirates, who's been, they've been one of the best allies that we've had in the region. Let's say that they want to invest in a nuclear power plant in Iran. They really can't do that without us lifting some of the sanctions that exist in the global financial system to make that possible. Now, are the Emiratis going to invest in Iran or is America going to let the Emiratis invest in Iran? Unless the Iranians change their behavior? No. So all these people say, well, you know, you're giving Iran money. No, no, no. We're saying that if the Iranians change their behavior, we're going to let some of these other countries invest in rebuilding their country and creating some prosperity for their people. That's like a good thing, right? If the Iranians stop funding terrorism, if they're behaving and their relationship is transformed, not just with us, but with the whole region, like that's a thing to celebrate.
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Podcast Host
Yeah. And that's also why, as drop site explains as well, Iran says it will soon begin connecting its electricity grid with Qatar, reviving a 2022 memorandum of understanding and facilitate the transfer of up to 1,000 megawatts of power. Power, according to Iran's minister Abbas Ali Bhatti and IRGC affiliated Tasnim Ali Body said feasibility studies are in their final stages. The project is entering implementation. Iran is also studying electricity links with other Gulf Cooperation Council states. The move signals these deepening economic ties, as we now know. There's this $300 billion reconstruction fund and now we're going to see country, we're going to see companies, Europe, South Korea, Japan and elsewhere start, you know, working within Iran as well as Iran as the regional powers have been able to reshape the Middle east and declare. Checkmate, Donald, Checkmate. And that's where you're at right now. Everybody hit subscribe. Let's get to 7 million subscribers and thanks for watching. Thanks for listening. I know this was a day dense video hat tip to all of those incredible reports that I was sharing with you. They were spot on. But we need to think in these terms. That's what's happening in the world. Thanks for watching. Be sure to add the Midas Touch podcast on Apple Podcasts, Spotify or wherever you get your podcast for new updates every single day.