Middle East’s pivot point.

President Trump dismisses a deal with Iran as the U.S.

’s Middle East allies hedge their bets and turn to Iran to discuss regional security, while consequential elections in Israel and the U.S.

leave Israel struggling to form a ruling government and President Trump losing control of Congress.

Tonight, the future of the Middle East is beginning to transform.

Coming up on "Compass Points."

♪ Announcer: Support for "Compass Points" has been provided by... the Judy and Peter Blum Kovler Foundation, Camilla and George Smith, the Dorney Koppel Foundation, the Gruber Family Foundation, and Cap and Margaret Anne Eschenroeder.

The Judy and Peter Blum Kovler Foundation.

Upholding freedom by strengthening democracies at home and abroad.

Additional support is provided by Friends of the News Hour.

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Thank you.

Once again, from the David M. Rubenstein Studio at WETA in Washington, moderator Nick Schifrin.

Hello and welcome to "Compass Points."

It is a pivotal moment in today’s Middle East.

President Trump says he’s focused on economic pressure on Iran after the U.S.

’s Gulf allies united against the war and are hedging their bets by talking with Iran about regional security, while Israel is talking about a future with less American support after the stunning midterm results which the vice president blamed on the war and U.S.

’s relationship with Israel.

So has the war widened a crack between America First and MAGA foreign policy?

What is the U.S.

’s Iran policy?

And where do the U.S.

’s allies go from here?

Here to discuss all of this, Hussein Ibish, senior resident scholar at the Arab Gulf States Institute, Danielle Pletka, a senior fellow at the American Enterprise Institute, Dana Stroll is the director of research at the Washington Institute of Near East Policy, and the former deputy assistant secretary of defense for the Middle East in the Biden administration.

And Alex Vatanka is a senior fellow at the Middle East Institute.

Thanks very much, all.

You appreciate your being here.

Let me start with what the president and his allies are saying about his policy in Iran.

He says the strategy is not to restart the war.

And the president this week wrote this on Truth Social.

He wrote, "We don’t need a deal with Iran," meaning the strategy is to maintain economic pressure on Iran.

Alex, can that work?

Vatanka: You know, I guess, you know, the president has some pretty tough choices ahead of him.

I mean, a bigger war, we all know what that would mean.

Certainly the region fears that.

The American public spoke in terms of their desire not to see this war continuing or widening.

Giving the Iranian regime everything they want, that’s another thing that a lot of people obviously fear.

So between those two options, you’ve got the blockade.

Now, the problem with the blockade is who’s going to blink first?

The blockade is easier said than done.

Iran is a country with 15 immediate neighbors.

All of them don’t want this war with Iran to continue.

The only exception in the region, probably the one country I can point to that actually might want to see the war return on a large scale is Israel.

But that’s a country that really doesn’t have a role to play when it comes to the blockade.

So you look at Iraq, Turkey, the Central Asian states, Pakistan, so on.

All of them are looking to end this war.

So the blockade is a risky sort of a project.

If you think, if you are the Trump administration, you think this is how you bring the regime down on its knees, I’m skeptical it’s going to work.

Danny, do you think that a strategy of the status quo, economic pressure, you think that’s the right way to do it?

I think the problem with this war has always been Donald Trump.

Ibish: Yeah.

- And... Schifrin: Hussein’s already agreeing with you.

All: [talking at the same time] And the issue is, you know, which Donald Trump is going to be making the decision on what day.

You know, we’ve talked about this previously, where, you know, we have been within moments of launching, launching, relaunching a campaign and the president changes his mind.

And it’s not that the president is embracing different aspects of a policy.

The president is embracing different policies.

That is, to my mind, the problem for the region, the Americans, you know, they look at this and they see, are you going to stay the course?

And the answer is, "Well, today, "but tomorrow, maybe not."

And for them, that is the challenge.

The numbers, Alex, I think the numbers actually, exit poll numbers from the midterms should encourage the president, right?

85% of exit polls said we have to stop Iran from getting a nuclear weapon, instead of taking that number and saying, "OK, I need to build a case "to the American people for a policy," whether it is continuing the war or it is the blockade or it is some hybrid of those two.

He has just continued with his vacillations.

But let’s let me engage with at least the policy as it is right now, which does appear... Pletka: Right now.

Schifrin: Fine, But does appear don’t restart the war.

Vice President, don’t make a deal.

So that leads blockade continues and the protection of commercial ships continues.

Dana, so is that sustainable for the U.S.

military to keep that version and keep the pressure on Iran that way?

So the U.S.

military has been building up over the past several weeks in expectation that President Trump was going to order another round of strikes.

And I think the third carrier arrives at some point soon.

There’s other buildups.

The question is, is this sustainable compared to what our other priorities and national security objectives are?

So if the only objective of the United States is only focused on Iran, only this Iranian regime, only the nuclear weapons program, the missile program and countering support for terrorism, so we want to put all of our resources on this issue only, then, yes, it is sustainable.

The problem is it’s a global military with global responsibilities and Americans.

I think one of the lessons of this election is that Americans are concerned about affordability.

And what we’ve learned is that affordability at home is connected to what’s happening abroad.

And so when we have interruption to the freedom of navigation because of Iranian maritime aggression in the Strait of Hormuz or the Houthis in Yemen and what they’re doing in the Red Sea, in the Bab al-Mandab, that affects energy prices.

It affects commercial shipping, which affects the prices of goods and diesel at home.

So again, but you know, the United States has objectives and interests when it comes to countering Russian aggression in Ukraine.

It is concerned about what China is doing in the Asia theater.

And so if we have these other objectives, then you have to look at the resources we have in the military and question how long this current strategy is sustainable.

Hussein, do you see this strategy as the right one?

And is it sustainable?

Well, I think it’s sustainable for two years.

In other words, a policy of containment, of keeping up the blockade to some extent, maybe not with the 3-carrier groups that are going to be there soon.

But but there is enough resources probably to get Donald Trump through to the end of his administration.

Right?

And hand this problem off to his successor as a kind of welcoming gift.

You know, he’s got himself, he’s backed himself into a corner brilliantly.

He doesn’t know what to do.

There is no good way out.

So you just sustain it until you’re gone.

And that’s likely the choice he’s going to make.

But let me just say the problem is not just with Trump.

He’s one problem the other big problem of the war is, and it’s kind of repetition, compulsion for the United States.

We keep doing this is getting involved in major wars in the Middle East without any consensus within the administration that launches the war itself, let alone the country, about what the point is.

What are we seeking?

What’s the goal?

And unless you have a clear goal, you can’t have a metric to decide whether you’ve succeeded or failed.

And the whole thing is doomed from the outset.

I think this is another example, as with Iraq in 2003 and other times in our recent history where we’ve gone to war without any agreement, even on the part of the authors of the war, what the purpose is.

And that puts the American people in a difficult position.

And in fact, as I said publicly on the show, the U.S.

officials admitted to me they decided not to decide how to end the war when they launched it.

Let me just quickly ask, Alex, though, OK, so we talked about all this U.S.

policy.

Iran’s watching this, right?

They see this.

How do they respond?

As you put it to my colleague, if Iran chooses to escalate, they would escalate to make sure that they wouldn’t turn Trump’s war into America’s war.

Why is that a key factor in what Iran is thinking right now?

So, Nick, this war has been going on for 260-some days since the assassination of Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei.

Throughout this period, if you watch what the Iranian regime is doing, is to be very careful in making a distinction.

This is Donald Trump’s war, back with Israel, hand in hand with Israel, whatever you want to call it, against Iran.

This is not a war that will serve American national interest.

In fact, just this week, the guy who agreed with the United States president, Vice President Vance in Islamabad, the speaker of the Iranian parliament, he said, "how does this serve American interests?"

So that’s how they’re playing it, because they look at American election results.

They don’t see an America determined to stay in this war for the reasons you just heard.

What is it that Washington actually wants to achieve?

They think this is something that is going to serve their interests.

To Hussein’s point, they think they can wait Donald Trump out.

I have to add, this is coming at a huge expense for the people of Iran.

Being on the blockade, many Iranians, innocent Iranians will suffer.

But this is a regime that for about half a century has made it very clear, doesn’t really care that much about the well-being of the Iranian people.

But that leads to the politics of this moment.

J.D.

Vance, as we all are almost referring to, came out swinging after the election, blaming Iran, blaming the war for the Republicans’ midterm defeat, as well as blaming Israel.

President Trump at first said he agreed, but with the benefit of a few days of hindsight, he said this.

Man: Has J.D.

Vance’s comments about Iran, questioning some of those decisions, has that impacted your relationship at all?

No, not at all.

But a lot of people didn’t like his comments, but not me.

He was right.

Other than one thing, he should have made one other statement, one statement that I think is very important.

If you had it to do again, would you do it again?

The answer is yes.

And as I mentioned earlier, the president has now dispatched the vice president to focus on domestic corruption.

Danny, what does this say about America First versus MAGA foreign policy?

Is there a difference?

What does this say about the Republican foreign policy future?

Pletka: I don’t think those terms, if I may quote Princess Bride, mean what you and a lot of other people think they mean.

Polling, the Reagan Foundation does two polls a year, big, big polls.

And they ask people, they poll conservatives.

They ask them, "Do you identify as MAGA or not?"

And what you see is that self-identified MAGA voters repeatedly, year in, year out, support a more aggressive foreign policy, a stronger military, more support for Ukraine, more support for taking on Iran.

And so, you know, I think that the problem is one that’s very familiar to all of us, especially people who, frankly, have children.

And that is that if you live an online life, like the vice president does, weirdly, surprised he has the time, but hey.

Schifrin: His kids are the same age as mine, as an aside.

There you go.

If you live an online life, you live in a world of illusion about what the makeup of the of the public is and of your party.

And the Republican Party... Schifrin: Does the vice president live in a world of illusion?

I think the vice president thinks that the future is national conservatism.

And, you know, if that sounds a little bit like national socialism, I think there’s a reason for that.

And I really do think that, you know, I mean, the failure to disavow Tucker Carlson, the failure to disavow "the oven," the go to blame the Jews.

Schifrin: Yeah.

You know, it’s central casting behavior.

And it’s not the view of the president of the United States who remains alert to J.D., your boss.

Right?

So I think it’s all extraordinarily misguided, misinterprets where the American people are and is classic J.D.

Vance.

Bad politics.

Schifrin: Hussein, you’ve been agreeing.

Ibish: No, I do.

I do agree with that.

But I think in addition, to be honest, I don’t think Donald Trump wants to be succeeded by a Republican who is successful even to the point of just winning the election.

Let alone having a successful presidency.

I think he would, if forced to choose, he’d probably prefer a Democrat to succeed him so that he can say it all would have been better if it had been a Republican named Trump instead of somebody else.

I doubt he wants to help J.D.

Vance be his heir and successor.

That’s one thing.

The other thing is, I do agree that the national conservatism idea is an illusion and that it reeks of anti-Semitism.

So the foreign policy debate that it seems to me the vice president is pushing on, the lack of, shall we say, consensus or strategy that you guys were talking about, all of that is seen by our allies as well, right?

And so we saw a couple of tentpoles in the last few weeks.

We saw the president’s Middle East envoy, the ambassador to Turkey, special envoy to Iraq and Syria, Tom Barrack, say something that perhaps the region already knew, but he still said it out loud that there would be less America moving forward.

Ibish: Right.

America is the guarantor to the world for the last 80 years.

It is no longer there.

What’s happening in this administration is not an abandonment.

It’s a message for realignment, and that message is like raising a teenager.

It’s not easy.

Schifrin: So let’s talk about those teenagers, if you will.

We saw senior officials from Saudi Arabia recently.

Alongside officials from Pakistan and Turkey, this is this new Mecca pact, traveled to Iran recently to greet, there you see, KBS, Khalid bin Salman, the crown prince’s brother, the defense secretary of Saudi Arabia.

We saw these meetings.

Sure, we’ve seen some hedging before in the Middle East.

But why don’t you start, Dana, are the U.S.

’s Gulf allies hedging right now, given everything we’ve talked about in terms of U.S.

strategy in the region?

They’re listening to the American debate.

They understand.

And for them, I think they’re not looking at just what happened in this election or the first two years of this Trump administration.

These are monarchies.

They’re not other than Turkey.

These are monarchies.

They’re going to be around for generations.

And they know that Americans shift two to 4 years in terms of what our national security policies are.

And I think what they are experiencing is that we swing very significantly in the trajectories of our foreign policy every two to 4 years and they need a backup plan.

And I think what the special envoy Barrack said, to call our partners teenagers, is utterly demeaning.

These guys need a plan.

They didn’t ask for this war.

They were not informed before the war started.

And it’s their societies, their civilian and energy infrastructure who has been damaged and demolished.

And they are the ones under threat from the Iranians should this war restart.

So they need a backup plan.

And that’s why we’ve seen active mediation.

But if I may, let me push back a little bit on one idea and jump in, guys.

It’s not just every two to 4 years that America changes, right?

Arab allies have seen, whether it’s Barack Obama or Trump won or Biden, they have felt America is not going to be there to a certain extent.

But simultaneously, they still want American technology.

They still want American military, right?

So is this just diversification rather than hedging?

It’s the best they can do under the circumstances.

They need to stick with the United States.

There’s no alternative that no other country could project power into the region if it wanted to.

And while they can’t count on the United States by any means, they can always plan on having the U.S.

be a major security partner.

And in fact, all 6 GCC countries do have that relationship with the U.S.

In addition, their militaries are structured around American training, American supplies, American equipment, American doctrine.

And they’d rather not switch to something else, a Chinese system or Russian system.

So they’re going to stick with the U.S., but they must diversify amongst themselves with other regional countries and building relationships abroad, including with Iran, just to try to defend themselves.

These are countries with very little strategic depth and few resources.

I agree with you.

They don’t have any other options.

This sort of joke that is constantly resurfaced in American national security analysis about how the Chinese are going to step in.

Schifrin: Other than some air defense and long range weapons that Saudi Arabia buys, that’s about it.

Tactically, the Chinese may step in.

Strategically, they look at the region and think, "You deal with it."

- Right.

Pletka: But here’s the challenge.

You know, it’s not just that they need to orientate themselves towards us.

It is that when they are not orientated towards us, they do.

I know, no bad language.

They do dumb stuff, yes, public radio.

They do dumb stuff.

Everybody can figure out what I actually thought.

You know, they go to war in Yemen.

They seek rapprochement with the Iranians, understanding that this is an ideological battle to the death with the Iranian regime.

There is no rapprochement.

And what we see is, look at the Saudis, right?

In the first Trump term, they had an embargo and tried to blockade Qatar, their GCC partner.

They tried, they enlisted the Emiratis into it.

It was completely quixotic.

But when we don’t listen to them, we do dumb stuff, too.

We charge off into this quixotic war.

Pletka: But we’re still America.

But they warned, you’re right, but they warned us against this war.

They warned us against 2003.

We should listen to each other and take good care.

Vatanka: No, I just want to echo the dumb stuff.

This is the part that the Gulf countries are still trying to see which one is worse, the fact the United States cannot defeat Iran militarily or the absolute lack of logic for launching the war and the way it’s been handled.

And one of the things, I’ve been saying this on your program before, the one sin of the Trump administration was, you know, the biggest tool in the box in many ways was a clear messaging to everyone, including the people in Iran, who actually early on in this conflict might have had a hope that this could be bringing the regime down.

But they haven’t heard anything that’s credible in terms of messaging.

And if I could, Nick, very quickly, because China came up, and I agree, Chinese cannot fill the vacuum today, but we shouldn’t for a second think.

China, Russia don’t have a horse in this race.

They are going to use this war in the region to weaken the United States, not, I think, just in the Middle East, but globally speaking.

Ibish: That’s true.

Let me bring up the other U.S.

ally that we haven’t talked too much about, which is Israel.

So this past week, President Trump acknowledged something that the Israeli government tells me that they kind of knew was coming, but has not been discussed too publicly in Israel, that the U.S.

will, starting in 2028, will no longer give Israel money in order to buy American weapons.

In other words, Israel will have to spend its own money to buy American weapons.

Now, the president can’t do that with a statement.

This is technically Congress or officially Congress.

But this conversation is now very public in Israel.

Dana, what’s the impact of that conversation and the overall talk of this relationship inevitably changing, giving the makeup of Congress?

Well, first of all, this amount of money, it’s about 3.3 billion dollars a year that Congress appropriates.

And you’re right.

It actually goes to the U.S.

government, to U.S.

defense industry for the purchase of military systems for Israel.

But it’s been very hotly debated now for a couple of years, and it clearly was going to be more divisive in the next Congress.

And I think actually Prime Minister Netanyahu understood that and laid some groundwork earlier this year for saying it’s time for Israel to wean itself off this amount of money.

And then the midterm surprise with President Trump saying this.

But I think it actually reflects growing course in both the Republican Party and in the Democratic Party that we should no longer be giving this amount of money for Israel to purchase.

And also Israel is a developed economy and it’s been using a lot of its own money to purchase American equipment.

It has its own thriving defense industry.

And so I actually think at this moment in time, if we treat each other as two partners sitting at the table who can manage an important transition, this is a good time to pivot in terms of what the next chapter of the U.S.-Israel defense relationship is like now, regardless of the politics of the strategy of declaring war on Iran.

There’s no debating that these are two militaries that fought in a combined campaign.

In a way that they had never done before, despite decades of cooperation.

Absolutely.

The U.S.

military has never fought alongside a military like we saw with Israel since World War II and the UK So this is significant.

And in a world that’s getting messier and more muddled, where we can’t produce everything ourselves and the security challenges are going to keep coming, we need partners we can rely on.

So the key conversation or the key phrase that you had there is managed transition.

Can that transition be managed, Danny, especially as a new Congress?

And again, this is bipartisan, but certainly new Democratic members are going to be more publicly critical of Israel and perhaps call on the U.S.

to stop sending weapons to Israel at all.

This can happen, you know, to echo Tom Barrack’s unbelievably bad judgment.

What this most reminded me of was when you tell your adult child that they can no longer be on your cell phone plan.

- Right?

Schifrin: How did that go?

I haven’t done it yet.

Sorry, kids.

[Laughs] But the Israelis can afford it.

Schifrin: Yeah.

Pletka: But they’re used to it.

It’s kind of nice.

They like it.

If you want to give it to them, they don’t mind it.

But the reality is it does come with constraints as well.

And so from the Israeli perspective, I think this could be a win-win in terms of arms sales.

You know, we have a lot to lose here as well.

And this is what all of those posers who just got elected in this midterm election and who think that they will win more votes by standing up to the Jews and the Zionists have wrong.

This is a partnership that is meaningful to our national security.

Much as we have been amazed at the Ukrainians, just to take the Jews out of it for a second, the Ukrainians have been fantastic at innovation and getting from soup to nuts in incredible time with drones, with surface to missile defenses.

And that’s what the Israelis are good at, too.

And we benefit from that because our defense system is sclerotic beyond.

Schifrin: Hussein, jump in.

But last words, because we only got 20 seconds.

Ibish: The key is Israel’s access to cutting edge American technology.

And the Gulf countries could talk about that because they have had a hard time with the money they have getting access to purchase these things without constraints.

It was the constraints on the F-35 that caused the UAE to pull out.

All right.

Unfortunately, that’s all the time we have left.

We could do a lot on that alone.

But I want to thank all you guys.

So let me start over here, Dana and Danny, thank you very much, Hussein and Alex, thank you so much.

And thank you for joining us at home.

I’m Nick Schifrin.

We’ll see you here again next week on "Compass Points."

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Upholding freedom by strengthening democracies at home and abroad.

Additional support is provided by Friends of the News Hour.

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