Call Me Back - with Dan Senor - Saudi Arabia, Biden & The Nobel Peace Prize – with Amb. Ron Dermer

Episode Date: June 17, 2022

The Biden administration has announced that the President will take his first trip to the Middle East as president. His first stop will be in Israel to meet with Israeli leaders and Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas, before heading to Jeddah, Saudi Arabia, where he will meet with Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman. The U.S.-Saudi relationship began nearly eight decades ago between FDR and King Ibn Saud. With varying degrees of tumult, the relationship has survived – and sometimes thrived – through 14 U.S. presidencies. Has all that now changed? Has there been a sense in Riyadh – and across the Middle East – that the U.S. (through recent Democratic and Republican administrations) is downgrading its focus in the Middle East. Is there a risk that China gradually replaces the U.S. as the most important geopolitical partner of Saudi Arabia? And will Saudi Arabia join the Abraham Accords? And, could President Biden engineer it and win the Nobel Peace Prize? Former Israeli Ambassador Ron Dermer served as Israel’s chief envoy to the U.S. from 2013 to 2021 – working with three U.S. administrations. He was one of Prime Minister Netanyahu’s closest advisers and played a key role in what led to the U.S. relocation of our embassy to Jerusalem, U.S. recognition of Israeli sovereignty over the Golan Heights, implementation of the maximum pressure campaign against Iran, and the historic breakthrough that led to the Abraham Accords. He’s a graduate of the Wharton School and completed a degree at Oxford. Ambassador Dermer and I had this conversation a few days ago at the Jewish Leadership Conference (https://www.jewishleadershipconference.org/), which is sponsored by The Tikvah Fund (https://tikvahfund.org/).

The Biden administration has announced that President Biden will take his first trip as president to the Middle East from July 13th through the 16th, where he will first stop in Israel to meet with Israeli leaders, as well as Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas, before heading to Jeddah in Saudi Arabia, where he will meet with Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, MBS. Why does this trip matter? Well, here's some background. The U.S.-Saudi relationship began nearly eight decades ago between FDR and King Saud. With varying degrees of tumult, the relationship has survived

and sometimes thrived through 14 U.S. presidencies. But resentment among some Saudi leaders grew about a decade ago with President Obama's, quote, pivot to Asia. Many in the kingdom and elsewhere throughout the Sunni Gulf and across the Middle East voiced concern that the U.S. now had higher priorities in geopolitics than security and stability in the Middle East, voiced concern that the U.S. now had higher priorities in geopolitics than security and stability in the Middle East. And this was well after the Arab Spring, which was also unnerving for a number of incumbent Sunni leaders in the region. Then, leaders in capitals ranging from Riyadh to Jerusalem became alarmed by the Obama administration's pursuit of a nuclear deal with Iran, which was finalized in 2015, the JCPOA. There was a general sense in the Middle East that the U.S., through Democratic

and Republican administrations, was downgrading its focus, its engagement, and its presence in the Middle East. But according to some astute observers of Saudi Arabia, the serious damage was when President Biden labeled Saudi Arabia a, quote, pariah state, as well as when it removed Patriot missiles that shield Saudi oil installations from attacks by Iran-backed proxies and worked aggressively to rekindle the Iran nuclear deal. By the way, the administration has since redeployed Patriot missiles to protect those Saudi oil assets. Also in the first year of his administration, President Biden refused even to speak with Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman. Also in 2021, President Biden publicly released the CIA's conclusion that the crown prince had ordered the brutal murder of journalist Jamal Khashoggi

in 2018. But when Russian oil abruptly vanished from global markets in March following Putin's war against Ukraine, the U.S. president tried to engage Riyadh. MBS refused his call. All this has been against the backdrop of China's strengthening relations with Saudi Arabia. Xi Jinping visited the kingdom in 2016, and China is now Saudi Arabia's largest trading partner. The Chinese government welcomed MBS to Beijing back in 2019. So what's going on with this trip to Saudi Arabia? Well, I had a conversation with Ambassador Ron Dermer about it, about Saudi Arabia, President Biden's upcoming trip, and the future of Israeli-Saudi relations. Will the kingdom join the Abraham Accords? Seems like it's a pretty ripe opportunity for the Biden administration.

Ron has shared with me in the past his idea for how President Biden could win the Nobel Peace Prize by engineering a durable normalization and peace agreement between Riyadh and Jerusalem. Understand that Saudi Arabia is the most important country in the Arab Middle East. If they join the Abraham Accords, it takes Israeli-Arab normalization to a whole other level. Now, just to refresh, Ambassador Dermer, who's been on this podcast before, served as Israel's chief envoy to the United States from 2013 to 2021, working with three U.S. administrations. During that time, he was widely regarded as one of the most consequential ambassadors from any country. I would often hear this from ambassadors representing

governments across Europe and Asia, and even from Arab countries in the Middle East. He was one of Prime Minister Netanyahu's closest advisors, almost an alter ego, and he played a key role in what led to the U.S. relocation of our embassy to Jerusalem, and the U.S. recognition of Israeli sovereignty over the Golan Heights, as well as implementation of the maximum pressure campaign against Iran, and then, of course, the historic breakthrough that led to the Abraham Accords. Ron is a graduate of the Wharton School, and he completed a degree at Oxford. He is currently with Exogen Capital, an investment firm in Israel, and he is affiliated with the Jewish Institute for National Security of America,

JINSA, where he actually hosts an excellent podcast that I highly recommend called Diplomatically Incorrect. Ron and I had this conversation a few days ago before the Jewish Leadership Conference, which is a large conference in New York City sponsored by the Tikvah Fund. We'll provide links to both the Jewish Leadership Conference and the Tikvah Fund. We'll provide links to both the Jewish Leadership Conference and the Tikvah Fund in the show notes. I highly recommend their work. I listen to and read Tikvah Fund content almost every day through their podcasts and Mosaic and Bible 365, so definitely look out for their work. But here now is Ambassador Dermer on President Biden, Saudi Arabia, and Israel. This is Call Me Back.

It's great to be here, and it's great to be here with my friend, Ambassador Dermer. We don't have a lot of time, and we've got a lot to cover. And I want to zero in with Ron on one of his favorite topics, which is his plan to get Joe Biden the Nobel Peace Prize.

OK, this is the Dermot plan. Now, I want to be clear here. He does not. He's got a simple plan. It's a simple plan, not the hard way, the way Obama got the Nobel Peace Prize. I mean, he's he's got Ron has a very straightforward plan, which and let me just give you a context here. In the late 1970s, Jimmy Carter was facing inflation, energy crises, challenges from Moscow, starts to sound familiar, a mess in Afghanistan. But one bright spot was bringing Egypt and Israel together in the Camp

David Accords. And Ron has a plan for how to do the same thing, for Joe Biden to facilitate the same kind of rapprochement between Saudi Arabia and the state of Israel. And we're going to talk about that in a moment because it's like a gift, because we know Joe Biden is watching the live stream of the Jewish Leadership Conference. So it's like a gift to Joe Biden that he's giving. But before we do that, Ron, we have talked offline a number of times about your observations as it relates to the changes in Saudi Arabia. So this is basically an eight decade relationship

that despite some ups and downs has basically survived 14 US presidencies. And until now, until this last year, year and a half, where the current administration has called Saudi Arabia a pariah state, has pulled, or initially pulled Patriot Missile Support Defense for Saudi oil assets from attacks from the Houthi rebels, has engaged, you know, refused to have a conversation with Mohammed bin Salman, who is, what is he now, 36, 37 years old? If he lives to say 86, he'll run Saudi Arabia for 50 years, but our president isn't talking to him. How would you assess what's going on in Saudi

Arabia and specifically U.S.-Saudi relations before we get to the Israel piece of it. Okay. So what is interesting in the previous administration is their interest in having a strong relationship with Saudi Arabia had been actually on a downswing for the very simple reason that what has held the Saudi-U.S. relationship together is one word, oil. And America became energy independent, and yet the previous administration still courted Saudi Arabia, and this was critical in the Abraham Accords. That embrace of the Saudis helped facilitate the Abraham Accords. And Bahrain does not make peace with Israel without Saudi support.

And if the Saudis would have had a red light, I don't think that Mohammed bin Zayed would have made that peace. Now, so we should be thankful. I know it's probably definitely diplomatically incorrect to be thankful to Mohammed bin Salman, but he's one of the reasons why the Abraham Accords happened. And he is somebody who I agree with you

is going to be on this throne maybe for 50 years. And we should think about having a relationship with that man, with all the difficulties. And he's incredibly popular in Saudi Arabia. He's incredibly popular in Saudi Arabia. That's true. I don't know exactly how they measure popularity there. Polling, polling, public polling.

Leaving that aside, no, I do think, and my hope would be that he would be an Arab Peter the Great and change the trajectory of Saudi history. He has confronted the Islamists. He has opened the door for religious Muslim leaders to move closer to Israel. When the head of the World Muslim League goes on a trip to Auschwitz, pay attention. That does not happen without MBS. He is the driving force there. So we can talk about how Biden's going to win an Nobel Prize. And it's not a joke. I actually, I'll be better. He can do it within six months. When did they come up with the nomination? I think it was November. Yeah. November. He can get the Nobel Prize this November. I have no doubt about it.

Take us back to late 2016, early 2017. You're ambassador to Washington. There's a new administration transitioning. The Trump administration's coming in. And you started to see the opportunity between Israel and the Sunni Gulf. And you, on the one hand, saw the opportunity. And to your point, a lot of these changes wouldn't have happened without Saudi Arabia. But you also envisioned Saudi Arabia actually being more front and center rather than working behind the scenes in this process? And

you would wish certain actions were taken earlier that could have had Saudi Arabia playing a bigger role publicly earlier on. Well, I'll challenge you on the timeline. We saw this possibility in about 2012 and 2013. In fact, we worked very hard in the second term of the Obama administration to get them to focus on what we called then this outside-in approach. Now all of you at TICFA have probably seen that video of John Kerry, right, where John Kerry says you're never gonna have a separate peace with the Arab states

without first having peace with the Palestinians. And we say no, no, no, no. And my only regret is he said no four times because we got four peace agreements. Had he said no six times, we would have gotten six peace agreements. But no one asked who Kerry is speaking to. I was in the front row where Roger is sitting and he's speaking to me and he's speaking to Netanyahu. He's saying there are people in Israel who say that this can be done because we were pleading with him to do it, because they were ready to move forward. Now, what caused their readiness?

And this should be a sign of Secretary of State Mike Pompeo. Ultimately, the President of the United States gets credit for the decisions. The buck always stops there. But the person who was responsible, the driving force behind policy against an Iranian regime that openly calls and actively works to destroy the state of Israel was Secretary of State and previously CIA Director Mike Pompeo. And I am deeply grateful for what he did. Now, he mentioned some of those things. First thing was you had the Arab Spring. So now all of a sudden things are rocky, right? They don't feel as stable.

Everybody thought nothing changes in the Middle East. All of a sudden things are changing. You see what happens in Tunisia. You see what happens in Egypt. People are worried. Now they see dangers on the horizon. The rise of Iran and the only silver lining to the dark cloud that was the nuclear deal with Iran was the fact that it brought Israel and the Arab states closer together. They also see

the dangers of Sunni radicalism. Iran is a Shia radical power. They see Sunni radicalism. Al-Qaeda was 1.0. ISIS is 2.0. And they're worried about that, those Gulf countries, including Saudi Arabia. And the third factor, which is very important to understand, America was withdrawing from the Middle East. They were reducing their military footprint. Whether they pivoted to China or not is another question. They were reducing their commitment and certainly military footprint in the Middle East. So if you are the leaders in the Gulf, and you see this Iranian tiger whose claws are getting sharper and the fangs are getting longer, and you see this ISIS leopard or whatever is going to come next,

and all of a sudden the 800-pound American gorilla just left the building, so what do you say? Well, hey, there's a 200-pound gorilla with a kippah on. Let's work with it. The other factor is the rise of Israeli technology. We are in Israel a global technological power. It's hard for people, for Jews, frankly, to believe. I mean, you wrote a book about it, but we are a global technological power in many fields.

Agriculture, water, cyber. Israel accounts for is one tenth of one percent of the globe's population, and we're attracting 20 percent of global private investment in cybersecurity, autonomous vehicles. There are 400 car companies in the state of Israel. You know what city in America has the highest growth of Israelis there? It's Detroit. Now, we don't make cars in Israel, but we make everything that goes under the hood. And some of you have that in your cars. In AI, which is the future, the great powers that are

emerging, Russia, China, US, Israel. Now, last time I checked, Russia's not an ally of the United States. China, not an ally of the United States. Israel is an ally, right? So the Gulf sees in Israel a security partner. And to the extent that you have leaders in the Gulf who are thinking what's going to happen when their oil supplies are depleted or when people move to a different commodity, to the extent that you have those leaders, Israel is the best partner. You have a Silicon Valley in their backyard. Exactly. Yeah. So that creates, those are the fundamentals. That's the opening. Now the question is, will you have a U.S. administration and a policy that will facilitate a rapprochement or that will undermine it?

And the key thing that happened with the Trump administration is they put in place also a series of policies that helped facilitate this breakthrough. One of them was confronting Iran because as Secretary of State Pompeo said, when people in Saudi Arabia or people in the Emirates or people in Bahrain, they were watching Netanyahu and Trump on the White House lawn in September 2020. What did they see?

They saw two leaders who were confronting Iran. You saw a leader who was putting massive pressure on Iran, a leader who had taken out Soleimani, and the one leader in the Middle East who's militarily confronting Iran all the time. That opens the political space for the Arab states to move into an alliance with us because their people are much more concerned about Iran than they are about the Palestinians. That's a real danger. They're firing rockets into their airports. They're attacking their ships. So you have an administration that is confronting Iran.

You have an administration that is confronting Iran. You have an administration that is embracing Israel. The message that that sends when you embrace Israel is they think the way that they improve their ties with Washington is to move closer to Jerusalem. And they did it on Jerusalem, on the Golan Heights, on the whole issue of Judea and Samaria, all of these little things where there's no daylight between the United States and Israel and the strength of that relationship convinces the Arab world to move closer to Israel. Another factor that was important is they didn't chase after the Palestinians. They took away the veto from the Palestinians over progress in the Middle East. And when you are confronting Iran, you're embracing Israel,

and you're giving the Palestinians a door to a peace if they choose to go into it, but you don't give them the veto power, that's how you open up the possibility for the Abraham Accords, and that's how Biden can win the Nobel Prize. Okay, so before we get to that, had the Trump administration, had Trump won a second term, do you think Saudi Arabia would have joined the Abraham Accords? More than that. Had we not had the political instability in Israel, I believe we would have had a peace with Saudi Arabia today. Because the original plan was supposed to come out at the same time with the Bahrain economic plan came out in June of 2019. And it didn't come out

because Netanyahu won an election victory in April, and then a small party, a Vigdor Lieberman, decided not to join a coalition and have stability in Israel. And so I don't know if a Vigdor Lieberman doesn't want to see peace between Israel and Saudi Arabia or wasn't even aware of it. But that, I think, changed a lot of things because it took us to start. The process was only when they put forward their peace plan. And the peace plan, the normalization they put forward their peace plan. And the peace plan, the normalization was implicit in the peace plan. You want to talk about a failure of journalism. Who was at the peace plan in January? Who was there? The ambassador of the Emirates, the ambassador of Bahrain, and the ambassador of Oman. And the only reason why Israel does

not have peace with Oman is the Omani leader died, or else we would have had those three. We wanted to put the peace plan out and then move ahead with normalization. That was the plan, and it was supposed to start in June. I believe had we done that, we would have actually been normalized in the year before with the Emirates and Bahrain. The Saudis were not going to go first, but I think in 2020, you would have seen a peace with Israel and Saudi Arabia. Now, this opportunity is there because of the fundamentals I described before. But if you have a U.S. administration that is appeasing Iran, that is trying to re-centralize the Palestinian issue, and I don't think they're confronting Israel, but the embrace is not the same. I hope I'm wrong, but in a U.S. administration that is appeasing Iran will not create the political space for Arab leaders to

move into a peace with Israel, certainly not in Saudi Arabia. The reason why they're reaching out to the Saudis now, which I'm for, you know, a broken clock is right twice a day. So even administration that has a broken Middle East policy, maybe they'll get something right in doing this. I'm for them doing the outreach. But the reason why they're doing the outreach is they want Saudi oil because of the failure of the energy policy here in the United States. What they should be thinking in the administration, they should be thinking about peace, about getting a historic peace between Israel and Saudi Arabia. The reason why that's important is that is the end of the Arab-Israeli conflict. And we are at the cusp, and it can happen.

Now, I think the window is going to be open for a long time. It may be another 10 years, 15 years, but I don't know if it's going to be open forever. Now, to end the Israeli-Arab conflict doesn't mean ending the Israeli-Palestinian conflict or the conflict between Israel and Iran. But once the Saudis are at peace with us, we're on the other side of the mountain. We're very close. We can get there. And I know they won't give the peace prize to Trump or Netanyahu, but they will definitely give it to Biden.

OK, so now, so Joe Biden calls you tomorrow in the event that he's missing the live stream today. Joe Biden calls you tomorrow and says, Ambassador Dermer, what's the plan? I've caved. I went through this 15-month cold shoulder to the Saudis. I'm now folding on that. I'm actually going to figure out a way to travel to Riyadh. So what do I do?

Here's what he does. He goes into a room with MBS. And he says to MBS, here's how we're going to resolve the whole issue of Khashoggi. OK, and we have to put that issue behind us as difficult as that attack was. We have to put it behind us. Here's how we're going to resolve this. Here's how we're going to resolve the Yemen issue. I am going to change and this is what is required of Biden. I'm going to change my Iran policy 180 degrees. And I'm going to confront this regime. I'm going to use economic pressure. I'm going to use a

credible military threat, which is critical for anything. And I'm going to reach out publicly to the people of Iran who are suffering under this regime. I'm going to do a complete 180. But I don't want to go back to the American people and tell them that I started a new war in the Middle East. I want to come back to the American people and say I created peace in the Middle East and I need you to stand with me. If you stand with me, together we'll confront Iran with the Israelis. That's how he gets a peace. So the administration has finally nominated an ambassador to Riyadh who served, I think, in Israel while you were ambassador to Ratne. Michael Ratne, wasn't he there while you were ambassador?

He was consul general a while before. They got rid of that consulate, and after 70 years of us putting our embassy in your capital, you gave some reciprocity to Israel, finally. So do you think there are any signs that the administration, assuming the Iran negotiations continue to kind of go nowhere and fall apart, is there, out of the ashes of that, is there a world in which the administration does something comparable to what you're... I don't think so. And I say that, I put a big capital U, unfortunately, in front of it. I don't think so, because this administration's policy towards Iran is not to prevent a nuclear

Iran, it's to contain a nuclear Iran. And they believe that if they're only faced with two choices, and this is how you know the difference between prevention and containment. Containment says they're going to have it, maybe we delay it for a few years, but ultimately they have it, they have the knowledge, they have the know-how to ultimately get a weapon and there's nothing we can do to actually prevent it. The difference between containment and prevention is if you only have two options, option one is a military confrontation with Iran to destroy their military nuclear capability, or to just do a deal, right?

Which, or you're gonna accept, I should say, you're gonna accept the nuclear-armed Iran, but maybe you'll delay it for three years, five years, seven years. So military confrontation, or accept the nuclear-armed Iran with a small delay. This administration will choose the small delay. And the logic, just understand,

the logic is if we attack them, it will set them back two, maybe three years, and then we'll just go and reconstitute the program, which I disagree with. When Begin made the decision in Osirak to bomb the nuclear reactor at Osirak, our military intel people were saying it's going to set them back two years. So now we're 40 years and counting. But the Biden administration has no credible military threat against Iran because they think that it is not a better alternative than doing this disastrous deal.

That's why I don't have confidence. Now, if somehow they change their opinion about that, then I believe any president, Democrat or Republican, who confronts Iran, embraces Israel, and doesn't put the Palestinian issue front and center, which makes it harder for these Arab countries to move towards us, any president can do it and can get that peace. But they have to understand what worked then and what will work now. How do you respond to analysts and even some leaders and retired leaders within the Israeli security apparatus, who the Biden administration cites all the time, who say that

the JCPOA had actually contained Iran on its nuclear program and that it worked? No, they didn't say that it worked. They think it's a better alternative. They're wrong. That's what I say. They were wrong about Oslo. They were wrong about the disengagement. And they're wrong about this nuclear deal with Iran. Disengagement from Gaza. The disengagement from Gaza, that a lot of the military said this is going to strategically improve Israel's situation, and it didn't. So the fact that, look, I have great respect for our military, and if somebody asks me,

you know, conquer Gaza, then I'll say bring me a general, because they know how to do that. I don't know how to do that. But just because you see intelligence for six months doesn't make you into a Kissinger or to a Pompeo. To understand the geopolitics of this and to understand how we can prevent Iran from developing nuclear weapons that they're, I think that they're dead serious about trying to destroy Israel. And what they're essentially trying to do is ring Israel with conventional weapons. So by the time you do a deal and all of those sunset clauses of the deal are removed in a few years, then all these people that were begging us to do the deal will say, you know, we can't go

after Iran militarily because it will mean the destruction of Israel through conventional arms. The deal is a disaster. It is a second Munich. And that's why I said the proudest day I had as ambassador is when Prime Minister Netanyahu stood at Congress and spoke against that deal. America should not go back in the deal. And one other thing I'll tell you, Iran is incredibly weak. The people of Iran hate their regime. They are protesting all around the country. No one is paying attention. And here I have to say, even the previous administration, they didn't have that leg of their policy. Understand what happened.

Here's the three legs that you need for an Iran policy. I said, credible military threat, most important, economic pressure, and Pompeo spoke about them having 4 billion in foreign currency reserves and also denying them the ability to sell the oil. They took them from about 2.8 million barrels a day to 300,000 barrels a day. Credible military threat, economic pressure. The third leg, the people of Iran.

That's how the Cold War was run because you had a Natan Sharansky, your first winner of the Herzl Prize, and you had a Reagan that had a confrontational policy but was reaching out beyond the government to the people. Trump, it took really two and a half years to have economic pressure because he didn't leave the deal for a year and a half and he didn't get rid of the oil waivers for another year. So May 2019 is the day where real economic pressure on Iran begins. He did not have a credible military threat until he took out Soleimani. That was January 2nd, 2020. For three years, the Iranians did not believe there was a credible threat.

Remember, after he did that, they were so cautious, they didn't move forward in their nuclear program one inch for 10 months. After Biden got elected, they moved forward. Before Trump took out Soleimani, they moved forward. But we know that Iran fears potential military action. So the two pillars were in place only at the beginning of 2020. But the third pillar, the Iranian people, that's the key. You got to reach out to them. And this is administration that talks all the time about human rights. Talk about human rights in Iran. I know there are protesters.

Wait, there's protesters. There's going to be a governor. There's all. There's like eight protesters. Let's not overstate it. This is like, it's sort of pathetic, this group. I pull up, I was expecting, you know, like... Well, people made a lot of fuss about this conference

because the governor, Governor DeSantis from my home state of Florida, and I think he's a Dolphins fan as well. So he may have some words. He's not from South Florida. You can't say DeSantis equals those. We got to accept everybody coming from New York. I bet he's a Buccaneers fan, but go ahead. All right. You have these protesters because of a position of a governor had on whether or not you should teach transgenderism to eight-year-olds. Iran is a regime that hangs gays from cranes, from cranes. That's what the LGBT community, that's what you know today about where we are

with Iran, rewinding the tape eight, 10 years ago, 12 years ago, would you have advised an Israeli prime minister to take military action against Iran's nuclear program. Conventional military action. So here's the secret. The prime minister of Israel is not the commander in chief. And when you say that somebody is a commander in chief, it doesn't mean that they play that song when he comes out. It means that a president in the United States who orders a military action through the chain of command, unless it is a patently illegal order, that action is carried out. When Trump made the decision,

which was in addition to the decision to withdraw from the nuclear deal, remember his national security advisor was against, his secretary of defense was against, and his secretary of state at that time, Mr. Tillerson, was against. The only person in that administration, senior person who was for it, was the person who was on this stage, Mr. Pompeo. All of them were against. But President Trump made the decision.

It's like that story about Lincoln, where he goes around the room and he says, nay, nay, nay, nay, nay, and he says, the eyes have it, you know, Lincoln. That's how it works in America. It does not work that way in Israel. If an Israeli prime minister tomorrow wants to do an operation, that operation has to go through the Israeli security cabinet. And when you have intel officials, and when you have people in the military who are seeking to undermine your operation, a lot of times because they think that the American president will do it. There were people who thought in 2009 and 2010,

you know, I listened to President Obama and President Obama, I'm confident that he's going to do this. He's going to take this action. Or they think in 10 years, I'll tell you a story. It's a true story with a very senior military official. I won't say who it is because it will detract from the story itself. He spoke to me at the end of 2016, after Trump got elected, but before he got into office. And he asked to speak to me. And he said to me, he thinks it's a mistake for Trump to withdraw from the deal. And I said, why? He says, well, because we'll have a few years to deal with this nuclear problem, and we should focus on pushing back regionally. And what I said to him is, it doesn't work that way in politics. There's either good guys or there's bad guys, right? What the Obama administration

had done is they took an Iranian regime that has a black hat on its head, put a gray hat on its way to white. If we hope that a U.S. administration is going to confront Iran across the board, we got to get them out of that deal. Because the deal was holding the world hostage in actually confronting Iran. But then I asked him a question. I said, what do you think is going to happen in 10 years when all of these, the sunset clauses kick in

and all these restrictions are automatically removed? And he's a very, very senior military leader. And you know what he told me? He said, the world won't let that happen. Now, you either laugh or you understand. Like, I'm, we're from a generation that those words mean nothing to us. The world will let it happen. They let it happen in North Korea. They let it happen in Pakistan. And they will let it happen in Iran. And this is a regime that is trying to destroy the state of Israel. And not just Israel. Our Arab neighbors and also are developing ICBM rockets and missiles.

Not for Israel. Last time I looked at a map, Israel was on the same continent as Iran. So those intercontinental ballistic missiles, they're for you. They're for Europe. And so you have to stand up to that to have any chance, I think, to have a smart policy. If Netanyahu were commander-in-chief of the Israeli armed forces, we will not be having this conversation today. We've got just about a minute or so left. You've lived and breathed the U.S.-Israel

relationship as a private citizen, as a public official. As John said, you were the most consequential Israeli ambassador to Washington and were at a front row seat and were the architect of some pretty important developments over the course of a long period of time. Are you hopeful about the U.S.-Israel relationship? Very hopeful. Tell me why. And I'll explain why. I don't know if I can do it. We can go. Where's John? Can we go a minute over? I'm going over time. By the way, Roger is saying he nods yes. So I don't care what John says, you know. Eric just said Roger's no longer chairman. So Elliot, Elliot says go for it. There you go. That is the true passing of the torch.

I'm a little worried. This is the first Jewish event I've been in 25 years. It's on time. Yeah. That's what I'm worried about. All right. But I'll tell you why. I am extremely optimistic.

In fact, I believe that Israel will be the most important ally of the United States in the 21st century, which is a big statement to make from somebody who had the privilege of serving as an ambassador of a country the size of New Jersey with all of 8 million, now we're over 9 million people. Why? Two reasons, security and technology. I'm going to make Dan Senor president of the United States. I think that's an upgrade, right? Yeah, a little bit. And I'm going to tell you, you can only choose one ally around the world for the next 50 years. One ally. And now when you think about insecurity, think about a military that can defend itself by itself so you

don't have to send American sons and daughters to defend other countries. Think about a country with an intel capability that can give you critical information to keep Americans safe and other allies safe. Think about a country with a cyber capability because that's a completely new form of warfare and so you need a good partner there. And think about a country with weapons-making capability. Now, it's not Australia, great ally of the United States. It's not France. It's not Germany.

It's not Canada. No, you're down to two. UK and Israel. UK does have capabilities, particularly in cyber, and their intel is very good. Those James Bond movies, there's some truth to there. They're good at intel. They're good at cyber. The state of their military?

Israel's standing army is bigger than Great Britain's. People don't know that. But you're really down to two. There's a conversation about Israel and Great Britain. Now, add technology. Secretary of State Pompeo spoke here about China being the one threat really that can change America's position in the world. Which country are you going to choose to be your partner to make sure that America remains the preeminent

technological force in the world for the next half century? No offense to British people who are here, but they're not in the same zip code as Israel when it comes to technology. So from a pure view of American interest, Israel is the most important ally for the United States. This is a new story and it was buried under disagreements with Obama and under agreements with Trump.

But the major change that has happened in the relationship between the United States and Israel is we matter to America. America always mattered to Israel, right? And Israel always mattered for Jews. But now we matter for America's national security and American national prosperity, and you're going to see us matter more and more. The old argument against Israel for 60 years or so was all about it undermines U.S. interests to back Israel. That was the argument. I remember when Walt Mersheimer wrote that book in 2007, people thought this was going to be a new wave against Israel with this argument that you have the nefarious lobby that is working to divert America from what its interests were,

that was actually the last shot in the old war. Because that argument was based on two things, Arabs and oil, which is really one thing. And that's changed because America now has become much more, I hope they continue to be energy independent, and the Arabs have moved over to Israel. So I don't know if people have noticed, the entire argument against Israel has shifted. It is no longer an argument about interests. It is now an argument about values. Israel's an apartheid state, a genocidal force, the dumbest genocidal force in history, I should say. All of these attacks are attacks on values. But what holds an alliance together with countries is interest. You started with Saudi Arabia. It wasn't Saudi values. Now, Israel, if it were

values that were running, governing the world, we would be the world's superpower. I have no doubt about that. And I relish that debate to go after those people who accuse Israel of apartheid. You know, we're the only country in the history of the world to take blacks out of Africa to freedom. Tell that to your kids. Tell that to your grandkids. All the attacks against Israel, all these wild allegations, what it is is just a new antisemitism. And we know it. We should just be able to articulate it and make sure that our kids and our grandkids can articulate it. But that's a different argument. Right now, America's interests and Israel's interests are pulling us closer and closer together. And what we have to do is have that values debate on the college campuses and elsewhere. But the trajectory of U.S.-Israel relations is taking off. There's

one threat to it, and I'll end with this. And I gave a speech about this seven years ago already. The one threat to it is that no, because what holds us together, America and Israel, are not just values and interests. It is a common sense of destiny. You know, America has many allies, but the intensity of affection for Israel is different. Why? Because we are not just countries, we are causes. America is a cause. Israel is a cause. Holland is not a cause. It's a democracy, but it's not a cause. And the danger that I see to the U.S.-Israel alliance is if people in either country no longer believe that they're a cause. They no longer believe in American exceptionalism or they no longer believe in Israeli exceptionalism. And there's a big difference now. The forces of Israeli exceptionalism are on the march. The forces of American exceptionalism are in retreat.

And I'd like to see a young generation of Americans, forget Jews, who actually believe that America is the greatest superpower in the history of the world and a tremendous force for good. If you hold that line on American exceptionalism, don't worry about us in Israel, because we're moving ahead. If you hold that line on American exceptionalism, don't worry about us in Israel, because we're moving ahead. If you hold the line here,

then I think our best days are yet to come. We packed a lot into 34 minutes. So I want to thank Ron Dermer for a great conversation. That's our show for today. To follow the work of Ambassador Ron Dermer, you can track him down on Twitter. He's at Amb Dermer. That's A-M-B-D-E-R-M-E-R. And to follow the work of the Tikva Fund, also on Twitter, at Tikva Fund, T-I-K-V-A-H-F-U-N-D.

And you can also go to the Tikva Fund website, tikvafund.org. And also, Ambassador Dermer's work with JINSA. Also, you can go to them online at jinsa.org. Call Me Back is produced by Ilan Benatar. Until next time, I'm your host, Dan Senor.