School of War - The Middle East After America?

Episode Date: September 22, 2026

Could Pakistan, Saudi Arabia, and Turkey form a “Muslim NATO?” Pakistan has the nuclear arsenal, Saudi Arabia has the wealth, and Turkey has the NATO-trained military—“you put these three together and it becomes a pretty formidable force,” says CBS News senior foreign correspondent Imtiaz Tyab. Today, he joins School of War to discuss whether the pact could really become an effective alliance, what the effort reveals about America’s changing role in the Middle East, and what five years of Taliban rule have meant for Afghanistan: “I’ve never seen the Taliban more confident,” he said. 02:14 — Reporting From Afghanistan 05:42 — The War in Afghanistan 11:29 — A More Confident Taliban 13:09 — Life Under Taliban Rule 16:13 — Afghanistan’s Secret Girls’ Schools 20:26 — Letters From Afghan Girls 25:30 — Afghanistan Under the Taliban 28:47 — A Girl’s Plea to the World 30:07 — The Pakistan-Saudi-Turkey Alliance 31:47 — A “Muslim NATO”? 40:33 — The Abraham Accords 44:27 — Testing the New Defense Pact This episode of School of War is brought to you by Maven Smart System, the builder platform for the American warfighter, fielded across the force and live on the frontline today. Learn more at palantir.com. This episode of School of War is also brought to you by Stratolaunch, a leading pure-play hypersonics company.  Stratolaunch helps the U.S. and its allies move new hypersonic technologies from concept to capability, faster and cheaper.  Learn more about how Stratolaunch is accelerating the future of hypersonics at Stratolaunch.com. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

This episode of School of War is brought to you by Maven Smart System, the builder platform for the American warfighter, fielded across the force and live on the front line today. Maven Smart System isn't just software you use. It's the platform you build on. Every day, thousands of uniformed service members use AI coding agents to build their own agentic applications across all warfighting functions on top of the DOW's integrated ontology. What once took a contract in a year, now takes a warfighter and an afternoon. Administered by OSWCDAO, powered by the Palantir platform. One platform deployed everywhere at all classifications. Build at the speed of war.

From Istanbul to Islamabad, it's as turbulent a time as ever in the broader Middle East. Today we talk with MTIEB of CBS News, who's just returned from spending the 25th anniversary of 9-11 in Kabul. We'll talk about life in Afghanistan since the Taliban consolidated its control there and resistance against the government, including the incredible story of MTIAS's visit to an underground illegal school for girls there. We'll also talk about competing visions of order for a post-Iran war Middle East. Let's get into it.

a date which will live in history. A bloody experience of Vietnam is to end in a state. We continue to face the rain situation in the ground. On the landing ground, no bike in the fields and in the street, which will never know. Hi, I'm Aaron McLean. Thanks for joining in School of War. I am delighted to welcome to the show today. MTIAv.

MTIAS is senior foreign correspondent for CBS News. He's based in London, though he joins us today from Canada, where he's, originally from. MTS, thank you so much for coming on School of War. Thank you. It's good to be here, eh? That was my Canadian insertion. So, yeah. MTS, every time I turn on the TV, I feel like you're like on a boat in the Strait of Formuz. You're in Iran just after we bombed it. That's in 2025, not 2026. You are, you are in Afghanistan for the 25th anniversary of 9-11. You get around. And I wanted to start today with this recent Afghanistan trip.

That can't have been your first time in Afghanistan, was it? No. I would say Afghanistan is probably my longest journalistic relationship. I first started going to Afghanistan back in 2010. And I'll sort of remind our listeners and viewers what was going on in 2010. It was Obama's surge. He was trying to build on the success of the surge in Iraq, thinking he could replicate it in Afghanistan, didn't go great. Big battles, lots of casualties,

very little to show for it. And I was there for that. And then the very quick sort of beginning of the very long drawdown. I was based in Islamabad from 2010 to 14. And I would do what some people called the Taliban shuffle, where you'd kind of go between Islamabad and Kabul back and forth, back and forth. Yeah, so I've been covering up. So today, yeah, I get the point of the name. Right. Yeah.

It's a bit of a shuffle like this. It's a bit awkward when you're like flying over the Duran line, but, you know, we try our best. But it's, yeah, it's a country that I've been reported on extensively, obviously, throughout, you know, half of America's longest war, embedded with U.S. forces, at one point, U.S. special forces, obviously the Afghan National Army as well, and really tried to make sense of the Republic of Afghanistan, the government in Kabul and the many issues surrounding that government, whether it was led by Hamid Karzai or Ashrafgani

and the corruption and mismanagement that plagued that government. But what I've also done is since the Taliban takeover in 2021, which came off the back of the negotiated agreement with the first Trump administration and implemented by the Biden administration. Surprise, didn't go great. But we've been to, I was there in the immediate aftermath of that withdrawal and had gone to Afghanistan pretty much every year since. So for me, Afghanistan is a tale of two Afghanistan. It's the one that was that I covered when the U.S. was there trying to build this state, nation build, as we say it, and the one where the Taliban has been in control. And when we start, started talking about the September 11th anniversary, 25 years, we felt like we can't talk about

9-11 if we don't talk about 9-12 and beyond. And Afghanistan made a lot of sense for us to go there. And so we did. And it was, again, a country that I've repeated repeatedly since the Taliban takeover. But I'll be very honest with you, Aaron. I don't think I've seen. the situation there quite so bad for the Afghan people. And I don't think I've seen the Taliban more confidence in their power than I have on this trip. Well, there was some incredible reporting out of that trip to include this visit to a secret girl school, which I'll ask you about in just a moment. But before then, and this is really out of personal curiosity, because I also have a 2010 history in Afghanistan. Who were you with when you were there for that first visit?

So, yes, to answer your question, we would always be based in Kabul. And then it would basically be, we would go to Bagram Air Base and we would basically sit on a bench quite literally waiting for somebody to say, hey, you can go to that forward operating base or, hey, you can go to this part of the town. And, you know, look, I was a very young foreign correspondent. It was my first big story, if I'm honest with you. I can't. tell you how exhilarating it was to climb into a Chinook in the middle of the night, going to a different corner of Afghanistan. And it was also extraordinary to be able to go to places like Masari Sharif, for example. And that is, you know, where a lot of U.S. allies were. And, you know, you would meet with the Europeans and then you'd meet with the Canadians. And then you'd meet with the Americans. And, you know, one of the things that I'll say, and I think it's really easy to look back at Afghanistan and the U.S.'s engagements and other countries' engagement to sort of say, well, what was that all worth and what was the point? Sure, I think those are

fair questions, but I think what it always struck me throughout that time was just how committed everybody was, like truly committed. And I never want to lose sight of that. You know, I was speaking to a former Air Force, or not a former retired Air Force colonel while I was in Afghanistan, a Colonel Burgess, Joshua Burgess, and I asked them that very question, which was, was it worth it? And his answer was yes, categorically. Because even though the situation in Afghanistan may not be great now, there was a moment where there was a horizon. Sometimes we don't get to reach the horizon, but there was a horizon. And we fought for that, quite literally, blood, treasure, you name it.

There was a lot that was paid for that horizon. But it was there. You had women on the courts. You had women lawyers. You had women becoming doctors who were in part of every facet of Afghan society and life. That is not true for today. But in that moment, it was. And so to answer your question, I was very fortunate to be able to travel to many

corners of Afghanistan, not just with U.S. forces, but also with European and allied forces, and also Afghan forces. And it was dangerous. You will remember the period of blue-on-green. That was a very real thing. It was a dangerous time. And we got very close to a lot of dangerous things, including in Kabul, you know, the Serena Hotel where we would say was attacked, you know, the restaurants we would go to, were attacked, journalists were attacked. You may remember Kathy Gannon from the AFP, she was attacked by an Afghan police officer. And so, it's a very complex picture for those of us who spent time there, including yourself. I think we would both agree that it's not easy to reduce it to whether this was good or bad.

It is a very layered experience. But for me to have been so present on the ground in Afghanistan, post-U.S. involvement, post-allied involvement, it's still a complicated picture because what Afghanistan has and what the Taliban inherited, rightly or wrongly, is a functioning state. Akemsan does function as a state. There are governments, there are ministries, there are systems in place

which this government or whatever you want to call the Taliban could not dream of. And strangely and paradoxically, it is to the benefit of the Afghan people. Now, human rights is an issue. It is probably the most serious issue there. poverty, unemployment, all these things that the Taliban as the government is responsible for. It is, again, a place that I try not to oversimplify because I don't think anybody benefits

from an oversimplification of America as long as war and what's happened since. I do remember the green on blue period. Well, we were lucky. I was there the first half of 2009 into the first half of 2010 where there were sort of isolated incidents, but it had not yet become an endemic issue. It did, sort of as we were leaving, like the summer of that year on, I think is when it really started to cook off all over the place. I did nevertheless sleep with a loaded M4 every night just in case. Do you still? You know, it's funny. I'm over it now, but when I got back at first, you do have that sort of

muscle memory of having it nearby at all times, and it is slightly unsettling when it's, you know, you have to hand it back when you come home. and it was slightly unsettling for it not to be there. So you said that the Taliban today are as, I can't remember if your exact word was confident, but something like that, as confident as you've ever seen them. Tell me how you got that impression.

Who did you talk to this time in Kabul? Why do they have this swagger? I think it's now five years since the Taliban has taken over. And if we want to rewind the clock, the Taliban pre this current iteration, had only controlled Kabul for five years. They came in in 1996, and they were out in 2001. And here we are.

They came in in 2021, and they're still there here in 2026. And they are isolated, but the reality is, is given the state of Afghanistan and the number of countries that were involved, they have had overtures from several countries, including. the European Union. They have formal recognition from Russia, a number of countries like India, Gulf countries. While they don't formally recognize Afghanistan, they are present in Afghanistan. As you know, Afghanistan is an extraordinarily wealthy country when it comes to resources, minerals especially, rare earth metals. That is a very tantalizing prospect for a lot of countries, especially countries who, unlike the U.S.

may not necessarily look at human rights through the lens that we may do, especially when it comes to women and girls. And they are circling, and the Taliban understands that. And while their coffers are pretty empty, they're starting to fill again. And I get the sense that the thalabon's approach is if we can wait everyone out, They're just going to have to come to us. I hate to say it so far. It seems to be working.

You also mentioned that the situation of the Afghan people seem to you to be as bad as you've seen it. Tell us how you gained that impression and tell us in particular the story of this school. And give us a little color. How did you learn of the existence of this place? Obviously, you can only give so much detail because, you know, as you did in your reporting for CBS, you're not going to say anything that could include the local authorities into the very specifics. But how did you become aware of it? How did you get there? What did you see? So, Afghanistan, as a country that is now ruled by the Ghaliban, is the only country on earth where girls over the age of 11 are banned from formal education.

Let's just think about that. The only country on earth where girls over the age of 11 are banned from formal education. That is the Taliban's Afghanistan. It means women are not in universities. It means women are not in medical colleges. It means women are not present in any meaningful way in Taliban governance. They have been pushed to the margins in a way that almost defies logic. And yet when you're in Afghanistan, you see it.

Yes, in a city like Kabul, you will see women. You will even see them working in certain jobs where they are directly engaging with women. The Taliban will tolerate that. But the issue of education is something it just seemed, as a group, seems to be immovable on. And so I interviewed a man by the name of Abdul Qahar Bal. Now, he's an interesting guy. I've interviewed him a number of time. He's a senior Thalabon spokesperson for the Ministry of Foreign Affairs. His biography is interesting, born and raised in New Zealand, of Afghan descent, and was very compelled to move to Afghanistan and join the Thalabon. And so he is a very articulate person, but he is very rooted in the Thalabon doctrine and their belief. And we, We had pretty testy exchanges when it came to the question of women and girls. He insisted that it was a technical matter, that it was homeschooling.

Obviously, I was incredibly incredulous about it and said as much to him. And I made it clear that no Muslim majority country on earth bans girls from education. Is the Taliban somehow aware of something that Saudi Arabia, for example, is unaware of, that Indonesia, which has the largest Muslim population on Earth is unaware of, and yet they are, and he didn't have an answer for that. And so this is my sort of way of setting the table to answer your question as to how did we discover this, frankly, resistance that has emerged, and that is women, girls, determined not to just be in their home, and wither away and learn nothing.

That they have in a very informal way decided that they refused to not be educated and so they have started what we would call secret schools. And these schools, and I'm going to be painting very broad strokes here, but they can be found in private homes, they could be found in disused businesses. There are a lot of them. It has to be said.

And we threw a lot of negotiating. This was not an easy thing to do. We had to give a lot of assurances. We would not reveal anybody's identity. We gave a lot of assurances. We would not reveal the location where we were filming. And we felt strongly about giving those assurances as well. I mean, as journalists, do no harm.

But we also felt it was very important to tell this story and to give these women and girls a voice. So we were invited to one of these schools. and we just sat in the back and watched. And there they were, 14 to 16 year old girls, a couple dozen of them, and they were studying advanced calculus. And I couldn't make heads or tails of it

watching these young girls doing better than me. Yeah, exactly. And it was astonishing. And the links they went to to obscure what they were doing was extraordinary. All they came to that classroom with was a pen and a notepad. Some of them would even carry scraps of fabric in their bag so that if they were stopped by the Taliban, they could say that they were just going to sewing lessons because that is something the Taliban would tolerate.

And I don't think I ever saw a group of girls more committed to understanding the complexities of advanced calculus than I had sitting in that room. And we spoke to the teacher. She was a 25-year-old who was about to graduate from university with an advanced science degree. And she was not given that degree because she was banned from her university education. And it was quite an emotional conversation because I was asking her, you know, you're taking a lot of risks to interview or to teach these girls. Why do you do it? and she said her mother had passed away recently and on her deathbed she made her make a promise

that she would keep teaching those girls and she said her mom said to her, I'm illiterate. The Taliban did not allow me to get an education 20 years ago. Don't let that happen to these girls. And so she teaches them. And at one point, when we had only a brief period of time there, we were there for 40 minutes. It's not a huge amount of time when you're trying to make a television piece of any length.

And as we were leaving, the teacher turns to me and says, I want to give this to you. And she started collecting pieces of paper. And I'd assumed that they were just assignments. I wasn't really sure what's happening. And she turns to me and says, I have 21 letters. here from the girls in this room, and we're calling them letters to the world. And Aaron, inside these letters, which were all handwritten by these girls, were some of the most searing, heartfelt, heartbreaking, and yet incredibly defiant letters I have ever read in my life.

And I'm going to read one for us. Yeah, I'm going to read some of it to you. One of the letters said, I do not want to become a victim of history. I do not want someone else deciding my future for me. We girls are not trying to take anyone else's place. We simply want to have a place of our own in the world. Even if my books and my pen have been taken from me,

they cannot take my dreams away. I dreamt of becoming a judge, and that dream gave me the strength to keep going. but today so many of those dreams remain trapped in the silence of the rooms of my home. Perhaps to you in the wider world, the story of girls being denied in education is simply another story that captures your attention. But for us, it is suffering without a visible flame, a pain that burns through our bodies and deep into our bones. Listen to the voice of a girl carrying all this pain as she says, please do not leave us alone.

This is written by a teenage girl. 14 and 16 years old. One question, like I'm just, I'm curious about the mechanics. So these are in Dari and then you had them translated? Yeah. So we have an incredible producer in our London Bureau, Kamala Salih.

He himself is a family of Afghan refugees, moved to the UK. And he translated every single one of those letters and beautiful prose. and I will read some more letters to you, but I think one thing that I think we need to talk about is how this story has resonated in a way that, I mean, it obviously sat with you and sat with me

and sat with viewers at home, but we made a promise to these girls that we would share these letters. And we did. We not only put it on our broadcasts, but we also put it on our website and the translations, we put it on social media. At last count, Aaron, we have had almost 12 million engagements on these letters.

That is how moved people around the world, especially in the U.S., have been, at the words of these girls. And remember, these are 14 to 16-year-olds who are writing with such clarity. and pain that I can't see how anybody can read these words and not want to do something for them. What would be the consequences either to the girls, the students, or to the teacher? Because I presume they're different sets of consequences,

if any of them were caught. We asked them. Their biggest fear is arrests. Another fear is just being beaten. and forced home. To be a woman in Afghanistan and defying the Taliban is a dangerous thing to do. This isn't a go home to your family sort of thing.

This is you will go to a jail and we don't know how long you will be there for. This is you could potentially face violence in that moment. this is something that hangs over these women and girls who just want to learn. And they know this. And some parents don't let their children go to these secret schools for very obvious reasons. They just cannot bear the idea of putting their daughter at the kind of risk that we've just discussed. But then there are girls who refuse to be at home and not learn. And I feel very honored to have been able to spend time with those girls and to be given those learners.

This episode of School of War is brought to you by Maven Smart System, administered by OSW CDAO, powered by the Palantir platform. Maven isn't an app. It's a builder ecosystem. Right now across the Joint Force, thousands of uniform service members are pointing AI coding agents at their hardest problems and building the tools they need themselves, targeting workflows, intel products, battle management. No ticket, no vendor, no wait. The warfighter closest to the fight is now the one building for it. That's how you fight at the speed of war. One more logistical question, then I'll ask you to read any of the other letters that you find really striking. But I guess just I haven't had the pleasure of traveling in Taliban-controlled Afghanistan. And so as a consequence, I don't quite know how to picture the logistics of moving around as a team of media. I guess in the back of my head, I sort of my assumption must be sort of North Korea-like that you must have minders. But obviously, you were able to make it to this school unobserved.

How did that work? Are you just sort of moving about Kabul of your own accord? Yeah. So I'm guessing you've spent time in Kabul. No, no. I only had the pleasure of central Helmand province. Beautiful Helmand province. Beautiful, I believe the desert to the west of the river in the part of the province I was in.

It's called the Dash de Margo, which I also believe translates to the desert of death. Yes. Which kind of sums it up. I was going to say, having had spent some time in Helmand. I can pick up other places in Afghanistan. I might want to spend time. Yeah. Look, as somebody who's spent, I mean, I practically lived in Kabul for a number of years.

Again, and this is no credit of the Taliban, but it is a reality when wars end and the guns go quiet. Kabul used to be fortress Kabul, right? The blast walls are gone. The checkposts are gone. The military conglars are gone. The city itself looks very, very dense. different to those of us who would know Kabul during the time of the U.S.'s engagement, whereas the Kabul now doesn't look like that anymore. Yes, the ministries that were built up

by the U.S. and Allied forces still are very secure. But for your average Afghan, who for 20 years lived under the threat of a possible car bombing or a possible suicide bombing or a sticky bond stuck to your car or any kind of asymmetrical warfare that the Taliban was waging, frankly against its own people as much as it was against US and allied forces. That threat is gone. And people do walk a little bit taller because they don't feel as afraid as they used to. Just as a side note, I'm sure you're familiar with Wardak province, which is just outside of Kabul. and for those listening or watching, Wardak, again, it's only an hour outside of Kabul,

but the Kabul to Kandahar Highway cuts through Wardak province. And for almost all that war was perhaps one of the most dangerous roads you could travel on. We never did, frankly. In all my years of reporting on Afghanistan, we never did.

And on this trip, we drove to Wardak. We just drove there. Now the scars of war are, everywhere. And I use that as an example to say that Afghanistan, paradoxically, under the Taliban, is far more safe and far more secure than I've ever experienced it, and probably far more safe and secure that this country has ever experienced in nearly half a century of war, occupation, civil war, violence, you name it. That is true. But the repression, the oppression, and the isolation is very real. And it is very real. And it is a very real. And it

It is something that women and girls live with every day. And it is something that those who, even if they have a hint or a width of working with U.S. forces or allied forces, are rooted out and punished in ways that is still happening. Read us one more letter, if you would MTS. Something you'd like to leave us with before we shift gears. I'll start with this letter. Dear world, hear me, I want to talk about something that perhaps, seem simple. The right to study, the right to work, the right to choose, the right to build my own future. Are these really such great demands? These are the most basic rights every human being should have.

I want to live in a world where being a girl is not a crime. I want being a girl to never mean having to shrink my dreams. World, I am asking you for something simple. An ordinary life. A life where having enough to eat is not a dream. Where having a job is not a matter of being lucky. And where safety and freedom are not fantasies. I still have hope, even though every day gives me another reason to lose it. I do not want the circumstances I was born into to determine all that life has in store for me. Again, 14 to 16 year old girls conveying to the world in these handwritten letters,

words that are so wise and so deep and just speak to the real challenges that they're going through. And there's 21 of them out of millions of Afghan girls who are living through this. That's extraordinary, MTA is. It's extraordinary.

I want to shift gears before we wrap up here. When we were first talking about this episode is before you went to Afghanistan, and we had been chatting about the Mecca pact or this mutual defense agreement that has just come about between Pakistan, Saudi Arabia, and Turkey in recent months. You hear much discussion of other countries in the region flirting with association with this group. I've heard of Bangladeshi flirtations. I've heard of Egyptian flirtations. It is a kind of fascinating development to me. It's sort of, to me, to me,

it's sort of on a nice edge. I can't decide if it's deeply substantive and says very important things about the future or if it's kind of risible or both. And maybe you can help me untangle that. You've spent a lot of time in the region based in Islamabad. You know, I see it in the following way. You've long had at least two competing visions of order in the region. You have the traditional U.S.-led system, which the Abraham Accords was a kind of attempt to revive and strengthen and balance against Iran. You had the Iranian vision of Iranian hegemony in the region. And what's so striking about this new arrangement is it seems to be exclusive of both.

That is to say, it sort of rejects both American and Iranian, call it what you like, hegemony leadership, and set its own course, but it's totally unclear to me how it will work. So with that, by way of preamble, how's it going to work, MTS? Good question. I think if I knew that answer, I'd be paid a lot of money by these countries to advise them. I don't think they know, if I'm very honest with you. I think this has emerged in a way that while there has always long been talk of this, that the Iran war has really accelerated this.

I want to preface my answer by saying none of this would be happening without the tacit approval of President Trump. I think we need to make it clear that these countries give. in their relationship with President Trump and with the U.S. would not go rogue and enter into these agreements without this permission. And I think it speaks to President Trump's overall view of the region, which is these people need to take care of themselves. Why are we taking care of them? And I think that underpins all of this.

Now, to go to your question, which is how is this going to work? Again, I don't know. The reality is, is you take a country like Pakistan, which is the only Muslim majority country with declared nuclear weapons. That makes it a very useful country. It's also a country, somehow bizarrely, I would say, that the Trump administration and President Trump personally has an affinity with, at least with its leaders, in a way that for me is somebody who is in Islamabad in 2011, where I got a call at 5 o'clock in the morning saying something's going down in Abadabad. get in a car, to only then turn up outside that compound to learn that Osama bin Laden was captured and killed. And obviously, the, you know, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the,

watching this relationship between the U.S. and Pakistan crater and stay that way for a very long time to now be here. It is breathtaking. And so you have Pakistan, which has the nuclear arsenal and one of the world's largest standing armies, and a very good one, I might add. You have Saudi Arabia, which has so much money. It's mind-boggling. And then you have Turkey, which is a NATO country, which has a NATO-trained military. and is a major weapons manufacturer. And you put these three together,

and it becomes a pretty formidable force. And so the Egyptians, the Bangladeshis, other Gulf countries, we know Kuwait has recently signed an agreement with Pakistan. Perhaps it is the beginning of them joining this agreement. What people are suggesting in the region that this is the foundation of what may eventually become an Islamic-Ar Muslim NATO.

NATO is not something that was just stuck together with bits of tape. This is a formidable decades-old entity with the headquarters in Brussels, bureaucracy, some of it worthy of criticism, and the president does a lot. But this is not what that is. And right now, the real question, for Ankara, Riyadh, and Islamabad is that their goal to make it into that? Or is it just their way of signaling to the Iranians, possibly the Israelis, possibly others, that we're pretty tough too.

And look at what we have. Look what we're able to do. Now, in practice, is it working? when the Houthis seized Mokha in Yemen, seizing a chunk of Yemeni territory, but also part of the Bab el-Mendab. The question was asked of the Pakistanis, well, you have this mutual defense pact with Saudi Arabia

and you're also part of this agreement with Turkey. Presumably, you're going to go help the Saudis who are very much engaged in this. And the Pakistanis said, well, the agreement doesn't cover pre-existing conditions. And I think that tells you a little something about the durability of this agreement and what it actually is. The Pakistanis have since signaled that they will try to assist the Saudis in some way. But I tell you that story because I think there's just too much that is unknown.

But I think it does speak to what is rapidly shifting because of the Iran, war, which is many of these countries who still want to be very close to the U.S. Let's not lose sight of that. They understand that being close to the global hedgment is incredibly important. They also want to buy a lot of U.S. weapons, and they want U.S. technology. Yeah. But they also understand that President Trump has a very clear vision for America's future, and it means the footprint in that part of the world will shrink.

And they understand that they don't want to vacuble. you. So they're going to try to fill it. Is this the right way to be seen? But that's what they're trying to do. There's a tremendous amount there. I have a couple questions based on everything you've just said. First, just to your point about the low point of U.S. Pakistani relations back in 2011, the striking thing about where bin Laden was, it's worth recalling, is, you know, after years and years of everyone's sort of assuming he's in some cave somewhere in the frontier of Afghanistan and Pakistan. He's killed in this compound in Abbottabad, which, if I'm not mistaken, the compound, was it about a mile, something like a mile, give or take, from the Pakistani Military Academy,

which I used to teach at our Naval Academy in Annapolis. And in fact, I was there, or just getting there when this happened. And it was like somebody had rented an apartment and stuck bin Laden in it on, you know, West Street. a mile from the main gate of the Naval Academy. And then afterwards, you know, the government sort of claims up and down, well, who could have known? Yeah, exactly. Who could have known that this guy was there?

Could have happened to anyway. Yeah, take it even further. It was essentially, as if bin Laden was found living a mile away from West Point. I mean, it really was that important of the academy for the Pakistanis. And, you know, to think of your picture, a Badaabod is beautiful, right? It was this gorgeous mountain town. Like, if you're going to be hiding from the world, it's not a bad place to hang out. And obviously we've done a lot of reporting on how the U.S. was able to get access to the compound using vaccination drives. But we also know that the Obama administration did not have definitive proof he was there. It was a risk they were willing to take and it ultimately paid off. But it really spoke to how Pakistan, at least then, was a country where I think the deep state, for lack of a better phrase,

was operating in ways in which one hand didn't know what the other hand was doing. And I do think there had to have been at least some section of Pakistani intelligence that knew he was there. While the other did not and could go to the Americans and have meetings with their allies and have plausible deniability because they didn't know. But I do believe that there was some elements within the Pakistani security apparatus that was aware. There's just no way that he could have been there. as long as he had without them knowing. So to your point about the Mecca Pact coming about with at least tacit approval from the Trump administration and Trump himself, makes excellent sense.

I have no reason to push back against that. At the same time, it just raises the obvious question, though, which for a man and for an administration, it's invested so much effort over the years, and still speaks quite bullishly, by the way. You know, we could debate how realistic the bullishness is about the future of the Abraham Accorres. kind of overarching security structure for the region, which very much involves the United States. And of course, very much also involves Israel, sort of the whole, if not the whole point,

then certainly the cornerstone of it. Then to encourage or allow without opposition the creation of a parallel structure, which part of the, at least a cornerstone of which, to strain the metaphor, is the exclusion of Israel. It's just a strong. breaking tension between the two concepts. And so I wonder, I just wonder at the logic of it. That's sort of a, I don't know exactly how you want to respond to that, but it's, I know, I can't disagree, but it just doesn't make any sense. I think, I think I can actually answer that. I think from President Trump's point of view, he believes that he can get Saudi Arabia and Pakistan and other Muslim majority countries to join the Abraham Accords.

He does believe that. And I also don't think he's wrong. The problem is, and the tension is, is that all these countries will happily normalize with Israel. As long as Israel does one thing, recognize a sovereign Palestinian state. That's not going to happen. At least not under this government. And I can't see a horizon, which this happens in any meaningful period of time, certainly not while President Trump is in office. And I think these countries have said to President Trump, we will sign.

the accords, but these are what we want. And I'm sure President Trump has said, hey, Beebe, you want to deal with Pakistan? You want to deal with Saudi Arabia? You want to deal with these countries? This is what we got to do. Politically right now in Israel, the idea that this government would allow for an independent sovereign state, potentially part of East Jerusalem as their capital, I don't see that as a reality. And so we're at this impasse, but I still think from President Trump's point of view, I think he thinks given his level of influence in Israel, Remember, the most powerful and popular politician in Israel is Donald J. Trump, that he thinks that Netanyahu, who's facing down an election in November of this year and really wants Trump's endorsement, that maybe he can start pushing things in a certain way. It's obviously unorthodox diplomacy, but that is what President Trump has been very good at, frankly, is unorthodox diplomacy.

And again, I find it hard to believe that we see a reality in which this government in Israel says, Palestinian state, we're going to be neighbors. It's going to be great. And also Saudi Arabia, Pakistan, all these majority of countries have now normalized with us. And now we have peace in the Middle East. But I think that's what President Trump leaves. No, that makes a lot of sense, actually. That's very helpful. When this pact is getting negotiated, I'm curious what scenarios the leaders of the respective countries envisioned as realistic scenarios from military cooperation. So if we're going to exclude the very hot, very serious war, Yemen as a, as you put it well, a pre-existing condition. Even though, by the way, that war, it obviously implicates Saudi Arabia at its core, but it definitely affects both Turkey and Pakistan if for no other reason than through its impact on the energy markets. If the Houthis go the way that Iran has gone in the Strait of Hormuz and expand their strikes beyond Saudi targets, which they haven't seemed to, they haven't wanted to do. yet it seems, but they're in control of much more advantageous terrain now if they wanted to cause

more trouble. That's going to cause major, major issues in the days ahead. But even without that, I mean, the strike on the east-west pipeline in Saudi Arabia itself just strikes on energy infrastructure throughout the Arabian Peninsula. These absolutely affect Pakistan and Turkey as they do the whole world. So, okay, we're going to rule, but sorry, pre-existing condition, we're going to rule that one out. So what are the scenarios? Is it Turkey going to war with Israel? Like, sorry, I struggle to picture like the guy sitting around in Islamabad saying, yeah, we want to get in on that. I mean, we have India over here in the other direction. But let's sort of take a holiday and go on an adventure, you know, in the western part of the Middle East. Like I just, what are the scenarios here? I mean, Iran and Saudi is another Iran is pummeling Saudi Arabia. It's even shot at Turkey, if I'm not mistaken, at least one. less so Pakistan. What real world scenarios are these countries thinking about? Great question.

I don't know. Look, I think, again, as I was saying, it was born out of the uncertainty that this region has been plunged into from a security point of view, from an energy point of view, frankly from a diplomacy point of view. And these three countries who looked at each other, and let's be honest, the Saudis and the Turks don't love each other. Jamal Khashoggi, if you remember. There's a history there.

I saw the David Glein movie. You know, and I mean, the thing about the Turks is that, you know, they, Erdogan sees himself as the heir of the Ottomans. They obviously see themselves on the edge of Europe. They are, I will say this fairly decadively, fairly masterful when it comes to statecraft. And I will say the Saudis are pretty amateur at stakecraft. craft. You know, this is a country which has become fabulously wealthy in the last half century. MBS is a very young naive leader who has made catastrophic mistakes at his time as the crown prince.

And despite the bad blood following the Khashoggi killing on Turkish territory and Turkey exposed Saudi Arabia, leaked to all the press, every single detail, including audio of Khashoggi being killed and dismembered inside the Saudi consulate. This is not a close friend, which remains the most singular damaging thing that has happened to MBS and still he is defined by. And yet here he is signing a deal with the Turks, with the Pakistanis as well. Now, these countries with Pakistan do have good relationships. The Turks have historic ties with Pakistan and just South Asian Muslims at large. And the Saudis look at Pakistan as this country which helped them develop their military, help them develop their aviation industry. So that relationship is incredibly tight.

But you raise the most valuable question, which is if Turkey and Israel go through a hot war, will Pakistan send fighter jets and will it send 100,000 soldiers? Will Saudi Arabia start letting its bases be used by Turkish or Pakistani air forces to drop bombs on Tel Aviv? I don't think so. I mean, it seems hugely implausible. me. And so I think the terms of the pact, even though the language is an attack on one is an attack on all, I think the reality is that you will see car votes and some will be small and some will be big and some will be enormous. And I think it will be something that will be on a case-by-case basis, but I think there will come moments where the weaker partner, someone like a country like

Pakistan, we'll have a Turkey, we'll have Saudis say, get your butts over here, put your men on the line, and I think they'll do it. MTS-Tayyb, senior foreign correspondent, CBS News. Really, really, really interesting conversation. Thanks for joining and stay safe out there. We'll do. Dangerous Canada. The main streets of Vancouver. Thanks a lot, Aaron. That's great. This episode of School of War is also presented by Strato Launch, a leading pure play Hypersonics company. Hypersonic weapons systems travel five times faster than the speed of sound, making them difficult to predict, track, and defeat. America's advantage in hypersonics depends

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