Middle East: Peace Beckons | David Friedman | EP 279

The effect it's had on the people of Israel, the people of UAE, the optimism and opportunity it has brought to the Middle East, none of that has been covered at all. And I think it's all because it came from us, from the Trump Administration. Yeah, but that's no bloody excuse here, that's no excuse. Like, this is political as far as I'm concerned, and I think as far as anybody reasonable would be concerned.

It's important to give the devil his due, and that's the case even if the devil happens to be Trump and his damned minions. The facts seem to me to be clear on the ground that this represents a significant and very unexpected move forward on the Peace front in the Middle East, and that's been a problem that has threatened all of us for 70 years, for longer than that, on all sorts of fronts.

[Music]

Hello everyone, it's my great pleasure and privilege to have with me today Ambassador David Friedman. As the United States ambassador to Israel from March 2017 until January 2021, Ambassador Friedman successfully guided unprecedented diplomatic advancements in the U.S.-Israel relationship, including moving the United States Embassy to Jerusalem, a move that was promised by many previous administrations but never occurred, and recognizing Israeli sovereignty over the Golan Heights.

He is also among a very small group of American officials signally responsible for the Abraham Accords—comprehensive peace and normalization agreements between Israel and the United Arab Emirates, Bahrain, Sudan, and Morocco—for which he was nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize in 2021. Ambassador Friedman was recognized in each of the past five years by the Jerusalem Post as one of the 50 most influential Jews in the world, coming in first in 2020. He also was named one of the 20 most impactful persons of the past decade by the Jewish telegraphic agency.

Ambassador Friedman was honored by President Trump with a rare National Security medal in September 2020 and by the U.S. Joint Chiefs of Staff with the Meritorious Civilian Service Medal in April 2019. He has received numerous other honors, recognitions, and awards, including honorary doctorates from Yeshiva University in New York and Ariel University in the Chevron. On February 8, 2022, Harper Collins published Ambassador Friedman's memoir, "Sledgehammer: How Breaking with the Past Brought Peace to the Middle East." In his first week, Sledgehammer broke sales records for a book on the state of Israel.

Ambassador Friedman is also the founder of the Friedman Center for Peace Through Strength, which works to build upon the ambassador's achievements in strengthening the U.S.-Israel relationship.

"Welcome, Ambassador Friedman. David, it's a pleasure to talk to you. I'm very pleased that you're willing to share what you've done with me and my audience, and welcome to the discussion."

"Thank you, Jordan. It's an honor to be on your show. So let's start. Let's jump right in. Let's start with an overview of the Abraham Accords. I’m sure that my ignorance is shared by many people. We can start right from the beginning: What did you do, and why, and what does it mean?"

"Well, the Abraham Accords is a series of agreements between Israel and four Muslim countries. If you count Kosovo in Europe, it's actually five Muslim countries. People have heard for years, for decades, about the Arab-Israeli conflict, the most intractable, if you will, of all the conflicts. There was some progress made in the 1970s with Egypt and then in 1994 with Jordan, and that was it—25 years—with no progress.

You had the Arab League, consisting of about 22 countries, that reflexively would oppose Israel, not just at the United Nations but in every diplomatic attempt made by the United States. So the United States accepted this conventional wisdom that had been around for 50 years: Until Israel made progress with the Palestinians, there could be no progress among any other Arab nations, which was, in many respects, counter-intuitive.

We proved it to be flat-out wrong, and as a result, the Middle East remained a very dangerous place, with really no opportunities for any advancement. That was standing the fact there were more than 20 Arab countries, all with different issues, different populations, and different concerns. We knew that Israel and some of these countries already had covert contacts. We knew that most of these countries didn't hate Israel; some of them didn't even know why they didn't like Israel. Some of them just reflexively acted against Israel.

But you couldn't do anything because of this conventional wisdom. John Kerry was the biggest cheerleader for this point of view—that until Israel makes peace with the Palestinians, you can’t move forward. When we came into office in 2017, we were given a mandate from President Trump to try to bring some greater modicum of peace to the Middle East. What we recognized was that virtually everything that was in the playbook of the State Department for the past 50 years which was just wrong—it was just wrong. It was stale, and it had done nothing but increased the misery of the peoples living in the region."

"And what accounts for this remarkable intransigence on this front lasting 50 years? The evidence for the validity of your viewpoint is that when you challenge this presumption—and you said the central presumption was there was no movement possible on the Arab-Israeli front, or let's say on the Muslim-Israeli front, maybe to broaden it to some degree—there was no progress possible on that without movement in relationship to peace with the Palestinians. That was accepted dogma, and it put things into stasis for five decades now."

"I found it disturbing and, at times, amusing. I entered government from the outside. I had briefings early on when I was confirmed as Ambassador with people in the State Department, and to them, the entire Arab-Israeli conflict just boiled down to Israel and the Palestinians. That was the accepted dogma.

I challenged it on numerous occasions, and they said, 'Look, it's a great question. You're wasting your time. You're completely wasting your time. The Palestinians are the issue. If you solve the Palestinian issue, you can unlock the rest of the Arab world, the rest of the Muslim world. If you can't solve the Palestinian issue, nobody else will even talk to you.'

To put that into a bigger context when you say the Palestinian issue: you’re talking about Israel not just making peace with the Palestinian Authority, which, in and of itself, is a corrupt organization, whose leader, as people like to say, is in the 17th year of his four-year term. He was elected for four years; he hasn't had elections since. He stayed on for another 13 years with no democratic mandate. He runs a corrupt government, respects no human rights, the justice system is non-existent, and financial transparency is non-existent. There is extraordinary subjugation of women. Homosexuality is a crime punishable by death. I mean, those are the good guys, right?

Then you have Hamas, which operates in the West Bank but primarily controls the Gaza Strip. Take all that, and they're extraordinarily violent. They don’t even accept the notion that one Jew should live anywhere between the Mediterranean Sea and the Jordan River. These are the organizations that the State Department says, 'Until you get them on board, you can't move any further within the region.' And there's really no way to get them on board. I mean, there really isn't."

"So there's two issues at work there, from what I understand. The first is what appears to me to be an oversimplified rationalization for failure to move forward, which would be the acceptance of a low-resolution ideology that you can boil down all the complexities of the Arab/Muslim/Palestinian relationship to the issue of Palestine. And because that's intractable, there's no point wasting effort on the attempt to take a more differentiated approach to bringing peace to the Middle East. Combined with—and this is a mystery that we could also delve into—the fact that there seems to be a reflexive identification for many in the West with the Palestinians on the side of this conflict.

It seems to me that's fueled by this equally global and vague reductive notion that the Palestinians are oppressed, and oppressed people are always virtuous. And since oppressed people are virtuous, the Israelis must be oppressors and wrong, despite whatever sins, let's say, the Palestinian leadership manifests, which are justifiable in any case because of the fact that they're oppressed and couldn't possibly know better. Is that too cynical?"

"No, no, it's not even cynical enough. You could take it another step which is the Palestinians, apart from your point about, well, you know, they must be right if they're weak, which is, of course, one does not flow from the other. But the Palestinian leadership—the Palestinian Authority, which is, again, as people say, the least dirty shirt in the closet—spends hundreds of millions of dollars from its budget that could otherwise be used to build, you know, a hospital or a school. They use that money to reward and incentivize terrorists to kill Jews.

The United States funds the Palestinian Authority. We didn't under Trump; we cut that all out. But you know Biden has recently resumed all that funding. So just to put this in perspective, the United States of America, the taxpayers of the United States, are paying the Palestinian Authority to incentivize their people to kill Jews. I mean, that's not too broad a statement."

"Okay, well, I don't often get accused of not being cynical enough, but I do appreciate that correction. Let's return to the Palestinian issue later because we don't want to get sidelined entirely by that as the whole world has been sidelined for five decades. Let's talk about the UAE, Bahrain, Sudan, and Morocco. You said Kosovo, and so these countries, for some reason, were willing to move beyond, let's say, this State Department dicta and work with you to improve relations with Israel and to improve the possibility of peace in the Middle East. So why were they willing to do that, and why them in particular?"

"Let me focus. I'll share with you a conversation I had with, because I think it's the most telling, with the foreign minister of the United Arab Emirates. I sat with him, you know, this past summer after the Abraham Accords were out for more than a year, and I said to him, 'Is this just about Israel having common enemies with, you know, Iran and Bahrain? Is it just about the fact that everybody doesn't like and is threatened by Iran? Or is there more to this? What, in your mind, got us started?'

What he said to me is, you know, 'In the 21st century, the real conflicts in the world are not really between nations anymore; they're really between ideologies, and primarily they're between extremists and moderates. We in the UAE are fighting that battle, and in the United States you're fighting that battle, and in Israel you're fighting that battle.'

You have roughly, you know, 80 percent of the populations that are, you know, center-right, center-left, you know, in the middle. In the past, they've always been able to find common ground. But now, you know, you've got 10 people crazy on the left, 10 crazy on the right, you know, extremists willing to resort to violence to achieve their means, and that's the fight that we have to win. And Israel, the UAE, America, Bahrain, and Morocco were all on the same side of that fight. Our interests are completely aligned. I thought, you know, after the fact, that’s as good an explanation as I’ve heard from anybody as to why the Abraham Accords came together."

"But this is very important, just because there are reasons for people to align; you have to create the right environment to do that. You have to create the political opportunity for it to happen. You have to create the kind of—The United States has to create, you know, the coverage for these countries to move out of their comfort zone. It was a long process, and if I can, it began in May of 2017. I can share with you what I think was the first step, and one of the most important, if I could share that with you now."

"Please do."

"You know, the very first trip that President Trump took to the Mideast was—in, I'm sorry—the very, very first trip President Trump took on foreign soil was to the Mideast. He went to three places. The first place he went was to Riyadh in Saudi Arabia where he assembled 50 Muslim nations, and he said two things to them, and the tape is extraordinary. They were at rapt attention. He said two things which I don't think any president has ever said before.

The first thing he said was, 'Radical Islamic terrorism is your problem in the first instance. I don't want to have to deal with it on my side of the Atlantic. Don't make me deal with radical Islamic terrorism; you solve the problem. It's coming from here. And if you do, you will find the United States to be an extraordinarily good friend.' That was the first thing he said, and a lot of people listened, and a lot of people acted.

The second thing he said is, 'For those of you still wasting your time thinking that Israel is going to be wiped off the map or they're not going to exist, you're wasting your time. Forget about it. It's never going to happen. Israel, you should be seeking to emulate, you know, Israel as an economy, as a power, as a democracy. You know, this is a solution in the Middle East; it’s not a problem. And those of you who still think it's a problem and think somehow you're going to shortchange Israel or get it to go away or push it into the sea, it's a pipe dream. You're wasting your time, and it's inconsistent with the relationship with the United States.'

He said those two things, and let me tell you, at the time we couldn't tell you how far that would go, but now, looking back from hindsight, boy was that an important speech, and he doesn't get any of the credit he deserves for it, but boy was that important."

"The next thing he does is he flies directly to Tel Aviv. Now, they told him, you know, Mr. President, we have to stop at Amman. Why? Because you can't fly from Riyadh to Tel Aviv; the Saudis won't let. And the President says, 'I just spent two days with the King. He's making me stop in Amman. He's making me kind of go out of my way just for some symbolic gesture? Tell them I want to fly straight from Riyadh to Tel Aviv.'

Of course, when he made that request, it was granted, and this was the first flight ever from Riyadh to Tel Aviv. You know, Biden's making a big deal now that he's flying straight to Saudi Arabia from Tel Aviv. The president of the United States under Trump did it five years ago."

"So then he comes to Israel. Where does he go? He does something no president has ever done before. He goes to the Western Wall. He's the only sitting president to go to the Western Wall. Why is that important? Because, you know, presidents used to like to come to Israel and go to Yad Vashem, which is the Holocaust Memorial. It's an extraordinary place; it’s one of the most stirring places on Earth. But Yad Vashem is not the state of Israel. Yad Vashem is not the DNA of the state of Israel.

The DNA of the state of Israel is the Western Wall. It's the Temple Mount. This is what connects the Jewish people to their 4,000-year-old history. You know, at the Western Wall, you see Mount Moriah, where Abraham bound Isaac. You have the two temples. This is the place where Jews have prayed for 2,000 years to be returned. Well, Trump went there; again, the only sitting president ever to visit the Western Wall. Biden wouldn't go. I mean, he was too timid. He reverted to that stale sense of even-handedness; he wouldn't go.

So the president goes to the Western Wall and he gave an incredible speech in Israel again, recognizing not just that the Jewish people have suffered—which, of course, Jews have suffered throughout history—but that they did more than suffer; they built something. They restored their people to the land of Israel, fulfilling not vengeance for the Holocaust but fulfilling a 2,000-year-old dream, an unfulfilled dream of the Jewish people.

Then last but not least, he went to the Vatican, and he met with the Pope and he incorporated, you know, the Christian theology into, you know, his overall message. So these were the seeds that were planted that eventually got us to the Abraham Accords."

"Lots of steps then along the way."

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"Okay, so you said that Trump went to Riyadh; he brought 50 Muslim nations together, and he made two very blunt declarations, which were to control terrorism and to place that back in some sense in the domain of the responsibility of the Muslim countries. That is in accordance with the discussion you described with the leaders from the UAE, that the civilized people of the world say are suffering from the same problem, which is how do you control a minority of extremists. We can get back to that, and then Trump also said forthrightly two other things. That there's that the Americans are going to throw their weight behind Israel permanently, and that any dream of eradicating Israel’s state is a pipe dream unless you're willing to face the consequences, let's say.

And that also that Israel should be regarded as a state to emulate given its democratic structure and its thriving economy, and its ability, let's say, to regenerate the desert and all of that, and that it could be viewed as a partner to learn from and appreciate rather than as an enemy.

Then the emphasis on the necessity for the unbroken flight, the visit to the Western Wall, and the visit to the Vatican. So why in the world was Trump able to do that? Why was he willing to do that? What made him, let's say, simultaneously a friend of the Jews and Israel but also someone that the Arabs and the Muslims more broadly were willing to deal with?"

"Because, you know, he first of all assembled a group of people that he respected, and that I think were all moving in this direction. Primarily, I would say Jared Kushner and me, two guys with no government experience but people that he had great respect for. We explained to him that this conflict was going nowhere, and unless he radically realigned America's priorities, you know, he would finish his term in office the same way everybody else did.

We had these discussions, and I think, look, he is the right president for the Middle East because he is strong; he is fearless. I mean, he worked those actions, and they were manifest throughout his four years, including the decision to assassinate Qasim Suleimani, which was an extraordinary message sent to the Iranians. But the president is very strong; he's a strong leader.

In the Middle East, we have a saying: You're either strong, or you're dead. And everybody—even the countries that didn't agree with him, even the Palestinians that reviled him because he wouldn't agree with them—they respected him. Even the Palestinians said that the only guy who can make peace is Trump because he's tough and he's strong, and he backs up what he says, and none of us can pull the wool over his eyes. What we say on the Arab streets in Arabic is going to get translated; he's going to find out about it.

He's not going to give us the wiggle room to say nice things in English for the American press and then say something different to the Arab street. He’s holding us accountable."

"It’s very interesting. I mentioned to you just before we started this interview a statement by Nietzsche that great manners are seldom credited with their stupidity. Trump is, from the perspective of a psychologist, a person who's low in trait agreeableness—so highly disagreeable, or at least highly impolite, technically speaking. That's not an insult or a criticism, by the way; it just means that he's not—well, it means that he's forthright and blunt and brash and able to say no.

That does have the consequence of making him a divisive character on the domestic front. But it's an open question how much that forthright and stubborn strength of character is the prerequisite for the kinds of negotiations that you're describing. That's really something that we don't understand; we don't understand the full complexity of human personality and what's necessary in each situation. So why do you think he cared and made this a centerpiece of his policy? Because he is a businessman, in some real sense, and it wasn't self-evident to me—and I think to many people—that foreign policy would necessarily be an interest of Trump's. And yet he pursued this Middle East policy assiduously and carefully, and with Melissa forethought, let's say; also very effectively. So why was this so important to him?"

"Look, it wasn't something he ran on. He ran almost entirely on a domestic agenda. He has a real interest in Israel, both because people that he's close to have a deep interest in Israel, whether it was Jared or Ivanka or me or many of his friends that he dealt with over the years in the New York real estate market.

He also, I think, was intrigued by the challenge because, you know, peace in the Middle East is sort of considered as likely as a solar eclipse or maybe even less likely. So, you know, the challenge, I think, was something that he saw interesting. And, look, I don't think he spent a huge portion of his time on this. What he did is he deputized Jared and me to work the region. Jason Greenblatt as well, when he was working there, we worked the region; we studied; we thought more about what to do. After that trip, we began to move forward with some real historic pro-Israel moves, both because we wanted to do it, both because the president had promised he would do it, because they were extraordinarily important to many of the people that voted for him, and also because it would give us a real sense of how a pro-Israel policy could be harmonized with a pro-moderate Sunni policy as well.

You know, it was interesting: my friend Jared likes to talk about his conversations when he spoke to a few of his Arab friends in the region about potentially moving our embassy to Jerusalem, and they said to him, 'Jared, I'm not going to tell you to move the embassy or not move the embassy, but what I am going to tell you is that if you move the embassy, you'll find out who your friends are.' And that struck me as an extraordinary observation because when we moved the embassy, we did— we found out who our friends were."

"You know, the State Department, the CIA, much to the consternation of Mike Pompeo who was running the CIA at the time, but the CIA analysts predicted that if we move our embassy, we're going to create an arc of violence from Morocco all the way to Pakistan. Everything that we did on our own, all the conversations we had, suggested exactly the opposite. But what do we know? I'm a recovering lawyer and Jared is a real estate guy, but everything we knew, everybody we spoke to said, 'That’s not going to be the case.'"

"All right, well, it's also the case that you would think if you were thinking about this strategically beforehand, in some sense, that the move of the embassy to Jerusalem would have scuttled any chances whatsoever of— that would be the accepted dogma—would have scuttled any chances whatsoever of moving forward with a broader Peace Accord. So much for expert prediction, but that's not at all what happened."

"No, not only is not what happened, but, you know, in terms of the arc of getting from that trip that the president took in May of 2017 to the Abraham Accords, one of the most important steps along the way, counterintuitively, was moving our embassy to Jerusalem. Why? Because what the president was saying in moving our embassy to Jerusalem was he was delivering a few messages.

The first is, 'I keep my campaign promises. I'm a reliable ally.' I told people I would move the embassy to Jerusalem; so did Obama, so did Clinton, so did Bush. I'm keeping that promise; you can trust me. Number two: 'I'm going to fulfill the will of the American people. The American people have, through their Congress, voted overwhelmingly to move the embassy to Jerusalem through the Jerusalem Embassy Act. I'm taking that view seriously; I care what the American people think.'

The other presidents have all signed waivers; I'm going to do something different. Number three: 'I'm not afraid. I'm not—who would I be afraid of in doing? I'm not afraid of rogue nations; I'm not afraid of the threats of rogue nations; I'm not afraid of terrorism; I'm not afraid of rogue actors.' I'm going to do what's best for America; I'm going to do what I promised. If somebody wants to complain, you have my phone number, but I'm doing what I think is right."

"And as you said, you get to know then who supports you and who complains in a real concrete sense, right? Because it's no longer abstract; it's something that actually happened, something that was in some sense, let's say, provocative but also justifiable, especially from the Democratic legislative perspectives.

So who complained? I mean, apart from some, you know, perfunctory words of complaints that were kind of meaningless, you know, who complained? Hamas, you know, a terrorist organization dedicated to Israel's destruction. Nobody else complained; even the PLO, we don't care about that. In fact, we're happy about it because you always want to irritate the right people in some real sense."

"And so now, we now did a couple of things. We proved that we would keep promises; we proved that we would stand with our ally, Israel, and recognize what the American people have recognized for two decades—that Jerusalem's the capital of Israel. We're not afraid and we're willing to—So what happened? A lot of countries took notice and instead of being angry, they said, 'Wow, you know, America can really be a good friend to its allies; it could be counted upon under this president. How do we get in on this? How do we join this circle of trust?' It seems like a whole different America, this guy Trump. You know, I want to be with him; I don't want to be against them."

"I see."

"Okay, so let me ask you another question here. That's a little bit of a sideways move. As I mentioned when I introduced you, you know, my ignorance knows no bounds, and I want to talk a little bit about Jared Kushner and Jason Greenblatt. So I'll tell you right off the bat that I know very little about Jared Kushner, but I can tell you what I do know and how I learned it, and what I know is that he's a reprehensible individual who was never suited for his job, and he was a nepotistic appointee by the Trump administration, and that there is nothing good about him on any front.

I learned all of that, I would say, from my casual interactions with the legacy media, whom I've learned to trust about absolutely nothing. And so what I'm curious about is I need to know more. I would like to know more about Jared and why you and Jason Greenblatt and more about Greenblatt as well—why you outsiders, first of all, were brought in and why you were able to—you know, what was Trump's justification for bringing you in, why did you agree to do this, and why were you able to and willing to move the logjam?

It makes sense, right? If something's been stuck for 50 years, maybe you don't want to stay working with the same people who've been stuck for 50 years. And so outsiders arguably, at least, can look at something different. The counterargument would be, 'Well, you guys were in some real sense—I don't think this is overstating it—but foreign policy and policy amateurs.' So why you? What positive attributes, I suppose, had negative attributes did you bring to bear on the problem, and why did it work?"

"That question is probably—requires a book to fully answer—and I have some of that in my book. But I would say that, first of all, starting off kind of on a macro level, I don't think you have the Abraham Accords without Jared Kushner. I think Jared did two things that were essential for the Abraham Accords. The first of which was just generally, I think he established really important relations of trust with these countries.

Now, how do you know that? We announced the Abraham Accords, the first one with the UAE, on August 13th of 2020. We did it from the White House; we did it from the Oval Office. This was an Oval Office that was plagued by leaks, you know as well as I do—leaks every day. Every single day somebody was running to the press with something about Trump, what he was about to do, something unflattering, or even something good. I mean, but the leaks were just rampant.

When we were working on the Abraham Accords really, you know, from the day we began, we were working on our agreement with the UAE for over a month. When we announced the deal with the UAE on August 13th, it really shocked the world. Nobody saw it coming. Why did no one see it coming? Because Jared and I, and Jason had already left the government at that point. But Jared and I, and the president, and Mike Pompeo, Robert O'Brien, Mike Pence—that was it. Those were the only people in America who knew about this.

Certainly, Netanyahu and Ron Dermer and his National Security advisor, three or four people in the UAE. The level of trust that we established—and Jared was really, I would say, the key to all that—was extraordinary. When they got done without trust. The second thing that Jared did, which is I think maybe even more remarkable—so we put out a peace plan in January of 2020.

Most people consider it to be extraordinarily pro-Israel in my view. I think it was the most maximalist position that could be given to the Palestinians, a deal that involved Israel. It had the support of a right-wing Israeli government, which, you know, the Palestinians ran to the Security Council and ripped it up. When we announced this deal, there were responses from Saudi Arabia, UAE, a bunch of Morocco, other countries.

And Jared worked like, like he worked day and night to make sure that even though the Palestinians were going to trash this deal, we got, you know, we got more of a positive response from the moderate Sunni nations than we did. I mean, we got a response from Saudi Arabia that said this is a good start; we think this should be the basis of future negotiations under the supervision of the United States.

That's from Saudi. Saudi was the author of the Arab Peace Initiative, which had been their default position for 30 years. I mean, it was a one-page document that Israel could never accept. So, you know, Jared was able to work these countries in a way."

"How did he do it?"

"So, you know what? I actually think it was in the relationship. I think first of all, he had huge credibility because, you know, in the Gulf, almost always the guy who's sort of the second in command at the Gulf in any of these Gulf countries is related to the king. I think they saw Jared, you know, as a prince. This is a guy who really, you know, we can trust him, he can deliver for the president; the president’s never going to leave this guy hanging, so he’s credible.

Okay, so he's credible for a variety of reasons—very, very credible, also, look, very, very smart. Unfortunately, this doesn't come across; Jared doesn't do much media, but he's very, very smart; he's got a book coming out in August; I can’t wait to read it. I think—oh, I should interview him! You should! Because I haven't—I don't know what it says; I'm really looking forward to reading it.

But very, very smart, and with his eye on the ball. Extremely loyal to Israel. His grandparents are Holocaust survivors; his parents have invested huge amounts of their philanthropic dollars into Israel. But at the same time, he made many trips to the Gulf and just developed credibility."

"So I think that's really the heart of it."

"And this?"

"Okay, and so let’s talk about this relationship issue. So he was meeting people in person, I presume. And how did he pick the people? And what is it that he offered them? Because we also haven't talked about the specifics of the Accords themselves, which we have to get into."

"But you know, it was much more kind of touchy-feely in the first couple of years."

"Yeah, well that's so important, and I mean, it's also the case that it's very necessary not to have the details of this sort of process worked out on paper by bureaucrats who actually have no power whatsoever to transform it into policy, but to find decision-makers who, like Kushner, are close enough to actual sources of power so that when the discussions occur, the probability that the agreement is going to be transformed into action is extremely high. And that's a very difficult thing to negotiate if you're only dealing with mid-to-lower level bureaucrats."

"Now, I mean, Jared was there often, and, you know, he had three or four major portfolios, and this is one of them. And, you know, look, Jason, while Jason was in government, would trek over there as well. He’d sit and listen; Jacob's—Jason's a great listener; he's very, very non-threatening. I'm much pushier and more aggressive than him, so I'm sure people were happy to listen and host him, and he listens, and he heard, and he would come back with thoughts.

We, look, we, the—we were told by everybody, 'Don't put out a plan for peace between Israel and the Palestinians because it's not going to go anywhere.' And after all these conversations, we came to the conclusion that if we can come up with a plan which at least Israel is willing to accept and explain why this is reasonable, and if the Palestinians aren't going to go for it and they're going to kind of blow themselves up on the world stage, even that I think will go a long way to convincing some of these other countries that the time has passed the Palestinians by; it’s time to move on.

I mean, we don't give up on making peace with the Palestinians, but if Israel is willing to really go forward with a serious plan and the Palestinians just want to rip it up, that gives everybody a certain amount of cover to start doing what's best for their own people."

"Well, you guys removed the power they had in some sense. If the State Department had assumed that peace was only possible through the Palestinians, then that put a tremendous amount of authority and power in their hands. And so by walking around them in multiple directions, you eliminated that ultimatum power in some sense that the Palestinians had always wielded."

"The first thing we did, I think your viewers might be interested in knowing, the first thing we did was back also in May of 2017—there were a number of people that were speaking to the president and they were saying that the Palestinians were ready to make peace; it’s Netanyahu who’s the difficult one in this relationship.

'Go to Israel; beat up on Bibi, and you know, make him more reasonable, and the Palestinians will come to the table, and you'll win a Nobel Prize.' And a lot of people were telling him that, including people inside the government. When the president comes to Israel, I went and I did something which I got a lot of heat for afterwards, but I went and I told the—I said to Netanyahu, 'Look, just so you know, there are people—the president's being told that you’re the problem, that you're the Troublemaker; you're the guy that won't make a deal.'

He said, 'That's not true.' And I said, 'Well, look, if you want to convince the president, what I would suggest you do is let’s make a two-minute video of some of the worst things that Mahmoud Abbas has said. I mean, he’s supposed to be the peacemaker; let’s put together a film—nothing out of context, only the actual statements he's made about how, you know, the blood of every terrorist is holy, and that we will never stop helping our holy terrorists and we won't give up one inch of Israel and we're going to take all of Jerusalem.'

I mean, put that—let the president see it. He said to me, 'David, you know, I've met with countless world leaders; I've never made a video for them.' I said, 'Well, just make it; maybe we won't use it; maybe we will.' We got into a room and got into a room, and the video was there. I was there with Tillerson and McMaster and Jared, and I said to the president, 'Did you see the film?' and he said, 'What film?'

I said, 'Let’s play the film.' He looked at the film; he was shocked. He said, 'This is the guy? Is this the same guy that I met with in Washington? This is the guy that everybody's telling me is ready to make peace?' And then the next day he goes to Bethlehem to meet with Abbas, and for starters, Abbas doesn't let me—he doesn't let me attend; he banishes me from the meeting, which got the president very angry.

The president said to him, 'Look, you know, you're not going to pull the wool over my eyes; there’s too many people watching you right now. You know, you told me you wanted to make peace; I see this video, so it's exactly the opposite. I want to know who you are, okay? Don't do this to me; it's a big mistake. Don't play both sides; I’m not stupid. I can form judgments very quickly; you know who are you.'

And that also really changed dynamics of the relationship."

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"I want to move in two directions here, one after the other. Let's talk a little bit more about the details of the Accord. What is it exactly that this agreement puts forward in principle, or binds the signatory states to? UAE, Bahrain, Sudan, and Morocco? We can talk about the commonalities across the states and the differences, but can you give us all a description of the fundamental nature of the Abraham Accords?"

"Sure. The Abraham Accords are structured in two parts. There’s the Abraham Accords declaration, which is the same for every country in which there is a recognition that the parties will end their state of conflict and their state of hostilities. They will recognize each other's sovereignty; they will normalize relationships in all different ways, whether it's cultural, economic, or political. They'll engage in strategic cooperation on matters of common interest for their respective national securities. They'll open up embassies—reciprocal embassies—and exchange ambassadors, so it's basically a full normalization of peaceful relations.

Now that's the overall, if you will, common Abraham Accords. Now with each country, if you look at it, the way I tend to look at it is each Abraham Accord is like a triangle. You have Israel and a Muslim country at the base and you have America at the apex. In each case, you know, something different is happening. I'll give you some examples. Like with Sudan, they wanted to be taken off the terrorist list, and the Sudanese government had done significant things to combat terrorism.

By getting them off the terror list, the United States was able to help them with some basic needs—they needed grain, they needed—it's a very poor country. So in the case of Sudan, we helped them, you know, kind of end their status as a terrorist pariah; they deserved it. And by the way, it's incredibly important for Israel because most of the arms that were heading up into Hamas were going up through Sudan, through Sinai, into up into Hamas in the Gaza Strip.

So that's Sudan. In the case of Morocco, Morocco had a long-standing territorial dispute with a group called the Polisario in the Western Sahara. We had felt for years that Morocco was—that the world was better off with Morocco having sovereignty over this territory. A lot of other countries didn't recognize that sovereignty; we recognized Morocco's sovereignty over certain parts of the Western Sahara. That was sort of the lubricant that got them to the table.

In the case of the UAE, they're really—you know, the UAE is looking for some advanced weaponry. We said, 'Look, we don't—there is a—that Israel is entitled, by law, to a qualitative military edge; that assessment will be done by professionals. But clearly, to the extent that you—that there are no hostilities and you've normalized with Israel and you have diplomatic relations, that's certainly going to fare well in the calculus, you know; it doesn't—it may or may not be enough; that's not for us to decide, but that will certainly fare well in the calculus of your relationship with the United States and the United States military.

In the case of Bahrain, they were actually the easiest; they didn't ask for—there was nothing in particular that was on the table. But you know they wanted—they thought, and I think correctly so, that their people would be advantaged by all the opportunities that stem from the relationship with Israel. Remember that Israel has extraordinary advancements in technology, whether it's food tech, agri-tech, water technology, you know, cyber defense, financial technology. I mean, they were a world leader. I would say that in cyber, they may be tied with America, you know. I mean in water technology, they may be number one. So, I mean, there's a lot that Israel can provide once these relationships begin to bloom as trading partners."

"Great. So that all sounds extremely positive, and it's very interesting to see the commonality—the declaration of peace, that's explicit, direct mutual recognition of sovereignty—that's a big deal, the cooperation and normalization of political relationships, including the establishment of embassies and the opening of doors to communication, and then the cultural cooperation, which allows, for example, for Israel to be treated and to become a genuine trading partner, which you could see. I mean, if Israel is, in some sense, the Silicon Valley of the Middle East, which I think is a perfectly reasonable way of looking at it, that could be of incalculable economic value for the surrounding Arab people. So hooray for that!

Jordan, if you go to Ben-Gurion Airport on any particular day today, and you look at the flight board, there are more flights leaving Israel for Abu Dhabi and Dubai than I think almost any other location around the world. It's really extraordinary how this has blossomed over the last couple of years."

"Okay, and who do you think—I like to give credit where credit is due—and so we've talked a little bit about the Americans who were signally important in bringing this about, including in the background, from what I understand, Mike Pence. So who on the side of the UAE—we mentioned some of the leaders there. How about in Bahrain, Sudan, and Morocco? Who played a signal role in those countries?"

"You know, I think in Morocco it was the foreign minister who was at all times taking his instructions from King Muhammad VI. In the UAE, they have a very skillful ambassador to the United States named Yusuf Al-Otaiba, who really took the lead, I think, on behalf of the UAE, but of course subject to the approval of Sheikh Mohammed bin Zayed, who is the Crown Prince and the ruler.

In Sudan, you know, they had a civilian government and a military government as well. They had to reconcile in order to do this. They've since split; there's since been a military coup in Sudan. The United States under Biden doesn't seem to recognize anymore the Abraham Accords with Sudan, but Israel does, and frankly, the military of Sudan continues to support the Abraham Accords, and for Israel's purposes, that’s the most important—that's enough."

"Right. Right. And you know, this was done just—and I think you, you know, this intuitively, but this was done at the highest levels of government of every one of the governments."

"Right."

"All right, so let's talk about consequences. So, as far as you're concerned, what are the present cons—what have been the present consequences of the Abraham Accords as they've ruled out so far?"

"Well, I think they've done enormous good for American national security, for Israel's national security, and for the national security of all the Sunni nations. Because with this surfacing of diplomatic relations has also come a good deal of additional cooperation with regard to sharing of intelligence.

When you look at the region and you see Iran as really a threat to everyone, including the United States, it's the largest state sponsor of terrorism anywhere in the world. So, you know, the winners here are the moderate Sunni nations; the loser is Iran. Iran now has a much more coordinated group of countries with regard to opposing their malign intentions. So that’s sort of number one.

Number two, I think, look, I think if we were still in office, I think we would be able to scale these relations to a lot more countries, including, I think in particular—"

"Yeah, well, who?"

"Yeah, yeah, well, okay, who's next on the list? Well look, it could be Oman; it could be Indonesia. But the real, the real, you know, big fish is Saudi Arabia because Saudi Arabia is the leader of the Muslim world; it’s the custodian of the two holiest sites in Islam. And I think that we've backslid horribly over the last two years with Saudi Arabia.

You just saw that over the last couple of days when you saw a very, very unimpressive visit by Biden. You know, he goes there, and not only does he, you know, kind of fumble, you know, some complaints about the killing of Jamal Khashoggi, but he gets a lecture from the Saudis in return about Abu Ghraib. So, you know, that didn't go well and got no relief at all."

"So what should have happened, in your estimation?"

"So, the Saudis like—I certainly see the Abraham Accords as—and I've talked to some Saudi leaders as well, and my understanding is that there's a quite large contingent there that would like to normalize relations with the Western world more broadly and to move Saudi Arabia out of its relative isolation into something more approximating a normative relationship with the rest of the world, potentially including Israel.

You'd think that would be a big deal, and so what should have happened in Saudi Arabia?"

"Well, I put out a tweet a few days ago saying if I were Biden, after I went to Israel and met with the acting Prime Minister Yair Lapid, I would take him with me on Air Force One. I'd fly him off to Saudi Arabia, and I would sit with him in MBS, with Muhammad bin Salman, and I would do something big. I would announce some big trilateral agreement that's there for the taking, if you're not how to do it and Biden—he fumbled that; you know, obviously miserably."

"Why?"

"Why? Biden has boxed himself in during the campaign, saying that he would treat the Saudis as a pariah state. He showed up here kind of hat in hand, and he got nothing on oil anyway. Would it have made a difference? Because inflation is, at this point, so rampant—beyond oil—I'm not sure what makes a difference. But the main thing I think is that, you know, Biden has been told in no uncertain terms by sort of the progressive left, you know, 'You stay away from Saudi Arabia.'

He's politically boxed in on Saudi Arabia."

"Yeah, well, he isn't boxed in unless he wants to continue to coddle to the radical elements of his party and the progressives. He's not boxed in at all, because, as you pointed out earlier in this conversation, the radical types—you said 10 on each side. I think it's far smaller than that, to be frank, although I think it's bigger on the left than on the right. There’s a tiny proportion of radicals that he's kowtowing to, and he doesn't need them.

The fact that the Democrats will not separate themselves from the radicals has only ensured their electoral defeat in the fall and probably for the next presidential election. So I just think that's complete rubbish. We can’t do this because the progressives don’t want us to. It's like, no, that's not true; practically, it's not true, strategically it's definitely a mistake, ethically there's no grounds for it whatsoever, especially as you pointed out, given that this— the path forward with Saudi Arabia in relation to Israel and the rest of the Western world seems clear.

So it's abdication, as far as I can see—an abdication, absolute abdication of responsibility on the part of the Democrats, let's say."

"Look, I agree with you, and I think a lot of this is political. I mean, it starts with, you know, Barack Obama making this terrible deal with Iran that has, you know, insignificant verification rights and inspection rights and expires, at this point, would expire in just a few years. When Trump got out of that deal and Biden comes in, Biden politically says I’m going to go and try to reinstate this deal.

He's been chasing the Iranians now for a year and a half trying to get back into the JCPOA. It makes no sense, but he's doing it because, you know, that's the deal that he and Obama came up with, and they want to validate that. They want to somehow resuscitate that—the more Biden chases the JCPOA, which he'll fail at anyway—I mean, there's nothing to be achieved there—but the more he chases that and chases this, you know, this fantasy of diplomacy with the Iranians, he pushes the Saudis further away; he pushes the Israelis further; he pushes everybody further away.

So, it's this misguided chasing after the fantasy of a diplomatic outcome with Iran that precludes Saudi Arabia."

"And how much do you think this reflexive identification with the Palestinians as victims is driving the necessity of turning to the Iranians instead of the Saudis? Or is that a separate issue?"

"It may be a separate issue, but it’s the same people, it’s exactly the same people who hold both views, right? Well, that's why I'm curious about the connection."

"Look, the—you know, I have to tell you—this was the last few days have been a frustrating experience for me because what I saw over the last few days was a complete reversal of all the things that we did that made the Middle East a much safer and more stable place. All the things that we did were kind of reversed in just a few days—throwing money at the Palestinians, not demanding any accountability, refusing to recognize Jerusalem as the capital of all of Jerusalem as the capital of Israel, then running to Saudi Arabia, you know, and, you know, resuscitating complaints that just resulted, you know, the Saudis aren't dumb!

They have answers for this. You know, I mean, so they go back, and now Biden's on his heels trying to defend Abu Ghraib because he brought up Khashoggi. From there, it just went nowhere—he went home; he went home; you know, with his happiness in nothing; he got nothing out of it. And we could have gotten so much more on this trip. I don't even know why they had the trip; I mean, why would you orchestrate a trip like this if you’re just going to insult your allies and come home empty-handed?"

"My Prime Minister, my Prime Minister Justin Trudeau tends to orchestrate a trip like that when the scandals and inflation on the domestic front get so unbearable that he needs to distract people."

"Yep, well, that sounds like exactly what happened here. Okay, so let's talk about an elephant under the carpet here. You talked a lot about making peace with the Sunni moderates. Where are the moderate Shiites in all of this, and what is the fact that they're not at the table? What lurking catastrophes are associated with that, and how might that be rectified?"

"Well, look, the Shiites that are relevant here are, you know, kind of half of Iraq or slightly more than half of Iraq, Hezbollah in Lebanon, and in Iran. And in all three cases, but especially in Iran, but I mean true of Hezbollah as well, they're not moderate. There’s nothing—the slightest thing moderate about them, and they, you know, they are at this point—you know, look, are there radical Sunnis? Of course, you have ISIS; you have Hamas, which is a Sunni, although they’re being funded by Iran.

But, you know, the primary—and I'm not suggesting that there aren't moderate Shiites; I'm sure there are—but the ones that make noise are primarily in Iran and in Lebanon, and they’re the farthest thing from moderate. I mean, they represent existential threats to the state of Israel and elsewhere. So why did you guys have no luck with them? And what do you think might be done by someone who was competent if they were inclined to redress that block?"

"I don't think there is—I don't think there's anything that can be done with either Iran or Hezbollah except from a position of real strength. Hezbollah really is—I mean it's just a proxy for the Iranians, and they’re very dangerous. And they don't accept any kind—look, I'll give you an example, which is kind of heartbreaking—Lebanon's a very poor country.

They have a significant offshore gas deposit that could be commercialized very much for the benefit of the people in Lebanon. There’s a question of who owns it; I mean, it's kind of right on the seam of Israel's territorial waters and Lebanon's territorial waters. Israel was willing to make a deal to solve that maritime dispute where, you know, they'll get some of the gas and Lebanon get some of their gas. Lebanon would get a lot of gas; it would make a big deal for their economy.

Hezbollah won’t let them make the deal. That’s it."

"What about behind-the-scenes negotiations? If the political leaders in the Shiite community can't pull this off, then is there another level of people in Shiite culture or in other countries? As you reached out to the UAE and Sudan and Morocco, etc., could you walk around Iran—in the same way?"

"No, unfortunately not. I’m sure, again, I’m sure there are people of the Shiite faith who are reasonable, but the—but those—the Shia who control weaponry are, you know, in Iran and in Lebanon and in Syria and in Iraq and in parts of Yemen, and they're all, you know, militant terrorists. They all take their instructions from Iran, and there's really no opportunity there.

The opportunity is for the moderate Muslim world to unite with America and with Israel, and this threat can be defeated. I have no doubt this threat can be defeated, but I don't think right now it can be solved except through the strongest of positions taken by our allies."

"Okay. Let's close this up maybe with two—with the discussion about the response in the West. I was a late learner about the Abraham Accords. I mean, the world's been pretty weird in the last couple of years, and I was also very ill and I sort of emerged from that and was informed about the Abraham Accords by some people on the ambassadorial front and became extremely interested in them for three reasons: first of all because, well, look, peace is breaking out in the Middle East, and so that was one, and isn't that surprising.

And then also curious because, given that this is, as far as I can tell, a truly historic Accord, I would have hoped that it would have been like front-page two-inch type news on the New York Times, for example, and that everybody everywhere would know about all its details. Then furthermore, that the people who structured it were not only nominated for the Nobel Prize—which is not that difficult to process—to be nominated but actually to be nominated but actually awarded it since this actually constituted peace. And I couldn't help in my cynical, what would you say, musings, contrast that with the willingness of the Nobel committee to give a Peace Prize to Barack Obama before President Obama even had a chance to demonstrate whether or not he was a peacemaker on the international scene.

So why, in your estimation, has been the response in the West among intellectuals and the press, and then among, well, let’s say the American people and people in the West more broadly?"

"Look, the attention from the press has been disappointing. We had a ceremony on September 15th on the South Lawn of the White House that day. The picture of Trump and Netanyahu and the leaders of Bahrain and UAE made the front page of all the major papers, so we got—we got one good day out of it. But the way it’s been expanded and the way it’s flourished, the effect it's had on the people of Israel, the people of UAE, the optimism and opportunity it has brought to the Middle East—none of that has been covered at all.

And I think it's all because of it came from us, from the Trump Administration. Yeah, but that's no bloody excuse here; that's no excuse. Like, this isn't—this transcends the political as far as I'm concerned, and I think as far as anybody reasonable would be concerned.

It’s important to give the devil his due; that's the case even if the devil happens to be Trump and his damned minions. The facts seem to me to be clear on the ground that this represents a significant and very unexpected move forward on the Peace front in the Middle East, and that's been a problem that has threatened all of us for 70 years, for longer than that, on all sorts of fronts.

The fact that people don't want to give Trump credit for this because he's Trump—that is still utterly inexcusable. I really don't understand it because it means, in some real sense, that the narrow political enmity that was directed towards Trump, for better or for worse, for warranted or unwarranted, I don't really care—that's not the issue. The issue is that under Trump, this extremely significant event occurred.

I think it's significant in the same way that the fact that Trump didn't entangle the United States in any stupid wars for four years was significant and also extremely underplayed. At least he managed that, and that's not nothing. But then to also cap his four years, which were definitely conducted under extreme duress and intense corrosive cynicism, again, regardless of his flaws, to cap that with the Abraham and then to be ignored by intellectuals in the West, denigrated and at minimum damned with faint praise, and then also to be ignored by the Nobel Prize committee—that's not just politics; that's a kind of willfully blind corruption. That's unforgivable in its depth."

"You won't get an argument out of me. We had—we had like a couple of days there where one outlet, I think it was the New York Post, ran a few stories about it great, but it was—I think the media presence of that day was nowhere near what it should have been. The same goes for the recognition by the Nobel Prize committee. The fact that Trump was also the first sitting president to broker peace in the Middle East in over a generation, and I think the committee should have made a slightly bigger deal about that, given that it's, you know, it's as good as you can possibly make the pessimistic case for what was achieved here."

"One hundred percent. Not only did they not acknowledge it, but they went through this whole ridiculing of it that I think is both politically driven and morally reprehensible, and I just don’t get it."

"Right."

"Listen, Jordan, I think that we went over a lot in this discussion. I think I greatly appreciate the depth of your questions, and it's been an great experience for me."

"Well, thank you for sharing. The opportunity to have this conversation has been eye-opening and, I think, vital to understand the current status quo we're experiencing and the fantastic movement forward that the accords represent. Thank you, Ambassador Friedman; it was a pleasure."

"Thank you, Jordan. Appreciate it."