 Good evening and welcome to Great Decisions. So good to see people, whoops, oh I'm starting the program here, I guess. Good to see all of you. I'm surprised at the empty chairs. So let me say this right now. If you or someone you know has made a reservation and cannot get here please, please, please call the library, because we have a waiting list of 15 people who could be here tonight and are not. In fact, we turned away two people, one on the waiting list, and so if you cannot be here, please let us know so we can arrange for an alternative to be here. Okay, our presenter this evening is Daniel Stoll, who has his doctorate from the University of Missouri. He's the Associate Dean for Global Affairs at St. Norbert's. As Associate Dean, he provides oversight and direction for all of the activities within the Center for Global Engagement, including study programs abroad, international student recruitment, and the English as a Second Language Institute. During his career, he has worked in both the foreign policy community as well as higher education. Before coming to St. Norbert, he had several positions at Georgetown University and at the Georgetown's campus in Doha. At the University of Missouri, Kansas City, he served as Director for International Academics Programs, as well as Deputy to the Chancellor. As a member of the U.S. Foreign Service, Dr. Stoll had postings to the U.S. Embassy in Baghdad, the U.S. Consulate General in Johannesburg, and in the Near East Bureau of the U.S. Department of State. While with the Foreign Service, he received three meritorious honor awards. His research focuses on issues of water and food security in the Middle East, as well as international higher education administration. He is co-author of International Conflict over Water Resources in Himalayan Asia, as well as the Politics of Scarcity, Water in the Middle East. He has also contributed chapters to volumes on higher education in the Middle East and on relations between Africa and the Arab Gulf States. So please welcome Dr. Stoll, who will talk about the future of the Persian Gulf Security. Thank you so much for the invitation to be with you tonight, and I think this is probably one of the most timely topics we could be discussing in your lecture series, given everything that's been happening in the Persian Gulf by extension Afghanistan. We'll talk about some of that later in the presentation, but right now what I thought I would like to do is give a brief overview of the region. I want to make certain we're all familiar with the terms that we're going to be discussing. Talk a bit about the history. This is not going back, you know, to Ottoman times, don't worry. But I think we need to have some sort of grounding in 19th, 20th, 21st century history, and then looking at what US strategic interests are in this region and have a conversation about what that portends for the country moving forward. Geographically, again, we're talking about the countries of Bahrain, Iran, Iraq, Kuwait, Oman, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, and the United Arab Emirates. I've intentionally highlighted Iran in a different color because we're going to come back to that in just a moment, but while we're going to talk about those specific countries in this talk tonight, we're also going to at times look beyond into the Middle East and North Africa region, the MENA region as well. Important to get a sense of what the population is like in this part of the world. And as you see, we have got a population spread from, you know, 85 million for Iran down to 1.26 million for Bahrain. The numbers are important, but so is the fact that we're talking about an increasingly young population. That's going to figure into some of our conversation later on about the pressures put on the governments in these regions. But I've given you the US at the bottom just by basis of comparison. And when you look at it with that, for example, annual increase is you see the United States pretty much at replacement value. What they call, demographers will call replacement value. Countries though like Oman, Bahrain, others, much higher population. And again, that's going to exert some pressures on the governments in the region and we'll look at that later on. So we've got the geography, we've got population. Inevitably, if we're going to talk about the Persian Gulf, we have to talk about oil and to some extent natural gas. Tonight we're just going to talk about oil. This is a region that has some of the world's largest reserves. And as you can see, Saudi Arabia by far eclipses most of its neighbors. Bahrain really has, no longer has any appreciable oil, so it's listed as zero somewhere you find the other countries. But again, some of the largest reserves available to the global energy markets. Obviously a source of incredible wealth as well as a source of tension. Access to those reserves, oil and gas reserves don't neatly fall within geographic boundaries. So Qatar and Iran share a very large natural gas field. If you remember the first Gulf War, Saddam claiming that Kuwait was extracting oil from its side of the border. So these are sources of again considerable wealth, but also tension. This oil is of interest to global energy markets. 80% of the oil from the Gulf goes to Asia. Japan and China in particular get the bulk of their petroleum from this part of the world. In 2018, over 21 billion barrels a day passed through the Gulf. 21 billion barrels of oil a day in 2018. Natural gas is also very important and again we're talking about some of the largest reserves of natural gas. In fact, Qatar and China just inked a deal for 3.5 million metric tons of liquefied natural gas. That will be shipped over the next 15 years, but it's an indication again of just how important the petroleum and natural gas reserves are for not only this region, but global energy markets. So a little bit of history. As I said, we need to solve, set some context and before we can really look at what the United States has been doing in the region. I think we need to examine what was happening at the turn of the 20th century, 19th and 20th century. Again, not trying to give a definitive history lesson, but I think it's important to understand some of the events at this period that then set the stage for what's happening. Currently, we're talking about rapidly diminishing before World War I, rapidly diminishing Ottoman Empire that had been in ascendancy for several hundred years. We see as the Ottoman Empire receding in influence, Britain, France in particular coming into the region. Once the Suez Canal was built in Egypt in the 19th century, the region took on even more strategic importance because the Suez guaranteed fast, efficient access from Britain to its colonies in the east, particularly India. And this region becomes important for those transit routes initially, again, protecting British imperial interests, but particularly India. There was also this desire to restrain external influences, Britain, France looking at Russia at the time. First, Tsarist Russia, later Soviet Union trying to minimize the role Russia plays in that region. But really, we're talking about an importance in transportation. That changed, however, in 1911. And what ended up happening at that point was a fellow by the name of Winston Churchill, not yet Prime Minister. But at the time, First Lord of the Admiralty, and he decided he was going to convert the British Navy from coal to oil. Sounds pretty non-controversial, sounds pretty straightforward. But what that essentially was, the impetus for that decision was an increasing competition between Britain and Germany in the build-up to World War I. Germany's Navy becoming increasingly powerful, increasingly fast, and one way that Churchill decided Britain could compete was by converting the British Navy to oil. Oil-powered ships generally faster, they don't require very lengthy re-colling stations and time, you know, re-colling. And so he made that decision, and he made it in part because there was already exploration going on in Iran, what is now Iran, in the oil reserves. And in 1908, a tremendous amount of oil was discovered in Iran. And that led to Churchill's decision that here was a large, readily developed and exported source of oil. We're going to convert the Navy to oil from coal. That really puts into play this emphasis that we continue to see to this day of reliance on the region for its hydrocarbons. The conversion, I'm sorry, the Britain decides it has to have access to those reserves. It ends up purchasing the equivalent of about 51% of the Anglo-Iranian oil company, so they were locking in that reserve and they were making certain that Britain would have access to that region. And it's oil. So that kind of takes us up to World War II. I know we're galloping along here, but I think it's important. And after the war, we begin to see an awful lot of change, an awful lot of instability that resulted from the end of the Second World War. Britain at this point is really struggling to cope with the demands of a diminishing empire. Imperial obligations are really causing it to struggle and to strain. One reason why 1947, India becomes independent. Britain decided it needed to sever that tie as a result of India no longer being the jewel in the crown, so to speak. The region wasn't as important for transportation, although the Suez still had some significance. Israel becomes independent as a result. We start seeing a number of other independence movements that Anglo-Iranian oil company gets nationalized by the Iranian government. And we see in this post-war period again a diminishing role for the UK in this region. And it was very difficult for the British government to kind of accept this change. And so at the one hand they wanted to kind of offload these obligations from empire. They still wanted to maintain some sort of influence. And so in 1956 they make the decision that they're going to invade Egypt because during the Suez Crisis, if you remember your history, Egyptian President Kamal Abdel Nasser decides he's going to nationalize the Suez Canal, take it under Egyptian control. And that was just a little too much for France and Britain to accept. So they launched this invasion, it's eventually stopped in large part because of US intervention. Dwight Eisenhower really put his foot down, imposed economic sanctions, froze British assets. And in the end they had to pull back, Britain and France pulled back, but it was yet another diminution, another decrease in the influence that Britain had in the region at the time. And then by 1971 all these countries like Bahrain, Kuwait, Qatar, United Emirates, that weren't perhaps formally part of the empire, but still very much influenced by the British Empire declared independence. And so we see Britain pulling back at an increasingly faster pace. That sets the stage for US involvement. And while we have tended to think of US as always involved in the Middle East, always a supplier of arms, always a supplier of support for Israel, we didn't step in completely to fill the breach left by Britain. This was an involvement that evolved over time. And even though we really have had very active engagement since I would say the early to mid-1970s, and we've seen multiple US administrations in that time period, I would argue that our strategic interests in the Middle East as a broad region but also the Gulf have pretty much stayed the same through successive administrations and over successive decades. First and foremost, we have always placed considerable value and importance on ensuring that the region's oil and gas reserves are produced effectively, efficiently, and oil and gas is exported without any kind of impediment or hindrance. Even when we have, as we have recently stepped back and become an exporter of petroleum, we still rely on this region's oil and gas to ensure a stable global energy market. And that really, that kind of focus on energy, that focus on oil and gas, really has stayed consistent through multiple administrations up until right now. Support for Israel has also been a fairly consistent strategic imperative for the United States. Granted, Truman's recognition of Israeli independence in 1948 was very controversial, at least within his administration. Secretary of State Marshall even threatened to resign if Truman recognized Israel did not think it was the best thing to do. And so, for the first couple of decades of Israel's existence, the United States really wasn't the ally that we think of U.S. Israel today. But even then, we saw ourselves as having an important stake in Israel's stability and Israel's security, and that sort of concern has remained, again, present up until the current administration, and it probably will not go away. And now we have very close ties with Israel, intelligent sharing. We see Israel's military as a kind of counterbalance to some Arab armies in the area, very strong cultural, economic, social ties. And so Israel's security remains a very dominant concern for us. We've had this desire, too, to counter or somehow deal with what we think might be external threats to the region. For a long time during the Cold War, we really did not want to see the Soviet Union exerting any influence in this part of the world. We were very nervous when, again, Egypt under Gamal Abdel Nasser started making a rapprochement, creating a rapprochement with the Soviet Union, buying Soviet weaponry, helping the Soviets, helping build an S-1 dam. So the United States has been worried about what it considers kind of malign or less than helpful influences exerted on the region from external players. And even today I would say that we're concerned to some degree with Russian interference in the region. Russia is certainly not playing a very helpful role in places like Syria. And so while maybe that concern about external threats or influences has diminished, there still is a sense that we need to be careful who's getting involved and who is trying to have some sort of influence. We've always had very strong interest in protecting what we think are our allies in the region. Increasingly Jordan, the Gulf monarchies, we've mentioned Israel already. But we have seen through the years successive administrations focused on how can we support friends in the region, whether it's Israel or some of the Arab states. And that has pretty much stayed consistent over multiple administrations. And then just like we were worried about, say, state actors, the Soviet Union, Russia, we've been very focused on what are called non-state actors, Hamas, PLO, ISIS, Islamic State, political movements, perhaps Islamic fundamentalist movements, that tend to be or we think tend to be sources of instability for our friends in the region. They might be affiliated with Iran. They might be, as the PLO was initially, very focused on destroying the state of Israel. But regardless of their kind of motivation, regardless of their agenda, actors that we feel are really posing threats to our economic interests, our allies, our political interests, and we're going to have to deal with those. So these kind of strategic interests, again, really have stayed fairly consistent since particularly the 1960s up until the present time. How has the United States tended to respond then? So I would say that while our interests have tended to stay the same, you'll see over successive U.S. administrations a change in foreign policy approaches, a change in the tools used to advance or protect those interests. And you see a variety of different ways that the United States over time has responded to threats or the desire to protect its interests. We'll talk in a bit about military assets. That's been a particularly significant role in how we are presented in the region. We've over the years used our membership in international organizations to protect or advance our interests. For familiar with the number of times the United States has used its veto in the Security Council at the United Nations to counter resolutions that are, say, anti-Israel or anti-another one of our allies in the region. That's a demonstration, again, of a foreign policy tool that we have tended to use to protect our interests. We have, at times, invested a lot of money in terms of economic assistance. That's particularly true for Israel, Jordan, to some extent Egypt. Well, to a considerable extent Egypt, actually. Perhaps less so in the states than the Gulf. But the MENA region, generally, we have spent a lot of money and invested a lot of resources in economic assistance. And then, of course, we have sought closer ties, particularly with the Gulf monarchies, and we'll talk about those in just a minute, but have really focused on how can we develop economic ties, particularly with the oil and gas industry. We have increasingly sold sophisticated weaponry to the Gulf monarchies. We've positioned U.S. military assets in the region, and we'll be talking about those. And so, over time, the countries, the Arab countries in the Gulf, have really seen a renewed focus by successive administrations on improving those relationships. Military sales, probably one of the most obvious ways that we have tried to influence or prop up our allies. I've included it around there because, as I said earlier, they're part of the Persian Gulf, but we haven't sold weaponry to the Iranians since 1979. But hasn't stopped the Saudis, hasn't stopped many other countries from purchasing sizable amounts of weaponry, and that continues until this day. This figure is important not only because of just the dollar value associated with the weapons themselves, but with what are called downstream associated costs. So, when you buy that sophisticated missile package, when you buy that F-15, when you buy those weapon systems, they have to be maintained. People have to be trained how to use them. They'll have to have upgrades at some point. And so, when a country invests in these systems, particularly sophisticated fighter systems or missile systems, that's a long-term commitment. And so, the initial price tag of the system is significant, but it's also then what happens years from there, again, in terms of training, in terms of upgrades. And so, these sales have economic value immediately, but also in the long term. Increasingly, we are seeing the United States demonstrate its interest in the region, try to influence events in the region. By positioning military assets in countries in the Persian Gulf. And I've given you here just a kind of a taste of what some of this might look like. There's still a much more exhaustive list that we have, but for example, Saudi Arabia after the 1st Gulf War allowed the positioning of a sizable amount of U.S. military personnel in the kingdom. That changed over time. They asked us to leave, Qatar raised its hand and said, we'd like to have you come. And so, El Aded Air Base has been built for headquarters through the U.S. Central Command. They're increasingly buying weaponry as well from us. In fact, they've purchased 36 F-15 fighters. It's around $6.2 billion worth of military equipment. And that's just Qatar. Bahrain, very important as the base for the U.S. 5th Fleet. We also have in the Emirates positioning of military personnel. And though in Iraq we have drawn down considerably with our assets there, we still have around 2,500 personnel in that country. All told, we have somewhere around 50, 55,000 military personnel in the Middle East region. A lot of them stationed in this particular part of that area. Why is this important? Why are those systems important? They're first of all seen as very visible, very physical demonstrations of U.S. support for the governments in this area. We are selling them this weaponry. We're positioning these bases as a sign of our commitment to their stability. These military bases, though, are also important for a broader geopolitical reason. And that is they allow the United States to project power, project influence outside the region. This is increasingly important now that we have pulled out of Afghanistan. But from these bases in the Persian Gulf, the United States military can run operations, again project influence in a wide area around the Persian Gulf. And so they're important for the immediate kind of protection they give, if you will, to some of our allies in the region. They also allow us, though, to project that influence. And this is becoming increasingly important in the minds of many U.S. foreign policy makers as they seek, for example, to counter China's Belt and Road Initiative. That long-standing development initiative that China has putting economic assets in place around the world. And increasingly it's in places like the Red Sea, East Africa, the Horn of Africa. And so now we have China, which is really flexing its muscles in a way that the United States finds unhelpful. So having these assets on the ground in the Gulf gives U.S. policy makers another way of responding. So what is going on currently with the security environment today? We've kind of done this quick rush through history in the region. What's happening today now? I would say that despite decades of investment, involvement, arms sales, economic commitment, the region is actually quite precarious, quite unstable. While we have managed to help prop up allies in the region like the El Saud family, like the world families in Qatar, Emirates, Bahrain, we are looking at a part of the world that is really quite unstable. And this is going to get us back to some of our first conversations when we talked about population and some of those issues. So for example, Iraq. As you know, we had committed a tremendous amount of time, treasure, manpower to that country. And yet it continues to be a country divided by sectarian tensions, tremendous division between Sunni and Shia Muslims. This was really exacerbated under the regime of Saddam Hussein. And we see that playing out even today. And we'll talk about Iran's influence in just a moment. But even without Iranian meddling in Iraq, we would see tremendous tension among communities within that country. Even though Iraq has got tremendous oil revenues, if you remember that slide several back, it's Saudi Arabia, quite substantial, but then Iran and Iraq, tremendous assets. And yet those assets have really not been used to improve conditions to any great extent in that country. Issues of corruption, but also issues of a kind of decrepit, antiquated infrastructure for the oil and gas industry. If you recall, the United States led a number of sanctions regimes to be imposed on Iraq, particularly under Saddam Hussein. And one of the impacts of those regimes, those sanctions imposed on the government, was that there wasn't the material, there wasn't the expertise that was needed to keep the oil and gas infrastructure up to date. And so the country today is kind of trying to play catch up with how it can develop and export its oil. You have Iraq, you have tension between Qatar and some of its neighbors. In 2017, Saudi Arabia, Bahrain, the Emirates decided, and Egypt decided that they were basically going to impose an embargo on their fellow Arab country, in part because they thought the Qatari royal family was getting too close to Iran. If you're familiar with El Jazeera, the news channel, they felt that El Jazeera was running stories that were very critical of particularly Saudi royal family and others that they didn't like. They also thought that the Qatari royal family was developing too close of a tie with Iran and the religious leaders there. And so they thought they would teach Qatar a lesson, they imposed an embargo, they cut off land, they refused to let land crossings, they refused to let airplanes fly through their airspace to get to Qatar. And for a number of years, that embargo really pinched. The Qataris have responded, they've kind of reconfigured a lot of their systems, they figured out new ways of importing food. It's gotten to the point now where there's I think kind of begrudging acceptance that maybe Qatar will be allowed to do some of these things. And you're seeing a restoration of ties between Qatar and these other countries, but it's a source of tension again still within the region. And then increasingly a lot of these countries are facing tremendous internal problems. And here we're going to get back to that slide about the population. Not only in many of these countries is the population expanding at a far greater rate than many other countries in the world, but it's an increasingly young population. And these are people who really want greater economic freedom, they want greater political say in their government. They look at what they consider to be corrupt elites siphoning off the wealth of the country and not using it for the development of the country itself. And so there's this tremendous pressure building up in a lot of the countries aimed at criticism of and dissatisfaction with the ruling elites. So they're all in many ways finding expression politically against the ruling elites. And then we still have these tremendous sectarian divides within the region in many of the countries. So Bahrain, although the royal family is Sunni, the vast majority of Bahrainis are Shia, to expressions of Islam that really do not get along very well. Saudi Arabia, very concerned about its Shia minority, particularly since many of the Shia live in the predominantly oil production area of the country. And so that Sunni Shia divide plays out in a number of ways internally, but also in terms of probably one of the most important relationships in the Gulf, and that is the one between Saudi Arabia, Saudi Arabia and the Emirates and Iran. This is really probably one of the defining relationships in the Gulf. It's been that way since 1979 in the Iranian Revolution. It's become increasingly pronounced. And it is in some ways, at least the governments themselves perceive this as an existential threat, that on the part of the Saudis they look to Iran, it's a Shia, it's a Persian country. Government says that the only true government should be based with Shia religious leaders. That's a legitimate government. They look at the Iranian government as a threat, and we'll talk about it in just a minute, how they threaten Saudi Arabia. Iran says the same thing about Saudi. They're trying to undermine the Islamic Republic of Iran. The Saudis are behind any number of attempts to destabilize the region. And you see this tension, again primarily between the Emirates and Saudi in one hand, in Iran on another. You see that tension play out in a couple of different ways. Iran, for example, very much tries to use proxies to influence what's happening in its neighbors. So it will support Shia groups in Yemen, it will support Shia groups in Iraq. It looks to Bahrain to do the same thing. And they try to use those proxies to exert influence, even if it's just to kind of create instability and indecision on the part of the Arab countries. This is one of the reasons, again, why Egypt, Bahrain, the Emirates and Saudi Arabia were so upset with Qatar. They thought that Qatar was basically in many ways supporting what they thought was a very real existential threat. And they had to control what was happening in Qatar in order to minimize that threat. Saudis, again, on the other hand, regard Iran as an existential threat, particularly to the royal family. They have regarded the Iranians as a source of instability in the region since the late 1970s when Ayatollah Khomeini came into power. And so you have set up in the region this tension, this conflict between two very different systems of government, two very different expressions of Islam. And so as I said earlier, Iran, particularly, has been using proxies to kind of get at, undermine, influence what's happening in the region. And we're familiar, again, with the Yemeni Civil War. We're familiar with some of the support that Iran has given Hezbollah. Iraq, it is definitely a way of influencing the region. That's difficult for Saudi and other Arab countries to counter. And so regarded by the Iranians as very effective. In addition, though, to this use of proxies, this kind of low level way of influencing, Iran has really been investing, if you will, in a couple of very concrete foreign policy tools that pose an equally dire threat to the Saudis and the other Arab states. One is their intention to expand their nuclear program, and the other is developing their own kind of ballistic missile system. They've used the ballistic system already to target resources in Saudi Arabia, particularly Aramco, the Saudi oil company. They could use the ballistic missile system to attack other assets, such as US military bases there. So between the nuclear program as well as the ballistic missile system, Iran seems to be posing quite a threat to the region. And so you have this tension, and I wanted to kind of refer to Mohammed bin Salman, just as an example of how this plays out on the Saudi side. Not going to give you a history about the crown prince, but as we're all familiar probably by now, highly influential in the kingdom. In many ways he is seen as the face of Saudi policy, particularly when it comes to Iran. And while his rise to power has been pretty ruthless, we think of Khashoggi and the things he's done to stifle opposition. Certainly in the last administration, the Donald Trump administration, MBS, he's kind of known by his initials, MBS was seen as a real ally, as a real asset to US foreign policy. In fact, in a way it's almost harkening back to when Richard Nixon looked to Iran and Saudi Arabia to protect US interest in the region. Under the Donald Trump administration, in a way it was almost Israel and Saudi Arabia, a kind of return to that so-called twin pillar approach. Regardless, Mohammed bin Salman has made it pretty clear. He regards Iran as a direct threat, as an existential threat, and he will do everything possible to counter that. Within the last couple of weeks we have seen a slight easing of tension between Saudi and Iran. There's starting to be some sort of discussion taking place, low level discussions, but we'll have to see how that plays out right now. That still, however, remains one of the primary relationships and it's not a very good one in the Gulf. So, where does this leave the United States? And I think one thing that I'm going to try to leave you with you now and then we'll get to some questions is the fact that, again, our interest in the region might change slightly in terms of importance, but they are still going to remain what they have been for the last several decades. Access to unimpeded energy flows, Israel's security. We want to try to minimize forces of instability, whether they're state actors or non-state actors, and we look to protecting the stability of our allies in the region. How we advance those interests, though, is really going to be dependent on, I think, three questions. One will be, what is the fallout from our pullout in Afghanistan? What are the long-term ramifications of the events in August and September? Certainly, the military bases that we have in that region are even more important because, as I said, now no longer do we have Bagram Air Force Base and other assets in Afghanistan. Our military presence is concentrated, at least in this region, in those countries. So those assets are going to be important, but I think there's a real question about what is the U.S. willingness to commit to security of these countries in the Gulf. As recently as last week, the foreign minister of the United Arab Emirates basically said its wait and see for what the United States is willing to do and capable of doing. The concern many of the Arab monarchies have now about U.S. reliability has been shaken by what happened in Afghanistan. Second question that we're going to have to answer as policy makers is, is this set of issues, security for Israel, oil, supporting our allies, going to be as important as other foreign policy challenges? U.S. relations with China. What's happening in Europe because of Vladimir Putin? We know Barack Obama had called for this pivot to Asia. That has the Gulf monarchies really worried, and they're wondering if increasingly U.S. attention is going to be taken away from the Gulf and put on some of these other areas. Finally, there's going to be a question, and this is, again, one that has to be answered by American leaders and the American people, and that is, what is the role the United States should play in the global system? Are we going to have kind of the role of peace protector? Are we going to be seen as the global policemen? Are we going to be seen as a dominant economic power, or are we going to turn within? Are we going to focus more on domestic issues and not spend as much time on foreign policy? That is a really difficult conversation that's been happening the last couple of years. I don't see it diminishing any time soon, and that question is probably going to be the most important one for what United States policy will be towards the Gulf in the next, say, two to four years. I want to stop now. I have some time for questions, and thank you again for coming and being part of this discussion. Thank you. Here, there's one. You have a question? Raise your hand, and I'll bring it to the mic. I've got two questions. I watched CNN. I've got the mic. You might have had this on here, but I really have a hard time seeing them. Let's go back. You've got obviously 9-1-1, a very big thing. You've got World War II, Pearl Harbor, and sinking Lusitania. What was the importance in 1954 when we got the shawl of Iran? The overthrow of Mossadik, and we installed the shawl, that was 1953. Two things, primarily. Concern on the part of Britain and the United States that Mossadik, the Prime Minister, was seen as too prosoviet, was seen as too willing to partner with the Soviet Union. That would have been bad enough, but then again, Iran had these tremendous oil assets. Concern that by pitching the country towards the Soviet Union, access to that oil would be jeopardized. I would say there were probably two factors. But the interest in oil was paramount? Well, again, I would say oil and reducing influence of the Soviet Union. This was at the same time, if you're familiar with the Baghdad pat, it was an alignment of countries. If you can kind of imagine Iran, Afghanistan, Pakistan, there was literally an attempt through the Baghdad pat to create a physical barrier between the Soviet Union and the Middle East, the rest of the Gulf. So this was the height of the Cold War. Do not diminish the fear, the concern that policymakers in Western Europe and the United States had for expanding Soviet influence. And when the perception was that Mossadik was becoming increasingly friendlier towards the Soviet Union, that was very worrisome to policymakers. And you mentioned President Truman and Marshall, who was almost resigned over the acceptance of Israel? Yeah, Marshall and many of Truman's cabinet thought that recognizing Israel would jeopardize U.S. interests with other Arab states, particularly Saudi Arabia. Was this the same Marshall from the Marshall Plan? Yeah. And the same Marshall? General Marshall. Of an owner of a football team? I don't know if he ever owned a football team. So was he an American? No, I don't think so. At West Point graduate, he was ranking American commander. Not the same one. So, no, but he was in World War II, you know. Was he anti-Jewish? No, I think the idea was by recognizing Israel, a small country that was already in very tense relationship with its neighbors, the United States was actually going to jeopardize its other strategic interests in the region. I don't think anyone has ever accused the general of being anti-Semitic. I mean, there could be an element in the part of some of Truman's advisors, but I think what they were really focused on also was the geopolitical implications of recognizing this very, very small state in the jeopardy it could pose to broader relationships. Okay. Great. Thank you. Sure. So you mentioned on several times about the rapid growth of population in this area and how that could be a destabilizing influence. And I wonder what are the factors that would, what are the factors that causes that to be decentralizing? Destabilizing? Again, there's this growing pressure on the part of an expanding population to have access to greater economic benefit, a desire to participate in government. Traditionally, what these governments have done to kind of tap down dissent, keep people happy is spend money on social services. So probably don't have to pay for utilities. You probably don't have to pay for the water or electricity you consume. We're going to give you free medical care. We'll possibly even give you land. Now, just be quiet. You've gotten that. So don't, don't try to get involved with politics because that's the purview of my family. So that's much more difficult to do, however, as that population expands, as that younger population looks around and says, you know, what we're experiencing here is not what's happening in just about any other part of the world, Western Europe, United States, Latin America. And I want some of that. We want to be able to say what happens in our, in our country. We want to say, have some say in government. It's one of the reasons why last, last two weeks, I don't remember now. Within the last two weeks, Qatar for the first time had elections for what it called the Shura Council, a consultative council. The first time Qataris were allowed to vote for some kind of elected representation. So it's it's not a parliament. I think it's only around 50 or 60 members. And this body will not be allowed to say anything about defense, foreign policy or the economy, but they will weigh in on everything else. So it's, it's an attempt by the family to say, okay, we're going to give you a little bit of say here. But again, we're controlling most of the lovers of power. That's increasingly difficult to maintain if the population expands and there are more and more people demanding certain social, economic or political benefits. Thank you. Yeah. I got a job with a Ramco in 1997. So there's a big move from moving from oil to healthcare in Saudi Arabia, making that a healthcare cent. Do you know anything about that? Because I don't know what it's done since then. So I think in large part, all of these countries are trying to figure out how they diversify their economy. If we, okay. So again, other than Bahrain, which really has no oil any longer, even Oman with very limited reserves still relies to a considerable extent on the sale of oil. So they watch very closely as that price per barrel ticks up and they base, you know, three or four year budgets on a certain level. Even Saudi Arabia with 266 billion barrels in reserves at some point knows it's going to run out, but also it's, it's heavily dependent on one source of income. And so if there's a global economic crash or, you know, something affects global energy markets, that has a direct impact. So all of these countries, but particularly Qatar, the Emirates, Saudi Arabia are trying to figure out how could we basically generate other forms of income. So Saudi Arabia, believe it or not, is thinking that they're going to develop a tourism industry. Primarily for fellow Muslims, still kind of difficult to get a visa if you're not, you know, Arab Muslim or, you know, a Muslim from Central Asia. But they are looking at develop and there are some incredibly important, you know, archaeological sites, historical sites in the country. And that's not unreasonable to think. But again, is tourism going to be able to significantly replace income that is provided by oil and gas? Qatar has looked at, you know, they have a small aluminum smelting industry. They're looking to some degree at banking and financial services. The Emirates are looking at the same thing. So whether it's healthcare or education or tourism, it's an attempt to pull back at least a little from a dependence on oil and gas and generate other forms of income. In the Emirates, yes. In Saudi Arabia. Yeah, in Saudi Arabia. I know they have in Abu Dhabi and Dubai, yeah. And there, you know, those countries are also trying to develop their own tourism industry. So you see, particularly in Doha, an expansion of museums and other kind of cultural institutions. Same thing with the Emirates. Kind of high-end hotels attracting a certain wealthy clientele. So that's another way that those countries are looking at diversifying the economy. Your attention, please. A library is closed during this. Oh dear. Including check out another computer services. Do we have time for one more question? Yes, that's just half hour notice. Okay. So I can't, I'm not asking how many names, but some of the leaders of these countries. How many of them were educated over here? That's a really interesting question. And I think increasingly you will see, certainly in Saudi Arabia, certainly in Qatar, to some degree the Emirates. Very strong ties between leadership and the US educational system. But it's not even the leaders. It's, you know, kind of mid-level engineers. Colorado School of Mines did really well educating Iraqi engineers in the 80s. Think of a US state institution that has a petroleum engineering program. They probably educated quite a few petroleum engineers, electrical engineers, chemical engineers going back to these countries. Both the Emirates and Qatar have kind of taken a different spin on that now. And in Qatar they have invited six US institutions. Georgetown, Virginia Commonwealth, Carnegie Mellon, Texas A&M, Cornell, and... Virginia. Yeah, I said Northwestern. So six US institutions set up shops, set up campuses to educate primarily citizens of the country, but also the region. New York University has a very large presence in the Emirates. So it's kind of two-way street, if you will. Still increasingly a lot of, particularly children of the elites will go to the United States or the UK. But increasingly they're being sent to these campuses on the ground, so to speak. Well, when I went to school a long time ago, I think it was called the brain drain. We educate them and then they go back. But I mean, in a way, that's, you know, if you're being, you know, coldly rational, hopefully that's a good thing. You now have a number of people with US educations and positions of power, hopefully predisposed to the country. Hopefully they had a good experience. They have really good educations. They're going to want them to use that education for the benefit of their country, but also maybe developing close relations with the United States. It's kind of the motivation for the Fulbright program, if you're familiar with that. I mean, how many Fulbright scholars that we hosted in this country that have gone back and become economic, political, cultural leaders in their home country. And in part they atreased that influence because they had time in the United States. Thank you. Yeah. Any other questions? Any other questions? And then I think, are you? Okay. I think both, so. My question was, what, they're stopping the education of women in many of those countries. What influence will that have with those younger people? Well, I think I would maybe challenge the assumption that it's in a lot of the countries. I actually think what you're finding, again, I think of Qatar, I think of the Emirates. Incredible emphasis on educating young women and seeing them now going into positions of influence. I don't think we're going to see anyone as head of state yet. Sheikh Tamim and Doha is pretty solidly there. His sisters, though, are incredibly well educated. Duke, Georgetown, NYU, UCLA, and they're having positions of influence in their country. Same thing with the Emirates. And I think it is certainly very concerning about Afghanistan. And I think that is just devastating. What is probably going to be happening in the next three to five years for women there. But again, at one point, 40% of medical personnel in Afghanistan were women. I think that was the figure. Don't quote me exactly. But it was considerable since the fall of the Taliban. How many women got educated in the medical sciences? That's not going to go away. That expertise, that knowledge, they can't take that away. So how we'll find expression, that's what we're going to have to wait and see. And we still also need to support the next generation. Because of the influence of oil in that area, actually around the world, is there compilation of natural resources of all the countries around the world in this area, especially when you think how that has driven, that has driven politics and wars. So is there a compilation of that within those countries? The inventory of the resources under the ground? Interestingly enough, there are still reserves being discovered all the time. But there's been a tremendous amount of effort. We see this because of British Petroleum. They issue a highly regarded energy report every year. We haven't talked about natural gas, but there are some countries in this region that are sitting on upwards of 100 years worth of natural gas. Maybe they don't have exact figures, but they're aware of the extent of, and they have a pretty good sense of where these reserves are and how much they are. So that, in part, back to the previous question about diversifying the economy, that, in part, is what's propelling some of these countries to say, you know what, even 266 billion barrels is going to run out at some point. And so we'll try to find more, but we're going to have to really pay attention to what happens when that spigot goes dry. So diversify the economy, create sovereign wealth funds, which basically large bank accounts that countries have that generate interest or other, you know, monies to use on projects. Fascinating to just look at how many of these countries have huge sovereign wealth funds, hundreds of billions of dollars. So they have oil on the ground, they have gas on the ground, but they also have these other assets that they're using to generate income. But they're paying very close attention to what they have under the ground. Thank you. Sure. Any other questions? I read a lot. Thank you. Yeah, no, thank you. This is an endlessly fascinating part of the world. And my wife and I have been fortunate to live there off and on for a number of... We've lived there off and on many parts of the world. We spent eight years in Doha, had foreign service postings in Baghdad, Arabic and Damascus, so. But, yeah, we ignore this region at our peril, I would say. So it's frustrating. It can really, you know, pose challenges, but we cannot take our eye off this ball, I would say. Persian Gulf security. I would probably put it around us an eight. A, because of those forces, those influences I was mentioning, but also I really think that our government is increasingly wanting to just distance itself from this region and deal with China, deal with Russia, deal with domestic issues. All understandable. I mean, you can make very compelling arguments to do that, but I would say if we pull out completely or we just ignore what's happening in this region completely, we are really going to suffer long-term consequences. Sorry, don't mean to be so negative. But thank you for coming.