Jared Kushner: evaluation

Transcript context

…Building off of Abraham Accords, as you mentioned, Israel-Saudi normalization, there’s been a lot of promising progress towards this. What does it take to not allow this tragedy damage the progress towards Israel-Saudi normalization? I think right now it’s probably not the best to think about that. I think that we want to think about that after whatever’s going to happen is going to happen now. I think right now, the number one priority for Israel has to be to fully regain security in the country. And then number two is, to figure out how you can, like I said, eliminate or degrade the Hamas capability or other Iranian threats to make sure that you have your security apparatus. I think that the Israeli leadership right now should proceed with that, and I don’t think that they should be thinking about normalization with Saudi at this moment. My instinct, and I’ve been watching this Israeli-Saudi normalization play out. Obviously just speaking with people and seeing what I’ve been reading and watching with great excitement. I think it would be a game-changer for the region. I think it’s one of Iran’s worst nightmares to have Israel and Saudi interlinked together. I think it’d be great for the Saudi people from a security perspective, what they’re discussing with America would be very strong. The ability to get different elements across would be incredible. So what I would say with this is that, the industrial logic held yesterday, and I think it will hold again tomorrow. I always expect countries to act in their interests. I think that the deal that’s on the table right now between Saudi, Israel and America is in Saudi’s interests, it’s in America’s interests and it’s in Israel’s interest. What’s going to happen now though is, the political dynamics are going to shift. And I think that, as we’ve seen with political dynamics, they come and go. I think let’s get through this moment, and then I hope at the right time that those talks will be able to resume and conclude in an appropriate way. It’s funny, Lex, when I was working on the US-Mexico agreement for the trade, every day there’d be a tweet that would go out or there would be an issue. People forget how intense it was between America and Mexico. And I’d speak to my counterpart of Mexico after a rough day and we were working on something, we were making progress. It’d get blown up. And I’d speak to them and say, “You know what? Look, they’re not moving America. They’re not moving Mexico. Let’s stop for today. Let’s pick up tomorrow and let’s find a new way to bring this forward.” So I would just encourage everyone working on that not to give up, to keep working hard at it and to find a way. But like I said, I would take a little bit of a pause for the time being. Let’s let the current situation play out and then hopefully there’ll be a way for it to move forward. I just hope there’s still people on the US side picking up the phone and calling UAE, Saudi Arabia just as human beings, as friends, as allies, and just keeping that channel of communication going. Maybe you can correct me, but I just feel like there’s just simple human dynamics that play out here, that divisions can form and just run away from you. Over simple misunderstandings, over just inability to see a tragedy from the same perspective because of conversations that could have happened but didn’t happen.…

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