CBO Fact vs Fiction; A New Middle East 6/16/25
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John Batiste's all-new jazz club, and the Caribbean's largest casino. Visit Bahamar.com today and discover your next vacation. Bring in show music, please. Hi, I'm CNBC producer Katie Kramer. Today on Squawk Pod. The big, beautiful bill, President Trump's key legislative priority, comes with a big cost. The Congressional Budget Office estimates this mix of tax cuts and investments could add more than $2 trillion to the U.S. deficit. We

We talked to the head of the nonpartisan CBO, Phil Swagel, on mathing the math, no matter the politics. There is a little bit of a strange thing being criticized for following the law, but that's okay. I think we all here understand that that's just part of the process. And the conflict between Israel and Iran stretches into a fourth day, with the region on edge. Once and for all, take that off the table. If...

They had zero possibility of getting a new. Israel has made the point that it is doing the work that lots of other nations probably appreciate. The Atlantic Council's Fred Kemp is optimistic this time is different. Iran's in the weakest position it's been since the fall of Saddam Hussein, so 30 years or so.

Plus, the rest of today's news that got us squawking from Congress to DNA databases to the mountains of Alberta. Our Megan Casella at the G7 with the world's largest economies. Canada as the host country, because of how much disunity and how much fracturing this is this year, they're trying to avoid some disagreements and they're not pushing for a joint statement of any kind. It's Monday, June 16th, 2025. Squawk Pod begins right now.

stand becky by in three two one cue please good monday morning everyone welcome to squawk box right here on cnbc we're live from the nasdaq market site in times square i'm becky quick along with joe kernan andrew is out today here's the latest developments on the fighting between israel and iran u.s ambassador to israel mike kuckabee says the u.s embassy's branch in tel aviv sustained some minor damage

due to shockwaves of a missile hitting nearby, but no U.S. personnel were injured. He said the U.S. embassy in Jerusalem will be closed today. Iran firing a new wave of missile attacks at Israel with emergency services reporting at least five people killed. Israel says fighter jets struck 10 command centers in Tehran belonging to an elite arm of the country's Revolutionary Guard.

Israel's military now saying it has achieved aerial superiority over Iran's capital. President Trump weighing in on the conflict last night as he left the White House heading to Canada for a G7 meeting. -I hope there's gonna be a deal. I think it's time for a deal, and we'll see what happens. But sometimes they have to fight it out, but we're gonna see what happens. I think there's a good chance there'll be a deal.

Earlier yesterday, the president posted on Truth Social that the two sides should make a deal and will make a deal. Also, a U.S. official telling NBC News that President Trump rejected a proposal from Israel in recent days to assassinate Iran's Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali.

came in and said, no, that would not be a good idea. Still hopeful for some type of negotiated settlement. I don't know what's going on behind the scenes. A lot of meetings are taking place. I don't know what's going on behind the scenes in terms of Fordo at this point. Fordo. Fordo. The Wall Street Journal is arguing that he shouldn't listen to the

people like Tucker Carlson and others that are saying you need to be an isolationist and that we've got the wherewithal. They don't have the planes to deliver it or the bomb itself. And the Journal was urging more or less to... Look, at this point, their air defenses are down, as you mentioned. They have not seen Hezbollah or Hamas able to make any of the proxy attacks that have happened in the past. Totally. And...

Tehran was in a position where they were producing more uranium than was allowed by the already very tight procedures that had been in there. They had been kind of testing the waters on this, waiting to see what was going to happen. If you were able to set them back a few months, that's one thing. But if you're going to go through all of this when they don't have the protections that they've had to this point, maybe it's worth trying to make sure that you can really set them back and prevent them from getting a nuclear weapon.

It would be a very different game. But that's where most of the efforts are now, a half mile underground. And if you don't, that's finishing the job. That's finishing what, I don't know whether it finally happens. I don't know what the president is thinking about this. But it is, and I'm sure there's a lot of ongoing discussions with people within the administration giving their opinions on what to do. But there's definitely a whole contingent saying,

help Israel once and for all take that off the table. It would change the entire Middle East if they had zero possibility of getting a nuke. And if they still have a possibility of getting a nuke, you...

It doesn't really solve the problem. Israel has made the point that it is doing the work that lots of other nations probably appreciate, not just the United States, but you're talking about just about every one of their neighbors. I even think that some of the neighbors that are condemning the attacks are... Yeah, agree. Right. That do not want to see Iran with a nuclear weapon. Right.

And in Washington, D.C. this morning, Republicans on the Senate Finance Committee are expected to release the legislative text for their portion of President Trump's broad tax cut and spending bill.

It's the final Senate panel to release what they've been working on, the legislative text, and includes some of the most controversial revisions to the House bill, including the cap on state and local tax deductions and Medicaid cuts. Senate Republicans are set to gather for a conference this afternoon to hear a representation or a presentation of the Finance Committee's changes to the House bill. ♪

I'm Anne Wojcicki, the former CEO of 23andMe has won the bidding to take over the company, a nonprofit that she controls, topped a prior bid by biotech company Regeneron. Regeneron CEO, Lynn Schleifer, telling me, "From our perspective, the juice wasn't going to be worth the squeeze. Many questions arose during the process about whether the data could be actually transferred, whether affirmative new consents would be required, et cetera. And as you said, many legal questions remain.

Putting it all together, the value wasn't there for us at a higher price. So Regeneron dropped out. They had had the winning bid before. This was an auction that was reopened. 23andMe's Ann Wojcicki under this new nonprofit actually winning with a higher bid. But Wojcicki's bid still needs to be approved by a bankruptcy court. Last week, Regeneron's Len Schleifer was here on set with us talking about what would be so interesting, why they'd be interested.

involved with this because they think they can do a lot with genetic diseases if they can get access to some of this information. But there had been a lot of questions raised. Congress was looking into this last week as well. And just the legal questions around that, whether or not you'd actually be able to use that information without the people consenting once again to allow you to use it, that was a big part of it too. Yeah. Anything that interesting in yours, Morf?

You wouldn't want getting out? I haven't done it. I'd be okay with them using it, especially after Lynn sat here and said he's got some of the rare genetic disease. I have a daughter with a rare genetic disease. You think about the potential for finding medicines. If you can dig down into some of that data, I'd be okay with sharing it.

The group of seven leaders are gathering in Alberta, Canada today, where much of the focus will be on trade. Megan Casella joins us right now with more. She is there in Alberta. And what have you heard so far, Megan? Hey, Becky. So good morning, guys, from beautiful Banff, Alberta. I am standing about 20 miles from where the group of seven leaders will be gathering today and this week.

in Kananaskis, Canada. President Trump got in here late last night into Calgary before flying over to Kananaskis to meet and really kick off this two-day summit, not only with the other G7 leaders, but also with other invited officials, the European Union officials and leadership, as well as leaders of Mexico and Ukraine, others not yet confirmed so far. And take a look at this year's G7. A couple of things.

One is that five of these seven leaders are fairly new to their positions. It's only Italy's Maloney and France's Macron that are sort of the veterans here, although for President Trump it is sort of, of course, a return to this group. And the other thing to note here is that all of the other six leaders have been to the White House simultaneously.

have been to Washington so far this year to meet with President Trump. So no new meetings for the president this week, at least not that we know of yet. But still a fairly dramatic range of issues to be discussed, trade, of course, being at the top of that list. As you mentioned, the president spoke with reporters on his way here yesterday and did say that he expects, quote, a few new deals this week. We know he has bilaterals set, for example,

with Canada and Mexico. So we'll have to see. Those deals have proven elusive so far, but it's one major deliverable we could see so far this week. Then, of course, there's the backdrop of everything going on in Israel and Iran. And the White House has told us other issues like critical minerals, AI and energy security are going to be top

of mind for them as well. But one thing, guys, that I have confirmed, talking with a Canadian official last night, and this is different for this year, there will be no joint communique coming out of this G7. And that is something different. That tends to be one of the only few concrete things that comes out of a G7 summit. It's the leaders coming together, sort of in a show of unity to sign on to a set of shared goals. Canada as the host country, because

of how much disunity and how much fracturing this is this year, they're trying to avoid some disagreements and they're not pushing for a joint statement of any kind. We might see individual leader statements. We might see some on specific issues, but no joint statement. And again, that underscores sort of the fracture in here. And I want to leave you guys with this. 2018, this is the last time Canada was the host country of the G7. And this became kind of an iconic photo of that summit with most of the leaders on

on one side of a table, President Trump on the other side with his arms crossed kind of defiantly. And it became the symbol of that summit when there was a joint statement after the president left. He withdrew the U.S. from the statement once he was on Air Force One amid a disagreement with then Prime Minister Justin Trudeau. So with Canada back as the host country, with President Trump back in the White House and returning to the summit this year, there's a lot of speculation here, guys, from everyone I've spoken with as to whether we might see some sort of similar dynamic this time around.

Guys, I guess by getting rid of that joint communique, you take some of the drama out of it in advance. We've kind of been hearing that that was going to be the deal, that there are just too many issues where they have...

too many different opinions to be able to get everybody on the same page. And seeing John Bolton there shows you how long ago and how different everything is at this point. Absolutely. That's right. And yet, Joe, I will say the similarities, the biggest one I'm only going to highlight is just the trade issues that we're back into that with...

all these side deals wanting to be struck and the tariffs that are back on stage. Everyone's hoping to clinch their side deal, but none of these leaders wants to go home, having looked like they've capitulated to the U.S. in any way at the same time. So they sort of want to stand strong while trying to get a deal. And remember, we're just about three weeks from the tariff deadline potentially kicking back into effect. So that's sort of the backdrop to all of these side discussions. Megan, thank you. Tease will be next.

Coming up, Congressional Budget Office Director Phil Swagle is defending his agency's projections about the size and the cost of the big, beautiful bill in the face of critique from the GOP. So it's just, it's narrative. It's the way that policymakers look at it is really up to them. SquawkPod will be right back. How will you shape the future of consumer products in retail with confidence? Behind every favorite product or seamless checkout, there's a series of strategic decisions to make.

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Welcome back. You're listening to Squawk Pod from CNBC today with Joe Kernan and Becky Quick. The Congressional Budget Office has been taking some heat from the Trump administration following analysis predicting that the president's big, beautiful bill could cost the poorest households $1,600 a year while boosting the richest by $12,000 a year.

Joining us right now is Phil Swagle. He's the director of the Congressional Budget Office. And, Phil, let's talk through some of the criticism you've received. Russ Vogt said on X that this bill reduces deficits by $1.4 trillion when you adjust for the CBO's one big gimmick, not using a realistic current policy baseline. Carolyn Levitt said that the CBO assumes a long-term GDP growth of an anemic 1.8%, and that's absurd.

And then you had President Trump himself saying that the CBO has become partisan and political. That's just a taste of what has been kind of thrown your way. Have you been surprised by the arguments that have been coming from the administration?

Oh, yeah. No, you know, none of this is a surprise in the sense that there's a lot of tension around the bill. There's a lot of attention on it. And, you know, our analysis can matter in some ways for what Congress is doing. So this is just part of the process by which legislation is made. In terms of the criticisms, you know, the baseline that we use is set by statute.

And it's completely legitimate for a policymaker or for the administration to say that their narrative is that the current policy basis that the OMB director talked about is the right way to look at it. And we'll provide that information. If members of Congress want a different baseline, well, we can do that. The one that we use is set by statute. So, you know, there is a little bit of a strange thing being criticized for following the law, but that, you know, that's okay. That, uh,

I think we all here understand that that's just part of the process. It's set by statute that is set by Congress. I think this is the committee on joint taxation. The Joint Committee on Taxation is the one that does that? Yeah, I mean, this is the Budget Act of 74 as amended, sets the way that the baseline is constructed. And that is based on current law.

But, and we work very closely with the Joint Committee on Taxation, which evaluates some of the tax policy. So the two agencies do that together.

Again, the word I've been using lately is narrative, that the way policymakers look at the legislation and look at the effects on the economy and the deficit and the debt is really part of their narrative. And if a member says, well, I don't think these tax cuts should ever expire, well, that's a completely legitimate way of looking at it. And that's their narrative. If a policymaker looks at, say, the revenue from tariffs,

And we've evaluated that and said that the revenue from the president's tariffs will basically offset the cost of the tax provisions of the one big beautiful bill act. It's hard to say that. Well, that's a legitimate way of looking at it also, that those two things offset. So it's narrative. It's the way that policymakers look at it is really up to them.

Well, the 1.8 percent growth expectations for the next decade does sound low. If you look just at what we've seen over the last 10 years, I pulled it up and there's only been two times that we saw growth or negative growth that was below 1.8 percent over the last decade. 2016, it was 1.7 percent. 2020, with the pandemic, it was down by 2.2 percent.

But aside from that, most of these numbers are well north of 2 percent. You know, 2.8 percent last year, 2.9 percent the year before, 2.5 percent. 2015 was 2.9 percent too. Why 1.8 percent? How do you get that? Oh, OK. So that number is us looking at the economy, you know, as being, you know, not in a cyclical downturn, as kind of the long-term potential growth.

And of course, the U.S. is an amazing place. We have an amazing economy, resilient and flexible. So we have lots of positives. On the other hand, we're an aging society. And that means the demographics of the country are going against us and the labor force growth is declining.

So that's in some sense a drag on the economy. We had a surge of immigration over the past couple years that led to lots of issues and lots of concerns by policymakers, but it did in some sense offset the labor shortage that we had coming out of the pandemic, and that's ended. So that's the kind of thing we're looking at. We're looking at the demographics, we're looking at investment in the US and productivity growth in the US.

We're not dismal, we're not negative on productivity growth. We just don't have the kind of booming productivity growth that the US has seen at some times. So that's why the 1.8% is kind of a middle of the road long term projection for economic growth.

What do you anticipate from the Federal Reserve? Because after the 2017 tax bill passed, the economy did pick up pretty substantially, 3.0% for 2018, 2.5% for 2019. Some critics will say, well, that was because the Federal Reserve was doing lots of things with quantitative easing around that time, too. What do you think?

Oh, okay. Yeah, no, and what you said is absolutely right. And it's really important that the U.S. economy grew pretty strongly in the aftermath of the enactment of the 2017 Tax Act, the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act. And that's what CBO projected. So as you said, GDP growth was 3%, and that's actually what CBO projected was 3%. It downshifted a bit. We were actually a little bit over-optimistic about GDP growth and revenues for 2019.

And then, of course, in 2020, the pandemic scrambled everything. So we do expect the economy to keep growing in the aftermath of whatever happens to the Tax Act. And the Fed will have to react to that. And we don't try to tell the Fed what they should do. That's, of course, up to them. We try to project what they will do because changes in interest rates feed back into the budget deficit and into debt.

And that's really, in some sense, a challenge of the fiscal situation we have, is that the debt trajectory in the U.S. is rising that will feed back into interest rates, that will feed back into the Fed's decision, and then feed back into the budget.

you know, that's the challenge that we face is that debt trajectory feeding back into the fiscal situation. It is a lot to try and get your arms around, a lot of moving pieces. That's, I suppose, why some people say, well, the OMB is always wrong. I guess it depends on which one of those metrics, which baselines you kind of put into it. Phil, you've been, again, accused of being partisan. You're a Republican.

I am a Republican. You can see over my shoulder that sheet of dollar bills is signed by the Treasury Secretary when I was in the Bush administration in the Bush Treasury, I was in the Bush White House.

You know, this is a nonpartisan organization. We work for the entire Congress. We work for both Democrats and Republicans, the House and the Senate. I have 270 colleagues here who are just focused on the job. And of course we get things wrong. We get a lot right. We get some things wrong. We're human. We do our best and we do it in a nonpartisan professional way. - Remember the last CBO estimates for the 2017 bill,

I know that you have constraints that you work under, but that doesn't mean that it's not sometimes misleading or could be outright.

You might not be anywhere near close to what the actual... Are you talking about tax receipts between 2018 and 2024? You said it would be $27 trillion, the CBO, not you, but it was $1.5 trillion higher than that between those years. I think some people have gone back and said that was because inflation spiked during the pandemic. I mean, it's GIGO, isn't it, Phil? I mean, if you're not sure exactly what to put in, you're not sure exactly what's going to come out.

I mean, there is margin. There's room for error. I don't think I don't think a lot of the people that love this bill are. I mean, I know they want to get it passed. They want to do what the president wants. But I don't think they're they're just lying through their teeth about what they expect to happen and why they think the CBO is underestimating some of the positive effects of of the the growth initiatives that are in there.

Okay. Yeah, I mean, you know, of course, there's uncertainty about the effects of the bill. I look at the 2017 Act where in the immediate aftermath, the CBO projections were really spot on for 2018 and 2019. And that's both with revenues and with growth.

2020, of course, the pandemic scrambled things. There's lots of legislation. There's very high inflation starting in March of 2021, and that inflated revenues as well. There's the Fed's QE.

had an effect on asset prices and we had a spike in capital gains revenues. There was the immigration surge and that meant high revenues. And see, these are things that the CBO certainly did not predict back in 2018. A lot of things like that. What is your assumption on GDP growth? I think that's what they complain about. What is your assumption for GDP growth? 1.8%.

Yeah, so it's 1.8, about 1.8% now. And that's important to keep in mind that before the bill, and we're putting out a dynamic analysis of the bill that will look at the effects inclusive of the bill. And the challenge that there's some things that will boost GDP growth, the lower taxes, but the higher deficit will go in the opposite direction. And the GOP wants you to assume much higher, Phil? Yeah.

I think that's right. And it's based on not just the bill, but the totality of what the president's agenda is. And he has a deregulation. And you can't really put that in, right? We will look at that later in the year. But the score, the dynamic estimate is just of the bill. So if the president has other pro-growth elements to his policies, we will get that. It just won't be in what we release later this week.

Could it be somewhere in the middle? Would you be absolutely shocked if it underestimated the positive effects? I mean, there is a range of uncertainty. If the outcome is better than we expect, we will look at our estimates and say, well, what did we miss? And we will adjust it. And there's really no sort of, you know, no belief that we're

Perfect. Believe me, we will learn and adjust. This is just based on the House's version of things. The Senate is going to put out its version today, and then you've got to figure out where the two come together. How quickly will you be able to change your models based on the new bills that are coming?

Okay. No, no. And thanks for asking that because that's an important part of what's happening here at CBO is that we're working intensively with the committees in the Senate as they take up the bill and work their will on the legislative language. And there's this very intensive back and forth as we provide technical assistance to the committees. I think we'll be in good position to provide estimates as the Senate estimates.

legislative language comes out. It depends, of course, on the changes they make. If they're big changes, well, then we might have some more modeling. But we and my colleagues at the Joint Committee on Taxation are working as hard as we can to provide feedback as quickly and immediately as we can. Okay. Phil, thank you. Phil Swaggle. Coming up next on Squawk Pod, where the strikes between Iran and Israel leave the rest of the Middle East with Fred Kemp, president of the Atlantic Council.

This is a historic moment. I don't think the Israelis are going to stop until they really have eroded Iran, maybe even to the point where there's a regime collapse of one sort or another.

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You're watching Squawk Box on CNBC. I'm Joe Kernan, along with Becky Quick. Joining us now for a look at the implications of the what is apparently still escalating conflict between Israel and Iran. Fred Kemp, CEO and president of the Atlantic Council and a CNBC contributor. You know, we see people depending on their point of view. Fred, we see all kinds of different analysis of this. I've never seen you. I

more positive about what this could potentially mean for the Middle East. And I happen to agree with you. And more than just...

more than just preventing Iran from getting a nuclear weapon, but removing the one obstacle from the Middle East to where you could actually bring the entire region into the modern world, theoretically. Joe, thank you for that. Look, I've been hoping for that for a long time. I've been talking to leading Saudi officials who have that vision themselves, have wanted to move forward for Israeli troops.

normalization, that would be the big win in the region if the Saudis and Israelis normalize. But we're watching right now this war not for the strikes, although they're incredibly stunning, bolder, more strategic, broader than anything Israel has ever done, but really what comes out of it. And the basis for all this is the Abraham Accords, which the first Trump administration struck. These are normalizing moderate Arab countries.

And then you add to that Jordan, Egypt, who have also normalized with Israel. We have a congressional delegation, the Atlantic Council has a congressional delegation in the region right now, which is the Abraham Accords Caucus on the Hill, and they decided to go out

despite what was going on, because they wanted to push this idea forward. We do it with the Talpins Foundation, Jeffrey Talpins Foundation. And the vision is for a Middle East that's economically modernizing, that's religiously tolerant, and that's politically moderate. And so you've got to think about Europe after World War II. Think about the

the really centuries of disputes that went into that. The only thing really standing in the way of this right now is Iran. And Iran is naked in its air defenses, as you announced this morning. It can't really hit Israel with very much punch. Twenty-three people have died, but they've thrown

everything at them and have not succeeded. So this is a historic moment. I don't think the Israelis are going to stop until they really have eroded Iran, maybe even to the point where there's a regime collapse of one sort or another. I don't think any of us knew, and a lot of us weren't -- you know, many people weren't alive when the Shah fell in the Iranian revolution. But I don't know if everyone realized that was really the beginning of decades of one country

really holding the entire region back with nuclear brinkmanship and extremism, exporting revolution. It had Hamas in Gaza, Hezbollah. You write about all this, the Houthis in Yemen. Everybody else, it seems like...

If Iran hadn't been the sticking point, we'd even be further along. And maybe that there is hope for what you just described. In the Middle East, it doesn't look anything like what we've seen since, what was it, 1979? Not at all. So Iran's in the weakest position it's been since the fall of Saddam Hussein, so 30 years or so.

And they have been the arsonist for integration, for peace agreements, whether it's the Camp David Accord, the Abraham Accords. Don't forget, on October 7th, when Hamas attacked Israel, Saudi-Israeli normalization was very close. The Biden administration was down to the last parts of the negotiation. The other thing that's intriguing to me, nobody's writing about this. I have a contact who's very close to the Trump administration, and he was in Iran a couple of weeks ago.

He knows Russia very well, Soviet Union very well, former Soviet Union. And he said to me, the mood was one of perestroika. And I said, well, what do you mean by that? He says, well, don't forget, in the latter days of the Soviet Union, there was this economic opening, perestroika, political opening called glasnost. And nobody was predicting the fall of the Soviet Union. But what happened was all the repressive institutions were in place,

But they were no longer so fearsome. People had ceased being afraid of them, and they had slowed down in their repression. He says he saw women on the street with scarves off to a degree that he'd never seen in Iran before. And we know they're unhappy with the regime. They must be even more unhappy now. It's very unpredictable what would come out of it. Would it be a military state? Would it be a country?

Certainly isn't going to be a parliamentary democracy, one wouldn't think. Could the monarchy come back? That's one of the things people are talking about on the streets of Iran. So I think we have history in motion. We just have to see where this goes.

Christine Amanpour was pointing that out over the weekend, too, Fred, I think, just talking about the former monarchy being one of the most well-known names that's there. But you think the idea of an uprising is a realistic one at this point? Well, you know, Becky, we've had it before, and it's often led by women. And there was a real crackdown on women not too long ago.

We have a strategic litigation project working on Iran's violations of human rights and other things at the Atlantic Council. It's almost all incredibly

impressive Iranian American women who are lawyers working against the regime. And they've got a lot of allies and friends inside the country as well. So there are a lot of groups. But in the past, their power of repression was just so much greater than that opposing them. And so a lot of things take place in Iran behind the scenes. You don't see it. But the question is, does it bubble up now? There's a whole wing of the Republican Party that

is just very, I think, aware of the failure of nation-building efforts, the most recent ones that we tried. And I think that's sort of what spawned

I don't know. You take a pick who you want to talk about that. Really, they don't want any involvement whatsoever with the United States and, you know, some of these problem spots. So I think the president is confronted with people on that, you know, from that side of things telling him, what are you doing? Take it easy. And others saying this is a chance.

for you to be, you know, 100 years from now, it could be remembered that this is when things happened. But what I'm alluding to is getting dragged into something like allowing bombers, U.S. equipment, maybe not bombers themselves, but in the bunker busting bombs to take out that remaining nuclear facility. And I know that there's people that want the president to go ahead and do and accommodate that

somehow for Israel. Do you know anything about where we are on that? And what's the likelihood that that happens? Yeah, Joe, I do. I know quite a bit about that. So Brett McGurk was the person that put those plans in place, helped put those plans in place in Biden administration. He was the negotiator then. He's now come to join us in our N7 Abraham Accords initiative.

He's, by the way, he's calling the Israelis have called this Operation Operation Roaring Lion. He calls it Operation Kitchen Sink because of everything they've thrown at it. But the issue is that only the U.S. has the B-2 bombers and the 30,000 pound bombs that can actually go in and take out the deeply dug nuclear sites.

I think Trump, by not doing that, by not helping out with this, is saying, you know, I'm going to have this both ways. I'm not going to apply American power. I'm not going to send in American soldiers. But on the other hand, I'm going to stand back and let Israel do what it can do with Iran literally naked now in air defense. So I think those that are criticizing this right now should actually—

praise Trump for the restraint that he's shown. He gave the Iranians 60 days. Don't forget the strike took place at the 61st day. So whether it was intentional or not, Israel waited for his deadline for negotiations to pass. So I think you also can take a look around the region. Saudi Arabia, Oman, the UAE, Qatar, these are countries with lots of money,

trillions in sovereign wealth funds. You've had the fall now of Syria next door of Hafez al-Assad. This may be one of those moments where the region itself can get together. And yes, we should help. We should help them. But I don't think I think we got more. You don't think we're going to that won't get that won't finish the you think that it's going to be negotiations? And why should we believe that Iran lives up to the

whatever the negotiations result in, in terms of enrichment and everything else. You don't think that, which bomber do we need? Which one did you say? BB-2.

that big B2 with the bunker busting bombs, that's not in the future for the Fordow site. You don't think that that is going to happen? So the U.S. policy thus far, I don't know what it is in the Trump administration, in the Biden administration, they had to have proof that the regime was moving toward a bomb and absolute intelligence, and they were confident they could get it.

The ayatollahs have said, well, that would violate our religion to go toward a bomb, so we're not going to do it. We just want the fissile material. I just don't know what would set off that kind of bombing in this administration. It may be the same thing, but right now they're so far away from being able to put together a bomb.

But, you know, I think a lot has been achieved away from the negotiating table that has increased our leverage in the negotiations. What would stop President Trump from giving the OK for that? You don't think he will. You don't think that's a bridge too far. That's too much involvement for the United States in this conflict, given what happened in Iraq and what happened in, I don't know, take your pick in recent years.

You and I have both been watching this president. He makes decisions very much on his own and from day to day. So what's in this one man's mind makes a lot of difference in the world. And I can't predict how he's looking at it. You can only know what he said about war in the past. He's been very reluctant to go there. He's very much against what happened in Iraq and Afghanistan. And his base elected him partly because of that. So I think it's going to be the last thing he does.

Okay. The last thing. Well, I think he'll try to avoid it is what I mean to say. And it would only be Iran doing something pretty silly that would put him in the position to do it.

It feels like maybe we're on the cusp of something really positive. And that's all in your in what you've written lately, Fred. And that's not everyone feels that way. It's like, oh, this is horrible. But thank you. Appreciate it. Well, some people could accuse me of wishful thinking, but, you know, it's optimists who actually try to change the world for the better. And I think there are a lot of them in the Middle East right now, which is which is one of the big changes. Right. Thank you.

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