NTK: Top Expert Outlines What Ultimate Iran Deal Will Look Like

sub-basement of the Ministry of Snark in Washington, D.C. and from other undisclosed locations

across America and around the world.

“Hello and welcome to Need to Know, I'm David Rothkoff, your host and on this episode”

as every episode, we're going to talk to an expert who we think can help shed some light on a subject of importance to you. We know that there are a few subjects that are more central to everybody's thinking right now than what's going on in the Middle East, what's going on in the conflict with Iran. And so we are very fortunate to have with us one of the country's best experts on this.

Amaz Hockstein previously served as White House Senior Advisor to the President. We've played a leadership role in advancing U.S. national security interests.

He served both in the Biden administration and the Obama administration, and he currently

serves as Managing Partner at TWG Global, welcome Amaz, thank you for joining us. It's great to be here. Thank you, David. So, you know, you know, the focus, and you also know the story line these days. Recently on our conversations with experts, we've started referring to this conflict

with Iran as the groundhog day war, because you know, we're going through a similar cycle. There are threats. There are attacks. There is pulling back. There is promise of peace.

There is no progress on those talks. Then there is more the more threats and so forth. And, you know, this has been repeated over and over and over again, over almost half a year of them, the New York Times is a story today saying, "Is this another endless war?" The difference between this war and the endless wars to which they refer is that this

war is directly connected by the global economic nervous system to the global economy, to, you know, energy prices. Another story from today shows that the price of diesel is up over $5 up 33% since the start of the war. And so, you know, it would seem like this is one place where endless conflict is in

nobody's interest, and yet nobody can figure out a way out. But that's why we're turning to you.

“You probably haven't figured out how do we get out of it?”

Yes, I haven't all figured out. Um, let me just give you the secret magic bullet of how we end all of this. Okay. Look, a couple of things. One is that what we're starting to see, and we can get into it a little bit more

because you raise the diesel, and when I was the president's advisor on some Middle East issues and negotiating in the Middle East, I was also primarily, he came into the administration as a president, senior advisor on energy, both domestic and global. And that started getting to a serious issue on the Russia Ukraine war before the October 7.

I say that because we're actually starting to see, uh, and we're going to see more and more of it, an interconnection between what's happening on the ground in Russia Ukraine, and

what's happening on the Gulf, the diesel price that you've just cited has to do is the first

piece that has to do as much with Russia Ukraine as it does with the Gulf, and the interconnection between the two is what's leading us to this very big spike in diesel, which the reason it's such a big issue is because it's the price of diesel is outpacing the price of oil. So oil is not price of oil is actually not high enough to justify this five dollars. It's the combination with what's happening in Russia Ukraine.

Let's put that aside for a minute.

“I don't think it's a forever, I think there's another difference between the forever wars”

of let's say Vietnam or Iraq, you know, et cetera, where we had boots on the ground. And here we don't. And so, and we also understood to some degree the impetus behind the wars, let's say the most relevant for people today, the Iraq war, because we explained it in advance, and then we had a theory, and you could be for it or against it, but you understood what the reason

was, you can be, you can support George W. Bush or you can oppose him, but you knew what he was using the arguments he was using justified.

And that adds, I think, to the complexity here.

I look, Groundhog Day to me is the best descriptor. We are, there's no peace in the equation, right? So people Donald Trump likes to talk a lot about, we're bringing peace in this agreement. There's no peace. This is a cessation of hostilities or no cessation of hostilities.

“And we're not in a war right now, and we're not in a ceasefire, right?”

So we have the U.S. us now conducted five straight nights of strikes in Iran. The Iranians have concluded a few rounds of strikes against their neighbors, but that's, that's all background noise of both sides pressuring. The strikes are not severe by either side. They're significant, but they're not severe, meaning they're not causing a massive escalation.

They're intended to put pressure on one side or the other, to get back to negotiating. But the question them, because what is it that we're actually negotiating? We're only negotiating one issue right now. We're negotiating the straight-of-her-most. We are not negotiating nuclear, we're not negotiating missiles, we're not capacity, we're

not negotiating support for terrorist proxies across the region. We're only negotiating one issue that did not, that was caused by the war itself and did not exist before the war, which was who controls the straits. And so the ceasefire, the so-called ceasefire was really an MOU period that was supposed to lead us to a ceasefire, which was going to be a longer standing ceasefire.

“And that we're not able to do, because I believe this from the second week of the war.”

Iran will not give up control of the straight-of-her-most, no matter what. There is no scenario in my mind where they give up control. So the debate is only about what form does that control take?

Is it, for Trump, it's always about the money, it's about a toll.

I don't, I think the Iranians can live without a toll, what they can't live without is control, control can mean I decide who, when and how they pass through the straight. I can punish my adversaries or my neighbors, I can use some kind of leverage points for asymmetric conversations with Gulf, friends who rely on it. And so that's really the only war we're in right now.

This only conflict we're in is over control of the straights. Yeah, we've had a number of conversations with other senior experts, many of whom you may know, and you know, in one of them yesterday talking to a really well-known nuclear expert, he said we have inadvertently given Iran something better than nuclear weapon, because the control over the straight doesn't invite the prospect of, you know, complete destruction,

gives them a lot of leverage, regionally and globally raises their importance. And it seems as you suggest that it's impossible that we're going to go back to February 24th, pre-conflict, where this was not an issue anymore. And, you know, Trump three days ago was, okay, we're going to control it. We're going to charge 20% that, you know, some people walked in and said, Mr. President,

we're not going to do that, that's not going to happen. And so he backed off of it.

“But you bring up, I think, what is the critical issue here, which is, it's not just us”

in Iran, it's, I mean, there's the rest of the world, but in terms of proximate consequences, it's Gulf states who are our allies who are increasingly important to our regional security interests and who do not want their economic future to be dependent on Iran. And at the same time, do not want to be living under the spectrum conflict, which is totally contrary to the investment and economic models that they've spent the past couple of decades

building. How does that get resolved?

So that's the critical piece.

The Gulf, and we have to be careful because the Gulf states are, no, this is not a monolithic and they are very different views on this, and those are also shaped not just by their ideological and political differences, but also their physical, geographic differences. So Saudi and UAE are able to reroute products, oil, gas, diesel, gasoline, jet fuel, petrochemicals to the other side, so to avoid more expensive, but worth it, to get to the other side

and not use the straightaway from us.

of the straight as a cul-de-sac, as your neighborhood cul-de-sac, Kuwait's at the end of the cul-de-sac, it doesn't have any access to the Red Sea. So UAE can go to the Gulf of Oman and Saudi can go to the Red Sea. And so they don't, the others don't have. So that's already a difference of a, that will be emerged.

“I think the basic way that you have to think about the Gulf right now is they say, look,”

we didn't want this war, we didn't support it. We thought it was a mistake to go toward the United States was not ready for it. But once you got into the war, you're an ally, so we'll support you and that's, we fight wars together, whether it's Afghanistan or Yemen. And they get Iran started attacking us, they fired into an unprecedented amount of missiles

into civilian infrastructure in all these countries, and they say, well, once they attacked us, we have the right to, to enter the war as well. Now they say, you guys dried us into this mess, now you want to do some kind of ceasefire

where Iran controls a straight, which is our, our, one of our most important arteries.

And they're emboldened, they're angry, they're vengeful. They have more control over their society today than they did before the war. And they're our next door neighbor. And they have no, they have shown that over the history that they support organizations that non-state actors against Gulf states.

And now you've left of, leaving us a mess, and you're ultimately going to move all your military hardware out of the region, and we're stuck with this.

“I think the Gulf is not just important for our security architecture in the region, which”

some people today say, well, let's just leave the region, and then we don't need them for our security architecture. One, it's a misunderstanding of America's national security interests.

Second, they're critical to our AI and technology advances and the race that we're in,

these are the China. If you look and calculate the level of investment into the United States, it's extraordinary and it's what's enabled us to be the lead in this, in, in technology. I spent many, many months working with our Gulf allies on this issue of investment into the United States.

So they're critical allies for us. They don't understand what we're trying to achieve. They have no idea. And we're opening new fronts instead of closing them. So now we have a potential today of the Houthis attacking the Babel Manda.

We have reports that the Iranians are talking to the Houthis in Yemen.

“Now if you do that, then the Straits get compounded, right?”

Because if there's reduced traffic through the state of our most, and there's reduced traffic in the Babel Manda, restricting Saudi exports, then you've taken out two arteries. And that's going to be some of the economy camp there. I'm sorry to interrupt, but I really have to tell you about our sub-stack. The DSR network sub-stack is the absolute best way to follow deep state radio.

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Thank you, and back to the show. I think, you know, the way you describe it, we joked at the beginning, you know, what's the solution.

I don't know that anybody knows what the solution is, but I do think that a fair analysis

will say long-term stability depends on how we develop these relationships with these partners in the Gulf. And the future of these relationships is not the same as the past. Part of that has to do with changing US relationships elsewhere in the world and with Israel which we can come to later.

But part of that has to do with what you're talking about, which is AI, where, you know, they're, you know, for example, the UAE has sort of twice the AI adoption rate that the US does, is investing heavily in it, has a lot of money. And by the way, people who follow our podcast know, one of our podcasts is underwritten and part by the UAE embassy here in Washington.

of interest.

They've never asked us to say one thing or another, but we always, we're always full disclosure.

But at any event, if you look at what's happening in Saudi, they have a plan to diversify away from a fossil fuels. In the UAE, they have a plan to diversify away from fossil fuels. They're building it. You know, Qatar is doing some similar things.

This looks like a bunch of countries that are going to, and they have deep relations with China, deep relations that are going to be important and the balance of power in the region. This looks like, you know, the formula for US regional security is going to depend more on defense partnerships. President Trump, after he backed away from his, uh, we're going to take over the, the

straight and charge everybody 20%. His response was, well, we're going to do a lot of investment and trade deals with the Gulf.

“I think that was an easy fallback because he was already planning to do that.”

But what do you think that looks like? And how central to sort of the big US picture in the Middle East do these new strategic defense partners to just strategic AI partnerships play a role?

I think the Gulf, first of all, I agree with a lot of what you've said.

I did not know about your, your association with UAE. It's a bit there, a sponsor, and I just, you know, we don't, I don't want somebody to listen in later and say, oh, well, they're a sponsor. So you're by, I'm not biased. I'm asking you a question.

You answered anyway. What? The, the real race in the Middle East, when I came back, left after the Obama administration came back into the White House to work for President Biden. The biggest change beyond COVID was the biggest race in the region was no longer about defense

actually. It was about who was going to diversify away from fossil fuels faster. The irony is that while we were debating climate change whether it exists or not, the need for the energy transition, yes or no, in the United States, a silly argument. The oil producing states of the Gulf had no debate about it.

They were like, yes, climate change is happening. The energy transition is being financed and it's growing and it's going to happen faster. And peak oil is coming and therefore, I need to plan for it because I have to survive.

“And what I can't do is remember they went through, before oil, they were pearl divers.”

And the Japanese got into the pearl business and they all went bankrupt and it was a economic devastation in the Gulf. They don't want to repeat that with oil. So they started competing what's going to be the alternative to oil in our economies. For them, it doesn't matter if that's peak oil is 2035 or 2050.

It's coming and I got to prepare for it. Technology, tourism, travel, all those things became very big conduits for that diversification. For UAE, let me just, and Saudi in particular, the investment in AI and technology is monumental. Think about it this way.

On AI, there's only three countries that really matter when it comes to new technology, right? Frontier technology development.

The United States at number one, close second China and Israel.

There is no third, there's no fourth. They don't exist. Yeah, a little bit developments in Europe, but nothing significant. It's only the United States, China, and Israel. When it comes to AI adoption, UAE outpaces everybody in the world, a little bit easier because

they're a small country, so a little bit easier, but the attention to it is massive. Saudi is trying to do the same, Singapore, etc. So they are critically important to the AI and technology ecosystem together with us. So our relationship really matters.

“I think the result of this war is that the Gulf on the defense relationship will have”

to, yes, continued deep relationship in the United States, but I believe they will seek to diversify their defense relationships. I think as we push European countries to spend more on defense and as we threaten Europe that we will leave NATO, Europe is going to direct that money instead of increasing spending on defense on American defense, which is what has been the case to date.

They will spend significant portions on that, of that, to build out their own defense capabilities. And we're already seeing that. As they do that, I think you'll see the Gulf starting to buy more and more non-US products. In addition to, they're not replacing, you cannot replace the US defense. But I think based on how erratic we have become, we are not trustworthy, neither in

how we go to war nor how we end the wars, and therefore they will need to have some diversification.

Yes, they have deep relationship with China and they will continue to have relationships

with Russia, with China, with the United States, with Europe, with Africa, with everyone. That's the nature of the game in the Gulf. But they understand that it's an 80/20 West versus China. They will be in China, but they understand that the reliability of the capital markets in the United States are not replaced by anyone.

That is one part of our secret sauce the United States is capital markets, and they can't replace that. So, yes, they will continue those relations.

“I think they will stay in the American orbit and they'll diversify into other sources”

when it comes to defense. Yeah, and the US has been from the Biden administration onward, very clear that if you want to play our game with AI, you can't play the Chinese game, and they've all signed on and they're very kind of strict guidelines in that regard. I think, by the way, there's a little irony in what you're talking about it about them diversifying

out, because in the wake of this war, who did they turn to try to strengthen themselves

defensively, one of the first countries was Ukraine on drones, because Ukraine for a variety

of reasons has now become a world leader on that, 100%. So, again, this is all part of the shifting sands, if you will, of the region, and for the US, it's kind of hard. I wouldn't say the Trump administration. I was in the Democratic administration as you may know, I'm a Democrat, so this is one

“area where people know I have a bias, but I wouldn't say the Trump administration is”

super strategic about where it's going in the Middle East, and this war is an example of that. But, you know, we are seeing things change, and I don't think anybody is quite clear where

the change is going, and this is a broad more part of it.

The shift away from fossil fuels to AI is part of it. The growing dependency on the sort of strategic partnerships with the Gulf is part of it. The relationship with Israel is changing, yesterday at a boat in the house, where a majority of Democrats said we don't want to continue funding Israel as we did before. We can debate the merits of whether it should be humanitarian aid or whether it should

be conditions on military aid, something we've talked about many times on this show. One thing is certain, the relationship with Israel is not going to be the same as it was. Maybe Netanyahu's days are numbered, probably, as Prime Minister, the person who replaces it may have very similar policies, Israel, you know, we look at Israel in the context of Gaza and the West Bank and the rest of the conflicts in the region.

But as you bring up, Israel also plays another role in the region as a technology platform that the Gulf states and others have wanted to work with. Somehow there's no relationship with Israel going forward. There's just a different relationship with Israel, a different relationship with the Gulf. And I don't know that we're very close to figuring out what that balance is.

Do you have some sense of what this looks like? I mean, some people, you know, talk about both Roma, manual, and a recent speech in Tel Aviv, and Jeremy Benami and with Jay Street talk about a 23 state solution, which, you know, I mean, you know, it makes sense, right? You need everybody to play the same, to pull in the same direction for there to be real stability.

What's your view?

“I think that people are running to simplicity when it comes to the Israel relationship.”

I think you've said it right. We are going to go to a different relationship with the United States and Israel. And I think in many ways it's a long time coming, unrelated to October 7th and the aftermath. And I think that we need to have a strategic conversation about it versus the vote yesterday to me was, it was like a freebie, right?

Everybody wanted to register their anger with BB and with Israel. But they also knew they were voting for something that would not become law, so it was an easy free vote to express your opinion, knowing that there was zero consequences for your vote. And many of the people who voted for it actually put out statement saying, this will require, if past we will need to require some, you know, nuance and discussions on what that means.

Israel's relationship with the most of the Arab states is stronger today than it was six months ago, stronger today than it was a year ago, two years ago, five years ago. It keeps strengthening. Israel's relationship with the West keeps weakening. It's a really, really big irony because, you know, for those of us who've grown up on

Arab states.

“It's now the Arab states defending Israel from the West, I think.”

And there's a lot of ironies there that have to be ironed out.

Some of this is personified to BB and when BB Lee, if BB Lee is, and it's always

he's the biggest political animal we've ever seen. So I don't count him out, I hope he's gone. I think who replaces him does matter. The policies are, you know, some big ticket item policies may shift. But if he's out, it's very likely somebody will say, I'm willing to have a conversation

about a negotiation towards a pathway to a Palestinian state with my strict conditions and so on. I think the police enforcement in the West Bank from violence from the settler violence against Palestinians will be tightened immediately. Almost everybody running against BB's saying, that is the first thing that they will

do is return law in order to, that will take a massive pressure valve from the relations

“from the relationship out, I think, a conversation about implementation in Gaza of the”

20 point plan that Trump put forward will happen. So I do think that there's a good chance that there will be not just personality change. But having Ben Gavir and Smotrych who are radical extremists that I can't think of any prime minister of Israel in its history, allowing them in government, having them out of government will also mean a significant change.

But I think people need to understand that the relationship with Israel has to change, but it can't just get ripped off. Israel is important to the United States as the United States is to Israel.

And one, it's a technology, it's one of the most important technology countries in the

world, more innovation than startups there, and we rely on those technologies and medical sciences and others greatly. And this is also a wealthy country now, it's not the country that require the same kind of assistance as it did 30 years ago, it's very wealthy, it's doing well. It requires our support militarily, defensive capabilities, and they did not design and

develop their own military capability in some areas, because we didn't want them to, you know, from Clinton administration or even Reagan administration onward, we wanted to be the supplier from the United States to Israel, and there are areas that are just to expensive for a small country to develop its own air force capabilities. So we're going to have to figure out what is defensive, what is not, what are the kinds

of things we provide, what are they after, what do they do, and second, what do we provide as aid, yesterday was about aid versus what we allow them to procure, just like we sell defense items to our other allies. The relationships going to have to change dramatically, the 23 state solution, yes, that's great.

There are a lot of solutions that I would sign off tomorrow if they could happen. I mean, Bill Clinton started talking about this 35 years ago. So I don't think anybody in Israel would object to the 23 state solution. We just haven't been able to get the 23 states to agree to do it. So that's a nice place to say, I don't know what the relationship should look like, here's

a solution. The two state solution is still probably, it's the most strained, but one that we have to go back to a formula of how do we get there. We, I was part of the negotiation with Saudi Arabia normalization that dependent on a Israel agreeing to a student to moving towards the two state solution and ending the war in Gaza.

“I think that will take you, that normalization effort will take you back to the 23 state”

issue. So I think there's a lot of things that can be done here with the headline that there is unanimous agreement. I think that the relationship must change, the question is how we will not have an answer to that until two things that happen in late October, early November.

October 27, the Israeli election, first Tuesday, November, the midterms, I think both

of those will be, you know, will be telling for how we go forward in this relationship. If BB is re-elected and he's back in the prime minister's seat, there will be a change in the relationship, it'll be a devastating change for Israel, and there will be no going back after that. If Israel, if the Israeli public doubles down on BB, Bendvier Smotridge, they are sending

a signal to the world that we don't want to, we are accepting no relationship with the Western world. That is where this is going, but if he doesn't get elected, I think we're in a different conversation. It brings up something kind of interesting, which I haven't thought of, which is the Israeli

election is before the US election. If BB gets re-elected, Democrats are going to ride that. They're going to see that as a potential problem, and maybe too late, because it's one week apart. Well, but yes, but no doubt, but you know, look at modern media technology, a lot of things

You know, that could be an October surprise, right? It could change things substantially, you know, you began very modestly saying you don't have the solution for all of these complicated problems.

“But, you know, I think, and I'm only happening for seizures here, when you do look”

at the analysis of these things, you do see actually the outlines of where everything has to go. It's like a two state solutions, but talked about for a long time. It's both the hardest place to get to and the only solution. So ultimately, you're going to get there.

The relationship with Israel is already rich, Israelis have already decided they can live with that a lot of the aid. It's going to go away, their relationships are going to continue. It's going to continue in the context of this new or Middle East, where there are other partnerships that are similar to the partnership with Israel, and in some cases, they may be just as

important depending on what the issue is, that's going to reshape the way that looks. As far as what's going on in Iran, as you point out, right now we're talking about the straight, there's going to be a solution.

The solution is going to actually there is no way there's a solution where Iran does not

have some control, or some say in this, Trump doesn't like it, but that's where he's

“going to end up because that's what he got into.”

There is going to be royal instability in the region, but because of these new defense relationships and so forth, there are ways to stabilize it, and ultimately we will move into a new phase of this sort of overall bigger negotiation, but I think you've described the moving parts and the direction they're heading. And before I wrap up, I just want to say, how much of that did I get wrong?

No, no, you got it all, right? I'll give you the solution. I do think that there's actually a solution for Iran, and I think we know it already. The question is not what does it look like, the questions when does it happen, and when do the parties just acknowledge reality and do it?

The solution is going to be Iran will have a certain degree of control, but not tolling

for a period of time. They can go to it later. They'll have that semblance of control. They'll be given that.

“That will lead to a nuclear deal that will look remarkably similar to the JCPOA agreement”

from 2015. It may have some minor differences. I joke that we call the JCPOA he'll call it BTO, the better than Obama, because that's only the matter. So maybe instead of low enrichment capacity, allow they'll have zero enrichment for 15 years,

but it'll be remarkably similar, and they'll rely on all the work that was done in JCPOA to be able to do it more quickly, because it'll just be a copy and paste. That's the deal. There's going to be no deal on missiles and no deal on proxies. That will allow Donald Trump to remove a couple of the aircraft carrier and strike groups

out of the region, and will go. The Saudis will lead the region in some kind of rough rush mal with Iran that will be on the surface only, because behind the scenes, they'll continue to see them as enemies. The UA will not want to even have the semblance, but they'll do some kind of working relationship. The Gulf will accelerate the building of infrastructure away from the straight.

That will include IMEC, which the Biden administration I was involved in leading, which is infrastructure that connects the Gulf to Europe.

But it won't go through Israel, basically be UAE's Saudi, Jordan, to Syria, and then Turkey.

That will allow Kuwait and Iraq to have flows that don't depend on that, not just for energy, but for technology and 5G wiring. So all of this is already in play. Everybody in the Gulf understands that this is the solution. They're just waiting for it, does Donald Trump enable himself to get there now, or does

he have to wait till the end of the midterms? And so we have this new normal of not war, not ceasefire for the next three months, four months. That's where we're going. I think it's already written.

It's just when do we acknowledge it? I totally agree with you, and I better have one last question, because it just strikes me. And that is, the other thing we know is that the United States is not going to do a major escalation. The reason is that if the US were to do a major escalation, the price of energy around

the world would go completely haywire. The global economy, there was an IMF report last week that said it's already been hit by this. The global economy would be in a bad shape. But the other thing that's sort of embedded in all of this, and I talked about it, we

do this A.I. show regularly, and I talked about it, but then economists earlier this week, is if we got into a major economic downturn as a result of this war, that could trigger the bursting of the A.I. bubble. And if the A.I. bubble bursts, that's driving a lot of sort of whatever energy there is in the global economy right now, and this would be a fall catastrophe that would

be the end of the Republican Party for 30 years, it would be bad for all of us.

And David, if the bubble bursts in the US, it doesn't necessarily burst in China.

So that means the Chinese get not only to beat us on the technology, they get to set to technological tone, guidelines, guardrails, policies, and advancement for the next 100 years

“on the most important technological advancement of the last 100 years, which is A.I.”

And that is really consequential. On the energy price, Russia's refining has been hit so hard by Ukraine, that they just remember this, Russia was an exporter of 11% of the global diesel supply. They just put an export ban in place, so 11% went away. All the countries that relied on the supply of diesel and gasoline and diesel from Russia now

have to buy it elsewhere.

The products are not coming out of the other main exporter of the world, which is the Gulf, because when the straights reopened after when the MOU is announced, it favored oil flows, but not gasoline and diesel.

“So diesel prices now at $5 in the United States.”

The premiums, what's called crack spreads, are at historic highs in the United States, which means that even if the oil price goes a little bit lower and right now it's going higher, gasoline and diesel for American consumers is going to stay very high and go up faster. We can create some kinds of solutions on oil production in the United States. We can increase them a little bit.

We can't manufacture a new refinery out of whole cloth. That takes years.

So we in the first several months of this, we've put out so much from the SPR from the strategic

petroleum reserve.

“We have drained the commercial inventories in the United States.”

We're at near zero point. If we go to escalation, David, it's not only that all the things you've said, the tools that we have in our toolbox to suppress an economic downturn because of energy are all used up. We won't have them anymore.

And that's something that is not being discussed in the media. We used all of the bullets have been fired. You know, it's not being discussed in the media because there are enough people like you. And I'm not just saying that to be flattering, because I'm also saying it to be flattering to me.

The number of people out there who understand economics and national security is a very small group. Most of the discussions that I hear about the Iran were former generals or their former, you know, people who experience this primarily military or intelligence. I was a partner for Henry of Henry Kissinger for a couple of years at Kissinger SFC.

And, you know, he would say behind closed doors that he didn't understand economics. It showed in some of the analyses that we're done. You can't deal with this problem, which is profoundly economic in a lot of its components and has to do with a lot of technicalities of energy without being able to understand the energy markets and the economic markets and the stock market and so forth.

And so, you know, I just encouraging anybody who listens, follow Amas, follow other people who bring this, follow other discussions that bring these perspectives together. Because if you have a, you know, you're missing a dimension, you're not getting the picture. Anyway, this has been great.

I hope at some point, we can have you back. It was a great discussion. And for now, thank you very much for taking so much time. Everybody, obviously, we're going to keep on top of this and, you know, keep following what we're doing here at the DSR network for more. Until then, thanks Amas. Bye-bye.