James Carafano, vice president for national security and foreign policy at the Heritage Foundation, spoke with the Daily Caller’s Samantha Renck about the peace deal between Israel and the United Arab Emirates, implications for the future and more.
On Thursday, President Donald Trump announced a historic peace deal between Israel and the United Arab Emirates. Trump tweeted the joint statement:
Joint Statement of the United States, the State of Israel, and the United Arab Emirates pic.twitter.com/oVyjLxf0jd
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) August 13, 2020
“It’s more than just a peace deal,” Carafano said. “It’s about [the] normalization of relations, which means we’re going to treat each other like normal countries.”
He added that “this is the first time that the U.S. has brokered a deal on this scale in over a quarter of a century and it’s probably not the last. We’re probably going to see similar arrangements.” (RELATED: Kushner: ‘Very Good Chance’ More Israel Peace Deals Will Be Announced Before Election)
“It’s probably the most significant, transformative moment we have seen in the Middle East since the 1970s,” Carafano said.
Carafano also discussed President George W. Bush and President Barack Obama’s foreign policy in the Middle East.
“Regardless of what President Bush believed his foreign policy was going to be coming into office,” he explained, “9/11 was really a defining moment. There was really a press to defend the United States. I think our notion was to jump into the Middle East, essentially, and solve all the problems. Quite honestly — that just didn’t work.”
On the contrary, “the Obama administration’s alternative to that was ‘let’s just walk away from the problems in the Middle East.’ Of course, that was even worse because it just created gaps and spaces for terrible things to happen.”
Carafano further discussed the implications of the deal, what other countries might be impacted and more.
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