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US donates vaccines to India; Macron v Le Pen; EU tourism
Ian Bremmer answers this week's questions on the biggest stories in global politics:
The United States says it will now donate 60 million COVID doses. Who are they going to?
Well, they're not COVID doses, because we don't want to give people coronavirus. They're vaccines. It's AstraZeneca, which we don't need in the United States. We haven't even approved yet. They are somewhat less effective than Moderna and Pfizer, but they're damned effective and you should take them, and they're going almost exclusively to India. And that is fully appropriate because India, we know about 350,000 cases a day. In reality, if you look at the positivity rates and level of disclosure, it's probably five to 10x that. This is by far the largest epicenter of the coronavirus crisis to date in the world. But they're not going to be getting these doses until probably June. And meanwhile, they're under very serious trouble right now. And there's a lot of recrimination, central government, local governments. The US has been slow. We should've made this announcement frankly a month ago, but I'm glad we're doing it.
Should Macron be concerned about the rise of the right a year out from election in France?
He should be a little concerned because his approval ratings are horrible on the back of the gilets jaunes crisis, and now you've got the coronavirus crisis and yeah, he's not doing well. But that doesn't mean that he's going to lose. He is behind in polls right now to Marine Le Pen a little bit, but in the second round, everyone that isn't pro Le Pen is against Le Pen, and he gets all of those votes and Le Pen gets the core Le Pen votes and she loses. And that is almost certainly what is going to happen. So I wouldn't be all that worried, even though the far right in France, on the back of a lot of Islamic extremism and recent attacks, a lot more than the United States, is a problem.
Is the EU ready to welcome American tourists back? What will that look like?Well, I mean, they're ready to start opening borders to American tourists. There will be vaccine passports certainly, will require that you show that you've had a vaccine, at the very least, that you have a negative test, and Americans will be able to travel to Europe. And I think that's a big deal. About 80% of the countries in the world right now the US is not recommending travel to, and the developing world, much of it around the world is going to take a lot longer to roll out effective vaccines, and never mind herd immunity, just get to the point that you don't have these massive spikes in cases, South America, South Asia, Southeast Asia, India, as I already mentioned. Europe is about two to three months behind the United States. They need the tourism, they need the money. They're going to open the borders, and Americans will be able to travel, showing that they are either immune through vaccine or have taken a negative test. And so we'll get there, and hopefully we'll get a little closer as a consequence.
Supporters of Peru's presidential candidate Verónica Mendoza hold a giant national flag during a campaign closing rally in Lima.
What We’re Watching: Andean elections, AstraZeneca’s hell week, former Aussie PM is designated driver
Two big Andean elections: This Sunday, Ecuadorians go to the polls for the second time this year in a close presidential runoff, while Peruvians will vote in the first round of their own presidential election. In Ecuador, the matchup is between the leftwing-populist frontrunner Andrés Arauz, who has pledged to blow up the country's IMF agreements and boost national oil production, and Guillermo Lasso, a pro-business candidate who is seen as the choice of continuity with the current market-friendly government. Voter abstention is likely to be high, and the final result could very well be close and contested in a polarized country that was struggling with massive social unrest even before the pandemic struck. Meanwhile in Peru — which recently went through three presidents in the space of a week — the candidate field is hugely fragmented. Those with a decent shot to make it to the second round include "change" candidates like the leftist former lawmakers Yohny Lescano and Verónica Mendoza, as well as the prominent neoliberal economist Hernando De Soto, who has recently risen in the polls. Former soccer star George Forsyth is also in the mix, as is Keiko Fujimori, daughter of authoritarian former president Alberto Fujimori. Both of this Sunday's elections will serve as a kind of bellwether for the political mood in a region that has been devastated by the public health and economic impact of the pandemic.
AstraZeneca under pressure: COVID jab manufacturer AstraZeneca has had a hell week. First, a top EU health official issued a confusing statement linking AstraZeneca's jab to blood clots, which has led some countries to limit its use on people older than 60 and younger than 30. And now the African Union is suspending further AstraZeneca purchases until the Serum Institute of India can ensure supplies for the global COVAX facility. The latter is a big blow to a lot African nations, since the AU was betting on AstraZeneca to inoculate the entire continent because its vaccine is cheap and doesn't need cold storage. On the other hand, it's also a vindication of early skeptic South Africa, which stopped using AstraZeneca even before the blood clots issue surfaced because it was not effective enough against the variant of the virus prevalent there. The broader problem is that unless the safety, supply and efficacy concerns are resolved soon, AstraZeneca's jab will lose the momentum it once had to end the pandemic throughout the developing world.
A famous chauffeur: Four inebriated Aussies stumble out of a bar in Melbourne to discover a driving rain. Having called Uber, they spot an idling car. They pile in and ask the driver to take them to Hastings street. About halfway home, one of the boys notices that their driver is Kevin Rudd, former Australian prime minister and current Eurasia Group senior adviser. Rudd had just dropped his daughter off at a restaurant when his surprise passengers arrived, and he agreed to take them home because Kevin is a fair dinkum gent.A perfect AstraZeneca storm is brewing in Europe
"The fact that you made worse decisions in the past shouldn't be an excuse to make bad decisions in the present." — Sanhita Baruah, a poet and author.
How else can one process the mess now unfolding in Europe, which has already been struggling with the mission of the moment: getting COVID vaccines into arms. The Oxford-AstraZeneca vaccine, one of Europe's main lifelines, has made headlines in recent days, though it can be hard to discern "whether it's a real signal or whether it's just noise."
The backstory: The European Union has been betting on AstraZeneca to inoculate much of its population (it purchased 400 million doses) and restore normalcy. But after dozens of blood clotting events occurred in people who had received the jab, a handful of European countries moved to suspend the rollout pending an investigation by the European Medicines Agency.
Critics say that the move is an over-reaction because the cases are far below the number of clotting events that would be expected in the general population, while cautioning that coincidence and correlation are not the same thing.
Did the EU muff it — again? Brussels has already been broadly criticized for bungling its vaccine drive. But it seems not to have learnt from past mistakes, and again, has made a series of missteps in recent weeks.
Initially, some EU countries restricted the AstraZeneca jab to people under 65, citing a lack of safety and efficacy data. Some later reversed course, but the damage had been done, with many Europeans expressing hesitancy to take a vaccine first cast as of dubious quality.
And more recently, when AstraZeneca and the World Health Organization pleaded with Brussels to continue rolling out the jab, Brussels sounded the alarm, resulting in political heavyweights Germany, Italy, France, Spain, Denmark, and Norway hitting pause on vaccinations.
Sowing seeds of doubt. Many experts believe that the EMA will soon determine that the AstraZeneca vaccine is safe and encourage European governments to resume the rollout. But in sowing the seeds of doubt without good cause, Brussels has already deterred people in Europe — home to some of the biggest anti-vaccine communities in the world — from rolling up their sleeves. The flip-flopping and excessive caution coming out of Brussels surely won't convince more Europeans to get vaccinated and help hard-hit countries move towards herd immunity.
More crucially, the longer it takes to immunize people, the more likely that new variants develop that are more resistant to current COVID-19 vaccines, which will in turn lead to preventable deaths and deepen economic pain. Time simply isn't on the EU's side.
A combustible situation. This setback comes as many European countries are experiencing surging COVID caseloads. More than three quarters of Italians have now been ordered back into strict lockdowns as Italian Prime Minister Mario Draghi warns of a "new wave of contagion." Similarly, European states like France, Hungary, Poland, Germany, and the Czech Republic are grappling with new waves of infection forcing new lockdowns and border closures. "Spring in the European Union is going to be dismal," one commentator recently wrote.
For months, pandemic fatigue — and the political backlash — have been slowly setting in. Germans, frustrated with a lockdown in place since last November, took their anger out at the ballot box last weekend by giving Angela Merkel's CDU party its lowest vote percentages in decades in two state elections.
Spreading fear abroad. But the effects of the European fiasco resonate far beyond the continent. The COVAX facility has banked its success on the AstraZeneca jab, which is cheaper and easier to store than other vaccines on the market. Many low and middle-income countries participating in the COVAX scheme don't have the luxury of pausing rollouts and changing tack midway. It's for this reason that the World Health Organization cautioned the EU to reassure its residents rather than rile them up.
EU shame: As Brussels lags behind, EU countries are increasingly buying jabs from China and Russia to make up the difference, and turning to Israel for help in managing vaccine distribution. For now, the EU's embarrassing missteps continue, costing precious time — and precious lives.
- Why Europe’s vaccine rollout has been so tortured - GZERO Media ›
- Merkel's CDU party setback in German elections - GZERO Media ›
- Was the EU’s bungled vaccine rollout inevitable? - GZERO Media ›
- What We’re Watching: Andean elections, AstraZeneca’s hell week, former Aussie PM is designated driver - GZERO Media ›
AstraZeneca vaccine politics may further damage Europe's economy
Ian Bremmer shares his perspective on the latest news in global politics on World In :60 - that is, :180.
First. What is going on with the AstraZeneca vaccine?
Well, around Europe, we have all of these countries that have suspended giving out AstraZeneca vaccines, because there have been some side effects of people that are taking it. Blood clots, a tiny number of folks, actually fewer side effects for AstraZeneca than we've seen for Pfizer, but it's become this big political show. After a few countries start shutting it down, others do because they can't be left by themselves. I just talked to a major senior official from one country saying, "Yeah, we were under pressure. We want to keep it going." World Health Organization said it's fine. AstraZeneca itself who has done the trials, say it's fine. And this is slowing down an already very slow vaccine rollout in Europe. They were doing a lot of things reasonably well in terms of dealing with the pandemic, but absolutely not this. They're a couple of months behind the United States right now in terms of getting to herd immunity. This is going to slow them down. It's going to hurt their economic growth this year. Okay.
Why are people protesting in Britain?
Well, big demonstrations opposed to the killing of a woman by serving member of the police force. Now there is proposed legislation that would limit demonstrations in the country. The demonstrations have been responded to with fairly aggressive policing, especially in the case of the UK, where police forces not carrying lethal force, the historic idea of the bobbies who are very well behaved and very little violence as a consequence in the UK. Knives are a big problem, but not gun violence. Well, it turns out that this is becoming a much more challenging, and as a consequence, the UK is trying to respond. There were certainly a lot of women that were protesting, were seen pushed down to the ground by police, serving on the same force as the fellow that had killed this woman. It's a challenge in the UK and Boris Johnson who had been doing well the last couple of weeks, has another thing that he's got to deal with.
Okay. And then finally, did you read Jared Kushner's op-ed on the middle East? What is the Biden administration's approach to the region compared to his predecessor?
Yeah, I thought it was a pretty good piece actually. First of all, basically came out and said that he thinks that what Biden is doing in China first and foremost, and in the Middle East, largely speaking, the right thing. They basically agree. Where they disagree is on the Iran deal. Kushner saying it was right of Biden to bring up the JCPOA and then back off, because the Iranians aren't serious. I think the Iranians are serious, but they're posturing because they can't be seen domestically before their own election in just accepting the old JCPOA deal. But I think that by the beginning of next year, that is what they will accept. Kushner doesn't think that's a good idea. He thinks that the US should not accept anything unless it's a broader, tougher deal that includes ballistic missile limitations, includes limiting of funding, for example, for proxies in the region and extremist groups. I think that may be possible over the medium to long-term, but in the near-term, I think both sides will end up accepting almost exactly the old JCPOA, maybe with an extended timeline around it. That means the Iranians will stop with their expanded nuclear capability development and they'll also have about a million more barrels a day of oil being produced, which means prices will go down.
The race to vaccinate: Dr. Atul Gawande provides perspective
Can the US vaccinate enough of its population to prevent hundreds of thousands of deaths before new and more contagious COVID-19 variants take hold? And will these vaccines even be effective against more adaptable mutations of the virus? Surgeon and public health expert Dr. Atul Gawande, most recently of the Biden/Harris COVID-19 Transition Task Force, joins Ian Bremmer on GZERO World to discuss the latest in the global effort to vaccinate our way out of this pandemic. He also explains why people should get the Johnson & Johnson vaccine if offered the chance, despite its lower overall efficacy rate compared to the mRNA-based vaccines from Pfizer and Moderna.
What We're Watching: Indian farmer revolt, EU vs vaccine makers, Myanmar saber-rattling, Maduro's miracles
Angry farmers take Indian fort: In a major and violent escalation of ongoing protests over new agriculture laws, thousands of Indian farmers broke through police barricades and stormed the historic Red Fort in New Delhi on Tuesday. At least one protester died in the chaos, while the government shut down internet service in parts of the capital. Farmers and the government are still deadlocked over the new laws, which liberalize agriculture markets in ways that farmers fear will undercut their livelihoods. The government has offered to suspend implementation for 18 months, but the farmers unions are pushing for a complete repeal. Given that some 60 percent of India's population works in agriculture, the standoff has become a major political test for the government of Prime Minister Narendra Modi's ruling BJP party.
EU threatens vaccine export controls: Fed up with delays in vaccine supply, the EU is threatening to impose export controls on the jabs unless pharma companies hand over more doses. The threat comes after Italy threatened to sue Pfizer for cutting the amount of vaccine doses it would supply, and AstraZeneca — whose jab has yet to be approved for use by EU health regulators — announced it'll cut supplies to the bloc by 60 percent. That nuclear option will likely be met with strong pushback from the pharmaceuticals, and may delay delivery of EU-made jabs bound for non-EU countries. Brussels is running out of options to ensure the 27 EU member states get enough vaccines to ramp up immunization as the continent suffers a third wave of the pandemic, and before new COVID strains potentially render the vaccines less effective. We're watching to see how the drug makers react to the threat of export controls, and whether the problem drags on and thus sets back the EU's plans of achieving herd immunity in a few months' time.
Coup in Myanmar? More than ten weeks after Myanmar held only its second national election since democracy was "restored" less than a decade ago, the outcome is still in limbo over objections from the party backed by the military. The now-dominant National League for Democracy has claimed a landslide win in the December vote. But the generals — whose party ran the show until 2015 — have alleged voter fraud, and ominously warned they may "take action" if the election commission doesn't fully investigate. Under the 2008 constitution, the military-backed party is entitled to a quarter of all seats in parliament and the national security portfolios in the cabinet, but the military has long aimed to become a viable alternative to the NLD, which is headed by Nobel Peace laureate Aung San Suu Kyi. Until now, Suu Kyi has kept the generals at bay by sharing some power, but in Myanmar — where the military has ruled for most of the country's post-independence history — Suu Kyi needs to watch her back.
What We're Ignoring
Maduro's "miracle" drug: Finally, a cure for COVID! Easy to take! No side effects! Tastes great! Gives your hair a luscious sheen, acts as a mosquito repellent, and might just help you find the perfect parking spot! Forgive us for ignoring Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro's claims that he has hit upon a miracle treatment for coronavirus. He claims that the new drug, Carvativir, was tested for nine months in a Caracas hospital but he has offered no scientific evidence for his claims. We are skeptical, but — but! — if Maduro is willing to throw in a free bottle of Original Orinoco Snake Oil as part of the package, we'll take the plunge and order up a case of Carvativir anyway.
US bet on Pfizer and Moderna may lead to earlier COVID vaccine rollout
Ian Bremmer shares his perspective on global politics on this week's World In (More Than) 60 Seconds:
With COVID vaccine near, what will the distribution look like across the world?
Well, yeah, it is quite near. I mean, we're talking about approvals coming just in the next few days for the first in the United States and indeed in other countries around the world. That means that within weeks, you're going to know people that have actually gotten vaccines, and that's pretty exciting, especially with Moderna and Pfizer showing 95% effectiveness. I guess there are a few things that I would say. The first, hearing from the coronavirus task force that everyone in the United States gets the vaccine that wants to take it by June. I think that's right. I mean, there could be infrastructure and delivery hiccups. I hope there won't be. Everyone is going to be rowing in more or less the same direction on this because everyone understands how important it is to get it done.
I'm going to say it again. I don't think you're going to see a lot of people playing politics around taking the vaccine. There are anti-vaxers out there. I've already heard from a bunch of them, but you're not seeing that from Trump or his top advisors. You're not seeing that from Biden and from his incoming coronavirus task force. In the United States where everything gets politicized, a lot of people are going to be taking this coronavirus vaccine. And indeed, you already see numbers of people and their skepticism has been reduced significantly just in the last couple of weeks as we're learning more about it. I certainly feel much more comfortable that I will take these vaccines as soon as they are properly available to me. I'm not sure I would've said that three months ago, given where we were at that point. I feel very comfortable with that now. So that's number one.
Number two, the United States has bought as much as possible of not only the Pfizer and Moderna vaccines, but other vaccines too. And the reason they do that is because when you see start making those orders, you don't know which vaccines are going to work. Because the Europeans have bet more strongly on AstraZeneca, which is a vaccine that has had problems in testing and doesn't do as well, that implies to me that the Americans are going to be getting this rollout before the Europeans do. And that will have economic implications for getting economies back up and rolling early next year. So the US does have a structural advantage here.
Also, final point. Let's keep this in mind. Those two vaccines in the United States are really vaccines that are most useful for advanced industrial economies, because they require much stronger infrastructure. You've got booster shots you need to deliver and you also have to have not just regular refrigeration, but more advanced cold chain technology. You're not using that in most of the developing world. The Chinese are going to be doing most of the early-stage export of their less effective, but still effective, vaccine to the developing world. Just needs regular refrigeration. And that's a lot of influence. I think you're going to see an enormous amount of politics play out as we see Chinese export to the developing world. And if you think that people are concerned about Belt and Road and the Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank, you've seen nothing before the kind of leverage the Chinese influence over their best friends who get their vaccines earlier than other countries do and what they want in return.
This is also going to be one of the biggest challenges for the United States and China in terms of navigating the relationship. I mean, a lot of people think that the US-China relationship is going to be at least more normalized, maybe a little bit better, maybe more promising under Biden. I'm not sure. I see the outbreak of serious trade confrontation and diplomatic confrontation with Australia right now. I see it with Canada right now. I see so many countries that are really antagonized by the Chinese government. And I see these issues getting worse. So even with a group that's rowing in the same direction as the Biden administration will, and with tweets not driving people crazy, I suspect this relationship is going to be very challenging. And I think vaccine rollout is going to be a big problem. So that was a lot of time on your question, but it's a really important question.
Why is everyone on Twitter talking about monoliths?
I have no idea. Some artists installed some metallic thing in the middle of Utah that nobody saw for awhile, despite satellite technology. Why not? Why did no one notice? Aren't there people that spend all their time just looking at the land and seeing what's new? You'd think that AI would have figured that out, but no. No, apparently nobody noticed it, and then suddenly in person they did, and then the obelisk is gone. And I honestly don't care. And we're going to find out that it's... Remember the guy that took the banana and nailed the banana to the side of a wall and said it was an art installation and was charging $80,000? And some other crisis actor came and took down the banana and ate it. And the whole thing was a set up?
It is kind of is annoying. I mean, at least Banksy does it with real talent. The banana guy just did it with a stupid banana. Right? I mean, I don't consider that art and this obelisk is kind of a stupid obelisk, and I don't consider that art either. This is probably the most controversial thing I'm going to say all day. So come at me haters. I don't care. I'm just not interested in a stupid obelisk. The only thing would make me less interested in it is if you put it in Rhode Island. How's that? And drew cats on it. That would really annoy me. But they haven't done that. It's just a stupid obelisk, but it's on my list of things that I find annoying. So there you go.
Quick Take: Latest vaccine news may be a light at the end of the tunnel
Ian Bremmer's Quick Take:
Hey, everybody. Ian Bremmer here, happy Monday, Thanksgiving week. Things starting to look increasingly normal in terms of outlook, in terms of having all of these vaccines. I understand that the next few months in the United States are going to be incredibly challenging, but so much easier when you see that there's light at the end of the tunnel and you know where that's coming. Most recently, the AstraZeneca announcement, which for me, in some ways is a bigger deal globally, even than what we've seen from Moderna and Pfizer, because it doesn't require freezing, it's just refrigeration, which means that countries around the world that don't have the infrastructure to deal with this cold chain requirements of these vaccines will be able to use another set of vaccines with different technology. That's not just AstraZeneca, it will be Johnson and Johnson. It's the Russians. It's the Chinese.
As you start rolling those out, that allows the world to actually get back to normal. It's going to take longer than the United States and Europe and Japan. The advanced industrial economies are going to get these vaccines first, they've put the money in, they've done the development, they have the infrastructure, but we're not talking about years, we're talking about months. By the time we get to first quarter next year, large numbers of people are actually going to be vaccinated. I also think it's really important that this is an issue that is not getting politicized. I mean, yes, there's the potential for fights among states, especially states that have difficulties in terms of how much money they have and can allocate to getting this infrastructure up and running. It's expensive, it'll take billions of dollars, and a lot of states are already got big budget deficit crunches, and you're going to have Democrats versus Republicans fighting over where money is and isn't going and difficulties and stimulus, all of that.
But the fact that these vaccines have been developed by or supported by Operation Warp Speed in the US, means that both the outgoing Trump administration and the incoming Biden administration are all going to be saying, "Get these vaccines." I mean, there will be anti-vaxxer sentiment in the world, and there will be anti-vaxxer sentiment in the United States. But when your top vaccines are at 95% effectiveness, and when the side effects are largely limited to a fever for a few days, but not more significant than that, more people are going to take it. When both Republicans and Democrats, when political leaders around the world are all saying, "Take it." This isn't like, is a mask useful or not? Should have never been politicized in the US. What about hydroxychloroquine? That works, or no, it really doesn't. Remdesivir it works, no it really doesn't.
These things have gotten politicized and they make people not believe it. I don't think people will feel that way about the vaccines. I'm worried that in some countries, Israel and France, the level of anti-vax sentiment and the disinformation around vaccines is very high. Russia, believe it or not, highest level of disinformation and anti-vax sentiment in the world, even though the Russians themselves are one of the producers that are pushing to get these vaccines out as fast as possible, a lot of Russians will refuse to take it, but I think the numbers will be lower than you expect. So if you add to the fact that you're going to have lots of vaccines available soon at very high efficacy, not getting politicized, more people believing in it, and a lot of people that will have already gotten the disease. I mean, in the United States right now, we know that a large percentage of the population has already gotten the disease.
Let's say 5%, but in reality, that's tested, given limitations of tests and level of asymptomatic spread. In reality, it's probably more like 15% of Americans have already gotten coronavirus. Once we start talking about end of winter and what this present second wave looks like, you're probably talking about closer to 25 or 30%. So you have 25 or 30% of the population has already gotten coronavirus, whether they know it or not, and have some level of immunity. Then you're able to get a meaningful piece of the population taking this vaccine, especially those that are most vulnerable to dying. Your mortality rate from coronavirus by spring is going way down. That's on top of all of the improvements with treatments that we've gotten with better ability to recognize quickly symptoms, both in-home treatments and in-hospital treatments and these antigen cocktails also getting approved. We see from Eli Lilly, we see others, the Regeneron, those are also making a significant difference in terms of improved treatment and lowering mortality rates.
You put that all together by middle of next year, we're starting to look at coronavirus in the rear view mirror. It's still an issue, it's still with us, and it's still a global problem, but it's no longer stopping us from engaging in big pieces of our daily lives. My God, that's great news. It's bigger news then the election in the United States, I've said it before, I'll say it again. Coronavirus is absolutely the most important issue in the United States and globally. It was true before the election. It's true after the election, a lot of people going insane because Trump refuses to concede. He may never concede. He's still leaving. Yes, it's a problem that we've got all this disinformation in the media, but that's very different from being able to respond in short order, in a year, to a disease that did not exist in the human population just over a year ago, has infected, we know of, some 50 plus million people around the world. Again, reality much greater than... suddenly we can address it. That's the news! That's the news!
Lots of other things going on, obviously, and I'll be spending more time on them. It'll be good to get back to daily, international affairs. The fighting that we see in Ethiopia, which is getting worse and a lot of hard liners in the Ethiopian government that the Abiy administration needs to stay in power, but pushing towards efforts against the Tigray region that could amount to war crimes. I hope they don't start shelling the general population. We've already seen lots and lots, I mean, 5,000 a day refugees, those numbers could pick up, it's a big new war and it's in a country that has over 100 million people, that's a pretty big deal. So got to watch out for that.
Certainly worried about the potential for US, China relations to continue to deteriorate. Trump is still President for a couple of months and there will be further measures taken against the Chinese government. There are plenty of things the Chinese government's doing that are antagonizing, not just the US, but other countries around the world, that has the potential to get worse. Also, of course, the fact that there's just been a meeting between the Saudi Crown Prince and the Prime Minister of Israel, both have their domestic challenges. Netanyahu may not be very long for power in Israel, MBS has had his internal fights and trying to consolidate power inside Saudi Arabia, and clearly worries that a Biden administration will not be as interested in working with him as the Trump administration has. But we're talking about a completely new geopolitics in the Middle East that allows America's allies in the region to work more closely with each other, puts more pressure on Iran at the margins, makes it easier to get back to a new tweaked Iranian nuclear deal.
By the way, my friend, Tony Blinken who's about to be appointed Secretary of State, he is someone who clearly understands that if you're going to get back to the Iranian deal, you're not doing the status quo ante, it's going to be more challenging. So the Saudi Israel alignment, which Secretary of State Pompeo was involved in, frankly, I mean, I'm sure that Pompeo and Blinken are not talking to each other right now, but I'd like to hope in the coming weeks, maybe they will, because they're both rowing in the same direction. This is an area where the American national security interest is the same, whether you're talking about Trump or whether you're talking about Biden, there's more of that than people generally think or appreciate it. So that's a little bit from me. Thanks everyone, be good.