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Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman and Pakistan Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif embrace each other on the day they sign a defence agreement, in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia, September 17, 2025.
What We’re Watching: Saudi-Pakistan defense pact, Italy passes AI law, Kimmel removed following Trump admin pressure
Saudi Arabia signs defense pact with nuclear-armed Pakistan
Following years of negotiations, Saudi Arabia and Pakistan bolstered their long-standing security partnership by signing a mutual defense pact on Wednesday. It’s not clear whether the deal obliges Pakistan, which boasts the largest army in the Islamic world, to provide Riyadh with a nuclear umbrella. The announcement comes as Gulf States have become increasingly skeptical about whether they can rely on the US to protect them – Israel’s attempt to kill Hamas leaders in Qatar is a case in point. Riyadh reportedly didn’t inform Washington of the pact until after it was signed.
Italy passes first AI law
Italy has passed the EU’s first comprehensive AI law, imposing prison terms for harmful uses like deepfakes and requiring parental consent for children under 14 to access AI. The legislation, aligned with the EU AI Act, mandates transparency, human oversight, and stricter rules for sectors such as healthcare, education, and justice. Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni calls the law a “human-centric” framework to protect rights, promote innovation, and ensure AI develops within ethical boundaries while combating fraud and misuse. It also allocates €1 billion to fund AI and cybersecurity ventures.
Jimmy Kimmel taken off air for Charlie Kirk comment
ABC has pulled Jimmy Kimmel’s late-night show “indefinitely” after his remarks about the suspect in conservative activist Charlie Kirk’s killing sparked backlash. The FCC, whose independence has been questioned since Donald Trump took office, urged stations to stop airing the program. Nexstar Media Group, which is currently seeking FCC approval for a $6.2 billion merger, dropped the show on its 32 ABC affiliates. While Sinclair, the largest ABC affiliate group, vowed not to air the show unless “appropriate steps” are taken. The controversy coincides with concerns that a forthcoming executive order on political violence and hate speech could threaten free speech.
Israel attacks and targets Hamas leadership in Qatar
How will Israel's attack in Qatar strain US alliances?
In this episode of Ask Ian, Ian Bremmer unpacks Israel’s attack against Hamas leadership in Qatar.
“Recent attacks on Qatar, a major ally of the United States, didn’t succeed in taking out Hamas’ leadership,” Ian explains. But that move, he notes, has “agitated President Trump pretty significantly,” given America’s close ties to Qatar and the wider Gulf states.
While the US shows no signs of breaking from Israel, evidenced by refusing to grant visas to Palestinian officials, Ian warns that the Trump administration’s support carries risks. With Israel shifting from “deterrence to threat removal,” US allies like the UAE are drawing red lines, even threatening to exit the Abraham Accords, which Ian says "would be a big slap to President Trump directly."
What (or who) will replace USAID?
As Washington pulls back from its decades-long role as the world’s leading aid donor, the humanitarian system is facing what David Miliband calls a “very big shock.” On GZERO World, the International Rescue Committee president and CEO tells Ian Bremmer that the US has historically been the anchor of the global aid system, contributing nearly $4 out of every $10 aid dollar. But amid the cancellation of USAID and a dramatic pullback in foreign funding, vital programs are now closing and the impacts are being felt all over the world.
Who–or what–could step in to fill the gap? Miliband says China isn’t interested in large-scale humanitarian aid, focused instead on economic development though initiatives like Belt and Road. Europe, meanwhile, is stretched thin by war in Ukraine and pandemic debt. The Gulf States and Japan are debating their role, but the scale of US funding remains unmatched. The result, Miliband argues, is “sucking sound” of money leaving the system, leaving the world’s poorest to pay the price.
“The US was the anchor of the global aid system,” Miliband explains, “When you pull an anchor in choppy waters, the boat rocks and the passengers get seasick. That’s what’s happening at the moment.”
GZERO World with Ian Bremmer, the award-winning weekly global affairs series, airs nationwide on US public television stations (check local listings).
New digital episodes of GZERO World are released every Monday on YouTube. Don't miss an episode: subscribe to GZERO's YouTube channel and turn on notifications (🔔). GZERO World with Ian Bremmer airs on US public television weekly - check local listings.
Israel strikes Iran: Could the US and Gulf States be pulled in?
Tensions in the Middle East escalate as Israel launches a surprise military strike against Iran, prompting international concern and speculation about broader conflict.
In his latest Quick Take, Ian Bremmer calls Israel’s strike on Iran “a huge success for the Israelis” and a significant blow to Iran’s regional influence. “A fair amount of Iran’s top military leadership has been decapitated by Israel,” he notes. While the US did not take part directly, Ian says President Donald Trump “gave at very least, a blinking yellow light, if not a direct green.” He warns of three high-risk responses Iran may pursue: a push for nuclear weapons, disruption of oil shipping through the Strait of Hormuz, or a harsh domestic crackdown. All are high-risk and carry the potential to draw the US and Gulf states into deeper conflict.
What is Trump after in his latest Gulf states tour?
On Ian Bremmer’s World in 60 Seconds: Ian dives into the Brazil-China relationship, India and Pakistan ceasefire, and Trump’s Gulf States tour.
Ian Bremmer's takeaways:
- On Brazil-China ties: “As the Chinese de-risk away from the United States, that is a significant benefit to Brazil.”
- On India-Pakistan tensions,: “The ceasefire will hold—for now—but the region is more dangerous than it was a few weeks ago.”
- On Trump’s Middle East visit: “He (Trump) wants this to be the most successful foreign trip he’s had as president.”
Trump's weekend of geopolitical success
Lots of headline announcements from Trump himself, and the biggest one in terms of the markets is not necessarily something you'd call a success. It's more a backtrack, but a useful backtrack nonetheless and one that we're all glad to see. Trump, of course, kicked off this global trade war with pretty much everyone, but especially with the Chinese, where he was essentially talking about a decoupling between the two largest economies in the world, raising tariffs against China to 145%, meaning nobody's going to buy any goods from China. Chinese doing the same against the Americans, raising up to 125%.
China was not going to pick up the phone to call Trump, and he was surprised that they hit back. He thought that this was going to lead to a negotiation and much more careful caution from the Chinese. As you saw from a lot of American allies around the world, not the case. And so, not only did he get his own administration to respond and talk with the Chinese and say, "We'd like to engage in person." But also sent Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent and Jamieson Greer, US Trade Rep, by far the most capable on the trade side that are senior and report to Trump.
And after a couple of days of meetings in Geneva, we've got 90 days off, and we have 125% off the American tariffs. So, we're at, what? 30% or 115% off, or 30% for the Americans, 10% for the Chinese. In other words, trade can happen again. And a joint statement from the US and Chinese governments, which is very rare under any government, frankly, with China, certainly with an adversary, to show that there is no daylight on the desire to pull back against decoupling, and also to engage directly between the two countries over the coming months to try to ensure that these trade gets to a mutually more respectful place.
Now, what's interesting is Trump had been trying to push so many allies around the world to align with the US on decoupling from China as part of the trade negotiations, that obviously, that piece of the negotiations isn't going to move anywhere. Japan pushed back, most countries aren't interested, certainly not the Europeans. Now, it's not really going to be credible, and I think Trump will quietly drop it, and the markets of course shoot up as a consequence of that.
So, two steps forward, two steps back. We're kind of where we were before Liberation Day on US-China. Yes, there are some additional sectoral tariffs, and this is going to be costly. But on the bilateral relationship, frankly, not an enormous amount has actually changed. Okay, so that's not a win.
What do I mean that he's had successful time on the global stage? Well, internationally, there've been a bunch of wins. India, Pakistan, significant escalation on the back of this Kashmiri terrorist incident, with lots of Indians getting killed, Indian civilians. The Indians respond by hitting Pakistani terrorist targets, according to India, but in civilian locations, so they don't mind that Pakistani civilians are getting killed. Then Pakistan responded, then India responded, and the Americans stepped in and facilitated a ceasefire.
Marco Rubio probably his single win on the global stage that we've seen so far, helps him with Trump. He also announced there would be trilateral engagement going forward between the countries. That's not going to happen. But we are, I would say again, at the status quo ante on Pakistan, India at this time, the Americans facilitated.
The Houthis had been threatening US and other shipping through the Red Sea. The Americans decided to blow up lots of Houthis military leadership capabilities. That was the Signal Gate leak that came out. And a few weeks after that, the Houthis said, "Okay, we won't attack the shipping lanes anymore, as long as you stop attacking us." That's a win for the United States. It was facilitated by Iran, who's engaged in direct bilateral negotiations with the United States right now, and Iran in a much worse position geopolitically, the Gulf states would love to see that happening. They're hosting Trump this week. That's likely to progress significantly. Maybe even Trump will meet with high-level Iranians. We'll see if we get a surprise there. But nonetheless, that's all in a much better position than it was before. And so too relations between the Gulf States and the US. Saudi US bilateral relations, including a willingness to allow for nuclear energy and development in Saudi Arabia.
Lots of new investments that are going to be announced with all three stops. Yes, there's this unfortunate announcement of a gift that shouldn't be accepted from Qatar of a 747. And then that's going to wrap up the first trip that Trump makes internationally, as well as the release of the sole remaining US hostage in Gaza. And that had been driven by the Israelis together with the US and the US angry with Netanyahu, who's continuing to engage in a war and taking over lots of territory in Gaza and not allowing humanitarian aid in. The Americans deciding they were going to negotiate directly for themselves, and with success before that trip.
So, all of those things, announcements that are frankly welcome. And the one big conflict where we're not seeing progress is Russia, Ukraine. It is plausible that there will be a bilateral meeting between Putin and Zelensky on Thursday. Zelensky is calling for it, the Europeans, the Americans are calling for it directly. Let's see if Putin actually shows up, or if he says, "I want to do a lower level meeting to start." Either way, it looks very unlikely that he's going to actually accept a ceasefire on terms that would be remotely acceptable by the Ukrainians, the Europeans, or even the United States, which means not much progress there.
But at least Trump not willing to do a deal with Putin absent a ceasefire, which means the Americans, the Europeans, and even the Ukrainians are more aligned today than they were a week ago, two weeks ago. Certainly during that shambolic Zelensky visit to the Oval just a few weeks back. So, good news over the weekend, and some good news coming this week. And I'm personally delighted to be able to report some things that are positive about what's happening in Trump administration, as opposed to things that are breaking and things that are falling apart. Let's hope that continues. I'll talk to you all real soon.
Israel’s geopolitical missteps in Gaza
Ian Bremmer's Quick Take: Back to the Middle East. We are now over a month of war between Israel and Hamas following the October 7th terror attacks. And frankly, it is not going all that well. What I mean by that is, it's an awful lot of carnage. It's an awful lot of political division around the world. And Israel, with the exception of a strong relationship with the United States, feels increasingly isolated. That's certainly in the message I was hearing from the Europeans over the last week, getting more and more uncomfortable as this war goes on. The Americans privately saying that to the Israelis, though publicly, certainly standing very, very strongly with them. And members of the Israeli cabinet increasingly believing that the pressure on them is going to grow significantly over the next few weeks as the war continues.
So is there anything else they could have done, right? Because I mean, if you're saying, well, this is really challenging, the fight and it's leading to enormous backlash and, you know, from the region and from the Global South and even from countries that are quite friendly and well-disposed to Israel, then what might you have suggested they do instead?
And here my view is, when you have enormous support from the West in particular, but also sympathies more broadly, following these horrible terrorist attacks on October 7th. And let's remember, I mean, this was civilians that were targeted, that were brutally murdered. This was not Israeli settlers who were fighting on the right. It certainly wasn't the military, was actually progressives on the left. It was the people that were most oriented to peace, were the ones that were gunned down and tortured and taken hostage by Hamas in Gaza. So if there was ever a time that the Israelis were going to have sympathy, it would be right after this. And my view is use that in the same way the United States did after 9/11. And they built a coalition of the willing with dozens of countries that were prepared to support them to go into Afghanistan, and specifically to take out Al-Qaeda. You build that coalition. There were countries, of course, NATO's allies, no surprise, the UK and France and Canada. But I mean, countries like Georgia were involved in sending people to UAE.
And this, I think, is an opportunity that the Israelis really did have. When French President Macron traveled to Israel, he said that they were prepared to join the fight against Hamas, join the fight on terror with the Israelis. The Americans, of course, immediately sending, you know, sort of troops to the region, as well as troops on the ground to act as advisors, a lot of intelligence support. I think you would have gotten significant support from the Germans in this environment, from the UK, in this environment. And the point here is that in the immediate weeks after the attacks, instead of massive bombing attacks and then a ground war instead, work first and foremost on a coalition, build multilateral support, heck, work with the Saudis. The Gulf states are strongly interested in working with Israel. They hate Hamas. They want the end of Hamas. They find, you know, this would be a dangerous movement that's much more aligned with their enemies. The Iranians. So Israel had a very strong geopolitical position and the ability to use it if their initial response was, “we're going to be stronger, we're going to build on all of this sympathy to have not just us fighting against Hamas, but everybody.”
Now, would that have constrained what Israel would have done? Would it have meant that they would have been more pinpoint in their bombing? It would have taken longer, that there wouldn't have been a ground war? Maybe so. But having said all of that, Israel is massively more capable militarily than Hamas is, and they have vastly better border security and they have incredible missile defense and they would have gotten more technological and military support from allies and friends all over the world following these attacks. I don't believe that there is an existential risk to Israel from Hamas. I don't believe there's an existential risk from anybody in the region in terms of military capabilities.
I remember when I was with Netanyahu once at a conference in Herzliya in Israel, and he came and spoke to some of us, a small group, I think it was 30 or 40 folks. And there were some investors in the room and he was talking. The first half of the meeting was all about how Israel was the best possible place to invest. And of course, had, you know, very high ratings in terms of credit and transparency and rule of law. And as a democracy in the region, all of these things. And, you know, everyone's nodding along. And then the second half of the meeting is how the Iranians need to be contained and how they represent an existential threat to Israel. And I mean, both of these things cannot be true at the same time, right? I mean, if you're saying that it's a fantastic place to invest, then it probably isn't really a place that other people can take out.
Israel, of course, has, though, unstated, a serious nuclear force, and they have massive military capabilities and incredibly well-trained Israeli Defense Force. Now, the point here is that, you know, Netanyahu took his eye off the ball, stopped paying attention to border security, undermined the Israeli defense Force's capacities as they were focused on the West Bank, took his eye off the ball on intelligence. But after October 7th, that was never going to happen again. The entire people, the entire country, with a massive additional number of troops being sent precisely to defend Israel. So I don't think it's credible to say that, if the Israelis didn't strike back massively within days and then engage in a massive ground war, that they were suddenly facing an existential further risk from Hamas. No, the risk came because the Israelis, who have every right to defend their borders, weren't doing so before October 7th and needed to do so after October 7th. There's no question that no one should expect Israel to be living next to a territory that is governed by Hamas. And they were going to need to take that leadership at a very least out and have vastly better security capabilities.
But that could be done at a time of Israel's choosing when they had built up much more multilateral support and when they were engaging not by themselves, but with others. And that was absolutely possible, certainly more possible than what we have today. The fact that the French government is saying that they're calling for a ceasefire, they certainly weren't doing that even a week ago. The Americans are privately, increasingly telling the Israelis that you're going to need to stop this relatively soon or the US will limit the military support that's being provided to Israel, three plus billion dollars a year. The fact that, you know, the Gulf states are having summits in the region, Israel's not a part of it. They're not being invited. They're working together. They're not condemning Hamas directly. This is a problem. And I think that, you know, at the end of the day, as much as everyone out there should have sympathy for the brutality that Israel was experiencing on October 7th and the 200 plus hostages that Hamas is still holding today. I mean, any human being has to have sympathy for Israel and for the Jewish people on the back of that.
It is a horrible, horrible thing. But the steps that they have taken geopolitically, the military steps they've taken on the ground, frankly, in my view, is weak in their position. The only thing that is going to ultimately cause an existential risk to Israel and to the Jewish people in Israel, is if they continue to fall into the trap that Hamas has played for them, has placed for them. And so far that appears to be, unfortunately, where they're going. So anyway, that's my view on all of this. I'm sure that nobody agrees with it 100%. But, you know, I promise to always give you my best sense and tell you what I think can be authentic with everybody. And I certainly hope that this doesn't continue to explode and that at the very least, we can keep the fighting itself contained to Gaza and that the humanitarian damage and devastation that we're seeing on the ground gets more limited going forward as opposed to continuing to expand.
I'm not hopeful. I don't expect it. I expect more violence from the settlers against Palestinians in the West Bank. And I even think that the northern front with Lebanon and Hezbollah appears to be opening up a little bit more. But that is certainly what none of us want. And we will see where we go from there.
That's it for me. I'll talk to you all real soon.
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Beina Lesanjir, a woman who escaped gender based violence, participates in a traditional dance at the Umoja village, Kenya.
Hard Numbers: A Kenyan “No man’s land”, Nicaragua strips critics, Eastern migrations soar, big money Bible
0: The defining feature of Umoja, a village in northeastern Kenya, is that it has precisely zero men. The town, which bans the Y-chromosome entirely (at least among adults), was set up decades ago as a refuge for women fleeing domestic violence, genital mutilation, or child marriage. Some 40 families now live there.
94: The Nicaraguan government of strongman Daniel Ortega has stripped 94 of his critics of their citizenship. The move, which violates international law, is part of a two-year-long crackdown on civil society in which hundreds of Ortega’s critics or opponents have been jailed or forced abroad.
64: The number of migrants undertaking treacherous migrations from East Africa through Yemen and onward to the Gulf countries has increased 64% over the past year. Women and children make up a large part of the rise along the so-called “Eastern Migration Route.”
50 million: The Bible warns against “love of money,” sure, but if you’ve already got $50 million burning a hole in your robes, you could be the owner of a nearly complete Hebrew Bible from a thousand years ago. The book goes on auction at Sotheby’s in May.