YouSaid · the spoken record

Gregory Brew

lines on the record: 28
first: 2023-10-20
most recent: 2023-10-20
sittings or episodes: 1
sources: podcast

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“Controversial older, but I think still vital to understanding where the conflict is coming from. I mean, there's so many books written more recently and articles as well. I mean, for understanding Iran's role in this, I would point people towards the work of Afshan Ostavar. He had a great article in War in the Rocks, I think just yesterday about Hamas and Iran's relationship. I mean, the list is endless, really. As you said, Tracy, you could read forever on this subject and still not fully understand how it goes.”
2023-10-20 · Odd Lots · Lots More with Gregory Brew · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Oh Man. I mean, I very often point people towards the work of Rashid Khalidi, who's a historian of the Middle East. They're old now, but the writings of Edward Saeed, who's a Palestinian intellectual of the 20th century, are always great.”
2023-10-20 · Odd Lots · Lots More with Gregory Brew · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“But it's important to bear in mind that these actors are engaging in this conflict on multiple levels. Some of them are on social media. Some of them are just involving ideas trying to get more support for their particular positions.”
2023-10-20 · Odd Lots · Lots More with Gregory Brew · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I can't even imagine. Yeah. And it also gets to one other element that maybe doesn't get quite the attention that it deserves, which is that these groups, Hamas, Hezbollah, Iran as well, they're fighting a war on several fronts, right? They're fighting it with weapons and arms and forces on the ground. They're also fighting what they see as being a war of ideas on social media and in the press. These are political organizations. They conceive of themselves as having constituencies, right? People who will support them. And they have ideologies, right? They're selling ideas as much as they are trying to fight a war against Israel or the IDF. So that's another thing to bear in mind, particularly when we look at things that Iran says, right? Iran is putting out rhetoric, putting out tough talk, because in many ways they're trying to talk up their own sort of propaganda, their own ideology, their own perspective of the conflict. That doesn't necessarily mean they're going to do anything, right? That they might not actually get involved.”
2023-10-20 · Odd Lots · Lots More with Gregory Brew · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“So there's a potential risk for the US to become entangled in this depending on how bad things get. But right now, I think everyone is kind of holding their breath to see what the outcome of Biden's visit is, what the Israeli offensive in Gaza looks like, and also how regional public opinion continues to digest not just the disaster at the hospital, but the continued bombings of Gaza and the outcomes there.”
2023-10-20 · Odd Lots · Lots More with Gregory Brew · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“The scale of the offensive may determine how or if other actors get involved. And there I would look specifically at what Hezbollah in Lebanon is doing. I mean, Hezbollah is a large armed militia. It dominates large portions of Lebanon. It's very closely tied to Iran. And there's been this constant skirmishing happening between Hezbollah and the Israeli military since the attack took place, sort of each side's warning the other to back off, right, in case either side tries to take advantage of this crisis. And if things start to get really bad in Gaza or if the Israeli offensive sort of really starts to push at what Middle East public opinion will accept, you may start to see signs that Hezbollah could escalate. There you have a US threat, too, right? The US has moved two carrier groups into the eastern Mediterranean. President Biden and Secretary Blinken have made very clear that the US is going to back Israel. They've sent very clear deterrent signs against Iran to not get involved.”
2023-10-20 · Odd Lots · Lots More with Gregory Brew · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Yeah. I mean, it's in an interesting phase right now because it's coming up on two weeks, a week and a half or so since the attack. Israel has been bombarding Gaza and has been planning an offensive, but still hasn't gone in. And I think a lot of the medium-term fallout from this crisis will depend on what the Israeli offensive in Gaza looks like and what their goal is. They still haven't said what they want to do. I mean, they want to destroy Hamas, that's clear. But how do you do that without do you have to occupy Gaza? Do you have to carve it up into separate zones? Does the IDF have to occupy parts of the territory or push the population out? There's the refugee problem, right? Where do you move hundreds of thousands of Gazans if Egypt won't take them if they can't be moved into Israeli territory? How do you launch a huge offensive when there's so many civilians in the line of fire? So while the IDF continues to plan this offensive, I think everyone's kind of in a holding pattern because”
2023-10-20 · Odd Lots · Lots More with Gregory Brew · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“One that I would expect from Materials Dan. Thanks, Dan. Right now, yeah, market is kind of taking it in stride, the product market, I think. I think people are still, I think it's still important to look at the picture that was coming together in fundamentals and sentiment before the crisis broke out. There's been some signs that Chinese demand in the fall was a little stronger than some had thought. That's maybe encouraging a more bullish outlook for 2024 as far as products are concerned. The crisis hasn't really spilled out into markets quite yet. There hasn't been actual physical disruptions. There's been some movement in Brent, I think, caused by positions shifting, although those came, you know, after the”
2023-10-20 · Odd Lots · Lots More with Gregory Brew · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Take a side. Totally. A lot of it is out of concern for how the public, the so-called Arab street is how it's referred to. How the public will respond to violence in Gaza, you know, perceived attacks by Israel against Palestinians tend to have ripple effects across the public opinion, across the entire Arab world. So you saw that quite quickly, and then you saw Arab governments issuing condemnations. I think maybe to get ahead of public opinion, even before the evidence could confirm exactly what had happened at the hospital. And that has caused a shift. I mean, you saw President Biden was supposed to go to Jordan to meet with various Arab leaders. That meeting apparently is now off the table. So he is flying to Israel to just meet with the Israeli government, which is not going to look good, I think, for the president, broadly speaking, as he tries to contain this crisis.”
2023-10-20 · Odd Lots · Lots More with Gregory Brew · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Yeah, we're still trying to piece together precisely what happened, right? Whether it was a rocket misfire, whether it was something caused from the Israeli side, something caused from Hamas or another group active in Gaza. I think the evidence is still kind of coming together. But there was an immediate reaction to the explosion across the Arab world. There were spontaneous protests in places like Jordan, in the West Bank, even in Iran, where the struggle in Palestine or the issue of the Palestinian people is followed quite closely. And you saw, as Joe mentioned, quite quick condemnations of the Israeli action from governments across the region. And to some extent, that's for a domestic audience. You have the public protests and then the leadership feels it has to...”
2023-10-20 · Odd Lots · Lots More with Gregory Brew · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I hope so. Speaking of going back to the market reaction, there's like a couple interesting things. I mean, in a way, I've been surprised that you expressed surprise oil popped on these headlines, which you didn't think had much teeth to them. In general, though, I've been surprised Tracy at like most markets for the last, you know, 10 days, they're quieter than I might have expected overall across oil, across rates, across stocks, which are more or less flatter, actually slightly up over the last two weeks, is not what I would have guessed given the intensity of the headlines and the just uncertainty for all this is going.”
2023-10-20 · Odd Lots · Lots More with Gregory Brew · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Well, it's very much in progress, Joe, but what I'm going to try to do, so my last book was about the US and Iran specifically in the Cold War. I wrote another, I co-wrote another book about the 1953 coup in Iran, which also celebrated an anniversary this year. But my next book is going to be about oil and the US more broadly in the 20th century. What I'd really like to do is examine how oil has helped sort of form the foundation for American power in the 20th century and how the oil industry companies like ExxonMobil, but also smaller companies that are operating in Texas and other places, how they served as tools of U.S. foreign policy and formed a part of the U.S. conception of national security. So oil national security in the 20th century is kind of the broad focus, but it's still, you know, in the early stages, so I'll let you know when I make more progress. All right, well, we'll have you back on for that.”
2023-10-20 · Odd Lots · Lots More with Gregory Brew · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“So it wasn't possible for me to go to Iran to do research. But that being said, I was doing research on the 50s and 60s, you know, the Cold War. And there's actually quite a lot of information, of documentary evidence in Farsi, in Persian, that's available in the US, in Europe. A lot of it is in the form of memoirs or interviews, but there are sort of collections of documents that you can find that have been published. So writing the book that I wrote, which was mostly about oil, the Cold War, US-Iranian relations, I tried to use as many of those sources as I could, right? I really, really strove to incorporate an Iranian perspective as much as I could because I thought that perspective was important, even if I wasn't able to go to Iran and do research there. I still felt that I couldn't write just another book about the US and oil. I had to incorporate the Iranian side. What is your forthcoming book about?”
2023-10-20 · Odd Lots · Lots More with Gregory Brew · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I love these kinds of questions because it reminds me of being a historian, which is my training before I came to Eurasia Group. I was at Yale. I was mostly working on my next book. So I wasn't able to go to Iran. That's right. I'm an American national. And at the time that I was doing my research, this was 2017 or so. It was dangerous, I think, for researchers who were Americans to go to Iran. You ran the risk of physical harm. You ran the risk of arrest. There have been Americans who have gone to Iran to do historical research who have been arrested and have remained in prison for years. I mean, what we just saw, the recent prisoner exchange between the United States and Iran, some of those individuals, none of them were historians, but some of them had been held in prison for nearly 10 years for really no reason.”
2023-10-20 · Odd Lots · Lots More with Gregory Brew · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“The harder it will be for governments like Saudi Arabia to look friendly with Israel. And that all works against a deal in the short term. But I wouldn't say that it's dead. I mean, MBS is going to be in charge in Saudi Arabia for a long time. He can afford to wait for this crisis to subside or potentially even blow over and revisit a deal with Israel at some point in the future. But I don't think we're going to see much talk about it anytime soon.”
2023-10-20 · Odd Lots · Lots More with Gregory Brew · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I think MBS, the Saudi government, has to take the line that it's taken for political concerns, for domestic concerns. It's concerned about regional stability. But in private, I would imagine that there is still quite a lot of interest from MBS in this deal. Because remember, what were the terms of the deal being discussed? Saudi Arabia would get a security guarantee from the United States. It would get US support for a civilian nuclear program, Israel and Saudi Arabia would form a sort of a united security front to contain Iran. These are all things that Saudi Arabia MBS is interested in getting. I think he's still interested in getting them now. He just maybe isn't willing to talk about them publicly, given the crisis that's happening. So I think the deal, yeah, the deal is on ice, but it's not dead. It will take some time to revive it, though. I mean, like, this crisis could go on for weeks. It could go on for months. The worst things get in Gaza.”
2023-10-20 · Odd Lots · Lots More with Gregory Brew · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Spoke right, and he did that in the context of this crisis. So, Saudi Arabia has been trying to sort of maintain a middle line of not appearing too friendly with Israel, while also I think largely staying on the sidelines of the crisis. Now, what does that mean for this Israeli-Saudi normalization? You mentioned the piece that came out right before the crisis. It kind of got buried, this news that Saudi Arabia was opening up a little bit to this idea that it would try to lower oil prices as part of this grand bargain with the US and Israel. That news came out. It was greeted with a certain amount of skepticism because this, you know, generally speaking, that wouldn't really align up with how the Saudis have been trying to manage markets. But it did suggest that there was progress on this deal. Now, where's the deal now? Given the crisis is happening, the crisis is escalating. I would say that it's on ice, but it's not necessarily dead.”
2023-10-20 · Odd Lots · Lots More with Gregory Brew · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Yeah, I mean, you have to remember, even though we've seen a lot over the last year or so on Saudi Israel normalization and even with the so-called Abraham Accords that came together at the end of the Trump administration, Israel normalizing with a number of Arab states, you have to remember that formal relations between Israel and the rest of the Middle East, or specifically the Arab world, is still a very touchy, complicated issue. There's still a great deal of history of sentiment that Arab leaders specifically, particularly in conservative Arab states like Saudi Arabia, they have to be sort of wary of managing. And I think the Saudi approach to this crisis has been trying to thread that needle, right? You've seen Saudi condemnations of Israeli actions in Gaza. You've seen the Saudis, I mean, MBS Mohammed bin Salman, the crown, prince of Saudi Arabia, he took a phone call with President Raisi of Iran last week. The first time they ever...”
2023-10-20 · Odd Lots · Lots More with Gregory Brew · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I don't know if OPEC or the Saudis would respond immediately because, as I said, anything that the U.S. would do would send prices higher. And that's exactly what the Saudis want, right? They want a higher price floor. They want to rise prices maybe into the 90s, maybe close to 100. So initially, I don't think they would do a whole lot.”
2023-10-20 · Odd Lots · Lots More with Gregory Brew · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Yeah, I mean, that's a really, it's an interesting question because, of course, OPEC's been pursuing supply management, market management. They've been maintaining their cuts. The Saudis have been adding additional voluntary cuts to try to push prices upward. And curiously enough, this has been happening while Iran has been increasing its exports. And it's also been happening while Saudi and Iran pursue normalization. So there seems to be some cross purposes here. There does seem to be a certain paradox in how the Saudis particularly are approaching managing this market. But in terms of what OPEC might do if the US suddenly crack down on Iran in a way that would really reduce the flow, right? In a way that would create physical, a change in the physical market to fundamentals.”
2023-10-20 · Odd Lots · Lots More with Gregory Brew · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Something that his administration has really been trying to avoid. So I think it's in the conversation, right? Tougher sanctions on Iranian oil exports. I still think the risk is fairly limited. And I think if the US were to consider doing it, it would be deterred by some of these more negative knock-on effects.”
2023-10-20 · Odd Lots · Lots More with Gregory Brew · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Of action that the US could take. And they're taking this oil through somewhat shady means. There's ship to ship transfers. The oil is being disguised in Chinese customs data. China still technically doesn't take any Iranian oil. It all gets redirected through other venues. So there's a lot of shadiness to this oil trade, which makes imposing sanctions by the U.S. a lot harder. But if you're cutting off the supply of oil to China, which is what tougher sanctions enforcement would do, the Chinese are bound to respond, right? They're not going to like that. And I think the Biden administration is wary of provoking China. And anything you do to disrupt Iran's oil exports is going to have an impact on the broader market, and it's going to send oil prices up. And that's also something that the Biden administration doesn't really want to do. So you have operational constraints on how sanctions would even work. You have provoking the Chinese. You have potentially provoking the Iranians, and everything that you do is going to increase the price of oil.”
2023-10-20 · Odd Lots · Lots More with Gregory Brew · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“But the bigger concern is yes, will the US and Israel decide to retaliate against Iran for its support for Hamas? And one of the major vectors that has been speculated on or discussed is this question of will the US tighten restrictions on Iran's oil exports. It's been a big story this year, right? The recovery of Iran as a major oil exporter around 700,000 barrels a day last year. They're now in the range of 1.5, 1.6 million barrels a day today. Yeah. I mean, and Iran is still technically under sanction, right? So there's been a lot of discussion of has the US eased off sanctions? Is this part of a bigger deal between the US and Iran? And now that this crisis is broken out, will the US respond by tightening sanctions? And to me, it's a lot more complicated than just, you know, President Biden having a big button on his desk sanctions no sanctions and then pushing it and suddenly Iran oil exports fall like the range”
2023-10-20 · Odd Lots · Lots More with Gregory Brew · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Yeah, totally. So I think as soon as the attack happened and this crisis started growing and started taking on the proportions that it has, the immediate thought was how was Iran involved? How will the US and Israel respond? Right. Iran backs Hamas, has for years. It's a major supporter of Hamas. It supplies it with weapons and funding and training. There still isn't any clear answer as to whether Iran was involved in the attack. And Iran has, as I mentioned, it's been talking tough, but it really hasn't been taking a direct role.”
2023-10-20 · Odd Lots · Lots More with Gregory Brew · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Either, or at least what oil that they do sell, it's a fairly small amount. And there really isn't any appetite, I think, within OPEC or the broader Middle East for another 1973. Certainly not for another embargo. So I saw those comments. And also, it needs to be said, Iranian officials, including the foreign minister, the supreme leader Ali Khamenei, they've been talking a lot of tough talk over the last couple of days about how this crisis could escalate, about how Iran might have to get involved. So this kind of fits within that broader sort of rhetorical campaign that Iran's been running over the last couple of days that they haven't really followed through with in terms of direct action. So I saw the comments and I thought like, well, Iran's talking tough. There's not going to be an embargo, but markets seem to react, right? Brent shot up from 9150 to 92.50. It's come back down since then, but clearly there's wariness and jumpiness out there about how this crisis could start affecting.”
2023-10-20 · Odd Lots · Lots More with Gregory Brew · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Right. Yeah. I mean, history does seem to be rhyming, right? I mean, the attack, the Hamas attack happened exactly 50 years and one day after the outbreak of the Yom Kippur War in 1973. So obvious parallels. And I think, so yeah, turning things back a bit, you know, Iran's foreign minister, who's currently in Saudi Arabia of all places, made kind of a wild claim in front of press. He said Iran was going to call on all Muslim countries, including countries like Saudi Arabia and the UAE and Kuwait, to embargo oil shipments to Israel, very clearly trying to replicate what happened in 1973, or at least a version of it. And the reason why it strikes me, and I think a lot of other analysts who watch Iran and oil closely, why it strikes me as kind of a wild claim is that, first of all, Iran doesn't sell any oil to Israel. Iran and Israel are antagonists. They're competitors, you know. And honestly, not many other Middle East countries sell oil to Israel.”
2023-10-20 · Odd Lots · Lots More with Gregory Brew · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Yeah. No, yeah, it unfortunately happens to combine the two things that I've done the most work on. And whenever that happens, it generally doesn't tend to bode very well because it means there's crises, there's disruptions, there's tensions. And yeah, I mean, the crisis right now does seem to be contained to Israel and the violence in Gaza, but everyone is concerned about how this could spill over into oil. You saw very surprising reaction this morning from Iran's foreign minister making a wild claim about an oil embargo on Israel suddenly sending oil prices up surprisingly. So I think there's a lot of, I think there's jumpiness. I think there's... Concerns, broadly speaking, that this crisis could eventually spill over and start affecting oil.”
2023-10-20 · Odd Lots · Lots More with Gregory Brew · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“The thing, yeah. I mean, we were having meetings, I was having meetings the week before the Hamas attack on Israel where the question of sort of Middle East tensions or Middle East crisis would come up. And the general feeling was that like, no, things look pretty quiet. We've got Saudi Iran normalization, oil seems to be flowing, although there's always the US OPEC problems. You have Saudis and Israelis kind of slowly moving towards normalization. Things seem pretty quiet. And then bam something huge happens that nobody really anticipated.”
2023-10-20 · Odd Lots · Lots More with Gregory Brew · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source