Welcome all of you to this policy forum trip report from a trip that i, my three colleagues and 50 members of the washington institu institutes board of trustees undertook just about a week ago, completing it, to the gulf. Let me just very briefly introduce our my colleagues up here, my immediate left, kate bauer, former u. S. Treasury official, who is our bloomen steen katz Family Fellow at the institute, she will speak after me offering impressions about our visit to abu dhabi. To her left is lori boghart. A former government intelligence analyst, who will be prepared to talk about all sorts of issues from Counter Terrorism and counter radicalization to social change going on in the gulf. At the far end of the table is mike swing. Our fellow. Who will also participate in our q a session, talking about all sorts of issues under the sun, from Strategic Issues to u. S. Bilateral relations with the countries in question. Again, this was an unusual trip that we took in the sense that it was a large delegation. There were 55 of us, all told who travelled from riyhad to muscaf to abu dhabi. This itinerary planned a long time ago was meant to reflect change that was gone in a very small area. Three very different countries. Each undergoing their own internal change, especially visible in terms of the transformation that is underway in saudi arabia. But is not alone in the process of domestic change each of whom is governed by the geography in which they sit that has a powerful determining factor for their regional Foreign Policy. Ill say mostly some words about saud by arabia, but just a word about oman. Wont say much about oman in the sense that we were there over a weekend. We had an opportunity to meet a wide variety of officials and see in a physical and up front sense the uniqueness and stru structural differentiation between oman and riyhad. Where you sit determines where you stand. And the omani Foreign Policy, which is starkly different than the Foreign Policy of its neighbors was quite evident from conversations with senior officials, and their openness to all regional partners. And their middleman role with the iranians, we can get into that a little later on. Just one final preparatory word, in case anyone is wondering, this trip was financed by the washington institute, other than a few delicious meals that were provided this was on our dime. Not any local officials, and the purpose of the trip was really to decide for ourselves a specialist, and the lay leaders of the washington institute, how real and serious are the prospects of change in these countries. How real and serious and carefully considered is the regional strategy pursued by these capitals, and for us to decide for ourselves while what ill call the obama critique, namely this is a swamp in which the United States should stay out. From which the United States should stay out. Or alternatively, is this a part of the world where we should be deeply engaged in order to assist the parties for their own benefit and our natural interests. Which one of these basic decisions is right . And ill say more about that a little bit later on. Let me make some comments about saudi arabia. When we arrived in riyhad on our opening night, i reminded our group that traditionally saudi arabia is based on three pillars, family, god and oil. You can make your own determination of which is more important than the other. And that to keep family together, electra guessly the saudi leadership has had a strategy based on the division of power on the various branches of family, rotation of leadership, among the various branches of the family. And the spreading of wealth among the various branches of family. If you were to Flash Forward and think about where saudi arabia is today, all these three pillars are being rethought and reconsidered. So in the saudi world view, since 1979, the year in which two sort of catastrophic events occurred one being the mega mosque takeover, and the other being the iranian revolution, this triggered enorm ousz change within the kingdom, in terms of the god pillar. And it lid saudi institutions down a path of extremism, which is now caught up with them and the leadership clear recognizes that. Secondly, the money pillar, the wealth pillar. The perception is, this is running out, certainly running out in the manner of spending that has historically been the case the third pillar is that to fix these first two problems of religious extremism and of an economy that doesnt produce what the country needs, you kwoongt keep the family together in the same manner its been kept in the past. So, therefore, theres underway a big risky experiment, a gamble to change the nature of the economy, to change the nature of society as a way to change the nature of the economy, and to change how leadership is determined and how power is wielded in the kingdome. This is a modernizing experiment, the record of modernizing from the top down in the middle east is mixed at best if one were to look at the record of turkey to the shah of iran, the record is mixed that is the path in which the leadership is taken. Dramatic transformation from the top down. This is not about democracy, this is not about liberalism in the traditional sense, its about how to in my view, its about how to rescue the saudi kingdom from the realities of the limits that it now faces, the limits of its experience with islamic institutions in the last quarter century, the reliance own traditional sources of revenue, and the limits of this the method of leadership diffuse leadership among the branches of the family that may have brought it so far, but doesnt seem to be the path for the future, the basic strategy after meeting with a broad range of officials and private entrepreneurs, and Young Students and high level Senior Leaders the basic strategy seems to me to make haste slowly, method methodically, but to make haste. Incrementsal but real change in the role women play in society, in the concept of work in the elements of the economy, and in how leadership is apportions within the ruling family. We saw this with the various people we met theres a huge injection of enthusiasm for change, that happens to be coming from the hundreds of thousands of alumni. King abdullah having given scholarships to come to the United States. A large majority are coming back and theyre not looking forward to take the roles their parents and grandparents had in society. Theyre taking their degrees putting them to work in new careers. I remember one fancy restaurant we were at one night we met the head chef who was the head receive over a staff of all men. I sat next to a young woman ph. D. Who wassed dean of a new university. A young guy who gave up his government job to own his own italian bakery selling cannolis. Half an hour into a conversation, can you ask sensitive questions, and the one thing i came away from all these interactions with especially outside people of government, is that they were banking on change, and they didnt want some foreign adventure, some foreign entanglement, someone elses issue to derail that process, i think many of our group were particularly impressed by what Senior Leaders said about shall we say moderate islam, rethinking traditional views of how islam is interpreted, mandated and executed. The basic idea for a rationale for this change is to go back to the model. Did women work in the 7th century . Of course. The prophet married an older woman who was a successful entrepreneur. That model is something that saudis are now pointing to. When we met the crown prince, he was joined by a handful of senior saudi leaders and most of them made sense to me. The minister of the interior, the national secured adviser sitting two seats over was the head of the National Entertainment authority. I was wondering why is the head of the National Entertainment authority in this platform. The crowned prince didnt have time to explain to us why this gentleman was sitting two seats away from him, we learned he was there because saudi arabia was about to open movie theaters to women. All part of this incremental, but in the saudi context, very significant move toward integrating women fully in the social fabric of the country. We saw i saw a hint of this in a fascinating exchange we had with the head of the Muslim World League when we asked about nonmuslim prayer in saudi ara a arabia, and when that might be allowed. The answer was not that it is forbidden in islam, rather, he mentioned that the current rulers are following the practice of previous rulers, on this territory, implaying to my ears that the ban on nonmuslim prayer was a tradition, not a an immutable aspect of islamic law. I found that very interesting. I also found interesting on this front, numbers we heard from very high leaders in the country 70 of personnel in religious institutions were by saudi accounts extremists up to two years ago, that purges have taken place and that number is now down to 20 with a goal of 5 three years from now. The idea that very high levels of government would offer such numbers to my ears was a stark admission of responsibility for religious extremism. And certainly a commitment to change. My overall sense was that on domestic matters, the regime has a clear sense of whereny want to go and how to get there. It wont be easy, of course, and it may fail. If youre under 35 or 40, youre a winner and you support it. If youre over 50, youre probably a loser and chances are likely that you oppose it. There are lots of potential losers in this change. A senior minister said to us, that the saudis now estimate that for many years, 8010 of the Saudi National budget has been siphoned off for corruption. The 2017 budget was 890 riyals. About 240 billion or so dollars. Thats a lot of money. Many of them are in the royal family to cut out that level of corruption, if that is the case is certainly going to be a fraught process. Fraught with danger for the people who are the benefits of corruption, and fraught for those who are trying to root it out if indeed thats the case, at the same time, the saudi leadership sees foreign threats and challenges all around. With the most urgent and threatening coming from iran. The threats in my view are real. Its unclear to me they have the same clarity of strategy in confronting the external threats as they do in their efforts to promote internal reform. Saudi arabia has been on the receiving end of missiles that have killed large numbers. When a very Senior Leader said to us, imagine what america would do if cuba dropped missiles in miami. You guys would drop the abomb. Offering exactly the same response how to deal with Yemen Remains a challenge. We were in riyhad when they changed political tact and then was subsequently killed. I cant say i have a clear idea of where saudi arabia and its allies are going, i can say they are sensitive to charges of the purposeful targeting of civilians. We were given the opportunity to visit invited to visit the air operations command. They brought us into the room where you can see dozens of saudi air controllers offering realtime instructions to pilots flying over yemen. And there behind a plate glass window waving at us, inquiry american and british air liaison officers. I tell you from my perspective, it worked. Its tough to imagine those american and british officers playing a role in the purposeful and deliberate bombing of civilians, does it happen . By error, by incompetence. Absolutely. Does this account answer questions about the delivery of humanitarian goods, no. On this question, unless you believe the u. S. Air force is in cahoots in the purposeful targeting of civilians, the answer at least as of today in my view is no. Strategically, we didnt hear a lot of answers to the famous david pa trayous question, how does this end, namely, how does the qatar crisis end that we heard an earful about the zhu missity. We didnt hear how the lebanese crisis ends, we heard a lot about the party of the devil. Which is the saudis preferred name for hezbollah, a lot of warnings that the upcoming lebanese election should be stopped, because it is about to permanently empower hezbollah, who is likely to have constitutional change and dramatically change the political makeup of that country. We did hear a more upbeat portrayal of the situation in iraq that i had imagined, namely that the current Iraqi Government is pushing back on iranian influence there, seems optimistic to me, but very interesting. In all of this, there was only one operational request we heard of the United States. Yes, they would like to see tougher u. S. Measures to stop weapons smuggling into yemen, theyd like to see the u. S. Take hezbollah down a notch. But the one ask, the only ask we heard was regarding east syria. The essential element in blocking the iranian land bridge and in helping to contain eye roones spreading influence in that air. As for irans strategy itself, the basic idea was containment, push back iranian influence, bottle them up, until such time as the iranian people bring about the change that will eventually come. If we dont assertively contain them now, we were told military confrontation becomes inevitable before long. I have written elsewhere on israel, the Peace Process in jerusalem, i wont repeat everything ive written else where here, suffice to say, we were there on the day of and the day after the president s announcement on jerusalem as israels capital. 23 we didnt raise the issue, im not at all sure it would have been raised by them. When we did raise it, their response was measured and moderate, put in the context of larger u. S. Saudi relations, larger u. S. Saudi efforts to build Israeli Palestinian peace, to which the saudis were committed, at the end of which, saudi arabia could see itself having a promising mutually beneficial relationship with israel. This was not as some have suggested, merely saudi hospitality, a desire not to raise unpleasant issues with guests. There are many ways to raise unpleasant issues, pleasantly. Flew sorrow and not through anger, i was in saudi arabia in the summer of 2000, precisely when president when the camp david summit was going on with crown prince abdul larks right in the middle of that summit, he found a way to express his views on the issue to our guests. To our delegation, and im sure that the saudi leadership, if they had had a great anger, would have found a way to express that to us. Instead, i believe that they made a purposeful effort to express their views to us in the manner that they did. So thats the story. Real dine mix on the domestic front with a clear sense of direction. Deep frustration and fear on the foreign front, with a willingness to act that is unusual in looking at saudi history, but with somewhat less clarity of purpose or design. We the United States can play a useful role by helping them with the latter, while playing a supportive and encouraging role and providing an encouragement environment for the former, in broad strokes, we should want the reform process to succeed and we should do our best with the saudis, in order to build on our common desire, and to help them make that more effective, more targeted, clearer with specific achievements and working in closer concert with its partners, especially here in washington. Those are my views on our visit to saudi arabia. Ill turn it over to kate for what we learned in the uae. Kate . Thank you, rob. First, id like to start by thanks rob for the opportunity to participate in this trip. It was truly an amazing, amazing trip, an amazing experience in all three countries are for the insights that weve gained and the access that we were granted. And thanks for that goes to our hosts in saudi arabia, oman and the uae. It was an honor to participate in this trip with my colleagues, rob, mike and lori, and with such an engaged group of trustees, a truly amazing time to be in the region, not just because the weather was superb. Returned to a chilly d. C. We arrived in the uae, picking up from where rob left off, energized by this dine mix that we experienced in saudi, and rested from our weekend in oman. The uae was an important stop for us to make, because it no doubt serves as a model in the region, because of its diversified economy and its commitment to tolerance and months race, its also an important u. S. Ally, a key partner on Counter Terrorism, a key ally in the current isil fight, and an important relationship in terms of the military relationship. Also, of course, saudi arabia and the uae are close partners, in contrast to our stop in riyhad, what we heard from officials in the uae, focused primarily on Foreign Policy, and the regional dynamics, no shortage of which were related to saudi arabia, and the reform agenda there within, and how it proceeded. Considering the focus in recent years on uaes ability to project power militarily, we have heard about the little sparta, the uae fighting alongside the u. S. And afghanistan, being a current partner in the isil coalition, as i mentioned. And the Saudi Coalition in yemen. What i heard related to soft power. One of the over arching themes was the fight to counter extremism. And also the need to emphasize development and governance in other countries in the region. What i came away with was a cohesive view from the perspective of the region and the regional strategy. How it was laid out was citing two primary threats they faced. Iran in terms of its support for proxies and islamist extremism. On iran, it was no surprise that yemen figured very central in our conversations, given that the threat that is posed by iranian support to the huutis. But we did discuss iranian situations. We made comparisons between the huutis, yemens and hezbollah, even to the extent they cited less sons learned from the israeli experience there. Talking about how the israeli withdrawal left a vacuum that was taken by yemen. Their presence in yemen was forestalling a similar consequence there if the power vacuum was allowed to persist. They expressed a commitment to finding a political solution in yemen, but also a wariness of working with islamist parties. Which has been overcome in part based on the news this weekend that nbz and nbs as well, met with the leader of the yemeni party, which was prev