Hey everyone, welcome back to My Weird Prompts. I am Corn, and I am joined as always by my brother.
Herman Poppleberry, here and ready to dive in. We have a heavy one today, Corn. Our housemate Daniel sent us a prompt that really gets into the weeds of the current regional shake-up. It is something we have been talking about around the dinner table quite a bit lately, especially given how much the world changed just a couple of weeks ago. We are sitting here on March twelfth, twenty twenty-six, and the air still feels heavy with the aftershocks of what happened in February.
Yeah, we are looking at what people are calling the M-B-S Paradox. It is this bizarre, high-stakes tightrope walk that Saudi Arabia is performing right now. On one hand, you have the private reality of Riyadh lobbying for massive military action against Iran, and on the other, you have the public face of the Kingdom demanding a Palestinian state and freezing all talk of normalization with Israel. It is a total split-screen reality.
It really is the defining geopolitical contradiction of twenty twenty-six. We are less than two weeks after the world-altering events of February twenty-eighth, and the dust hasn't even begun to settle. If you missed the headlines, that was the day the United States and Israel launched those massive airstrikes that resulted in the death of Iran's Supreme Leader, Ali Khamenei. It was a moment that felt like the end of an era and the terrifying beginning of a new one, all at the same time.
It was a massive inflection point. And what makes it so fascinating for our discussion today is that we now know, through various leaks and diplomatic reporting, that Mohammed bin Salman—M-B-S—was privately pushing the Trump administration to take that shot. He wanted the head of the snake removed. But then, the moment it happened and Iran retaliated against Saudi oil infrastructure, the public rhetoric from Riyadh shifted into this very cold, very distant stance toward Israel.
In one room, they are sharing intelligence and strategic goals with Jerusalem and Washington, and in the other room, they are telling the press that normalization is absolutely off the table unless there is a Palestinian state based on the nineteen sixty-seven borders with East Jerusalem as its capital. It is a strategy of maximum ambiguity, and today we are going to pull apart the layers of this paradox. We will look at why the February strikes didn't lead to a grand peace deal like some expected, why the Saudi public is more hostile to Israel than ever, and how Riyadh is hedging its bets by looking toward Turkey and Pakistan instead of just relying on the West.
There is so much to get through. I want to start with that gap between the private and the public. We have to define this Covert-Public Gap because it seems like the old rules of the Abraham Accords just don't apply anymore. Herman, you have been looking at the reports from the Institute for National Security Studies. What is the actual state of engagement between Israel and Saudi Arabia right now, behind the closed doors?
Well, Corn, it is essentially a full-blown military and intelligence partnership in everything but name. The February twenty-eighth strikes weren't just a surprise to the Saudis; they were a coordinated expectation. For years, the Kingdom has felt the shadow of Iran’s missile and drone programs. They saw what happened in twenty-nineteen with the Abqaiq-Khurais attacks, and they realized that they couldn't defend themselves alone. So, the cooperation with Israel on early warning systems, missile defense integration, and even maritime security in the Red Sea has become incredibly deep. We are talking about shared radar feeds and real-time data links that allow Saudi interceptors to talk to Israeli tracking stations. It is a level of technical integration that you usually only see between formal treaty allies.
But that cooperation is invisible to the average person in Riyadh or Jeddah. If you are walking down the street in the Kingdom, you aren't seeing Israeli flags or joint press conferences.
Completely invisible. And that is by design. The reality is that the Saudi leadership views Israel as a necessary technological and military bulwark against Iran. But they also know that the Saudi public has a very different view. There was a recent poll mentioned in the brief Daniel sent over showing that ninety-nine percent of Saudi respondents view normalization as a negative step. Ninety-nine percent. You don't ignore a number like that, even in an absolute monarchy. It is a staggering statistic that refutes the idea that the Arab street has just moved on from the Palestinian issue.
That number really stops you in your tracks. It makes you wonder if the era of the Abraham Accords, which we talked about way back in episode nine hundred twenty-eight, is actually over, or if it has just evolved into something much more cynical and transactional. Back then, we were talking about peace for prosperity, but this feels like peace for survival, and only in the shadows.
That is a great way to put it. The Abraham Accords model was built on the idea of a plug-and-play peace deal. You sign the paper, you open the embassies, and the tourists start flying back and forth. But Saudi Arabia is a civilizational state. It carries the weight of the entire Sunni world on its shoulders. You can't just plug the Emirati model into Riyadh. For the Saudis, normalization isn't just a trade deal; it is a theological and historical event. And that brings us to the February twenty-eighth inflection point. When Khamenei was killed, there was this brief window where people thought, okay, the old guard of the resistance is crumbling, maybe this is the moment for a new regional order. But then Iran hit back. They didn't just hit military targets; they went after the lifeblood of the Saudi economy. They hit the oil fields again, and they did it with a precision that showed they still have teeth, even without their Supreme Leader.
And that changed the calculus for M-B-S. Suddenly, the cost of being a covert ally of Israel became very, very tangible and very expensive. It wasn't just a theoretical risk anymore; it was black smoke rising over the refineries.
Precisely. It is one thing to share intelligence when it keeps you safe. It is another thing entirely when your primary source of national wealth is being set on fire because you were seen as complicit in an American-Israeli operation. This forced M-B-S to move from a position of quiet alignment to one of public defiance. He has to prove to his own people, and to the wider Muslim world, that he is not a puppet of the West or a silent partner to Netanyahu. This is where the Palestinian Precondition comes in. It is not just a talking point; it is a diplomatic shield. He says, no normalization without a state. That allows him to maintain the security cooperation in the dark while appearing as the champion of Arab rights in the light.
Is that a genuine policy shift, though? Or is it just a way to keep the public from revolting while he waits for the Iranian threat to diminish further?
I think it is both, and that is what makes it so complex. M-B-S is a pragmatist. He wants the Vision twenty-thirty projects to succeed. He wants the Neom city to be a global hub. He knows that regional instability is the enemy of investment. But he also realizes that he cannot lead the Islamic world if he abandons the Palestinians while Israel is still engaged in intense military operations. Remember, we are still seeing a very fragile situation in Gaza. Even though there was a ceasefire in January of twenty twenty-five, it has been violated constantly. The humanitarian situation is still a daily feature on every news screen in the Middle East.
And Saudi Arabia’s absence from the Cairo verification mechanism is a huge signal there, isn't it? For those who don't know, the Cairo mechanism was set up to monitor that January twenty twenty-five ceasefire and handle the transition of governance in Gaza. Egypt is there, Jordan is involved, even some of the Gulf states have observers. But Saudi Arabia stayed out. Why?
Because being part of that mechanism means taking responsibility for the day-to-day management of a post-war Gaza that is still incredibly volatile. If they are in Cairo, they are seen as Israel’s subcontractors. They would be the ones having to police the ruins and manage the anger of the population. By staying out, they maintain their clean hands and can continue to demand a full sovereign state as the only price for their involvement. It is a brilliant, if frustrating, bit of maneuvering. They want the result—a stable Gaza and a neutered Iran—but they refuse to pay the political price of helping to build it until they get their grand prize of a Palestinian state.
It feels like a total strategic deadlock. But Herman, let's talk about the Trump factor here. Because we have Steve Witkoff, the United States envoy, and President Trump himself basically saying that a deal is imminent. Trump has claimed multiple times that M-B-S is ready to go, that the Palestinian issue isn't the dealbreaker the media says it is. He talks about it like it is just another real estate negotiation. Who are we supposed to believe?
This is where the friction gets really interesting. You have this massive disconnect between the American administration's optimism and the Saudi reality on the ground. Trump is looking for a massive foreign policy win, another Abraham Accord but on a much larger scale. He views M-B-S as a fellow deal-maker. And in private, M-B-S probably does talk to them in those terms. He probably says, look, I want this deal, I want the security guarantee from the United States, I want the civilian nuclear program. But then he looks at the polling data. He looks at that ninety-nine percent figure. He is looking at the internal security reports from his own intelligence services.
He knows that the legitimacy of the House of Saud is tied to its role as the Custodian of the Two Holy Mosques. If he signs a deal with Israel while the Al-Aqsa Mosque is a flashpoint and while there is no path to Palestinian sovereignty, he risks a domestic backlash that could destabilize the entire Kingdom. So, when Trump says a deal is close, he is probably right about the leader's personal inclination, but he is completely wrong about the political feasibility. It is the classic mistake of thinking that a leader in an absolute monarchy can just ignore public sentiment. In reality, they have to be even more sensitive to it because they don't have the safety valve of an election.
And that pressure is why we are seeing the pivot to Turkey and Pakistan. This is a part of the story that I think a lot of Western media is missing because they are so focused on the Israel-Saudi-U-S triangle. If you look at the defense agreements signed in the last six months, Saudi Arabia is diversifying like crazy. They are moving away from the idea that the United States and Israel are their only security options.
Let's dive into that. Why Turkey? Historically, M-B-S and Erdogan have had a very rocky relationship, to say the least. I mean, we all remember the tension over the last decade.
They have, but pragmatism is winning out over old grudges. Turkey has a massive defense industry now. Their drone technology is battle-proven in places like Libya and Nagorno-Karabakh, and frankly, it is cheaper and more accessible than American tech in many ways. More importantly, Turkey is a Sunni power. Aligning with Turkey doesn't carry the same domestic political stink that aligning with Israel does. When M-B-S signs a defense pact with Ankara, he can frame it as Islamic solidarity and regional autonomy. He is building a Coalition of Necessity that includes Qatar and Turkey, which is a huge shift from the old days of the blockade against Qatar.
It is like he is building a secondary layer of protection. Layer one is the covert intelligence from Israel and the United States. Layer two is a more public, more culturally acceptable alliance with other regional Muslim powers. It makes the Kingdom less vulnerable to the charge that they have sold out to the West. And then there is Pakistan. What is the play there?
Pakistan is the nuclear backstop. Saudi Arabia has funded the Pakistani defense budget for decades, and there has always been this unspoken understanding that if Saudi Arabia ever faced an existential nuclear threat from Iran, Pakistan would provide the umbrella. By deepening ties with Islamabad now, M-B-S is sending a message to Washington: if you won't give us a formal defense treaty because of Congressional opposition or because we won't normalize with Israel, we have other ways to ensure our survival. It is a very sophisticated way of saying I have options.
It also feels like a move away from the Abraham Accords model entirely. We talked about this in episode eleven thirty-two when we were looking at the new order in Syria. The Abraham Accords were built on the idea of peace for peace or peace for prosperity. But Saudi Arabia is a different animal than the United Arab Emirates or Bahrain. The UAE is a smaller, highly efficient state that can pivot its foreign policy very quickly because it doesn't have the same kind of massive, diverse domestic population or the same religious responsibility.
It really is. You can't just plug and play the UAE model into Riyadh. For the Saudis, the religious significance of the King makes his signature on a document with an Israeli Prime Minister a thousand times more consequential than the Emirati signature. And let's look at the Iranian retaliation again, because I think we need to emphasize how much that scared the Saudi leadership. When those missiles hit the oil facilities after the February twenty-eighth strikes, the message from Tehran was clear: if you help them kill our leaders, we will kill your economy. The Saudis realized that the United States, even under Trump, wasn't going to start World War Three to protect a few oil refineries. They were on their own when the bill came due for that covert cooperation.
So, the M-B-S Paradox is actually a survival strategy. He is being an Iran hawk in private because he needs Iran's regional influence to be destroyed. But he is being an Israel critic in public because he needs to protect himself from both Iranian missiles and his own people's anger. It is a strategy of maximum ambiguity. He wants the benefits of the Israeli alliance—the tech, the intelligence, the shared enemy—without any of the costs. But Herman, how long can that last? Israel is getting tired of the arrangement. From the Israeli perspective, they are taking all the risks, doing the heavy lifting in Iran, and they aren't getting the diplomatic recognition they feel they've earned.
It creates a lot of resentment in Jerusalem. There is a sense of, we just took out your biggest nightmare, and you're still calling us an apartheid state in the United Nations? That resentment is why you see the Israeli government being so stubborn on the Palestinian issue. They feel like they have already proven their value. They don't think they should have to buy Saudi recognition with land or sovereignty when they are already providing the security that keeps the Saudi regime alive. So we are at an impasse. A total strategic deadlock.
So, if you are a listener trying to make sense of the headlines for the rest of twenty twenty-six, what should you be watching? We need some practical takeaways here because this feels like a lot of high-level chess. What are the tells that this paradox is shifting?
There are three things I would keep a very close eye on. First is the Saudi-Turkish defense ties. If we see Riyadh purchasing high-end missile defense systems or entering into co-production agreements with Ankara, that tells you they are seriously moving toward regional autonomy and away from the U-S-Israel axis. It means they are preparing for a world where they can't rely on the West to protect them from Iran. Watch for news about the Kaan fighter jet or new drone factories being built in Saudi Arabia.
Okay, that is one. What is the second?
The second is the Cairo verification mechanism. This is the ultimate proxy for trust. If Saudi Arabia suddenly decides to send observers or, more importantly, money to that mission in Gaza, it means a deal has been struck behind the scenes regarding the future of the Palestinian territories. They won't touch Gaza until they have a guarantee of what the day after looks like. If they get involved, it means they have seen a path to a Palestinian state that they can sell to their public. Their absence right now is a loud silence.
And the third?
The third is the rhetoric coming out of the Trump administration regarding the defense treaty. If the United States starts talking about a non-NATO ally status for Saudi Arabia that doesn't involve Israel, that is a huge win for M-B-S. It would give him the security he wants without the political cost of normalization. But if Trump keeps insisting that the two must go together, then the deadlock continues. Also, watch the energy markets. Every time there is a move toward Israel, expect a response from the Iranian axis against Saudi infrastructure. We are in a cycle where diplomatic progress triggers physical retaliation. This security tax on oil is going to be part of the landscape for a long time.
That is a great point. The covert-public gap is the new normal. My takeaway would be to stop viewing normalization as a binary yes or no switch. We have been conditioned by the Abraham Accords to think that a country is either at peace with Israel or at war. In twenty twenty-six, that is no longer true. We are in a spectrum. Saudi Arabia is at a level of functional integration that would have been unthinkable ten years ago, even without a formal treaty. When you read a headline about a setback in normalization, don't assume the cooperation has stopped. It usually just means the public optics have become too hot to handle.
It is a return to regionalism. And I think that is a healthy development in the long run, even if it makes things more complicated for Western policymakers in the short term. A Middle East that can manage its own security without needing a superpower to referee every dispute is a more stable Middle East. But as we saw on February twenty-eighth, stability can be shattered in a single afternoon. The death of a Supreme Leader changes everything and nothing at the same time. The geography remains, the grievances remain, and the paradoxes just get deeper.
It is interesting how much the Palestinian question has returned to the center of the board. For a few years there, especially after the Abraham Accords in twenty-twenty, people were saying the Palestinian issue had been de-coupled from regional peace. It was a side-show. But here we are in March of twenty twenty-six, and it is the primary obstacle again. It never really went away, did it?
It just went dormant. The war that began in twenty twenty-three and the regional escalation we have seen over the last year have revitalized it. It has become a symbol of broader grievances. For the Saudi public, the Palestinian cause isn't just about borders; it is about dignity, it is about the holy sites, and it is about resisting what they see as a Western-imposed order. M-B-S knows he can't just wish that sentiment away with a few high-tech city projects. He is trying to drag his country into the future, but the ghosts of the past are very much alive in the present.
And those ghosts have missiles now. That is the terrifying reality of the post-February twenty-eighth world. Iran might be wounded, their leadership might be in chaos after Khamenei's death, but their proxies and their missile capabilities are still there. The Axis of Resistance is more like a Wounded Animal now, and that makes them even more dangerous for a neighbor like Saudi Arabia. So, the Coalition of Necessity is likely to stay covert for the foreseeable future. We shouldn't expect a grand ceremony on the White House lawn anytime soon.
I would be very surprised if we saw one this year. What we will see instead is more gray zone cooperation. More joint exercises that aren't officially announced. More intelligence sharing through third parties. It is a Cold Peace or maybe a Warm Shadow-Alliance. It is a fascinating, if somewhat depressing, look at the reality of power. It is not about what is right or what is just; it is about what you can survive. M-B-S is a survivor above all else. He will pivot as many times as he needs to keep the Kingdom secure and his vision for twenty-thirty alive.
He has managed to keep the Americans close, the Israelis useful, and the Turks as a backup, all while keeping his domestic population from revolting. It is a masterful piece of geopolitical juggling. The only question is how long he can keep all those balls in the air before one of them drops.
That is the truth. We are living through history in real-time. This episode is actually a great companion to what we discussed in episode eleven thirty-two about the new order in Syria. The entire map is being redrawn, and Saudi Arabia is trying to make sure they are the ones holding the pen.
It has been a fascinating deep dive, Herman. I feel like I have a much better handle on why the news feels so contradictory lately. It is not that the reporters are wrong; it is that the reality itself is split. It is a Schrödinger's Alliance. It both exists and does not exist at the same time, depending on who is looking at it.
And before we wrap up, I want to remind everyone that if you are enjoying these deep dives into the weird and complex world we are living in, we would really appreciate a review on your podcast app. Whether you are on Spotify or Apple Podcasts, those ratings really do help new people find the show. We have been doing this for a long time, but the community is what keeps us going.
It really does. And if you want to find our full archive, including the episodes we mentioned today like episode nine hundred twenty-eight on the Abraham Accords or episode one thousand eleven on Israel’s security paradox, head over to myweirdprompts dot com. You can find our R-S-S feed there, and all the different ways to subscribe.
Also, if you are a Telegram user, make sure to search for My Weird Prompts and join our channel. We post every time a new episode drops, and it is a great way to stay updated without relying on algorithms. We are sitting at episode eleven hundred thirteen now, and there is a lot of history in that archive if you want to see how we got to this point in twenty twenty-six.
We have covered a lot of ground over the years. And a big thank you to Daniel for sending in this prompt. It was a tough one, but I think it was necessary to really understand the moment we are in. It is good to have housemates who keep you on your toes intellectually.
Definitely. Alright, I think that is it for today. This has been My Weird Prompts. Thanks for listening. We will be back soon with another exploration of the strange, the technical, and the geopolitical. Until then, keep asking the weird questions.
Stay curious, everyone. Goodbye for now.
Goodbye.
You know, Herman, I was thinking about that ninety-nine percent figure again. It is just so absolute. In any other country, you would assume the data was rigged, but in the context of the Saudi street right now, it feels authentic.
It does. It is a rare moment where the public and the religious establishment are completely aligned, and that creates a massive red line for M-B-S. He can change the economy, he can change the laws, but he can't change the heart of the people that quickly. It is the one thing he can't Vision twenty-thirty his way out of.
It takes generations, not years. And in the meantime, he has to play this double game just to keep the lights on and the missiles from falling. It is a stressful way to run a country.
I don't envy him the job, that is for sure. Anyway, let's go see what Daniel is cooking for dinner. I think I smell something good.
Hopefully it is not another complex geopolitical puzzle. I am hungry for actual food.
Fair enough. Let's go.
Talk to you all next time. This has been My Weird Prompts.
Take care, everyone.
I'm serious about the review, by the way. It really helps.
It does. Alright, truly signing off now. See ya.
