Saudi the Kingmaker: Gaza, Trump & a New Middle East with Andrew Maxwell

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0:58David McWilliams: To understand the economy, you have to understand human nature. This podcast is powered by ACAST. How you doing there? The podcast today is going to be intercontinental, John. Intercontinental, because I am sitting in Christchurch in New Zealand. You really do feel that you're actually at the end of the world here. You really, really feel it. The top for you is Antarctica. Absolutely. And I'm actually talking to John a day in advance. I'm talking to you from the future. Yes, you are. How weird is that? I have time travelled. I'm talking to you from the future. Anyway, it's great to have you. I'm on this tour, you're probably aware, down in Australia and New Zealand.

1:45David McWilliams: I have two more gigs. I have a gig here tonight in New Zealand. I have two more gigs. I just think we told you about them at the top of the show in Melbourne and Sydney. It's been a wonderful trip. But we're going to John. not do the podcasts about this part of the world today. What we're going to do for this week's podcast is we're going to do a discussion on the biggest news of arguably the last three years, which is the peace plan in Gaza, the peace plan in Israel, the fact that the world has shifted on its axis, whether this can work, what it tells you about where people's traditional positions were.

2:27David McWilliams: And more importantly, we're going to focus on the key country, which isn't America, which isn't Israel, which isn't the embryonic state of Palestine. It is the kingmaker in the region, the real financial muscle behind everything. And we know that Donald Trump wants money as much as anything else. It is Saudi Arabia. We're going to be talking to the great Irish comedian, Andrew Maxwell. who has just come back from the Riyadh Comedy Festival, where he performed in front of 8 ,000 screaming Saudi Arabian kids, comedy fans. Max also has the added insight. His wife is Egyptian. His kids are Arabic.

3:09David McWilliams: And he knows the region extremely well. So we're going to talk to Max in a minute. But what I'm going to do is set this up, John, on the basis that what went before in the Middle East? And you remember we did the piece on the Middle East, the start of the Gaza war. We did that three-part series. Yeah. So I want to just again look at what has happened and how it's changed. So in the past, the world, when it came to Israel and Palestine, was very split along what I would call ideological, received wisdom, a certain amount of pan-Arabism, a certain amount of anti-colonialism in the sense that the Palestinian cause was an umbrella movement that brought together a whole host of people in the West who might not necessarily have been ideological bedfellows, but they came together for a variety of reasons.

4:02David McWilliams: And at the core of that was the notion that this was still part of the Cold War. The Israelis were on the American side, the Palestinians were broadly on the left, i.e. Soviet side, because their supporters tended to be from that part of the world, and that no peace could be done without really the big left-right powers coming together. What this peace, the Trump peace, has done is blown that consensus out of the water, because you have the Qataris, who are representing Hamas, but who are a monarchy in the Middle East, together with Egypt, which is representing the Muslim Brotherhood, that has been always an anti-monarchy, Middle Eastern power.

4:48David McWilliams: Yeah, yeah. Together with the Americans, with the Europeans sidelined and now coming back on side simply to save face, all of whom are in a coalition now, which looks very, very different to the old thing. So what I want to do here before we talk to Max is set up the way the world might have changed, John. Yeah, it's interesting, though, as well. I mean, even I mean, you've mentioned a lot of the obviously the Middle Eastern countries, but I was watching some of the footage the other day of, you know, the big signing and all the rest. And Pakistan has also had a major input into this too. So it's much broader than just that.

5:30David McWilliams: And Saudi, who we're going to talk about now, Saudi and Pakistan have recently created a new alliance between them. People are talking about that might be an embryonic kind of Muslim NATO kind of vibe. I mean, I wouldn't go that far, but I mean, Pakistan is the only Muslim nuclear power. this is the most important thing right so it is a massive massive player in the region and of course Saudi Arabia has relations with Pakistan and has relations with Egypt but let's just talk about what was the case many many years ago Edward Said who I interviewed I was lucky enough to interview wrote a book called Orientalism and Orientalism was this idea that basically when Westerners starting with Marco Polo, go to the Orient, go to the East, that rather than analyze, they emote and they use words like exoticism and weirdness and unusualism, that they're not really taking the Eastern people that seriously.

6:31David McWilliams: But it's a whole set of cliches that we bring to analyze. And that was Edward Said's worldview. We called it Orientalism, which is sort of an infectious disease of the European intellectuals, which basically you can see that even when we talked about remember we did that podcast about napoleon conquering egypt in 1798 and it's the same sort of idea that the french arrived with this perception of harems and exoticism and hashish and all sorts of things right whirling dervishes and everything like that right rather than dealing with people from and more recently just oil just oil but rather than just dealing with just normally normal people, right?

7:09David McWilliams: There was something that came with some baggage. So if you look at, right, so the, in the old days, right, the old days are now last week, John, this is the way the world is going so quickly, right? That basically you had, on the pro-Palestinian side, you basically had what I would call pan-Arabist European intellectuals, right? That they were people who supported the administrations of the Ba 'athist country, right? Syria, Egypt under Nasser, and Iraq, even under Saddam Hussein. And what actually, their worldview was framed also by proximity to Moscow. And they basically thought that the pan-Arabist movement was an anti-colonial movement.

7:52David McWilliams: And so if you were an anti-imperialist European, if you were guilty about colonialism, you had to be on that side. So that was one constituency that was very much for the Palestinian state. A second constituency which rested uncomfortably with those people was the constituency that supported the monarchists, monarchists, which are the Saudi Arabians, the Qataris, the UAE, the Bahrainis, who are basically Arab monarchs. Now, this was much, much less easy for European intellectuals to support, but they supported them on the basis that, yes, we don't like monarchy, but these people represent the average Arab on the street.

8:36David McWilliams: So what was called the Arab Street came to be represented, let's say hesitantly, by these monarchies. So lots of European and American intellectuals and political commentators and largely people of the liberal left said, we can hold our nose about Saudi Arabia and the UAE as long as they are representing their people, which is the average Arab. That was another constituency. Then, of course, there was the sort of what I would call the anti-Christian, anti-Catholic liberal idea, which always seemed to think that, well, you know, extreme Catholics are really wrong, but you know, extreme Islam, we can justify that.

9:16David McWilliams: You can explain that away from our nastiness and the way in which we treated them. So it was a kind of bizarre other part of this strange coalition. And then, of course, you have the general anti-American, right? Which is most exemplified with the anti-Trump stuff, right yeah but america is bad it's the great satan it's a terrible colonial power it's imperialist it's a bully la la la la la la so they all lined up on on one side and then of course you have the what i call the tankies tankies what's a tanky tankies is this idea there's lots left in fact people accuse one of our presidential candidates of being one which are the pro-soviet left that basically they justified tanks rolling into czechoslovakia and hungary on the basis that The people of Czechoslovakia and Hungary didn't understand what they were rebelling against.

10:02David McWilliams: And the Soviets had to use tanks to put down these counter-revolutionaries. So these are deep, deep communist, not deep, deep Moscow insiders. They're all over Ireland, by the way. There's loads of fuckers in Ireland, right? And an RTE. Amazing, right? And an RTE is full of them. RTE is rammed with tankies, right? And the left in Ireland is rammed with them. And then, of course, you have the proper, what I would call human rights people, who are saying, oh, this is actually about good versus evil, powerful versus the weak, the human rights of people. So you have all this coalition coming together, many of whom said there cannot be a peace orchestrated by the likes of Donald Trump for a variety of reasons, right?

10:46David McWilliams: Now what we have, and we can talk about whether it lasts or not, because the second phase of this peace agreement is always going to be the hardest. That's going to be a tricky bit, yeah, yeah. It was the same as the Belfast Agreement, the Good Friday Agreement. You know, actually getting the ceasefire wasn't the hard bit. The hard bit was negotiating the decommissioning and the political structures and the la-la-la after that, because the unionists, of course, were terrified that the IRA would get control. Ironically now, Sinn Féin is in control in Northern Ireland, but it took 30 years, right?

11:17David McWilliams: But let's go back. So all these people are on one side, John. And right now, I think they have been flat-footed. are outsmarted, are outmaneuvered by what has happened, which is this weird coalition of Trump's America, so it's MAGA, together with Qatar, together with Egypt, and now the 20 other countries that lined up yesterday, ranging from Canada to Hungary, from the United Kingdom to China, from Indonesia as the largest Muslim country in the world, people forget that, the largest country in the world, to the likes of Norway. Now, I'm sure certain people in the Irish Department of Foreign Affairs will be smart.

12:03David McWilliams: Why weren't we invited? Because we don't count, right? Okay, so let's talk about it. Why is this coalition emerging? Maybe the microcosm for this coalition emergence is the world is changing dramatically. And the place to gauge that change isn't Tel Aviv, isn't Janine, isn't Washington, isn't London, isn't Beijing. It's actually Riyadh. What is changing in Riyadh is leading the world. And that's why I want to talk to Max, because he's just come back from there. he is also representative I would say for those of you who have never been to Kilkenomics of a Kilkenomics vibe which is comedians doing their thing and explaining the world not just with humor but with the way in which they think so why don't we go straight to London where Max has just come back that's Andrew Maxwell Irish comedian from Riyadh and as I said a man whose wife is Egyptian, his kids are Arabic, who's kind of vested in the region as well.

13:09David McWilliams: Let's go and talk to Max. Max, how are you? Great to see you. Oh, great. Yeah, great. Thanks, dude. Yeah, it was amazing. It was, you know, like you said in the introduction there, comedians see the world through a different lens. And exclusively for us, that lens is how good's the audience. And in that regard, Saudi Arabia was a revelation, man. The crowds were mind-blowingly good. Go on, tell me. Well, it's an incredibly young population. And they have, since their country started opening up in the last five odd years or whatever it is, you know, they're on Netflix, they're on YouTube, they're listening to podcasts, they're watching comedy clips.

13:46And they're massive comedy fans. It really reminded me of, this is sort of a take that only Irish people, and particularly Irish people of our generation, Dave, could really get. We, as I've said on stage in Ireland, we middle-aged Irish people are the last people on earth to have lived in medieval Europe.

14:06The kids in Ireland have no conception of what we lived in. We lived in a world of moving statues. The Catholic Church was all-powerful. Divorce, abortion were banned. Condoms were banned. We lived in a terror-adjacent society. And growing up in the 80s and 70s, it just felt like it was never going to change. It would never change. And in the space of, what, 10, 15 years, We became a tech and pharma global hub. But we were still getting American and British comedians and Aussie comedians, but particularly the Yanks, would come to Kilkenny or come to Dublin or Galway. And they expected us to be riding around on pigs.

14:45Do you know what I mean? Yeah, yeah, yeah. And that sort of felt like the culture clash. I've worked and spent a lot of time in the other Gulf states, Qatar and the UAE, Bahrain and Oman over the years, gigging, usually to expats it has to be said. But in this case, I just wasn't prepared for how much it was nothing like I imagined it to be. And I'm a news junkie. I know you are. You know, so I was baffled by how much of a blind spot I had. You know, it's just extremely youthful. And I remember that when it turned into the early 90s in Ireland, we were like, God, this might happen. We might become normal.

15:26David McWilliams: And you think exactly the same sort of transition is happening now. That's the framework. You should look at it. You should look at it in that sort of framework of a country that was dominated by one ideology and dispensing with that ideology from the top down and the bottom up and changing completely. Well, I think it's more that they're keeping the ideology, you know, its position in the power structure is changing. You know, there's not a Taoiseach in Ireland since the great changes in Ireland still doesn't attend mass they're all still practicing catholics you know what i mean it's it's the lids being lifted off the pot is this a an mbs driven thing yes i mean it's ultimately yes it is and that's a that's a strange thing for any comedian in the west is de facto a liberal you know what i mean by our nature and you go well this is all this what i would consider positive change that's happened in saudi and also that ripples out across the entire world and not just the islamic world Where Saudi goes, the rest of the Islamic, particularly Sunni world, goes.

16:27David McWilliams: Yes. You're saying by having something like the festival, I don't want to get focused completely on the festival, but I want the comedy festival to be emblematic of greater change, that this is a signal of something going on deep in the society. And as a result of that, it's a crucial sort of example. Absolutely. I think you can have a Formula One race and nobody questions whether the culture is changing. You know, the next thing into this arena that I did, it was me, Jimmy Carr and Louis C.K., 8 ,000 people in an arena. And the next people in were the tennis classics. Again, you can have John McEnroe can bat a ball around and nobody thinks that society's changing.

17:06But comedy's different. You know, from the Saudi perspective, what a high wire act. You know, it's the audacious level of their ambition, which I think provokes a lot of envy and gall in the West.

17:19David McWilliams: yeah well i want to talk about exactly exactly about this is what when you were there talking to people what did you come away with about a saudi arabia b mbs the structures the top-down structures see the bottom-up structures the kids who are at your gig but also also we're talking about a capital city of what 10 million people 8 million people these are huge these are huge places i think it's about eight million in riyadh now again it could be any of my thoughts on this are obviously within the bubble of the comedy festival i spoke to quite a lot of saudis while kicking around i went into a lot of the bigger name acts basically flew in on the day and left on the day or the day after i came in four days earlier because i was fascinated what's this all going to be like but all my observations would have to be predicated on the fact maybe they're their observations of Riyadh rather than Saudi all told.

18:11Yeah, but nonetheless. So I suppose as far as the ruling class there, they're basically, from what I can take from it, it's basically sort of like perestroika is what they're attempting, you know? And when any system that isn't a democracy, no matter what you want to brand it as, at that moment of desire for change is when it's at its most vulnerable. So it feels like they have the money, they have the ambition, and they know they have to move, you know, that old Silicon Valley expression, you know, move fast and break things. They know if they don't do it quick, you know, the forces of reaction within their society, which have been suppressed, but surely they mustn't have gone away.

18:52I had lunch at the Irish Embassy with our ambassador, Gerry Cunningham, and we were talking about the religious police who MBSs shooed off the streets. These were a nightmare, particularly for women. Like, their job was to drive around basically bullying women. Must be incredibly unpleasant. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. You know, and you're saying they're gone. They're gone. They're all gone. Women can wear what they want. There is still some women in niqabs. That's the full covering. But I would say walking around in malls and shops and restaurants that I was in in Riyadh, most women were just in a hijab, so a scarf, an alabaya, which is sort of long, sort of essentially gown.

19:29But other than that, there were, you know, but there was no rules. There isn't anybody to enforce rules. The other thing to note, which was kind of astonished me, is I saw no cops. There was no state authority on the streets. They weren't around the venues. There was just, you know, private security, you know, dudes in T-shirts that said security on it. As you'd get at any gig. Yeah, exactly. So there was no outer expression of state power. Wow.

19:55David McWilliams: So let's talk about the state power. Just give me a quick part of history. The House of Saud, who are they? Who is the top man? How did they get to the position they are? because, again, we're talking about a hundred year history of the House of Saud. Yes, the House of Saud are from Riyadh. That's their power base. We all know it in the decolonization concept. All the borders around the developing world, Africa and most of Asia, were pretty arbitrary and set up by the Brits and the French, Sykes-Picot famously. So it didn't take into account a lot of tribes. But within Saudi, you know, tribe really matters.

20:31Yeah. It's probably actually of more importance than the difference between being Welsh and Scottish. It's a deeper thing, you know? Yeah. You've got bonds of kin that are profoundly deep. But the Saudis are from Riyadh. They had arch rivals in the Hashemites who were out of Jeddah. Jeddah is the city on the Red Sea coast that is, you know, it's styled as the gateway to Mecca. It's how all the pilgrims making Hajj would have sailed in there. So they'd always have a slightly more cosmopolitan vibe. And they were the sort of arch rivals of each other. And after, the Hashemites had sort of helped the British, you know, Lawrence of Arabia, da-da-da, in the First World War.

21:09And when the Ottoman Empire collapsed straight after the First World War, the new Turkish Republic disbanded the Caliphate. The Caliphate is, you know, is basically the head of Sunni Islam. It's a very important role. I guess the closest thing is like the Pope. The Vatican. Yeah, it doesn't quite align. But yeah, and the top guy in the Hashemites, he just proclaimed himself to be the caliph. Ballsy move, it must be said. Ballsy move. You've got to give it to him. Declaring yourself pope is a good, it's a good, it's very medieval. Well, he thought he had the backing of the Brits, and then the Brits pulled out one.

21:44So basically, everybody else in all the other tribes in Arabia backed the House of Saud at the time, and they won custodianship of the two holy sites in Islam, which are Mecca and Medina. And that is a profoundly powerful role. And the fact that the Saudis then didn't take the caliphate, although they had the power and they literally had control of the two holy sites, has made them incredibly culturally powerful within the sunny Islamic world, certainly.

22:13David McWilliams: So from the economic perspective, everyone always talks about, hold on a second, Saudi is a massive player. The reason is it's very rich. It's got all the oil. You're saying, yes, that's absolutely the case. but it also has this cultural heft in terms of being the custodian of the holy sites. Absolutely. So, you know, that's where their power is. And you've got to remember that they secured that power before they discovered the oil. Yeah, that's true. That's very true. That's why it's so consequential how Saudi goes. Tell me now, so when you're in Saudi Arabia, they've seen what the West did in Iran.

22:51David McWilliams: They've seen the Shah. They've seen Saddam Hussein. They've seen Afghanistan. They've seen Syria in the last eight years. Yeah. And they're saying, we don't want any of that carry on. Absolutely. Yeah, we, the West, have given the Middle East a truly awful example of what liberal Western democracy looks like. To them, it looks like chaos. The young people that I spoke to, they look at all that and they don't want that. They don't want chaos. So it's, although there's no denying it, the Riyadh Comedy Festival, the snooker, the golf, the tennis, the Formula One, all the rest of the e-sports, which the Saudi National Sovereign Fund just bought EA Sports for 55 billion.

23:37You know, they're a huge player in e-sports, Olympics and all that sort of carry on. you know it is bread and circus without a doubt but from the perspective of all the young Saudis I spoke to they were like this is so much better than Iraq

23:51David McWilliams: A than Iraq and B what it was 10 years ago now you said something to me very interesting you compared it to going was it from Henry VIII to what was your quote it was like yeah they're basically in 10 years they're going from Henry VIII to Clement Attlee you know and they are speed running it and you go well that's you know it's all top down it's all surface da da da but again from an Irish perspective of my generation we speed ran it we did you know if you think about it from the hysteria of the moving statues in the early 80s where there was literally an episode of the Simpsons there's whole villages of Irish people staring at a statue of the Virgin Mary until she moved you know at no point anybody on RTE news pointed out that the clouds were moving behind her We went from there to, you know, Intel's just opened another fab.

24:48Exactly. Exactly. That was in 15 years.

24:52David McWilliams: Less. Now, I'm with you and I think the listeners are with you, but the difference is Ireland did that with a conversation with itself, an inconsequential small island that doesn't really matter. It matters to us, but it doesn't matter to the rest of the world. Saudi Arabia really matters. Right? Saudi Arabia has got relations with Egypt. It's got relations with Pakistan. It's got relations with Israel. And of course, it's got the money that Donny wants. It's got relations with Trump as well. So explain to me what you are sensing, seeing, hearing about its new role in the Middle East. Well, I think, again, it's that sort of thing of you don't see any outer manifestations of politics.

25:35Okay, so there isn't going to be any pro-Palestine flags. There's none of that. You know, all the royal houses in the Gulf vehemently hate the Muslim Brotherhood, which started in Egypt, which is basically, you know, the cornerstone of all political Islam. Right? So that takes in Hamas, who are in, you know, in Palestine, and the various jihadi groups all across the Middle East in the Sunni context, you know? So they hate political Islam, particularly the Emirates.

26:08David McWilliams: Can I just stop you there? That's because ultimately these are monarchs and they believe in family enterprises. And political Islam is a bottom-up movement. And is that why the Turks support the Muslim Brotherhood? Because the Turks are a democracy. They've made their transition. Well, it's even more specifically the party of Erdogan in Turkey, the AKP, is also a descendant of the Muslim Brotherhood. Yes, okay. So they are actually from the same, you know, political family, as it were. Political origin story. You know, obviously that Turkey is a democracy, if somewhat flawed. But nevertheless, you know, that's the basic framework of the country.

26:54I mean, as I tried to explain, the Saudis have a quarter of the world's oil reserves. That seems like a number. I was trying to explain to me, mate, the other day. That's the equivalent of every other country on earth that makes oil is a pub. the Russians are a pub and next door the Americans are a pub and you know and the Venezuelans are a pub and they're all in a row and they're all selling their pints at whatever price they can sell them for but directly opposite them is a giant brewery really the Saudis set the price because if they want they can just flood the market the Saudis literally hold the price tap of hydrocarbons on our planet yeah they know it and the Americans know that too And so ultimately, they can be relatively passive.

27:41They don't have to come up with solutions to problems. But when somebody else comes up with a decent solution, they're the ones that can lubricate that answer to an epic degree. I mean, ultimately, whether Trump pulls this deal off vis-a-vis Gaza, what happens with Hamas, da-da-da, how much interfering will the Iranians do, da-da-da, all of those things, if it settles on a place, the amount of money and investment that the Saudis can put into Gaza or the West Bank or wherever is completely consequential. It changes everything.

28:16David McWilliams: But it changes everything, what you're saying, if the Palestinians move away from their Muslim Brotherhood organizations as their ground forces, as their basic organization or two, they have to. And is that part of the deal? Is that what's really going on behind the scenes? I would imagine so. The Qataris have always been, you know, much more hands on in the negotiations vis-a-vis Hamas, or certainly openly. I've absolutely no doubt that Saudis are deeply influential there because the Saudis are deeply influential in Cairo. Explain that to me. Well, basically, you know, Saudi Arabia, I think, sitting in the mid-40s population-wise now, so that gives it a sort of population size, the same sort of Spain or Poland.

28:59But its demographics are 10, 15 years younger than either of those countries. But traditionally, it had all the oil, it had all the prestige within Islam, with the two holy sites, of course, as we mentioned. But what it didn't have was manpower. It didn't have military heft. It has always lent on the Egyptians, who have always been broke, but a huge population along the Nile. I think they're on 120 million now. Yeah, yeah. And it's very much a military state. So it lends on the Egyptians for manpower and the Pakistanis. I mean, there's the thing about this opening now, with the comedy festival as part of, is actually the second time around.

29:42People don't realize it. all that sort of, you know, extraordinary medieval behavior of the last 25 years in Saudi Arabia. That was a new thing. In the 70s, Saudi was liberalizing. Now, it's not, it wasn't like a, you know, a night out in Nashville, right? Don't get me wrong. It wasn't, you know, it wasn't Miami South Beach, but it was pretty liberal, you know, and it was heading in that direction. There were cinemas, the religious police weren't on the streets, you know, Westerners could get a drink. You know, there was all that sort of thing. And it was heading that way. And then they had the siege in Mecca in, I can't remember what it was, 79, 78, somewhere around then.

30:23David McWilliams: And the Islamic revolution in Iran as well. That freaked me out too. Exactly. Chimed at the exact same time. Although, obviously, the ones involved in the Mecca siege were, they were Sunni fundamentalists. They were connected directly to the Iranians, who were obviously Shia. But yeah, they were two giant shocks to the system. And ultimately, the Saudi royal family had to bring in expertise from the Pakistanis to put that down. And that was all live on TV. You know, it was a giant shock to the system. And the decision was made under the previous generation of rulers there. The one above MBS, sort of basically his distant uncles, went, right, we're locking it all down.

31:02So this is their second go at it. Okay, this is fascinating stuff. You know, the decision was made, the lessons were learned of, okay, we can't tinker with this. We're going to have to absolutely shock the entire system. I'll tell you an example. I think from, you know, obviously I can't ventriloquize what the ruling class in Saudi Arabia think. But what I felt like, they built an entire entertainment complex for the comedy festival, okay? Big box development. I think there were three or four theaters, loads of restaurants, loads of parking, da-da-da, a place for all the families. there was a guy walking around as a Mr.

31:38Bean impersonator and he was mobbed everywhere he went. It was quite the dent to the ego. You know, and they had the mascot wandering around, which was a big old-timey microphone with a face on it. But what there was, and this is sort of, something would be really shocking to the Western mindset to get your head around. I think most Westerners know that pigs are haram in Islam. Yes. Obviously, halal is good. Haram is bad. Probably most Westerners wouldn't know that that's where dogs are as well. Dogs are traditionally, if not as bad. They don't like a dog.

32:14David McWilliams: They don't like a dog. Dogs are traditionally very much not in the scene in the way that they're profoundly embedded into our society. I mean, they're literally in every home in Ireland. It's so odd to us that people wouldn't. But what there was in this complex, there was, and I believe it's a chain, it's called Luca. and it's where you can go and have dog encounters. And they had all sorts of... Most of them was having encounters with dogs. Yeah. And there was just, and there was like, you know, they had a great day. They had chihuahuas. They had all sorts of dogs. And Saudi families... Is this like a red light district for dogs?

32:49No, it wasn't that sort of dog pound. But no, it was just, it was so sweet. I stopped and watched and it was just Saudi families. The people in Riyadh, again, I can't speak for the rest of Saudi Arabia, but the people in Riyadh were completely fluent in English.

33:05David McWilliams: So what you're saying is the society is totally pervious, right? It's not impervious, it's pervious. It's porous. Everything's coming in. The kids are all right. They're looking at TV. They're looking at Netflix. They're looking at YouTube. The censorship is disappearing. The place is opening up. And you can really feel it. And MBS, on the top of this, actually has a strategy. Well, I think, just to finish the analogy about the dogs, it was watching all these Saudi families, just meeting dogs. And there was one little girl, she petted a dog for the first time. And then she gave her dad a big hug.

33:38He was in the Thobe, which is their version of a dish dash of the white robe. You know, these were reasonably traditional Saudis. She was like, I can't believe I got to meet a dog. And the dad was so proud that he made his daughter happy. And it felt like kind of my perspective was from the Saudi top brass perspective, us comedians at the festival were like human puppies. You know what I mean? We were kind of almost them showing their people look this is comedy this is yeah this is their inner lives here's louis ck's inner monologue here's jimmy carr's dirty jokes five in a row like this is the west okay you don't need to be scared of them look pet them pet them it's okay yeah you know what i mean we were it's sort of yeah we only looked at it like we're going there and freedom of speech and they were looking at you know hey look see it's kevin hart yeah it's okay it's all right yeah we You can mix with these people.

34:30It's all right. Does that make sense? No, it makes complete sense.

34:34David McWilliams: It makes complete sense because the other thing is, I just want to focus in on this week and the politics of it and the economics of it, et cetera. The big prize for Trump is to try and get a deal where Israel is recognized or acknowledged by Saudi Arabia and vice versa. Was there any talk at that or that's completely off limits? I'll be honest with you, I did not engage anybody in the conversation about Israel. About the Zionist state. And in truth, David, I didn't because it was such an optimistic time out there. And it's been so profoundly gloomy. You know, you know, my personal life, my private life.

35:18My wife is from Egypt. My father-in-law lives in Qatar. You know. Yeah, you know the region. You know, I've had over the years, I've had people from the world of the Irish arts going, why aren't you speaking out about Gaza more publicly? And I'm like, has it occurred to you the fact that when I look at children being pulled out of that rubble in Gaza, they look like my daughters. This is really personal for me. You know what I mean? So in some ways, it seems so counterintuitive, but when I was in Riyadh, I felt I could breathe out from that conversation for once. I didn't need to have it because it's going to happen.

35:57You know, ultimately, the Saudis know they are holding an incredible prize in their hands. You know, they know that if Saudi Arabia normalizes, the custodian of the two holy places normalizes its relationship with the state of Israel, that changes everything. That profoundly changes, you know, because since the 70s, as part of that reconservatization of Saudi Arabia, they invested in a lot of mosques around the world. You know what I mean? So they have a huge amount of, in any city you're in listening to this in the Western world, there is a mosque in that city you're in that is directly funded in some capacity one way or another by the Saudis.

36:40And therefore it's, you know, it's, what would you call? The direction of its sermons that are being preached on Friday prayers is obviously going to be leaning towards the Saudi while you're looking at it. Does that make sense?

36:52David McWilliams: It's an editorial. Of course it's an editorial. The editorial, thank you. That's a good way of putting it. Yeah. I mean, there is, freedom of speech-wise, there's no point glossing over it. It is an absolute monarchy. I mean, people were like, well, you wouldn't have said anything about the, yeah, I wouldn't have said anything about the royal family on stage. But number one, it's not my damn country. You know what I mean? That wouldn't have made the people in the audience those, because the audiences were, I did, they have their first ever comedy club opened two years ago. It's called The Comedy Pod.

37:20And it was an awesome experience hanging out with those guys. because they were basically, they were all young Saudis. The audience was exclusively Saudis, 50-50 men and women. Same with the two big festival shows that we did. Again, it was 50 % women. You know, even if you take out any of the sort of highfalutin liberal principles that we both share, Dave, you know, as Western men, you know, who've been on TV and radio and in the public forum for years and years and years. you know nobody wants you to show up and tell them how they're doing their stuff wrong no discretion is the better part of valor like you know i think there's an extraordinary simplicity

38:01David McWilliams: in the way in which the riyadh comedy festival was received in certain parts of the comedy stroke i was reading reviews in the gorge and the usual suspects right what i'm much more interested in I'm not interested in yesterday's discussion. I'm much more interested in where things are going, right? Sure. What's the direction of travel? If the direction of travel is this comedy festival and the football and the Ronaldo and the golf is suggestive of a country opening up and because it is the financial heft, it's accelerating this process through buying ideas, buying comedy, buying wine. Absolutely.

38:40David McWilliams: If this is the way it's going, if the Trump peace in Gaza is part of that overall equation, we then have to think differently about where this is headed. And if it is a Saudi-backed West Bank Gaza at some form of peace with Israel, excluding Hamas, lots and lots of people on the street in Ireland and the West will go mad because it's ideologically not where they want to go. But if this is the direction of travel, this is where we should be in a podcast like this. Not talking about what should have happened two years ago, five years ago, ten years ago. Not seeing it through the lens of the Cold War.

39:20David McWilliams: Seeing it through the lens of the 21st century. Absolutely. I mean, there was talk, and whether it gets back off the ground, of setting up essentially a rival to the Chinese Belt and Road Initiative, of basically coming out of Guterat in Western India and bypassing Pakistan, and then going into the megaports that the Emirates have built. And then rail links taking it across the north of Saudi Arabia through Jordan and then popping out at Haifa in Israel. And that was all those sort of conversations were moving on at a pace. And then the October the 7th attacks obviously happened. And history for the people of Gaza took a very dark turn.

40:03But nevertheless, those conversations are already being had in Riyadh, Tel Aviv, New Delhi, and Abu Dhabi. And Oman. They're seeing this. They can see that, and they have the ambition to basically bypass Chinese power and bypass Russian power. So it's happening. Yeah. You know, we're not getting it, but it's happening. Massively so. And when you talk about the House of Suh, you've got the royal families in Saudi Qatar and the UAE specifically. The others are slightly behind schedule. But the three of them are rivaling each other in every field. And that is propelling them forward to an astonishing degree.

40:48In the case of Qatar, you know, it's almost as if particularly Qatar and the Emirates, they are where we in the West are going to be in 10, 15 years time. A huge amount of this development in Saudi is about keeping talent and attracting human capital to their countries. You know, the Saudis have massively educated their young population. And what they're really worried about is that the place won't be attractive to stay in. Yeah, exactly. They've gone and created 10 million fluent English speakers. And they've let them watch Netflix and YouTube and play on computer games for the last 10 years.

41:26They don't want them leaving. you know they want to keep hold of their capital and so i know qatar probably the best of all the all the countries in the gulf because my father-in-law lives there and he's he's pretty close to some elements in the ruling house what's astonishing that most westerners wouldn't realize there is they they've three million people in qatar and about 350 000 nationals and the rest are expats of different types. South Asians, Europeans, Filipinos. And to keep all those peoples happy who are mostly not Muslim, you know, you've got a lot of Ethiopian Christians. You've got a lot of the Indian and Nepalese Hindus, right?

42:09Near the airport in Doha, there is a thing called Church City. Church City. And next door there's Hindu City. And in Church City, there is a Catholic Basilica. There's various Protestant denominations. There's various Orthodox churches. And on a Sunday, there is a quarter of a million Christians worshipping on a Sunday in Doha. Now, to protect them, both the church city and the equivalent next door for the Hindus, they are both technically palaces. So they are not guarded by the regular police. They are guarded by the Praetorian Guard that protect the royal family. That's how serious, that was the signal that the royal family wanted to put out to their people.

42:49if you attack these people in their churches, you are attacking my palace right? That is a level of effort to protect your religious minorities that quite frankly pulls the West to shame

43:04David McWilliams: Max, as I said at the very top, comedians see things differently, this is the whole joy of Kilkenovitz, this is the joy of working with you, now you're coming back next year right? Definitely for Kilkenovitz it's that idea, you know you go you gig, you see, you get the vibe and thing, and you're seeing things differently. This has been amazing. We started with Ireland and moving statues. We started Ireland in the 1970s. We ended with Church City. There's a lovely symmetry in the whole thing. Wonderful stuff, Andrew. I just find this fascinating because this week, all the analysis is, well, a lot of the analysis is going to be from the well, the same well, which is that we will, the West and the Arab world are implacably opposite to each other, et cetera, et cetera.

43:48David McWilliams: what we're saying here is no, the world is changing. The world is changing very fast, you know, and people don't like it, you know. A lot of liberal people are actually deep down conservative on the inside. You better believe it, my friend. You better believe it. You know, if you've been the BBC's Middle Eastern correspondent for the last 30 years, you've got, you do have an opinion. And you only share it when you're in the hotel over a couple of whiskeys with your other fellow journalists. But like I said, it's from firsthand, the Saudi royal family are trying to outrun the conservative elements within their society and just change so fast to almost break the velocity you know that that's that's how a plane goes up in the air you know will it work who knows you know was I blown away by the reception of the comedy fans there I was incredibly touched because that's exactly how it felt when I was young in Ireland and people, all of a sudden, amazing comedians came to Dublin.

44:47We were like, what? Me and my mates when we were 16 snuck in to see Jack Dee live. We were like, I can't believe Jack Dee came to Dublin. Like, wow. You know what I mean? I mean, it seems so trivial now, but it's like... But it's a moment. It's a moment. It's a moment. Like, there's 8 ,000 people in this arena and I have a joke where the setup of the joke is the world's a mess, brothers and sisters, and it's all men's fault. Women should rule the world, right? And the place went nuts. This is where we are. And there's 8 ,000, you know, there was a good 4 ,000 women like, yeah! And then there's obviously a switcheroo punchline.

45:27Look, everybody gets slapped in the face with a good gag. But the point is, they did that. You know, it's not North Korea. You know, these people paid their money to go. They didn't round up a bunch of public sector workers and have them all wave a flag in unison. You know what I mean?

45:42David McWilliams: You know, comedy is a kind of a universal language, but there is a kind of an English flavor of comedy and there's an American flavor of comedy. Is there a Saudi or Muslim flavor of comedy? Well, number one, Saudi is very influenced by America. Yeah. Whereas the Emirates and the Qataris have a bit more of a British flavor and the Bahrainis definitely and the Almanis. but Saudi culturally has been very, very much US facing. From going along to the local comedy club, me and Louis just sat in the background and watched about 10 Saudi comics. A lot of them were doing comedy in English for the first time because they all wanted to be on the bill with Louis, basically.

46:25They wanted to be on the bill. I shared a bill with Louis CK, right? And it was rammed. It's only 120, 180 seat a room, but beautiful gig. And there was a lot of material about family life.

46:36David McWilliams: Right. And it really reminded me of, again, Irish comedians disproportionately have material, and Italian-American comedians. You know, it was just about, everybody had basically an angle on, publicly, Dad's in charge. But once the door's shut, the mother's actually the power. You know what I mean? They had a lot of that kind of joke. That sounds disturbing, like the three of us. As always, an absolute pleasure. And I will hopefully very soon in the flesh and we'll go out for scoop and keep talking. Yeah, 100%. Well, here's the thing. I will keep you posted because the Saudis have the biggest dance festival in the world.

47:14It's called Sandstorm. There's like 100 ,000 Saudi kids raving for a weekend in the desert. Whoa. And I may be going to do the first ever comedy gig at it. So I'll keep you posted there. Like, I mean, who doesn't want to see that? I'd love to see that. Amazing. You know what I mean? Post Malone's headlining it. Wow. Yeah. That's mad. A white dude with face tattoos is headlining a festival in Saudi? What? That's the speed of the pace. But, you know, from what I can gather of the young people I met, they're well able for it. Brilliant stuff.

47:46David McWilliams: Brilliant stuff, Max. We'll talk to you again. All right.

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48:27David McWilliams: I'll tell you what struck me most about that conversation with Andrew. He was fantastic. I didn't realize he was so embedded or invested in the whole region and knows it inside out and backwards. But it's the, what he was talking about, the ambition of the Saudis is as big as anywhere else, is as big as China's ambition, you know, and the Belt and Road Initiative. You know, there is the Saudi Belt and Road Initiative, as he was mentioning. But it is that ambition and they have the money And they have now also golf, football, comedy. Comedy, yeah. And dance, apparently. Dance festivals. John, exactly.

49:11David McWilliams: Dance festivals in Saudi Arabia. Who would have imagined five years ago? And this is why that's fascinating. I think what we have are the Saudis. The Saudis have the money. The Egyptians have the manpower, as Andrew says. and the Pakistanis have the nuclear power. This is what the Americans are coming to terms with now and realizing that they don't just have to back the Israelis, which used to be the case, but they actually have to get into bed with and play ball with a whole host of other regional powers of whom the Saudis are the ones that they are closest to. And that's another reason why Saudi Arabia is so important.

50:02David McWilliams: And also draw them away from China. Exactly. Draw them away from China. I mean, again, the Saudis have seen what getting to bed with the West looks like, and they don't want it. So the Saudis export a huge amount of their oil to China. They're playing the game. Again, what we're talking about is this multipolar world. So there's not just two big powers. there's many many powers that are emerging they've all got different interests they've all got different assets they've all got different strengths they've all got different weaknesses some of them are coming from a religious background like the Saudis and trying to in some way liberate their people from a very very old ideology and religion while still keeping their culture other ones like for example you know the Indians and Chinese are doing completely different things, the Pakistani.

50:51David McWilliams: So my sense of what we're talking about is just a re-ordering of the world. And that's what we're seeing, whether it's a Sharm el-Sheikh this week, or whether it's going to be a phase two of this particular peace plan. Now, of course, this peace plan is predicated on a huge amount of imponderables. One is, does Hamas leave the scene? And that's why the Qataris... And the disarmament of them as well. Do you remember the decommissioning of the IRA? That took years. De Shastalin and this, that and the other, and talks about talks. I mean, it takes ages. But the reason that Qatar are in the game is Qatar finance Hamas, number one.

51:31David McWilliams: The other reason that Qatar are in the game is that the Israeli attack on Qatar is what triggered Trump to change his view. Why? Because not only did the Qataris give Donny a plane, but they're actually incredibly wealthy. And America wants massive investment from the Saudis and the Qataris and the UAE into the United States. That's one thing. So again, this has kind of outsmarted the Israelis because the Israelis now realize that in actual fact, the Americans are kind of agnostic. Yes, they're very pro-Israeli, but they're actually very happy to do deals with the Arabs too. And that's becoming an even bigger issue in America.

52:08David McWilliams: I mean, you mentioned the Qataris there. they are setting up an air base in Idaho, a Qatari air base with F1 fighters or whatever they're called. Well, probably with American fighters, fighter planes. Sure, sure, sure. But this is driving the MAGA base crazy, the Marjorie Taylor Greene's and all that kind of stuff. And there is this movement in America, and this might be the undoing of Trump, the movement in America that is becoming anti-APAC and anti-Israeli. People are, for the first time, questioning, why are we putting so much money into Israel? No, but that's true. But I mean, this is, we're talking about, you're talking about the undoing of Trump.

52:50David McWilliams: He's now at his strongest, right? Yes, I am, yeah. Okay, but if you think about, so the key then is, do Hamas leave the scene? If they don't leave the scene, if they don't leave Gaza, can those, the idea of a technocratic Palestinian peaceful government, which is part two of the plan, actually wrestle control of Gaza from Hamas? I'm not so sure about that. Would the Arabs be prepared, like for example, Saudi Arabia, to put in Arab soldiers in a peacekeeping force or stabilization force in Gaza if it meant that they were hunting down Hamas, which in effect would be Arabs doing Israel's job? That, again, wouldn't go down well.

53:35David McWilliams: Then, of course, if Hamas stayed there, will the Israelis continue? Or at least will the Israeli pullout be permanent? I doubt it very much. So there's a huge amount of stuff going on. And that's why the phase two of this is going to be more difficult, arguably, or maybe not more difficult, but as difficult as phase one. But look at the positives, right? The idea of the Gaza Riviera is over. Trump's plan from last February. Yes, thank God for that. That means that the risk of ethnic cleansing of Palestinians is over because the Riviera was predicated on getting the Palestinians to move to the Sinai in Egypt, all two million of them, opening up a real estate opportunity for American investors, right?

54:20David McWilliams: That's now off the table. And that's a big shift. I know it sounds weird, but it's a big shift, right? It means that the Palestinians remain in Gaza as the people of Gaza. Gaza will be rebuilt with Saudi Arabian money. Buckets and buckets of Saudi Arabian money. It also means that Trump has aligned himself as much with the Arabs as he has with the Israelis. That's very difficult to see some of the commentary here in Ireland, but that I think is what's going on. And again, the key thing is the Arab money and the strategic notion of the world changing. And of course, the Palestinian state is back on the table.

55:02The Palestinian state, the two-state solution, is central to this plan.

55:06David McWilliams: So I think we just take a breath. It's been a crazy week. It has been an extraordinary week. There's lots of things that have changed. I think Andrew Maxwell has absolutely nailed it in terms of what's going on in one of the lead countries. and what goes on in Saudi because of their role in the Muslim world and because of their money and their influence in Washington is absolutely crucial. It also shows you, John, how Kilcanomics brings different angles, which is on in a couple of weeks' time, kilcanomics.com. And you're going to bed and I'm going for my breakfast. Yes, come on. So I am talking to John.

55:48David McWilliams: I am 12 hours ahead of him. He's going to bed and I'm just out of the scratcher. You're always 12 hours ahead of me, Mac. As I said, speaking from the future, Johnny Boy, talk to you next week.

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