Hey everyone, I'm David Chalian, CNN's Washington Bureau Chief and Political Director, and welcome to the CNN Political Briefing.

Before our eyes, a new generation of leaders is transcending the ancient conflicts of tired divisions of the past and forging a future where the Middle East is defined by commerce, not chaos, where it exports technology, not terrorism, and where people of different nations, religions, and creeds are building cities together, not bombing each other.

'That's President Trump speaking in Saudi Arabia earlier this week, the first of three stops on his Middle East tour. Over the course of the four-day trip, he also met with leaders in Qatar and the UAE. The newsmaking moments of the visit started even before Trump touched down in the region with an announcement that the president planned to accept a very unusual gift, a luxury jet plane from Qatar that he'd use as Air Force One. The notable moments continued when Trump announced he'd lift sanctions on Syria and then became the first U.S. President in a quarter century to shake hands with the Syrian president. So what tone does this first big international tour set for Trump's geopolitical moves in this second term? What did the president get out of this trip? And is it deemed a success? Barak Ravid is a political reporter and Middle East expert for Axios. He's also a political and global affairs analyst for us here at CNN. He joins me to break down this week's visit and dive deeper into Trump's relationship with the region. Barak, thanks so much for joining me. Appreciate it.

'One of your pieces on Axios this week had the headline, "Trump tries to tackle four global crises all at once." And I kind of want to dig in to each one of them with you. I'm actually going to start just briefly with the one that is not directly in the region, which is Ukraine-Russia. And I only want to start there because we are learning as President Trump is wrapping up this trip, he was on Air Force One going from Qatar to the UAE and said he did not think that there was going to be a breakthrough in Ukraine-Russia talks until he met with President Putin directly. We know Putin's not going to Turkey, and therefore neither is Trump, and Rubio, Secretary Rubio said the same thing in Turkey, that there needs to be a direct talk between Trump and Putin to move the ball forward here, which seems to me like they're sort of laying the groundwork here, that this is very much in the immediate offing, that we are gonna see Trump and Putin together, but that didn't happen for this trip. What should we make of this rhetoric about a Trump-Putin meeting?

'Well, I think that Trump wanted very much to have this trilateral summit with Zelensky and Putin, maybe even a quadruple summit with also Erdogan and like, you know, something like another huge diplomatic event at the end of his trip, which was loaded with high-level meetings, historic meetings, like the meeting with the president of Syria. I think that for Trump, this was like a, you know, not only a groundbreaking diplomatic achievement if such a summit would have taken place, it will also be an event with tons and tons and tons of ratings, that, as you know, President Trump likes ratings. And he tried, and the White House tried to press Putin to come to that meeting. Putin, at the end, decided not to, which is kind of funny taking into consideration that it was his idea in the first place. Putin presented this idea of doing this meeting in Turkey as an attempt to bypass President Trump's call for immediate 30-day ceasefire. He said, well, you know, forget about the ceasefire, let's just meet everybody in Turkey. And then when Zelensky said, great, I'm coming, Putin started to walk it back and said, okay, I'm going to send some lower level people. But I think it's still going to be very interesting with this meeting in Turkey because it's going to be the first time that Ukrainian and Russian officials meet face to face since March 2022. Does that mean that the ceasefire is going to take place? You know, I think Secretary of State Rubio's skepticism was very healthy at that point in time, but it's definitely a beginning of a discussion.

'I am eager to learn where that Trump-Putin meeting will take place and when.

I think what we can say for sure, that it is not a matter of if, but a matter of when.

So both Putin and Trump want to meet, okay? They wanna meet regardless of Zelensky, by the way, okay. But if Zelensky needs to be there, you know what? Maybe they'll do it some time.

Maybe it'll be a little classic shuttle diplomacy where Trump can go back and forth between the two, but you are right. It is clear Trump and Putin are on the cusp of having their first meeting of this Trump term. You mentioned Syria, Barak, and I do want to go back to that. I think it was some of the biggest news of this entire trip. Donald Trump announced that he was lifting sanctions on Syria. He then met with the Syrian leader. We haven't seen a U.S. president meet with the leader of Syria for, I don't know, 20, 25 years or so.

Yeah, yeah, it's extraordinary when you think about it.

'What did you make of this move? And, more importantly, what does your reporting suggest about what Israel made of this move and how that impacts the US-Israel relationship?

Well, you know, like many people, including people within the Trump administration, the Israelis were shocked by this decision to lift sanctions and to meet the Syrian president. They were not notified in advance. They were caught off guard. But again, Trump didn't let anybody know, including, you know, again, within his own administration. I think only the people who were with him on this trip knew at some point that he made this decision because he made this decision after his talks with Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman and with Turkish President Erdogan. I think that on Monday, before he traveled to the Middle East, he gave a hint when he said, Erdogan asked me to lift sanctions on Syria. We're looking into it. We're gonna make a determination. But when I heard him say that, I said, all right, we'll make a determination sometime in the future. I didn't think that he would make this determination in 24 hours. And that was one of, I think, one of the amazing things in the week we just had that the pace of things was just, you know, it's always a whirlwind. When you think about, you know, he's coming to Saudi Arabia. A few hours after he lands, he announces this thing with Syria. In the same time there are those, you know, talks for a possible summit with Zelensky and Erdogan. Day before, he released a hostage from Gaza, he's talking to this hostage from the hallway of the Ritz Carlton hotel in Riyadh before he goes in to meet the Saudi crown prince. Everything happens at the same time, and he is moving from one country to the other. In every country there's another announcement or several announcements, and I think this is Trump's style of shock and awe that you know to just create a lot of action and a lot of news in a very short period of time and to basically create this feeling of domination of the news cycle and, through that, you know domination on the world stage.

'And what do you make of the U.S. president, you know, shaking hands with and being in a meeting with and in a room with somebody who I think he was associated with al-Qaeda in Iraq at some point. I mean, this is...

'There was a bounty. There was a there was a bounty; the FBI has put a bounty on Ahmad al-Sharaa's head when, you know, we are old enough to remember that he was called in those, you know, posters of the, you know, most wanted by the FBI. He was called Abu Mohammad al-Julani.

Yeah, and now he's sitting in a room with the president of the United States. I understand he is now the president of Syria, and things have changed, and he ousted the government there after years of civil war of the Assad regime. But what are we supposed to make of that outreach from Trump?

'Well, I think that what we know about Donald Trump from the first term, and he continues to do it now, he is not a status quo president. You can argue about his decisions, you can like it, you can dislike it, but he is not a status-quo president. He's making decisions very fast, and this is why the pace is so much faster than any other, I think, presidency, and he believes in engagement and in diplomacy. This is why he, you know, in the first term, went to see Kim Jong Un. Again, you can argue whether it was the right decision, the wrong decision, whatever, but that's his style. And when you think about it like that, then the meeting with the president of Syria, the same guy wasn't up until two hours a wanted terrorist, and now he's wearing a suit and shaking hands with the president of the United States. That's classic Donald Trump. That's his worldview. This is how he conducts his business. By the way, I saw this photo of Trump, the Syrian President Ahmad al-Sharaa and the Saudi Crown Prince, Mohammed bin Salman. Ten years before, Donald Trump was "The Apprentice," Ahmad al-Sharaa was arrested by US forces in Iraq, and Mohammed bin Salman was, you know, a Saudi Prince who was not very prominent and that nobody even thought would ever get to be even close to being the king of Saudi Arabia. Ten years have passed, those three people are in a totally different place.

Wow, what a difference a decade makes. We're gonna take a quick break. We'll have a lot more with Barak Ravid in just a moment. Barak, you had mentioned the release of the last remaining living American hostage out of Gaza. This is something that seems to have come from a direct negotiation between the U.S. and Hamas, if I understand it correctly. Was Israel sort of cut out of that? How did Netanyahu respond to that? Israel was not on the list of countries that Trump was visiting in this first big visit to the region and his first big international trip. What is the state of play right now for Trump and Netanyahu as you see it?

'So let's start with talking about the release of Edan Alexander and how it came to be. So you said it was direct talks. It was almost direct talks. Okay, what happened? What happened was that a Hamas official close to the Hamas chief negotiator, Khalil Al-Hayya, contacted a guy called Bishara Bahbah. Who is Bishara Bahbah? He's a Palestinian American businessman who headed a movement called Arab-Americans for Donald Trump. I don't know if everybody remembers, but during the 2024 presidential election, Michigan was a battleground state, and the Arab-American vote was very important. And Bishara Bahbah rallied voters in favor of Donald Trump, because he said Donald Trump is going to end the war in Gaza. And he was pretty successful at it. And Hamas were looking for somebody who can get them in touch with the Trump administration, and they said, OK. That's the guy. He's close enough because he worked for Donald Trump in the presidential campaign. And they contact him, and they tell him, we want to convey a message to Steve Witkoff, the White House envoy. Bahbah met Witkoff one time, bumped into him accidentally. He doesn't really know him, but he manages to get in touch with him. And the first thing Witkoff tells him is, who the hell are you? I mean, why? Like, I don't know you. Why would I trust you to be somebody who's giving me messages from Hamas about a hostage deal? So it took them a few days to figure out who's this guy. And once they did, they started conveying messages. And at least 20 messages were passed between with Witkoff and Hamas chief negotiator Khalil Al-Hayya, who sits in Qatar, threw this guy Bishara Bahbah until this deal was concluded. And one of the things that Witkoff and Bahbah told Hamas is, you should release Edan Alexander for free because that way you can get some credit with Donald Trump. It would go a long way with the president. He may not like you, but he will hate you a bit less. And maybe it's going to help you down the road during the negotiations. And Hamas decided to take that chance. They thought that, by doing that, by releasing Edan Alexander, they will move Trump a bit more to their side in those negotiations with Israel. I have to say, Edan Alexander was released earlier this week. Three days have passed since then. I don't get the sense that it did the trick. Meaning Trump got what he wanted, he hasn't given Hamas anything at the moment, and the thing is that the negotiations that continued from that point, from the point that Edan Alexander was released, they continued negotiations in Doha with Israeli negotiators, with Witkoff, with the Qataris, with Hamas, but those negotiations until now did not produce anything, and if they won't produce anything in the next 48 to 72 hours, there's quite a reasonable scenario of Israel going back into Gaza with full force, reoccupying the entire Gaza Strip and flattening it, literally flattening it. And that would be a very dangerous scenario, and I think there's a quite big chance that this is what's gonna happen.

It seems like that'll set back any kind of movement towards a resolution such as existed, which didn't seem like much. It'll set it back irreparably, perhaps, if that is the case.

I agree. And one of the things you mentioned is why Israel is sort of left out of this trip, okay, of Trump's visit to the Middle East. You know, you can just imagine what would have happened if, let's say, Barack Obama came to the region and didn't visit Israel. You know what, don't have to imagine. It actually happened in 2009, and Netanyahu went all out against Obama in the U.S. media for the fact that he did not visit Israel, and the Republicans attacked Obama, and now it didn't happen. Why? Two reasons. First, because Netanyahu gave Trump such a hug over the last few months that he's sort of like totally dependent on him, and he can't really criticize him. And the second reason is that I think a lot of people understand, including people in the White House, in the Republican Party, understand that it would have been a mistake for Trump to go to Israel at this point. And I heard this from several Republicans, including people in the administration, including people in the White House that said, Donald Trump got nothing to win out of visiting Israel now because the only thing that Netanyahu can give him is a headache. And when he goes to Saudi Arabia and he gets, you know, billions and billions of dollars in investments, he goes to Qatar and he gets, you now, investments and a jumbo jet, and he goes the UAE and he gets also investments. Israel doesn't have anything to give him because it is bogged down in a war in Gaza. That's one of the reasons that it is not part of this festival we saw over the last few days in the region.

'Festival is a good word, and that makes sense. I have a few quick things that I wanna make sure we chat about. One is this Iran nuclear deal that seems to be on the table at the moment. It seems the U.S. has handed over actual documents of a deal to Iran, and Trump is saying, now is the moment for choosing. What are you hearing about that? Are we going to see a US deal with Iran on a non-nuclear Iran in perpetuity?

I think it's getting closer. It doesn't mean it's super close, but it's getting closer. The U.S. gave the Iranians for the first time a proposal for how the U.S. envisions Iran with a civilian nuclear program that cannot be used for producing nuclear weapons. Does that mean that there's an agreement tomorrow morning? Not at all. I followed the nuclear talks in 2013 and 2014 and 2015. It takes time. It's a technical issue, highly complicated, but they do see a scenario where this will be a phased thing, meaning we will first hear some sort of a joint statement that basically says what are both sides' intentions. Then they will move towards some sort an interim deal to just take some sanctions off and to shut some nuclear things down. And then the third phase will be the comprehensive agreement that will be more down the road.

Is this gonna look somewhat similar to the Obama deal, which obviously Trump is gonna twist himself into a pretzel to make sure it doesn't, but will it look along the lines or have echoes of the Obama nuclear Iran agreement?

I don't know how the agreement is going to look like. I know one thing. Everybody who supported the Obama nuclear deal will say, you see, it's exactly the same. Trump walked out of the deal and then walked back into the same deal. Everybody who supported the withdrawal from Obama's 2015 nuclear deal and who supports Trump's deal will say, this is nothing, not even close to Obama's. This is a whole new thing.

I know, but I'm going to count on you to tell me which version is true.

I have to tell you, I'm pretty sure that both sides will have a point. Because A, you cannot reinvent the wheel, okay? We know the parameters of the Iranian nuclear program. We know what it means to roll it back. We also know that the Iranians are not going to take tons of TNT and blow up their own nuclear facilities, so it has to be some sort of a compromise, and any compromise will look more or less like the JCPOA. And every compromise might have also some stuff that are different than the JCPOA. And then each side will be able to say, oh you see it's the same, or, oh, you see it's totally different.

My final question for you before I let you go you referenced it when you mentioned the festival this week, and you mentioned the aircraft. So where do you place this story? Was this a distraction from other big news this week? Or was this legitimately, in your mind, like a significant item? That right on the precipice of embarking upon this trip, President Trump indicates that the United States is going to accept a gift of a 400 million dollar palace in the sky aircraft that can be utilized as Air Force One for presidential travel from the government of Qatar.

First, it's an interesting story, I think we can all agree. It is interesting. How consequential it is, I think we can argue. And I'll give you an example from a different country where I come from, from Israel, a country that did not have for many, many years a government plane for the president and the prime minister. And then the government put in millions and millions and millions of dollars, and the project took years until they managed to build the Israeli Air Force One. They call it the "Wing of Zion." I think it cost at the end something like, I don't know, more than 200 million dollars. And it's no offense to anybody, it's not the most sophisticated and modern plane in the world. Eventually the product, the end product wasn't the best one they could get. And the amount of money that was spent and thrown to the trash in this project and the waste in this product was immense. And I covered this for many, many years, this project in the Israeli Air Force One. So, you know, when I look at that, and I see, they're getting a plane for free, then I say, you know, it's hard for me to say, oh my God, I cannot believe it is happening. Okay? So we'll have to see. I think the question is how much it will cost to actually turn this plane into a real Air Force One. That's the main question, I think.

Yes, agreed. Well, Barak, I really appreciate your insights. There's nobody who's smarter on the region, so wrapping up Trump's first big international trip of this term to the Gulf region with you is a real pleasure. So thanks so much for your time.

Thank you so much. It was my pleasure.

That's it for this week's edition of the CNN Political Briefing. Remember, you can reach out to us with your questions about Trump's new administration. Our contact information is in the show notes. CNN Political Briefing is a production of CNN Audio. This episode was produced by Emily Williams. Our senior producer is Dan Bloom. Dan Dzula is our Technical Director, and Steve Lickteig is the executive producer of CNN Audio. Support from Alex Manasseri, Robert Mathers, Jon Dianora, Leni Steinhardt, Jamus Andrest, Nichole Pesaru, and Lisa Namerow. We'll be back with a new episode next Friday. Thanks so much for listening.