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Hi, I'm Sean acres, Dean of the helm School of Government. I've enjoyed so much having the opportunity to visit with you about US foreign policy toward the Middle East. Now as we go forward, it's important to ask ourselves the difficult questions and to examine the future of US Middle East relations. The United States has historically held a certain vantage point of policy with the Middle East and a certain relationship with the countries of the Middle East. You see those in dynamic play in recent years. And it's important to ask yourself why? Especially from a foundational standpoint, I would suggest to you that there are several layers in which you can view a question such as this one being the practical layer saying, how should we work with nations in the Middle East to accomplish a given set of results. The other though much more fundamental and it's asking how a changing worldview in the United States and a chain and changing worldviews in the Middle Eastern countries is complicating and changing the relations between the two. And as a result, causing a need for change or causing change in the policies that exist between the United States and Middle Eastern countries. How particularly has a decline in the Judeo-Christian worldview in the United States affected the United States foreign policy toward the Middle East. How have competing Muslim world-views, Sunni and Shia worldviews affected the interplay of, of ideology and laws and transitions of power and Muslim nations in the Middle East. How have I, have the Jewish people in Israel gone through changes in worldview that have affected one way or another, policy toward the United States and policy toward their Arab neighbors. These are incredibly important questions that I would hold out to you are largely answered only in terms of the effects that that different parties would like to achieve, rather than in the fundamental questions of how they are being driven. What's giving rise to them? How are they being driven by changes in the way that entire people's think in the worldviews that they hold. Now this becomes incredibly important for us as the stakes are very high. The idea that there may at some point in the future be another nuclear power on the Middle Eastern Bloc named Iran. The idea that America status in the world continues to change in ways that are not related to the Middle East but directly affect its power and influence in the Middle East. The matters of economies in the Middle East. For example, the rise of such a vibrant economy in Israel. How has that affected foreign policy and the way that israel responds to its neighbors? All of these questions will continue to become important as we deal with both larger nations divesting themselves of their nuclear prowess, while smaller nations strive to develop nuclear capabilities. Oh, wow. We see very subtle and at times very overt shifting of allegiances and alliances and governmental structures in all the nations that not all, but in many, many of the nations that ring the Mediterranean Sea. This is an important time to be studying American foreign policy toward the State of Israel. I would encourage you to continue your studies even after this course ends. I think that you'll find that even in domestic matters, we tend to discount how important these things are. For example, not many of us would think how a Middle Eastern conflict could affect the development of technology in the United States. But in fact, if you've got an Intel processor in your computer, or you use a cell phone or you like text messaging or a variety of other technological advancements of that nature. Those things came out of the State of Israel. How would conflict the wrong time have affected the development of those products? These are important issues that will be faced with for, for quite sometime in the future. And I encourage you to make US foreign policy toward israel, a staple of your studies.A