i'm pleased to welcome our gust speaker juan zorata, david cohen and kate bauer as well as our own executive vice president ambassador steve flesh who will introduce the program and moderate the program. again, welcome and look forward to a good discussion today. thank you. >> thank you so much, marcelle. good afternoon and welcome everyone. i'm pleased to be able to moderate this discussion and i'm very, very happy to have such distinguished colleagues with me to help enlighten us on this subject as marcelle said, one of critical interest and one of a timely nature at the moment given events in the region and here in washington as well. my introduction can be short. you can look for greater detail in the handy programs that were on your chair when you walked in, but allow me to please just briefly introduce kate bauer, who is the bloomingstein fellow at the washington state institute and a former treasury official that served as the department's atake shea in jerusalem and in the gulf region. to her right is david cohen, former deputy director of the central intelligence agency and better k

i'm pleased to welcome our gust speaker juan zorata, david cohen and kate bauer as well as our own executive vice president ambassador steve flesh who will

kate, over to you. you can assess the risks and opportunities, if there are not any we have recognized. ms. bauer great. thank you for inviting me to join. i'm really honored to be here with these men who have been great friends and mentors over many years. and i have to say after speaking with the two of them, i have to agree with what -- with a lot of what they said, but i think i will find a couple points to push on a little bit. thatnk i agree with david have arabia and the uae galvanized action against terrorist financiers that were operating and continue to operate in qatar, and they felt that there is a sense that qatar does not share the same threat and the uae. saudi this allows them to pursue at different times multilateral attempts, whether they are the trilateral attempts that david mentioned or another iteration efforts to designate has blocked as a terrorist organization and the mechanisms that go along with that, commitments that were made at the camp david summits under the obama administration to pursue andilateral efforts activity in the region. these desires to bring the gulf g