Hisham Foad

Associate professor of economics and Fred J. Hansen Peace Chair @SDSU. Amateur woodworker and long sufferer of Cincinnati sports fandom

[Hisham Foad @HSFoad]

Article in the NY Times citing my research on birthright citizenship in Ireland. Would have been nice if they attributed my work, but still glad that the topic is getting attention

[Lydia DePillis @lydiadepillis]

Americans take birthright citizenship for granted, but most countries don't allow it. I wanted to know what that means for kids who are born in a society without the full right to participate. We found some answers in Ireland and Germany. https://t.co/r4cdAgx3vW

[Hisham Foad @HSFoad]

@basedseattle One thing to consider is how much wait times can vary over the course of a day, given that certain hours have a lot more flights departing. This is a graph of wait times for my airport (SAN) from 3/15-3/21 (most recent data) from the CBP website

[Ineluctable Chris @BoveFromAbove]

Downfall parody when Trump learns that Spain is refusing to allow the use of its air bases.

[liam cunningham @liamcunningham1]

Read this and read it again.

[Peter Girnus 🦅 @gothburz]

I am a diplomatic aide in the Sultanate of Oman's Ministry of Foreign Affairs.

My job is logistics. When two countries that cannot speak to each other need to speak to each other, I book the rooms. I prepare the briefing materials. I make sure the water glasses are the right distance apart. You would be surprised how much of diplomacy is water glasses. Too close and it feels informal. Too far and it feels like a tribunal. I have a chart.

We had a very good month.

Since January, Oman has been mediating indirect talks between the United States and Iran on Iran's nuclear program. The talks were held in Muscat and in Geneva. The Americans would sit in one room. The Iranians would sit in another room. I would walk between them. My Fitbit says I averaged fourteen thousand steps on negotiation days. The hallway between the two rooms at the Royal Opera House conference center is forty-seven meters. I walked it two hundred and twelve times in February. This is good for my cardiovascular health. It was less good for my knees. Both are in the service of peace.

By mid-February, we had something.

Iran agreed to zero stockpiling of enriched uranium. Not reduced stockpiling. Zero. They agreed to down-blend existing stockpiles to the lowest possible level. They agreed to convert them into irreversible fuel. They agreed to full IAEA verification with potential US inspector access. They agreed, in the Foreign Minister's phrase, to "never, ever" possess nuclear material for a bomb. I have worked in diplomacy for seven years. I have never seen a country agree to this many things this quickly. I made a spreadsheet of the concessions. It had fourteen rows. I color-coded it. Green for confirmed. Yellow for pending. By February 21 the spreadsheet was entirely green. I printed it. It is on my desk in Muscat. It is still green.

That phrase took eleven days. "Never, ever." The Iranians initially offered "not seek to." The Americans wanted "will not under any circumstances." We landed on "never, ever" at 2:14 AM on a Tuesday in Muscat. I typed the final version myself. I used Times New Roman because Geneva prefers it. The document was fourteen pages. I was proud of every comma.

Here is what they said, in the order they said it.

February 24: "We have a once-in-a-generation opportunity." — The Foreign Minister, private briefing to Gulf Cooperation Council ambassadors. I prepared the slide deck. Slide 14 was the implementation timeline. Slide 15 was the signing ceremony logistics. I had reserved the Palais des Nations in Geneva, Room XX. It seats four hundred. We discussed pen brands for the signing. The Iranians preferred Montblanc. The Americans had no preference. I ordered twelve Montblanc Meisterstucks at six hundred and thirty dollars each. They arrive on Tuesday.

February 27, 8:30 AM EST: "The deal is within our reach." — The Foreign Minister, CBS Face the Nation. He sat across from Margaret Brennan. He said broad political terms could be agreed "tomorrow" with ninety days for technical implementation in Vienna. He said, and I wrote this line for the briefing card he carried in his breast pocket: "If we just allow diplomacy the space it needs." He praised the American envoys by name. Steve Witkoff. Jared Kushner. He said both had been constructive.

I watched from the Four Seasons Georgetown. The minibar had cashews. I ate the cashews. They were nineteen dollars. The most expensive cashew I have ever eaten. But it was a good morning and we were within our reach.

February 27, 2:00 PM EST: Meeting with Vice President Vance, Washington. The Foreign Minister presented our progress. Zero stockpiling. Full verification. Irreversible conversion. "Never, ever." The Vice President used the word "encouraging." His aide took notes on an iPad. The aide did not make eye contact for the last nine minutes of the meeting. I noticed this. Noticing things is the only part of my job that is not water glasses.

February 27, 4:00 PM EST: "Not happy with the pace." — President Trump, to reporters.

Not happy with the pace.

We had achieved zero stockpiling. Full IAEA verification. Irreversible fuel conversion. Inspector access. And the phrase "never, ever," which took eleven days and cost me two hundred and twelve trips down a forty-seven-meter hallway.

Every American president since Carter has failed to get Iran to agree to this. Forty-five years.

Not happy with the pace.

February 27, 9:47 PM EST: The Foreign Minister's flight departs Dulles for Muscat. I am in the seat behind him. He is reviewing Slide 14 on his laptop. The implementation timeline. Vienna technical sessions. The signing ceremony. The pens.

I fall asleep over the Atlantic. I dream about water glasses.

February 28, 6:00 AM GST: I wake up to push notifications.

February 28: "The United States has begun major combat operations in Iran." — President Trump.

Operation Epic Fury. Coordinated airstrikes. The United States and Israel. Tehran. Isfahan. Qom. Karaj. Kermanshah. Nuclear facilities. IRGC bases. Sites near the Supreme Leader's office. Israel called their half Operation Roaring Lion. Someone in both governments spent time choosing these names. Epic Fury. Roaring Lion. I spent eleven days on "never, ever." They spent it on branding. The President said Iran had "rejected American calls to halt its nuclear weapons production."

Rejected.

Iran had agreed to zero stockpiling. Iran had agreed to full verification. Iran had agreed to "never, ever." Iran had agreed to everything in a fourteen-page document that I typed in Times New Roman.

The President said they rejected it.

I do not know which document the President was reading. I know which one I typed.

February 28, 18:45 UTC: Iran internet connectivity: four percent. — NetBlocks, confirmed by Cloudflare. Ninety-six percent of a country went dark. You cannot negotiate with a country at four percent connectivity. You cannot negotiate with a country that is being struck. You cannot negotiate. This is not a political opinion. This is a logistics assessment.

February 28: The governor of Minab reported forty girls killed at an elementary school.

I do not have logistics for that. There is no slide for that. The water glass chart does not cover that.

February 28: Lockheed Martin: up. Northrop Grumman: up. RTX: up. Dow futures: down six hundred and twenty-two points. Gold: five thousand two hundred and ninety-six dollars. An analyst at AInvest published a note titled "Iran Strikes: Tactical Plays." The note recommended positions in oil, defense stocks, and gold.

The most expensive cashew I have ever eaten was nineteen dollars. The most expensive pen I have ever ordered was six hundred and thirty dollars. The math suggests I have been working in the wrong industry. Defense stocks do not require water glasses. Defense stocks do not require eleven days. Defense stocks require one morning.

February 28: Israel closed its airspace and its schools. Iran launched retaliatory missiles toward US bases in the Gulf. The Supreme Leader promised a "crushing response." Israel's defense minister declared a permanent state of emergency. Everyone is using words I recognize in an order I do not. I recognize "permanent." I recognize "emergency." I do not recognize them next to each other. In diplomacy, nothing is permanent and everything is an emergency. In war it is the reverse.

February 28: The Foreign Minister has not made a public statement.

The briefing card is still in his breast pocket. It still says "within our reach."

[Acyn @Acyn]

Wolfers: This is the most interventionist government of my lifetime. It’s the least conservative government of my lifetime. When you are the richest country in the world, maybe you are not the ones who should be tearing down your existing institutions. That’s usually what countries that are lagging behind try to do. But that’s exactly what this president is doing.

This won’t show up in next quarter’s GDP. What it will show up as, a decade from now, is companies that were never founded. Entrepreneurs who couldn’t afford to go to business school. Immigrants with great ideas who stayed in their home countries instead. Whatever the next generation’s Google or OpenAI is, it may not be invented—or it may not happen on our soil.

We’ll never see that absence directly. But our kids will feel it. They’ll feel it as lost opportunities: businesses never started, jobs that never existed, technologies never developed, and ways of creating a greener, safer, more prosperous future that simply aren’t possible.

[Harry Burton @HBtoons]

My cartoon in today's @irishexaminer.

[Hisham Foad @HSFoad]

The only surprising thing is just how little effort they put into it. It's like they are testing just how blatantly they can lie and still have people believe them (but that's probably giving too much credit)
https://t.co/FL6RwvUpY0

[Hisham Foad @HSFoad]

Me on the local news discussing changes to the H1B Visa. Really want to stress how this could negatively impact healthcare in rural areas that rely on H1B physicians. https://t.co/HFVHubihyB

[Shadi Hamid @shadihamid]

The reason why campus activists aren't protesting about Iran is actually pretty simple. The U.S. isn't allied with Iran. The U.S. isn't facilitating the mass slaughter of Iranians by funding and arming the Iranian regime to the tune of billions of dollars.

To my knowledge, there's basically no one in the mainstream media who is celebrating the killing of Iranian protestors. That's a good thing. Unfortunately, that wasn't the case with Gaza, where cheering Israel's war crimes was extremely common.

Campus activists were calling on their universities to divest from companies that were complicit in Israel's actions in Gaza and the West Bank. To my knowledge, there is no American university that has financial holdings in companies that are complicit in the Iranian regime's killing of protestors.

It makes sense that campus activists in America would be most concerned with American wrongdoing. That's what they might have some influence over. They have no influence on the Iranian regime, which will continue committing murder regardless, because it's a murderous regime.

Also, while there might be a tiny minority of people on the far-left who defend Iran's slaughter of its own people, I've seen very little of that. Are there many campus groups that have issued statements in support of the Iranian regime's actions? To assume that student activists who care about Gaza are fine with the Iranian regime's behavior is to assume quite a lot without evidence.

This is classic whataboutism. What about Sudan? What about the Congo? What about Iran? Except in none of these cases is the U.S. actively and directly supporting a genocide. This whataboutism is a move to distract from the continued slaughter in Gaza and to demean and delegitimize student activists and anyone else who supports the basic human rights of Palestinians.

[Hisham Foad @HSFoad]

@samhaselby Winning the election was always going to be about turnout. The people who wouldn’t vote for a black woman and a gay man were never going to vote blue in the first place. Run on ideas that excite people rather than trying to be a palatable alternative to Trump

[Hisham Foad @HSFoad]

@EYakoby Just step back for a moment and realize that there’s no way there has been a census conducted in Gaza since October 7. Lies, damn lies, and statistics

[Hisham Foad @HSFoad]

Directive to denaturalize citizens “involved” in things like war crimes and human rights abuses. But also anyone who poses an ongoing threat to the US. Why not strip citizenship from anyone (naturalized or not) who does these things?
https://t.co/R0b9HLmDI9

[Hisham Foad @HSFoad]

@babarganesh @umichvoter It was 100 degrees on Election Day, definitely depressed turnout among older voters

[Hisham Foad @HSFoad]

Climate change leading to an explosion of ticks that turn people into vegans. There’s a lesson in there somewhere (though serious sympathy for anyone who has Alpha-gal syndrome) https://t.co/BGFY8lJoAg

[Hisham Foad @HSFoad]

@AkkadSecretary Yeah, that’s total GDP, which is going to be bigger in more populous countries. 38 million people in Poland, 10 million in Sweden. Per capita GDP adjusts for this. Poland $27,000, Sweden $58,000 (IMF data)

[Hisham Foad @HSFoad]

@DravenNoctis One thing to add to the list that nobody ever talks about is that they probably helped develop apartheid South Africa’s nuclear program (which was dismantled just before the ANC took over)

https://t.co/OvrRV3XsD3

[derek guy @dieworkwear]

How much do you think it costs to make a pair of Nike shoes in Asia?

I'll show you. 🧵

[Hisham Foad @HSFoad]

@krassenstein One other thing is that tariffs distort the ability of markets to efficiently allocate resources. With free trade, export things we produce efficiently and import those we are less efficient at producing. Tariffs shift resources from high to low efficiency industries

[Hisham Foad @HSFoad]

@RapidResponse47 @StephenM A lot of the “foreign” cars you see in America are actually built here. For example, some of Toyota’s best selling models like the Corolla, Camry, and Tundra are all made in American factories.