1 00:00:00,030 --> 00:00:03,420 Pleased to be here. It's more of a seminar. 2 00:00:03,900 --> 00:00:12,210 It's not a big group here. So I hope we can turn this into a kind of a dialogue rather than a lecture. 3 00:00:12,450 --> 00:00:15,210 But I will start off and make a few points. 4 00:00:16,590 --> 00:00:24,690 First of all, what's not in that bio is the fact that a lot of my research writing on the Middle East is not public. 5 00:00:24,720 --> 00:00:31,200 It's not published. It's for commissioned papers, mainly for the U.S. government. 6 00:00:31,210 --> 00:00:34,350 That sounds like my phone and my phone. 7 00:00:35,430 --> 00:00:43,290 And therefore, a lot of you don't know what my expertise is, but my interest has always been in the Middle East. 8 00:00:43,300 --> 00:00:54,000 I first went to the Middle East in 1966 and became very much fascinated with with Egypt and Nasser and Sadat as a starting point, 9 00:00:54,000 --> 00:00:58,739 gives you some idea of where my expertise is, what I'm going to do. 10 00:00:58,740 --> 00:01:08,430 And this little talk is talk about the Middle East and the four camps, which I call them, whether these four camps are meaningful anymore. 11 00:01:08,850 --> 00:01:20,160 And then I'm going to kind of leave land gently, I hope, in the area that I'm very focussed on right now, which is the future of Syria. 12 00:01:20,340 --> 00:01:30,990 Syria, as all of you know, is very much in the news and we're at a bit of of of uncertainty and sense. 13 00:01:31,350 --> 00:01:34,890 Uncertainty is is something that attracts me. 14 00:01:36,240 --> 00:01:39,750 I don't like to deal with certitudes and boring stuff. 15 00:01:41,430 --> 00:01:45,840 I'm going to probably dwell at length on this. The other thing you should know. 16 00:01:46,500 --> 00:01:49,500 Just for background, you know, you know, where is this guy coming from? 17 00:01:49,500 --> 00:02:00,750 Where I'm an American, but I'm also I've become an expert, shall we say, on how Israel views its regional challenges, 18 00:02:00,750 --> 00:02:08,190 because that was the paper that I just finished that I was commissioned on, that the commissioner was not in the Middle East. 19 00:02:08,190 --> 00:02:10,380 It was in Washington. So. 20 00:02:10,650 --> 00:02:22,520 So you you're probably get some thoughts on that perspective that you won't get in ordinary newspapers because I kind of dug in deep. 21 00:02:22,520 --> 00:02:26,400 I talked to a lot of people, talked to a lot of senior people. 22 00:02:26,760 --> 00:02:37,890 And I think I get it. I've been doing this for several years, so I have kind of built up a kind of a cadre of people that I can talk to. 23 00:02:38,040 --> 00:02:43,769 And it is something that I follow every morning, every morning I read to what is happening. 24 00:02:43,770 --> 00:02:47,340 So what's what's happening? What's the latest this morning? 25 00:02:48,900 --> 00:02:59,969 I don't know. The latest is that Israel now has an Iron Dome mechanism that can be fired off of ships in order to 26 00:02:59,970 --> 00:03:08,220 protect its oil rigs from Hezbollah or or this future Iranian sea base that they're worried about. 27 00:03:08,370 --> 00:03:11,640 But anyway, that's a little taste of what you're going to get. 28 00:03:11,970 --> 00:03:17,130 I'm probably going to go for 35 minutes, and I have a feeling the way I've launched this introduction, 29 00:03:17,430 --> 00:03:20,990 it's not going to be as tight as they probably should be. 30 00:03:21,000 --> 00:03:28,740 We have time for this is the term and it's also the this is the most difficult period for any American. 31 00:03:28,950 --> 00:03:33,299 The first 48 hours after Thanksgiving weekend is Thanksgiving week. 32 00:03:33,300 --> 00:03:40,500 And you just shut it down and it takes you so long to get to where you have to get to on Monday that you're really completely wasted. 33 00:03:40,620 --> 00:03:45,570 I don't have that excuse, but I am an American and I did celebrate Thanksgiving on Sunday night. 34 00:03:45,900 --> 00:03:50,850 Anyway, what I would like to pose is the following question. 35 00:03:52,020 --> 00:03:55,650 We divided the Middle East into four camps in recent years. 36 00:03:56,220 --> 00:04:02,790 You've probably heard this before. There's the Saudi led camp, which are what we call the moderates, the moderate Sunnis, 37 00:04:03,720 --> 00:04:09,240 the monarchies, Egypt, Tunisia, what we consider most of the members of the Arab League. 38 00:04:09,700 --> 00:04:21,840 Then you have the Turkey led kind of political Islam Muslim Brotherhood camp, which really Turkey, Qatar, maybe Hamas, maybe it's really a small camp. 39 00:04:23,130 --> 00:04:27,300 You could call it a fringe group within the Sunni world or a separate camp. 40 00:04:27,390 --> 00:04:29,550 Then, of course, you have the Iran led Shiite camp. 41 00:04:30,300 --> 00:04:43,500 And finally you have this I don't know how to be politically correct, but Takfiri Salafist jihadi camp, AQ, Daesh or ISIS. 42 00:04:43,890 --> 00:04:46,920 So those are the four camps that we've been thinking about. 43 00:04:47,250 --> 00:04:54,600 And the question is clearly there have been if you had to use a political science terminology, 44 00:04:55,800 --> 00:04:59,700 the Middle East, you would say, is now characterised by shifting alliances. 45 00:04:59,970 --> 00:05:06,350 And volatility of power constructions, shifting alliances along, constantly shifting. 46 00:05:06,360 --> 00:05:15,360 Look at Turkey with Putin now. I mean, just a year and a half ago, Turkey shot down a Russian fired look at it. 47 00:05:15,480 --> 00:05:20,930 Look at Qatar and the GCC, look at Israel and Saudi. 48 00:05:20,940 --> 00:05:27,300 So you have these shifting alliances. So does do these four camps make sense anymore? 49 00:05:27,870 --> 00:05:35,700 And what I've decided on the trend right here is that, no, the camps still work. 50 00:05:35,880 --> 00:05:40,500 What what is happening is a logical conclusion of the camps. 51 00:05:40,980 --> 00:05:45,809 It's one thing to say here you've got these four different camps. But then what is the conclusion? 52 00:05:45,810 --> 00:05:51,420 Well, Iran gets Iran supports the Houthis. 53 00:05:51,690 --> 00:05:57,690 The Houthis launch missiles that are more precise than they should be on their own. 54 00:05:57,690 --> 00:06:01,410 So they're getting help from somebody like Hezbollah and Iran. 55 00:06:01,890 --> 00:06:05,640 And they they are aimed at the Riyadh International Airport. 56 00:06:06,360 --> 00:06:16,320 And so all of a sudden, you have the Saudis speaking up quite loudly, spoke up in a number of ways, and Hariri resigned. 57 00:06:16,770 --> 00:06:20,940 They accuse Lebanon of making war on them. They accused Iran of making war on them. 58 00:06:21,360 --> 00:06:28,650 So all of a sudden, you have the logical conclusion, which, by the way, I thought back in 1974 when I was a junior at Yale, 59 00:06:29,160 --> 00:06:39,209 which is one of the results of the Yom Kippur War in 1973, would be a tacit alliance between two status quo powers, Israel and the Saudi Arabia. 60 00:06:39,210 --> 00:06:46,020 Now, nobody thought of that in 1974, and to be frank with you, it's taken a little bit longer to happen. 61 00:06:47,010 --> 00:06:50,340 And the years of that time, huh? 62 00:06:51,330 --> 00:06:55,620 Yeah, that's a pretty long prediction. What is happening? 63 00:06:56,400 --> 00:07:03,629 It is happening because it's logical. You have at that time there wasn't even an Iran that was an Islamic republic. 64 00:07:03,630 --> 00:07:09,150 But it was still clear to me that time you could argue that Egypt was the revisionist power, 65 00:07:09,990 --> 00:07:15,780 but clearly Saudi Arabia, with its aggression of wealth, was going to be a very important player. 66 00:07:16,740 --> 00:07:22,200 That's when I made my decision to leave the Midwest and go to the Middle East, because if you remember, 67 00:07:23,160 --> 00:07:30,719 the United States had a horrific recession in 1974 caused by a lot of things, 68 00:07:30,720 --> 00:07:36,420 but basically the oil embargo, that was mainly the work of key figures of Saudi Arabia. 69 00:07:36,420 --> 00:07:46,530 So anyway, Saudi Arabia's been very much on my mind. The big question is, in 43 years, why hasn't it been able to convert its wealth into power? 70 00:07:46,980 --> 00:07:54,600 So for those of you who are interested in power as a major power, one thing for sure is it's not just money because they've had plenty of it. 71 00:07:54,960 --> 00:08:03,600 And the way they have I like the way John Jenkins put it recently, they have plenty of capacity. 72 00:08:03,600 --> 00:08:08,970 I mean, how many jets do they have from the most advanced equipment? 73 00:08:09,360 --> 00:08:18,720 But they seem to as as we see in the their performance in the Yemen war, they seem to have less than ample competence. 74 00:08:20,910 --> 00:08:30,450 On the other hand, Iran has not so much capacity and it seems to be performing with very much competence. 75 00:08:31,170 --> 00:08:35,940 So when Jenkins raised this point in a seminar a few weeks ago, I raised the question, well, 76 00:08:36,300 --> 00:08:42,180 that would explain the need for Saudi Arabia maybe to align itself with somebody that's competent, 77 00:08:43,350 --> 00:08:46,800 not only has capacity, but has competence, particularly in the military field. 78 00:08:47,340 --> 00:08:50,370 So what's going on in Saudi Arabia is quite interesting. 79 00:08:50,370 --> 00:08:53,520 You're having a revolution from above, not from below. 80 00:08:54,120 --> 00:09:04,260 You're having this guy embeds who's centralising power so that Saudi Arabia can begin to exert power before this. 81 00:09:04,590 --> 00:09:12,930 Saudi Arabia. How is Saudi Arabia? First of all, you had the mid powers and the religious wing that was pushing radical Islam, 82 00:09:13,230 --> 00:09:17,970 that was not winning too many friends particularly, and those of us in the counterterrorism field. 83 00:09:18,540 --> 00:09:24,329 Second, you had this phenomenon where all these persons were like their own foreign ministers. 84 00:09:24,330 --> 00:09:28,170 You had hundreds of foreign ministers doing their own thing. 85 00:09:28,440 --> 00:09:31,980 Some supported al Qaeda, some supported the United States. 86 00:09:32,220 --> 00:09:43,920 And and and so in part because I wrote about this in my first study for the US Government in 2000 to 2003 was on the future of Saudi Arabia. 87 00:09:44,790 --> 00:09:47,069 It was neat the way they had separated. 88 00:09:47,070 --> 00:09:56,640 Basically three or four power centres was the Saudi National Guard, which was run by King, the late King Abdullah's father family. 89 00:09:57,180 --> 00:10:05,120 And then you had the Ministry of Defence, which was run by. Sultan and Bandar is the son of certain colleges. 90 00:10:05,120 --> 00:10:08,270 All sign up sometime that family around the family. 91 00:10:08,570 --> 00:10:12,980 And then you had the minister of interior that was run by the Nayak family. 92 00:10:13,520 --> 00:10:23,540 And I. I thought that was kind of a clever way to kind of gain key constituencies, but also balance power. 93 00:10:23,840 --> 00:10:27,020 The National Guard was very good at preventing any coups. 94 00:10:27,470 --> 00:10:33,110 And the Ministry of Defence, of course, was guys buying all these weapons from the United States and Britain. 95 00:10:34,610 --> 00:10:40,130 But what's happened is that Mohammed bin Salman, what's the first thing he and his father? 96 00:10:40,940 --> 00:10:44,870 I think they're very much together. I think he's the favourite son of his father. 97 00:10:45,380 --> 00:10:48,770 There are other some children, much older. 98 00:10:49,730 --> 00:10:55,250 But this one in particular, his father thought, gets it and can work. 99 00:10:55,270 --> 00:10:59,120 And he's demonstrating anything. He has a lot of energy and ambition. 100 00:10:59,600 --> 00:11:07,010 So he what is it, the first thing he does well in June or is it the beginning of Ramadan this year, 101 00:11:07,550 --> 00:11:16,970 he basically managed to have the crown Prince Mohammed bin Nayef removed and he was replaced as crown prince, 102 00:11:17,540 --> 00:11:21,470 thereby neutralising the presumed succession. 103 00:11:23,060 --> 00:11:32,570 And then recently, he removed the son of King Abdullah from the National Guard, which was that that was that Abdullah family, 104 00:11:33,260 --> 00:11:41,120 certain guy named Mehtab, who could have been a challenge to a future king, Mohammed bin Salman. 105 00:11:41,150 --> 00:11:50,510 So he'd been moved off to the Interior and the National Guard are now consolidating on the foreign front. 106 00:11:50,540 --> 00:11:54,660 What's interesting is that he starts to make noise about Lebanon. 107 00:11:54,680 --> 00:12:03,200 I mean, we've all seen what's happened in Lebanon, not so much as in 26, but in 2008, Lebanon, 108 00:12:03,200 --> 00:12:10,550 basically the Hezbollah basically shut down a Sunni opposition from a military point of view from 2008. 109 00:12:10,820 --> 00:12:15,260 Hezbollah has been the pre-eminent power in Lebanon. 110 00:12:15,320 --> 00:12:19,760 First of all, it has a blocking power in terms of blocking anything. 111 00:12:19,760 --> 00:12:22,880 It didn't want to happen in the parliament and in the ministry. 112 00:12:23,150 --> 00:12:31,460 But second of all, it basically started so and then with the beginning of the rebellion in Syria, 113 00:12:31,970 --> 00:12:37,400 it moved out of Lebanon and became what I call the the fighting force, 114 00:12:37,400 --> 00:12:45,950 the operational command level force for Iran's interests in Syria and not only in Syria. 115 00:12:46,160 --> 00:12:51,770 As I said, since 2009, Hezbollah has been fighting with the 14th Street Houthis and of course, 116 00:12:51,770 --> 00:12:57,290 have been active in Iraq, training Iran proxy pro-Iran militias. 117 00:12:57,320 --> 00:13:09,160 So so the question I go back these four camps do they make sense with despite the shifting alliance the fact that everything seems to be chaotic? 118 00:13:09,170 --> 00:13:13,790 I would argue, yes, Iran on the rise. I think that's clear to everybody. 119 00:13:13,880 --> 00:13:20,340 It's not only Khomeini ism that's on the rise. It's part of Iran's imperial past that's being reflected. 120 00:13:20,510 --> 00:13:27,110 And that's part of the reason why he's so popular domestically. Hey, we made this piece, this nuclear deal with the West. 121 00:13:27,440 --> 00:13:37,219 Now we can assert ourselves traditionally in our in our effort to reclaim the old the old empire of King Cyrus Empire, empire, empire. 122 00:13:37,220 --> 00:13:44,720 And, you know, when China comes up with its own Imperial Belt and Road Initiative, which is to create a new Silk Road. 123 00:13:44,930 --> 00:13:52,520 They need another empire. And Iran would be perfect for them as they go on the road from Xinjiang, from western China, 124 00:13:52,880 --> 00:14:01,590 through the Central Asia, through Iran, and all the way up into Piraeus, Greece, and ultimately into Central Europe. 125 00:14:01,610 --> 00:14:04,580 So a lot going on in Iran. 126 00:14:05,420 --> 00:14:14,840 We'll come back to that and the other phenomenon of the Middle East that's part of what's happening in Syria is the decline of the state. 127 00:14:14,840 --> 00:14:20,510 Since the Arab Spring happened. We've seen it in really stark terms with the rise of Daesh. 128 00:14:21,440 --> 00:14:25,130 It's simple. The Sunni Arab world is in decline. 129 00:14:25,400 --> 00:14:31,520 The state is in decline. And what you've seen is the rise of tribes, the rise of sects, the rise of clans, 130 00:14:31,730 --> 00:14:39,260 and particularly the rise of non-Arab states, Iran, Turkey, Israel, and to some extent, the Kurds. 131 00:14:40,970 --> 00:14:45,800 Maybe we'll talk about the Kurds in Q&A. I want to say, how are we doing, Andrew? 132 00:14:46,280 --> 00:14:52,760 So far, so good. Tremendous achievements. But okay. Well, I'm still in the first four lines of my notes, so speed it up. 133 00:14:52,910 --> 00:14:56,320 Right. Very good. In the room until the 2nd of December. Okay. 134 00:14:56,330 --> 00:14:59,750 All right. All right. But it's great to. 135 00:14:59,880 --> 00:15:06,330 Matt Bai and I was 20 minutes late for lunch, but still be very cordial and listen. 136 00:15:06,330 --> 00:15:15,549 So we have the artificiality of states. And let's just quickly mention bit where this came from, Sykes-Picot. 137 00:15:15,550 --> 00:15:19,560 So the British French concoction at the end of World War One. 138 00:15:19,570 --> 00:15:25,110 But you also had Nasser's Arab nationalism, which came crashing down in 1967. 139 00:15:25,650 --> 00:15:29,280 You had the Saudi response to promote Islam, and we've talked about that. 140 00:15:29,520 --> 00:15:36,899 That's led to a more the most extreme jihadi form, which the Saudis have finally decided enough is enough, 141 00:15:36,900 --> 00:15:39,990 and they want to go into a more moderate direction. 142 00:15:40,200 --> 00:15:44,580 And you have this rise of sectarianism. What are the prospects for Arab reform? 143 00:15:44,610 --> 00:15:48,420 I happened to have a Saudi client who believes in Arab reform. 144 00:15:48,670 --> 00:15:50,760 You have to live in Paris and not in Riyadh. 145 00:15:50,770 --> 00:15:59,040 But he really does believe that there's nothing different from Arabs, from anybody else, from Latin America, from from Eastern Europe, 146 00:15:59,040 --> 00:16:07,070 all the places that have gone through the democratic, democratic transition, which sort of I guess Ukraine at some time are still struggling. 147 00:16:07,630 --> 00:16:14,370 But you know what I mean? Transparency and accountability, a free press, freedom of speech, gender equality. 148 00:16:14,370 --> 00:16:24,420 These are kind of universal things, in his view. To me, you know, I look and I say, I think you're right, but, you know, we can discuss that. 149 00:16:25,650 --> 00:16:31,530 So just to finish up what's happening in Saudi Arabia is NBS is centralising 150 00:16:31,530 --> 00:16:36,450 authority so that so that Saudi Arabia can wield power commensurate with its wealth. 151 00:16:36,780 --> 00:16:39,840 And they are really starting to get nervous about Iran. 152 00:16:40,020 --> 00:16:45,330 Iran is threatening them. If you look around, you don't see the United States there with them. 153 00:16:47,040 --> 00:16:52,620 We can talk about the U.S. policy in the Q&A, but I'm not going to dwell on it in my opening remarks. 154 00:16:53,700 --> 00:16:58,770 Why? Because Trump is kind of a black box, so we kind of kind of have to make it up as we go. 155 00:16:59,160 --> 00:17:03,440 But what I'm talking about here is observable facts. 156 00:17:03,450 --> 00:17:15,270 Okay. The other thing is that we have a very interesting situation in Syria right now. 157 00:17:15,990 --> 00:17:18,990 The United States and Russia have made an agreement. 158 00:17:19,500 --> 00:17:26,130 They can sit down. But basically Trump runs into Putin at these conferences, one in Hamburg and the most recent one somewhere in East Asia. 159 00:17:26,430 --> 00:17:30,490 I think it was Vietnam. They make a deal on Syria, basically. 160 00:17:30,900 --> 00:17:38,160 The deal is that Trump basically delegates Syria to Russia and in particular the issue that 161 00:17:38,160 --> 00:17:45,870 concerns Israel is how far can Iran and Iranian proxies be allowed toward the Israeli Golan? 162 00:17:46,500 --> 00:17:50,580 It's a very, very sensitive issue. It's not the only issue for Israel, but very sensitive. 163 00:17:50,760 --> 00:17:54,240 And in both cases, Israel's interests were shut out. 164 00:17:55,260 --> 00:18:03,959 So what we're seeing now is on the one hand, and Iran dropped with its power from victories, it saved Assad. 165 00:18:03,960 --> 00:18:11,000 It's got a whole bunch of stuff coming to it in terms of strategic and economic interests in Syria. 166 00:18:11,010 --> 00:18:13,320 It has a formula for expanding. 167 00:18:13,680 --> 00:18:23,990 That is, you create local Hezbollah, organically created cells that basically are not Iranian, but they do the bidding of Iran. 168 00:18:24,000 --> 00:18:29,040 They have a great formula, and I attribute it mainly to General Qassem Suleimani, 169 00:18:29,430 --> 00:18:33,089 who is the head of Al Quds, which is part of the Revolutionary Guard. 170 00:18:33,090 --> 00:18:40,410 Keep an eye on him. So what's what's going on here is where is the United States and Israel? 171 00:18:41,070 --> 00:18:49,380 So, you know, when when Lavrov said the next day after Israel protested the latest Vietnam understanding, 172 00:18:49,740 --> 00:18:57,570 Lavrov said Iran is legitimate because they've been legitimate and they've been invited by Hassan, who is the legitimate ruler. 173 00:18:58,200 --> 00:19:01,620 Well, I guess some would argue that Assad is not the legitimate government. 174 00:19:01,680 --> 00:19:08,430 But the fact of the matter is, Russia seems to be supporting Iran's stake in Syria and the United States is kind of saying, 175 00:19:08,430 --> 00:19:14,340 well, there is some language in it that says all foreign forces will have to leave at some point. 176 00:19:15,060 --> 00:19:20,790 So what you're seeing is Israel is reverting to the old Israel that you may remember from the fifties, 177 00:19:20,790 --> 00:19:28,290 sixties, certainly 7280s, where it basically acts on its own. 178 00:19:28,530 --> 00:19:33,900 It asserts its own security interests. It doesn't work behind the United States. 179 00:19:36,120 --> 00:19:40,409 They thought that Trump would be pro-Israel and different from Obama. 180 00:19:40,410 --> 00:19:51,510 And what they're discovering is, despite the lofty language of Trump, particularly when it comes to Iran, that they have basically a de facto Obama. 181 00:19:53,010 --> 00:19:56,970 This is an interesting. So what do you have, I guess is the facilities trap? 182 00:19:57,000 --> 00:20:04,110 What do you have when you have a rising power, Iran, rising toward the Mediterranean and you have a status quo power? 183 00:20:04,110 --> 00:20:08,909 That's the pre-eminent military power in the Middle East, namely Israel. Sounds to me like you're going to have war. 184 00:20:08,910 --> 00:20:14,190 War? I would I would not predict a hot war, 185 00:20:14,190 --> 00:20:21,419 but certainly certainly there going to be some [INAUDIBLE] for tat going to be happening because Israel's red lines 186 00:20:21,420 --> 00:20:28,830 are incompatible with Iran's interests and Iran thinks it deserves what it wants and it's going to get what it wants. 187 00:20:29,400 --> 00:20:34,590 And Russia's sitting there and saying, Oh, my God. I'm going to get their spy chief in Tel Aviv right now. 188 00:20:35,970 --> 00:20:41,700 Oh, my God, Israel, could this whole thing. I mean, you know how easy it is to take out Assad. 189 00:20:43,320 --> 00:20:50,700 They could they took out a guy named Samir Kuntar from an apartment building 60 miles away with a guided missile. 190 00:20:51,960 --> 00:20:55,530 Their intelligence is the best in the Middle East. 191 00:20:56,370 --> 00:20:58,739 There's a big article in Vanity of Vanity Fair. 192 00:20:58,740 --> 00:21:06,960 You may have heard that where Trump was trying to I don't know what he was trying to find to ingratiate his Russian hosts by telling them, 193 00:21:07,320 --> 00:21:09,930 hey, that, you know, you know what I heard? I heard that they you know, 194 00:21:09,930 --> 00:21:18,960 the Israelis reported they had these guys go into northern Syria and plant these listening devices in in Daesh 195 00:21:19,200 --> 00:21:26,070 so that we found out from them that they were going to put laptops in in the aeroplanes and blow them up. 196 00:21:26,190 --> 00:21:33,180 Wow. I, I don't think the Israeli intelligence people were too happy about that disclosure to say the least. 197 00:21:33,420 --> 00:21:37,190 But it does show you that with good intelligence you do have an edge. 198 00:21:37,200 --> 00:21:48,059 So I definitely see with Israel feeling abandoned, if you will, by a lacklustre and confused the United States, 199 00:21:48,060 --> 00:21:56,010 which doesn't seem to have any policy on the future of Syria and a very kind of ambivalent relationship with Russia, 200 00:21:56,010 --> 00:22:06,360 which is on the one hand, Russia thinks Israel is practically Russian to them and they got a Russian speaking defence minister and Bibi Netanyahu. 201 00:22:06,530 --> 00:22:12,290 Made so many visits. Saatchi Saatchi, Saatchi, Saatchi Saatchi. 202 00:22:13,820 --> 00:22:18,770 But on the other hand, as I said from Lavrov's recent statement, 203 00:22:18,980 --> 00:22:25,700 Russia certainly sees Iran and Hezbollah as the foot soldiers to maintain to Assad, which is an interest. 204 00:22:25,970 --> 00:22:32,930 So big question marks on what's going to happen. I predict it's going to be some interesting. 205 00:22:33,170 --> 00:22:42,320 Basically, Israel will use its air force to attack these precision missile factories that Iran is trying to build in Lebanon and Syria. 206 00:22:42,830 --> 00:22:47,720 And the question is whether Russia will try to challenge their airstrikes. 207 00:22:47,760 --> 00:22:57,520 Now, I would get interested because, you know, Russia's power in Syria is more is more bark than bite. 208 00:22:57,530 --> 00:23:06,530 It's not that deep. And Israel, if it had to, could take out the S-300, the S-400, as long as they stay away. 209 00:23:06,770 --> 00:23:13,880 So as long as they stay away from the Russian forces themselves and they could but they could hit in any place around them. 210 00:23:14,570 --> 00:23:20,960 Be really interesting. If Assad says, sure, Iran, you may be on a sea base and an air base here. 211 00:23:21,830 --> 00:23:28,990 What would happen if that sea bass were located by the Russian Sea Base and that air base is located by the Russian air base? 212 00:23:29,000 --> 00:23:34,310 But I to my recollection, I don't think the Iranians have much of an air force, 213 00:23:34,760 --> 00:23:42,770 and I don't think sea bass would I think a sea bass would provide a nice target for the Israeli Air Force. 214 00:23:42,770 --> 00:23:51,500 So when it comes down to it, a lot of these fears or these red lines that Israel say are kind of are kind of exaggerated. 215 00:23:51,530 --> 00:23:59,540 But what they really fear is that Iran is going to basically take over Syria and connect back to Lebanon. 216 00:23:59,870 --> 00:24:03,500 And they've already got so much going on in Iraq. 217 00:24:03,800 --> 00:24:12,050 It's going to be very difficult. Now, the upside is this is people say Iran is what's bringing Saudi Arabia and Israel together. 218 00:24:13,460 --> 00:24:19,070 It's not true. It's the United States. When you think about it, 219 00:24:19,100 --> 00:24:27,380 the United States was Saudi's reliable ally and then they see what the United States did under Obama to Mubarak and threw him under the bus. 220 00:24:28,700 --> 00:24:36,079 They see what Obama did with the JCPOA. That's the nuclear deal, basically, that they basically privileged Iran. 221 00:24:36,080 --> 00:24:42,170 They're their enemy. They see the Palestinian issue isn't as important as it used to be. 222 00:24:42,950 --> 00:24:46,400 Some is new. It may still be very important. We can discuss that. 223 00:24:47,780 --> 00:24:54,620 And I see that, you know, maybe Israel can replace the United States so that there's a lot of upside there. 224 00:24:54,620 --> 00:25:01,010 But from the Israeli point of view, what exactly can Saudi Arabia do for them in Syria? 225 00:25:01,160 --> 00:25:05,180 I mean, in Saudi Arabia, how do they have the Italians? 226 00:25:05,180 --> 00:25:09,200 Do they have Sunni Hezbollah, the equivalent of Sunni Hezbollah? 227 00:25:10,790 --> 00:25:16,850 They have money. That's what they have. And so it's just hard. 228 00:25:16,970 --> 00:25:24,950 And also the other thing and I end with this is when you talk about a Sunni Arab camp without the United States and Israel, 229 00:25:25,670 --> 00:25:31,790 this Sunni Arab camp is not going to come together. Egypt is totally wrapped up with internal issues. 230 00:25:32,240 --> 00:25:36,560 The latest been hundreds of people killed in in northern Sinai. 231 00:25:38,000 --> 00:25:43,430 Who else is there? Iraq is not in that camp. Qatar is outside that camp now. 232 00:25:44,690 --> 00:25:51,229 So it's it's a pretty, pretty weak camp. Are we are we in 35, you know, five, five more minutes. 233 00:25:51,230 --> 00:25:54,410 Okay. Then I'll get to the second half of this in Thanksgiving. 234 00:25:54,410 --> 00:25:58,670 So yeah. Yeah. Well, I think I covered most of my themes. 235 00:25:58,730 --> 00:26:05,180 Trump has no clear strategy in Syria. For him, it's mission accomplished for Israel. 236 00:26:05,180 --> 00:26:12,560 It's the mission. It's just starting for Iran. The mission is continuing and entering a new military, political and diplomatic phase. 237 00:26:13,070 --> 00:26:22,910 The United States, this is particularly controversial, has defeated Iran's enemies three times. 238 00:26:23,810 --> 00:26:26,870 First, right, Iraq, 2003. 239 00:26:26,870 --> 00:26:34,430 Saddam Hussein wasn't a nice guy, but he was the balance against Iran. 240 00:26:35,960 --> 00:26:46,760 It was the second Afghanistans. The Taliban, ruthlessly a.k.a. Shia, may be changing now, but that was an enemy of Iran. 241 00:26:47,240 --> 00:26:54,500 And what's the latest enemy of Iran to the United States like coalition to be or is to be. 242 00:26:56,170 --> 00:27:05,210 It's nice. So it's not that Iran is some incredible superpower, some military giant. 243 00:27:05,220 --> 00:27:10,910 It's that we, the West, have been defeating Iran's enemies. 244 00:27:10,920 --> 00:27:16,260 We've been working for Iran. That's one way to look at it. That's one way to look at it. 245 00:27:16,260 --> 00:27:22,470 And Iran simply is filling the vacuum. So let's talk about that. 246 00:27:24,280 --> 00:27:28,410 Let's talk about that. And that, I think, is so different. 247 00:27:29,910 --> 00:27:33,090 I think that's that's where I want to leave it.