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Wall is the improvement of investment climates by other means clouds of it's for dummies.
The Scott Horton Show.
Taking out Saddam Hussein turned out to be a pretty good deal.
They hate our freedoms.
We're dealing with Hitler revisited.
We couldn't wait for that Cold War to be over could we?
So we can go and play with our toys in the sand, go and play with our toys in the sand.
No nation could preserve its freedom in the midst of continual warfare.
Today, I authorize the armed forces of the United States in military action in Libya.
That action has now begun when the president does it.
That means that it is not illegal.
I cannot be silent in the face of the greatest prepared of arms in the world.
All right, y'all.
Introducing Elijah Magnier from Alrai Media.
That's A-L-R-A-I, alraimedia.com.
And of course, his own blog is elijahjm.wordpress.com and follow him on Twitter too.
So look here, his latest article, and no, this is not a repeat from the other day.
This is a brand new interview.
Brand new article here.
Very important.
Very interesting stuff.
Iran is losing influence in Iraq.
Is Qasem Soleimani the right person?
Welcome back to the show.
How are you doing?
Hello, Scott.
Thank you for having me again.
Well, I really appreciate you taking the time to talk with us here.
It's a very important subject.
So Soleimani, I guess you have it spelled here.
I don't know.
He is the leader of the Quds Force, basically the Iranian, well, I don't want to just call them special forces because they're much more political than that, right?
The Revolutionary Guard Corps and all that.
How exactly would you describe his position?
Well, Qasem Soleimani is the representative of the Imam Ali Khamenei around the Middle East.
He is the one who supports and in direct link with all the organizations, proxies, partners, allies in the Middle East who fight for this objective.
And he is the one who supports the oppressed against the oppressors around the world.
And he has unlimited budget, more or less.
And he is the one who deals with Hezbollah in Lebanon.
He is the one who is responsible for the Iraqis who are willing to follow the same path and the same goal and always oriented toward against the U.S. establishment and policy in the Middle East.
And he is one of the very senior figure in Iran.
And recently, I mean, recently in the last few years, he became very public.
And Iran is promoting him just to send messages all the time to the Americans saying, we are present and we are here and you're not on your own.
And we will not leave the arena only for you.
All right.
So I think pretty much the regular listening audience to this show understands the degree to which Iraq War II really backfired and helped to empower Iran's friends and particularly the Dawa Party, Jafari, Maliki, and now Abadi, the last three prime ministers.
And that dates back to what, 2005.
They've all been from the Dawa Party, which is very close to Iran.
And now in the aftermath of Iraq War III, they've depended on Iran even more.
And so but I guess with dependence comes resentment, huh?
Well, I think the Iran-Iraq dynamic is largely misunderstood by analysts around the world.
I think there is a strategic relationship between Iraq and Iran since the gift of George Bush of eliminating Saddam Hussein that he gave to Iran by eliminating a very nasty enemy.
And since then, the Americans gave power to the Shia.
The majority of Iraq, the majority in the country, they represent at least 65 percent.
And since the Iraqi Shia who are holding the power in the country have a strategic relationship with Iran.
And what I mean by strategic, it means they have a common religion.
They have they don't have opposite goals, but they have different tactics.
And the Americans, the Shia in Iraq are allies of the Americans, and they have supported the Americans in 2003.
And they work along the Americans against the insurgency and against al-Qaeda in Iraq that is later on known as the Islamic State in Iraq and later on ISIS or ISIL.
And for that, the Americans supported the Shia and the Shia supported the Americans only in Iraq, while the Iranians are against the Americans, but they're not against the Shia Iraqis.
Therefore, this kind of conflict has been created since 2003 until today, because we can see the Americans are back in the country, even if they were a bit late to support the Iraqi government.
But they are omnipresent in Iraq, and this doesn't like to the dislike of the Iranians.
Therefore, the Iranians since 2003 have supported the insurgency against the Americans, and later on they have supported groups, finance and train groups to attack the Americans who declared themselves an occupation force in 2003.
However, the Iraqis have their own policy, and they're not linked to the Iranian policy, which means the Iraqis have a very good relationship with all the neighboring countries and would like to have a good relationship with Saudi Arabia, while the relationship between Saudi Arabia and Iraq is really bad these days, and particularly in the last few years.
Well, it has never been very good, but I mean, it had deteriorated tremendously in the last years.
Moreover, the Iranians would like to see the Americans outside of the country, while the Iraqis would like to use the expertise of the Americans, as long as these keep trainers and advisors within a certain number approved by the Iraqi government, and they don't want the Americans to stay in the country.
They don't want large American forces to be in the country.
Now, as you rightly mentioned, the Dawah party throughout the years, starting from Jafari, who is today the foreign minister, and Maliki, who is the vice president, and Haider Abadi, and all three were from the Dawah party, are linked to the Dawah party, but they have completely different policies.
Haider Abadi, from the day one, he felt aggressed by Soleimani, because Soleimani wanted to, he has accepted to remove Maliki, because for the first time in history, the Grand Ayatollah Ali Sistani, who is the marja, and the highest level of religious leadership among the Shia in Iraq, who wrote a letter saying, Maliki shall not return and should not be a prime minister again.
And Soleimani was insisting in bringing him back, or trying to go for Jafari to replace Maliki.
And then he came up with the name of Hussein Shahristani, until Abadi came and was promoted by a small group without the knowledge of Maliki.
And in a few hours, he declared himself as a prime minister, and it was an ipso facto in Iraq to the dislike of Qasem Soleimani.
And what Qasem Soleimani did in the first year, he worked against Maliki, and was trying to remove him by using his contacts and his leverage and his influence in Iraq to remove Abadi, but he didn't succeed.
First, because the Iraqis do not obey to the Iranians.
They, yes, they feel very grateful for the Iranian support.
They know that Iran ran to help Iraq in 2014, particularly immediately after the fall of the northern city of Mosul, when the Americans did not respond in the first month or two and allowed ISIS to expand.
So the Iranians came with weapons and supply weapons to the Kurds in Erbil and to the government in Baghdad.
They also brought advisors and special forces to put together enough Iraqis to stand against ISIS and to stop its advance.
And they were involved in the training, and they have established an operation, military operational room in Baghdad, along with Hezbollah, with the Iraqis, and with the Russians, just a few hundred meters from the American embassy and American military base at the green zone in Baghdad.
So, yes, they are very grateful for Iran, but they want Iran's support.
They want to have excellent relationship with Iran, but they don't want Iran to dictate its policy upon Iraq.
Now, what Soleimani did—am I going too fast?
Oh, no, I love it.
Keep going, please.
Okay.
So what Soleimani did is, after the first year, he has accepted the mandate of Abadi, but the relationship and the tension between the two men, the prime minister of Iraq and Qassem Soleimani, who is the representative of the Grand National Committee in Iraq and Syria, the relationship was very bad, to the point that Abadi refused to receive him several times.
And Soleimani kind of kidnapped the Popular Mobilization Forces, or units.
They are called PMU or Hashd al-Shaabi.
And these Popular Mobilization Units are forms of different groups.
They are pro-Iranian groups in the PMU, but they are not only pro-Iranian groups.
There are groups that belong to Sistani.
There are groups that belong to other groups like Muqtada Sadr, who has never been under Iranian influence after 2010, because before 2010, that's a completely different story.
I don't think you want to hear it now, but we will leave it for another time.
So there are other groups who are part of the PMU.
So what we saw, logically, is the representative of the PMU, the vice president of the PMU was Abu Mahdi Mohandas, who is Soleimani's man in Iraq.
So everybody judges the PMU as an Iranian force, which is not an Iranian force.
There are many Iranian friends and many Iranian, many groups, Iraqi groups supported directly by Iran, like Asaib Ahl al-Haq, like al-Nujaba, like Kata'ib Hezbollah.
These are, these receive direct support from Iran.
And also these have never declared themselves completely merged within the PMU, because they want to run the elections and they want to be part of the new election.
And because the Iraqi law prevents any security force, including the PMU, to be part of the election.
So what these have done is they said, okay, we are, we fight under the flag of the PMU until ISIS is over.
And once ISIS is eliminated, we remain with our integrity and the name of our group and our forces away from the PMU umbrella, because the PMU will be part of the interior and defense ministries of Iraq.
So what Soleimani did is he came out in various occasions in the north of Iraq, in Tashkermato, in the south of Baghdad, in Jurf al-Sakhar.
He was visible in Tikrit.
He was visible in Kirkuk, everywhere.
And Abadi understood the message that was directed toward the Americans.
But this message bothered a lot the Iraqis, because it also gives the impression that Soleimani is the hero behind the liberation of the Iraqi territory, which is not the case, because in every single battle, particularly in the north and in the middle and in the middle of Iraq, we saw the counterterrorism forces, we saw the interior ministry forces, we saw the army and we saw the PMU.
And all four fought on all fronts, no one less or more than the other.
And the last bit that just drove Abadi completely out of his limits is when the news went viral that Soleimani is the one who has liberated Kirkuk.
And that was not the case.
It was the Iraqi army who walked in, and it was Abadi decision and ultimatum to the Kurds to pull out, otherwise he will put up a fight.
And he did in some areas until he recovered the control of the area that he wanted to recover the control of.
So, and this is when Abadi was very upset with Soleimani, and he just wanted him to disappear.
But what Soleimani did, because he's a clever man, and he's a fine strategic military officer, but he's not a very good politician in Iraq, because it requires a lot of subtlety to understand the Iraqi mentality.
I mean, I lived in Iraq between nine to 12 years, with nine nonstop.
And I can tell you that I still have to learn a lot about the Iraqis.
So, coming in and out and then hearing all the visitors, this is not enough to form an idea about the Iraqi mentality and the Iraqi language.
I mean, I speak the Iraqi language, but what I mean here is the Iraqi language they use to send messages.
If we're talking about the majahiya, we're talking about the political dynamic or the politicians, or we're talking about the people in the street.
They all have different languages and different messages to send around.
So, what Soleimani did, he understood that Abadi is the one who is most probably going to win.
So, he held Hadi al-Amiri, who is the head of Badr forces, and he is one of the senior politicians and military figure who helped defeating ISIS.
He is an ex-minister.
Therefore, he was omnipresent on the Iraqi arena, particularly from 2014 to 2017 in all battles to defeat ISIS.
And because Hadi al-Amiri enjoys a particular, very close relationship to Iran, and he believed in Iran's goal, he is anti-American.
But Soleimani took him by the hand, and he went to visit Abadi at his home in Baghdad.
And he forced al-Amiri to sign the deal that he will merge, the PMU will merge with Abadi.
Now, it's complicated here to explain in a few words why that was a very bad move.
It was a very bad move, and I try to be very, very simplistic here, because you can't put, the PMU has quite a good reputation today among the Iraqis.
And the Iraqis consider the PMU our heroes.
They are the one who offered around 6,000 or 7,000 men killed in the battlefield against ISIS.
Only the PMU, because the whole number exceeds 10,000 to 11,000 Iraqi men killed in the battlefield in the last three years while fighting ISIS.
So the PMU is made of the people and is made of the population, particularly the poor population, and mainly in, we're talking about al-Sadr city, and we're talking about all of south of Iraq, and mainly we're talking about Basra, Al-Ammara, Diwani, Nasiri, all this area, Karbala, Najaf.
And these people have a lot of support because the Iraqi population look at them as heroes.
Therefore, they will have at least between 20 to 30, 35 seats at the parliament.
Now, taking the entire PMU and creating this unity with Abadi, who is also expected to have around 30, 40 seats, it means diluting all the PMU into Abadi, who is going to dictate all his conditions after the elections.
And what the PMU considered that's a very bad political move is because they want to run the elections solo, like Ammar al-Hakim too, like al-Maliki, like Muqtada al-Sadr, and they want to go each one on its own to go for the election.
And then after the result, depending on the weight of each group, then the negotiation can start.
So therefore, when al-Amri went to Abadi with Soleimani at Abadi's home in Baghdad, and he signed, he returned to his people, and he said, look, this is what happened.
I am not happy.
I was forced to do that.
I felt very embarrassed to reject Soleimani's offer.
But now you decide.
And they all decided to reject Soleimani's wishes.
And that, as you rightly said, and you have decided to do the show today on it, it is very unique for Soleimani to receive a total rejection of people who he is financing, he is sending weapons, and he is supporting by all means to tell Soleimani, no, we don't follow your wishes, and we do it in our way.
And that is going to be the beginning of a series of things that Soleimani will have to face.
And Iraqis will have the courage to say to Soleimani, you don't know as we know.
We both agree on the big line, on the strategic line, that the security of Iraq and the security of Iran are the same one.
We do not accept that Iraq represents a danger to its neighbors, including Iran.
But I'm sorry, the internal policy is run by us.
You don't want the Americans in the country.
We don't want the Americans in the country.
But you don't tell us how we run the elections.
Now, what is going to happen is the PMU detached itself and rejected the unity with Abadi.
And Abadi was very happy to see Soleimani for once doing something that he likes.
But then he was surprised the second day by seeing the PMU detaching itself from the deal and rejecting the signature that was put on black and white the day before.
And what is going to happen today is that Abadi is going to run the election on his own.
Al-Maliki felt betrayed by the Iranians, and he accused Soleimani of stabbing him in the back because he said, I mean, what is happening here?
You just take the decision to move the PMU that I have been supporting, that I have been promoting, that I've been the spokesperson of the PMU, and you take the whole PMU to Abadi and you support him before the election.
This is not a very clever move.
And then Ammar Hakim said, what, I am not a Shia.
You just isolate me completely, and then you go and make a deal with Abadi, allowing no room for myself.
And then Muqtada al-Sadr said, OK, I'm running solo.
I'm going to put myself with the Communist Party, and I'm going to eat them up because I will enjoy their support.
They have several hundred thousand around the country, but not enough to earn many seats.
But I will climb on them, and they're happy to be my allies.
And now we're talking about every group will have between 20 and 30 to 35 seats.
And this is where the battle will start for the forthcoming elections, when the parliament is going to form and who's going to be the prime minister.
It depends what each group can offer, how many members of the parliament each group enjoys.
And this is when the negotiation will start with Abadi.
To you, Scott.
All right.
Well, certainly a lot to review there.
So I do want to go back to Muqtada al-Sadr, actually, because toward the beginning there, you mentioned Iranian support for insurgents or the insurgency in Iraq War Two.
And generally speaking in America, that is a reference that usually is used as a reference to the Sunni-based insurgency.
But I think you were probably referring to support for the Sadrists and the so-called special groups during that time.
But then, so that leads to the interesting question of his role in all of this, because as you were saying, you know, you didn't want to get too far into it, but he was dependent on Iran there for a little while.
But originally, he was the nationalist among the Shiite leaders who preferred to have an alliance with the Sunnis against the Iranians and the Americans and was telling us all to get out at the beginning of Iraq War Two and stood with the Fallujans during Mattis's attack on Falluja, both of them, I guess, in 2004 in the spring and in the fall of 04.
But that didn't last.
But anyway, I just wanted to clarify that point, because if it, unless you really did mean to say that the Iranians were backing the Sunni insurgents, which I didn't think so.
Well, because we are in 2018, and that happened 15 years ago, we can release something here.
Now, to be honest with you, the Sunni insurgency was supported by every single country around Iraq, including Turkey, Saudi Arabia, and Iran, but without forgetting Syria as well.
And the aim was to keep the Americans busy and to make sure that they're not going to expand their occupation to neighboring countries.
Therefore, there is a relationship between Iran and the Sunni, and what spoiled all that is the behavior of the head of the insurgency, who is Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, the Jordanian, and he has decided to attack not only the Americans, but also the Shia and the Iraqi army.
Therefore, this is when the support to the Iraqi insurgency, and particularly here the Sunni, stopped from the Iranian side.
So what they found themselves...
Well, but that wouldn't have been until, I mean, what, late 04, early 05, then, two years into the war?
In 03, 04, and 05.
And just to give you an example, the Iranians and Hezbollah used to train Hamas militants, and these were supposed to go back to Israel and to go back to Palestine and fight there.
And they find that many of these trained by Iran and by Hezbollah were blowing themselves up among the Shia in Iraq.
So they stopped this program, and they said, we no longer do that, and we no longer support the Sunni insurgency, particularly when Abu Musab al-Zarqawi blew up the holy shrine of the Shia in Samarra.
Wait, wait, you're saying, you're saying Hamas fighters trained by Hezbollah were then acting as suicide bombers for al-Qaeda in Iraq under Zarqawi?
That is correct.
And many of them, we saw them later on in Syria against the Syrian army and against Hezbollah.
Yeah, I mean, don't be surprised if anything in the Middle East.
Well, I guess, yeah, it's not, I mean, obviously Bill Clinton worked with Iran to back the mujahideen in Bosnia and whatever.
And of course, I mean, it's no secret that Iran has supported Hamas over the years and that kind of thing.
I guess I just had never heard those particulars is all.
Yeah, well, that's true.
I mean, I was in Bosnia when during the war between 1993, 1996 and to date an agreement.
And there was an Iranian support to the Bosniak, particularly in Sarajevo.
They were also in Zenitsa, all around the city.
And it was not supporting the Shia only because Iran supports the Palestinians who are Sunni.
They support Afghanistan and part of the Afghan who are also non-Shia.
So they are, they support Yemen and the Houthi are not Shia.
So it is not a rule of the thumb that Iran support only Shia around the Middle East.
No, they support all the oppressed against the oppressors.
That is the title of Qasem Soleimani's office and unit.
All right.
Well, now, so let me go back to that for a second, because I mean, obviously, it makes sense what you're saying that once Zarqawi's war kicked in that the support stopped.
But even then, when America was really fighting against the Saudis, especially in 2007, and they fought them off and on during, you know, in 2004, and a couple more times.
But even then, all of the hype about Iran is supplying all the EFP roadside bombs was all a bunch of hype.
And those EFP factories were found in Iraqi Shia stand over and over again, by American and Iraqi forces.
So and they never proved for all of their claims, they never proved in 07, those bombs were coming from Iran.
They only claimed it.
So I just think if, if the claims about Iranian support, material support for the actual Shiite insurgency in 2007 is so thin, I wonder what is really the evidence for their support for the Sunni based insurgency in 03 through 05?
Well, I can tell you that I've assisted in person to one of the, let's call it the finance minister of Zarqawi at that time, and who was running the talk to find a compromise between concessions for the Sunni and the Iraqi government and the in exchange, the Zarqawi will stop attacking the Shia.
And this didn't go well.
So no, there is a collaboration, there was a support.
And I will continue telling you about the Muqtada Sadr now.
Okay, so the IEDs to improvise explosive devices were not the Iranian speciality, they were Mujahideen speciality even before that.
We saw that in Afghanistan.
They've learned a lot in Afghanistan during against the Russians.
And then they, the transport and the sharing of experience among Mujahideen around the world is not very difficult.
And Zarqawi used a lot of IEDs against the Americans, against the American forces in Iraq.
So it's not only an Iranian trademark.
But what happened is Muqtada Sadr felt he wanted to do something.
First in 2003, 2004, this man that I know very well, and in person, I was next to him when he was walking toward the Kufa the first time, he attacked the Salvadorian units on the, what's the name of it?
Yes, it's Haya Sinai, the industrial area.
And he did not mean to attack the Salvadorian forces.
It was just his men in euphoria.
They start shooting at the Salvadorian, and the Salvadorian forces started to reply and they burned a little white van in the middle of the street.
I just still have it in my memory just in front of me.
And then from that onward, this is when Abu Mahdi al-Muhandis, the representative of Qasem Soleimani, moved in to support Muqtada.
And what happened at that time, Muqtada was very young and very inexperienced.
And everybody in Iraq, including Jafari, including Maliki, every single politician wanted to take a share of Muqtada Sadr's popularity, because his father left behind him a huge support from the population with a very large number that everybody wanted a chunk of it.
So they all tried to come close to Muqtada.
And Muqtada, the way he functions is he has so many, let's call them advisors around him, that are most of the time very young, more or less his age, and they all bring up ideas.
And what he does, he adopts an idea without saying it is his, unless it works.
If it doesn't work, he will blame the person, and then we will remove him for another six months.
So what Muqtada did is Iran saw in him a potential fighter and a leader of a very poor population.
And this is where mainly poor people can carry weapons and fight, because they have less to lose than other levels of society.
I'm sorry to say that, but this is the rule of the war in the Middle East.
It's like that.
And because Muqtada was sitting on top of a very big mass of poor people, Iran saw the will to support him and his will to fight the Americans.
And hence the war at the Battle of Najaf between the Americans and Muqtada al-Sadr.
At that time, he used to call his people Jaysh al-Mahdi.
And they were really beginners, and they were novice in the art of war.
And this is when the relationship between Iran and Iraq started.
And when they supported him, they proposed the creation of a new organization that is known today as Asaib Ahl al-Haq.
And that was led by one of Muqtada's lieutenants.
His name is Qais al-Khazali.
And Qais al-Khazali was one of Muqtada's men, and he worked for him.
But Muqtada wanted to keep a little distance away from Qais, so he gave him the leadership of the army.
And Muqtada went to Iran to stay in Iran because he was afraid for his life, and he believed the Americans want to kill him.
Now, I want to tell you something about Muqtada here.
Muqtada was offered a swimming pool and a villa in Iran, and he had money, guards, everything.
And Iran was supplying him with weapons.
But Muqtada, to be honest and fair with the man, never replied to Soleimani or fulfilled Soleimani's wishes, to the point that one day, I still remember, Soleimani went completely mad about Muqtada, who wanted to visit Saudi Arabia and meet Bandar bin Sultan.
At that time, he was the head of the intelligence service, the Saudi intelligence service.
And Soleimani was saying, what on earth Muqtada is going to do with a man who is plotting against us and against Iraq?
And Muqtada was saying, none of your business.
So Muqtada had this kind of independency because he wanted to remain a figure and a leader among the Shia, and he wanted to remain someone with a certain name and a certain position.
And he did succeed.
Now, his relationship with the Sunni is only due to the fact that Muqtada wanted to play a religious role, a minute indimension to the Grand Ayatullah Sistani, because Sistani believes that the Shia and Sunni are equal and should not kill themselves and should not be engaged in any battle or any war against themselves.
And Muqtada tried to promote that.
But, hey, one minute, in 2006, it was his own people after the destruction of the Al-Askariyyaan in Samarra who killed between 3,000 to 3,500 Sunni and Shia because they thought they all were Sunni in Baghdad as a reaction to the destruction of the shrine.
No.
I mean, this is a show that I am a moderate and I am with the Sunni.
It's something that Muqtada tried to promote only to get support behind him.
But generally speaking, there are Sunni leaders in Iraq who work with the Shia politicians without having any problems.
And the Sunni population that Muqtada is trying to attract, particularly within the Anbar area, will never be pro-Shia, never.
They will always be against the Shia.
And what Muqtada was trying to do is trying to offer himself as an alternative moderate figure.
And the Sunni in the area were using him to say, hey, we can deal with this man.
But they were terrified, including the Shia, were terrified of Muqtada's men because these people, it's difficult to communicate with them.
I was stopped several times by the people of Muqtada.
It's really difficult to communicate with.
Hey, people keep telling me, man, you got great show notes on your show nowadays.
And that's all thanks to Damon, who's doing the great editing and posting of the interview.
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Well, yeah, and it makes sense that they would be terrified of them because the Saudis really did join up with the rest of the Shiite militias in the sectarian cleansing of Baghdad.
And I include the US Army with the sectarian militias there in the worst of the surge in 2007.
At the same time, they were fighting against Sadr.
They were really fighting for his power block in the government.
Correct?
Well, yeah, because I mean, Muqtada create alliance at the end of the day with al-Maliki in his first and the second term.
And he was forced in the second term to do that.
Otherwise, he would have been completely isolated.
But now he has a choice.
So no, Muqtada does what is convenient for him.
He's not behind any sectarian or non-sectarian war.
No, Muqtada is Muqtada.
He does what he wants and what he sees fit at the particular time to grab a particular opportunity to the point now he is all sweet and honey with the Marjaya and Sayyidistani when in 2004 he tried to assassinate him.
He tried to assassinate Sistani?
Well, yes.
I mean, when he controlled Najaf, he sent his men to shoot against all the Marjaya in Najaf.
And when I was there, at that time, the Sistani people arrested one of Muqtada's men who was trying to approach the roof and jump with a weapon in his hand inside the house of Sistani.
And Muqtada's people try also with the other Marjaya, like al-Najafi, the granite of al-Najafi.
They tried with the granite of al-Afghani.
They tried with everybody that he wanted control of Najaf.
And you had 14, 15 people, youngsters in the middle of the street in Najaf asking people their identity when these people were of Najaf and these youngsters were not from Najaf.
Man.
Boy, yeah, you talk about, you know, just learning the language of Iraq and the real history.
Boy, I thought I knew the history of Iraq War II and I knew there was a rivalry between Sadr and Sistani, certainly, but I never knew that Sadr had tried to kill Sistani.
I would have thought, I guess, that Sistani was of such a higher religious rank than Sadr that he wouldn't dare.
But what the hell do I know?
Nothing, I guess.
Well, no, because Muqtada was not Muqtada of today.
He was a youngster who believed he can control the entire Iraq and he had Jason Mahdi and he believed himself and he wanted the power.
But, I mean, the rivalry between Muqtada's father and the granite of Sistani is not new.
It goes back even before Sadr Hussein assassinated Muqtada's father, when Muqtada's father used to accuse Sistani of being the silent Marja'iyya and when also the father of Muqtada used to have the power given from Sadr Hussein.
Doesn't mean that he was working with Sadr, but he had the power to give the resident permit to all the non-Iraqi in Najaf, including the granite of Sistani and including the granite of Afghani.
All right.
Now, so one of the disputes back in Iraq war two between Sadr and the Supreme Islamic Council, which you mentioned al-Hakim here, I think that's the son of Abdulaziz al-Hakim, right?
From Skiri or Iskina.
So, and now one of the disputes then was Sadr would say, well, you guys are the sock puppets of the Iranians because he would accuse them in anger over their proposal that what we need is a strong federalism.
In other words, instead of having an alliance with the Sunni Arabs and a Iraqi state that they could all agree on against all foreign interference, the Americans and the Iranians too, that they would prefer to have really just a strong Shia stand and screw the Sunnis out there in Fallujah and Mosul.
And Sadr would, you know, accuse them of favoring that policy because that was what Iran wanted.
And so to link back to where things stand now, when America's anti-Iran policy in Syria blew up into the Islamic state that conquered all of Western Iraq.
And then when America then helped to launch Iraq war three, to help these same Iraqi Shiite and Iranian forces rouse the Islamic state right back out of Fallujah, Ramadi, Mosul, etc.
Again, that leads us to the question of where things stand with the future of Kurdistan.
And I mean, pardon me, well, nevermind the future of Iraqi Kurdistan for the moment, pardon me, the future of Iraqi Sunni stand out there in the West and Northwest of the country and the future status of Baghdad's rule over that land.
Because part of the reason that ISIS was able to roll right in there was because the Iraqi Shiite army mostly didn't really have much authority there.
Patrick Coburn actually a year before the fall of Mosul was on my show reporting and in The Independent, of course, reporting that, geez, the Iraqi army is AWOL from Mosul.
These guys are safe running, retreating, safe behind Shiite lines because they feel like, you know, they're way out on a fort out in foreign territory here without support or backup, and they don't want to get hung out to dry, they can see the storm coming.
And so Sunni stand, Iraqi Sunni stand was sort of wide open there.
But so now what and and what's Iran's take on the future of Western Iraq?
Now, you have raised so many important points, but there are too many.
Let me try to answer a few.
First of all, the only state or population or country who wants a Shiite stand in Iraq are the Sunni in Iraq, is Saudi Arabia, the Kurds, and the Americans.
Having a Shiite stand is against the Shia interest and against Iran and against Syria and against Turkey.
That means dividing the Middle East.
Now, the Iraqis, the majority Shia who are ruling the country, would rather rule the country but not take part of it and give it to the Sunni, where this area is going to be supported by all the enemy of the Shia, starting from Saudi Arabia and the Americans, and then this will be not only a prosperous country, but it will be a starting point to attack the Shia and render their life like hell.
Therefore, it is not in the advantage of Iran or the Shia or Syria or the Middle East to have a divided Iraq.
It is in the advantage of the Kurds, because the Kurds try to have their independence state.
And I perfectly remember immediately following the fall of Mosul, when Barzani declared what happened in Mosul as an uprising of the Sunni revolution.
And he hailed that and praised ISIS and the other group, because Mosul was not taken by ISIS.
It was taken by all the Sunni tribes, Naqshbandi, the Sunni party, and ISIS, and they call all these the Sunni revolution.
ISIS confiscated the victory at the end, but that's something else.
And so what the Kurds said, and they supported this uprising because they thought these Sunni groups will not come to Erbil and Kirkuk.
But as soon as Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi took over with terror and he told the Kurds, I'm coming because I want Kirkuk, because I want the oil, this is when they trembled and they changed position.
And this is where Iran came to help Barzani and supported him with weapons to stop ISIS at the doors of Kirkuk and Erbil.
And later on, the Americans move in.
Now, that's one point.
The second point is, I don't think the Kurds will be able to hold on to what they are planning in Syria and Iraq.
In Iraq, they have failed completely.
And because now they are under completely different conditions, because Barzani said, I no longer abide by the constitution.
So al-Baghdadi said, right, then all the deals and the agreements, we consider these revoked and we start again.
Instead of giving you 17 percent of the oil, we give you 12 percent of the revenue.
And you can't use your airport unless there is Iraqi security forces from Baghdad who are controlling all the borders, including the airport.
And he shut down the airport for a few months.
So Kurdistan felt alone, isolated because the move and the time of the move was not wise, particularly for the presence of the Americans in Syria.
Therefore, it is not in the advantage of the Shia to have a Shia stand in Iraq.
On the contrary.
And Iran doesn't want that.
Iran will be also attacked by because there are so many ethnicity in Iran that the turn will come to Iran if they start splitting Iraq.
And the same will happen to Turkey.
Well, I mean, it sounds like it sounds like what you're saying is they've learned this the hard way.
Right.
I mean, they they really had sort of abandoned Sunni stand.
And that's what left it wide open to this so-called Sunni uprising or ISIS takeover, however you want to frame it detail and whatever.
But so but what's the alternative now, then if they've learned that lesson, then what kind of concessions are they going to have to make to Sunni tribal leaders, etc, former Baathists, I don't know, in order to have a peace instead of Iraq war for now?
Well, I'll answer that.
Just let me open a very small window in Mosul.
And in Mosul, the reason why the Mosul fell is because they were working the Sunni tribes, Turkey and Saudi Arabia, and the Sunni in Iraq and the connections of ISIS leadership who are ex-military and ex-Baathist with the actual people in the government.
And they had a lot of money to corrupt the leadership in Mosul.
And al-Maliki didn't see that because he has decided to put ex-military leaders in Mosul who are of his same tribe.
And some of them were his direct relatives.
And he ignored many advisers to remove these before the before the takeover of Mosul by all the Sunni groups, including ISIS.
And the reason why Mosul didn't fight, the army that didn't fight, is because the leadership gave contradictory instructions to the army.
The way ISIS was stopped in Iraq and Syria immediately is because ISIS found in front of it, people ready to fight.
The reason why ISIS in 2004 occupied a third of Iraq is because ISIS was just driving and wherever they were driving, they were reaching, they were occupying and had no resistance.
Because the resistance was absent in Mosul due to incompetence of the military there and the leadership in Baghdad and al-Maliki not giving orders to fight and putting the right people, he asked for an evacuation that was called an evacuation.
And it means evacuate in the way you want.
It means grab the first car you find or the first donkey on the street and jump on it or just leave Mosul.
This is not a way to defend a city like Mosul.
That is today, the old city is completely destroyed because the fight was really very tough to recover the city.
Now, in a few days, you call the entire army and you have a full arsenal in the city and at the airport, and you leave it to ISIS and the other group, and you have half a billion dollars of gold in the bank.
That was a real incompetence from al-Maliki and the military leadership.
This is why Mosul fell.
Now, your second question was, what is the alternative today?
For the Kurds, you mean?
No, I mean, primarily for the Iraqi, predominantly Sunni areas, Fallujah, Ramadi, Mosul, etc.
And for that matter, and I guess that means, in a way, what's the Baghdad government's wishes, what are they capable of and what does Iran want now?
You say they really don't want to have their own independent Shi'a stand because that implies this independent Sunni stand, which we've seen can be a real problem.
So they don't want that.
But so now what?
Correct.
Now, to be honest, the Sunnis in Iraq are the biggest losers of all.
The entire battle against ISIS took place in every single Sunni city.
And every single Sunni city where ISIS refused to withdraw was partially or totally destroyed.
And we're talking here about the old Mosul.
We're talking here about Tikrit, Al-Alam, Ramadi.
We're talking about the third of Iraq.
Now, what is the alternative of the Sunni today?
The Sunni alternative today is to try to reconstruct the country and to reconstruct the country when the country is bankrupt.
And because the country spent hundreds of billions of dollars and borrowed a lot of money from the International Monetary Fund to fight ISIS, today, with the price of oil that is down, the Iraqi government is struggling to reconstruct the country and is badly in need of the Americans, the Europeans, and the Arab money to start the reconstruction of the country.
And if Abadi failed or any person sitting on top of the government to attract the foreign investment, then the country will be in deep trouble.
We're not talking about the sectarian war here between Sunni and Shia.
It's finished.
The Sunni are destroyed in Iraq.
And the PMU is part of the security forces, and they will be always on alert to stop any possibility for ISIS to return.
I do not believe ISIS will return.
There will always be insurgency attacks here and there because cells will always exist, even in America or in Europe or anywhere.
But ISIS is finished, and the biggest, worst problem today for Iraq is to be able to attract money to reconstruct.
And those who have suffered the most in their wealth, properties, land, homes, and men are the Sunni.
So they can't have their stay.
They just want to get on with their life, and they're not going to find it easy at all.
Now, so I guess it's always seemed like a real big deal, but I wonder, it sounds like maybe things have changed from what you just said.
But I guess I always thought or remembered those who said that the loss of Baghdad, so that it's now a super majority Shiite city, maybe 80 or 90 or more percent or something Shiite now, means that there's just going to be permanent Sunni insurgency forever.
That when Bush used the U.S. military force to make that change during Iraq War II, and to help the Shiite militias that did the sectarian cleansing of the capital there, that that was just, even though it almost went unnoticed in America, you know, we're just fighting terrorists or something.
But this is just this huge change in world history, where now the Shiites control an Arab capital for the first time since 1100-something in Egypt.
And so now that means that al-Qaeda types and maybe Saudis are going to be throwing suicide bombers at the capital city from now on, for generations to come.
We're going to have this permanent conflict.
But is that necessarily true?
Well, first of all, the Shiite responded to, in a sectarian way, against the Sunni in Baghdad, when Zarqawi succeeded in turning the war and the battle into a sectarian battle.
Well, and, you know, Rumsfeld did, too, with the El Salvador option, and using the Bata Brigade to hunt down the leaders of the insurgency.
They're hunting down a lot more than just that, and torturing them and killing them.
Yes, that's true.
But don't forget the people of Azamiya, who used to stop also on the way from Baghdad to Najaf and Karbala, and used to put checkpoint and kill the Shiite traveling backward and forward.
And Zarqawi refused the order from his emir of al-Qaeda, Zawahiri, to stop killing the Shiite and turn the war against the Shiite into a sectarian war and to concentrate only on the Americans.
So even Zarqawi was aware what Zawahiri was doing in turning the war into a sectarian one.
Now, your question is if this is what we are going to see.
We're always going to see insurgency from the extremist Sunni, because there are Sunnis who don't want the war.
It is not a war against the Sunni.
There are many Sunnis who are also very strict Sunnis.
You take Sunni leadership in Iraq.
Saleh al-Mutlaq is a Sunni.
He's part of the government.
He represents the area where ISIS was proliferating.
And he works with the Shia in the government perfectly well.
The president of the parliament is a Sunni.
The defense minister is a Sunni.
So it is not a Sunni-Shia, really.
But to answer your question, to stop ISIS cells, it requires a solid intelligence service.
And it requires a solid intelligence service with adequate means of social media intelligence, of communication intelligence, of cells and people infiltrating these groups.
This is what can stop ISIS attacks.
So I guess I didn't really frame the question right.
What I'm really trying to get to is, is the loss of Baghdad going to forever be that strong of a motive for the extremist Zarqawi types to continue to, you know, basically, they can't take the capital back.
It took the army, the US army to give it to the Shia.
So they can't win it back.
I just wonder, what degree of frustration does that represent?
That, you know, in other words, I've heard it framed in the past that the loss of Baghdad is everything and the struggle to get it back no matter how futile will never end.
Well, according to the history of Islam, the caliphate need Baghdad and need Damascus and he needs the Levant, the Bilad al-Sham.
Now, in the jihadi mentality, it doesn't mean a lot if the majority are Shia and the Shia have 10 to 12 children while the Sunni have one or two.
And that demographic boom will cover the entire Baghdad, which is most probably true.
But it means that the jihadi needs to think and concentrate on working on an objective that seems impossible to realize, but with the help of Allah, it's possible.
This is how these people think.
So you don't need to think logically and you don't need to count the number of the population, because in the Quran is also said a small number of people can defeat a very large number of people with the help of Allah.
So in other words, yeah, permanent war.
Yeah, well, it's not a war, but it is an insurgency war.
It is a terrorist attack that is going to happen that is most probably happen in Europe and other parts of the world.
Yeah, and don't get me wrong.
I'm not taking sides between the Sunni population or the Shia population or anything like that.
It's just that I think we can all note that this all started when George Bush rolled the Marine Corps in there with James Mattis in the lead back in 2003.
And that the consequences of this just continue to roll on and reverberate back and forth all over the place.
It's a regional sectarian more now.
Not that I'm claiming they're fighting about religion, but just in terms of who's on whose side.
And more than a million have been killed, certainly by now in Iraq and Syria.
Well, if we remember Madeline Albright, she was okay with half a million children killed by the US embargo.
At the end of the day, it's the US policy that is helping to create a large mess in the Middle East.
And we saw what happened in Iraq.
We saw what happened in Afghanistan.
And now we're looking at Syria after seven years of war.
The Americans still want to stay in Syria for unknown reason, just to be there and not to leave the area for the Russians, but without any real benefit.
So, again, for seven years, they supplied weapons to al-Qaeda.
They close an eye on ISIS oil traffic.
And they supported the flow of all jihadis from the four continents into Syria.
And they supply weapons.
They train them.
There were CIA training programs.
The American forces, special forces, were extremely upset because they were aware they were training jihadis who were part of the 9-11.
And, well, this is the American policy, and they're never going to learn from history.
Yeah.
You know, isn't it funny how the Benghazi attack got so much publicity, and there was really the limited hangout about the failure to rescue the guys when they were under attack and the lack of security, instead of the overall operation and what was going on in Benghazi, what really got them in trouble.
But then, three American, I think Green Berets, I forget which kind of army they were, who were murdered by, apparently, I think, if I have the story right, a pro-ISIS or pro-al-Qaeda guy in Jordan when they were in the midst of training jihadis, just like the situation in Benghazi, where we have our guys training their enemies.
And just because we're helping them doesn't mean they love us.
And so, sting.
But that one wasn't a scandal.
I'm not sure why.
Well, it's because what the jihadis are saying, please, American special forces, teach us what you know, so we know how to kill you.
And the Americans go for it, because to them, Iran, and now their more influential Shiite crescent, although you've put proper nuance on that today, in terms of Iranian influence in Iraq, but that now much more powerful Iranian Shiite alliance of power, which includes Baghdad, is such a threat.
That's the excuse for making things worse in Syria in the first place, in the creation of, back in all these jihadis, that resulted in the rise of the Islamic State.
And now that Iraq war three is over, all these consequences in Iraq, and then still in Syria, as you mentioned, that's the last interview about Turkey's invasion.
We're already at an hour here, but I guess I could ask you, do you have anything you want to add about Turkey's invasion of northern Syria and the current state of the war there?
Well, yes, I think what I would like to add is I think Turkey is in a very bad situation today in relation to the attack to Afrin.
And Turkey has really no options.
If they push their own forces, they will, the forces will be destroyed.
Otherwise, they have to use the air force and destroy the city of Afrin and the entire enclave and cause the massacre of hundreds of thousands of civilians.
Otherwise, using the proxy, this is not going to work.
Their proxies are not capable of holding the ground.
They are a mixture of jihadis and non-jihadis trained by the Americans.
And if you look at the war, the battle that is going on in Afrin, it is the best way to explain how the Syrian war is so damn complicated.
So we have a NATO member, Turkey, attacking pro-U.S. forces, the SDF in Afrin, who are supported by the Syrian army, allowing weapons, ammunition, and opening up all hospitals to receive the Kurds.
That's why the Americans are supporting Turkey in killing the people who they have formed, the SDF, and they have supported.
This is Syria.
And all while the Turks are using the jihadis that the CIA trained to attack the Kurds that the Pentagon trained.
That is correct.
Yes.
It sounds like a joke, but it's real.
That doesn't seem fair.
You know, setting up all these people and stabbing them in the back.
I was just talking with Eric Margulies about this in the last interview too, and I'm sure you know and are reporting about the war crimes being committed by the jihadis against the female Kurdish fighters there, or at least according to the pictures I saw on Twitter.
But actually, they were being tweeted by competent journalists.
I saw, I don't know exactly, I didn't verify myself, but it wasn't just hearsay.
It looked like really bad stuff going on.
And then as you put it, let me ask you to clarify that.
As you put it, America is really conspiring with the Turks to do this bombing of the Kurds in Afrin.
If that's really right, then are they, how far are they going to support that?
Or you're saying, but the Turks are already stuck because the SDF is too strong.
The American backed Kurds are too strong.
So they can't defeat them without completely blasting them with air power, which maybe they can't do because of the PR and all of that.
And so where does that leave the Americans in the future of this conflict?
Well, I don't think the Americans intentionally wants to conspire against the Kurds, but what they want is they don't want to lose Turkey and they don't want to see Turkey align themselves with the Turkish leader, aligning themselves with the Russians.
Therefore, they walk along with Turkey.
They're very happy to see Turkey incapable of defeating the Kurds to the expense of the Kurds, of course, and with the Kurds casualties that are increasing.
But they can't do much about it except supplying weapons to the Kurds and ask them to take whatever they want to continue the war and try to stop Turkey.
And on the other hand, they support Turkey's attack.
So the Americans are very honest here because they said, we don't have allies.
We have only interest.
And our interest now is not to lose Turkey.
Even we have created you.
I'm sorry, but we have to look at you dying.
We can only supply you with weapons to defend yourself.
But we can't lose Turkey.
Turkey comes first.
All right.
Listen, thank you so much for coming back on the show, Elijah.
I won't take up any more afternoon there, but I really do appreciate it.
Thank you.
All right, you guys.
That is Elijah Magnier.
He's at ElijahJM.wordpress.com.
And it's AlraiMedia, A-L-R-A-I-Media.com.
And he does post his blogs there in, I guess, all different languages, but in English.
So go and check them out, guys.
And you know me, ScottHorton.org and YouTube.com slash Scott Horton Show for the show archives.
And then my book is Fool's Errand, Time to End the War in Afghanistan.
That's at foolserrand.us.
And then I want you to read also everything at antiwar.com and libertarianinstitute.org where I'm the director there.
And follow me on Twitter at Scott Horton Show.
Thanks, you guys.
