Sorry, I'm late.
I had to stop by the Wax Museum again and give the finger to FDR.
We know Al-Qaeda, Zawahiri, is supporting the opposition in Syria.
Are we supporting Al-Qaeda in Syria?
It's a proud day for America.
And by God, we've kicked Vietnam syndrome once and for all.
Thank you very, very much.
I say it, I say it again, you've been hacked.
You've been took.
You've been hoodwinked.
These witnesses are trying to simply deny things that just about everybody else accepts as fact.
He came, he saw, he died.
We ain't killing they army, but we killing them.
We be on CNN like, say our name, say it, say it three times.
The meeting of the largest armies in the history of the world.
Then there's going to be an invasion.
All right, you guys on the line.
I've got Giorgio Caffiero.
He is the CEO of Gulf State Analytics.
And that's a Washington-based geopolitical risk consultancy.
And here he is writing for ConsortiumNews.com, behind Israel's bombing in Iraq's heartland.
Welcome back to the show, Giorgio.
How are you doing?
Scott, great to be with you as always.
Thank you for having me on your show.
Very happy to have you here.
So, I wonder if any neocons noticed, and I wonder what they thought if they did notice, when Israel started bombing Iraq a couple of weeks ago.
Yes, well, I think probably the neocons in Washington, D.C. were delighted about this news.
As I mentioned in this article I wrote, there have been at least five Israeli attacks carried out with drones and missiles over the past two months that have been targeting certain militias, certain armed groups in Iraq, which are supported by the Islamic Republic of Iran.
Often in Western media, these are called Iranian proxies.
And this definitely marks a major escalation of the so-called proxy war between Israel and Iran, really bringing Iraq into this after years of Syria sort of being one of the main battlegrounds in this so-called proxy war.
As I said, it's recently expanded eastward into Iraq.
And now, so they were also hitting, suppose at least, Iranian targets in Syria and Lebanon at the same time, and threatening to hit the Houthis in Yemen too.
Yes, that is correct.
The Israelis carried out attacks which targeted Gaza, Lebanon, Syria, and Iraq last month.
A very, very dangerous month in the Middle East.
Yeah, now, so I thought that David Wormser said, that Ahmed Chalabi said, that if America would just get rid of Saddam Hussein, then the new Shiite-dominated Iraq would be an ally of Israel.
So how come here we are in 2019, watching Israel bomb Iraq?
Well, it's a good point you make.
When Saddam Hussein was in power, none of these militant Shia groups were controlling large parts of Iraq.
Saddam Hussein's regime, whatever one may have thought about that government, it certainly kept Iranian influence at bay.
What's clear, though, is that since 2003, Iran has been able to flex a lot of muscle in Iraq.
And that's obviously just an outcome of the regime change policies of the George Bush and the Tony Blair administrations.
I think it's an important point you make, is that the Israelis are certainly, at least from their perspective, I think they would say they're a lot worse off with the current situation compared to what they had back when Saddam Hussein was in power.
That kind of seems to have been the mission all the time, is wherever you can find a secular dictator, you want to overthrow him on behalf of Iran and or al-Qaeda.
As long as America's enemies and strategic adversaries benefit, let's do it.
Yes, there is a tendency in Washington for many foreign policy decision makers to not learn lessons about blowback.
You know, we're mainly talking about Iraq today, but of course, I think one of the main lessons to take away from the past eight and a half years of chaos and intense violence in Syria has been that the United States did not learn important lessons from the experience in Afghanistan back in the 1980s.
Always a sort of a romantic view of certain Islamist or jihadist groups that they can serve U.S. interests by going after geopolitical foes, never considering how these kinds of partnerships can backfire so easily.
I mean, I'm not even sure that they really have backfired that much.
It's clear that the Americans and the Israelis must regret all of the pro-Iranian effects of their interventions in Iraq and Syria, especially.
And yet, is it really true that Iran threatens Israel from Syria or that they mean to arm up Hezbollah into an offensive force that can threaten to invade Israel or any of the kind of things that Benjamin Netanyahu claims to be preempting here?
You know, I don't think that these Iranian-backed groups are necessarily a direct threat to Israel's, oppressing threats to Israel's immediate security.
What I think they threaten is Israel's capacity to completely dominate the region militarily.
You know, in May of 2000, when Ehud Barak, the Israeli prime minister, and Israel pulled out of Lebanon, this was the first time that the Israelis retreated from the battlefield having not achieved their political objectives.
It was very simple.
The Israelis, the Israeli leadership calculated that the costs of continuing the occupation of Lebanon outweighed all of the benefits, the perceived benefits of continuing it.
Six years later, Hezbollah and Israel were in a conflict that summer that did not result in a decisive Israeli military victory.
This essentially underscored how there was a new balance in the region.
And again, the strength of Hezbollah in 2006 was attributable to Iran's ascendancy post-2003 after Saddam fell in Iraq.
And I think the Israeli concern has been that Hezbollah or other Iranian-backed Shia groups could really consolidate a lot of power in Syria and further weaken Israel's military might in relation to its neighbors.
And I think right now, the Israelis have a few objectives, but without any doubt, one of them is to try to sort of push the regional balance back in the direction it was before 2000 or 2006 to sort of strengthen Israel's geopolitical position vis-à-vis the neighboring Arab states and Iran.
Mm-hmm.
Well, and of course, this is why they started the war in the first place, was as David Warhamser wrote in The Clean Break and In Coping With Crumbling States, this was all supposed to empower somehow Jordan over the Shia-dominated Iraq, post-Saddam Iraq, and that was then supposed to weaken Iran's ability to work with Syria and Hezbollah, which doesn't make any sense, and probably that has something to do with why that didn't work out.
But it was really, you know, as J.J. Goldberg has written about in the foreword, it wasn't even Ariel Sharon as much, because he hated Iran more all along.
It was really Benjamin Netanyahu's faction that favored the war with Iraq the most, and the neoconservatives in America were most closely tied to his side of Likud.
And so it wasn't just Israel that they were thinking of, it was Netanyahu and his policies that they were thinking of, that they were implementing at the time.
And then I think it's important, too, as you describe Hezbollah, that the problem is that they can defend themselves.
That's what makes them a threat, is now they're strong enough to keep Israel out.
Yes, absolutely.
And just going back, another side note, when we talk about the U.S. and U.K.-led invasion of Iraq back in 2003, it was at the end of that year, AIPAC, the pro-Israel lobby group in the United States, listed its achievements, and one of the achievements that they pointed to was their role in the United States in terms of pushing for the administration of George W. Bush to go ahead with plans for invading Iraq and taking down Saddam Hussein's regime.
So as paradoxical as this may seem, the Israeli lobby in the U.S. representing the interests of Israel's government had certainly an important role to play in that equation.
Yeah.
And of course, these are the same people that said, we had to stay in the war.
We can't cut and run.
We can't leave now.
We can't try to, you know, foist even Chalabi on these people and leave.
We have to stay and create a democracy, a new constitution, a purple-fingered election, and then we have to side and fight for the Shiite majority.
I mean, it was Paul Wolfowitz at Donald Rumsfeld's right hand saying, yes, let's arm up the Bata Brigade and make them the Iraqi army, and we'll put the Supreme Islamic Council and the Dawah Party in power, and anyone who says we have to leave now when those parties, they may have been coming to power anyway, but when the Baghdad, you know, the capital city was still a mixed city, maybe there still would have been a civil war once they got rid of Saddam, but the Shia side certainly had a lot more incentive to compromise with the Sunni, you know, predominantly Sunni government that they were overthrowing, or at least the remnants of that power back when, you know, before the Army and Marine Corps helped them finish the sectarian cleansing of the entire city.
By the time they were done with the surge, they, you know, had no need to compromise with the Sunnis whatsoever, had control over the whole place, and at the same time, they had no more need for dependence on the United States and instead decided that they would be closer with their friends, the Iranians, who they were closer with all along, than the Americans who helped put them in power, because after all, we helped them completely vanquish their enemies.
What do they need us for now?
So it's these very same guys who are complaining about Iran now, who, it's like they're never satisfied doing Iran enough favors.
Yeah, you know, Scott, I think it's important to keep in mind that sensible people like us would look at the situation in Iraq and say it's, you know, U.S. foreign policy was an absolute failure, but there are some voices in Washington, D.C. who would look at the mess and actually, maybe they wouldn't be so cavalier to say this openly, but I'm sure they would think that it was a success in the sense that Iraq is now a weak state, it's a state that's being penetrated by other actors, it's a country that Israel can bomb with seemingly no consequences, and what came to an end, at least for the foreseeable future, is this idea of Iraq being a strong and unified country that could heavily influence the Middle East's geopolitical order.
So while I completely agree with you that the war was disastrous, we need to keep in mind that that's not the conclusion that everyone reaches.
There were some people who would look at the situation in Iraq and say that this is ultimately good for Israel or that this is good for the United States, as crazy as that might be to think about.
Yeah, well, it sounds pretty crazy, but yeah, I guess if they could overthrow the Ayatollah and put a new puppet in power in Tehran, then it wouldn't matter that Iran dominates all the places we've helped them dominate in the last 20 years there.
Yeah, you know the...
That makes sense from a certain point of view, as long as it's okay to kill people, you know, if you accept that premise, then go ahead.
Sure, you know, but these groups that the Israelis claim pose such a huge threat to Israel, these Iranian-backed Shia militias, we need to keep in mind that while a number, you know, there are many segments of Iraqi society that oppose these groups, but there are also segments of Iraqi society that believe it's legitimate for them to have so much power and influence in Iraq, and that's an outcome of the role that, you know, the popular mobilization forces and so on played in the fight against Islamic states, and that so-called caliphate's rise to power in Iraq was an outcome of the situation following Saddam Hussein's fall in which there was real oppression of the Sunni minority, and it was those very harsh conditions and those very grave human rights violations that resulted in many in Western Iraq who are Sunni Muslims finding purpose by joining ISIS.
So I just think right now when we're talking about these Shia militias being such a huge threat, we need to understand the circumstances that led to them gaining degrees of popularity and legitimacy in post-Saddam Hussein Iraq to begin with.
Yeah.
Well, I mean, of course, that's the whole thing is Iraq War III, and right now I'd call it Iraq War 3 1⁄2.
The Islamic state is gone, but there's still ISIS members, which is just al-Qaeda in Iraq, and they're still fighting a low-level insurgency in Western Iraq, and American special operations forces are still embedded with the Iraqi army fighting against them and therefore are essentially, possibly, you could call it one degree removed of separation, but not really.
They're essentially directly allied with these very same Shiite militias.
Yeah.
And still, to this day, or again, maybe.
Yeah.
Definitely.
There are very credible sources right now that are telling us that ISIS is at war that ISIS is having a resurgence in both Syria and Iraq right now.
So I think it's important to ask what kind of effect would these Israeli drone and missile strikes have in relation to the Islamic state?
You know, as you point out, it's, sure, ISIS was severely weakened, but it was not entirely obliterated after the liberation of Mosul and in other cities.
So, when you have a situation like this, in other cities, so when you have some of these Iranian-backed groups that were very much involved in the fight against ISIS with them being weakened by these Israeli attacks, I think that certainly could contribute to the further strengthening of ISIS as it's trying to make a comeback at this point.
Yeah.
Israel's flying as their air force.
And we've seen this over and over again in Syria, too, where they go, well, they're working with Iran and got these weapons.
Well, yeah, they're fighting against ISIS in al-Qaeda there.
And, you know, they're directly intervening on their behalf and in some cases during battles, you know, providing cover for these guys and directly participating.
So, it's shades of that, you know, all the way around, of course, but the Americans have been back in the jihad and speaking of which, so this is their big threat now is, hey, never mind how it got this way, but now there's a land bridge, you know, a road that goes from Tehran through Baghdad through Damascus and on to Beirut.
But is that even really true?
And does that mean there's a highway of Iranian weapons that are going all through Western Iraq and Eastern Syria unmolested by jihadis or Americans I think that we have to be a little skeptical about these kinds of analyses.
I think this talk is sort of a land bridge has been coming from more neocon kind of voices in D.C.
But having said that, I mean, it obviously is important to note that Iran does have a significant share of influence in all of these countries.
And, you know, while it was the King of Jordan referred to a Shia crescent back in 2004, so shortly after Saddam Hussein's fall, there at least is a perception in the region that that is the case even if I think some of this language about a land bridge is sort of a product of exaggeration or oversimplification.
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And now, so you talk about trying to tilt the balance back the other way but it really just is too late, right?
The two major tries here in Iraq and Syria have both backfired to an incredible degree.
The war against the Houthis has done nothing to weaken them and if anything has strengthened Iran's position there which I still don't think is very much but the Iranian government just officially recognized the Houthis as the government of Yemen at least you know tacitly supporting them if not truly arming them the way it's claimed but anyway certainly their influence there has increased absolutely and so what can America do?
I mean it seems like all they could do is start Iraq War 2 all over again and try to kick the Shia out of Baghdad and give it back to the Sunnis and we all know that ain't gonna happen in a million years but what short of that is gonna make any difference?
You know and they're not gonna put Jolani on the throne in Damascus Obama already you know balked at that halfway done with the job before he decided against it so yeah well you know you raise a good question I would argue that in a number of these places we've been talking about there has been quite a bit of consolidation of the Iranian influence and if the United States you know you know for all the talk about ejecting or countering Iranian influence I mean it really hasn't happened even since Trump became president two and a half years ago and he's pursued an increasingly aggressive foreign policy against Iran from what I can tell it doesn't really seem like Iran is all that much weaker in the region you know you talk about the conflict in Yemen yes Scott I completely agree with you that many pundits policy makers exaggerate the extent to which Iran has a hand in Yemen but let's also not deny the fact that Iran does have a degree of influence in that war-torn country and it's been you know influence that has been pretty easy for Tehran to gain the amount of money that Iran is nothing compared to the amount of money that the Saudis have spent fighting in this conflict since March 2015 and these Houthi drone and missile attacks that the Houthis have carried out against Saudi Arabia have really brought the conflict into Saudi Arabia they have highlighted from the Saudi border the weaknesses in the kingdom's defense systems some of these attacks have gone way north of the Yemeni-Saudi border hitting strategic targets very far north into Saudi Arabia so it's been the Iranians very little cost have been able to really expose Saudi weakness in that country reportedly United States diplomats are meeting with the Houthis right now in trying to find out how there can be some sort of a settlement based on a compromise you know back in March 2015 we were led to believe that this Saudi and UAE-led Arab coalition was so powerful they were going to crush these Houthis in a matter of weeks or a matter of months well now it's been and reportedly U.S. officials are sort of sitting down with the Houthis and saying okay we need to try to find some sort of bargain here what has to be given to you in order to stop these attacks how long has that been going on and how serious is the situation with the Houthis in an effort to wind down the war to bring peace back to Yemen I don't know exactly when they started I think maybe at least we started reading these media reports earlier on this month maybe beginning in late August there was some buzz about them let's keep talking about the Houthis but back in June 2015 so three months after the Arab coalition went into Yemen the Obama administration officials met with representatives of Ansar Allah in the capital of Oman so in Muscat however those talks obviously did not lead to some sort of resounding victory for the coalition the Trump administration's view was very much aligned with the views that their counterparts in Riyadh had and that was just with sheer force and military might the Saudis would be able to crush the Houthis weaken them so much that they would force them to make a decision on but the fact that Trump administration officials are reportedly meeting with the Houthis somewhere would really illustrate the extent to which these policies have truly failed yeah well no question about that in fact if it's all right can we get into some details about the coalition and what is going on with the coalition and what is going on with the coalition and what is going on with the coalition and what is going on with the coalition and what is going on with the coalition and what is going on with the coalition and what is going on
with the coalition and what is going on with the coalition and what is going on with the coalition and so on what is going on with were reunited, because South Yemen was an independent country from 1967 to 1990.
It was the only pro-Soviet Marxist regime in the Arabian Peninsula.
When the Soviet Union fell and the Cold War wrapped up, South Yemen became very weak, and there was the reunification.
However, ever since 1990, many of the people living in South Yemen have had a lot of grievances.
They believe that the reunification of the country, now nearly 30 years ago, undermined their basic interests.
There is these common narratives in the South about how the national governments of the post-1990 era have marginalized them politically and economically.
Yemen's oil wealth is concentrated in the South, and so they've believed that the wealth that they feel entitled to has been squandered by these northern politicians.
What happens after the current civil war breaks out in September 2014, when the Houthis took over the capital, is that the Houthis tried to go down south to carry their fight out there, and southern separatists fought back against the Houthis.
This actually added to their grievances.
They now saw the Houthis as their next potential oppressors.
As a consequence of the discipline and the success that the southern fighters had in terms of repelling the Houthi attacks, the southern separatists were able to sell themselves to the Arab coalition as an invaluable partner by saying, look, if you're against the Houthis, if you want to work with Yemenis who are capable of fighting them effectively, well then you need to arm us, you need to give us money, and you need to bring us into the coalition and recognize our value here.
The problem was that their goal of reestablishing South Yemen as an independent nation state fundamentally contradicted the agenda of the UN-recognized government of Hadi, which Saudi Arabia was fighting to restore to power.
Now things got very messy last month when the southern separatists who the UAE has been particularly supporting, and we can talk about the reasons why the UAE believes it's been in their interest to support the STC, which was a pro-southern separatist umbrella group formed in 2017, but nonetheless, as I was saying last month, the STC and the forces loyal to Hadi started, their fighting intensified very seriously, resulting in the STC fighters taking control of the largest city in southern Yemen, it's a strategic port city of Aden, which has been the so-called temporary capital for Hadi's government.
What is still going on now, notwithstanding some talks in the Saudi city of Jeddah aimed at reconciling the differences between Hadi's government and the STC, is that there's been a battle between the Saudi-backed Hadi government on one side and the UAE-backed STC on the other.
The Hadi government's perspective is that if they lose their so-called temporary capital in southern Yemen, this would be the second capital that they've lost control of since 2014, and if it goes to the STC, they will lose all claims to legitimacy.
Likewise, the STC believes that controlling this port city is essential in terms of their interests in demonstrating to the people of southern Yemen that they are truly deserving of the title of legitimate government in southern Yemen.
So it's a very messy situation.
Now how the Houthis factor into this is very interesting.
My personal opinion is that if the STC can consolidate its power in much of southern Yemen, the Houthis would be okay with the country being split and with the Houthis and the STC trying to find some new understanding between each other, whereby the Houthis get to control the north and they agree to leave the STC alone in the south, and they reach this new understanding based on a common hatred for the Hadi government.
If that's going to happen or not, that remains to be seen.
That's my opinion about how the Houthis might be viewing this fighting between the STC and the Hadi administration.
And now, does anybody support Hadi inside Yemen?
I mean, other than the Saudi government, I guess the al-Islah party supports it.
Yes.
You're absolutely right.
Which is the Yemeni Muslim Brotherhood.
But that's it?
Yeah.
That's not it, but the Muslim Brotherhood's offshoot in Yemen al-Islah is an important part of Hadi's support base, and your forces loyal to Hadi do have control over some areas at this point.
I mean, obviously they're so far away from controlling all of southern Yemen, let alone the entire country, but yeah, they do have pockets of influence and control, and it's not inevitable that the STC is going to maintain its hold on power.
It goes back and forth with Hadi's loyalists and the STC jostling for power.
Very volatile, very fluid situation.
But yes, this point about the Muslim Brotherhood in Yemen is extremely important.
The STC is anti-Muslim Brotherhood and views al-Islah as a terrorist organization.
This is one of the main reasons why the UAE is so supportive of STC, is because the UAE's leadership is, at the risk of exaggerating here, being very careful with my words, I would say that the leadership in Abu Dhabi is really paranoid about the Muslim Brotherhood, not just within the Emirates, but throughout the grander Arab and Islamic world.
So one of the UAE's main interests is preventing Sunni Islamists from gaining power in Yemen, and this is one of the reasons that goes to the heart of why Abu Dhabi has given so much support to these anti-Islamist southern separatists.
Well, except that, I mean, it sounds more like they're afraid of the Muslim Brotherhood because the Muslim Brotherhood, at least in Egypt and in Qatar, for example, they like to stand for election and participate in democracy, and that's the real threat.
They don't seem to be worried about Sunni Islamists.
They've been backing al-Qaeda and ISIS there this whole time, as Nasser Arabi is talking about that, oh yeah, you're targeting al-Qaeda, huh?
You mean you're bombing the UAE army?
Because that's who al-Qaeda is fighting for.
They're just joining up the UAE army, driving, as CNN reported, driving American MRAPs around.
Yeah, you know, there are many contradictions in play.
So to be objective, to be fair, the UAE military has definitely fought al-Qaeda in Yemen, but at the same time, at least according to the Associated Press, there has been cooperation between the Arab coalition, so what I mean by that is really Saudi Arabia and the UAE for all intents and purposes, and al-Qaeda's local offshoot in Yemen, al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula.
But again, you know, the Muslim Brotherhood and al-Qaeda are very different, and your point about elections and sort of grassroots activism is key, because al-Qaeda does not stand for any sort of democratic institutions or democratic reforms in the Arab world.
Al-Qaeda and ISIS do not believe in what we would call political Islam that the Muslim Brotherhood does believe in, and I would argue that while the UAE sees a threat from both, the UAE is a lot more fearful of groups that I would consider to be representing more moderate forms of Islamism, such as the Muslim Brotherhood, because their ideas have potential to resonate with citizens of GCC countries, especially during times of low oil prices, and especially as we're moving closer to the post-oil era, which will inevitably change the social contracts between the rulers of these countries and their citizens.
There's a real fear that when the government cannot spend so much money on social services, going to demand much more in terms of civil liberties and political rights, and being able to cast a vote and elect governments could definitely be among those political rights that citizens of the Gulf will possibly be demanding much more so as we move into the future.
All right, you guys, that's Giorgio Caffiero.
He is the CEO of Gulf State Analytics, and here he is writing for ConsortiumNews.com, Behind Israel's Bombing in Iraq's Heartland.
Thanks again.
Thank you.
All right, y'all, thanks.
Find me at LibertarianInstitute.org, at ScottHorton.org, AntiWar.com, and Reddit.com slash Scott Horton Show.
Oh, yeah, and read my book, Fool's Errand, Timed and the War in Afghanistan, at foolserrand.us.
