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Welcome back to the show.
I'm Scott.
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Next up, Pepe Escobar from the Asia Times.
Welcome back to the show.
Wonderful to be with you, Scott.
Always a pleasure.
Well, I appreciate you joining us.
I should say atimes.com.
I don't think I say that often enough when I introduce you.
That's how people can read your work or just put in your search engine.
Pepe Escobar.
And you'll find the best of Pepe Escobar, which is all of it, there at atimes.com.
So, what's going on in the world?
Mr. 47%.
He is all over the place, even in Congo, Malawi, Mozambique.
You know, that's the only thing.
Everywhere for the past three new cycles.
But today, there's something else.
On the cover of the satirical weekly in Paris, Charlie Hebdo, there's another series of Prophet Muhammad cartoons.
So, expect everything that happened last week to happen this week all over again.
And now the target is, we hate France.
It's not the U.S. anymore.
So, what else is new, Scott?
Does that mean that the CIA in France is behind this thing?
Absolutely.
And the cover of Charlie Hebdo is very funny.
Absolutely.
It's an Orthodox Jew and a Muslim in a push brand.
And the headline is, don't laugh about it.
But then when you go inside, there are a series of cartoons of Prophet Muhammad.
And he is depicted naked.
So, can you imagine how this is going to play in Sana'a, in Kabul, in Cairo for that matter, or in Benghazi?
So, you know, this thing will never end.
They never protest about what's going on in Palestine.
I was looking at the Palestine map again today, this morning, how Palestine shrunk from 1947 to today.
This is what Muslims all over the world, including these crazy Salafis, should be protesting about.
No.
They'll be protesting against cartoons over and over again.
It's stupidity.
It's a cosmic stupidity, in fact.
Well, it is a cosmic stupidity.
There's no doubt about that.
But, I mean, I don't know.
Part of me thinks, hey, this is the beginning of some kind of end or major change or something.
I don't know if you and I talked about this, but it really seemed to me that it was kind of strange and interesting that the Arab Spring didn't really mention America very much.
Where, from Texas, it looked to me like Uncle Sam was behind every king and sultan and emir and potentate and pretended president from Morocco to the Philippines.
So, I wondered why they weren't taking it out on America at all, the American government's military and whatever other kinds of empire that it maintains over there.
And so it seems like now, a year and a half later, that's changed, and they decided that it is America's fault after all or something, and based on insults to the prophet rather than 30 years of support from Mubarak.
Isn't that strange?
I don't understand.
Maybe you do.
Absolutely.
But in the first stage, especially in Tunisia and Egypt, the local populations were obsessed about toppling the old order, even though the new order would take time to consolidate.
In fact, it would take years if not decades.
Then, there was the counter-revolution, something that we talked about with all of your guests last year.
It started basically with Libya, involved Bahrain, the invasion of Bahrain by Saudi Arabia, and the toppling of Gaddafi in Libya with the help of hardcore Islamists and Salafi jihadis.
So, the narrative changed completely, from liberation of dictatorial regimes supported by the U.S. in North Africa and the Middle East, to the counter-revolution, which was organized basically by the House of Saud, with active collaboration by the U.S., help from London and Paris, and the Qataris heavily involved as well.
And the whole thing culminated in Syria.
They thought that the Syrian regime, just like Gaddafi, would collapse in a matter of months, even without NATO's humanitarian bombing.
And they were absolutely wrong, because one thing we know for sure about Syria is that it's a very well-organized police state, as repellent as it is for most Syrians.
But they know how to repress people, and they know how to contain a guerrilla, an insurgency, whatever you want to call it, NATO rebels, whatever you want to call it.
And this is exactly what happened.
And the fact that, I would say that starting last week, after assassination of Ambassador Stevens in Benghazi, people in Washington are starting to think over and over again about getting in bed with Salafi jihad.
This is a very bad deal.
Because everybody knows blowback is inevitable and will be inevitable.
It has been happening since Afghanistan in the 1980s.
So this is not going to change.
On top of all this, we have the war inside the Muslim world, which is basically the Ikhwan, Muslim Brotherhood, against the Salafis.
So we can also say that this is a war between the Emir of Qatar against the House of Saud.
Because Qatar, their official foreign policy is to support the Muslim Brotherhood everywhere.
They did that in Libya, they're doing that in Syria, they're doing that in Jordan, which sooner or later will collapse as well.
That King PlayStation is probably going for eternal exile in London with his queen.
And the House of Saud, they support, of course, hardcore Wahhabis all over the world.
That's what they started to do in Afghanistan in the 1980s, in Pakistan.
And the Salafi jihadists, of course, the nebula of Salafi jihadists that we in the West call Al-Qaeda, but it's not, in fact.
It's a lot of local movements, basically.
Including a local brigade that is, we can say, 90% of certainty, by now, we're responsible for the attack against the West Conflict in Benghazi.
Some call them Ansar al-Islam, and some call them Omar Abdul Rahman Brigade.
Whatever that is, this is a collection of Salafi jihadists.
Some of them had training in Afghanistan.
That was Zarqawi's group, right?
Ansar al-Islam?
Yes, it's a Libyan, it's an indigenous Libyan group.
This is practically certain, in fact.
Just the same name?
Yes.
Because Zarqawi, he was Jordanian.
Exactly.
The foreign elements, of course there are.
Some of them were training in Derna.
Derna is a city in the desert, south of Benghazi.
Historically, they sent a lot of people to be trained in an Afghan, an al-Qaeda Afghan training camp.
And some jihadists that had Iraqi experience.
Libyans that were in Iraq, or Sunni Iraqis that then went to Libya last year.
So they are now shuffling back and forth, and going to Syria as well.
So this Salafi jihad in Nebula, which was responsible for the attack against the West in Benghazi, and it is in fact acting, and will keep acting along the Turkish-Syrian border, whatever happens next, and nobody knows, no one knows for sure.
What we know is that the Bashar al-Assad regime will stay, more or less, for a while in charge.
After Obama's election, which I say Obama's election because I'm following the polls every day, just like every other journalist.
Nate Silver is saying now it's at 75 to 76%.
So I think he's practically clinched this election.
So what is Obama 2.0 going to do about Syria?
Is he going to accommodate Assad, with Turkey involved as well?
As we speak today, the contact group proposed by Egypt, and proposed by Iran as well, Egypt, Iran, Turkey, and Saudi Arabia, they are starting to meet, and they are probably going to Syria to try to find a solution.
So can you imagine if they broke a local, regional solution for the Syrian problem, without Western interference?
In geopolitical terms, this will be a game changer as well.
So, yes, as you said, there's the beginning of something new.
It always reminds me of Gramsci, you know, the old order has collapsed, the new order has not been born yet.
So, Burst Banks of the New Middle East, to quote our dear Condi, this is going to take quite a while.
And there's going to be a lot of stupid protests in the middle, slumophobic agents in the West, in Europe, all over, will keep interfering.
And this war inside the Muslim world, between the Salafis and the Muslim Brotherhood, would get, you know, really, really nasty.
So, it's not good.
Yeah, well, and between the Saudis and the Iranians too, right?
Yeah, exactly.
Oh, and of course, the new Kurdistan that's aching to be born, that's going to be a bloody mess.
And don't forget Afghanistan, Scott, as well.
Because, you know, I'm starting to think that there's going to be a Saigon moment, maybe next year.
Not in December 2014, you know, the way things are going.
It's possible that NATO as a whole will start packing up and leaving next year instead of 2014.
Yeah, well, Obama signed a deal with the state in 2024, really, though, right?
Yeah, before the end of 2014, of course.
So, what's going to happen to Afghanistan?
Afghanistan will be back to what it was in the early 90s, after the end of the Jihad, you know, which was basically a super fierce civil war, until the Taliban prevailed in 1995 to 1996, with the help of Pakistan.
They will go all out, starting now, practically, but especially next year, to consolidate their grip on Afghanistan.
So, this means they'll be clashing directly against India and Iran, which don't want to see the Taliban in power again, supported by Pakistan.
So, you know, so the perspective for...
And, of course, Hamid Karzai, probably, he's going to be part of the Saigon moment.
You know, there's a helicopter already booked for him, to leave by ground straight to somewhere in the Midwest, or maybe the deep south in the U.S., you know.
So, as America leaves, the Northern Alliance, the communists, that America's been fighting for this whole time, well, this whole time, you know, this century.
When we go, and the Pakistanis move to strengthen the Taliban's position, to take over as much of the country as they can, as we leave, then that's going to provoke, even further, the Iranian-Indian alliance against the Pakistanis and the Taliban in Afghanistan.
Is that what you're telling me?
Yes, that's more or less what could happen.
And then whose side is Russian China on?
China's on Pakistan's side, right?
But the problem for Russian China, there's one thing they don't want, the Taliban in power again.
So, in this sense, they are aligned with Iran and India.
But there are some other complicating factors, because Pakistan, they want this Shanghai Cooperation Organization, they want Pakistan to be a full member.
So, if Iran and Pakistan are full members of the SCO, they have to find ways not to antagonize each other, because the SCO is primarily, I would say, a security organization.
There's also the problem, no matter which country you are involved in, that you can't get rid of the Taliban anyway.
Nobody can seem to get rid of them once they're there.
Exactly.
You just cannot get rid of them.
So, one possible solution would be for them to be part of a power-sharing arrangement in Kabul.
I'm sure this is being discussed in those secret negotiations between the Taliban and the US.
By the way, in Qatar, where the Taliban now have an office in Doha, I wonder what Pakistan is going to say about that, because what Pakistan wants is Afghanistan as a client state.
This has been their policy for the last 30 years, at least, even before the jihad in the 1980s.
So, I'm sure the Russians and the Chinese will find a way to pressure Pakistan to find an accommodation, especially the Chinese, because the bilateral relation between Pakistan and China is very close, in terms of military sales, military cooperation, and strategic cooperation between both.
But the thing is to find a solution that will be acceptable to Iran, India, Russia, China, and Pakistan at the same time.
And we're not even talking about the Afghans, because the Afghans, basically what they want is the end of a 30-year-old war, practically non-stop.
So, a lot of Pashtuns would agree with that, but the Uzbeks, the Hazaras, and especially the Tajiks, will say, wow, Pakistan back in our country, and with Taliban as part of the power arrangement in Kabul, this is going to be a disaster.
There are going to be pogroms all over the country, just like during the 90s, the late 90s especially.
So, it is practically an unsolvable problem, because, you know, modern Afghanistan, since Zbigniew Brzezinski had the fabulous idea to start a jihad over there, with the help of the most reactionary elements in the Muslim world, Saudis and then the Pakis, it had to happen, and now it's unsolvable.
Yeah, well, so what?
Who cares about some stirred-up Moslems?
We brought down the Soviet Union.
Well, I mean, that's what he said, you know.
That was before September 11th and the current terror war.
I don't know if he would say the exact same thing now.
Exactly.
They renamed the terror war.
Nobody even talks about the war on terror anymore, right?
Since the West was in bed with the Salafi jihadis in Libya and now in Syria, you know, it's demonstrated once again that for Washington, when they want to further any short-term geopolitical interest, it doesn't matter who you get in bed with.
You never get in bed, of course, with indigenous nationalist movements.
These are the real bogeymen, you know.
But if you want to use Salafi jihadis, Al-Qaeda spin-offs, crazy Salafis, oh, everything is fair game, you know.
The consequences, of course, it's for the next administration.
Yeah.
Well, now, you were talking about Syria earlier and support for jihadis there.
We have clips of – well, I have a clip here.
I think you've heard it.
I won't waste your time with it, but it's Hillary Clinton saying, hey, Zawahiri is pro-rebel in Syria and we need to make sure that we're not accidentally helping him.
I'm badly paraphrasing what she said, but the intent is correct there.
So then Ben Swan, who's this great Ron Paulian local TV news guy, had an interview with Obama and put to him assassinations and indefinite detention in Syria and Libya and Afghanistan and all of these things.
And Obama basically said the same thing while he was trying to deny the degree of his intervention in Syria, really, and was saying, well, you know, we're trying to help provide some nonlethal aid, you know, just for the poor civilians there, but we're being very careful to not get involved because, gee whiz, you're right, newsman.
I have to admit that, yeah, we're – you know, al-Qaeda is on the side of the rebellion there or al-Qaeda types, the kind of people that the government would call tied and guilty enough to kill or whatever if it was Afghanistan instead of Syria, right?
Yeah.
And yet so – but you've been reporting for, what, 10 months or something like that, that, oh, no, the CIA's there helping coordinate the Free Syrian Army and the rebellion there.
Exactly.
And the CIA – in fact, the official CIA scheme is that we are selecting which fighters, warriors or freedom fighters, get weapons that are, you know, most of them bought in the black market, shipped to Turkey, and then the CIA says they are screening the fight.
This is completely absurd because – Oh, come on, it worked perfectly well in Libya.
Yes, exactly.
It did work in Libya.
There's no question about it.
It did work in Libya, especially with the Misrata Brigade and the Abdul Hakim Belhadj Brigade, which was being trained in those mountains southwest of Tripoli.
And then they arranged that pincer movement that was basically the fall of Tripoli in 24 hours.
These people, they were trained by Qatari intelligence, Qatari military.
They were trained by the CIA as well.
So it was very organized in Libya.
In Syria, it's much more complicated because – Well, and you're not supposed to count the guys that killed the ambassador.
Some of them.
The Libyan Islamic Fighting Group, because some of the people of the Libyan Islamic Fighting Group are part of the new power structure in Tripoli, including Belhadj.
But some others, they felt that, no, no way we have to fight this government because they are aligned with Western interests.
Because don't forget, their mentality is basically, we want a caliphate.
This implies Westerns are dangerous infidels, and you can have a tactical alliance with them for a while, but afterwards, the war against the infidels is back.
So these people, brigades, scattered brigades, including the one that was responsible for the attack against the consulate, they'll be at war with the central government in Tripoli.
There's absolutely no question.
They want, basically, for Syria and Ica, eastern Libya, to become an emirate.
So they don't respect so-called secular power in Tripoli, especially because it has very good connections with the U.S. and with the Europeans.
So the internal, it's also a Muslim internal war in Libya.
It always goes back to the same point, in fact.
Any country that you examine, from Northern Africa to the Middle East, the wider Middle East, you find this internal Muslim war between Muslim brotherhoods, different strands of the Muslim brotherhood, from moderate neoliberals to some that are more exalted, let's put it this way, against Wahhabis and Salafis and Salafi jihadists, which is the really hardcore jihad brigade forever.
And there's no way the West has any influence over this internal fight in Islam.
It's absolutely impossible.
And even the best Muslim scholars, they talk about fitna, which is a fascia inside Islam, and they say, look, as long as we don't solve the fitna problem, Islam will never progress.
They're right in this sense.
The problem is, how are you going to convince a bunch of ultra-hardcore medieval sheikhs in Saudi Arabia that they should start, I'll give an example, issuing fatwas every week calling for the killing of Alawites in Syria?
This is happening practically on a weekly basis.
Or how are you going to prevent the sheikhs in Al-Azhar in Cairo, which is considered the seat of a Sunni Islamic intellectual thought and interpretation of Islam?
They are almost as intolerant as the Saudi sheikhs as well.
So it's impossible.
It's just like Chief Wiggum on The Simpsons.
We're powerless to help you, not powerless to harm you.
We can come in there and just shake the shit out of everything and make everything worse for everybody.
Yes, exactly.
And the craziest thing is that you see people in Washington, like I was in New York for the past two weeks, a lot of people in New York and people in Washington were worried about our allies in Saudi Arabia.
Come on!
These people in Saudi Arabia, these sheikhs in Saudi Arabia, they have been fomenting this thing for decades, in fact.
You cannot possibly have an ally with Saudi Arabia.
It's absolutely impossible for a post-modern empire like the West to be allied with a 7th century desert kingdom.
It doesn't make sense at all, no matter the angle you try to analyze it.
Hey, you know what I wonder?
If America didn't sell them all their weapons and train their so-called guard units and whatever the hell like that, would all those princelings in the Saudi royal family rule Arabia at all or would they have fallen long ago?
Or how does that work?
Because I've actually talked to some people who say that even really without American help, more or less is the natural government of that part of Arabia anyway.
Look, if you talk to the Hashemite family, in fact, they will disagree, because they consider themselves the rulers of Arabia.
So they were deprived of ruling Arabia after World War I, in fact, by the 1930s.
The Wahhabis are representative, of course, but they do not represent the whole country.
And very important, the Shiite minority, which is 15% of Saudi Arabia, they are very important because they are in all the areas that have oil and gas.
That's where they live.
And they are the actual proletariat, let's put it this way, the working force in the oil fields and the gas fields as well.
So if they were a little more organized, and of course if they are not repressed the way they are, they could organize a workers' movement like we saw in Brazil or in Poland in the 70s and confront the leadership head on.
They don't do it because they are not politicized enough, they are not organized enough, and of course they are repressed to death.
But this is something that might happen in the long run as well.
So Saudi Arabia is not a monolithic thing controlled by the House of Saud.
No, and they are despised by a lot of people.
The thing is their handouts, you know, you remember the latest handouts, $60 billion of handouts by King Abdullah two months ago.
This is how they run their country, basically.
All right.
Well, hey, we're going over time.
I turned off the show because the show is over, but I wanted to still interview you for just a minute if that's all right.
Always a pleasure, Scott.
Okay, great.
Well, so I wanted to get back to the sort of larger scene of these massive protests, obviously, you know, sparked in many places at least, if not in Libya, with that attack on the ambassador, but in the rest of these places, supposedly sparked by this provocative YouTube clip somehow.
But now raging on and then, of course, as you mentioned, the French cartoonists chipping in to make matters worse for everybody.
But so I wonder, and obviously it's actually been great fun to see just a few people in the mainstream media say, Hey, guys, I think maybe we need to admit this isn't just about a YouTube video.
You know, that that truth just barely kind of creeping through there.
That's been sort of fun to watch.
But so now, since you and I understand what everybody's really writing about in a little bit larger context there, I wonder how long you think the riots are going to go, how deep, how meaningful they really are in terms of, you know, this signals a real change in the amount of power the empire has over there, the amount of influence there.
Because, I mean, I guess you're saying that, yeah, it does.
All these forces are unleashed in this, the wars in Libya and Syria, forces that the Americans can't control.
But so do you see that like quickly spilling over to Jordan or to, you know, the Arabian Peninsula?
Obviously, we've had our problems in Yemen, but the rest of the peninsula, all our dictatorships seem more or less stable there.
Is it all going to just keep spiraling out of control at this point?
Or is this just letting off a little bit of steam?
And, you know, the way things have been is going to keep rolling on?
Or what do you think?
It's going to be a total instability, to put it mildly, if not bordering on chaos, for quite a while.
Because it's a mix of influences and interferences.
The internal war in Islam that we were talking about a while ago, the fact that the U.S. will try to interfere as much as possible to prevent especially very close regimes being toppled.
Example, Jordan, which Jordan doesn't have a particularly strategic importance to the U.S.
But if there is unrest or some kind of guerrilla movement springing up in Saudi Arabia, Washington will freak out because they wouldn't know how to do it, how to deal with it.
Because basically the most important thing is how to confront Iran, how to confront what is defined in Washington by the axis, Iran, Syria, and Hezbollah.
The fact that the Syrian regime did not fall and is not likely to fall in the near future was a blow to the whole thing, to the whole rationale, in fact.
The fact that Iran is trying to lead this meeting of the Non-Aligned Movement proved graphically that Iran is not isolated.
Not only is it supported by Russia, China, and even India, but it's supported by most nations of the Non-Aligned Movement.
That's 120 nations.
Iran has the support of at least 80 or 90 of these.
So they are not isolated.
So there's not going to be regime change in Iran.
There's got to be a deal.
So the only possibility would be that if Obama is re-elected, he will go for what I call the Nixonian moment.
Okay, let's sit down with Ayatollah Khamenei, which is the guy that really decides everything in Iran, and let's organize a package.
But can you imagine the reaction of the Likud, Nix, and Israeli lobby in Washington?
Obama doesn't have the courage to do something like that.
We'll think about the possibility, because it's the only way to stabilize things in Southwest Asia, if not in the whole Middle East, but in Southwest Asia at least.
And this will disarm Saudi Arabia out of this obsession that they have, which is to fight Shiites all over the place.
So the Saudis consider Shiites infidels, apostates, you know.
And they fight them in Iran, in Lebanon, all across the Middle East, and they say that this is the problem, because they want to destabilize the House of Saud.
So if you have a U.S.
-Iran agreement on this nuclear issue, this whole thing disappears completely.
So then they will start talking real issues, which is geopolitical power in Southwest Asia and the Middle East.
You're saying another major reason why America needs to make a nuclear deal and settle our relationship with the Iranians is so to...
Yes, the U.S. needs a new deal, a totally new deal in the Middle East.
And especially so to call off the Saudis, so that they will not be so afraid that they feel like they've got to back every...you know, solve the rebellion in the region.
Exactly, because, you know, the two main reasons for the U.S. trying to control the whole of the Middle East, everybody knows what it is.
It's oil, of course, and protection of Israel.
So if there is a deal with Iran that includes...tacitly includes some sort of collaboration between the U.S. and Iran, everybody knows that they don't have a military weaponized nuclear program.
And as Ayatollah Khamenei said many times, so this would be settled down as a deal, a direct deal between the U.S. and Iran.
So they can concentrate on other stuff, you know.
For example, Western investment in Iran's oil and gas industry, which will benefit everyone in Europe.
And this is basically what the Europeans want, because coming back to that same Gazprom question, you know, off the record they say, we are being totally fucked by Gazprom.
We are dependent on them for our gas.
Our plan B would be Iran.
We cannot do deals with Iran because of the U.N. and U.S. sanctions.
So this whole thing would disappear.
So as the Chinese say, it would be a win-win situation for everybody.
And the U.S. will have its hands concentrated on solving some other problems.
For instance, the possibility of a Palestinian state, which has disappeared completely from discussion.
Why?
Because of Bibi's obsession in bombing Iran, which contaminated Washington as well.
So everybody stopped discussing the possibility of restarting a negotiation for a Palestine state, which, by the way, is going to be impossible.
If you look at the map, it's impossible to have a viable Palestine state.
So I wonder where they would start the negotiations again.
There's not much to negotiate.
So how are you going to undo this collection of Bantustan in Palestine?
But if there's no new deal or no new initiative, this whole thing in the Middle East will keep festering and festering, basically driven by the Saudi hate against Shiites, and ultimately against the West as well.
They want to live in that 7th century frame of mind, and the House of Saud would be privileged for the 7,000 princes, and fuck the rest of the population.
That's what life in Saudi Arabia really is.
They should never discuss Iran in July.
Never.
Well, I thought all they wanted to do was party on their yachts all day.
What happened to that?
Now would they say that all the Saudi princes are a bunch of spoiled brats?
Yes, and they are.
They are.
They are spoiled, they are corrupt, and they absolutely don't care about, I would say, 95% of the Saudi population.
The same thing, it's an amplified version of what goes on in Bahrain.
So they want the 21st century for them, they want the 7th century for everybody that they rule over.
Exactly.
And for them, they want nightlife in Monte Carlo, Ferraris in the Cote d'Azur, you know, that kind of stuff.
Parties in London, you know, that's it.
And of course, getting rich selling oil to the West, basically.
To the Europeans, to China as well.
So, you know, there's something very interesting in Saudi Arabia, it's a parallel process in the long run.
They want to do many more deals with China.
So one of these days we're going to see Saudi Arabia selling more oil to China than to the West.
So then the Saudis themselves are going to say, oh man, maybe we don't need the US as customers anymore.
We're going to be protected by China.
Can you imagine if or when that happens?
Well, the sooner the better, as far as I'm concerned.
The sooner the better.
I don't know why they need a single borrower there.
By the way, you know, I screwed up.
I meant to ask Phil Giraldi this earlier, when we were talking about Iran, and I didn't.
So I'm going to ask you and see what you think.
It sure seems like Barack Obama has more or less told Benjamin Netanyahu, hey, just shut up for now, at least, to put it mildly.
And at the same time, we've got a massive war game going on and a military build-up, like crazy, in the Persian Gulf right now.
Now is that just part of telling Netanyahu to shut up?
Or is that because telling Netanyahu to shut up is really a smoke screen and that naval build-up is what it's really all about?
Look, these war games, they were scheduled months ago.
So it's not that something that was scheduled last week or in this past few days.
It's interesting that it coincides with what is now totally accepted, that Obama actually told Netanyahu to shut up.
And General Martin Dempsey, you know, the top military guy said exactly the same thing as well.
There's not going to be a war, and I don't believe in it.
I don't believe in it, and it's not going to work.
The problem is that Bibi and Barack, they are so crazy.
They are against their own cabinet in Israel.
This is the craziest thing.
And a lot of the Israeli press that is not controlled by people like Sheldon Addison, for instance, if you read the Haaretz every day, there's always a very good, well-argued, in-depth article saying that this war is not going to work.
It's folly, and on top of it, Israel doesn't have the technical means to destroy Iran's nuclear program.
They could postpone it for a year, six months, two years, whatever, and then Iran will have a very good reason to build their bomb.
So, it's crazy.
This is something that I wrote yesterday.
Bibi wants regime change in Washington much more than he wants regime change in Tehran.
So I think this is the essence of the whole story.
He believes that with his friend Romney in the White House, he'll be able to bomb Iran in 2013, because he knows that he can do it by himself.
And his own intelligence services tell him, we cannot do it.
Yeah, well, I mean, it's certainly clear that Netanyahu prefers Romney.
That's the only reason I can think of to prefer Obama at all, not that that would amount to a reason to vote for the man.
Although, I mean, really, Mitt Romney has only sworn to commit mass murder the entire time he's in power.
Barack Obama already has been committing mass murder the entire time he's in power, which means he belongs nowhere other than the prison cell.
The shadow wars, especially in the Waziristan, in Yemen, in Somalia, in the Horn of Africa, soon in Central Africa, they will go on with Obama 2.0, that's for sure.
Now, this is a state policy in the U.S.
With Romney, this thing wouldn't be different.
There will be the added element of going for an attack against Iran, which I think the Obama administration, and even the Obama administration 2.0, will consider, okay, let's keep with the sanctions, but let's keep talking.
And eventually, we may sit down and discuss an overall deal.
So it's the least bad of two possibilities.
But you're right.
Mass murder will go on all over the Muslim world, and our good old Mr. Blowback will be back on a weekly basis.
All right.
Well, let me ask you one more thing.
And this may be just silly, but I really wonder what you think of this.
As far as I know, you've never reported on this, so I'm just asking your speculative opinion and that kind of thing.
Where is Ayman al-Zawahiri?
Oh, my God, this is a very good question.
In fact, nobody knows anymore, because he was supposed to still be holed up in one of the Waziristans, probably North Waziristan.
But nowhere, even some of my best Pakistani sources, some of them are exiled in the West for a few years.
They said, look, the chatter stopped about it.
And in fact, the only thing that al-Zawahiri did these past few months, in fact, was to release that video, admitting that Abu Yahya al-Libi was killed in early June, and released the video three months later.
So he could be still in the Waziristans, which, by the way, it's Pakistani territory, or Osama style, let's put it this way.
He could be in one of the big cities.
He could be in Rawalpindi.
He could be in a safe house in Karachi.
Who knows?
In fact, nobody has an answer to this question, Scott.
Yeah, you know, Ray McGovern yesterday brought up the suicide attack that killed all those CIA guys in Afghanistan in, what, December 2010, right?
Eight CIA guys bombed.
When they were recruiting this guy to try to get al-Zawahiri, that's what they thought.
He had promised al-Zawahiri, and that was why they were so excited that they brought him in.
So they had no real lead.
The only lead they had was a completely bogus trap.
And he was in Kabul?
Or in Helmand?
Oh, well, wasn't it coast?
Isn't that where it was?
With a guy near coast somewhere, where the guy did the suicide bombing and killed the eight CIA agents?
He was a Jordanian doctor who was motivated to join up the fight by the Israeli war in the Gaza Strip.
That was Ray McGovern's point about how what Israel does blows back on America.
Well, Afghanistan is a very unsafe place for al-Zawahiri.
Helmand, you know, most of the NATO troops are in Helmand.
Oh, yeah, no, well, that's what I'm saying.
Actually, no, I think in the story the guy was going back and forth across the border into Pakistan, and he was saying he knew how to get al-Zawahiri in Pakistan, so he was meeting with the CIA, but really he was there to suicide bomb them all to death rather than do anything for them.
So as far as I know, he had no idea where al-Zawahiri was.
He was just selling them a bill of goods in order to have access to them.
Yeah, yeah, okay.
Yes, the most likely place would be one of the Waziristans or, you know, the border of Kunar province with Pakistan, north of a place called Chitrao.
I've been to this place a few times, years, years ago.
It's very easy to cross back and forth, very, very easy, and only locals, and the locals are hardcore Pashtuns, and they, I wouldn't say they support al-Qaeda 100%, but they're at least sympathetic to al-Qaeda since the 90s, since the mid-90s, in fact.
So this would be a likely area.
Afghanis, don't forget it.
It's too dangerous, especially in Helmand province, you know, which is basically semi-occupied by NATO, at least until now, you know.
All right, well, we'd better leave it here, or it's going to be too long for anybody who wants to listen to it.
So I think this is a good place to leave it.
It's all bad news.
It could have been 10 minutes ago.
Thanks very much, or another 10 minutes from now.
Thanks very much, Pepe Escobar.
It's always great to talk to you.
Thanks very much, Scott.
Thanks a lot, Scott.
Really appreciate it.
Everybody did great.
Pepe Escobar from the Asia Times.
That's atimes.com, atimes.com.
Just look for the link right there in the left-hand margin.
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