Sorry, I'm late.
I had to stop by the Whites 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 had.
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 us, he died.
We ain't killing their army, but we killing them.
We be on CNN like Say Our Name been saying, 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, Scott Horton Show introducing Elijah Magnier.
His website is ElijahMagnier.com, and you can also follow him on Twitter, spotlight Magnier.
You know how that goes.
Great investigative reporting and on scene war reporting from Syria and the Levant and Iraq and et cetera like that.
Welcome back to the show.
Very happy to have you here, Elijah.
Hello, Scott.
Thank you for having me again.
Very happy to have you here.
Hope you're doing well.
I got this huge article.
I just got such a kick out of this, and I want to talk about this with you.
U.S. policy failure in Iraq, Syria, et cetera here.
The land bridge, the dreaded land bridge.
But first, I was wondering if we could talk a little bit about what's going on in the Gaza Strip with the missiles and the striking back and forth and this and that.
Then from there, I think we can talk about the Golan Heights as a transition into the rest of your Syria and then Iraq reporting there, if we can kind of go in geographical order.
What's going on in Gaza?
Was it Hamas that fired some rockets?
And then what happened?
Well, I think so, because the military in Gaza, they have the capability to launch a new type of missile or perhaps better say, reveal a new type of missile, which is a long range, longer than usual.
It's 125 kilometers.
It's above 75, 80 miles.
That never happened before.
And it has a power of destruction because it has demolished an entire house.
And normally it makes a hole and there are blind rockets.
And this one, we don't know if it is a precision missile or it is just a longer range missile or a longer range rocket.
It's not very clear, but it is something unusual.
And yes, what is also unusual is it happened the day when Netanyahu was receiving the gift from Donald Trump, the Syrian occupied Golan Heights, and it spoiled a little bit his fiesta at the White House.
But I mean, at the end of the day, the move of Hamas or whoever launched the missile, because it hasn't been acknowledged by any party yet, it's an indication that the axis of the resistance, i.e.
Iraq, Iran, Syria, Hezbollah in Lebanon, and the Palestinian in Gaza are united on the same objective.
And if one rejects something, one of the group or all the group or half of the group will react and retaliate.
And then, I'm sorry, go ahead.
And so that's it, really.
So Netanyahu had to return without attending the AIPAC conference.
And but in the meantime, he ordered his troops to bombard Gaza and they did.
They launched 50 attacks against Gaza.
They bombed the building that belonged to the to Hamas and to the government institutions.
But they warned all the Palestinian intelligence service, the guards of the prime minister, Palestinian prime minister in Gaza, and all the objectives.
They warned the people ahead and they asked them by a phone call to evacuate because they were going to bomb.
And minutes after the evacuation, these buildings were destroyed to avoid casualty.
It's a special language between Israel and Hamas, Israel and Hezbollah and vice versa, where they limit the damage to institution or a tit for tat, trying to avoid casualties.
So none of the parties start to escalate to respond to the other.
Right.
And then.
And so I guess the presumption is that this will be good for domestic politics with the upcoming election there.
But there's a real risk that Netanyahu is playing as well, isn't there?
Yes.
I mean, Netanyahu is trying to force his way against the blue and white party that is not doing too badly.
On the contrary, he's getting more seat than Netanyahu.
But Netanyahu with all his right wing group and is getting more than blue and white party.
So any move that Netanyahu makes that is against him or counterproductive will bring his chances to be reelected down.
Therefore, he had to retaliate against the Palestinians.
But the retaliation that doesn't bring him to toward a war.
Otherwise, the Palestinian will retaliate, will fire back.
And then the missiles or the rockets start flying on both sides.
And then the Israelis will not be very happy with the result.
And Netanyahu doesn't want to lose.
He wants badly to be reelected.
So this is why he tried to avoid the war.
And he did a kind of a short, punitive excursion by by bombing few positions that belong to Hamas and the what they call the Palestinian Resistance and Al-Qassam Brigade.
And he limited himself to destroy a few buildings.
And then that's it.
Hold on just one second.
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OK, now, so the Golan Heights back in the 67 war, Israel seized, obviously, Gaza and the West Bank, including East Jerusalem there.
But they also seized the Golan Heights.
And I guess that gets less coverage because they cleansed the vast majority of the population out of the Golan Heights.
Right.
150,000 people, something like that.
And so, I don't know, I guess they announced, was it in the very early 80s, they announced that they officially annexed the Golan Heights.
But no one on earth, no other state on earth really recognized that up until now.
Correct?
Yes, that is correct.
1981, the Golan Heights were annexed to Israel.
But the UN resolution was very clear, rejecting any annexion of occupied territory controlled by an act of war.
Therefore, the Golan Heights was occupied by Israel in 1967.
And it is under the Israeli occupation until then.
But the unilateral position of the U.S. establishment has not been recognized by anyone around the globe, including the United Nations, the Friends of the U.S.
And Europe, the Arab states, including Saudi Arabia, the closest friend to the U.S. establishment, they all rejected this kind of a gift from Trump to Netanyahu.
Basically, he gave him a gift that he doesn't owe.
Yeah, of course.
But that's fine.
What America says goes.
That's the law.
Simple as that.
It doesn't have to make sense.
Never did.
But now, so what do you think will be the consequences of this?
Well, I don't think there will be any factual consequences for the time being, at the exception of everybody is very worried about what would be the next U.S. step.
They're very skeptical about the relationship with an administration that can dispose of territory that doesn't owe.
And it spoiled the plan of the Saudis and the Americans to convince other Arab states to join the peace process with Israel, because now they say, well, what's going to be next?
Is it going to be the West Bank?
Is it going to be other territory that Israel has occupied and will include into the map of Israel?
And even if the Arab leaders accept or close an eye on it, or on some of the U.S. establishment decision, the Arab population will never acknowledge that, will never accept that, and will never regard their leaders in a good way if any of the Arab leaders accept the U.S. gift to Netanyahu.
So, basically, on the public relation level, it's very bad.
On the ground level, it gave the possibility for the Syrian state to be engaged in a guerrilla war against Israel, to ask the support of Hezbollah, to rely on Iran training and support, and to declare an agreement.
And to declare an open war against Israel if and when Assad will feel more comfortable at home and the war is over.
Basically, it is giving more reasons for all the militia and the non-state actors around Israel to continue the struggle.
Therefore, it is extremely counterproductive for any peace process between Israel and any Arab bordering country.
Well, I mean, and that's the thing of it, right?
It makes sense for short-term political reasons for Netanyahu and Likud inside Israel right now, and yet the status quo was working out for them just fine.
But now they've just escalated it in terms of definitions and claims when the reality hasn't changed since 1967.
And they even annexed it officially, really, as far as their own claims go, as you say, back in 1981.
And so, really changing further long-term chaos for short-term gain here when they already had it.
There was already the fait accompli there.
But now, so let me ask you this about the West Bank, because this is something Jonathan Cook brings up this morning, too.
Is, well, maybe they'll just annex the West Bank now if America's going to go ahead and rubber stamp all this stuff.
And I wonder, you know, there are some pro-Palestinian voices who say that, look, Israel did annex the West Bank in 1967.
And just because they don't call it that, I mean, in fact, that's exactly what they did.
And by refusing to kind of admit that that's what they did, that allows them to continue this fiction that someday there will be an independent Palestinian state.
And so, therefore, they don't have to give the Palestinians any rights now inside what is, in reality, the Israeli state and always will be, or at least for the foreseeable future.
So, what do you think of that?
Well, to go back to the last topic you mentioned, you are absolutely right.
For Israel, nothing is changing except bringing more trouble.
So, pushing Trump to declare the Golan Heights as an Israeli property is only creating more tension when nothing is going to change on the ground.
And for the West Bank, in 1948, it was a Jordanian occupation on the West Bank until 1950.
And during the Six-Day War, again, 1967, the Israeli captured the West Bank.
And the UN Security Council Resolution 242 called for the withdrawal of Israel of all the occupied territory in the conflict in exchange of peace, of course.
But Israel doesn't seem looking for peace, but is looking for more provocation, because for 32 years, the Assad family, the Hafez Assad, the late president, and Bashar al-Assad, never opened a fire against the Israelis in the occupied Golan Heights.
And now, in the West Bank, yes, that could be Trump's second gift to Netanyahu, but for no purpose, really.
Because Israel is not going to change anything on the ground, and nobody is going to recognize that.
So, just putting on an Israeli map, locally and domestically, the name of Israel control of this area, but for the outside world, nothing is going to change.
So, I find it extremely counterproductive.
Sorry, hang on just one second.
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Okay, so, now let's talk about Iraq War II and its aftermath ever since then, the redirection, the Syria war, and all of this.
I just laughed out loud in real life here when I read this quote of the supreme leader, the Ayatollah Ali Khamenei of Iran, when he said, We thank Allah who render our enemies imbeciles.
And, well, I can think of a list of people he must have been referring to there.
And I'm not sure if it was divine intervention or ridiculous ideologies and what all corruption here.
But first and foremost, true or false, I mean, is it or is it not the case that there's nothing that America could have done for Iran better than to not just get rid of Saddam Hussein, but then stay for five or eight more years fighting to put the Dawa party and Supreme Islamic Council and their stooges in power in Baghdad?
Well, I would allow the listener to judge.
Let us start in the year 2000 when the Taliban killed Iranian diplomats and declared a kind of war against Iran.
After 2001, 9-11, of course, the Americans met with the Iranians to discuss how to defeat Taliban.
And for the first time after the Iranian revolution, they joined the intelligence effort to defeat Taliban.
And they were working very well until George W. Bush made his famous declaration in the middle of a full intelligence cooperation between the U.S. and Iran intelligence services.
And he declared the war on Iran, describing it as the axis of evil and blew up the whole negotiation that stopped from that day.
And what he did, he invaded Iraq and gave a huge gift to the Iranian to the point when I was living in Iraq and I met a few Iranians of the IRGC.
I asked them why on earth they're not creating a statue for George Bush in the middle of Tehran because he deserves it.
He has liberated Iran from a huge burden all along the long borders between Iraq and Iran and liberated Iran from a fierce enemy who were destroying the Iranian infrastructure and economy for the entire period of the Iran-Iraq war.
But that is not enough.
What the American did is they moved forward wanting to declare war on Syria, to impose on Syria their own conditions.
And their plan was to move, as General Wesley Clark said, from Syria to Lebanon, Iran and all the other countries.
So that was a huge U.S. move in favor of Iran.
But that's not everything.
Let's go a bit fast toward 2014 when the ISIS controlled Mosul.
And when ISIS controlled Mosul, the Americans stood back and waited, refused to deliver weapons and ammunition to the Iraqi government.
At that time was Prime Minister Nouriel Maliki and refused to support the Kurds in Erbil for them to be protected against ISIS attack.
And they created a huge space for Iran to move in.
And I recall four Iranian planes landing in Erbil supplied with weapons to the Kurds where Iran and particularly Brigadier General Qassem Soleimani became one of the closest allies to the Kurds and to Baghdad.
Because the Iraqis saw that the Iranians are supporting them when the Americans were watching.
And it took a couple of months for the Americans to move in.
But let's go to Syria now.
What the Americans were saying, we want to prevent the line between the road line between Tehran, Baghdad, Damascus and Beirut, because that will be the supply line of weapons that we don't want Hezbollah to receive.
And we don't want the Syrian army to rebuild these trains.
And what they did is they stayed.
They went and sent forces to the border.
That's a crossing between Iraq and Syria.
There is another crossing in Qamishli.
I took both roads during the war because sometimes one would close, the other one would be open.
And in both crossings, the Americans are in full control, preventing any exchange of commerce or cars or trucks or anything going between the two countries.
And what Donald Trump said, he said, I want to pull out.
This is a land of sand and death, and I don't want to stay in the country.
By saying I don't want to stay in the country, he was told that he can't do that and leave ISIS behind.
Otherwise, the occupation, the U.S. forces will be declared as occupation forces because their legitimate reason to stay is fighting terrorist groups, that is ISIS and al-Qaeda.
Now, let us leave al-Qaeda on the side because the U.S. supported al-Qaeda.
Let's go to ISIS only.
And so Trump said, OK, I'm going to defeat ISIS and then I will pull back.
So what he did is after two years of just caressing ISIS from time to time, allowing it to gather around the Euphrates River and proliferate and increase in number and use its strengths and do excursion and attacks and insurgency against the Syrian army and even sometimes against the Kurds, he had decided to eliminate ISIS.
And when he has decided to eliminate ISIS by bombing ISIS, by artillery and by air bombing, now he got rid of ISIS in that particular area because the main forces who really attacked ISIS for the last half a decade are the Syrian army and their allies.
But also the Kurds attacked ISIS in the Al-Hasakah province and Deir ez-Zor, part of Raqqa, part of Deir ez-Zor and Al-Hasakah.
So now he has cleared the road.
So the Iranian, the Iraqis and the Syrian said, well, that's great.
I mean, Trump is really a good man.
He cleared the road for us.
Now we can reopen the road along Deir ez-Zor and Bukamal.
That was where they all piled up ISIS for the last couple of years and allow it to stay there.
And now they eliminate it.
Now we can reopen the road.
We can create a train, build a train track between Tehran, Baghdad and Syria.
And now we have the way to support the Syrian economy and for all the trucks to come from Iran to Iraq and from Iraq to Syria again.
So this is why also the ex-president of Iran, Hashemi Rafsanjani, said about the United States establishment, it's a dinosaur because it's very strong, with a bird's brain because it doesn't think strategically.
Yeah, no question about that.
Well, and don't leave out on the Iraqi side of the border, Iraq War III.
I mean, you mentioned how Obama kind of stood back and let the Islamic State take all of Western Iraq until they were really threatening Baghdad and Erbil before he intervened.
It really was like five weeks later before he launched Iraq War III there, let them consolidate their gains first.
But then he turned right around and he put the U.S. Air Force and Special Operations Forces right at the beck and call of the Bata Brigade again.
The same guys that they wished that they hadn't fought Iraq War II for, they went and turned around and fought Iraq War III for them as well.
And so now, which is just as huge, right?
In other words, on the Syrian side of the border, the Iranians have more influence than ever because they came to help Assad fight against these terrorists that America had helped to support.
But on the Iraqi side of the border, it's even worse, more ironic than that, because America had helped to support the rise of the Islamic State in various ways, as they did, turn a blind eye to it seizing Western Iraq at first, as they did.
But then with Iraq War III, essentially Obama repeated George W. Bush's exact war by siding with Dawah al-Nasiri and their allied militias again.
And now, so no wonder they're so upset when, even though it was al-Qaeda that attacked the United States on September 11th and before, and it was the al-Qaeda-tied Sunni insurgency that was responsible for most American deaths by far in Iraq War II, our government still hates Iran and Iran's friends more, even to this day, it looks like.
And so they're so frustrated because they hate Iran the most, and yet Iran benefits the most from everything that they do.
Well, you're absolutely right, but there is a reason for that, I believe.
By hating Iran the most, Iran remains the terror for the Arab countries, and the U.S. can sell more weapons to Saudi Arabia, who really hate Iran.
So therefore they can't say in Iran there are good guys, otherwise there is no point for the Saudi to invest so much money on the military equipment and raise their ministerial defense budget so high.
And the Americans will not be able to sell them weapons if they say, well, the threat is no longer coming from Iran, as President Obama did at the end of the few years of his mandate by signing off the nuclear deal.
Therefore, signing the nuclear deal for Trump was a very bad idea because it means it prevents him from doing business, i.e. selling weapons to the Saudis, and to maintain the military bases in the Gulf by always saying Iran is a threat and Iran is going to attack you, and Iran never attacked an Arab country.
It's Iraq that attacked Iran, and all the Arab countries supported Iraq against Iran in 1981, but Iran never took the initiative.
So therefore it is essential for the U.S. establishment to say Iran is the enemy and continue pumping this idea in the head of those who are already prone to accept the idea, like the Saudis, and continue to put their hand in their pocket, bring out the money, and buy more weapons, and Iran continue to be the threat.
That's the reason.
You know what?
It's funny, but that policy, that strategy may be the only thing keeping the peace now.
If we attack them and get a regime change, making our failures, the U.S.'s failures in Iraq and Syria okay, because who cares if Assad and Ahmadi are friends with Iran, if Iran is run by friends of ours now, but if they do that, then that will take away their excuse to sell all these weapons to the Saudis and the Qataris and the UAE and everyone else.
And so maybe that will keep the worst war from breaking out.
What do you think?
Yeah, I think this is one way of looking at this kind of policy.
But on the other hand, this kind of policy is generating more than a million deaths in Iraq and hundreds of thousands killed in Syria and 20 million in Yemen who are starving to death.
So in other words, only a full scale war with Iran would pale that in comparison, because you're right, it's a hell of a cold war against them that leads to all these deaths in these other three countries.
But it's not possible anymore because the U.S. can start a war against Iran, but is the U.S. capable of ending it?
I mean, Iran will not be alone.
There will be the front open from Lebanon against Israel, from Syria, from Iraq, and the U.S. will lose all its allies.
Or Hazar friends in Afghanistan, too?
Yeah, in Afghanistan, there is a strong collaboration today between the Afghan and the Iranians.
And Russia is in the middle of all that.
It's not that easy.
I'm sorry we are out of time, but I appreciate your time on this show so much, Elijah.
I appreciate it.
No problem.
All right, you guys, that is Elijah Magnier.
Find him at ejmagnier.com.
Spell it like Magnier.
You know how it goes. ejmagnier.com.
And also follow him on Twitter as well.
All right, y'all, thanks.
Find me at libertarianinstitute.org, at scotthorton.org, antiwar.com, and reddit.com slash scotthortonshow.
Oh, yeah, and read my book, Fool's Errand, Timed and the War in Afghanistan at foolserrand.us.
