04/22/15 – Mark Perry – The Scott Horton Show

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All right, you guys, welcome back.
I'm Scott Horton, and our first guest on the show today is Mark Perry.
Formerly at Foreign Policy, now he's writing for America.
Aljazeera.com.
And this very important one from April the 17th is called U.S.
Generals.
Saudi intervention in Yemen is a bad idea.
Welcome back to the show.
Mark, how are you?
Thank you.
I'm fine.
Great.
Great to be back.
Yeah, good.
Good.
Happy to have you here on the show.
Happy to read you here.
Very important.
You have, I believe you say here, a senior commander at Central Command speaking on condition of anonymity has come out and told you that they don't approve of the Saudi war in Yemen at all.
Is that right?
Yeah, that's right.
And and the feeling that he expressed, I think, extends upwards into the Joint Chiefs of Staff.
There was real puzzlement on the part of our senior military about the Saudi intervention in Yemen.
After all, the Saudis had taken on the Houthis, which is a Shia grouping of tribes, a Shia tribe in the in the north of Yemen, who had proven to be very effective in fighting al Qaeda, which is our number one enemy.
So the question from the American military is, why are we supporting a Saudi intervention that's targeting people who are on our side?
It was a it was a very controversial decision and it raised a lot of questions inside our own military.
That was going to be my first question was, what are the chiefs and the chairman of Joint Chiefs of Staff say?
And I guess it's just politics overrides military strategy even in the middle of a war, huh?
Well, that's exactly right.
They got their orders from the president.
But even so, I you know, I sense throughout this entire support for the Saudis, a real grudging acceptance of the alliance and and real skepticism.
We we supplied them with logistics.
We supplied the Saudis with logistics help.
We supplied them with intelligence.
But it was very, very limited.
And and I think that quietly we were behind the scenes telling the Saudis that this was a bad idea.
And we should remember, Saudi Arabia doesn't have a very good military and their involvement in in Yemen prior to this did not go well for them.
So this was this was kind of one of those interludes in our foreign policy.
That's hard to explain.
That's very controversial.
And as of this morning is thankfully over.
Yeah, well, I was going to ask you about your past tense there.
Is it really over?
Because they were announcing that yesterday, but then it seemed like the strikes were continuing.
Yeah, that's right.
There are some strikes that continued, but the Saudis announced that their intervention was a success.
I think that's that's open to debate and that it had ceased and that they had proven their point.
I don't know what their point was to begin with.
And this is this is now standard for the Middle East.
The shifting alliances, the shifting support of people, the rise of ungoverned spaces and new terrorist groups all the time has really muddied the water on what strategy we should follow.
Now, on the one hand, we're you know, we're supporting a coalition that is fighting the Houthis, which we say is supported by the Iranians, which we don't like.
And yet we're dealing with the Iranians and negotiating with the Iranians on their nuclear program.
So this is I mean, if you walk around Washington, have a cup of coffee with policymakers, they look at you and the words are always the same, which is this is a mess.
Yeah, well, and we're still fighting for the Iranians in Iraq like we have been for the last 12 years.
Well, we are their we are their air force when it comes to fighting ISIS, because they're fighting ISIS, too.
You know, it reminds me of what happened in World War Two.
And it's it's it's not a reach as a metaphor.
We had a president of the United States and a prime minister of Great Britain who sat down with Stalin and shaped an alliance with him to deal with an immediate problem.
And that was German militarism, fascism and the Nazis.
And we made an alliance with Stalin because German Nazism was a much greater and immediate threat.
But there was never any question in anyone's mind that we were dealing with a country in Russia or the Soviet Union that was a benign power.
We knew that sooner or later we were going to have to have a confrontation with them.
We were simply postponing it.
I think it's very similar now in the Middle East.
We have an immediate problem, which is ISIS.
And we're willing to make a winking deal with the Iranians to fight that immediate problem.
Yeah.
And yet, isn't it the case, as Patrick Coburn has been really saying all along as this happened right before our eyes, that American and allied support, including the Saudis, for the so-called revolution in Syria is what led to the rise of the Al-Nusra Front.
And then ISIS in the first place.
I mean, that's not to discount the responsibility of the previous war for turning Western Iraq into jihadi stand.
But it wasn't really the Islamic State until America supported our enemies outright since 2011 in Syria.
I think Patrick has got this right.
And and and you're you're you're quite justified in citing him.
American intervention and any kind of intervention in these conflicts always radicalizes the people on the ground.
So we've seen a revolution in Syria that's become more and more radical.
We've seen a revolution, a revolutionary geography in Western Iraq that has become more and more radicalized.
And I think we're going to have to live with that prospect, perhaps for a generation.
These are revolutions that are sweeping through the Middle East.
And we all know the truth of revolutions.
Moderates don't storm the barricades.
It's the radicals who hold sway.
And it's going to take a while to get through this.
Well, you know, it seems like whichever side we're on, we're distorting how much power they really have.
So, for example, if we help the Shiites, it would take a lot of American help, I think, to help the Shiites so-called liberate Fallujah, Ramadi, Mosul from the Islamic State.
But then if they do that and we're talking about, you know, the Shiite militias and the so-called Iraqi army, the Shiite army expanding their geographical presence on the ground in Iraq in such a way as to just drive more Sunnis into the hands of the Islamic State or whatever comes next.
And then we have a whole new stage of the war that comes up after that.
So it seems like the way everything is now, at least it's more or less a stalemate.
And it seems like all the Americans could do is make it worse by distorting power for or against Assad, for or against Abadi, for or against the caliph.
And instead, they should just maybe quit.
Does anybody in D.C. think that, that maybe they actually ought to back off for a minute?
Well, it's a really good point.
And it's one that I happen to agree with.
I think that the one thing that will unite the Arab world, whether they're Sunnis or Shias, young or old, no matter whether they're Iraqis or Syrians or Egyptians, the one thing that would unite the Arab world would be American intervention.
And we dare not do it.
A good friend of mine who now serves in the White House as the advisor on the Middle East to the president, said four or five years ago when I was making a presentation with him that the last thing the United States should do is get involved in a Sunni-Shia war.
Well, here we are.
We're on the verge of getting involved in a Sunni-Shia war, and it's a terrible mistake.
These are problems that this is a major problem in the Middle East, but it's one that they're going to have to sort out.
We really can't be the mediator of it.
We can't come down on one side or the other.
This is their future, their countries, their religion.
They're going to have to be the ones that make the final decisions.
Yeah.
Yeah, I think that's a really important point.
I'm glad to hear somebody in the White House thinks that.
You know, I'm sure you're familiar with Michael Shoyer, the former chief of the CIA's bin Laden unit.
And he can be really hawkish and say, oh, yeah, kill them all sometimes.
But he was as he was complaining about how crazy it is that we're supporting the revolution in Syria.
And his Fox News interviewer, I believe it was, said, well, so you're saying we should support Assad?
And he said, no, because actually that'll just blow up in our face by making the bin Ladenite type seem right about us, that we're on the side of the Shiites in the sectarian war against them like we have been in Iraq.
We really should just call it quits here.
Is it OK I can keep you through this break and do one more segment here, Mark?
Absolutely.
OK, great.
It's Mark Perry from Al Jazeera America, Al Jazeera dot com.
We'll be right back.
Hey, Al, Scott Horton here.
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All right, you guys, welcome back.
I'm Scott Horton, it's my show, Scott Horton Show.
I'm talking with Mark Perry from America dot Al Jazeera dot com.
And we're talking about the sectarian war that America started in the Middle East and keeps making worse in this case, primarily on Yemen.
And back to Yemen here real quick.
Mark, could you explain a little bit your best understanding about just how much support America has been giving here?
I guess I've read some reports and I just sort of assume that the whole thing is being run out of a couple of AWACS and or a couple of battleships offshore that that America must be taking care of the logistics of the whole thing, even if it's not all their planes.
No.
Well, that's right.
Certainly the Saudis are in no condition to do the logistics.
Their air force is dependent on the intelligence we provide.
The U.S. military has made it clear that we are not providing air intelligence while in Yemeni airspace.
We do have naval vessels off of Yemen.
But as I said before the break, this is pretty grudging.
The Pentagon has made it clear that while we're providing support, it's pretty minimal and that the battle in Yemen from the Saudis and the coalition that they put together is their business.
We're not leading it.
We're supporting it and politically we're supporting it.
But I think it's controversial enough that the Obama administration and particularly U.S. military are really taking kind of a not a hands off attitude, but a distant, detached attitude, nodding their head, but not too vigorously, as it might be said.
I guess maybe that's why you think it's pretty credible that the war is coming to an end now is that the Saudis realize they don't have the support they really would like for this.
And so they got to back down.
I mean, after all, what army are they going to invade with?
They keep saying they're about to invade, but.
Well, that's right.
I mean, and I'm old enough to remember a U.S. senator back during the Vietnam War said, why don't we do this?
Why don't we just declare victory and get the hell out?
And I think that that's kind of the Saudi attitude.
They're going to you know, they're going to bomb some refugee camps.
They're going to hit some command centers and they're going to declare victory and say they won.
That's not true.
But no, they figure no one will know the difference and they get to strut around and we get to say, thank God that's over.
And then that's the end of it.
But I don't think actually anything on the ground in Yemen.
And it's a mess, as I said.
I don't think anything on the ground in Yemen has really been changed by this intervention at all.
Well, yeah, I mean, apparently at least it's not like the Houthis have been driven out of power or anything like that.
But at least some reports are that al-Qaeda has made some major gains.
If they took a seaport, an airport and a weapons magazine of some kind and then I'm leaving one thing out.
Oh, oil refinery or some kind of power station or something as well.
Is that right?
Yeah, that's right.
And what an irony.
I mean, here it is.
The Saudis say they're fighting terrorism by bombing the Houthis and that they're opposing Iran by bombing the Houthis.
And who benefits?
Al-Qaeda benefits.
And and you can see the kind of.
I don't I find it so disturbing because of all the enemies the United States has in the Middle East, the number one enemy must be.
And we need to keep focused on this is not Iran.
It's al-Qaeda.
And al-Qaeda has now made gains in Yemen as a result of the Saudi intervention.
And it means that, you know, it remains a real threat to the United States.
It's all.
And and look at how the neoconservatives in Washington are are are viewing this.
They want a confrontation with Iran.
And yet when we have a confrontation with Iran, who benefits?
It's al-Qaeda.
It's a it's a it's a it's a real problem.
And the solution is to keep our eye on the ball.
The people who did 9-11 were not the Iranian people who did 9-11 and cost thousands of American lives were al-Qaeda.
All right.
And now.
So what about all this hype about an Iranian warship is sailing to Yemen?
It seems like it would have gotten there by now.
And we're just all supposed to believe, I guess, that it's full of guns for the Houthis.
Is that true?
And do you think that there's a real risk of a Gulf of Tonkin type situation taking place out there?
A Gulf of Tonkin type situation is a is a good way to put it.
If ever there is a reason to to go into the Middle East again, it would be Iran.
And there are people who are applauding wildly that this kind of thing is happening.
But recently I've noticed that that the White House is downplaying this so-called Iranian convoy.
There's no question there are Iranian transport ships near Aden and near Yemen.
But the confrontation has not taken place.
The Navy is downplaying it this morning.
It's not clear that the convoy has arms.
It's not clear that they headed to Yemen.
It's not clear that we're going to intercept them.
You know, in these kinds of stories, the first reports are almost always wrong.
And that's been the case, I think, here.
This has been exaggerated, overblown, overdone.
The last thing that the United States needs is a confrontation with Iran.
And I think that we're taking steps to make sure that one doesn't happen.
And now you quote a guy named Michael Horton, no relation to me, a Yemen expert that you say is close to the Special Operations Command.
And he calls all these accusations about Iranian support for the Houthis nonsense.
He just completely dismisses that because, of course, that's the narrative that is kind of underlies this whole thing is that this is an Iranian takeover.
If you read Krauthammer or whatever.
Well, yeah, that's right.
If you read Krauthammer, that's what you think.
The first phone call I made when this mini crisis developed was to Michael Horton.
And I'll never forget the phone call.
He was just absolutely astonished by these reports.
And his description of the Houthis is of a type of Shiaism that is so remote from what the Iranians practice that it's that it's absolutely contrary.
They have not been fast allies and certain allies of Iran.
They're not puppets of the Iranians.
They've been involved in Yemen forever.
It's it's absolutely a whole cloth that that they're viewed as that the Houthis are viewed as some kind of stalking horse for Iranian designs on Yemen.
Nor do they need weapons from Iran.
They've got plenty of their own.
They're well armed.
They've been involved in the politics of Yemen for decades and decades.
That somehow there's a, you know, kind of a politburo like there was during the Cold War, that is, that is yanking all of the strings all over the Middle East is just a far cry from reality.
It's not what's happening at all.
And and we need to to realize that there are, you know, differing, not only differing views of Islam, but they're that they're ever changeable by geographic regions.
So I think that, you know, linking the Houthis to Iran is really a stretch.
Yeah, it makes for a great narrative, though, for those who would confuse us as to who the enemy is over there.
I agree.
Yeah.
And now.
So what about the relationship between the Houthis and the old sock puppet dictator, Saleh, who was deposed and replaced by this guy, Hadi, who's now, quote unquote, invited the Saudis to bomb his country to try to give him his power back.
But I've read some reports where really it's Saleh is, I don't know, really behind the whole thing.
But certainly they claim is allied with the Houthis and is helping coordinate their takeover of the capital for his interests.
Well, I don't think there's any doubt that the former dictator Yemen, Mr.
Saleh, would love to get back as head of Yemen.
But this what this reads like more than anything is a chapter from 1984.
Today's enemy is tomorrow's ally and tomorrow's ally is today's enemy.
And the shifting alliances here between these groups is something that keeps military intelligence people employed in the United States.
It was there was a case at one point where Saleh was fighting the Houthis.
Now he seems to be with the Houthis.
Hadi was fighting the Houthis.
Then he was negotiating with them.
The Saudis took him in, but were never all that friendly with him.
This is really, you know, as Orwell would have it, Eurasia versus Oceania.
But but tomorrow, that alliance could very easily change.
All right now.
So you mentioned the Iran nuclear talks.
And Benjamin Netanyahu, the prime minister, after the framework was announced, said that he would still stop at nothing.
He would do everything he possibly could to kill the deal.
And so that reminded a great many people about your work in foreign policy from a couple of years ago.
Oh, false flag was the article where you said Mossad was was posing as the CIA in order to recruit Jandala, who are bin Laden night terrorists inside Iran.
And as Ray McGovern always likes to remind us, they were killing people, killing Iranian military officers in October of 2009, right when Obama was trying and failing the first time to strike a nuclear swap deal with the Iranians.
And I wonder whether you have any word that there's any danger of the Israelis going that far again right now during the final negotiations on this framework.
I change on this on honestly and transparently.
I change on this day to day.
A week ago, I thought, you know, there's no way the Israelis would would be so stupid as to be absolutely confrontation with Iran or cross into a war with Iran today.
I'm not so sure.
When you quote Mr. Netanyahu saying he would do anything to stop a nuclear deal, I have to believe that at face value.
I have to take that at face value.
I think that there's a very real danger.
And I think there's not only a real danger that Israel might do something that would draw us into war with Iran.
It's now clear to me as a result of the Yemen crisis that Saudi Arabia would too.
We have you know, we this is a very dangerous time.
We are we are undergoing a major shift in our thinking on the Middle East and on Iran.
We're attempting to stop the nuclear program.
And that is viewed as a threat by our allies, Israel and Saudi Arabia.
So we have to be very careful.
I support the nuclear deal.
I think it's absolutely a lot tougher than people give it credit for that.
Obama has done a very good job on this.
But I think the dangers are are ever present and day to day.
And it could very easily go the other way.
All right.
I'm sorry.
I'm keeping you in the break here for just a second.
But let me ask you one more thing.
You mentioned the Israelis and the Saudis.
What about the national security state?
What about, you know, not not necessarily.
Well, yeah, sure.
Go ahead and throw in the biggest contractors like Lockheed and them, but especially the Central Intelligence Agency and the Pentagon.
They like having Iran for an enemy.
They they have as a Cold War type enemy they have for a long time.
And there were at least some reports that the CIA was in on it when Mossad was hiring Jandala to do those attacks.
And, you know, I don't know whether that was at the president's behest or whether that was an attempt by them to undermine his peace treaty.
Then I don't know whether it's even true, really.
But I wonder whether you think that there's a consensus inside the national security state that they support what the president is doing, because they certainly have a say, you know, even if those of us in the public don't necessarily get to hear it.
Well, I know it's a good it's a good question.
And I'm not sure I have the clearest of answers, but I'll say that there is no appetite inside the U.S. military.
For any kind of military confrontation with Iran, it would just be too costly and too bloody and the outcome too uncertain.
And and I but I do think that, you know, the national security state never turns down an opportunity for a confrontation and there's money to be made in arms sales.
Balancing that out, there are people lined up at the door, including America's oil companies, including Silicon Valley, including weapons manufacturers are lined up at the door now willing to do business with Iran.
And it is a huge, huge market.
And I think that that is going to be too hard for the national security state to turn down.
Right.
Yeah.
See, that's the real trick.
You got to line up the arms dealers behind the peace deal.
Well, that that that's what it amounts to.
And we're a ways away from that.
But I certainly don't discount it.
There's a lot of people who are frothing at the mouth willing to do business in Iran.
And that's the one thing that that that makes the Obama opening popular in in some segments of the national security state.
OK, good deal.
Thank you very much for your great journalism and your time again on the show, Mark.
Good to talk to you.
It's always good to be here.
Thanks.
All right.
So that's Mark Perry.
He formerly a foreign policy now at America Al Jazeera dot com.
And the latest is U.S. generals.
Saudi strike in Yemen.
A bad idea.
And before that, if in case you missed it, you might like Netanyahu's Congress invitation raises eyebrows among some U.S. generals.
That one was a good read, too.
Hey, I'll start here to tell you about this great new book by Michael Swanson, The War State and the War State.
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