Deep Dive
Shownotes Transcript
Over 25 years ago, on September 29th, 1998, we watched a brainy girl with curly hair drop everything to follow a guy she only kind of knew all the way to college. And so began Felicity. My name is Juliette Littman, and I'm a Felicity superfan.
Join me, Amanda Foreman, who you may know better as Megan, the roommate, and Greg Grunberg, who you may also know as Sean Blunberg, as the three of us revisit our favorite moments from the show and talk to the people who helped shape it. Listen to Dear Felicity on Spotify or wherever you get your podcasts. Ryan Reynolds here from Intmobile. With the price of just about everything going up during inflation, we thought we'd bring our prices down.
So to help us, we brought in a reverse auctioneer, which is apparently a thing. Mint Mobile Unlimited Premium Wireless. I'm going to get 30, 30, I'm going to get 30, I'm going to get 20, 20, 20, I'm going to get 20, 20, I'm going to get 15, 15, 15, 15, just 15 bucks a month. Sold! Give it a try at mintmobile.com slash switch. $45 upfront payment equivalent to $15 per month. New customers on first three-month plan only. Taxes and fees extra. Speeds lower above 40 gigabytes each detail.
Hello, Eamon. Hello, Thomas. And hello, everyone. Thank you for joining us for the very first conflicted... Well, my Apple Watch was talking to me. That's technical error number one. How many will we have during this very first conflicted live Q&A?
Q&A. First of all, everyone who joined us today, welcome. We're sorry we're running a bit late. We had a little technical hiccup, but we're back in action. We're certainly delighted to have you all here. Before we get started, we have a bit of housekeeping. First of all, you'll notice the way this live streaming software works is that you can see us, but we cannot see you. So if you have a question for us, drop it into the chat on the right side of your screen.
And, you know, I'm sure I don't have to say this because conflicted listeners are all very civilized and polite. But we do ask that if you're sharing anything in the chat, keep it respectful. We love a lively debate, but please let's be cordial. That's the one thing about conflicted. We talk about deep subjects, but always with a friendly tone.
The next thing is you'll notice on your screen that you have the ability to call in. However, we ask that you do not call in as we will not answer it and it will disrupt the flow of the show.
Finally, the show will last one hour. We're going to start off, Eamon and I, by discussing recent news from Turkey, Saudi Arabia, and Iran. And then we'll move on to answering some of your questions. So do share questions in the chat. We will be able to get to some of them at the end of the hour. Rightio, that's it. Let's dive in. Eamon.
Turkey. As of this recording, Turkish troops appear poised to invade northern Syria in force. They've been bombarding Kurdish militia positions across the border.
And all of this follows a bomb attack, a pretty brutal bomb attack in Istanbul on the 13th of November, which President Erdogan has blamed on the YPG, a mainly Kurdish militia operating in northern Syria. Will Turkey invade? And what's Erdogan's endgame in Syria?
It looks like it. It looks like there will be a limited land incursion by the Turkish forces into the Kurdish areas of northern Syria. The trouble here is, you know, there is a good assessment by some credible intelligence analysts in Europe that the act that took place in Istanbul, that terrorist act, was actually the work of a terrorist
a small rogue element from the PKK-YPG nexus. And the aim is to provoke something. So the PKK are the Kurdish groups that operate inside Turkey, resisting the Turkish government, and the YPG are in Syria. Yeah, but they are almost like, more or less like having a close...
they are from within the same ideological makeup, if we can call it this way. Oh, I lost you there. I don't know if anyone else lost you. Still alive. Still alive. So in a sense, the problem here we have is that the Syrian regime is,
not going to like the idea of a Turkish incursion, but they also like the idea of a Turkish incursion at the same time because it is going to cause mayhem for the Kurds who are allied with the Americans. It is a very complicated situation and Erdogan is already trying to court Assad in order to create that pincer movement at some point in the future. But for now, whatever Turkish military step that's going to happen will be limited.
And Erdogan, his primary purpose in invading northern Syria, I mean, you read things like he wants to create an enclave within Turkey really to re-export Syrian migrants. He's sick of all the Syrian migrants in Turkey. He wants to send them back. Is that what he mainly wants to do? Or is this mainly about neutralizing the threat as he sees it from Kurdish militias in general and Kurdish separatism, Kurdish nationalism? Or is it both?
Well, remember that always strong men, they need a, you know, how can I say, a bogeyman in order to scare their people, to believe that, look, I'm protecting you from a real specter of terrorism here. And unfortunately, that terror attack that took place in Istanbul really played into Erdogan's hand because he is running for elections.
or re-elections and he is trying to portray himself as a strong man that turkey needs in order to protect the turks from the you know the shadowy specter of terrorism um and therefore maybe by doing so he is creating more terrorism in order actually to justify you know himself remaining in power unfortunately it's an old story uh speaking of strong men uh
since we're talking about, um, about, uh, Erdogan, we might as well talk about Vladimir Putin in Russia because Turkey and Russia at the moment are, are also involved in a kind of very awkward dance over the, over the Ukrainian issue. Um, and, uh, but it, it's tied to Syria because, you know, uh,
Putin has asked Erdogan, please don't invade Northern Syria. Russia is still, I understand, in Northern Syria or in Syria, but perhaps a little bit preoccupied with Ukraine to do any active operations on the ground in Syria. What is the relationship now, would you say, between Ankara and Moscow? And how is Erdogan trying to take advantage of Putin's invasion of the Ukraine and the geopolitical fallout of that invasion, especially in the run up to these elections?
As usual, Erdogan is trying to play all parties and trying to be everything to everyone at the same time because he is seeing the opportunity here. He is, you know, the typical Machiavellian, you know, a strong man looking at the opportunities and the opportunities are presenting themselves from every angle. He is looking at cheap opportunities.
energy from Russia. He is looking at Turkey becoming an arbitrage place for energy from Asia, Russia to Europe. And this is where he wants to be. And so therefore, his relationship with Moscow is the carrot and the stick. On one hand, he is providing weapons to the Ukrainians. On the other hand, he is providing
a channel for Putin's money and money laundering machine to continue working as well as arbitrage for the oil and gas that Russia want to sell on the open market.
Well, you know, Turkey, it's a big beast. It has these huge geopolitical ambitions now, well beyond Anatolia, well beyond the Middle East. And it raises a question that one of our listeners, M. Agbebi, I hope I've got that right. He's at Harkonnen82 on Twitter. So he must be another Dune fan. A man of the manhunt. He says Turkey...
Exactly. So M. Agbegi on Twitter asked us, Turkey have historically been a military powerhouse. What are their current aims and objectives to project power beyond their borders? In April of this year, The Economist wrote that Turkey and France, after sparring in Libya, have also locked horns in West Africa, the Sahel and the Maghreb, where Mr. Erdogan has challenged French influence by playing on France's image in
as a colonial aggressor. In Somalia, Erdogan faced off against Saudi Arabia and the UAE when they're spat with Qatar, which is friendly with Turkey, spilled over into a proxy struggle in the Horn of Africa. I've also read that as Chinese investment in Africa has taken a wobble of late, Erdogan's trying to fill in the vacuum. So clearly, Turkey has big ambitions
What are those ambitions? What is his big vision? Because you framed it a bit like trying to keep the plate spinning, that kind of weird mobster gangster state he's got on the one hand, trying to get reelected on the other hand. But there is some serious geopolitical strategy as well. Of course, there is a geopolitical strategy and it centers around three objectives. The first objective is economic stability.
Turkey is in deep economic trouble and it needs to get itself out of it. You can't extricate yourself from economic troubles without having alliances. And he is trying to repair some of the damage that happened over the past decade. And that is starting by, you know, causing up to Moscow, causing up to Riyadh, causing up to Abu Dhabi and to some extent causing up to Cairo also.
While at the same time, the second objective here is to become an energy powerhouse. Turkey is poor in terms of energy resources, but it has a geographic position which can benefit the European, Middle Eastern, Russian and Central Asian markets by actually being the conduit through where the producers are.
can actually pass the energy through Turkey to consumers. And therefore, the idea is that to use this as a political leverage. It didn't do Ukraine very well, but nonetheless, Turkey is trying to be the arbiter and the middleman in this new post-Ukraine war energy geopolitics.
And the third objective here is basically to become a powerhouse in terms of military hardware. The idea is that Turkey is becoming better and better at military technology and they want to be, you know, the poor man's, you know, exporter of weapons.
Well, you know, it's funny. In season three of Conflicted, we took the broad view about Turkey going back to the Byzantine period. And in a way, Erdogan is trying to return Turkey to that strange, awkward middleman role the Byzantines played. The Ottomans were the strong man.
But the Byzantines were sort of caught between worlds and they learned to play very adroitly as a middleman between different competing powers. So maybe Erdogan is not actually an Ottomanist. He's a Byzantinist. You mentioned the economic problems that Turkey has been going through. Now, I'm going to have to push you on this a bit, Eamon, because in season two, you told us that Erdogan's economic policies were the reason for his political success.
And you focused on that kind of public private partnerships plan that he had, which were allowing the government to build infrastructure and grow the economy without direct state control, but with the state benefiting from profit. So a kind of public private partnership. Now something's gone wrong in that model. Inflation is rampant. These PPSs, as they're called, PPPs are rife with corruption. So what do you think? Would you say now three years later,
later that the Erdogan model isn't as robust as you thought? Always remember that strong men, unfortunately, when they see the economic success, they think that it was their miracle. It was their hands that created all of this. It happened to Erdogan, it happened to Putin, and it happened to shipping.
All of these men came promising a lot of economic success. Actually, they achieved economic success because they did not interfere that much in the market. But then as soon as they saw that the market is actually thriving, as soon as they started interfering, basically, they just put obstacles rather than pave the way. And this is exactly what's happening in China, what's happening in Russia, and what's happening in Turkey at the moment.
I read an interesting report on the Turkish economy because it's slightly bewildering. It's slightly bewildering. Don't worry. Dear listener, dear viewer in this case, we're new to this live Q&A show, so there'll be a couple of hiccups along the way. Anyway, I read a report about how economists are slightly baffled by the Turkish economy's performance because inflation is insane, like 80% and even higher at times.
Interest rates are high, even though Erdogan would like to push them down. That's part of the problem. But nonetheless, GDP growth overall is still decent. And so I think that there's a strange kind of contradiction at the heart of Turkey where the people of Turkey are very, very entrepreneurial. They're very hardworking. There's a tremendous diversity of private sector companies.
sort of models that follow big, huge corporations, small family firms, a lot of diversified investments. So they can kind of adapt quite adroitly, the Turks, I should say, to these ever fluctuating economic conditions. So it may be that in the long term, Turkey's sort of rise will not be arrested by this blip, by this economic kind of
blip at the moment. As long as Erdogan doesn't interfere that much in the economy, that's the first thing. And the second thing is that the Turks were first unlucky with COVID because, you know, Turkey relies a lot on the, you know, the tourist sector, you know, for hard cash coming into the country, as well as for retirees from Europe buying real estate. However, that collapsed with COVID. However, now there's something here happening, which is the Ukraine war has been a blessing. First of all,
a lot of Russians moved to Turkey with their money and they have really, you know, went into Turkey because they can then obtain Turkish citizenships by basically just buying properties worth about $400,000. You get the Turkish citizenship within three months and then Russians become Turks. They have bank accounts there in dollar and it's estimated between 38 to about $42 billion in
From March all the way until September, six months, roughly about $42 billion poured into the Turkish economy. That pushed the GDP numbers a little bit further because the real estate market recovered a little bit because of the Russian economy.
you know, I would say like an amine influx into Turkey and with their money because they wanted to buy that citizenship which can give them some room for breathing and maneuver in the age of sanctions that's been slapped upon them by Western powers.
What a time we're living in. So let's move from Turkey now to your homeland, Saudi Arabia, and from one strong man to another. I'd like to start with MBS, the crown prince of Saudi Arabia, the notorious crown prince of Saudi Arabia, Mohammed bin Salman.
Would you say, Eamon, that his international reputation is finally being rehabilitated properly? For example, we all saw that he was there at the World Cup, sitting there with the Qatari Amir Tamim, which was quite funny to see. I think for those of us who've been following the Qatar-Saudi Arabia imbroglio over the last five years, and in fact –
One of our listeners, Joe Brennan, on Twitter, asked for your thoughts on the Qatari Amir, on FIFA president Yanni Infantino and MBS all sitting together during the Qatar versus Ecuador match. What does that tell us about the ever fluctuating dynamics of golf politics, Eamon?
Royalpolitik, man. Royalpolitik. That's exactly what it is. I mean, at the end of the day, you know, we are dealing with the most pragmatist of the pragmatist, you know, people. No, no,
The most, you know, pragmatist people on the world are the dynastic, you know, princes. They are the ones who actually have to deal with the fact that they have to, you know, straddle, you know, several worlds in order to survive. And MBS is no different. I mean, he has to balance China against Russia, against Europe, against the U.S.,
He has to also balance the conservatives in his country against the liberals, the modernizing agenda against the religious agenda. I mean, he has to really balance so many acts in order to, one, survive. Remember, I mean, he's a young man. I mean, basically, he's younger than both of us by about, what, six, seven years. So we have to deal with the fact that he is a young man. He is a young man that he is going to inherit the crown at any moment now, and
over the next two or three years, possibly because of the aging effects on his father. And at the same time, the fact that...
Can we say his image being rehabilitated? I would say you can't rehabilitate an image after what happened in Turkey to Jamal Khachoggi because the narrative is so much against him, even though you and I discussed really what happened. The problem is the narrative was so strong against him that it will take a while for the narrative to actually change. But what
What happened here is that in the eyes of the Saudi people, at least, he has been rehabilitated.
because he came out the other side stronger, able to challenge to some extent, you know, the pressure from the West and from the Americans, was able to really steer the country through the COVID crisis and still stick to the diversification of the economy agenda, which is while not going to
you know, really well, it's not going terrible either. It is somewhere there in the middle. And the numbers, you know, speak for themselves. And so I think, you know, so far the results are mixed, but enough to say that he is out of the danger zone by now.
Well, if his domestic position is strong, that's great, I guess. But I'm more interested in this international position. So earlier this month, he attended the G20 summit in person, but he did not meet with President Biden, which is the president who notoriously, as candidate Biden,
called Saudi Arabia pariah state, and many observers would say had been particularly ham-fisted in his dealings with Saudi Arabia for whatever reasons. I don't know. It seems that the Democratic Party of America has Saudi Arabia in its sights. I'm not sure exactly why. You probably have ideas about that.
But I want to focus more on the sort of the spat at the end of the summer. So in July, Biden went to Saudi Arabia and, you know, actually ate humble pie, kissed the ring, met with MBS and left, he says, believing that he received a promise or a commitment to keeping the oil price low, if possible, by increasing supply or at least not decreasing supply. That didn't happen. And
And it caused this huge global sort of storm of controversy where I think the Saudis actually behaved very professionally in the face of some pretty bratty complaints from Washington, especially the Democratic Party, as they were preparing for their midterm elections. So what's the long term consequences of the current spat between MBS and
And President Biden, is it just gonna drive Saudi Arabia away from America even more, pivot more towards China? What do you think's gonna happen?
First of all, I mean, you know, no one is saying that the Saudis will ever pivot away from Washington. That's not going to happen. I mean, basically, it's just a rebalancing. The idea is that MBS wanted to tell the Americans, look, gone are the days when you can pick up the phone from the White House to the king of Saudi Arabia and to say, you know, hey, pal, you know, can you drop the price by $20, $30 per barrel? Thanks. You know, and that's it.
The vassal state relationship between Saudi Arabia and the U.S. needed to be adjusted a bit. So instead of the 90-10, MBS is trying to adjust it to about 70-30. There is no breakaway between Saudi Arabia and D.C. It's not going to happen. Not in at least the next decade or possibly two.
Because the Saudis still need the America's security umbrella, basically. Is that the reason? The main reason? Well, not only that, the Saudis view America as something else completely different. You know, for them, they don't view the Chinese as any alternative to America. They always say, if you ask any Saudi, and I have lots of friends, you know, Saudi friends, like, you know, in position of authority and influence. And what they say is that, look, you know, at the end of the day,
We will only start to consider China as an alternative to America when China is transformed from a nation of imitation to a nation of innovation. And at the moment, for as long as America is the innovator and China is the imitator, our bet will be on Uncle Sam.
So that is the- The PIF is putting its money where its mouth is, I guess. The PIF continues to invest heavily in American corporations. Exactly. To some extent, this spat was just superficial as all of these Saudi American spats are. The relationship underneath the hood is strong. It's the real special relationship in the world, I would say. Indeed, absolutely. It's just a married couple. I mean, after 75 years of marriage, I mean, it's going to happen, man. Yeah.
So I hope – so we got a question – well, in fact, a request from Max West on our Facebook discussion group asking us to discuss the OPEC production cut and U.S.-Saudi relations. And this goes on because there's another OPEC meeting coming up in I think five or six days. Already, again, the press is reporting what are they going to do? What are they going to do? I don't know.
I'd like you to sort of speak a bit, Eamon, to what is going through the Saudi oil minister's mind at any given point when he's thinking of an OPEC meeting. Because people talk about Saudi Arabia like they can just unilaterally make decisions, but it is a cartel. It is a group decision. And with OPEC+, it involves players like –
Russia, who of course have goals of their own. So what will the Saudi oil minister be, who's the older brother of MBS, of course, who will be thinking as he prepares for this meeting in a few days? Look, when OPEC ministers think about all the time are three things. The weather, the economic data,
And the disease data. Seriously, I'm not kidding. They think about China and the lockdowns. They think about the weather and is it going to be mild or is it going to be cold? And they are thinking about the economic data because all of these three sets of data would determine the demand. Oil is about supply and demand.
And that's it. So what happened is that Biden was mistaken, or I would say because of his age, kind of, compus mentis. Basically, he wasn't able to comprehend what MBS and everyone else were. Non-compus mentis. Yeah, non-compus mentis. I don't want to be uncharitable to an old man. I mean, he's a very nice old man. But, you know, sometimes one wonders. Yeah, old men. Like, they can't comprehend what young men are telling them. And so MBS...
Isn't it amazing, Eamon? Sorry to interrupt, but isn't it amazing? Like 20 years ago, the problem was that the Middle East was ruled by old men and the West was ruled by young men. Now look at the reverse. It's reversed. Exactly. You look at a sort of meeting of Biden with the Senate and the House majority leaders or whatever, the House leaders. They're so old. It's like looking at a cabinet meeting with King Abdullah back 10 years ago. Indeed.
Yes. I mean, what a reverse of positions here. Like the Middle East is run by the young and the West is run by the old. Although not in the UK, Rishi Sunak is quite young. But I will say something here is that Biden was told by the GCC leaders that we will increase production in August. That was in July, in August.
and then in September. And then in October, we will review the data. And the three data are, you know, weather, you know, what's the weather going to be, the projections, the economic projections, and
indeed, the lockdowns in China, the COVID situation in China. So what happened is that they looked at it in October and they thought, oh my God, I mean, we don't have very good data. We have to cut the production now. So they said 2 million. That was a very misleading figure because not many people actually...
are producing what they are supposed to be producing. So the cut really was in effect 1 million, not two. But nonetheless, the market took it as 2 million. Everyone was angry. Everyone was upset. This is an attempt to bring the price, at the time it was about 80, to bring the price up to 120.
In reality, within nine days, within nine days of that decision, actually the price was at the same level as before the decision. And the reason is because these people know what they're doing. They want the price to be at 80%.
And they knew that if they didn't take that decision, the price projection was to be 65. So actually, there was going to be a downward spiral of oil prices going down. And this is why this meeting in December, most likely because of the current unrest in China, the problem with the production lines there, the winter is mild.
you know, very mild. It's amazing. Exactly. So all, and the economic situation is actually heading into recession. The curve is actually kind of scary. All of this point towards low demand, which means that there will be a cut. The cut is,
I was told it's not going to be steep, somewhere between 400,000 to 900,000 barrels. But they will never mention the word million there in order to avoid another spat with Biden and his administration.
Okay, well, that's Saudi. Now let's move on to your favorite country in the world, Iran. Iran has been in the news a lot for reasons that I think everyone that listens to Conflicted will know. On the 16th of September of this year, Masa Amini, a 22-year-old woman, was arrested by Iranian religious police for not wearing her hijab properly. And
She was brutally beaten so brutally that she died. Protests broke out around the country. They've been continuing now for over two months. And estimates, you know, you never know what estimates to believe, but it seems that around 500 protesters have been killed. It's pretty bad. Amir Kamyar on our Facebook discussion group asks, will the current protests in Iran lead to an actual regime collapse?
Now, two months ago when these protests started, friends were asking me what I thought. And I said, sadly, I don't think so. You know, there's not enough political organization amongst the protesters. They're rather disparate. But these protests are lasting. And the female dimension is slightly wrong-footing the mullahs. It's slightly making them hesitate to use outright force in the way that they did in 2009. What do you think, Eamon? Will these protests continue?
cause a significant change in the regime? I don't think the regime will be toppled by these protests, but the regime will be significantly weakened by that. I mean, the authority, the respect, the fear that the people had for it, the veneration, which means that the next Ayatollah, the
the next Grand Ayatollah is going to have a legitimacy crisis, you know, is not going to be able to galvanize. And most likely, this next Ayatollah will be Ibrahim Raisi, the current president of Iran, who is most likely going to be the successor. The problem with these protests is that they are leaderless. This is a problem on one hand, but actually an advantage on the other hand. You know, in the Green Revolution in 2009, Mahdi Karoubi, Meir Hossein Moussaoui, they
the leaders of that revolution, they were targeted, they were taken, they were put under house arrest, and that's it. They killed the whole thing.
And they killed the revolution. But this one is difficult to target because there isn't the central nerve system here in which to target to stop them. The reality is that it's an anger. It's a festering grievance that is there. It's been there for a while because the problem with the Iranian regime is that they misjudge the mood among the people. The people don't want
to have a diet of empty slogans and religious fanaticism. What they want is really education opportunities and economic prospects, which the regime seem to be gambling with all the time. And the more the sanctions continue to go on,
the more that people realize that the IRGC is controlling the economy through the sanctions and has now controlled or is now in control of 40% of the GDP in Iran. And that is stifling small businesses, medium-sized businesses. They are unable to flourish. They are unable basically to have the jobs and the aspirations and the education that they want. So,
It's amazing that in season three, we talked about the concessions era within Iran when Westerners, British people mainly, had these very, very monopolistic concessions over the Iranian economy, which brought down the Qajar dynasty and caused the first wave of revolutionary foment there. And now, weirdly, following the Islamic Revolution of '79, a similar sort of stranglehold over the economy exists.
But from within by the IRGC, similarly being considered by the lower middle class, the business class is very, very unjust. Now, I find it interesting that Masa Amini was a Kurd from a Kurdish region of northwestern Iran. And so we have Turkey now about to invade northern Syria to deal with Kurds there.
And IRGC troops – and the IRGC rather sending troops into its own northwest to deal with Kurds there. Is this just a coincidence? I mean this just came up into my – popped into my head, Eamon. Has the existence and success of Iraqi Kurdistan legitimately encouraged the Kurds more widely? And is this a problem for both Turkey and Iran? Are they kind of facing the same problem for different reasons in their own countries? I mean –
The Kurds, just like other, I would say, stateless people, I mean, this is where we are having a problem here, is that the Kurds in northern Iraq succeeded in building an admirable civil society there and a nation that really deserved to have an independence.
Does that mean that every Kurdish minority deserves self-determination? This question is really plaguing every commentator there, because if we are talking about self-determination for the Turkish Kurds, it's going to be a large chunk of the republic, like in a breaking away. If we are talking about Syrian Kurds, a large chunk of Syria is breaking away. And the same thing with Iran.
And these nations, Syria, Turkey, and Iran, with some degree of complicity by Baghdad's ruling Shia elite,
They all don't want, you know, the Kurds to have their self-determination. And, you know, and in my opinion, that actually made me more supporting, actually, the Kurdish self-determination because the civil societies they created, not only in Iraq, but even in northern Syria. I remember, you know, I saw how the Kurds who suffered so much at the hands of ISIS
ISIS brutally murdered prisoners of war from the Kurdish fighters without mercy. When the roles were reversed, the Kurds were far more kinder to the ISIS prisoners of war.
And I remember this is when I said that those people deserve nationhood just for this, just for the fact that their mannerism, their way of actually applying justice is in itself deserving of self-determination.
Now, we have again, @Harkonnen82, M. Agbegvi asked on Twitter, "If Iran reached the point where they can produce nuclear weapons, how does that change the landscape in the Middle East?" And that's a very broad question, which we have covered on the show many times.
But you told me, Ayman, that Iran is very close indeed to achieving the capability of manufacturing a nuclear weapon. How close would you say is the regime now? In terms of producing enough fissile material, you know, like –
highly enriched uranium, you know, weapon grade uranium, basically. Like, I mean, enough for two devices. Yes, we do. We have now crossed that threshold already, maybe weeks ago. How close are they to actually taking that material and putting it into, you know, building two devices? It is yet to be seen. It could take months. But we have now reached that level, unfortunately,
You know, so we are entering what I call the most dangerous six months the Middle East has witnessed since the invasion of Iraq in 2003. So, yeah. Yeah.
So obviously, you know, Israel isn't going to like this. Israel is going to do something about this, especially now that, as seems likely, Netanyahu is back again. He's like the Iranians. He's like the end of Kerry for the Iranians. He just keeps coming back. What do you suppose Israel will do in the face of the West or the global community's failure now to prevent this eventuality of Iran becoming a nuclear state?
There is no doubt in my mind that the Israelis are not going to just act alone. They will create, you know, if they can't get a coalition behind them or if they can't convince the Americans and enough European powers to come to with their aid, they will at least create the conditions through which if they act alone,
they will act in a way in which Iran's retaliation will force Western powers into intervention. Remember here is that Iran did not do itself favor over the past three months in two fields here. The first one is by aiding the Russians in the Ukraine war. That was a mistake. That was a very big mistake. And I think the Iranian denials after that
made them, you know, it showed that they realized how big a mistake it was that they sent these, you know, suicide drones, which they used against Saudi Arabia, you know, through the Houthis before multiple times, you know,
The fact that they used them in Ukraine and the fact that they were falling over Ukrainian cities in Kyiv and other places actually provoked the West into becoming more and more harsher on Iran. And Israel actually used that and milked it to its fullest potential. That's the first thing. And the second thing, of course, the protests that are taking place there. So...
And not to mention the fact that, you know, that the Iranians are in a corner at the moment. They have now three options to get out of the current mess they have.
in order to unite the people around the regime. The first one is go nuclear, which is the least likely. The idea is that to test a nuclear device and to announce Iran becoming the 10th nation in the world to be a nuclear power. So to say, hey, nuclear glory, that's it. Anyone who is in the streets is acting against the best interests of the great Iranian nuclear nation. The second...
in a way for them to get out of this corner is to actually just pick a fight with the neighbor.
you know, pick a fight with Saudi Arabia, pick a fight with Pakistan or Afghanistan with the Taliban, you know, they will try to pick a fight with someone in order to say, look, or Azerbaijan even, because they were threatening Azerbaijan recently, which upset the Turks very much. And this actually, like, you know, shows how complicated the situation in the Middle East is. And the third option they have, basically, is just
capitulate, sign a nuclear deal, and that's it. And unfortunately, none of these options seem to be the most viable, and the Iranians are actually desperate at the moment. So, I think the thing is that if Israel attacks Iran in a big way to try to really hobble its capacity to wield this nuclear material properly,
What is the likely retaliation? What powers does Iran have to retaliate? I mean, obviously, it could call on Hezbollah, invade Israel from the north or attack Israel. It could call on Hamas, possibly, from the south, invade Israel. It could call on its Houthi allies to lob more missiles at Saudi Arabia. It can itself lob missiles or via its proxies in southern Iraq.
in oil fields in Saudi Arabia. This has the potential for a region wide conflagration. It's a big, big problem, especially given that Saudi Arabia actually itself has access to nuclear weapons. So it's like the problems plaguing the whole world now with a nuclear Russia fighting the NATO in Ukraine is kind of mirrored down at a regional level of the Middle East. It's a very dangerous time.
And this is exactly why neither the Israelis nor the Europeans want Iran to become a nuclear power, because if they become a nuclear power today, tomorrow Saudi Arabia will become a nuclear power by default. The fact that they have access to 10% of Pakistan's nuclear arsenal
you know, which is offshore. But in the moment, the moment that Iran become a nuclear power through the testing of a viable nuclear device, then Saudi Arabia will transport this capability into its homeland and it will become an onshore nuclear power. And that's it. You know, this will prompt Egypt and Turkey to seek nuclear weapons of their own. This is not what anyone wants. Right.
No. Except maybe the devil. I think he quite likes this scenario. So that's it. So we've talked about Turkey. We've talked about Saudi. We've talked about Iran. And as we've done so, you, dear viewer, have been putting your questions in the chat. Now, my producers have been curating these questions and they've given me some to ask.
Now, this is an abridged version of a question from Eli Byrne. "Is there a way to incentivize Saudi Arabia to invest in building and sharing their knowledge of desalination plants, particularly in Africa?" This is an extremely interesting question. Obviously, as climate change ramps up, Africa, given its population explosion, is going to suffer from some severe water shortages.
Is there an opportunity for Saudi Arabia to charitably or even commercially invest in African desalination plants?
There is a company in Saudi Arabia that is actually now owned or half owned by the PIF, the Public Investment Fund. It is called Aqua Power. Aqua Power, A-C-W-A Power. A-C-W-A Power is a leading Saudi company in terms of integrating solar power with water desalination.
So they use solar power as well as renewable energy, you know, such as wind farms in the sea in order actually to generate, you know, sweet water, like drinking water and irrigation water. For example, they built one in Oman and they built one in Al-Khafji, which is just on the border between Kuwait and Saudi Arabia.
These were experimental at the beginning and it was amazing. I mean, the one in Al-Khafji was producing 400 kilowatts of power, which was generating drinking water for at least 77,000 people on a daily basis. That in itself shows that the ability to integrate solar power in order to generate... Because you
you need it during the day. You don't need to keep producing water 24-7. If you just produce during the day enough water for, you know, 50,000 or 40,000 or 20,000, you know, community, that in itself basically is going to make a lot of difference. They also cooperate with Japan where there's Japanese, you know, technology where you have little ships, actually, like, I mean, many water desalination plants
you know, uh, you know, ships basically. It's such a Japanese thing. I love it. I love the Japanese. Mini desalination ship. Cute. Indeed. Um, so, so, and since Saudi Arabia is producing about one third of the world's, you know, um, uh,
desalinated water, it means that they have now, their technology matured and they have, you know, acquired a lot of patents. Someone said to me, like, just the patents in the field of the water desalination technology is about 1,070 patents just in that field, which they acquired and bought as well as developed themselves. So can they be a leading light
in terms of saving the Middle East, Africa and part of Asia from the ravages of wars over water? Possible. It is possible. Hmm.
That would be interesting. Certainly maybe a way for MBS to solidify his rise back into international respectability. So now we have a question from Sam R. Do you think – this is a great question actually. This is a rather provocative question. Do you think that Saudi Arabia will ever actually build NEOM? Now, we should explain for those who don't know. In northwestern Saudi Arabia, opposite the Sinai Peninsula –
The Saudis are building the city of tomorrow, Neom. Neom is a portmanteau of – what is it actually? Neom.
I can't remember what it's meant to mean, what it's supposed to mean. A new day. I think new yom, maybe new yom. Anyway, and most sort of notoriously of late, they released their plans for the line, this long, straight, narrow city that's something like 180 kilometers long into the desert. And
When you look at pictures of Neom, it does look like something out of Dune or something out of the imagination of George Lucas. Eamon, is this a typical Middle Eastern white elephant? Is this like Ozymandias' fever dreams in the desert crumbling? Is this just megalomania run mad? Or is MBS going to do it? Is there really going to be a 22nd century city in 21st century Saudi Arabia?
Well, I mean, NEOM is four things, you know, we have to understand it's four things really. First of all, there is, you know, the Oxagon, you know, basically, which is a port, as well as, you know, a trade city, as well as a place for the production of green and blue hydrogen and green and blue ammonia.
So there's the Oxagon that I'm more optimistic about because it has practical, you know, applications for new energy. Yeah, practical commercial applications and right in a very good position, actually. Then you have Trojina, which is, you know, kind of like, I mean, a skiing slope, you know.
uh, you know, in Northern Saudi Arabia in Jabal al-Lawz, which is rumored to be the mountain where God spoke to Moses, you know, basically there. Oh yes. So some American Protestants have made a big deal about this in the last decade. Absolutely. Um, and there are hieroglyphic writings there and all of that. So, uh,
discovered. And then you have Neom, which is the city itself where you have the commercial, scientific, educational institutions. That is basically like these three cities are, I would say, if
about half of them were built or each one achieved 50% of building over the next 10 to 15 years, I'll be very pleased. The line, however, I'm skeptical because, you know, it is humongous and it is, you know, basically, I mean, out of, like, June, as you said, the only reason why I believe that it's not going to be built
in its entirety, but it could actually be, because it is actually designed to be built in stages. So it can actually, we could see maybe like if it is built over a hundred stages, maybe we could see five of them only. But even if five were built or five blocks were built, that in itself an achievement. Someone asked a question. I said like, really, what is the line here?
And the answer that came to me from someone who was actually working as a project manager in Neom, he said, it's Noah's Ark and it's modern day Noah's Ark. And I was, you know, wondering what, what did he mean? Like, you know, basically, and he said, well,
in time you will get to know what's the purpose of this place. And so it is, you know, like, is it a city to be a refuge, you know, basically for people who escape, like, you know, basically the horrendous effect of the overheat of the climate change? Or is it something... But this sounds more
megalomaniacal than even I thought. This is crazy. This is becoming like, well, this is like Elon Musk wanting to send humanity to the Mars. This is like, is MBS basically just a techno bro in his heart? He's all a futurist. By the way, my producers, you know, our producers told us that NEOM is a portmanteau of neo-mustakbal, new future. So maybe MBS is just a kind of Elon Musk style futurist.
and thinks that the destiny of mankind is to populate the galaxy. It is straight from Dune. It is possible. It is possible. I'm not, like, I mean, discounting it. But nonetheless, I would say that out of the four projects of NEOM, three I'm excited about, one I'm skeptical about.
So now we have a question from Guy. He asks, is there a growing second Arab spring occurring in Iran following the killing of Masa Amini? Now, obviously, the Iranians are not Arabs. Only some of them are Arabs. A small minority are Arabs. But we talked about the protests. But do you think that what's happening in Iran now is –
is similar to or equivalent to what happened 10 years ago in throughout the Arab world and what we call the Arab Spring? Yes and no. Yes, that it is the same motivation, the lack of opportunities, lack of the light at the end of the tunnel has been switched off by the Iranian regime and there is no light at the end of the tunnel. So people want to, you know, have hope and there is no hope and they are not being given hope by anyone. The only hope
The only hope that could kill the whole uprising right now is for the Iranians to announce that they have reached a nuclear deal with the Americans and that finally the sanctions will be lifted. That's the only thing that will appease the Iranian people. Short of that, nothing. Pick a war with a neighbor, it will make things worse. Going nuclear will make it worse.
But the problem is that the IRGC benefits from the sanctions because they're corrupt and whatever, and they're gangsters. And the ideologues at the top of the movement still would think of any such deal as sort of cowardice or compromise, and they're not into it. Exactly. And this is why I always said that
Look, wherever there is ideology in the government that there will be a civil war. So for example, like in, I mean, you know, in Egypt, the leadership of Mubarak, I mean, Mubarak was a tyrant. I don't have any excuse for him.
But what an honorable tyrant he was. He decided, you know what, I don't want to be... Take care, everyone. Mubarak, honorable tyrant. Yes. Well, I mean, there is honor among thieves, you know. So, you know, same thing with tyrants. I mean, so there are bloody tyrants and there are honorable tyrants. He was an honorable tyrant. He decided not to, you know, kill his own people. The same thing with Ben Ali of Tunisia. And so they decided to leave. The Iranian tyrants, however, are very different. They are like Assad.
They are very ideologically committed. They will not leave. They will fight to the last man to defend the privileges that they have gained over the past four decades. And therefore, the collapse of Iran is going to be in a civil war. And this is why many people will tell me, like, oh,
the Saudis, the Emiratis, the Kuwaitis, they would be so happy. And the answer is no. Many people of position of power in Saudi Arabia and Kuwait and the UAE will tell you immediately that the last thing they want is a civil war in Iran that will result in millions of people, you know, boarding boats and then coming all the way as refugees like into the other shore of the Arabian Gulf or the Persian Gulf, depending on who you talk to.
So that's why, you know, be careful what you wish for.
Nicholas Melor on Facebook, our Facebook page, he asks, Eamon, he asks you to cover the Chinese strategy for engaging with the three countries we've discussed tonight, Iran, Turkey, and Saudi Arabia, building on your special Chinese insights and also to help many of us. And he's asking you now to do what it is that you do best, helping us to break out from seeing these three countries from our Western prism. So put us now in Shijing,
Ping's throne and how does he see these countries, Iran, Saudi Arabia and Turkey? Okay. So for China, Turkey is a troublesome necessity. Turkey
Because Turkey is not exactly like in a playing ball with China all the time. Turkey plays a host to about 400,000 Uyghurs. Many of them are active in opposition to China and rightly so, you know, for reasons that we all know in terms of like, I mean, the horrendous, you know,
that is taking place like in Xinjiang province. But at the same time, Turkey knows that it cannot just keep on using the Uyghurs as a bait and as a pressure card on China. They need also to play
a positive role with China in terms of business. So the Turks are, again, just like they are doing with the Russians, sell weapons to the Ukrainians, while at the same time saying, hey, we're going to help you with your energy issues. The same thing with China. So Turkey is the nuisance that China has to deal with because it is a useful nuisance nonetheless.
Iran is important for China because China, and especially China National Petroleum Company, CNPC, or PetroChina, invested heavily in Iran, possibly $25 billion at least.
as well as the fact that Iran plays an important role in making sure that China's also investments in Iraq and the oil sector there, 37% of the Iraqi oil concessions go to China. So, you know, so the oil investments in Iraq and Iran are part
part of the strategy through which Iran is viewed by China. And actually, China is happy with the sanctions because the more sanctions that there is in China, sorry, on Iran, the more Iran is beholden to China and to Chinese interests and to Chinese concessions and conditions. And the Chinese can extract from Iran concessions of their own and they're getting oil from Iran at discounted rates. That's very good for China. Yes, of course.
And I remember, because I read a lot of Farsi articles and Farsi Twitter and all of that. And so I see how when I was monitoring China National Petroleum Company, CNPC, when they were based in Khurram Shahar and Abadan and these places. And they are doing a lot of projects in the oil fields there. And the locals always basically talking about
everywhere these Chinese people and Chinese go, the turtles disappear. And so there were a huge amount of turtles that were disappearing. And this is when they discovered that turtle soup is one of the delicacies that basically the Chinese and Chinese enjoy so much there. So basically it's one of those eco problems that are caused by the oil explorations, the disappearing turtles.
But nonetheless, this is one of the concessions that they actually took from Iran. But nonetheless, Iran is viewed by China as an important factor in its energy security, not because of Iran itself, but also because of Iraq and the role that Iran plays in securing the Chinese oil concessions in Iraq. Saudi Arabia...
is extremely important for China. The biggest exporter of energy to China is actually Saudi Arabia, 3 million barrels per day. Add to this the fact that the other national oil company in China, the competitor to CNPC, which is Sinopec, possess refineries there in Saudi Arabia, and they have a lot of concessions with Aramco.
Um, the fact is that Saudi Arabia is the arbiter of prices to some extent. Uh, the fact is that Saudi Arabia is a important stable country that China needs in order to be the bridge, you know, between, uh, for, you know, for its, um, you know, policies in Egypt and Sudan and the African home. I know because it's a strange thing, but actually China has always viewed, um,
the Saudi port of Jassan, which is on the border with Yemen, as an important stepping stone towards replenishing and exporting building materials and everything they need in order to carry out their mega projects in places like Eritrea, Ethiopia, Djibouti, Somaliland, Kenya, South Sudan. Yes.
I have a question for you then, actually, Eamon, because now MBS looking at China, is he possibly thinking, well, look, is this a stable country? Because we see these anti-lockdown protests there and we see the geostrategic sort of oven cooker, pressure cooker of Taiwan, you know, ratcheting up. I wonder what the Saudis are thinking. You know, maybe they've put too many eggs in a basket that's about to fall apart. What do you think is going on there? Yeah.
Well, at the end of the day, you know, you have to understand that from the Saudi perspective, you know, from their, you know, viewpoint, China is the factory of the world and it still is going to be the factory of the world for many years to come because no other country in the world is...
got the same capacity as China in terms of production. And the production lines there are just massive, huge. And no country can replace them at any given time, anytime soon. And that is why, for them, these protests are transient in their nature. They don't see them as a regime threatening or that it will result in a fall. In fact, they believe that the Chinese people
You know, you remember the Tiananmen Square events were bloody and brutal. But what followed that was reform. What's happening right now, there will be brutal repression. But what will follow will be relaxation of more rules. You know, it's not going to be... But of course, like in relaxation on the surface, but beneath the surface, like it's going to be an electronic surveillance state, you know, state of art, right?
Well, we're going to wind up here. We're reaching the 60-minute mark. Thank you very much, dear listener, dear viewer, for this inaugural live Q&A session with Eamon and me. Eamon, I have a little question, if you could be brief, because I think after the last episode of Season 3, some people might be interested to know.
how you and your family are getting on in your new home in an unmentionable and unmentioned Middle Eastern country. How are you doing? I mean, I got a lot of very, very heartfelt feedback from that episode. People were very concerned given the experience you had in Scotland. So I'm sure that everyone would love to know how you guys are getting on in your new lives.
I can report that, you know, both myself, my wife and my two kids are extremely happy where we are and that, you know, we have put that episode behind us and that, you know, my daughter in particular is experiencing a very, very happy circumstances in her new school with her new friends.
and, you know, her new adopted country. And, you know, she is speaking up Arabic very well. Alhamdulillah. That's excellent. We're all very happy to hear this, Ayman. Fah, our last question, we could end on this last question. Question from Nick. I am assuming, he asked, that there will be a conflicted season four. Any idea...
how long we will have to wait for it. Well, Nick and all our dear listeners, we ourselves are eager for season four to get off the ground, but just be patient with us. It's going to be bigger. It's going to be better than ever before. We're putting it together now. Can't talk about it, but it's coming. It will be here before you know it.
And believe me, as I get older, time just flies by very fast. So as soon as before you can even think, when is the next season going to start? You'll hear a ding in your phone and there will be. So season four is coming and it will be bigger and better than ever. Thank you very much. Thank you, Eamon, my dear friend. It's lovely to see you. And I'm happy to hear that you're thriving. And dear listeners, thanks for being with us. And I guess that's it. I don't even know. Producers didn't tell me how to end this thing. Do we just...
Do we just hang up? I guess so. We say goodbye. Okay. Eamon, we'll speak soon, man. Thank you. All the best. See you then. Thanks very much, everyone. Thank you, everyone. Bye. Thank you. Bye.