World War Iran
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Dear listener, we're back. I'm Thomas Small. Your co-host with me as ever is Eamon Dean. If you're new to the show, go ahead and binge listen to every episode of season one right now.

It'll give you a lot more about Eamon's amazing backstory and my less amazing one. Excuse me. And you'll also hear us tell the whole story of the War on Terror from behind the scenes and discuss the issues involved in that war in a different way, really, from how you usually hear them discussed. Or you could just start right here.

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Hi, Eamon. How are you? Hi, Thomas. I'm still alive. Still alive. I'm still alive. Oh, I'm so glad to hear it. Not only alive, but in fact, celebrating a new birth. I believe you have a son now. Indeed. Now I have one of each. Oh,

And they are delightful, but also they come with the usual tax of sleepless nights. Well, I imagine that your life as a spy also led to several sleepless nights. In fact, frankly, given the threat that you constantly live under of assassination and other such things, have you really ever had a good night's sleep?

Before the kids, yes. I always had good night's sleep. That's not true. You're lying. You told me once that you couldn't sleep unless you had endless audiobooks playing in your... Exactly. That is the source of my, you know, wonderful sleep. So, Eamon, you know, here we are, Series 2, Season 2 of Conflicted. Season 1, it seems, was rather appreciated. In fact, we have been nominated for...

for Best Independent Podcast at the ARIA Awards, the Audio and Radio Industry Awards. Can you believe it? I was surprised, to be honest. I'm sure that we owe any adulation we are receiving, we owe to you, dear listener, for sticking with us through these extremely complicated stories, which we will now continue with a whole new series of Conflicted.

If you are starting here, then I'll do a quick recap. In season one, we told you the story of the war on terror from 9/11 onwards, and we did it through the prism of Eamon's life story. Eamon joined jihad as a young man. He fought in Bosnia. He fought in the Philippines. He ended up in Afghanistan, where he swore allegiance to Osama bin Laden, becoming an al-Qaeda terrorist.

A couple of years later, he decided terrorism wasn't really his thing. So he left and was given an option. You go to prison or you join MI6.

He joined MI6. They trained him up and sent him right back to Afghanistan as a double agent inside al-Qaeda, which he was for eight years until Dick Cheney outed him and he had to flee the embrace of MI6 and go into the banking sector, one form of terrorism for another.

Was that fair? Oh, yeah. OK. This season, we'll be looking at another swathe of history. But before we go back in time, we want to start with a bang in the present. Iran says it will take revenge for the U.S. killing of its most powerful military commander. General Qasem Soleimani died when his convoy was hit by a U.S. drone at Baghdad airport. So, Eamon, who was Qasem Soleimani? Well...

Well, sometime if you ask this question in Iran, people will tell you, well, you should say or you should ask who Qasem Soleimani wasn't because he was so many things. He was the leader of the Quds Force. So the Quds Force is part of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps.

And I think it's important. It's usually known in the press as the IRGC and people think that the I stands for Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps. That's not true. It is the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, which I think indicates what its purpose is. And the Quds Force within that core is an elite group of fighters who are devoted to spreading the Islamic Revolution beyond the borders of Iran.

Well, if you remember, we talked in the previous season about the civil war within Islam. And we talked about the fact that the entire Islamic world is divided between those who believe in the modern nation state and those who don't, whether they are on the Shia side or the Sunni side. So on the Shia side, you have the Iranian nation state, but people always forget that Iran is actually two Irans.

One Iran is the nation state and one Iran is the revolution. So Qasem Soleimani was devoted to spreading the second Iran, the revolutionary Iran. Exactly, because the Quds Force transcended borders and national identities. They didn't believe in the modern nation state. And so what are some of the things the Quds Force did to project Iranian power in the revolution?

Let's put it this way. The Al-Quds Force might be 20,000 or 30,000 Iranians, but there are 280,000 non-Iranians who actually are fighting under the banner of the Al-Quds Force. Afghan mercenaries, other sort of other mercenaries, all Shia, some Sunni? No, no, all Shia. And we are talking here about bigger than just Afghan mercenaries and Pakistani mercenaries. We're talking here about all of the Iraqi militias.

like Asaib Ahl al-Haq and Hezbollah Iraq. And then you have Hezbollah in Lebanon. You have Al-Houthis in Yemen. All of these proxies around the region, they're sort of in a way, they're members of the Quds Force. And Qasem Soleimani was their commander. To put this into perspective, 280,000 active troops...

fighting for Iran in the region. That's more than the standing armies of the UK, Sweden, and Netherlands combined. So why was Qasem Soleimani assassinated by the Americans, and why now? Okay.

He's been in the IRGC for decades, I guess, and the commander of the Quds Force since 1998. So why now? Well, you know, ironically, I did encounter, not Qasem Soleimani personally, but I did encounter his influence when I was, you know, spying for the British intelligence services. So when I was stationed, you know, in the Gulf...

after the 9/11 attacks and the movement of al-Qaeda from Afghanistan into Iran, especially many of its leaders relocated to Iran. So I did encounter al-Quds Force influence when they hosted the commanders that were giving us instructions, the al-Qaeda commanders who were giving us instructions

in Saudi, in Bahrain, in Kuwait and other places to attack American and Saudi interests. You mean these commanders were in Iran at the time or they were with you in the Gulf? No, no. They were in Iran. They were hosted in Iran. Hamza Rabi' who was the head of the external operations for Al-Qaeda,

He's quite famous. He's the one who masterminded the assassination attempt against Hosni Mubarak, the president of Egypt at the time in Addis Ababa in 1995. And he is the one who actually was responsible for planning the 7-7 attacks in London. So he was being held under house arrest in Iran with someone like Qasem Soleimani's knowledge and coordination even. Total coordination because Qasem Soleimani saw these people as criminals.

Perfect, useful people. They want to attack Saudi Arabia. They want to attack America. How about basically we give them safe haven there in Iran and let them do whatever they want to do. Let them wreak havoc in the region. So what I want to know actually, Ayman, is what has the assassination of Qasem Soleimani achieved?

A former senior US intelligence official just told me that killing Soleimani is the equivalent of hacking into the military servers of a belligerent nation and disabling them and, you know, wiping them out completely. Soleimani

was always, you know, electrophobic or electronakophobic. He believed the Israelis and the Americans were trailing him. So he never wrote any phone numbers. He never wrote any plans. He never basically, you know, put his, you know, plans together in written form, whether paper or online.

He was a walking hard drive, this guy. Exactly. He was the ultimate hard drive, the ultimate brain of Iran's external operations, Iran the revolution. So by wiping him out, basically America has just formatted the hard drive of the Quds Force. They have set them back 10 years.

They have set them back 10 years. So taking him out was a shock. Just look at the Iranians to this day. They are still in shock that the Americans were so bold to do it. And that's why when people say, you know, you remember the World War III trending in that day. And I was thinking, guys, come on, World War III. This isn't going to lead to World War III? No. And simple because the Iranians...

They do not want a war, especially a direct war with the Americans, because they know it will only take 72 hours for all of their military hardware to be destroyed. Yeah, I mean, everyone has to remember that even though it seems these days, with good reason, that American power is in decline, when push comes to shove, the American military can't.

Exactly. And that's why wiping him out, this is important because he was the engine of Iranian aggressive expansionism in the region, in Iraq, in Syria, in Yemen, in Lebanon, in Bahrain.

Not only that, a lot of analysts have suggested that he was actually being groomed to replace the Supreme Leader Khamenei when the Supreme Leader dies. Not only that, he was actually groomed to become the newly elected president of Iran once Rouhani's current one basically finishes his term. So this assassination has some serious consequences for Iran politically, militarily, geopolitically. Exactly. It is their Chernobyl moment.

As we know, there have been these protests rocking Iran since early October with a sort of ferocity and an extent that have never been witnessed before. The regime has been cracking down, killing people in the street.

We haven't heard much about it because they've done a good job of silencing the media and shutting off social media. But it is happening. Instead of World War III, are we perhaps seeing the second Iranian revolution in so many as 50 years? I don't think if... This is my analysis, that if Iran descends into chaos, it's not going to be a revolution and an overthrow of the regime because they have the IRGC. It's going to be another Syria. It's going to be a civil war. Oh, God. As much as many people basically wish...

For a toppling of the regime, the regime will not topple because it's an ideologically committed, driven regime. It's going to be a civil war. Another point I want to make. Many people objected, especially in the West, objected to what happened based on two reasons. First, it was Trump. And they say, oh, Trump, the idiot, he's starting another war.

They do understand that the killing of Soleimani was engineered by none other than Mike Pompeo. This is the American Secretary of State. But since when do secretaries of state organize the assassination of foreign generals? That's very odd. Well, he is not organizing the assassination. He is actually putting it as a policy forward.

And remember, he was the former head of the CIA. So Mike Pompeo have a beef with the Iranians. That's well known in D.C. And also, basically, he believes that Iran's aggression and the reason need to be checked. For him, the killing of Soleimani is...

pushing back against aggression in the region. It's not causing the Third World War, it's preventing it. It's preventing it because, you know, the two forces in the region, the Sunni and the Shia forces, basically are colliding. And therefore, to rebalance...

The conflict, you have to push back against Iran because they were being aggressive the six months prior with the oil tankers and the attacks and the ballistic missiles and, you know, arming of the Houthis and, you know, blockading the Strait of Hormuz, you know, or threatening to blockade the Strait of Hormuz. So therefore, it was important. So when people were saying, this is Trump, he's the idiot, how could he have a strategy, he doesn't know anything,

It wasn't Trump. It was Mike Pompeo. Former head of the CIA, who we assume knows one or two things about the way the world works. Exactly. So I return to my original question. Why now? If Soleimani has been involved in this kind of activity, anti-American activity for 15 years, 16 years, 17 years, why in January 2020 did the president say, OK, take this guy down? So many things happened during that time that really led to that moment. Because first...

Qasem Soleimani had a low profile in 2003, 2004, but then it's the American invasion of Iraq that really propelled al-Quds Force into prominence. So in 2006 was a pivotal year for Qasem Soleimani. First, there was a decision taken by the Iranian leadership that the Americans have overstayed their welcome in Iraq.

and they need to leave in order to make place for Iran's hegemony in Iraq. The second thing is that the Israeli war with Hezbollah in 2006 in Lebanon. So Hezbollah is an Iranian proxy allied with the Quds Force, overseen by Qasem Soleimani, and in 2006 it initiated a fighting war with Israel, which lasted about a month, I think, in the summer. 33 days, yeah. Yeah, 33 days in the summer. So...

So for Qasem Soleimani, his involvement in, first of all, instigating the beginning of the Shiite resistance to the American presence in Iraq in 2006 by supplying, first of all, by establishing Asa'ib Ahl al-Haq, which is the foundation of the PMUs or the Popular Mobilization Units. So these are Shia militia groups armed by Iran, coordinated by Iran, that are within Iraq, agents of Iranian foreign policy. Absolutely. They are the...

IRGC of Iraq. They are the Hezbollah of Iraq, basically. So, you know, he established that and then gave them sophisticated IEDs that were targeting American citizens

armored personnel carriers and American tanks, which basically led to the deaths of hundreds of American soldiers and the maiming of thousands of them. I think most people remember who were around then, remember these IEDs that were targeting American soldiers in Iraq or British as well, you know, coalition soldiers in Iraq. But I'm not sure people then realized that they were being

directly funded and coordinated by Iran? Manufactured in Iran, because they were so sophisticated. You know, they worked basically with infrared sensors and, you know, video imaging targeting. So they were absolutely, you know, amazing in their own

Sophistication. Okay, but you've taken us back to 2006. I'd like you to answer the question, why now? Why in 2020 has Qasem Soleimani been assassinated? Because there are milestones. So 2006 was a milestone here. What was the next milestone? The next milestone is 2011. 2011 with the Arab Spring and Syria. Absolutely.

There is now evidence, hard and fast evidence, that Qasem Soleimani, as representing the Quds Force, was on the ground in Syria at the outbreak of the conflict there, really moving it towards civil war from the very beginning. Absolutely. I mean, the defense...

The Syrian Defense Minister himself, Ali Ayyub, was talking and giving an interview. He said that, "I knew Qasem Soleimani, I met him, and from the beginning in 2011, we planned to counter the uprising of the Syrian people, and the first battle was the Battle of Baba Amr in Homs in 2011, which basically was the first armed clash

you know, of the Syrian civil war. So, you know, after six months, it was peaceful. But then, of course, basically the Assad regime, you know, during the peaceful period killed more than 8000 protesters. So, of course, basically it was inevitable that it will turn into a civil war. So 2011, Qasem Soleimani plays a role in the destruction of Syria. So why 2020? Again, another milestone is 2015. 2015. Yeah, the outbreak of the Yemen war.

which we talked about extensively, as well as a Syrian conference in that. It does seem that Qasem Soleimani has been behind the scenes of series one of Conflict the whole time. He was behind the Qaeda's relocation to Iran. He was behind... In every great sequel, at one point, someone rips off a mask and says, I was there the whole time.

Exactly. I mean, the man was really a pivotal, you know, he was a pillar of the terror, you know, in the region. Because you remember when we said basically there are three tectonic plates moving on in the region, moving in in the region, basically colliding. So you have the modern nation state and you have the Shia political and militant Islam and you have the Sunni political and militant Islam. All

All of these plates basically joining together. So when you have three tectonic plates colliding, what's going to happen? Volcanoes and earthquakes and seismic shifts. So Soleimani was basically moving between the three plates, basically organizing this chaos. So, Ayman, why 2020? Because he overstepped. That's really, that's it. Because...

In the six months prior to his death, he escalated so much. What did he do? Beyond America's endurance and beyond the region's endurance.

One, he escalated by attacking oil tankers in the Strait of Hormuz several times, you know, in May and June. So he continued to attack and seize oil tankers. And then there was that famous drone strike of the oil facility in Saudi Arabia. People probably heard about that. Not only that. You're talking about the largest producer of oil in the world. You know, you're talking about a country that produced 12 percent of the world's oil every day. So when you attack it,

with 26 cruise missiles and drones. 26 cruise missiles? I don't think that's what was reported. It was 26 combinations of cruise missiles and drones. That's an enormous strike. In one facility alone, 17 explosions. 17 explosions. And actually, it was so accurate, it was because there was an insider job. Someone placed tracker beams...

You know, from members of staff who are actually Shia and belong to the IRGC in secret. They are working for Aramco in Saudi. Working for Aramco in Saudi. It's really Cold War stuff. My God. Exactly. They placed a tracker beams basically to guide the drones and the cruise missiles to hit their targets with precision accuracy. I'm very glad that you brought this up because I want to move away from the politics. Yeah.

And just go to the nuts and bolts of how someone is assassinated in this way. So obviously, as you've established, he escalated beyond America's endurance. So Trump said go. Probably a long planned assassination strategy was put into effect and a missile from a drone just crashed.

came out of the sky and obliterated him. But how does that happen? Literally, take us into your knowledge of how that kind of thing happens on the ground. What would have America had to do to kill Soleimani in that way when they said go? Well, when you have targeted assassination,

We have to go back into the beginning of the decision. So basically, the decision was taken that Bin Laden must go, Baghdadi must go. You know, basically, these, you know, Ahmad Mughnia, who was the military commander of the Hezbollah during the 2006 war, where he was killed. In Damascus, actually, I was there when that happened. Exactly, in 2008. That was a very sophisticated decision.

attack by the Mossad, where they placed a bomb at the, you know, basically in his car seat, you know, obliterated him. So it was very sophisticated. So first someone decides this guy needs to go. Exactly. So the process is like this. You decide this person is, you know, the person I want to get rid of.

So this is your strategy. So how do you go about it? First of all, you have to establish pattern. You have to establish... But how do you do that? I mean, obviously, you literally have to tell them so that you follow their life. He wakes up at six. He has a boiled egg for breakfast. He shags his wife at seven. He has a shower. How is that? Who's doing this? Well, when you are a country like America or Israel...

You have an army of intelligence assets on the ground in every single country. You mean CIA agents? More than that. CIA agents, defense, military intelligence agents for the Pentagon. The Pentagon have their own intelligence capability, the DIA. Not many people know about it, but it exists. The DIA, yes, the Defense Intelligence Agency, which is American military intelligence. It's like a CIA inside the Pentagon. Indeed. Indeed.

Then you have the Mossad. And then you have a network of regional assets that helps you. And we will talk about it later, what I call basically the privatization of intelligence. This will be another episode. We will talk about how... No, it's actually this episode, and we're going to get there in a second. I'm in charge of what each episode is about. Thanks very much. Okay. So basically, you have...

a network of privateers, private intelligence assets. You mean like freelancers, mercenaries. This is Star Wars stuff. This is Han Solo and Greedo shooting out in the Mos Eisley Cantina. Exactly. The Mossad, the CIA, MI6, the French intelligence, even countries from far away, China, Russia, all of these organizations have networks of people who cooperate.

And these people are privateers, intelligence collectors who sell information to those who pay. They do sound like pretty shady individuals. How are they trustworthy? For example, I can imagine one of these privateers being hired by one government to get some intelligence, but then just selling that intelligence to a rival government. Do they work for rival governments and are they trustworthy? I work with teams that sometimes basically work for competing governments.

You know, these are teams in Syria. They're not your employees. They have other people they work for. Exactly. You know, I just hire them between now and then for whatever project that, you know, comes across my way from whatever government around the world, basically, that asked the question, you know, or, you know, have the inquiry. So the problem here is that you can't control these people on the ground so much because basically they are living in hellish conditions.

circumstances, they are living in a war zone, man. It's a war zone. They don't know if they will survive to the next day. And if they are found out in Syria, they will be, you know, a head shorter and six feet underground. Have you ever ever lost one of your contractors? Have you ever had to face that that rather tragic reality? Not while on the job. But basically, you know, over the years, I

Always, you know, almost like, you know, three or four times a year, we hear about the death of these people due to, you know, it's collateral damage, basically. I mean, bombs falling from Russian airplanes, you know, the regime, you know, basically shelling of the villages where they are based. Sometimes they lose family members and many of them end up making good money from the work we give them.

that they end up basically moving on to Turkey and from there possibly to other European countries. I see. So America has lots of these in Iraq. The American government says to one or two of them, trail Soleimani or maybe even infiltrate within his bodyguards, become a bodyguard. For Soleimani, because of his constant movements across Lebanon, Iraq, Iran, Turkey, other places. So what happened is,

you don't tell him in the classic way, "Get someone and that's it, no." So basically what you have is that you have what we call basically points on the map where whenever he appears, someone will alert you.

So basically, you know, Baghdad, Beirut, Damascus, these are the three weak points in Soleimani's itinerary. So you have assets in Beirut who can alert you, they are working in the airport, that an Iranian VIP is coming. And based on the protocol, who picks him up?

What car comes, all of these things, you can deduce from that, from the repeated nature of that, that this must be Soleimani. Okay, fine. Damascus, the same thing, Baghdad, the same thing. So on the morning of the assassination, you know, how does the Reaper drone operator, who's probably sitting in Utah or something, how does he know that when he pushes the button, the missile's going to get Soleimani? Several things. First, the American intelligence just learned that he is on a flight to,

from Damascus coming to Baghdad. It's a commercial flight, so they can't shoot it down. But that's about a 45-minute flight, 50-minute flight. Exactly. So you can imagine, like, you know, red klaxons are going, you got 50 minutes, the countdown starts. Exactly. But remember, the decision has been taken that he will be killed. And remember that for the several months before that, they would have known about his movements too. But there was no decision to kill yet.

There was, you know, the planning to kill, the decision has been taken that if certain escalation happen, we will kill him. But until then, the trigger, you know, never took place. There was no trigger yet.

But the attack against the U.S. embassy, the attack that killed an American contractor in Kirkuk in Iraq just a few days prior. So when they happened, now they are going to wait for the next time they know his movement and then take him out. So now they are aware of his movement. He is leaving Damascus airport, coming to Baghdad.

And therefore, the Reaper was just waiting. And what the Reaper does is that it has a facial recognition software in it. This is like stuff out of a Marvel movie. They're just looking at our faces and sort of Thomas is in Waitrose. Thomas is going into the pub. I think they can't see inside the small buildings. But no, I mean, of course, if Qasem Soleimani is stepping out of the airplane and then he is moving into a car.

And while he is on the tarmac, the drone can actually just look at his face, detect his facial features and confirm. See, I thought that there needed to be something on the ground, either near him or attached to the car or something, some electronic device that tells the drone where he is. That's not the case? That's not the case. In this case, basically, you know, it was a... Plus, they made it easy for the drone because he was a VIP who was taken...

immediately from the plane stairs into a car and being driven. So this protocol has been done many times before. So the Americans already knew his protocol.

So that's why it was easy for them to recognize that it's him and then to target him and kill him. So what kind of missile was it? Hellfire. And a hellfire missile, what kind of damage does that missile do? Oh, wow. It obliterates a car easily. So, I mean, something like, how many people died in that attack? I think there were about nine people because, you know, four missiles. And we're talking about, like, vaporization here. Exactly. I mean, I saw a picture of his, you know, arm.

maimed, mangled body after that, basically. I mean, and... Why didn't you share it on social media, Eamon? Well, I mean, it's out there. It's already shared. But, you know, when I saw this, the first thing that came to my mind is that

He died when his car was targeted the same way when he planned and orchestrated and gave the order 15 years earlier, almost to the day 15 years earlier in February of 2005.

to kill the former Lebanese Prime Minister, Rafiq al-Hariri, while he was in a car. His body was thrown out of the car. He was maimed. So it felt as if karma. It looked... You know when they say karma is a bitch? And looking at that in a photo of him mangled like this because his car was attacked, and the same way that he ordered another decent, good human being like Rafiq al-Hariri to be killed this way,

And I was thinking, you know, that's it. You live by the sword. You die by the sword. You live by the bomb. You die by the bomb. This episode is brought to you by Shopify. Whether you're selling a little or a lot.

Shopify helps you do your thing, however you cha-ching. From the launch your online shop stage all the way to the we just hit a million orders stage. No matter what stage you're in, Shopify's there to help you grow. Sign up for a $1 per month trial period at shopify.com slash special offer, all lowercase. That's shopify.com slash special offer.

Well, Eamonn, it's as always fascinating to hear your insightful comments about these things. And just to veer towards a different topic now,

And the reason you know about these things is because you actually are, to some extent, one of those private practitioners of espionage in the 21st century. Indeed, to some extent, yes. So tell us about this world. We're talking here about an exceptionally, I'm not going to say secretive, but I would say a fascinating world where you have a lot of former politicians

continue to be spies, but in a very different manner. They are no longer basically answerable to one single government. Sometimes, basically, they are answerable to several governments because, basically, they sell, you know, basically their services. It's a private sector job. It's a private sector job. You know, so what happened is, of course, when you are working in espionage and then you move into working, you know, for the banking sector, which, basically, when I was there, I was...

a financial investigator into the money laundering and terrorism finance world, as well as security. So then when you are in these jobs, you create a network of contacts. You see, espionage is not just only about what you know, it's who you know.

And when you have a massive network of people, friends all over the world, basically, especially in the hot spots. And to put, to be blunt, these are all bad guys. You have a big Rolodex full of bad guys that you can call. Oh, no. Like, you know, basically it's.

of every manner, bad guys, good guys, you know, neutral guys, basically people, you know, you talk about sometimes people who are, even some of them royalty, you know, you have people basically sometimes who are teachers, people basically who are taxi drivers. And what unites them all is a thirst for money? Yeah, the desire, you know, well, we don't call it money,

We call it the thirst for money. We call it the desire for a better life. I see. So they're all mercenaries to some extent. Yes. Intelligence mercenaries. You see, what is intelligence? I mean, just to give you an idea. I frankly know so little about it, I don't know. Just to give you an idea, and I give the listener an idea, you know, one of the best sources, if you are landing in a city...

And you want to know a lot about the city that you landed in. For example, basically, I remember I landed in Sao Paulo and I was there investigating Hezbollah finances because Sao Paulo is an important financial hub for Hezbollah. Not many people know that, but it is the case. So when I landed there, you know, the most important thing is to find a taxi driver who speaks English.

So that's the first thing. The second thing is that when you sit down and talk to them, the taxi drivers know more

more about the locations of people in the city than anyone else. So he will tell you, oh, yeah, Shia Lebanese people, basically, they have, you know, mosque and, you know, charity. They are in this particular neighborhood. Oh, yes, they, you know, they do have a particular get-together, you know, in this area and this area. I heard about them. So taxi drivers are great sources of information. Exactly. And actually, even terrorists use them as information.

you know, a source of information. So, yes, for example, the Bali bombers, when they landed in Bali... The Bali bombers, yeah. This is in 2002. So when they landed there, it was the taxi drivers who told them where the Americans and the Australians go for parties. So basically, you know, taxi drivers are a great source of information. Do not discount them, basically, as just

People who talk nonsense all the time know they see things the average people don't. And as a result, we or the terrorists basically utilize them without them knowing poor things for information. But what I want to know is why would a government need to hire you? I mean, governments have...

James Bonds. You know, they have guys they can call up and say, leave the girl, put on your tuxedo, you know, fly to Baghdad and assassinate that guy or find out this or that. And Q gives some magic watches and amazing Aston Martin cars with ejector seats. I mean, governments have these sort of guys. So why do they need you? I mean, no offense, but, you know. Yeah.

That's not your lifestyle. I know you very well. You're a good boy. Okay. What is intelligence? But really, most of intelligence gathered around the world, I'm talking about human intelligence here rather than the, we talked about it before in season one, signal intelligence and other form of intelligence, basically, you know, eavesdropping and all of that and electronic, but intelligence

And surveillance. But if you look at the human intelligence, most of it is gathered really in restaurants and hotels. Really. But by freelancers like you, not I mean, why would a government hire you or someone like you? So let's take an example like Syria. What do you think the survivability of a.

white, blonde agent going in for the first time into Syria without that much support from local people. So Daniel Craig touches down. He walks off the tarmac. Everyone says, I think that guy might be a British spy. Exactly. His life expectancy will be measured in minutes.

Let's put it this way. So what you need then is local because you can't put your own people at risk, at a stupid risk like this, because they will be known immediately. I mean, you can't land in a tuxedo or, you know. I've actually always wondered that when watching James Bond movies. Look out for the guy in the tuxedo. Exactly. So you can't just land in. And even basically if you wear, you know, very normal clothes still or casual or whatever,

Still, you are recognizable as foreigner. So therefore, and even if you send people who are of Syrian origin or Arab origin from your own, you have to send them slowly. You have to send them gradually and you have to integrate them into society. It takes months. But what if you need something now? What if you need something now? Yes. Therefore, basically, you look for people basically who run networks, these privateers, and there are quite few of them.

You know, the private intelligence companies, and sometimes they masquerade as research groups or research offices,

What they do for you, you come to them. Let's say basically they have an office in Beirut or Amman or Istanbul. And you go to them and you say, oh, OK, these are pictures of individuals we are interested in in Syria. We want to know where they live. We want to get the exact coordinates. We want you to get close to them. So switch on your Wi-Fi and basically find out their IP addresses and all of that.

So, you know, we want to know what cars they drive, take a video, take a photo. So I will say, okay, no problem at all. I'm in that office in Beirut. So basically I call my, you know, friends, let's say in Idlib or in Raqqa in the past or in Deir ez-Zor or in Damascus or wherever. These are all Syrian cities. Yeah, exactly. So I call, I say, you know, my friend inside Syria, who do we have, let's say in the city of Jisr al-Shughur in Idlib?

And he will say basically, well, we have quite few. I have this guy, this guy, this guy, and this guy. Okay, do they have motorcycles or cars? Motorcycles. Okay, perfect. I need motorcycles. Okay, fine. You're just ordering up a kind of a menu of intelligence options. I'm going to send you by either a Threema or...

Other, you know, I'm not going to mention other apps, but, you know, by certain apps, I'm going to send you, you know, basically four pictures of four individuals who are seen in that vicinity. You know, these are what they are known by. This is their kunya or the aliases.

I want information on them within two weeks. So within two weeks, I would receive full information with fresh photos, fresh videos, you know, the exact coordinates of their houses, who they are married to if they are married, where they go to pray, what cars they're driving. So perfect. And then I hand over this. Now, if that government wanted to do it on their own,

they would have to send someone to find them first. And basically that someone will be at risk. But because the individuals we tasked for this are locals who wanted to do it for money, and they have no idea actually who is the ultimate tasker. They have no idea. They just know that

this is the target, this is what you need to collect, need to know basis, so they will collect all the information and then based on that information, that government will decide either to liquidate or to extract

Well, I mean, there are certain even EU governments did it. Liquidation? Liquidation. Whoa. Even I know EU governments did this. I should really press you on which governments, but I don't think you'll tell me. But, you know, sometimes what happened is, you know, some governments even installed live feed cameras. You know, basically, you know, for example, one of the secrets not known actually is that

These privateers, these individuals inside Syria placed a live feed camera for more than 16 months outside of the main ISIS court in Raqqa, photographing everyone going and coming. And that live feed was in 24 hours basically beaming into one of the European capitals. For what purpose? For basically facial recognition.

Just going and coming. People basically going into the court, into ISIS court. So they identified their judges, their commanders. But I don't understand. I can understand you go into an ISIS court, you can see your face, but you don't come out with your head. Well, you still come out with your head, but the execution happened in the public square. So this privatization of espionage that you're talking about, to some extent, you know, I've seen Casablanca. I've seen these movies. I mean, to some extent,

governments have always employed freelancers on the ground. But would you say in recent years, decades, even the privatization of espionage has gone up in a way like governments in general outsource to the private sector these days? Are they outsourcing to the private sector in this regard as well? Yeah, I mean, basically. And why? Why did that change? First in Iraq, we started to see the privatization of armies. You know, we have Blackwater. We had Aegis. We had D4S. These are American security groups.

American, British, everything you can imagine. And they're just providing mercenaries on the ground. South African even. In the Maltese, well, I mean, basically, you know, registered in Malta, but they are private companies. Even basically people from Nepal, Gurkhas basically being recruited to go and fight in other wars. So that's already happened, but...

The privatization of intelligence, I never seen it like this before. In the past, it used to be like this. You want to spy on a certain country. You have your own embassy staff in that country form a really good relationship with businessmen, civil servants, military officers, law enforcement agencies. So they cultivate all of this and they get the intelligence.

However, these days, because the source of the greatest and the gravest security threats happen in places where there are no embassies anymore. This is a consequence of really the Arab Spring, the war on terror in general. The nation state has been weakened throughout the region and therefore nation states and the embassies that are meant to dialogue with those nation states just aren't where the real power lies in many cases.

I mean, they are war zones. I mean, basically, this is the problem with gathering information in a war zone. For example... Not just war zones. I think it's important. They're civil war zones. Exactly. It's not that it's a nation-state fighting a nation-state. These are non-state actors within governments, within states, transcending state borders, moving... You can't just anymore throw some swanky embassy party, don your tux, hand out some champagne, and talk to your Soviet counterpart. You can't do that anymore. So places like Afghanistan, like Yemen, like Syria, Libya, you...

are basically at the mercy of people who have strong connections inside.

These non-state actors. Non-state actors, basically. People, basically, who have, you know, a small company, you know, with a title, or I'm a managing director or a CEO or whatever, basically. But I'm a private individual. But I'm a private individual with a massive, you know, phone book. And this phone book includes lots of people on the ground there who will do anything, you know, for a buck or two because, basically, they are desperate. They are in a war zone.

So you say that we started to see this developing in Iraq. First, and then Syria, Yemen, Libya, Afghanistan. These are the places now where a lot of intelligence, especially Syria, a lot of intelligence is gathered by private individuals. Well, in private groups together, basically forming these groups.

intelligence gathering network. I mean, basically, when people say data in the West, like what Mark Zuckerberg and Alphabet owner of Google is doing, is that data is the new oil, data is the new wealth. That's in a very crude way is what's happening on the ground in Syria, in Yemen, in Libya, and to some extent even in Turkey among the refugee communities.

That's what's happening. Data, information is so important. Do you know people, and this happened and I've seen it myself, people sometimes risk their lives to go and collect the mobile phones and the laptops and

you know, of a bombed site in Syria, basically. So if a site is bombed and this site belonged to either Al-Qaeda, Jabhat al-Nusra, as you know, or any of their affiliates, or ISIS, they will go and collect all of these because this can be sold for $2,000, $3,000 because they contain, you know, addresses, phone numbers, email addresses,

of people within Syria, in Turkey, outside in Europe, in the Gulf, you know, in the Arab world, which means that every phone have a treasure trove of intelligence. So, you know, young Syrian people go collect them very quickly. It's like mining. They're mining for... Exactly. Mining the data. The gold of post-terrorism atrocities. Exactly. Then these phones and devices, they make it into Turkey, where then they are sold to brokers, you know, basically. Exactly.

And these brokers, like, you know, I mean, you know, people like myself and others. But these brokers, these these, you know, these espionage privateers, aren't they criminals? Isn't this illegal? Are you saying I'm a criminal? Far be it for me to say that a former al-Qaeda bomb maker might be a criminal, but I don't understand. Surely this.

Isn't legal. Is it that governments turn a blind eye to this stuff because it's so useful to them? No, it is perfectly legal because basically, first of all, you know, imagine, let's say you, Thomas Small, you have friends in Syria, don't you? Yes. OK, so basically, if I come to you, whether I'm a government, I come to you, Thomas, and I say, Thomas, you know, we have heard all.

of, you know, basically a, you know, a coup in Damascus or something like that. You know, there was a coup within the intelligence and we are trying basically to ascertain is it true or not. Can you tap into your local people there basically and see what they have heard? And, well,

I mean, basically, you say, yes, of course. And we will say, OK, we want detailed report. And then I push an envelope to you, basically, like with $5,000, $6,000. And I say, this is for your trouble. And also, you can basically send gifts to your friends there in Damascus. But we need really good, juicy information. So you come back to me and you say, yes, we found out this, this, this, this. OK, that doesn't sound so illegal. But, you know, come on. Sometimes you're going to be asked maybe to do something illegal.

Or certainly immoral. How do you navigate the thorny moral swamp of private espionage? That is where you have layers and layers of different levels of commitments. So basically, for example, you know, I wouldn't, you know, do any, you know, how can I say assassination? I wouldn't, you know, you know, engineer any. Why not? Extraction, because basically, like, you know, first of all,

You know, there is so much legality issues behind this. So you're right in a sense. Because, you know, if you describe my work, my work is information gathering. That's it. You know, so what they do with that, what the governments do with that after that, I mean, that's their own business. Have you ever been in a position where you heard –

saw on the news or heard through your networks of a strike against a facility or a strike against a person and you thought to yourself, hmm, I know how they knew where that guy was? Well, to some extent, yes. I'm not going to say no. It does happen. But sometimes you're wondering whether, because sometimes you pass this intelligence basically to a particular government, but then the Russians come and destroy it.

And then that's when you know that definitely it wasn't the government that supplied the Russians with it. Why? Because they are enemies. They are not talking to each other whatsoever. So then how did the Russians know about it? Because if I knew about it,

You know, if I knew about it, if my sources in the ground confirmed that this is a weapons storage facility for al-Nusra, then basically the Russians would have their own privateers, possibly sometime the same privateers who I have tasked might have been tasked by the Russians.

It's a murky world. Very murky. So back to Qasem Soleimani then. He is often credited. Let's play devil's advocate here. So obviously, you know, you weren't a huge fan of Qasem Soleimani. You probably smiled to yourself when you found out that he had been assassinated. Smiled? I danced in the house. Danced in the house. But let's imagine. I mean, there are some people who say that Qasem Soleimani is a hero because he played such a vital role in the destruction of ISIS. What?

Well, first of all, he is that, you know... Okay.

Soleimani did not defeat ISIS. Let's put this myth to rest. It was the American firepower from the sky raining on ISIS, basically, that ended them. Because the Iranians and the Iraqi militias did not have the capability to just take cities and then hold them because they couldn't. Because only the American precision firepower, massive, overwhelming firepower that did that for them.

So, you know, what Soleimani provided is boots on the ground. Shia militiamen. Exactly. But Soleimani wasn't doing it out of the goodness of his heart. He was taking advantage that, oh, this is the chaos through which I can create a massive unregulated army. He wasn't recruiting men to join the Iraqi army. He was recruiting men to

to join a revolutionary Iranian-backed army. And he recruited tens of thousands of them. Hundreds of thousands. And they still exist. I mean, even now Soleimani might be dead, but they exist. What's going to happen to these Shia militia who actually feel perhaps more allegiance to Iran than Iraq? Well, that is what the protests happening right now in Iraq is about. Is Iraq...

going to end up like Lebanon, having a state within a state. I mean, Hezbollah in Lebanon, being a state within a state, having a private army, private welfare network, private finance, private everything. Which would suit the Iranians very well. Exactly. So, you know, in other words, it's a very weakened nation state.

So the protests in Iraq right now gathering momentum and not only Sunnis, but also many, many Shia Arabs who do not like the idea of Iraq becoming just another province for Iran. But we can understand why the Shia of Iraq think that Qasem Soleimani was their savior because ultimately...

ISIS is coming down the road and anyone who's going to fight ISIS is probably your friend. And we can say the same thing about Al-Qaeda in Yemen. People, Yemenis in the south, will view them basically as the saviors against the Houthis. At the end of the day, we cannot basically just sit there and cheer, you know, packs of wolves fighting each other, you know, basically, and ignore the fact that there are lambs need to be saved.

So because they are fighting each other over who will eat the pack of lambs. So who's the shepherd here? Is it with this newly muscular America and President Trump? Is America once again playing the role of the shepherd, trying to fight the wolves off, the sheep, the lambs, whatever? I'm screwing up your metaphor here. I mean, I just have a very difficult time picturing that.

Trump as a shepherd, basically, with his stick and a turban over his head. Really, I've heard some of these Jeffrey Epstein revelations, and I don't have as hard a time imagining that. But I can tell you something. Yes, America is playing, to some extent, basically the role of the shepherd, but the role of the shepherd as a whole is played by the nation states.

We come back again, Thomas, into the question of what do we want. Do we want...

the modern nation state to prevail because they are the best guarantors of safety, security, stability, prosperity in the region? Or do we want transnational ideologies built on revolutionary ideas, perpetual revolution that will keep shedding blood on and on and on until they build their empires on mountains of skulls and oceans of blood? Well, I think we know how America would answer that question. It sides with the nation state

as long as the nation state buys into America's hegemonic role as chief shepherd of the sheep. Now, that really brings us to what series two of Conflicted is going to be all about. In the first series, we focused more narrowly on the war on terror and the modern history of the Middle East.

In this series, we're going to widen the scope of our investigation out a bit and we're going to tell a slightly larger historical story. It's what has been called and indeed was called by George Bush Senior just at the end of the Cold War, America's New World Order. America's attempt to create an everlasting, prosperous and peaceful world. And really lies behind so much of what we see in the headlines today.

You've been listening to Conflicted with me, Thomas Small, and my good friend, Eamon Dean. Conflicted is a Message Heard production. It's produced by Sandra Ferrari, Jake Warren, and Jake Otajewicz. Edited by Sandra Ferrari. Our theme music is by Matt Huxley. New episodes of Season 2 of Conflicted will come out every other week on Wednesday, so tune in.

This season, we're trying something a little bit different. We want to hear more from you, dear listener. What did we get right? What did we get wrong? What topics do you want to hear us chat about in future episodes? We've set up a Facebook discussion group. You can find the link in the show notes or search Conflicted Podcast Discussion Group on Facebook to join.

In the group, we'll post early access to episode teasers, recommend further reading for people looking to go deeper into episode topics, as well as running exclusive giveaways. Each week, we'll be giving away some recommended reading to one lucky listener. All you have to do is join the group. This week's book is The Twilight War: The Secret History of America's 30-Year Conflict with Iran.

an excellently written and researched account of U.S.-Iranian relations from the 1979 Iranian Revolution onward. Join our Facebook group before the 19th of February and you might just win. You'll hear from us soon in two weeks time.