Ask Haviv Anything - Episode 34: My life in Al-Qaeda, a conversation with Aimen Dean

Episode Date: August 6, 2025

Aimen Dean was once a fervent young jihadi fighter, a passionate believer in radical Sunni Islam who had memorized the Quran by 12 and was fighting in the Bosnian jihad by 16.Haviv talked to Aimen about the religious and psychological journey of a young jihadi, his experiences in the wars in Bosnia and Chechnya, his recruitment by Bin Laden himself in the mountains of Afghanistan, and his sudden and powerful disillusionment, both political and religious, that led him to become an MI6 spy in Al Qaeda's ranks.They talked about present-day Islam, the "deradicalization" that Syria's President Ahmed al-Sharaa underwent in recent years, possible better futures for Gaza and whether Israeli-Palestinian peace was still possible. We also talked about why he thinks it's time to end Western experiments in reforming Middle Eastern governance and fall back on what he sees as the most natural and inclusive form of government for the region: The paternalistic monarchy.This episode was sponsored by David and Karen Divine, who asked to dedicate it to someone we lost on October 7. This episode, we remember Abed Rahman Ziyadne, 26 of Rahat, part of Israel's Bedouin Arab community, who was murdered by Hamas terrorists on the Zikim beach, north of Gaza, on October 7, 2023, along with his girlfriend, Yulia Chaban.Please join me on Patreon to support this project: ⁠www.patreon.com/AskHavivAnything⁠.If you would like to sponsor an episode, please email us at [e-mail]⁠.Musical intro by Adam Ben Amitai.

Hi, everybody. Welcome to a fascinating new episode of Aschab Anything. This one is really extraordinary. We have talked in the past, as any fans of the podcast, regular listeners or viewers will know, in abstract theoretical terms about some of the major themes and ideas of political Islam, Islamism, Salafism. We talked about Muhammad Abduh, the Grand Mufti of Egypt in the 1890s, and his students, Rashid Rida, and the lineage through the Muslim Brotherhood that produced Hamas. We talked about that, of course, because it is profoundly significant to the ideas that drive some of the Palestinian discourse and Hamas, certainly, in Gaza today. But more broadly, it affects how the Middle East talks to itself, what the Islam in the Arab world is thinking. You have to know.

You have to understand how it all works. And that was the idea. And so we took some historical deep dives. Today we're going to do something completely different, and frankly, much more interesting to me. I am joined by Iman Dean, who was a card-carrying member of Al-Qaeda. They have these nice little, they don't have cards. Do they have cards? No, they never had.

They never had cards. It's evidence. Every club I've ever been part of had little magnetic cards. And it's going to be a conversation that really dives into lived experience. What is it like to be there? What is it like to join a Western espionage agency to then try and head off some of the terror attack being produced by some of these organizations?

Before we get into the conversation, I want to tell you that this episode is sponsored by David and Karen Devine and dedicated to the memory of, as many people have done with this podcast, and I really profoundly appreciate it. It feels profoundly meaningful to someone who died on October 7.

Today we remember Abid Rahman Ziyadhni, 26 of Rahat, part of Israel's Bedouin Arab community, who was murdered by Hamas terrorists on the Zikim beach north of Gaza on October 7, along with his girlfriend, Yulia Shaban, who is 24 from Arad. He and Yulia were camping together along the beach when the Hamas attack began. They fled the site. They tried to hide in the sand dunes. Eventually, Yulia left voice notes to her first. family, you could hear the explosions and gunfire in the background, and they were eventually

killed by Hamas terrorists who found them in the sand. Abed was buried in Rahat. If anybody recognized that name Ziyadhna, you might, from just the Israeli news cycle of the last 22 months. He is survived by his parents, Amal and Atif, as six siblings, and also four of his relatives. Bilal, Aisha, Yusuf, and Hamza were kidnapped that day and taken captive in Gaza. Bilal and Aisha, 18 and 17, when they were taken by Hamas, were freed in the November 2023 hostage-reased-fired deal. Father Yusuf 53 and brother Hanza 22 were killed by Hamas and their bodies were recovered in January.

So thank you for that dedication. I think that was a very important way to start an episode. Ayman, hello. Hi. It is truly an honor and fascinating to have you here. Thank you for agreeing to come on. We turned to you and asked you after reading your book, Nine Lives. My time is MI6's top spy inside Al-Qaeda.

If that doesn't hold the listeners' attention, you know, nothing well. I want to start off essentially by asking you to introduce yourself through your story. through this extraordinary story you tell about your childhood, about what it's like living in deeply conservative Muslim societies, Bahraini family in Saudi Arabia. I grew up, okay? I was born in 1981, so 9-11 happened when I was 20. I grew up with a very particular picture of what Saudi Islamic society is.

And reading your book, there's something much, much more complex and human about that society, even at its very conservative, at its most conservative. And so I would love to dig into that. Tell us about your childhood. In particular, I was fascinated by how you talk about women and your mother and the home in this deeply religious society and someone who memorized the Quran at a young age, which is a classic sort of goal of a believing Muslim.

So I'm going to now stop asking this very extended question and let you talk. Thank you so much, Habee, for having. me and I want to extend also the thanks to your listeners. Well, I mean, first of all, I was born in 1978, and so it was just only three months before the most catastrophic year in our living memory. I would say it was 1979 when the Islamic Republic was established through the Islamic Revolution in Iran.

Saddam Hussein came to power. the Soviets invaded Afghanistan, you know, starting the whole jihad, the modern jihad cycle. And of course, not so catastrophic was the visit by Sadat to Jerusalem and the Cam David Peace Accord. Now all of these events shaped, you know, my life. But in particular, one event that shaped my life later, especially in Saudi Arabia, was also in 1979, which defined Saudi Arabia for a generation to come was the siege of the Grand Mosque of Macca.

So I was born in the wrong year, I would say, in comparison to my five older siblings, all of them used to tell me that Saudi Arabia was so different prior to 1979. It was conservative, but it was discovering itself. it was slowly and gradually coming out of its shell and started to feel more comfortable with, you know, westernization and Western films and movies being shown in cinemas.

There used to be cinemas in Saudi before 1979, yes. There used to be female waiters in restaurants, you know, in Saudi Arabia before 1979. But then 1979, just three months after I was born, like it. I mean, it was the event that shook the kingdom to the core when a group of celifists, followers of Jheemana al-Atebi, and the movement is called the Mhatsubin, those who are doing Hesba or, you know, the prohibition of vice and the promotion of virtue, seized the Grand Mosque in Mecca, announced that they have the Mahdi with them, So already there is some eschatology there, you know, to add to this salad.

And for 18 days, the Grand Mosque of Makkah, the most sacred part of Islam was a battleground in which we saw not only just Jordanian special forces come in to help the Saudi forces retake the Grand Mosque, but we saw some French special forces coming in to help, who just at the border of the haram, at the sanctuary, converted to Islam in order to perform the mission. And this is one of the fun facts when we talk about that. But what really happened is that after that, the reality is that Saudi Arabia was so shocked

by the fact that this group of people, 400 men who seized the Grand Mosque, were doing it because they felt that the kingdom was going too far, on the path of westernization and liberalization and modernization. And so they wanted to take it back. And take it back they did. Yes, they failed in the uprising they staged, but in reality they succeeded in making the royal family, you know, go back, you know, on their vision of modernizing the kingdom

and thought, well, if we want to keep a grip on power, we might as well go back to conservatism. And as a result, I grew up in that, newly applied conservative society that his late majesty, King Khalid, enacted after the events of 1979, and then after that, of course, enacted by his successor, his late majesty, King Fahed. For me, I grew up, you know, in what I call like, basically the King Fahed Saudi Arabia. conservative, austere, and it was a place where there is definitely now segregation, no cinemas, you know, were there anymore. Society was segregated, you know, according to men and women,

men and women, like, and for me, I had only six, sorry, I have only five older brothers, and, you know, and the only female in the house was my mom, and so for me, you know, women were, you know, not to be seen. I used to have some... You write that you literally didn't see a woman unveiled except in your home, your mother, for how long, for how many years?

Well, until I was 16, you know, really, like, I mean, you know, from the age of nine, you know, all the female cousins, I think by nine, ten, that's it, all the female cousins that I used to have, all of them started to veil based on. on the culture and the gnomes at the time. And so I didn't see their faces after that.

And so I would say from 10 until 16, six years, that's it. Like I mean, I did. You only see them, ironically, on TV, on Egyptian or Syrian or Lebanese TV sitcoms or TV shows. And that's it. Or movies. But in real life, they are segregated. in real life, you don't see them. And so that's the first thing I've noticed, like I mean, growing up,

is the fact that there is segregation, but also with it comes the fact that where I was born in itself was a fascinating place. I was born in Chubour, and Chubour is, in my opinion, the most fascinating town in Saudi Arabia, hands down. And I know, like, you know, I mean, some people would say, No, it's Riyadh or Jeddah, whatever, but no, sorry.

I mean, I would say it's Khobar. And for the following reasons, first of all, it is the home of Aramco, the largest oil company in the world, and the producer, the largest producer of oil in the world, until at least when I grew up, when I was growing up, like, you know, it was the case. My uncle, my, you know, well, actually, I would say my three uncles and my dad, all of them work for Aramco. So I'm an Aramco boy through and through.

almost I have currently 29 members of the current extended family, cousins and second cousins who currently work for Aramco. And some of them are third and fourth generation Aramco. So you can say like that, you know, that, you know, almost if I ever like, you know, basically were to have my blood taken, you know, forget the metallic, you know, smell. you might as well smell the oil out of it. It's all oil in there, right. Exactly. What does that mean? It means basically that we were, you know, more accustomed to seeing Americans,

Brits, Dutch, Scots, you know, so usually, like, you know, we used to see Australians. I mean, so we were more accustomed to see foreigners than other parts of Saudi Arabia. So that was one thing that made. the inhabitants of that town, like, you know, more curious around the world than the rest of Saudi Arabia. That's one thing. And the second thing also is the fact that we were having access. And actually, I remember this, like, I mean, all the other parts of Saudi Arabia used to hate us for this. But we used to have access to more TV stations than the rest of Saudi Arabia.

So because we were hubr, so we had access to Kuwait TV, Qatar TV, Bahrain TV, which were, and Abu Dhabi TV, which was far more liberal, you know, than Saudi TV. So the rest of Saudi regions were strictly Channel 1, Channel 2, that's it. For me, however, and my compatriot, it was... It's because of the foreigners? It's because Chubar also has a big Shia population. It's more diverse. It's an international commercial center because of the oil, right?

So is that why that you can't restrict TV in a hotel of a commercial, you know, of an international center? No, because it was analog. It was analog and we were geographically next to these countries. Pure geography. It's pure geography that we were next door to Kuwait, next door to Bahrain, next door to Qatar, next door to Abu Dhabi and Dubai. And so our analog, you know, TV at the time,

like I used to catch all of these channels. And as you touched on it already, you know, roughly about at that time, it used to be 40% of the population of the Eastern province, you know, where Shia, now I think it has been reduced with significant migraine. from other parts of the country to 25%. But at that time, it used to be 40% Shia, the population there. And growing up, it's the 80s, it's a war between the Shia Islamic Republic in Iran

led by Khomeini and the Sunni-led Iraq, led by Saddam Hussein, and eight years' war between the two sides. And of course, in the school, we used to taunt each other, the Sunni boys used to support Saddam and the Shia boys used to support Khomeini whenever the Iranians used to make a significant

gains in the war they used to talk us about it even though we were kids we were seven and eight and nine but we understood all of these things because the fact that we were growing up it's the equivalent of growing up in in Belfast where you have

you know the Catholics and the Protestants like in a toning each other, it's the same thing here, except our schools were mixed. And that led to even more tones between the two sides. We were studying next to each other, but I can tell you, like, I mean, we were, you know, absolutely, you know, gulfs apart in terms of our political leanings and who do we support and, you know, how do we see the future? How did that, I mean, I'm sorry, how did that work? In the Middle East generally, different religious

groups, different minorities often, and this is an inheritance of the Ottomans, and it's true in Israel, it's true in Lebanon, it's true in Syria, have their own schools, their own school systems, their own ideologies, they can have their own court systems and their own religious worlds. Sunni and Shia studied together in a school that also, because of Saudi Arabia, taught Islam. What Islam did they learn? How did a school unite Sunni and Shia and teach Islam in Saudi Arabia in the 1990s? Well, it didn't unite them. It's just like, basically, you know, this is the curriculum, The curriculum is based on Salafi Islam according to the teachings of

Sheikh Mohammed Mahal Wahab. You memorize the book of Tao Heid, which is his main pamphlet. Let's put it in his manifesto if we can put it this way. And all the Shia kids just had to do that. And memorize it and have to pass the examine it. And we used to rub their noses in it, actually.

But I mean, we used to enjoy it. So, and... But at the same time, It's fascinating. Yeah, but at the same time, we used to see immediately the difference, even among Shia themselves. We used to see that the Shia of Al-Ahsa region, the oasis of Al-Hsa, were far more tolerant and lenient and, you know, open-minded and easy with us. Because they used to follow Najaf rather than Qum in Iran, while the Shia of Qatif and Seahat and Tsafwa and all of these places, which is on the coast, rather than the coastal Shia, rather than the Oasis Shia.

They used to follow Qom. And as a result, they were more loyal to Iran and they were more hardliner with us. And it's just fascinating that the fact that they had to learn by heart the writings of Muhammad bin Abdul Wahab and have to pass the exams. They had no separate schools whatsoever.

They had separate courts. They are called the Jaferi courts. But that's the only separate thing they have. But apart from that, all the schools were united in teaching the... Saudi curriculum at the time, which included the essential writings of Muhammad bin Abdul Wahhab. That's fascinating.

Regular listeners will remember we had a conversation with Hussein Abdul-Khoussin, who is Shia, Arab from Iraq, who really feels that the Iranian version of revolutionary Shiism of Khomeini and then Khomeini overwhelmed the much more moderate Arab Shiism that he wants to bring back and hopes Iran's Shiism is. is in collapse because of the latest war with Israel, et cetera. So it's interesting hearing another signal of that kind of divide that's very deep and very serious in your experience. Let me push forward a little bit in your life.

You are now a teenager. It is now the early 90s. And you read the writings of a gentleman named Saeed Kutib and decide to join the gentleman. Can you tell us that story? Well, for whatever reason, I mean, 1991 was not exactly

like, I mean, the best year of my life. First of all, we, our town was targeted by more than 100 ballistic missiles by Saddam Hussein during the January and February of 1991. From February until May of 1991, we had

the black winter when Saddam blew up. all the 700 oil wells in Kuwait and the you know and the wind which were you know south southwards I mean brought all the smoke

and gave us a three months of black cloud winter where the day was night and then by May it was over but then by August my mother passed away brain aneurysm she was only 49 at the time I was 12 so for me

it was of course like in a basically a time when I was absolutely still trying to find myself. I just finished memorizing the Quran a month before she passed away. She was so happy about it.

Can we just stop on that once? In the book you talk about, first of all, her influence over you. We just talked about you not seeing any woman's face for those at that six-year age group. Your mother being the only female really presence in the home. She was a big inspiration also for for your religious learning, for your scholarship.

She was very proud of you for being, you know, a clever kid who loved to read, who was very bookish. What is involved in a 12-year-old learning to memorize the Quran? This is a very old Muslim tradition, ideal even, I would say. By the way, it's similar to Judaism in the Middle Ages where the learning, and in the Talmudic period where the learning of the memorization itself was a separate function and was considered tremendously honorable and young people aspired to it. Tell us more about that.

your mother's influence and also that what was that Islam in your life as such a young person? I think from my mother like I know she thought that okay my two oldest siblings like we're going to become chemical engineers and

the third joined them as well on this journey. So from her point of view if I showed already an aptitude towards religious learning and I was very curious about religion since I was young since at least nine when I started to show serious curiosity about it and I started going to join an Islamic

awareness circle in a mosque and it was a celifist one of course so for her you know she encouraged it she thought okay I want you know someone who is a half of the Quran like in I mean in my house it's a blessing and she encouraged it and from from my point of view I saw Islam like in I mean as not just more than a set of rituals or set of beliefs also, but also I saw it as a story. It was, there is a historical narrative to it. There is a story. Of course, at the beginning of the story was extremely rosy and beautiful and flawless.

Of course, like, I mean, that view started to change, you know, with time as someone, you know, as I started to grow up. But at that time, it was a story. which point me to a child who doesn't like stories. Isn't that so different from the yeshiva, like, you know, in Israeli society, like in a where, you know, Jewish kids go and learn the Torah and, you know, devote themselves, you know, to the Torah. It's the same thing here, basically.

It's a devotion towards learning Islam and Islamic faith, you know, with this all entirety, you know. It's like from the creed, you know, from the jurisprudence, you know, from the point of the recitation of the... the Quran itself from the interpretation of the text and slowly gradually understanding of the history the narrative the story again it's we come back to the story so my mother pass away and I remember that caused me incredible grief you know in a way I can't even find the words to describe it and I remember in the month a month or two after that I

remember I went to one of my teachers in the school who I admired so much and I asked him the question I said I'm finding it extremely difficult like you know to come to terms with this and with grief like in amin and so he told me that you already finish memorizing the Quran and if most of the books of interpretation you are reading are ancient ones like ibn kathir and kirtabhi and al-lisi and all of these being you know, ancient ones like an army, why don't you read it through the prism of a literary, philosophical, but also personal journey, you know, of a man who went through considerable amount of grief and wrote the interpretation of the Quran according to that grief?

So from his point of view, since he said that this author wrote all of this interpretation of the Quran through the prism and perspective of grief, nine years in prison, you might as well read it. And I said, who? And he said, come on, you should have guessed it by now. Is it Zillalal of the Quran in the shades of the Quran for Sait Kutub. So I thought, well, we have it at home. It was a kind of required reading.

And I started then reading. And I can tell you that despite everything I think of Sait Kutub right now, and I have so many things to say about him and his negative impact on the Muslim world right now but man he could write and write so deep and he could touch your heart directly

because you can tell that he went through these years of mistreatment and torture and violations in prison nine years in Nassau's prisons in the 1950s and 60s, they were no picnic. And so you can tell that through the prism of pain and grief, he was transforming the verses of the

Quran that he was interpreting, while he was interpreting them from a revolutionary point of view, infecting them with socialist revolutionary flavor. however, when he was interpreting the verses about patience, about grief, about endurance, I mean, they were poetic. There is no question about it. And he was able, I mean, for example, like, when he was talking about the personality of the Prophet Muhammad, and I remember there was one particular verse when he's talking about the humanity, the fact that the Prophet Muhammad.

the fact that the prophet is a human, you know, basically, and the humanity of the prophet when he talks about him and the influences that were on him and said that, he said, look at this person, he's a boy, he's six-year-old, and he is returning from Medina where he's already an orphan, he's lost his father, and he's already an orphan coming back with his mom, sickly mom, from Medina where he was visiting his, you know,

uncles from his mother's side there, coming back to Mecca, but because his mother was taken ill, the caravan left her, and him, you know, alone, you know, until the next caravan come and pick them when she feels better. But hours after the caravan leave, she died. And he is talking about this, you know, six-year-old boy stranded in the desert, you know, with a dead mother. And then he is talking about the grief, how he dealt with it. and the fact that how could he have imagined that he, as a six-year-old boy, stranded in a desert with a dead body of his mom

and doesn't know what to do with it until the next caravan came and helps him with the burial and then it took him back to Mecca to his grandfather. How could he have imagined that he would change the world in a way that he would have never dreamed of? And so he was saying that the lowest point of grief is your start to a much, much higher journey towards changing not yourself, but changing possibly the world. And I remember I'm reading this and I'm shaking,

I'm thinking that, why am I grieving even, like, you know, when the Prophet's grief was far greater than mine, and then I, you know, should learn from this rather than basically be buried deep in mind. And this is when this idea of changing the world, being part of history, not being a spectator on the side,

and also the caravan, the idea of a desert, like joining the caravan, which also was a title of a book by Abdullah Azam, the godfather of the jihad in Afghanistan, which was available everywhere in Saudi Arabia at the time. Join the caravan. And it was one of the things that resonated with me. And so this is what prepared me for the fact that once there was the path open to go to join the jihad in Bosnia,

I just took it without even in a thinking twice about it. You read Saeed Qutib for a few years, from when you're 12 and your mother dies until you're 16 at Mecca reading it. And then you make this decision and you go off, you're not even 18 yet, you're 16 when you go off to the jihad in Bosnia. What did jihad mean to you?

What were you hoping to accomplish there? What specifically, this little boy, lonely and adrift, but also deeply learned already, for a 12-year-old, certainly in Islam, finds in the story of the prophet himself, no less, this deep identification. That is powerful. That is enormous.

But a 16-year-old getting up and going off to Bosnia to fight, you know, in jihad, that's a leap. Tell us about that leap. Well, I mean, this is exactly what Sett Kutub said, when he said that our words are just nothing but candles that will remain unlit, unless if we are willing to die and actually we die, you know, for the sake of these words,

then they are lit and they will shine, you know, the path forward for those who, you know, will follow our path. And I think for me at that time, the Bosnian, you know, conflict was on our screens every day, you know, and of course, like, I mean, it was resonating because for us we see, for the first time, we hear about them even. You know, we have the Bosnian Muslims, like, I mean, they are, you know, blue and green-eyed, you know, blonde and brown-haired Muslims, like, you know, but they are killed because their names were Ahmed and Ahmed and Mirzad and all of that. But, I mean, it, it didn't matter that they were genetically Serbs who just converted to Islam, you know, 500 years ago. I mean,

they, you know, this is one of the reasons why when mass graves are found, you know, and still to this day, they are found between now and then, they have difficulty finding out if they are Serbs or Bosnians because they have the same DNA, sadly. I mean, sadly, like, I mean, just shows you, like, the fact that it was purely on religious rather than racial, you know, background. And so for us, like, for me, when I was growing up, I felt that that made me, like, you know, identify more with my faith rather than my nation state, rather than the, you know, that the environment around me,

I started feeling like, you know, that said Qatop called towards the Ummah. and the kingdom of God on earth, as he used to call it all the time, like, you know, basically, how do we bring it about? We bring it about by actually practicing what is lost for generations, which is the obligation of jihad. So I just finished that, umra that, like, in a religious journey in Mecca, and when I came back, I was told that my friend, a childhood friend and someone who was three years older than mine, because most of my. friends at the time were either three or four or five years older than mine. I mean, unfortunately, that's a reality when you are a nerd and most of your age peers that are not exactly catching up with you. I have no idea what you're talking about.

That was never my experience. I'm sure it was yours. I'm sure it was yours, too. And so I went to his house to say goodbye because I knew he was going off to Bosnia, but in these 10 minutes I'm walking to his house. I decided I want to go with him. Because I felt that I was ready.

I just, I didn't know it. And until I saw, you know, it's like you see this light at the end of the tunnel and you think I'm going to follow it. So when I knocked on his door, you know, and I said, I heard that you're going with two others. And so I'm sure, you know, there is a room for someone else. And he said, oh, you know someone else was going. I said to him, you idiot. I'm not talking about someone else. I'm talking about me joining you.

And he said, come on, you're just only 16. I just turned 16, like, I mean, literally. And I remember the question he asked me, which changed his mind and changed my life. He asked me the question. He said, for God's sake, look at you, you're 16, you're a book, you know, a nerd, bookish nerdy individual. Like, I mean, do you think the jihad needs you? So I said to him, come on, Khaled, but I mean, I'm not even, you know, arrogant to even think that it needs me, but I need it.

I'm the one who is in desperate need for it So you have to take me with you Because it's not about like you know what jihad needs Jihad doesn't need any of us But we need it Including me Especially me And he said to me

Okay, that's a rat attitude Which means basically like you're coming And so From his point of view Even though he was trying to tell me It's not a picnic, people die I said to him, yeah I know but I said to him, I don't want to be

you know feeling in several years ahead that the caravan came and went and passed me by and I did not join it and I remained on the side of the roads. I don't want to be left behind. I don't think people in the West today

really understand the power of religion. The power of this poetry, the power of this belonging, the power of a... young man seeking the dignity of doing something dangerous and meaningful and useful. It's something that is lacking, I think, in Western. What does a young American man, or I think there's also for women, but just specifically in this context of going off to fight the good fight in the world,

you at the time, you write, really understood jihad as a defensive act. and Bosnia, that was easy to frame it that way also, right? Because that was a situation in Bosnia that would not be true, for example, in some other places. Of course. Yeah, and you go off to join it. And then there's this amazing, I don't know how to put this, it was fun. Was jihad fun? Can you explain that to us?

What was that experience? You would be in several countries over several years. What was it like to be actually a jihadi who eventually, actually basically joins up with Osama bin Laden in al-Qaeda. I mean, I wouldn't say this only fun. I don't mean it in the shallow sense.

Yeah, it's thrilling. It's thrilling. It's adrenaline-filled, you know, adrenaline-filled thrill. I mean, that's the best I can describe it. And not only that, but the nobility of it. I mean, in Bosnia in particular, like, I mean, I felt that there was something noble about it.

I mean, because it was a clear-cut, ethnic cleansing. It was a clear-cut, you know, genocide. You know, 60,000 women were raped by, you know, the Serbs according to UN figures of that time. And, you know, and the massacres were there for everyone to see. It's not like, you know, basically this is a, it was almost at the beginning on one-sided fight. And so you feel the sense of nobility, you feel the sense that you are being chosen. I mean, and also like when you arrive and you think, oh my God, I'm going to go there and I'm going to join thousands of other volunteers. And then as soon as you land, you find, you know, what is my number or my number of 403 or something like that, like,

you know, basically? Is that it? You know, am I, am I the 400th volunteer? Yeah. I mean, and then it hits you straight away, like, you know, I mean, that were quite few. And out of, out of a billion Muslims at the time, like, you know, you feel that, like, you know, only one out of two million, you know, answered the call. And then they tell us immediately there, your God's chosen, you know, people, like, you know, who answered the call, when, you know, you know, when, you know, millions others did not. So you are, as he, I remember, like, Anwar Shahed Mar Shah Dwar Shah Khan,

who was the leader of the Jama'a Islamia in Italy and then became the leader of the Mujahideen Brigadee in Bosnia. He said to us like this, he said, you are the Safwa. Safwa means the chosen ones. And so, that, of course, like, if it doesn't fill your heart with, you know, that kind of pride, like,

I mean, you know, what will, what will fill your heart with pride like this. We were four individuals who went to Bosnia. It was October of 1994. And if I fast forward all the way to December of 1995 when the war ended, the two who came with us, with me and Khaled were dead already. Khaled would go on later to become the leader of Al-Qaeda in Arabia between 2002 and 2004.

And that's just to show you, like in that, Bosnia graduated many, of the future leaders of Al-Qaeda. Many people who were paramount to the 9-11 planning were there. Ramsey bin Ashib was there, Khal Shah Mohammed was there, although he came at the end. Many leaders of the Al-Qaeda in Arabia were there. Many leaders of Al-Qaeda in Yemen were there. That gave birth to the – because, you know, like the Afghan jihad was –

kind of, you know, anti-communist, the, you know, the Bosnian jihad became a anti-Western. It became the breeding ground for anti-Western resentment. It became that breeding ground because it was primed for it by everybody having read Sykut, or because the West had failed to come to Bosnia's aid until, you know, four years in where Clinton finally orders, NATO finally bombs Belgrade. But what was the grounds for anti-Western? resentment, Anabazia. Serbia was associated with the West?

You already answered this. The whole idea is the failure of the United Nations. And unfortunately, the United Nations forces there, especially, like, in Spanish and British and Canadian forces, like, you know, we're not exactly behaving the best, like, ever, like, and this is, and the reality is that they were useless. I mean, you know, the UN did not stand for the United Nations, it stood for the useless nations. and that sense of failure, I mean, do they want the war to continue like this? And so I think by the end of it, the resentment, you know, grew and grew as it, you know,

that they only intervened when the Bosnians were finally able to turn the table and start gaining and recovering territories from the Serbs. And that's, I think, what was the perception at that time. And of course, when the Dayton Accord happened, and I still remember that day December 14 of 1995, when we finally had the, you know, the peace treaty signed, one of the conditions is that we, as the foreign fighter contingency there, were there, like, you know, we have to leave. And so we decided, you know, what we leave. And I remember when I left, I already spent about 14. months there. And I remember that when I arrived in Istanbul, several days after, and I was looking

at the mirror, I just turned 17, and I remember, like, and I was looking at the mirror, like, in the hotel room, and I was thinking, I feel like I have aged 14 years because of everything that we have seen, you know, throughout this conflict. And I think that is a common thing among many people who were participants in the horrors of war and conflict all over the world. So we're now at the end of 1995. Take us to 1998 that the next three years in which you, I think it's fair to say, climb the ranks, certainly of Al-Qaeda. And then in 1998 there's the great pivot where you're recruited by MI6,

and you choose to be recruited by MI6 because you've seen some. things that trouble you. This defensive jihad is something else by then. So just walk us through that history and then that pivot is fascinating to me. I think I want to talk about when did this when did someone who got so much

out of this world suddenly come to believe that this world is actually bad or a problem or deeply flawed in some way? I think my problem is that I'm annoyingly inquisitive and I'm still to this day, which

means basically I managed to offend everyone equally. And because of that, I always ask questions. I never shy away from asking questions. It all started really near the end of our time in Bosnia when Khaled Sheikh Mohammed, who would become later, like known as the mastermind of 9-11, he spoke eloquently and elegantly about going to Afghanistan and joining the camps there that were reopening in order to graduate a new breed of jihadists. And so I listened to what he has to say. He gave me a piece of paper with a number on it, a man called Abu Zubeda, who would later, of course,

who currently serving time in Guantanamo. And he told me whenever you feel that you are ready to join us there, just in a dial this number, tell them it's from my meal, I mean, and they will pick you up. However, I wanted to go to Chechnya at that time. And so I went to Azerbaijan. I spent five months there as a, I will call it an office jihadist. I was there as a part of a team of five people only, doing the logistics and helping,

diverting a lot of the funds that were coming from Muslim private donors from around the world towards the Chechen refugees and we were diverting it of course like I mean towards the Chechen jihadist led by Eben Khattab at that time and so I remember we used to joke about it

that 2,000 people inside Chechnya, the whole brigade inside Chechnya who were fighting the Russians and giving the Russians the hardest time possible between 95 and 96 so we were saying that ironically, you know, if the Russians were to send just a team of Alpha or Amun, like I mean

team into this villa we were in in Baku in Azerbaijan and shoot us, there are only five of us like, you know, and we were unarmed. They will win the war. I mean, because three times a week we were sending trucks full of equipment and cash and fuel and medicine and equipment and electronics. everything they need to survive. So these 2,000 people couldn't have continued the fight without us, five people there.

And this is where I learned the power of finance and the power that follow the money. Amazingly, these five months I spent in Baku would have an incredible effect or incredible footprint on me becoming a banker in later years. But that's something else. So, but I still... You got to get your training, your professional training somewhere.

Exactly. So I... So, yeah. So after that, I... The war in Chechnya ended, I realized, like, you know, that, okay, what am I going to do here? And so I went to Afghanistan. I followed what Khaled Sheikh Mohammed wanted me to do. I joined a camp and then through many twist and turns that they want to talk about the Philippines.

That's another story. It will take us, like, you know, I mean, hours to... recall it, but then August 97, I was in Afghanistan and by complete coincidence I met with the head of Bil Laden's bodyguard, Hamza

Ghamdi. I just returned from the Philippines spending eight months there. He was fascinated about what's happening there in Mindanao, and then after spending a few hours with me, he just told me, I really want to invite you to join us.

And I remember one thing he said to me, which still is in it with me to this day. He said, we can't let Sheikh Abu Abdullah, of course, he means someone with Laden. We can't let Sheikh Abu Abdullah be surrounded by those, you know, idiotic, self-serving Egyptians, you know. And I was like, okay, I know what you mean. So, you know, like, you know, the eternal enmity between Saudis and Egyptians, which is always beneath the surface, you know. So even then, even in the mountains of Afghanistan, it was still true.

So I made my way to Kandahar, went into the headquarters there in Tarnak farms just next to the airport in Kandahar. And it's just the same evening. Like, you know, I mean, he just, after the Aisha prayer, like, you know, he just dragged me into, to see Osama Bil Laden. And this is when I met him. And I remember one of the things Osama bin Laden was, I can tell. like he was thinking, like, you know, I was hoping he was taller, but because, of course, like, you know, for him, anyone is short. He was such a tall man. Very imposing. But of course, like, you know, the first thing he asked me, he said, do you know what you are, you know, getting into?

And honestly, like, after everything that Hamza al-Gamdi told me, like, I mean, in the long walk I had with him in Duralabad when he was trying to convince me to join, I felt like, you know, I knew what I was going into. I said yes. And then, you know, after that, of course, like, you know, he extended his hand. I extended mine, you know, and I shook his hand. And then I recited the oath of allegiance, you know, that I will. I give him my oath of allegiance, you know, in hardship and in good times, in bad times. I fight alongside whoever he fights. And I make peace with whoever he makes peace with.

And that God is my witness. That's it. It's the Bayat al-Harb. It's the allegiance of war. And my understanding is that we are going to, our aim and goal is to expel the American forces out of the Arabian Peninsula. That's our aim and goal.

I thought, like, I mean, that's what we're going to do, fighting against American forces that are based in Saudi or Kuwait or, you know, UAE, all these places. Can I ask why? Bosnia was, it is not hard to do. It is not hard to argue that that was profoundly defensive. Salafist ideology aside, that was a defensive act to fight for the Bosnians in that war. The Americans were in Saudi Arabia at the invitation of the Saudi government.

They weren't killing Saudis. They weren't fighting Saudis. They weren't imposing themselves on Saudis. What was the religious theory, or just literally the purification of the holy land of Arabia? Or was there something beyond that? There were three justifications. the first thing defensive from the point of view that these forces are there to implement an unjust siege against our, according to bin Laden,

like our Iraqi brothers and sisters who were dying in their tens of thousands from malnutrition, especially when we talk about, you know, children. Of course, like, you know, it was exaggerated. There was a lot of like an exaggeration, like, you know, of the effect of the sanctions on Saddam's regime. But that's how it was. framed. That's the first thing. The second thing, these forces are enabling the continued occupation. Remember that's Samuel Luddin, that's his message, a continued occupation of the holy land by the Israelis. So that's the second justification. And then the third justification is the

fact that the Arabian Peninsula is not supposed to be a host to any foreign non-Muslim army, no matter what, according to Islamic jurisprudence. So three religious justifications for this jihad against the American armed presence in the region. From my side, I was convinced, even though I was only 19 at the time, but I would say, you know, I mean, I wouldn't argue at that time. And, you know, and I remember the first thing, you know, I remember that Osama bin Laden said, well, you know, he was just saying it like in a, I think, affectionate manner, like, basically he was saying to Hamza Ghamdi, you know, referring to me. He said, I don't think he's a command of material, like, you know, so we're going to

send him to Abu Kabab. So, of course, going to work with Abu Kabab, who is the Egyptian, who was the most celebrated, bomb maker jihadist circles ever seen, you know, in the past 50 years, you know, was in itself an honor. So it's an honor and a privilege that if you were chosen to go and study, you know, bomb making, poison, toxicology, poison making, like, you know, and chemical and biological weapons, it's an honor. And so you will be sent to a secluded, you know, a camp with only four participants and an instructor. That's it. and I was elated, you know, that I was bestowed with such honor and as a result, because they said they thought, like, I had temperament for it. And I was sent to spend the next 11 months with Abu Kabab in his camp. And that was fascinating.

How are your bomb-making skills today? Rusty? I meant that it's hard to leave a joke, you know, when it's ripe on the tree and not to pull it down. But how much did you learn? Was it a professional, serious infrastructure kind of that they could rely upon? Did you actually train seriously and intensively? Yes. Without a doubt, because at the end of the day, Al-Qaeda would be spending so much money, you know, acquiring all the chemicals and the equipment and the tools.

and so they want to see a return on their investment. And so I remember when I arrived there, I noticed that there were only four of us. And I also noticed, like, you know, how rudimentary the places. You know, it's only, we are on a slope of a mountain, three really rooms made of mud, like, you know, huts, like basically. And I was thinking all these chemicals stored in this, in a way if

I used to joke later like in life like I said if a British health and safety inspector were to go there and look at the state of the place

they will have a heart attack they will think like how could you store chemicals like this next to each other in such conditions there would be many problems if that British health inspector showed up in that place

oh indeed apart from that I don't think a heart attack will be the cause of death but anyway but what's interesting also is that is that you, you were, you were not a commando. You were, for example, in Bosnia, a medic. And they had, they had complexity. They had positions. They had, I think the Americans call it MOs.

Everybody had different kinds of jobs and expertise, and you trained in it. It was, it was, it was much, much more, when I was in the IDF, in basic training, I got yelled out a lot by a sergeant. And that sergeant, when you were running, you know, without, not properly, or forgot something in the tent, well, you were supposed to have all of your equipment. The sergeant would say, this isn't the Taliban. You've got to be professional here. Yeah, this is the IDF, right? That's what they would say. The impression is that it's a kind of lackadaisical kind of showing up volunteers, a bunch of people who are just running around doing whatever they get can manage. And in fact, it was much, much more serious, professionalized, hierarchical. There were bank accounts. There

were investments. There's a lot of thinking, organizational thinking behind all of it. that's just a fascinating thing to see from the inside. And that was your experience throughout, right? Yeah, at the end of the day, like, you know, we were a bunch of, a bunch of militarized civilians. We were not a bunch of professional military fighting force. We were militarized civilians. That's who we were.

And so to ask me to become a commander in Afghanistan, you know, is unrealistic. But to ask me to be, you know, to, you know, to, you know, use my intellect to have a crush course in chemistry and to learn it like basically so quickly and to excel in it within let's say 11 months period that was expected so

they knew how to take advantage of each one's talents and abilities so they are not wasted because there is no point of for example they were telling me like we're not going to select you for suicide bombings or no like basically you will be the one who are making the vest

You will be the one who making the vehicles. Like, you know, we need, you know, one IQ for every hundred suicide bombers in the future. And so that's the idea. You know, that's what they wanted. Yeah, because at the end of the day, suicide bombers are expendable. They are low IQ. However, you happen to be high IQ. You know, it's a waste to send you, you know, to somewhere to die.

Right. Because the person who will replace you making the next bombs will make poorer bombs, presumably. So this is actually the best use of resources for the organization. So in 1998, you arrive in Qatar, you're arrested, and you make a choice. And you have several choices to make. You make the choice actually to join MI6, to become their undercover guy in Al-Qaeda. Why? Why?

How could a kid who literally, you tell this story, I mean, so much of what and who you understand your role in world and all the things that you draw dignity from are invested in this world. And you turn on this world and you turn on this world in a way that is, you become loyal to MI6 going after Al-Qaeda. Something happens and tell us that. What was that? You see, August 1998, you know, we, you know, I wake up to the shouts and, you know, and, you know, T'Kbira, and Allaho Akbar, and all of that, like, and, you know, celebratory gunfire, and what happened? Oh, we just destroyed the largest CIA station in East Africa.

What? And so I, then I started to learn about the attacks, you know, on the American embassies in Nairobi in Kenya and Dar es Salaam in Tanzania. And for me, I remember that I started getting the news slowly, gradually, about who did it. One of my friends actually was the one who drove the van into the U.S. Embassy in Nairobi. And I've learned about the devices. I learned, like, you know, how many people killed at the beginning, like, and then how many people wounded. And then this is when I started hearing, hearing on the radio, especially Kuwait radio, which I used to listen to,

across the mountains coming, like, basically to us. I heard that 224 people were killed, 12 of them Americans, the rest were just ordinary civilian Africans in who were going on about their daily lives. They were in the wrong place at the wrong time, but because the 800-kilogram bomb was filled with thousands of shrapnel's and nails, it caused 5,000, 1,000. wounded, you know, it actually, like, I mean, wounded 5,000 people, 150 of them were blinded for life. And I remember that, first of all, after the first 24, 48 hours of trying to process what was happening and thinking, wow, that was great into thinking, oh dear, because several things hit me at once.

First, this is not attacking American forces in Saudi Arabia. This is attacking, you know, mostly Africans who have nothing to do with whatever, like, in the basic, whatever beef we have with the Americans in Africa. And in addition, what hit me even more was the fact that they are preparing me to build these devices in the future for similar atrocities. You see, until then, when I joined the Kaida, not a single atrocity was committed by them at that time. Nothing was committed. So I joined them fresh, they are just fresh coming out to Sudan. They haven't done anything like this.

And so it was their first ever attack and introduction to the world. And it is the equivalence of someone handing you a gun for the first time, your life and telling you, pointing to you at someone blindfolded, you have no idea who they are or whether what they have done or if they deserve to die and they tell you, shoot them. And obedient psychopaths will do it, like I will shoot. Not me though. You know, first of all, I'm not low IQ. I'm not psychopathic.

You know, I am a cat-loving, you know, God-fearing individual, you know, who's a nerd, but basically. And I then realized that, goodness, you know, I just finished training with Abu Khabab just two weeks ago, and this is the gun in my hand. And one day they will put me in front of that blindfolded person and tell me to shoot, and it will be soon rather than, you know, later. And so it hit me. And then when I went to the Mufti of a Kaida at the time of Abdullah Mahjur, who's the dean of the Sharia College at that time, I asked a question, I said, I mean, I'm not doubting anything, so please don't, you know, think anything else of me,

but please, can you explain to me how do we justify killing so many civilians to get at 12 American diplomats? I mean, seriously, I mean, can you just tell me because one day I will be the one being sent to do that? So he went on, first of all, he starts saying, Well, Amen, come on, they are a bunch of Africans, who cares. That's the first, you know, red flag, which I was thinking, you know, and myself, shall I tell the Somalis that we have here in the camp that you just said a bunch of Africans?

Because there were many Somalis who died in Kenya that day. Kenya itself is 10, 15% Muslim. There were presumably Muslims who died in that attack among those civilians. Roughly about, you know, 55 Muslims like, you know, kill that day. Most of them Somalis. And so when he said a bunch of Africans, I was thinking, shall I tell the Somalis in the camp here? Like, and I don't think they will have a very friendly conversation with you

if they hear you say that. But then he went on to say that we have a fatwa, you know, the Tataros fatwa, you know, the Ibn Tamiya fatwa, the fatwa that if the enemy shield himself behind civilians, then we have the right to do, you know, to attack. And whoever die among the civilians, will be kind enough to them to show them to heaven and that's it. Tell us more about that fatwa.

Tell us more just about the backgrounds. Yeah, so I asked him, you know, what is this fatwa? He said, oh, you will find it in his, in Ebn Taymi's comprehensive works and, you know, and letters. And I was thinking, okay, that's 37 volumes for God's sake, thank you so much. But you see, two weeks later, I never forgot. I was by complete coincidence in the Ka'aida's major headquarters in Kabul, and they have the biggest library there it's my favorite place at the time there in Afghanistan

I used to love that library so I went there I found it the last two volumes of this 37 is actually the indices and so I went into the entities I looked for it the Terros you know human shield found it in the 28th volume opened it and I found that it is a

repetition of older fatwas from the Mongol times so when the Mongol invasion happened in the early 1200s against the Muslim cities of Central Asia in Uzbekistan and Kyrgyzstan and all of these places they were sending urgent questions, urgent request for fatwas

saying that the Mongols, whenever they conquer a city they take the civilians from one city, make them push the siege towers towards the next, towards the walls of the next city in order to, well, basically conquer it. And so they were saying, can we shoot arrows and javelins or whatever like our fellow brothers Muslim brothers who were pushing the siege towers even though they were doing it against their will

and the fatwa came back and they said well they are dead anyway I mean they will be killed by the Mongols after the battle is over they are expendable so kill them prevent the siege towers from reaching your walls save yourselves and I was like reading this and I'm thinking that's not what happened in Kenya or in Tanzania

Yes, I mean, I don't see the American, you know, Americans pushing siege towers towards Mecca and Medina. It was really Ebn Tamia here. You know, poor Bintamia, everyone lying like, you know, basically in interpreting, you know, his right things the wrong way. You know, he was talking about the fact that if it is a life and death situation, then you do it. But there was no urgent life and death situation here. And I decided to leave. and I was waiting for the pretext. I was waiting for the fact that there was a scheduled,

a properly scheduled medical checkup in Qatar that I have to go to because working with chemicals, having typhoid and malaria the year earlier also has damaged my liver, and I have to go anyway to Qatar, and it was scheduled and everyone knew about it. So as soon as I was on the aircraft leaving Peshawar Airport going to Doha, I renounced my oath, you know, to Osama Biladan, I renounced my oath to Al-Qaeda. I thought, like, I mean, good reasons to Afghanistan, to all of this, I'm out.

Arrived in Qatar, long story short, got arrested because, hey, they were waiting for me, actually. Separately. You didn't try to get arrested. No, no, no. I actually arrived there thinking, hey, I'm going to be a history teacher. I'm going to go back into education. I'm going to go to university and I'm going to go and become a history teacher. And much to the relief of my would-be students, it never happened. So, you know, the Qataris were waiting for me because of a French intelligence tip-off in advance that I'm arriving. And so I always thought of myself as not that much important.

But then the French and other intelligence agencies had different idea that they thought, no, yes, you might be 20 year old, but you are important, important enough to be on our radar. And so as soon as I landed, I was arrested by the Qataris. But as soon as I started their interrogation, I mean, they were extremely surprised by my friendliness and cooperation and me being like an open. you know, with them about everything, never denying anything. And then, like, within, like, I mean, 40 minutes, they were saying, like, you know, hang on here. Is there anything wrong here? Like, you know, why are you being so cooperative? I mean, that's not a world experience.

Yeah. And so I said, well, I just left. And then I explained to them exactly what I explained to you. The, there were Qatari's, there were some Qatari offices, but also they had with them Sudanese and Jordanians. auxiliary officers, you know, who are, you know, supporting the function of the Qatari intelligence because it didn't have enough manpower at that time. Remember, it was 1998, you know, in order to fill the intelligence service at the time. They all left, you know, spent, I don't know, 15, 20 minutes outside the room and then came back,

giving me hugs, you know, basically, and saying, well done, well done. I mean, we can't say thank you enough, like, you know, for really seeing the light here. well done we are going to make your stay here comfortable with us we will bring your meals from the sheraton hotel next door like and we will make sure like you're absolutely comfortable what do you need i said as long as you give me a bunch of books i'll be fine i mean for entertainment like i need to read uh to pass the time and of course i was doing the debriefings with them and so you know and after nine days of debriefings through which i alerted them to an impending and attack in Yemen and things happening there and they then told me the truth that look, nothing will make us happier. I remember the Minister of Interior at the time met me. He said, like, nothing will make me happier than to keep you in Qatar here, and especially with me next door, like, and I mean, just to ask you all the questions I need, but here

in Qatar you'll be running into your friends on daily basis. You know, it's a 250,000 population. in this city, you will be meeting your friends on daily basis, you know, in the, in the mosque and the supermarket everywhere. It's not safe for you here. So you need to be adopted, let's put it this way, by a major agency that can protect you. And so I said, you know, and who do you have in mind? And he said, well, either the French are very keen on you.

And I said, I don't like the French. I don't like even to learn their language. even, so sorry, the Americans. Not easily, like, I mean, I just survived their, you know, cruise missile attack on my camp. Just, you know, several weeks ago, no. And then they said the British. And given the fact, and I didn't know that, I didn't know the fact that my father,

also in the 1960s, I, you know, cooperated to the British intelligence, you know, and had a role with them. I didn't know about that. about that later. And the fact that my grandfather was a British officer in the British army in Iraq, you know, because he was a Durrani of Afghan origin, he joined them there in Durand in Khyber, passed in Afghanistan, Pakistan, and then, you know, which is at the time British Raj, and then ended up in Iraq, and this is where he married my grandmother, and then we became like, you know, basically purely Arab, even though we are Durrani's,

you know, basically originally from the Durrani clan of Afghanistan. So he's, he's a very I had that affinity and because I've been to London before, you know, doing a mission for La Cáida there and so I was like thinking, okay, that's far more familiar and easier for me and they are more

familiar with the region. So yes, I said, okay, how long do I have to take a decision? They said half an hour. Okay, half an hour. I'm sorry, there's a CIA guy in French intelligence and MI6 sitting in the waiting room waiting for you to make a

decision? Why was there? I think the French were waiting. However, it's the Americans and the Brits were waiting, you know, in their respective capitals. And so I was told, okay, you will be put on an airplane this evening, you know, and straight to London. And I'm thinking, oh my God, okay, fine. And so I arrived in London and I remember that I was met by two agents from both MI5 and MI6. At the airport, they were extremely, you know, kind and welcoming. And after the first two-hour debriefing, they said that Christmas came early. We didn't know that Santa was living in Afghanistan, sending wonderful gifts. That is an amazing coup to get someone. This is a beginning, yeah. This is a beginning of an eight years' journey with them. You go back to Al-Qaeda, and you were.

remain embedded in al-Qaeda for those eight years. What are those eight years like undercover in al-Qaeda? I'm almost going to skimp on the juiciest pieces here, mainly to get people to buy your book. You know, it's good for you, it's good for me, just to move the podcast along. What are those eight years like? They reminded me also of what Abu Shabbab, you know,

ominously told us when we sat down for the first lesson in, you know, in bomb making. He said, you know, in bomb making, And also in Espionage, your first mistake is the last mistake. You will never live to make another mistake. And, oh boy. It's true in marriage too, but yes. Exactly.

Exactly. Exactly. So you will never live to make another mistake. And so, you know, can you imagine eight years, you know, one wrong word from me, one slip of the tongue, and you are a head shorter and six feet under. and with the addition of some people peeing on your grave also. So there is no dignity even in that death. But nonetheless, I did it. And I did it because I felt, like, I mean,

I would be extremely hypocritical if I was willing to die for the other side and not willing to die for this side. And at the end of the day, this is when the change of heart came. Like, you know, that I started to believe passionately in the nation state and the sanctity of the nation. nation states, all nation states deserve within the modern framework of the 21st century to have their flag identity borders protected. And with all honesty, that include the state of Israel as well in the region, as well as

Saudi Arabia, as Iraq, as well as Iran. I mean, I want Iran to stay within its borders. I mean, I want Israel to stay within its borders. I want Saudi Arabia to stay within its borders. But these borders must be protected. And each nation have the right to protect them. Each nation must push back against transnational ideologies, whether it is a Muslim fatherhood or Al-Qaeda or ISIS or the Taliban or anyone.

One second. I'm sorry. Is there a Muslim Ummah? There is the spiritual Muslim Ummah. There isn't the political one. There hasn't been, you know, for roughly, I think, you know, 1,250 years now. 1,300 is, I would say. So what kind of loyalty do you feel today?

You know what, let's unpack it just directly. Let's just dive into it. Yeah. Islam has spent what I have told my listeners, and I laid this out in its 32nd versions that you can explain to them where I went wrong. They're hearing stuff about Islam from a Jewish-Israeli. I can only apologize. That there is a debate within Islam sparked by, you know, 200 years ago, roughly, give or take, whether it's the British Empire coming to Egypt or it's Napoleon landing in Egypt before that,

this discovery that Islam is very backward, very weak, and the West has charged ahead and advanced. And that created a kind of theological crisis for this lineage that we talked about because we're very interested in who Hamas are and what they think and that produces Hamas, the Muslim brothers and their teachers, you know, from Rida to Abduh to Al-Afghani

and these thinkers in Egypt. And this is a discourse that spreads. It spreads to Shia Islam in the revolutionary regime of Iran. It spreads all over the Muslim world. These people are read, you know, from Malaysia to Morocco. And they come to recreate an Islam that is political, that looks at pan-Islimism, the borders, the boundaries, the nation states,

fail them in the collapse of Arab nationalism and pan-Arabism under Nasser and all of that stuff. So there's this deep, deep, profound idea that Hamas draws from, al-Qaeda drew from, that there is this Ummma, this umma, this umma's arising is, heart of Islam returning to its rightful place in history instead of this fallen place to which it had fallen in its weakness in the face of Western imperialism. Tell us sort of what's the grand historical vision that you had then of Islam?

What were you trying to redeem? Is it literally just protecting Muslims in Bosnia? Or was there a larger sense of the awakening? Bin Laden's theory of the 9-11 attacks was that an American reprisal against the Muslim world would awaken and unify the Muslim world. And so there was this sense of awakening that needed to happen. You had that idea or it was something else? And what do you think today? How do you understand that Muslim world? Is it just that all the transnational ideologies end up burning everything to the ground and everything they've touched,

they've destroyed, basically, whether it's Hezbollah in Lebanon, Hamas in Gaza, or the Taliban in Afghanistan? Walk us through your thinking. In reality, my understanding of our role, I mean up until like the East Africa bombings in 1998, was to start this awakening within the Muslim world into understanding that we are all one Muslim nation, one Muslim Ummah. And I believed in the Muslim Ummah. I just didn't know that the Muslim Ummah existed spiritually, it just, it did not exist politically. And it never existed. I always drank that Kool-Aid that, you know, that we were always one united, you know, Muslim

Ummma when in fact, like, I mean, looking at the history, oh my God, like, in our history is as bloody as the Mongols and as the Europeans and as the Aztecs and everyone else, like, I mean, in the world, like, you know, we are humans after all, you know, filled with that human nature of ambition, of brutality, of, you know, of fighting with passion in order for whatever we believe in. However, I think when the East Africa bombings happened, and I just felt that epiphany, I felt as if I can see 20 years ahead, and I felt that this will not stop here. this will not stop until we are bombing compounds, ministries, and police headquarters inside Saudi Arabia, killing our own brothers and cousins and friends and schoolmates, you know, fighting, you know, Arab to Arab Muslim to Muslim, Bedouin to Bedouin, and for what exactly? If this is what God wants, you know, basically, I mean, okay, if I say like, I'm fighting against some other things,

Maybe this is what God wants, but does God want really like, you know, basically us, you know, cousins and brothers killing each other, like, you know, for the sake of who is right about what is the modern vision of Islam should be? This is when I remember during the first year working for MI5 and MI6, I started to read more and more about the nation state and the role of the nation state and the differences between why the Muslim Ummma failed, why the Muslim world failed, I will say, largely. And then this is when I started to realize a theory of mine I started to develop and then started to champion over the past seven, seven, eight years, that really it's not all of them failed. You know, what failed was the secular, dictatorial, autocratic systems, those that failed, that failed. The ones that succeeded. Even the ones that claimed the mantle of Islam, for example, the Ottoman solaceous, the ones that claimed the mantle of Islam, for example, the Ottoman solaceous. who claimed to be a caliph, but in fact was not, was something out. It was very much a worldly.

Yeah, the last caliphate, who had any rule over the entire Muslim world was Abu Jafer al-Mansur, like the second Abbasid Caliph. So really, like, I mean, we're talking about the first four caliphs, Rashidun, and then the 14 Umayas, and then the two Abbasids, and then that's it. Andalusia broke away, then Morocco broke away, then Tunisia broke away, then Tunisia broke away and then the political umma broke up and never united ever since and that was when that was in the year 140

of the hijra like in basically which is about roughly 780 AD since 780 you know that's more than 1,200 years ago we don't have a single unified political entity so no Ottoman emperor can say oh he ruled over the Muslim world, excuse me, like, you know, most of North Africa wasn't yours, and Najd wasn't yours, and, you know, Iran and Persia, and of course, behind that is India, and Central Asia wasn't yours either.

So at the end of the day, like, you actually, they ruled, you know, over more Christians than Muslims. So in, you know, in South Western Europe. I would say, like, for me, the only successful model, really wasn't, nationalism, socialism, or whatever, like in all generals, military, or anything like that. The only successful model that finally captured, you know, the essence that is enough to represent modern-day Islam, while at the same time adopt modernity is the monarchy system. So the Middle East is divided into, really, in terms of the Arab Middle East or the Muslim

Middle East is divided into two zones, the royal zone and the non-royal zone. The royal zone is the most successful. Absolutely. Throughout the MENA region, that's the most successful. Even Jordan and Morocco, they are inherently stable in comparison to the neighbors who are inherently unstable. But if you look at, you know, the theocratic model, Iran, it's hell on earth, you know, for its own people and for the neighbors. If you look at the democratic systems that are in Lebanon, in Iraq, it is so sectarian.

It is so, you know, influenced by tribes without the tribe having its own rightful place in the system. And as a result, it is so manipulated. Look at, you know, Yemen, look at all the other countries, Libya, they are in civil wars. Look at Syria. I'm one of those people who is, like, begging Ahmed Ashraf al-Shara. Like, you know, just declare it a kingdom, call yourself a king, and let's be done with it. because the only successful model in the Middle East, among the Arabs and Muslims, will always be the monarchy.

I argued for this when I was only a 22-year-old undercover, you know, M.I.6 agent, when I argued that in my paper for MI6 at that time, before the Bonn conference, please restore Muhammad Zahar Shah, you know, to the throne of Afghanistan. Because a king in Afghanistan is nothing, just like in the Arab world, is nothing but a glorified tribal sheikh. He will have the authority to unite the tribes together, to bring them together. And within the kingdom, which is what, unfortunately, what a secular republic exclude completely, a secular republic exclude faith as an institution and exclude the tribe as an institution.

But these two institutions find their way and find their... place comfortably within a system of monarchy because a monarch is a paternal, semi-religious figure who the allegiance to him is similar to the allegiance to the caliph, and is similar to how Muawiya, the first king in Islam, you know, ruled the founder of the Umayyad dynasty and every other dynasty since then. Legitimate is thousands of years, you know, of, of a, you know, of tradition. I think by now we have safely come to the end of the trial period. If it ain't broke, don't fix it. I've been preaching this, like, you know, before the Bonn conference, and I was told that the White House, it will never agree, you know, to a monarchy system

because American democracy, you know, find a monarchy an anathema to, you know, the spirit of American democracy. And I said at that time, and I hope, like, you know, basically, you know, I will try to use a child-friendly term here, I said fluff American democracy. You know, really let them fluff the fluff out. I mean, in all honesty, we need stability, not experiment. And this is when, you know, I became a, you know, I totally avowed monarchist believing that the nation state, even with its all, it's, you know, false and short,

It's the best way for Islam to find its place, its rightful place, as a spirit, as a spiritual religion, as a ritual religion, to find its place in the world and to adopt modernity. And, you know, don't, if you don't believe me, look at Oman, look at Saudi Arabia, look at Morocco, look at the United Arab Emirates, look at Qatar, and look at Saudi Arabia of all, like, you know, how it changed when there is an enlightened monarch. on the throne here. Like, and this is what I've been saying, like, you know, throughout that, forget all about the ideologies. What defeats ideologies more than anything else. What cleansed the UAE of the Muslim Brotherhood was its royal families. What cleansed Oman of the Muslim Brotherhood was its royal family.

And what cleansed Saudi Arabia of its jihadist, you know, past, you know, basically was its royal family. family. The view of the Middle East held by Israeli intelligence, I mean the PhDs and the assessment divisions of army intelligence, you know, not necessarily the generals, but the scholars of Israeli intelligence, is a view of the Middle East that says that there are three or four axes. And one axis is the Shia led by Iran. One axi is what they call the conservative Muslims. And this is also something I've done a podcast episode about. Conservative Muslims are all the monarchies. they tell us. These are states that went through the Arab Spring unharmed, untouched.

Syria collapsed. You know, state after state collapsed. Egypt collapsed. Jordan held firm. Morocco held firm. The Saudis held firm. Bahrain had a problem, had a rebellion, but it was a Shia-Sunni issue,

a lot of it instigated by Iran. And yet, the Bahraini government held firm. And so wherever you have these monarchies, you have this conservative Islam. The third axis is radical Islam. the Muslim brothers, the Salafists, whether it's Hamas, the AKP party of Erdogan, the Israelis include Qatar in there because they perceive Qatar as very much in terms of radical Islam on the other side of the, right? Now, the entirety of the Abraham Accords process is with these monarchies.

And the entire, I think Sudan is the addition, but it hasn't yet signed on the dotted line, right? And then there's a fourth axis, which is the Israelis like to put it as other. It's, you know, the Jews, the Druze, the Kurds, you know, all these that don't fit into any of the Arab Muslim boxes easily. And we tend to fight for each other and protect each other and help each other in different ways in the Middle East. It sounds to me, I hope I'm hearing the same thing. I hope I'm not imposing on you my own view of the Middle East, but that that is your essential understanding of the Middle East as someone who came from that, from the background that you came from. In other words, the Arab Sunni world is essentially today divided into two camps. The radicals, the people who read Qutib or various scholars around the Wahhabis,

but that version of the Wahhabis, the revolutionary, we'll call it Sunism, and the conservatives. And navigating that civil war almost in Arab Sunni Islam is the great task of our time. That's the kind of thing an Israeli intelligence official might tell us today if they happen to have a PhD. Is that something that you think is an accurate view of the Middle East? What are they missing? How do you see that? I think one of the reasons why, you know, banks, energy, energy companies, multinationals, big corporations, defense, they don't employ scholars and PhDs.

They usually employ people, you know, basically, like, you know, who have the similar background, like, in the intelligence and the defense. And the reason is because basically, like, I mean, we see more of the world than people in their eyes. Tvers, but what you portrayed is somewhat accurate, but it is still needs to, you know, to add some meat to it. And that meat is the fact that the battle right now is between the monarchies, you know, of the region versus the transnational ideologies. The monarchies represent the pinnacle of stable, modern nation-state. and the transnational ideologies I mean by that three types

which is Sunni militant Islam whether it is Al-Qaeda, Isis, you know, Shabab, Taliban, all of these you have political Sunni Islam which is a Muslim Brotherhood and then you have the Shia political and militant Islam because the Shia like you have their political and militant Islam

merged together within the framework of the orbit of Tehran and the IRGC-related groups, they have, of course, like, you know, and everything is laced with eschatology and the battle for the Mahdi's. I mean, I used to say, like, you know, Al-Qaeda and Isis have their own Mahdi

and the Houthis with them, you know, and the Houthis and the Hezbollah and everyone else and the Iranians have their own Mahdi. And it's a battle of two Mahdi's, you know, when in fact there is no Mahdi. I mean, basically, like, you know, all of these are Abbasid fabrications that find their way into the Hadith.

And since then, like, I have now completely, like, I disavoured the belief in the Mahdi. I don't believe in any Mahdi. I believe, like, in all of these were fabrications, you know, made by scholars who wanted to carry favor with the Abbasids. You know, and so this is, I think, where we see the battle line between those who believe in the nation states, especially monarchical nation states,

and those who want to bring down. the nation states to establish their empires on mountains of skulls and you know you know and oceans of blood and this is where the battle lines are drawn I am on the side of the modern nation states within Islam I believe in the monarchies I believe the monarchs are paternal glorified tribal leaders who do not kill their own people in fact like and they might discipline their people but they do not kill them they have that paternal social contract between them and their, you know, people. Tell me, Haviv, have you ever heard about boats capsizing in the Mediterranean carrying Saudis or Emirates or Qataris or Kuwaitis or Amanis?

Of course not. And the reason is because basically these people never leave their land. You know, they retain their population for a reason, even though they are not exactly like, you know, the paragon of, you know, free speech or freedom of conscience. I'm the first one to raise my hand and say, no, they are not on the same part as, you know, for example, let's say, like, you know, Europeans or even the Israelis, but, you know, in terms of freedom of conscience, like, you know, and thought. But something is magical about these, you know, systems. They retain their population. That was Iran before the 1979, you know, revolution. That was Afghanistan before King Muhammad Zahar Shah was deposed, you know, in 1975.

That is a reality. We need to return to a system that actually guarantees safety, security, stability, law and order, prosperity for everyone not to be the experimental political lab for PhD, you know, ivory tower dwellers in London or D.C. or Berkeley or Yale or Harvard or anyone else. We know our region. I think you are, you are one of our tribes. You are, Ben-Israel, you are one of the tribes here in the region. You came from a line of kings. You should understand that more than anyone else. If Westerners thought of Israeli Jews as an Arab tribe among many Arab tribes of the Middle East,

they would understand every single reaction Israeli Jews had to every single event. I will say Abrahamic Semitic tribe. Half of Israeli Jews, are the grandchildren of people who came from the Arab world. I don't know why it's shocking to people. Yeah, and they're half of them. I mean, we're all intermarried. So then, you know, we all have some roots of some kind, except for me, I'm pure Ashkenazi, and I'm very embarrassed about it in my neighborhood.

But you said something that bothered me about Syria on Twitter, on X, excuse me. And so I would like you to flesh that out very quickly. And then I want to take you to the thing that's, I think, much more serious and painful for me directly, which is obviously Israel and Gaza and also how it's playing out of the Muslim world. And then I'm going to let you go and be a free man. because you have so much to tell us that is so fundamental to our world and our experience and our understanding what's happening, that there simply is no way for an ordinary Westerner to get it. You have argued, you know, this question of the massacre of the Druze in Swayda came up.

I have a great many Drew's friends. I served in the army with Drew's friends, my direct commander in my infantry platoon was a Drew's officer. and I feel a deep, it's hard to say this in American English, it's very easy to say this in Hebrew, but I feel a absolutely deep camaraderie and loyalty to the Jews because they are there for us and they die for us and we have that exact same duty to them. And then, Jolani, who, you know,

Ashahaz leads this group called Jabhatan Nusar. He led them and they've changed their names and they've changed their... And all of this complexity, you are not opposed to Jabilten Nus. which is a group that swore loyalty to al-Qaeda. And so I would like to know why. Why you think Jolani is not what, I would say, just a sort of ordinary Westerner might want to think of him as al-Qaeda in that caricature of al-Qaeda that we might have?

And also why the story of Swayda was not any kind of simple Sunni radicals massacre the Jews and the Israelis come to their defense, which, by the way, Israeli leaders were convinced it was for the first few days. Now, I still think there was a massacre. think those massacres continue and i still think israel has a responsibility to protect the jews but the jews of syria are also divided into different camps into different groups and there's complexity here and you are very bullish very optimistic about uh mr julani and the possibility of establishing a syria that even though it comes from that ideological place is stable is reasonable

can make peace with israel for example um so how did you see that play out and what do you think that tells us about you know a the future of syria b how minorities can live in this world that you're describing as paternalistic and a lot more stable. And I agree with you. Every Israeli agrees with you. Better a Saudi Middle East than a Hamas Middle East or, you know, Iranian Middle East. How do you understand Syria right now? Well, this is where I always used to say, like, you know, basically that knowledge is burden.

And, you know, the more you know about the situation, especially when you know, you know, not only the, you know, the surface, not just only the, you know, the layer below the surface, but the second and the third and the fourth and the fifth layer below the surface, this is when it becomes a burden, because then you're saying things that are not obvious to others, and then people think, like, you know, what's the hell?

I mean, you are anti-Alqaeda, for God's sake, and you are, you know, sympathizing with someone who's sworn allegiance to al-Qaeda, and it's like, you know, calm down, boys, like, I mean, because I know more than you do, way more than you do about this issue, you know, not just from now, but from many, many years ago.

It's possible you even know more than me on this issue. I just want to say that officially for record. A little bit more. A little bit more. What are we missing? What are we missing? First of all, he's very much impressed us that he put on a suit. But then again, there has been this massacre of the Aloites.

There has been Christians fleeing. He did, when he was in charge of Idlib a few years back, forcibly convert, at least sort of publicly on paper as a stunt maybe. But it wasn't experienced as a stunt by those minorities, a Christian village and an Alawite village. How do I know if she's good or evil? Where do I look to find that out? I think this is, in my opinion, one of the first instance in history

where you have the radical leader of a radical organization becoming deradicalized and then starting de-radicalizing the top-tier leadership and then going into the second-tier leadership and the third-tier leadership and, you know, top-down dereidicalization as opposed to you know, the other way around. And I was aware of it, you know, I was completely made aware of it in a chance meeting in Berlin with one of the senior intelligence officers from the Five Eyes, you know, in March of 2018. So I'm talking about the knowledge I have, like, you know, basically extending more than 80s.

And we were talking specifically about Doolani and Idlib and what's happening there. And I was absolutely surprised that when I was taken into the confidence, of that senior intel officer, like, you know, who was serving at that time, holding the Syria file at that time, and I was supplying him with information. And he said to me that actually, you know, if you want to know, like, you know, basically something that will, you know, surprise you. Julani has now completely, completely switched to the American side. And that was, remember, March of 2018.

Remember? 2018 and I said how he said well it's all started you know when he was in Buka and then like in another prisons like I mean American jailers like in a way befriending him and

especially American librarian you know the jail library and the jail librarians like you know where in particular impressed by how many books he was reading and the fact that he was starting to depart the idea of global jihad and thinking about jihad being a instrument to fight injustice rather than being a global, aimless, you know, jihad like in a foreign empire.

And then, of course, he comes out of prison in 2011, straight away sent to Syria. He established, you know, Javit and Nusra there, even though it was funded by ISIS initially, but he was completely at odds with ISIS leadership about the direction of the group. He doesn't want Syria to be a staging ground for any terrorist. against any other nation whatsoever, especially the Americans. And then when the pressure was on him so much, in April of 2013, just before the split with ISIS happened, he went to the Turkish military intelligence and to Hakam Fadan in particular, and he just said, I don't want, like, you know, basically to be part of this, like,

how do we extricate ourselves from this situation? And so this is when the split with ISIS happen. He managed to keep hold of about 40% of the group, kept them as a Nusra. 60% went with ISIS, but then you know what happened with ISIS. So what happened is for the next several years, he was passing on to the Turks every single bit of intelligence on ISIS, camps, weapon depots, location of their leaders, exact coordinates. So the Turks were passing it on to the Americans, drones, fighter jets, everything you can imagine, decimated Isses. But then he, of course, when he left Isis in order to remain legitimate in the eyes of his followers, he gave his allegiance to Al-Qaeda.

Al-Qaeda decided, oh, great, thank you so much. We're going to send now our own leaders to you. So they started sending people like Abul Farage al-Masri and Abu Abdullah al-Moharajar and Ibrahim Siyazer and all of these leaders, only for them to be killed one after another by America. drones. Somehow, someone, somewhere was leaking their, you know, locations. Why? Because El Jolani was leaking their locations to the Turks and the Turks were giving it to the Americans and then brownie points, one brownie point after another. And so at some point, the Americans worked it out and told in late 2017, they told Hakam Fidon, we know who your sources, we want

to meet him. And so a meeting was arranged and it was in January, just two months before I met that intelligence officer in January of 2018, the meeting happened. And in that meeting, Al-Julani, Lakhina basically asserted that, you know, I have no interest whatsoever in anything that is remotely related to global jihad. We despise, you know, this idea completely. And we made sure that anyone who is trying to make Idlib a staging ground, you know, for attacks against any other nation will meet his demise before he even achieve it. So he was asked the question, what do you want?

And he said it exactly like this. He said to rule Syria. That was what I was told in March of 2018. And so I was thinking that that was smart. But does those around him know that? And the answer was most of that first-tier leadership know that, know his strategy. they have converted to that, they are now more or less similar to Saudi Wahhabist ideology

of the nation state comes first. And they are doing that conversion slowly and gradually, you know, from the top down. So in 2020, in July, that's another evidence of this, I met with a senior Syrian businessman who lives in the U.S. and I remember he had a debts problems and everything and all of that and he said to me, Amen, finally I'm going to pay my debts and I'm going to move to Turkey, everything will be fine. I will tell you, I will tell you, I have the exact location of El Jolani.

He is quarantining for COVID. He is in this exact location and he showed it to me. He showed me on the phone where Jolani is and he had the proof of life. He had Jolani's video inside that house. And he said, I just passed it on to the American. It's only a matter of time before I collect a $10 million reward on him. I said to him, it's not going to happen. They're not going to target him, trust me.

He said to me, no, no, no, what do you mean? I said, trust me, they are not going to target him. He's just too useful for them. And, you know, several days passed by, you know, 10 days almost, and I called him, I said, you know, my dear friend, no attack yet. He said, oh, those American bastards, they told me they put it all the way to the chain of command. at the time it was President Trump, by the way. And it came back from the White House to the Department of Defense saying that it doesn't serve the national security interests of the United States to target this man,

even though there is $10 million reward on him. Once it's on, you can't lift the reward, right? Because then you clarify that he's working for you. So they have to leave the reward, but then never act on it. Exactly. The man mirrors my journey. Everything about him reminds me of me. Everything, every word he's saying. From Sayyat Kutob indoctrination all the way to the nation state and the Chicago club

and, you know, infatuation with Milton Friedman. Yes, I'm not kidding. Seriously. You know, the man mirrors my journey. And so, however, I was, you know, dismantling. things from within. He was changing, changing things from the top, something that no one ever achieved before. So he has a difficult task here. And this is why I was enraged when I saw the Israelis attacking and it's like, oh wait, wait, wait a minute. You should be working with this man because this man is the guarantee that Syria is going to be radicalized for the next 20 years,

not the other way around. You know, because he is the one who is making sure that radical people are either expelled or in prison. Look at the prisons of Idlib. How many people there from the jihadists, like who are Egyptians or Iraqis or whatever, who currently like basically languishing in Idlib jails? Just like the jihadis in Saudi Arabia who are languishing in Saudi jails. Right. In other words, in Idlib, you have these jihadis,

and he's keeping a lid on them, and he can be trusted to do so. He, just like the monarchies, and he wants to be a monarch in the future. You know, at some stage, like, you know, basically he want to be the king of Syria, a united kingdom of Syria. Now, the problem here is, you know, it's not the Druze. The Druze were always painted as patriotic Syrians in Syria. And remember, like, you know, you have to understand that the Druze of Syria are very different from the Druze of Lebanon are very different from the Druze of, you know, Israel. that the three are very different

in terms of culture, political, like I mean machinations, all of that. So it's a mistake to treat all the three as the same. And also the same time, everything would have been fine if it wasn't for one particular man

in Sweda who I blame personally for this entire mess. It's not that the jihadists want to kill the truce. I mean, look, the jihadists want to kill everyone, to be honest. Like, you know, basically they want to kill even Sunni, you know, people who, you know, dance and drink and party.

But the reality here is the fact that we have someone already keeping a lid on them and deregicalizing them. You know, that is genuine and we can see that. We see his efforts on the ground. The problem here is we have one man who, Dr. Eman Safadi, you know, the foreign minister of Jordan, in 2015, he put out a tweet. Before he became a foreign minister and deputy prime minister of Jordan, he said, hecumat al-Hijury is the, you know, a source of all the problems. That's the current Druze leader.

In Sueda, yeah. In Sweda, one of them, to be honest. Like, there are two other, Hannaway and Al-Jurboa. But there are, you know, he is the most outspoken and the most militant out of them. Imagine in 2015, 10 years ago, the current deputy minister, prime minister and, you know, foreign minister of Jordan describing him as the biggest liability in Sweda and that he is a trouble. He said that ten years ago. Now, the surprise here is that Aiman Saffedi is a Druze himself from the Druze of Jordan.

So he said himself that. And I have recent, as you can read my tweets, I speak to diplomats in Jordan and they tell me that the biggest problem in Sweden is Hesmata is Hikmah al-Hedri because he is genuinely mentally unstable who have, just like Gaddafi, have different positions every few hours. And, you know, he changed his mind depending on who he meets, you know, last and who he speak to last.

And so, you know, as a result, the Darbuo and the Hanawi were more than happy to coexist and to actually cooperate with the new government. They made progress. And their request of fully droos police force, fully droos judiciary, and fully droos civil service in Suveda was agreed to. However, seven months and the Hikmahil-Hijri is saying, no, no, no, no, no, no, and without any good explanations as to, yeah, but we're giving you everything you want. He said, no, I want a secular government in Damascus.

well, we are secular, we have no religious leader, like, basically. No, no, no, I want a genuine secular. Yeah, did you look at your head, mate? Like, basically, you have a religious hat on your head, and you are the leader of the political and military, undisputed leader of the Druze in South Suede. Like, I mean, it's like, you know, glass houses and rocks and all of that. Like, I mean, you see, it's not...

Do you think the Israelis didn't understand any of this? Yeah. Unfortunately, no. because of domestic political issues. But why did the Israeli drus say we desperately need to be hundreds of people crossed the border, you know, just in a pirate way, just on their own as vigilantes to go save the Jews of South Sweden? Golan Jews, who are, you know, some of them think they're Israeli, most of them think they're

still kind of Syrian, they don't really know, but people who are very familiar with the situation in Sweden. Why, how did the Israelis, never mind the failure of, you know, Israeli intelligence or understanding or politicians pulled the trigger a little too fast. What the Trump administration said, according to an alleged leak that I think of the Trump administration has since denied, Netanyahu was just a little too easy on the, right, he bombs everything, that's the right. But there was nevertheless this sense that they, the Druze are telling us what's happening.

Why would these truths say it that way? Why would they? Blind tribalism, at the end of the day, is a blind tribalism. It doesn't matter, basically. Like the Arabic saying, unser, a haqa, al-zloman, or mizloumen. Like, I mean, support your brother, whether oppressed or oppressor. You know, that is the Arab, you know, mentality. It's a tribe.

It's a tribe with a tribe. Once the Jews are dying, it doesn't matter who's doing the killing and who started it. Exactly. And how you stop it? And by the way, like, you know, many atrocities were committed by the, you know, members of the military and later members of the tribal forces when they entered into Sweden. No question about it. But to call it genocide or ethnic cleansing is, like, is a disservice to,

a pure analysis and honest analysis. Why? Because it's a fight between two militias, for God's sake, or an army and a militia. Because that's exactly what happened. You know, all of these things avoidable. Everything was avoidable, to be honest, because the Druze were given, in Sweden were given almost considerable amount of autonomy, and it was, you know, with guarantees that there will be no weapons south of Damascus. That's it.

The Syrians were telling me that we are happy with the demilitarized zone. own. We don't care. Like, I mean, at the end of the day, you know, if the Israelis want to, you know, invade, let them invade. They will meet the tribes of Darra. You know, let them let them try the tribes of Darraa, you know, Gaza will be another cakeway. Gaza will be considered a cakewalk in comparison. So, you know, the government in Damascus, if you ask them, what do you want? And do you know what is the word they always say in Syrian accent, but naeish? You know, we want to live. In other we want to have higher standards of living for our people. But at the same time, they are doing their best to deradicalize people who have been radicalized by 14 years of traumatic conflict, where a million people died, 14 million displaced, and they just experienced power after 54 years being bereft of power. I'm talking about the Sunnis of Syria. So, you know, the neighbors need to work with them in order to achieve that.

And you know what? You know, Nathania who could have picked up the phone to Ashara and say, hey, I want you to give the droos one, two, three, four, five, you know. And in return, I'm going to help you with the drought, you know, and all the agricultural, like, you know, challenges that you have because we are the best in the region with that. Will you do that for me? Ashaharad would have said yes. And the Syrian people would have valued this gesture for the 20 years to come. Do you think Ashahar would say yes now after Israel? bombed military HQ in Damascus?

I would say yes if it means that Syria remains united and there is a Israeli backing for a united Syria and potential in the future for a united Syrian monarchy. Okay. Final question. Thank you so much for your time. I don't know how to do this. Maybe I'll just invite you for another four hours some other time. Happy to do so. Gaza. We, Israelis, you know, after October 7, I said on some podcasts, I don't think our enemies understand what they have awakened. All of our history, 140 years of the history that produced the Jews of Israel as a cohesive society, teach us that we no longer can trust

in our own analyses of whether the enemy is deterred. We thought we understood Hamas. it turned out we did not. And so we no longer trust our own judgment of whether Chisbalah is deterred, whether the Khomey is deterred, whether anybody is deterred. And so the New Israeli Vision, by October 9th,

was very clear to people like, me and to every serious pundit of Israel, many, many of us. The new Israeli vision was no more monsters on any borders, no more enemies that we have clever theories about the deterrence. And so we went to a war,

first in Gaza, then in Lebanon, Khazbalah insisted on joining that war. But we wanted Chazbalah to join in that war because we wanted the chance to shatter this thing forever because we can never have monsters on our borders ever again because we simply can't believe that our own intelligence telling us they're deterred. Nobody's ever deterred in the Israeli imagination ever again. And we went to Iran. Iran was said to be this enormous challenge and turned out to be an unbelievable cakewalk. We have dead, we have buildings shattered, we have thousands displaced.

It is not one percent of what the pessimists said that war would mean for Israel and for the Middle East. Chisbalah turned out to be a cakewalk because of 10 years of incredibly professional and astonishing, astonishingly clever, intelligence work, etc. And Gaza, that weakest of our enemies, but the one that surprised us, because we did not understand it, because it had managed to compartmentalize to a point where Israeli intelligence couldn't see it because of a catastrophic Israeli failure. Gaza turned out to be the thing that we still now struggle to understand how to get through, how to achieve the basic war goal, which is Hamas disarmed and removed. That's the war goal. That was the cabinet decision two years ago almost. And along the way, Gaza has suffered terribly. I think that the basic Israeli understanding of the Gaza War is basically World War II

in Germany. The Allies destroyed Germany, demolished Germany. My complaint to Benjamin Netanyahu has been that while the Allies were demolishing Germany, it was understood that that was because the Nazis were holding on, because they wouldn't surrender. We will do whatever it takes to remove Nazism. But once we remove Nazism, there is the great rebuilding. the Israelis need to say that. There is the Great Rebuilding, because otherwise they're just destroying, and they're destroying at enormous scales, because there are 500 kilometers of tunnels under this tiny territory of 25 kilometers. But Gaza is the place where the Israelis are struggling. Gaza is also the place where there's enormous suffering, enormous suffering.

In Lebanon, the civilian death toll is tiny compared to the destruction wreaked down Hezbollah. In Iran, it's even smaller compared to the catastrophe it represents militarily. In Gaza, the civilians are suffering far more than Hamas. So much of Hamas is dead. Maybe that's, I don't know. I don't want to get into it. Never mind the semantics. The point is there's massive suffering.

There's widespread terrible hunger in Gaza right now. There's a big debate about whether it's actually starvation. Okay, fine. But there's no doubt there's suffering. Has the Middle East radicalized against Israel? Is Hamas exactly that kind of transnational enemy or is it a nationalist enemy in the model that you told us? So many questions that I have about Gaza.

Are the Abraham Accords still possible? How do you do, you know, if the Saudis demand a Palestinian state for movement forward with an Abraham Accord, does that mean also the West Bank? I have to tell you, there's not a single Israeli I know who isn't in some way afraid of pulling out of any part of the West Bank because they absolutely believe that Hamas will take over anywhere they pull out of because Hamas is the only real story that exist in Palestinian politics

that Palestinians cling to. So this is something that we don't know how to solve. We're not going to solve any time soon. It's tremendous suffering involved on their side, on our side. 90% of Israelis think the Palestinians want to destroy us utterly. 90% of Palestinians, it turns out, roughly, think that the Israelis want to destroy them utterly. I don't know how this conflict ends anytime soon.

And in the meantime, the entire Middle East is watching it and obsessing about it and seeing nothing else almost on their television screens. How do you understand Gaza? What should the Israelis do? How bad is it? Is there an Abraham Accords to come out of it? And I'll think up another seven or eight questions. No, this is it.

This is the last question. Tell us what someone who comes from your past and knows what you know understands that Gaza conflict. I was, it was September 17, 23. So it was just my birthday. And I was in the presence of the Irish ambassador here in the UAE, and I was giving a talk to the Irish business group here in the United Arab Emirates. And there were 200 people in front of me, and I was talking about the recent positive outcome in the region.

First, we have the March, 23 detente between Tehran and Riyadh, brokered by Beijing, in order to secure supplies of energy and make sure there is no shooting war between the GCC and Iran. And then we have the IMEC, the India, Middle East European corridor, which will go from Mumbai to Dubai to Riyadh, to Jordan, and from there to Haifa, and from there to Greece and Italy. Wow, this will create this kind of Israeli-Sahdi economic integration before even we go into the proper normalization.

What a wonderful time to live in. Hooray for peace. And then I said something. I said, are we allowed to say that peace is finally, you know, raining in the Middle East? Are we, like I mean, allowed to be optimistic? Or somehow, somehow, someone across the water, and I was pointing, you know, from Dubai across the water, like I meant Iran, will sabotage all of this?

You know, and I remember one of the members of the audience asking, like, how do you think the sabotage will happen? I said, I don't know, maybe the Houthi is firing more drones, you know, on Saudi oil facilities, you know, but I don't think this will happen. It could be, you know, the classic way of another Gaza war, just like 2009, 2014 and 2021 skirmishes, like, you know, it could be a small scale. that's what I said. It will be a small scale, little did I know, in order to just disrupt that

kind of normalization process that was taking place and the speed at which it was going on. Because I was being told by Saudi friends from the diplomatic service and even the intelligence service like that the Saudis were working hard to bring back some sort of a working relationship between Hamas and Fathah in order to dissolve the problems between them because, you know, the government in Jerusalem was telling the Saudis, if you want us to have a peace between us and the Palestinians, how about there should be a peace between the Palestinians and the Palestinians? You know, these two, they need to agree first.

They have to have that unified, you know, vision in order for us to have a, you know, a credible partner for peace. both of them and that include Hamas abandoning its charter and the aim of destruction of Israel and all of that until October 1st they were telling the Saudis they are on board

and they are willing and open to talk about these points and then of course October 7 happened two hours if you look at my timeline on X on Twitter two hours into the attacks I posted only one line and I was almost in tears. I said, Iran is going to fight Israel

until the last Palestinian. This is the only line I wrote that day and it's there for everyone to see because I knew exactly who did it because I thought it will happen just three weeks earlier because there is a almost unstoppable train for peace like in the region, and someone is going to derail it.

But I didn't think it was on that scale. It wasn't derailing. It was blowing up the bridge and the whole train went down into the abyss. And this is why I would say that the only peace, the only way this can happen and for the Abrahamic Accord to be put together is for Jordan's. Saudi and the UAE, and only these three, please not to Egypt, only these three, Saudi Arabia, UAE and Jordan, for them to take over Gaza as a protectorate and with U.S. and European security involvement, dismantle, disarm, and expel Hamas leaders from Gaza, and start a program

not only of rebuilding Gaza, but of deradicalizing and rehabilitating the people. of Gaza and to create that working model, you know, for coexistence and peace that could take up to 10 years to build. In the meantime, I'm one of those people who believe that I don't believe in the two-state solution. I'm not like, you know, basically one of the idiots, like, you know, who believe in this is a complete fallacy, complete idiocy, it's not going to work. Because there is no viable land for the Palestinians in the West Bank anymore.

more. And it will, after October 7, which Israeli generation will ever, you know, abandon their strategic depth of defense and allow, you know, such pockets like, you know, of potential enemy, you know, forces to fester and to multiply there. So I'm one of those people who believe that a primitive model of non-representative democracy that could actually emerge, where there is a one-state solution involving only the West Bank. Gaza will be an Arab protectorate, separate completely, but the West Bank Palestinian population will become Israeli citizens, and that 70% of the Knesset will be reserved for Jewish population in order to protect the Jewish identity of Israel. while, you know, the other 30% will be represented by Arabs.

So, yes, it's a little bit of a, you know, one-third disenfranchisement. Yes, it's like Lebanon. The Christians are only 30%, but they have 50% of the parliament by constitution in order to maintain that cultural and, you know, heritage of Christian and cultural heritage of Lebanon. So this is the only viable solution in my estimates, you know, as an amateur student of history looking forward. That's the only way that can go forward. Gaza is separate, you know, become a GCC Jordan Monarchical Protectorate, like, you know, basically, and their citizens, you know, given some sort of, like, you know, basically a,

Saudi or, you know, Saudi protected passports, like, you know, basically in order to become separate entity, while at the same time the West Bank and the population, the Arab population and the West Bank become Israeli citizens, but their voting power will not alter at all the Jewish identity of Israel. I think that's the only way. I can't think of any other way like an despicable There are

So you know The Israelis themselves People progressives desperate To find a solution Are falling over themselves struggling to find one And really nobody has any But there is talk about imagining

For example Jordan stepping in Taking over the Palestinian cities They get Jordanian citizenship They have that opening to Jordan Jordanian international airport They then have a lot of land strategic depth maybe even the Israel and Jordan split the West Bank in some way,

something like that would not be something that you would... It could be. It could be. But then, you know, that would extremely, like, going to be opposed by a bigger, you know, a big minority within Israel, like, you know, saying that still territories are being seeded. You know, at the end of the day, it's not... I haven't heard of anyone with a serious solution. However, the only way is just absorbing the land and the population while putting constitutional guarantees. Some people say, yes, but it's a time bomb for the future it is.

The other way around this is, as you said, like the potential for enclaves, Jordanian royal enclaves within the West Bank. So it's an annexation of the West Bank with enclaves of Arab Jordanian citizens living there. You know, and that could be because we have the same here between Oman and the UAE. Oman and the UAE have a very funny border where I enter, you know, sometimes I could basically cross the border several times because I'm going from one enclave to an exclave to an enclave to an enclave, you know, and like that between the two countries, because tribes chose to go with one country or the other.

it's not unheard of in this region but it's basically the alone plan of Igal alone where he had these maps where the West Bank is carved out where populations are fit with their sort of ethnicity their government okay so you are as confused as the rest of us but you are optimistic but you're nevertheless optimistic on normalization

that is something that is in the future and also on the monarchies being willing to rebuild Gaza as well. Yeah, Israel need to do a lot to become economically integrated with the rest of the region. It is absolutely surprising. Seventy-eight years and still Israel is not properly economically integrated with the region and especially with the GCC. That need to happen possibly even before the Abrahamic Accords in order for the Abrahamic Accords to become a political reality. Because only through economic integration that peace can happen. Because at the end of the I remember I you know I was you know giving a talk in the bank I used to work for I

worked for a bank after I left the service of my 5 and my 6 and I pulled a it wasn't the UK so I pulled a 20 pound note and I said it's amazing that this could be both an instrument of peace or war but actually you know this is an instrument of peace because nations that depend on each other so much you know rarely you know go to war with each other. And so I think an Israeli economic integration with the rest of the Middle East is something that need to happen and need to happen as soon as possible. I'm Andean. The goal of this podcast is to fight against the Western cartoonization of the Middle East because it's big and it's complex and we're real people and we have three-dimensional

understandings of the world. And you have just helped me do that and I hope you have helped our listeners and viewers do that. Thank you so very much for joining me. You're kind. I really appreciate it. Thank you so much for having me.