Chapo Trap House - Bonus: So, I Just Watched 300... feat. Derek Davison

Episode Date: January 6, 2020

Felix and Derek discuss the Trump administration's assassination of Qasem Soleimani and what it means for the future of the region and US foreign policy. Subscribe to Derek's newsletter here: https://fx.substack.com/ Felix shouts out a twitter account in this ep, this is that twitterer: https://twitter.com/Seamus_Malek

Laila Khalidi, I say to martyr Qasam Soleimani, you are the son of Palestine, and Palestine will never forget its children. Donald Trump, Sissy Graydon Carter of Failing Vanity Fair Magazine, and owner of Bad Food Restaurants has a problem with his VF Oscar party, is no longer hot. Three months into the new year, Qasam Soleimani, the head of Quds Force, the spy and special forces component of the Iranian IRGC, was killed by the latter man, the man with a feud with Graydon Carter. Actually the most skilled military commander of our era, absolutely vaporized by the man

who fired T-Door Tees on TV. To process these events and the consequences, we have returning champion, Derek Davison. I feel like so are you. You know, we've talked under better circumstances, I think. I suspect that's probably true, and my dog is even unhappy, no she's barking. I don't know. Yeah it's been, this absolutely shocked me, and I think it shocked a lot of people, but I think to sort of like fully grasp the gravity of what has happened and the consequences,

we should start out and we should give people sort of a brief history of Soleimani. Did you sort of go into Soleimani's earlier military career and his actions in recent years that have earned him a lot of notoriety? Sure, yeah, I mean Soleimani, almost every kind of senior officer in the Iranian military at this point cut their teeth during the Iran-Iraq war, which was ten years and there was a lot of time for teeth cutting, I guess. Soleimani actually got his very early start, he joined the Revolutionary Guard Corps right after the Revolution in 1979, and served in northwestern Iran where there was a Kurdish

revolt against the new government or the revolutionary government. But he then, you know, went very quickly into the Iran-Iraq war. He served for a while as, he's kind of started to make his reputation as a reconnaissance officer, like he would do sort of deep reconnaissance inside Iraq and sometimes foraging operations for the frontline soldiers who were stuck in position, you know, basically waiting to be attacked. That's where he really started to make a name for himself. He then got transferred to northern Iraq where the Iranians were trying to set up proxy forces

to challenge, kind of threaten the Iraqi government of Saddam Hussein from inside Iraq. This was the birthplace of the Quds Force, which is the organization that he eventually rose to command. From there, Quds Force and Soleimani kind of spread out throughout the region, engaging in similar activity, kind of cultivating and supporting proxy forces, southern Lebanon, they helped to birth Hezbollah, and then later on, you see, they supported the Northern Alliance in Afghanistan, they supported Syrian militias backing Bashar al-Assad, they've supported Iraqi militias, and they've supported the Houthis.

The place where he really came on to the U.S., came to the U.S. attention was in Iraq, Soleimani was appointed commander of the Quds Force either in late 1997 or early 1998, and then, of course, 9-11 happened a couple of years after that. For a while, he and Quds Force were working with the United States. They worked with the United States in Afghanistan in the Battle of Herat. They fought with U.S. Special Forces to take that city from the Taliban. They worked for a little while together in Iraq because, of course, as, say, whatever else you want about the invasion of Iraq, the U.S. was trying to topple Saddam Hussein,

who was a mortal kind of existential enemy to the Iranians. But that cooperation, which kind of offered an opportunity to reset the U.S.-Iran relationship after a couple of decades of unremitting hostility, was thrown out the window when the Bush administration decided to go full axis of evil. They lumped Iran in with Iraq and North Korea as the big villains of the world. And any kind of impetus in Iran to improve relations with the United States and collaborate with the United States was lost. So Soleimani and Quds Force, instead of helping the United States in Iraq, they turned around

and began arming and organizing training, supporting Shia militias in Iraq who resisted the U.S. occupation. And Soleimani kind of emerged as the pole of, I guess, resistance to the occupation. He's been deemed personally responsible for all the U.S. soldiers who were killed in bombings and in military engagements with those militias. And that made him kind of public enemy number one for the United States or, I guess, recently public enemy number one kind of behind after bin Laden and Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi. But that's where he really became the thorn in America's side.

And he emerged over that period of time then as one of the big kind of heroes or pillars of the resistance to the U.S. And as the United States has put more and more pressure on Iran through sanctions and sort of trying to surround and contain Iran militarily, Soleimani has emerged further as the sort of champion of Iran's resistance to those things. One thing that I sort of think has been interesting in his characterization since his death is you see this massive cultural gulf between American and especially American Natsak culture and Iranian culture.

Something that, there was something that was on Twitter that was really, it was really funny, but it was very illustrating. You know the account Carl remarks? Yes. I think I saw what you were talking about. So he wrote like a satirical article and one of his a few years ago, one of the things in there was that Soleimani was referred to as Superman-y because he could fight four or five wars at once and he was like the real Soleimani was an amazingly capable commander

and part of what made him so capable was his ability to get factions in war zones that would otherwise hate each other to fight on the same side under him. I mean not just as a commander, he did so many things for the Iranian government. He was kind of a shadow foreign secretary, he was a senior commander, one of their most important military units. He did all this sort of traveling around the region organizing these proxy forces. He was very much a political player and one of the most successful politicians in Iran, although he never stood for office or anything like that.

But one of the things that was most remarkable about him I think is that he was able to wear all these different hats and switch seamlessly from one to another and just succeed, excel in all of these things and for a guy who really had like incredibly modest upbringing, very little education, went straight into the military from like doing menial labor jobs in the city of Karamon for somebody like that especially to be able to play all those roles as well as he was able to play them was really kind of astounding. Yeah, no incredibly capable commander but no one ever called him Supermoni and Michael Weiss wrote that he was sort of based on this guy's piece of satire and when the guy you

know a little bit after Sulamani's death said I've made this up and every you know all these American Natsik idiots bought it Weiss argued that there are actually several interviews with US senior commanders where they refer to him as such but it did it like illustrated something interesting to me. Well I think he like praised I mean he praised Karl Marx he's like you should give yourself credit for being you know being able to give him that nickname because it really... Just refuse to admit it is wrong like it's okay man you got fired by CNN no one cares anymore but he so it is interesting and it this has reminded me of a previous assassination

one that was you know holy shit it was 12 years ago now but when America and Mossad took out Ahmed Mugna then the second in command of Hezbollah and I think there is this sort of assassination led foreign policy it's interesting to me because I do think that if you look at America and you look at how we mythologize guys like Petraeus and McChrystal we do and this is part of our culture our culture of the individual we do absolutely think that we got our dicks shredded in Iraq and we failed we failed all these regional goals because just one one guy was the best it's always just one guy one guy there's just one guy who's he's the hero god alpha male genius and without him the organization falters and

with Hezbollah after Mugna who was actually the way that you describe Soleimani you could say the exact same thing about Mugna a guy who came from nothing and rose through this incredibly incredibly just the incredible sort of political snake pit and was had this underrated charisma and was respected and his thing was sort of giving the finger to the West and as far as their military goals and Hezbollah 12 years later doesn't really seem any too much worse for wear after the assassination of Mugna and I can't imagine even for how skilled Soleimani was at all the Hatsy war that they didn't plan for this that for Iranians or for Hezbollah that a huge part of their thing is like well I could

be killed at any moment and in some ways welcome the possibility what right and I mean they're ready not not only that he was prepared for it but that the Iranian government has been prepared for something like this to happen I mean they've got other people in place maybe they're not they're not as effective as Soleimani but you know the the guy who who has replaced him Esmael Ghani I don't know that much about him but he's been Soleimani's deputy for you know years now and is supposedly in a in a strictly like military sense is very capable he might not be able to do all the different things that Soleimani did but you can find other people to replace that what's what's amazing to me is that like we have this sort

of great man approach to the region even though like all of our great men have just been fucking failing at everything like Betrayus was a fucking failure you know Stanley McChrystal oh god he's going to save Afghanistan fucking failed you know all these guys we haven't won a war in how long like like just one a military conflict but we're constantly convinced that it's just like the one great general is going to come in and our experience should prove that that's not the case but we assume that it must be true of of Iran so I don't I don't know why but that seems to be uh it's sort of there's nothing like nothing can shake our view that it's like the great man thing is is relevant here yeah so uh I guess let's get into the actual

assassination of Soleimani um he was traveling in a convoy and I mentioned do we know that at this point if uh he was he was killed by a drone attack I don't know that for a fact but that seems to be what everybody's assuming is that it was a drone strike no that really that really does define the error right like this uh this guy this guy just was staring deaf in the eyes entire life like uh abandoning any like moral judgment of what which I think is I think that is kind of bullshit when we as Americans just need to do that anytime something like this happens like any American can just uh like understand the the life that this guy led compared to ours right or what what he meant in in Iran's experience in what the country of Iran and the people of

Iran have experienced like yeah there's no ability it's it's increasingly apparent like there is this commitment on the part of foreign policy people in DC to view America as the eternal like protagonist of history uh and to not on top of that to have no ability to even conceive of the the idea that maybe for the Iranians like Iran is the good guy here you know maybe for somebody else who has a different perspective they view these same events in a different way there just doesn't seem to be any willingness or ability to to do that yeah and all all the all the things people say like about how many you know innocent people may or may not have died in the course of his operations it's like it's like you couldn't say the exact same thing about a fucking Patreus or

McChrystal but more so I would yeah yeah absolutely I think it's um I'm trying to find this one thing from uh one of my one of my friends on Twitter a journalist uh who's of uh Iranian descent there has been this line since you know uh Sulaimani was killed by a guy holding an Xbox controller who sends Facebook stickers to his wife yeah that's it that's it that's that's that defines the age shimus uh I'm really sorry shimus I'm gonna I'm just not going to pronunciation I'm gonna fuck up your last name huge apologies but uh shimish Malika Malika Vazali uh I'll link his Twitter in this uh he says been talking with other Iranian diaspora people and Sulaimani has really exposed strange complexities example my dad is an atheist communist hates Islam hates

Khamenei but he loves Sulaimani he's the Defeater vices the Thorn in America side him being IRGC as a footnote and uh that's this is today especially we're recording this on Sunday has been very illustrative to that point because you saw the massive massive procession people marching and this isn't this isn't a parade this isn't you can't order some people have said uh oh well you can force people to come out to a parade this isn't a parade people not many people yeah this was a fucking sea of people and it's in cities all over the country like the Iranian military is not 20 million strong they can't go into every city and like have enough people to force hundreds of thousands of people into the streets to pretend to mourn this guy like the the images that have been coming

from cities all over the country including places like Avaz which is the home of like an actual separatist movement the Arabs that live in in Avaz in sort of the southern like southwestern part of Iran there is a separatist movement there and still even in a place like that you've got this massive outpouring of of uh kind of massive response to the the killing of of this guy so yeah I get it I've been trying to get into the mindset of doing this and really I think what's evident is well what happened is people presented this as an option to Trump as like the most extreme option as the example of the thing he shouldn't do and he just fucking did it but I'm I'm getting in the mindset of the people defending it you know the people who have done their tours of duty

in all bomb pans and internships across the greater DC area who are sort of giving either qualified or totally just categorical approvals of this um in like they very recently there was massive protests in Iran relating to a lot of the economic travails they've experienced recently right and and gas prices and I think they're trying to get into their sort of idiotic mindset they must think oh well this was a hyper popular uh figure inside Iran and killing him will further delegitimize the Iranian regime but what do you think the actual effect is going to be here because it seems like you've just galvanized I mean it isn't isn't that sort of poetic this guy who galvanized opposing forces his entire life will in his death galvanize opposing forces within

side Iran and Iraq against the United States yeah I I mean I think the rally around the flag effect has the potential to be massive um you know if you look at what Iranians have been protesting what they've been protesting is belt tightening austerity you know the immediate cause of those protests was a cut in fuel subsidies uh and that's you know that that anger is directed at uh the civilian government it's directed at Hasan Rahani the president uh and his economic team it it even may be directed uh to some extent at the supreme leader at Ayatollah Khamenei uh you know for for overseeing this economic mess that Iran has become but people aren't dumb I mean the Iranian people know that the big you know the lion's share of their economic crisis it has to do with the

reimposition of US sanctions uh and Soleimani uh who was not somebody who's identified with sort of domestic politics and you know fuel subsidies and budgeting and all of that kind of stuff but is instead identified as this uh you know kind of lion who is resisting the United States as it uh tries to grind Iran under its heel uh you know of course that's gonna hit people differently like there's uh you know of course this is gonna be a galvanizing thing even for the people who were just out in the streets protesting because they view him through a different lens and and there's uh there is sort of you know failure to understand uh you know the the ramifications I think of of uh who who these people are what roles they play and what killing a guy like this is

is likely to mean uh to people yeah there is um let's talk about a little bit about uh the significance in Iraq I think you must have seen this today the KD the KDP has issued a statement about Soleimani and they want US troops out like this is we for people don't understand Kurdish Democratic party we we would have no basis to be in there anymore we'd have no legal basis we would either we would be occupying a hostile country again uh yeah I mean everything that's happened in Iraq today has has been um not great if you're a fan of the US kind of permanently leaving soldiers there uh there's the KDP statement the the Iraqi parliament voted to remove all foreign forces from the country which means the United States I mean there's they're not like talking about

uh you know Papua New Guinea or something or like they're talking about the United States um you know Abdul Abdel Mahdi who is the prime minister technically he's kind of a caretaker prime minister at this point you know he's he's signaled that he wants the US out uh other political leaders Muqtada Asadar Asadar and uh even Grand Eye Tola Sistani who's sort of the main religious uh figure for Iraqi Shia uh have all kind of hinted or or outright stated that they you know uh that it's time for the US to get out of Iraq um there you know and then you get but then you get little like pissants like Marco Rubio who has never has never you know the the closest he's ever come to like being in danger was like a game of laser tag uh at an arcade uh and you know who who tweets

things like uh well technically uh the Sunni and Kurdish factions weren't there at the parliament so uh they didn't have a quorum to vote to expel the United States and also technically Abdul Mahdi is only uh an interim prime minister now and it's not clear that uh under the status of forces agreement he would legally be allowed to kick and it's like what what the fuck are you talking about like this is an entire country that doesn't want I mean they can't be more clear about it they fucking don't want the United States to be there anymore like what are you just going to leave the these soldiers I mean it's you know a couple thousand a few thousand soldiers uh in in this country where they're not you know they have no security they're at risk they're not wanted

what are they supposed to do they're like just stay holed up in their bases waiting to get attacked basically which is the only thing that I can think of they're there to be a trigger for or at further escalation that that's what you know a person like Rubio wants is is to leave those soldiers there uh and paint a target on them uh so that if or when they get attacked then that's your next excuse to do the next thing you know the next thing after uh killing Soleimani whatever that response might be yeah no as uh as they said in the loop climbing the mountain of conflict uh so to that what do you like what do you think the the the general Iranian response could look like sort of including actions in Iraq yeah I mean it's hard to say because there's just

so many options for them um I think in general uh what the Iranians whatever the Iranians do do they will try very hard to calibrate it so that it is a proportional response and not seem necessarily as an escalation or as a like first strike in a in a full fledged shooting war uh I think they'll they'll do that because they themselves don't want a war uh they're the allies with whom they will be consulting basically Russia and China don't want that war to happen um and you know I think there's a whole menu though of options underneath that everything from like the thing that that the media has been talking about has been cyber attacks and I think they may have already hacked a little obscure federal government website uh yesterday uh you know the there's cyber attacks

they could do things like uh you know take hostages they could have Hezbollah you know launch some missiles against Israel uh the Iraqi militias as long as there are US personnel of any kind in Iraq uh you know Iraqi militias are are omnipresent in parts of that country that and they could take some kind of action you know shelling a base where their US forces stationed or something like that um you know they could do targeted strikes or targeted attempts to kill high-ranking US personnel uh there are we've seen over the last few months that there are a number of options for them uh to do things in the Persian Gulf you know they've allegedly uh bombed oil tankers they've allegedly they allegedly launched a few months ago that drone and missile strike against Saudi

oil facilities uh so there's a lot of stuff they could do and they could also you know make things more complicated for the United States and Afghanistan because there is a a relationship now between the Iranians and the Taliban something that you know would have been unthinkable five or six years ago but that's uh that is the case today so they could provide assistance to the Taliban to make things more uncomfortable for the US uh there there's just there's a range of possibilities it's almost uh impossible to kind of illustrate or kind of uh you know track all of them and and list all of them but uh they they definitely have plenty of things that they could do and I do think they'll try to be measured in their response and and do something that might draw a US retaliation

but will not you know in itself be uh viewed as a as a drastic escalation yeah it it it seems like they would also want to avoid a retaliation where there are mass deaths of Iranians but um I think like the calculus could be kind of thrown off because like it we're here in the first place like I I do generally think given a more clean opportunity a lot of other Republicans would have done this but like I don't know maybe not maybe not because this was of course presented as the most extreme option and Trump took it I think if I'm trying to get into his mind and because of the fall of the green zone like that was humiliating and it portends very poorly for anyone any US forces contractors or diplomats still in Iraq if that was supposed to that was

never supposed to happen but in Trump's mind I think he thinks all right well you know they're telling me the Iranians did this whether they did entirely or not we we've got to hit their their big beautiful guy we've got a bit hit their big handsome general I guess yeah the nuclear option for Iran would be blockading the Strait of Hormuz and just completely crippling global economic trade but I really I can't I I can't see them doing that unless it's the most extreme scenario right I mean I that's that's sort of there's no taking that back right I mean that that is such a dramatic step that I I do think I think they're they're keeping that in their pocket for a situation where there is actually a war like it's already started and there's no going

back because that that would really take things I think to the point of no return or at least as close as you can get but yeah I you know I think the fact that the Bush administration didn't take this step is is illuminating to me because if there was an administration that that could argue that it you know attacking Qasem Soleimani was you know an act of self-defense or an act of legitimate you know kind of strike in a war it would be the Bush administration because that's when he was you know at his most active kind of supporting the resistance to the US occupation of Iraq yeah I you know the the New York Times and the New York Times reported this as though like the the big beautiful generals put this option on a list of potential responses to

the the sort of mob attack on the embassy in Baghdad and and we're like stunned to find out to try or like we're stunned when Trump picked it because they didn't expect him to take the most extreme option I I I don't know that I mean that sounds self-serving to me that's a good point yeah there's some generals you know trying to cover their asses here like if you haven't learned by now it's yeah you know three years or yeah three years into this administration if you haven't learned by now that like this guy doesn't think things through and if you put a list together uh he is just as liable to take the dumbest fucking option on the list as he is to to do anything more measured um you know I you you haven't been paying attention so you know just putting

on the list is a grossly irresponsible act if if that's not the direction you want to steer him toward I think also it's illuminating though that like if you look at the other kind of big consequential uh Middle Eastern decision that he's taken recently on the spur of the moment which was his decision to announce a withdrawal U.S. withdrawal from northeastern Syria which he did you know on the basis of a phone call with Recep Tayyip Erdogan the president of Turkey two geniuses right right two two mega mega minds if if you look though at the panic that said in the national security establishment and how hard they tried to talk him out and eventually did basically you know they they came in him with like well we can take the oil don't you want to

take the oil and like they came up with this scenario where it was cool to stay and like we get oil and everybody's going to be rich and you know did went so like did did so much to talk him down from that in this case you know doesn't seem that they did any of that it was just like oh wow that we weren't expecting you to pick that but okay if you want to it's fine we'll go ahead and do it like you can definitely see I think a contrast in how they responded to these two equally kind of abrupt decisions but one went in the direction of reducing the U.S. footprint in the Middle East and the other went in the direction of escalating us toward a war with Iran I think it's interesting that one wasn't allowed to stand and the other one was yeah I think this is like

a lot of things and we won't get the entire story till probably about 20 fucking years after the after the fact um god I remember a few months ago we watched the movie JFK and we developed our own theory for the JFK assassination which is the the CIA attempted uh wanted to make an attempted assassination attempt and then accidentally killed him and we're just like oh fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck I think I think like you could explain a lot of things in history that way perhaps this is one of them but I that is this is a great point that there are a lot of other Trump decisions on foreign policy in Middle East specifically that they they can you know people know how to flatter sort of a vain dementia add old old man and roll him back on things and seemingly no one

tried to hear potentially you can see like a little bit of the explanation for that in the response of this both from Democrat and Republican Republican aligned Natsik blob uh barnacles that are just on the hull of the ship rationalizing this justifying this uh I think there was probably more more impetus to do this in that room and both in the overall blob than there was to withdrawal from northern Syria so shifting to Iran what effect do you think this will have on both hard liners and sort of more moderate forces like Rouhani well for a while it's gonna it's gonna crowd any official dissent at least out out of the political sphere I think I mean it's gonna be really awkward and potentially I mean depending on on whether the uh Iranian government takes

measures there's some hard liners who are calling for like a a crackdown on on kind of reformist politicians and reformist rhetoric if they go too far with that they could actually kind of waste this moment for themselves and dissipate some of the the the sort of rally around the flag thing that we're seeing but I do think it's going to be difficult for moderates and reformers to stray too far from from the the sort of main line kind of anti-us case at this point and it's it's been getting that way more and more as the sanctions that the US imposed or has been imposing have bitten deeper and deeper into the Iranian economy it's become more and more difficult for kind of other voices in in Iranian politics to be heard you know there's so I think there's

going to be a sort of flattening out of of political differences at least for a while uh the the next um Iran's next presidential election is next year in 2021 not sure if there's a parliamentary election this year or next year um but either way I mean that's still that's well within especially if the Trump administration keeps pouring on with the sanctions and especially if Trump is re-elected that's well within you know a time frame where the repercussions from something like this could still be kind of limiting the the the options in Iranian politics and could lead to a real you know hard line kind of political field moving forward so in the case that Donald Trump does not get re-elected you know the eric trump birthday card that all those senators

compiled isn't enough god did you see that did you see tom tell us that was the most pathetic thing I think I've ever seen it was I was a US senator we're doing a birthday card for the president's big boy uh I was thinking about that I was thinking about how you know silly money and Mugnaan you know everyone else we've assassinated in that sphere they have had this thing of like yeah it can be martyred in every moment I mean people you know people literally say to say one of their friends is killed congratulations you hero you've been martyred but there has to be something in the back of your mind like these are the guys that did it god damn it yeah like holy shit yeah what I said like I tweeted a couple of days ago like

somebody send Eric a fucking military registration card because he's not 36 yet he could still sign up for the army and often fight this war that his dad's gonna drag us into uh yeah but instead we're sending him a birthday a birthday card like it's like I would say it's like silly money probably he in some ways probably viewed Obama's like sort of a co-equal like this fellow guy who rose from obscurity and navigated this snake pit like sort of a very calculating guy who's like all right a lot of this is a zero sum game like I have I have to secure like the best outcome here and if he was killed by him he'd be like yeah all right but he got he got fucking exploded by the guy with a feud with Graydon Carter

fucking amazing I mean so fucking embarrassing to die by this country like especially now how did you die well I was murdered by a guy who used to pretend to be somebody else and call the New York tabloids to like talk about himself yeah I was I was killed by a guy who has more tweets about Rosie O'Donnell than my country fucking god uh but uh so say yeah say say Trump loses um and we get someone we because I don't I don't I I wouldn't really see a Buttigieg administration thawing too many relations well let's say I don't know it's like a Warren even though she has very bad instincts she can be pushed on this issue obviously or like a Biden or Sanders what would what would sort of a re-establishment of ties and thawing look like

what would we have to do now because it would be a lot it would be a lot I mean the first step that I think an administration would have to take would be immediately rejoining the 2015 nuclear deal which the Iranians actually just announced today that they're you know stepping back from all their uranium enrichment limitations under that deal which is a step they were probably going to take anyway I don't know if it's connected to the the Soleimani strike they were probably going to do something like that anyway but that I mean the first step would have to be rejoining the nuclear deal and cutting you know lifting all the sanctions again and and sort of abjectly apologizing on the way like as we're doing this because that was such a huge step to to just like

upend you know what of all the things you can criticize I think legitimately the Obama administration for on foreign policy the the nuclear deal was a huge achievement that that promised to resolve like an almost 40 year at that point now over 40 year conflict with Iran that has served no purpose it has accomplished nothing and and you know all of that was blown up completely like just just completely torn apart by the Trump administration so the first thing you would have to do is try and I'm not even sure that you could but would be to try to repair all of that damage rejoin the nuclear deal lift the sanctions again and hope that you can somehow build up enough goodwill again or enough good faith in negotiations with the Iranians that you can

build on that then that you can you know extend in some cases you know parts of that deal or you know expand the the scope of your negotiations into other areas and I mean if you could do that if you could establish some level of trust and good faith in that relationship there's an you know in almost every case like if you go down the line and look at the things that should be U.S. priorities in the Middle East instead of this obsession with Iran if you look at you know like fighting the Islamic State stabilizing Afghanistan making sure the Taliban doesn't take over in Afghanistan again you know stabilizing Yemen ending that war if you look at all these things that shot to be priorities the U.S. and Iran could be working together on all of this stuff

in most cases they would be pulling in the same direction in terms of you know wanting to see a stable Afghanistan that frankly even though you know the Iranians have been working with them I'm sure they would prefer not to see the Taliban once again kind of ruling Afghanistan you know they would definitely you know they're definitely not interested in seeing any kind of resurgence of the Islamic State and in fact I mean Soleimani and the Quds Force were instrumental in fighting the Islamic State at the same time that the United States was doing it there are a lot of interests in common and sort of you know there are certainly some places where the U.S. and Iran naturally disagree and all apart from you know if you can somehow divorce those disagreements

from all the other baggage in that relationship but but this the hurdle the initial hurdle that you would have to get over is massive it's it's not just the pent-up kind of hostility and mistrust that's built up over 40 years it's the fact that like the Iranians have already been burned once like they stuck it stuck their necks out and and went into this nuclear deal in 2015 and and abided by it you know upheld their obligations did everything they were supposed to do and still the United States screwed them over that's now added to all of this other baggage and it's it's a really huge lift but I think the the first and most obvious step is you know there just has to be a return to the nuclear deal and an apology you know maybe not in so many words but a you

know somehow like making amends for that that decision yeah and barring a Sanders presidency and a completely clearing out of most of the natzak state I see for the foreseeable future I think we are gonna have this thing where there is this one country in the region that all our politicians are seemingly obsessed with if you came from another planet you couldn't figure it out to save your fucking life and are gonna constantly refer to them as evildoers whether they are centered left or the furthest right and are just obsessed with this country uh so I don't even think that really begins to happen without clearing that entire thing out but given that in and if we're going with either a Biden presidency or continue a or or a warren one or a booted

judge one or continuation of Trump what is sort of the general outlook now for our imperial project in the Middle East because it seems like you know before this Saudi Arabia has been trying to push back from its you know uh more unilateral actions more aggressive actions after being totally humiliated some countries were making more overtures towards Iran in a in a general sense what does the region look like and what is our future in that region look like in the next sort of 10 to 15 years given that we go on the exact same course as we are now right yeah I mean this is the part where um you know when when people attribute everything that that the United States does uh in the region to malevolence like I'm I'm sympathetic to that but uh you can't discount

stupidity yes uh as being a big factor here and and the reason I say that is because assuming that the Iraqi government does manage to make its wishes and you know its its desire here plain and the United States has to leave that's the end of not just the US deployment in Iraq that's the end of the US deployment in Syria which can't be supported anymore without having forces in Iraq and and you know when you say well you know there's there's just these malevolent people who want to war with Iran that's true and they may have you know pushed for this strike or they may have you know tweak Trump until he agreed to to do this but those are the same people who want to see the United States stay in Iraq forever and the United States stay in eastern Syria forever so

they've kind of uh uh you know undermine themselves in in doing this um you know elsewhere in the region as you say I mean the Saudis were really I think pulverized by you know the the series of relatively minor attacks that that took place uh over you know kind of in the middle toward the end of last year uh and in a way that you know just was like they weren't even that devastating in themselves they were sort of like here's what we could do to you people if we really were and I think it terrified the Saudis who are you know in addition to you know having spent now you know going on six years unable to beat like a bunch of mountain you know goat herders in Yemen with the most advanced military in the region uh so in addition to you know having proven that

they're not very good at the whole military thing uh they're trying very hard to transition to a new way of doing things as you know they want to be involved in finance and business deals and you know this whole vision the vision 2030 plan that uh Muhammad bin Salman has is all about kind of opening things up and bringing tourists in and you know entertainment acts and uh really like developing the Saudi economy in different ways none of which can withstand a regional war and the Gulf said the smaller Gulf states the the UAE especially is already there I mean Dubai is already in a place where its economy is dependent on tourism and you know resorts and shopping and all that kind of stuff which is just hugely vulnerable to a conflict so yeah there's no

appetite in that region for the United States to sort of push everybody into a war and it really is like if the US isn't able to base soldiers in Iraq anymore and it's not able to to house soldiers in Syria anymore it's hard to see you know they'll still have a naval facility in Bahrain they'll still have their air base in Qatar you know they'll still have relationships with the Saudis and relationships with the other kind of Gulf states but it's really hard to see how you continue to maintain this this huge imperial apparatus in the region if if you know you lose ties to these other countries yeah yeah I'm sure they'll think of something incredibly fucking stupid along the way you can always count on that yeah it's nice it's nice you can depend on this uh would you

would you see maybe the Gulf states because all the Gulf states they do have existing relationships with uh China pivoting more towards China if we show ourselves to be I the only word to describe it would be erratic and idiotic yeah I mean I think to some to to some extent it depends on China which is um I think the Chinese government is still trying to have it both ways uh in the Middle East like they want to be uh the hands-off friendly guys who are just there to do business and they don't want to interfere in your politics and don't want to get involved in your conflicts or take sides uh in any way but they're emerging as a competitor to the United States in in every way and at some point you know they're gonna have to decide how they want to handle that

all the political kind of baggage that goes along with something like that because it will come it will come upon them to you know get involved at some point and I don't know what that looks like yet I mean I think their inclination is to try and act as a a a stabilizing force whether they can do that or not but to have good relations with everybody and to kind of uh you know maintain the ability to act as a mediator or to you know to sort of talk to all sides um and it becomes more difficult to to do that as you kind of as your profile kind of increases especially I mean you know in the ways that uh China has become uh or wants to become really you know a uh a client or you know a sort of patron of some of these Gulf States you know selling weapons and

technology and things like that um you know I do think that that the Gulf States may look more and more to China to kind of step in and play a balancing role um and Iran would certainly appreciate that if the Chinese government were to do that my question would be more about what what is the Chinese government prepared to do like how far are they willing to stick their necks out basically well uh that about covers it um knowing our luck is something idiotic is going to happen Marco Rubio is going to try to personally take a howitzer to go on heights or something by the time this comes out it's gonna parachute into Baghdad and and like knock on the prime minister's a door are you like you can't kick us out again yeah so well it'll be made obsolete by then

and just the worst just a constantly wet simpering idiot fucking moron but uh I we covered everything that has happened up till sunday uh Derek where can people find you uh i'm uh at substack uh my newsletter is called foreign exchanges uh fx.substack.com uh i'm uh you can subscribe monthly or yearly uh and uh you know get all the information i have on what's going on in the world in a newsletter format all right uh perfect we will put that we will put that link in the episode description uh Derek thank you so much thanks Felix