The Duran Podcast - Blinken, Middle East failure. South Africa ICJ case begins

Episode Date: January 12, 2024

Blinken, Middle East failure. South Africa ICJ case begins

All right, Alexander, let's talk about what is happening in the Middle East. Let's talk about Blinken's trip in the Middle East. How did it turn out for Blinken? Let's also talk about, I really want to discuss the ICJ, South Africa's ICJ suit against Israel. I think that's picking up a lot of momentum. Saudi Arabia is now supporting it as well. And Blinken and Netanyahu administration, You can tell from their statements, they're worried about this ICJ hearing.

They say it's meritless, but you can tell that they're worried about it. And we can also probably touch on last week a big escalation for conflict with Iran, but you always have that threat lingering of a wider war. Anyway, what's your take on everything that's going on in the Middle East? I think this is actually an interesting point, because you asked me at the start, you know, what is happening in the Middle East. Last week, all the indications were that we were going to see strikes on the Houthis. At the very least, there were warnings from the US government, there were warnings from the Europeans, the British were weighing in, making all kinds of aggressive

statements. It looked as if some kind of missile strike on the Houthis was just about to happen. And we have Blinken going around the Middle East, trying to tell everybody, stay calm, you know, let's avoid a wider conflict, all of that. He's received in all kinds of capitals. Nobody seems particularly interested in what he has to say, because, to be frank, Blinkett is coming up with nothing new, absolutely nothing that he hasn't already said at various points in his various strips of the Middle East,

which he's been making now repeatedly since October, since this current crisis began. But the fact is that the one country that, in a sense, has the initiative, which is the United States. And we made programs discussing the fact that there is this constant seesaw within the administration between various different people, the hardliners who want to go after Iran, who want to strike the Hussis, who want to strike Hezbollah in Lebanon,

who want an advanced by the Israeli army into Lebanon, towards the Littani River, to smoke out the... Hesbullah bases. There are those people. And then there are the other people who say, my God, we can't take on another war. We are already bogged down in Ukraine as it is. We've got potential problems with China

in the Far East and the Pacific. We're using up all our spare Patriot missile interceptors trying to keep Ukraine together. We're just short of everything. The last thing we want, is yet another war this time against Iran. Now, last week it looked as if it was the hard lines who were about to win.

Then, you know, the pendulum has now seemed to swing back. And this war, I don't say it's been called off. You can never say that. Not when the situation remains as unstable as it is. And of course, there's two things to say about this. Firstly, we won't know for a fact that there is. is no war going to happen until and unless the president himself comes forward and makes his intentions clear i remember during a similar period of crisis back in october 2016 when there were clashes in

Lebanon and Syria. And there was talk, for example, about a US missile strike on Syria. And the Russians were warning that if the missiles were launched, their air defence systems in Syria would shoot them down. I can remember that the president at that time, Barack Obama, he got his spokesman, and the spokesman said that the president is not going to launch this missile strike. And that ended the sense of crisis. This time, the president himself says nothing. And one gets the sense that he is not able himself to make a decision. So that keeps the situation very unstable, but it does something else, which is across the Middle East,

it conveys a sense of American indecision. and weakness. They say to themselves, that the Americans give the impression that they're prepared to attack, but in the end, they don't do so. And that shows that the Americans are weak, and that means if we are, you know, an Islamic militia in Iraq, well, let's go on attacking American bases because we can, if we're the Houthis. Let's go and attack, go on attacking

commercial shipping in the Red Sea because we can. And of course, that keeps everything tense and uncertain as well. Until and unless this policy paralysis in Washington is resolved, we're going to have this continue all the time. confidence in the United States, credibility of the United States will continue to drain away in the Middle East and at the same time,

the situation will remain unresolved and extremely dangerous. The way to end this, and we said this many, many times, is to get a ceasefire in Gaza some kind of negotiation process underway. that brings the crisis under control. The president is not able to do that.

And that is the underlying problem. Barack Obama once did. Donald Trump, after the Soleimani affair, once did. This president, temperamentally, and perhaps for other reasons, is unable to do this. Yeah, he doesn't even know what's happened. with his defense minister. So, um, well,

which is, which is an astonishing story, which is being conveyed all around the world. The Chinese are now writing about this. People in the Middle East are noticing, this. The president himself,

he doesn't notice for days, that his defense secretary is no longer there. We have the defense secretary. He's got cancer. He's in hospital. And he's, we're still told that he's running things.

Apparently, no decision to sack him, replace him, call him in, find out what's happening with him. And again, this conveys a sense of paralysis and weakness. And as we discussed in the video we did about it a couple of days ago, highlights the constant divisions and arguments that must be taking place within the administration. The fact that Lloyd Austin is still in hospital and still nonetheless, defense secretary, what that tells us is that the political infighting in Washington is completely out of control. Lloyd Austin himself doesn't want to quit because he's afraid of what will happen if he does.

And there is no consensus or agreement in Washington about who might be the right person to take his place. So it's being picked up around the world. As I said, the Chinese are writing about the Chinese media is how you go field day about this. And people in Washington don't seem to be noticing. Yeah, but, you know, going back to your statement that you made about the indecisiveness of the Biden White House, even if the Biden White House were to to side with the hardline neocons and make a decision and start going to war with Hezbollah, with Iran, with Yemen, I still don't think the Middle East would, the countries in the Middle East would,

I don't think they would, they would buy into this show of force. No. I mean, what am I trying to say is, is, you know, even this show of strength that the, that the neocons want to display to the region, I don't think anyone buys it anymore. Yes, it would escalate the conflict. Things would get very dangerous. But I just have a sense that many of the countries in the region just have a feeling that they can now assert there. their interests and their sovereignty. That's the sense that I'm getting. You are entirely correct, because what it will do, if they do start launching missile strikes against Iran and the Houthis and all of that,

in the end, it won't convey decisiveness. It will convey weakness because those missile strikes are not going to solve anything. They're going to make the situation worse. And I think plenty of governments in the Middle East by now have worked that out. It's not as if they haven't seen 30 years of American interventions of the Middle East, all of which ended up as failures. So American credibility is already weak. It was already weak going into this crisis.

And of course, launching those kind of missile strikes, those kind of attacks on the hoothies, on Hezbollah, getting involved in another battle with Iran, massively destabilizing, inordinately, inordinately dangerous as well. But ultimately, it won't solve America's problems. It will make them worse. And in fact, if you read the articles that the advocates of this aggressive policy always make, they never think about what will happen the day of. after. They are so focused on getting those missile strikes on Iran, they take it so axiomatic that if they get

their missile strikes, everything will turn out right, that they have no plan for what will happen when it goes wrong, as of course it will. Now, MBS in Saudi, you know, LCC in Egypt, Bashal Assad in Damascus, al-Sadani in Baghdad, the king of Jordan, the Emir of you, the Emirates, the Emirate, the president of the UAE, they could see through this all. They've been here before. They've seen it many times. The one way that the United States could reestablish some kind of confidence in the Middle East is if it started to use the very real influence that it has and the considerable levers that it still has to try to actually achieve a genuine stabilization in the Middle East by getting a ceasefire in Gaza.

That is the first step. Anything else. They can't even say the word. They can't even say the word. They can't even say the word. Exactly. Anything else, one way or the other, doing nothing or starting a war, is only going to make their position worse. And we already see the effect of this, because you mentioned that the Saudis are now backing this case that the South Africans have brought to the ICJ. And that's astonishing, by the way. I mean, Saudi Arabia, you know, a couple of weeks ago before October 7th, the Biden administration was deluding.

itself that it could get a you know the Saudis to agree to establish diplomatic relations with Israel and that wasn't going very far and Blinken is still talking about this even on his trip and of course what did the Saudis do they go ahead and they back this case against Israel and the ICJ so I mean that's Saudi Arabia's reply if you like to what Blinken is doing. But let's talk about this case because it is very, very interesting. And I mean, first of all, I ought to say, it is moving much faster, much faster than I had anticipated. I mean, I am not an expert in the procedures of the ICJ. I am not an expert in the various relevant international laws. I mean, you know, the genocide convention and all of the others. I have read the, the, you know, the

case that South Africa has presented. It looked to me extremely well argued. It looked to me extremely well put together. It inevitably did exactly what I thought it would do, which is singled out all of these various statements that Israeli officials have been making, which I warned many, many times were opening up Israel to potential legal claims. When Blinken says that this case is meritless, he's not looking at the actual case itself, and he's not listening to the kind of things. The Israeli ministers have been saying the first thing the Americans should have done right at the outset is when people like Ben-Vir and Swarthrich and all of the other stuff,

and not just them, even Netanyaki himself, started to talk. in the way that they were doing, they should have come up and said, stop! This is extremely wrong. It could get you into huge amounts of trouble. It could get us into huge amount of trouble, given that you're asking us to back you. Of course, they didn't do that. And it set the scene for this case in the ICJ. And the ICJ is now considering it.

Now, usually when we're talking about the ICJ, it can take months before the first hearing. And just, what is it? Just 10 days the hearing has started? Admittedly, we are talking about genocide. Whenever there's a genocide claim, by definition, presumably, there's a degree of urgency about this. But always, especially if you argue that a case is meritless, you would, try to raise jurisdictional questions, procedural questions. You could slow it down. The very fact that you're succeeding in slowing it down

shows that the court is leaning in your favour. On the contrary, the very fact that the court is hearing the case so quickly, again, I stress this is not my area of expertise, I've never had anything to do with the International Court of Justice. But the fact that the court is listening to this case now, I would have thought is an indication that they think that it at least has enough merit that it deserves to be heard. And that is something which, exactly as you said at the start of the program,

has got the Americans and Israelis extremely worried. And if they have two grey cells to rub together, it should make the neurod, you're not. Europeans more worried still. And the fact that countries like Saudi Arabia and most of the global South and not just the global South, all kinds of other countries, are now either openly or quietly supporting this claim. I mean, that in itself ought to make them more worried still. I would add that if the ICJ does come to a decision against Israel and make a judgment against Israel, it will be a political disaster.

Again, I'm not certain that it will happen. But if there is a judgment from the ICJ against Israel, the pressure on the ICC, the international criminal court, to issue its own proceedings against particular Israeli officials, will become extremely strong. indeed. I mean, how can it go against a finding of the International Court of Justice, which is in some respects a superior court, certainly a much more long-established court than the ICC itself is? And of course, if we start getting indictments against specific Israeli officials,

well, the disaster turns into a catastrophe because all of these countries in Europe that have signed up to the Rome Statute, what do they then do? Do they ignore the decision after insisting that the indictment against Putin must be enforced, an indictment nobody takes seriously? Or do they implement that decision and basically bar top Israeli officials from coming to Europe? It would be a disaster for them. The Germans in particular, who are, you know, sort of legalistic people, they're going to be in a very, very difficult position indeed. And that is why, by the way, just to come full the circle, they will be moving heaven and us behind the scenes,

putting all the pressure that, you know, they can do to try to get the ICJ, not, you know, not to make the kind of decision that I'm talking about, you know, to try and either find in Israel's favor or if they do find against Israel to try and water the judgment, down in some way. They'll be pulling, moving heaven and earth to do that. But of course, they must be very worried, very, very stressed that this thing is getting out of their control. And as with the judges in the ICJ, obviously, logically, they ought to follow the law.

Probably that is what they will tell you that they would do. But they must also know how big the political stakes are. And they will certainly note that yes, if they find for Israel, that will give the Americans and even more the Europeans an opportunity to cite for relief. But across the global South, it will go down very, very badly indeed. And that the status and reputation of the ICJ is now also its issue. So it's a very high-scale legal game. No, this is a checkmate move by South Africa. Absolutely, yeah. An absolute checkmate move.

If the ICJ throws this case out or doesn't take it seriously, which is very possible, likely, I would say, given that you're dealing with the ICJ, then the entire Hague, this whole image of the Hague collapses. The ICCC, the ICJ at all collapses. The entire 80% of the world is just going to say, you know what? once again, as with bricks, as with the SCO, the Shanghai cooperative agreement, as with one belt, one road, we need a new system. As with the Olympics, that's all this is going to do is just going to push the rest of the world to say, you know what, we need to have our own ICC and our own ICJ. That's what's going to happen. So this was a checkmate move. Yeah, I completely agree. I'm going to say something. I mean, judges in particular are very very,

very, very nervous about being put in that kind of situation. I mean, again, I don't, you know, I'm not the fly on the wall, but I personally suspect that behind the scenes, there's lots of agonising, white faces within the Hague, people arguing about what they should do as this thing looms over the horizon for them. Do they take on the Americans, the British and the Germans, which normally they would never do, but risk seeing their international reputation completely collapse, or do they uphold their position as lawyers and judges and do what most of the world now expects them to do? Very difficult decision. Do what's right. Do what's right. Do what's right. But of course, if they do that, and by the way, at the moment, I should say, you know, the indications are

that they do seem to be heading in that direction. I mean, the fact that they've decided to hold this hearing at all points that way. If they do do what is right, then, as I said, the implications are explosive. I mean, that would be for the United States, for Israel, a disaster. For Europe, it would be a catastrophe. All right, we will leave it there. The durand.orgas.com. We are on Rumble Odyssey,

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