The Duran Podcast - MBS Is Trapped. Europe is Doomed

Episode Date: September 20, 2026

MBS Is Trapped. Europe is Doomed

All right, Alexander, let's talk about what is happening in the Middle East. What is happening with Saudi Arabia, with MBS, with rising diesel over 630, I believe, in the United States. Some places in California, it's even hit $10.10. That's what I've read. I've seen some places which say $10. I don't know how true that is. but diesel continues to rise and oil prices continue to rise. And MBS looks like he is in big trouble.

He does not have the straight of Hormuz. He does not have the Almondab straight. He does not have the East-West pipeline. And the Houthis continue to advance. The United States does not appear ready or willing to help MBS. So he's in a bit of a bind. What do you make of the situation going on in the Middle East? MBS is in a bind and I should say that Saudi Arabia is in a bind.

And Europe and Europe is in a bind. We'll get to that as the video goes along, Europe is in a bind. Look at the situation. He's got, the Saudis now have the Houthis in the south. They are clearly winning in Yemen. They already control the Red Sea coast of Yemen. They control the Al-Amandah straight, exactly as you said. They are striking Saudi oil installations and other installations in southern Saudi Arabia.

And they're shooting down Saudi fighter jets, by the way. We've had that happen as well, this actual film of it. There are the Iraqi militias in the north who are also launching drone strikes at Saudi Arabian installations. and who are being blamed for damaging. And it's now clear the damage was very substantial, damaging the East-West pipeline that Saudi Arabia has, which Saudi Arabia was using to send oil to the Red Sea, to the Red Sea ports.

So that pipeline has had to be closed. And then the Saudis look east, and they have the Iranians, and the Strait of Hormuz, closed and the constant fear and threat of Iran also conducting strikes against Saudi Arabia now, as it did during the fighting that took place earlier this year between the United States and Iran. In March, we now know that the Saudis participated in the US air offensive against Iran and the Iranians on their part launched missile strikes.

against American bases in Saudi Arabia, and that some Saudi installations, oil installations, were severely damaged over the course of that war and has still not been repaired. Saudi Arabia cannot export oil. We've had the unprecedented situation. For the first time, I think, in his modern history, Saudi Arabia has gone through a period when it is not exporting oil at all. It has told the Europeans, we cannot supply you with oil at this time. We are not in a position to export it. Saudi Arabia is also, by many reports now, running out of air defence interceptors. Patriot missiles, in other words, they've given up hope of getting any Patriot Missiles from the United States because we know that American inventories of Patriot

Missiles are severely run down and the US needs all the Patriot Missiles it has to protect its but it's one remaining functioning base in the region which is the base in Jordan and Israel as well where the Americans now also by the way appear to have troops so they can't get missiles air defense missiles from the Europeans. They're now asking the Europeans, sorry, for the Americans, they're now asking the Europeans for air defense missiles. They say the Americans aren't helping us. We are absolutely crucial to your long-term economic future. And, well, of course, as we know, the Europeans are also receiving pleas for air defense missiles from Ukraine. So Saudi Arabia is now competing with Ukraine for delivery of what few air defense missile interceptors, Europe still has.

So the Saudis are in an extremely difficult position. MBS telephoned Trump twice asking Trump to bomb the Houthis. We've discussed this in previous program, a previous program, and pointed out the bombing the Houthis is not going to in itself make any difference. But I think one of the reasons why MBS wanted Trump to bomb the Houthis is because it would have been seen in Saudi Arabia as an overt step by the United States to back not Saudi Arabia as such, but MBS personally. The United States was responding to MBS's requests and was therefore backing him. The fact that the United States is not prepared to bomb the Houthis

is pretending that it has some deal with the Houthis, which of course the Houthis are denying. That must have damaged MBS's standing in Saudi Arabia itself. There's been two big articles in the British media, about MBS's position, one in the FD, the Financial Times, one in the Daily Telegraph, both insisted that despite all of the enormous problems, which they admit, are unprecedented in Saudi Arabia's history, MBS's position within Saudi Arabia is secure. Perhaps it is, perhaps it is.

But my own sense is that the telephone calls to Trump tell a somewhat different story. And I would add that in Saudi Arabia, they have had a history of people who appeared to be powerful and untouchable being suddenly removed. and in the 1960s, they actually managed to maneuver out of power. They actually deposed one of their kings. So I am not going to speculate too much about the internal situation within Saudi Arabia. But personally, I think it is inconceivable that there is not some private criticism of MBS and some conval. and some comments that he's left brought Saudi Arabia to this terrible situation. And, well, maybe it's time that he stepped aside.

It's very strange what's happening with MBS and Trump. Let's say the Trump family, the Trump organization, because MBS and Saudi Arabia was very, very connected to Trump, very connected to the Trump family, to Kushner. They have investments, business dealings. And the reason Saudi Arabia invested so much in Trump and the Trump family and all of these funds that they have going and God knows what else they have is in order to secure their position with the United States. I mean, they ditched their path towards bricks, knowing that Trump was going to win

the election, that Trump was going to be president and MBS and all of these Saudis with MBS. They went full in with Trump. And they have invested a lot of money. They've given a lot of money to the U.S. and to the Trump apparatus, let's say, whatever that entails in order to make sure that they're going to be okay. And now they're not okay. Well, they made a disastrous mistake. I mean, while Biden was president, they...

Biden hated MBS. Biden hated MBS. MBS hated Biden. So NBS dabbled with rapprochement with Iran and Brick's membership and all of that. But the moment it appeared like Trump was coming back to the presidency, he rejected in October 2024 the offer of Greeks membership and went with the Americans. Oh, it was a terrible mistake. And, well, we now see the results because Saudi Arabia placed,

over-reliance on Donald Trump and over-reliance on the United States, they obviously assumed that the Americans were more powerful or more willing to exert power in the Middle East than they really are. And there's now stories appearing in the Israeli media, which are well-connected with people in Saudi Arabia, by the way, saying that the Saudis are, quote, disappointed. with the Americans. They're not disappointed. They're furious and they feel deeply betrayed. Now, the big question is what does MBS? What do the Saudis do in this situation? And it's very

difficult. The Iranians by now don't trust them. The Houthis are outright hostile. The Shia militias are outright hostile. The Saudi military has. taken on the Houthis before and has lost. The Saudi Air Force, well, it can do a lot of damage in Yemen, but it can't defeat the Houthis. So what do the Saudis actually do with this situation? Well, one option, since all attempts to get the Americans to help, is failing, one option would be to again talk to Bricks, maybe not to see Shimpin. Call Putin. But call Putin.

Putin has always had a good relationship with NBS. They worked well. They worked not always well. They've actually had their arguments, but they've managed to cooperate mostly on oil-related issues. call Putin. Putin probably at this time has more influence on Iran than any other world leader. Call him. I should quickly add, by the way, that Pakistan, you remember NBS forged that alliance with Pakistan?

You know, I am going to make a guess. I think that the Saudis were getting some, they were sensing that things were going to go wrong soon. And so they rushed through this alliance with Pakistan and Turkey. hoping that that would then secure their position of the Americans weren't able to help. The Pakistanis are now saying, well, actually, this isn't for that purpose. It's intended to create a new security architecture in the Persian Gulf area. Let's ask the Iranians to join. I don't think that was the Saudi intention at all.

MBS's original intention at all. So call Putin. Putin has some influence over the Iranians. the Iranians still have influence over the Houthis. See what Putin can do in this situation. He might be able to do something. I'm not sure what he can do. I mean, Putin is not a magician, but he likes MBS.

He's had a good relationship with MBS. The Russians have worked hard to develop a good relationship with Saudi Arabia overall. So called Putin. He hasn't done that up to now. MBS has not contacted the Russians. Maybe he feels angry towards them too, because they've been helping the Iranians, which they have, by the way. But, well, what MBS needs to say to himself is the Russians helping the Iranians, I mean the Russians have leverage over the Iranians.

So they're the obvious people that need to call. Yeah, but I agree with you. You call Putin. Maybe you try to return to that place that you were before Trump was elected, before you started to move away from Bricks. You had an agreement with Iran, which was mediated and brokered via China. So you had a normalization of ties with Iran. You were on your way towards bricks. You will have to give up Yemen.

That's going to be one obvious requirement. So be it. Saudi Arabia is out of Yemen. And the Houthis, they take over. Okay, it is what it is. But at least you preserve your place as MBS as Saudi Arabia. And you get back to a better time before all of this started up, which was when China brokered that deal with Iran. Saudi Arabia really looked like it was on the right track. I mean, things were changing. Things were moving for the better for Saudi Arabia. Yes.

The problem is that if MBS were to do that, the United States would smash him. Yes. Regime change tomorrow. Yes. And they could probably pull it off. They probably can, yeah. So, I mean, he's stuck.

He's stuck. I mean, he's in a trap, and you can sense this. I mean, notice how quiet he's been. Yeah. Maybe he's thinking it'll just all go away. Well, sometimes be sometimes in this kind of situation. That's exactly what people do. When the problems become too great, they just opt out of dealing with them.

All right. So let's shift gears a little bit and talk about the fact that Saudi Arabia, because of the East-West pipeline being destroyed, and because the reports are now saying at a minimum, it will need six weeks around November to be fixed, maybe. That's best case scenario. Saudi has cut off the oil to the Europeans. This is going to affect Poland a whole lot because Poland, they refine about 40% of Saudi crude. And that's going to affect the Baltic countries, which are also getting a lot of their oil.

from Poland, from the Poland refineries. So there was a shipment that was supposed to go to the Europeans in September. That's not coming through. There's also oil that was going to go from Libya to the Europeans. That's not coming through either. So big problems for Europe. And there are talks now in the U.S. that they may put an export ban on diesel, the Americans.

Yes. They're just talking about it now. But the fact that it's in the media leads me to believe that this could happen, especially if diesel continues to rise. You know, we said in many videos, Alexander, going back a year ago when the Europeans were talking about cutting off Russia and the U.S. was going to be the only game in town. We said that one of these days, Trump's going to wake up and his administration's going to start today and they're going to say, you know what? We need to cut off energy to Europe for XYZ reasons and it looks like that day might be coming. Absolutely. That's exactly what's going to have.

I think this is a massive crisis for Europe. They're not getting gas from Russia anymore, pipeline gas from Russia anymore. They're still importing LNG, but bear in mind, LNG they're supposed to stop importing in January. That was a crazy decision, but that's what they decided to do. Gas reserves are very low in Europe, I mean critically low, unusually low for this time of year. And now we have on top of all of that an oil shortage, a gasoline shortage already. And diesel is becoming extremely difficult.

The entire industrial economy works on diesel. trains move on diesel, trucks move on diesel, agricultural goods move on diesel, ships move on diesel, production, some machines in factories also use diesel. Diesel is the oil, the refined oil, that an economy needs in order to function. By the way, militaries need diesel as well. this is an absolute disaster. You would have imagined you would have thought that it would be the priority issue in Europe today, that the European leaders would be meeting together. They would be talking about what to do, about the diesel, the oncoming diesel crisis,

the oncoming natural gas crisis, gas prices reached in the European Union, the same level they'd hit in December 2020. And we're still very early on in the year, just say. You'd think that they would be talking all about that and trying to find a way to prepare Europe for the winter. I see no evidence that they're doing anything of the kind. At the moment, what they're doing is talking to each other about seizing the Russian assets. and sending more money to their dear friend, Zelensky, in Ukraine. That is their priority, it seems.

I'm talking about Canada. Oh, Canada, of course. That's right. Associate member. Is their plan to get the oil and energy from Canada? Is that their master plan? Well, it may be. But, I mean, first of all, one, it's not going to happen.

Because the obvious place for Canada to sell its oil is the United States, and that's going to remain the case. I mean, there is no real realistic alternative. But the Canadian oil needs an enormous amount of refining, and European refiner is not good to refine it. I mean, it's as simple as that. So, I mean, you mentioned Poland refining Saudi oil. Saudi oil is completely different from Canadian oil.

I mean, before that happened, It would take years. I mean, it's, again, Ursula's, perhaps that's, you know, Ursula's latest idea here. But, I mean, if this is a plan for how to deal with the crisis this winter, then she's taken leave of her senses. That's all I, that's all I can say. I think they're very similar to MBS the Europeans. They're just kind of keeping busy with other stuff, hoping that the big problem will just kind of go away. Yeah, well, that's what a lot of people do when they face a problem that looks so overwhelming that they can't cope with it, instead of trying to cope with it, trying to get on top of it, and then asking the serious questions that they don't want to ask themselves.

They are doing exactly what you said. You know, we have this metaphor in England. I don't know whether it exists in other places. It's about the ostrich putting his head in the sand, not looking around. even as everything closes in around it. That's exactly what we're doing in Europe. Yeah, they don't seem interested in the whole energy thing. No, no, no, at all.

No. No. Yeah. France has, just to wrap up the video, France is also now going through some gas shortages, fuel shortages. Absolutely. Around 10% of the gas stations, according to the Figuado. They're having gas problems, storage problems. It's interesting, supply problem, sorry, interesting that it was Macron who was cheering on the attack on Russian oil refineries, and they were propagating the whole Russian fuel shortage crisis. And now, look, France is in a mess.

Yes, but you must never say that. You never make those comparisons. I mean, you know, the two are obviously completely unconnected with each other. And, of course, fuel shortages in France. I mean, you know, they're, they're, one thing, but the important thing is that the great Ukrainian military must go forward and win the war. That is the overriding priority of all. So, you know, and that, that, but you're absolutely right. I mean, we started, we started the last few months with stories about fuel shortages in Russia.

the actual fuel shortages are actually now starting to happen in Europe. All right, we will end the video there. We are on Substack. We are on locals, and also check us out on the Durand shop. Links are in description box down below. Take care.