The Duran Podcast - Saudi Arabia public rebuke of Biden White House

Episode Date: February 14, 2024

Saudi Arabia public rebuke of Biden White House

All right, Alexander, let's talk about the situation in the Middle East. And we had a Hamas proposal for a ceasefire, a 135-day ceasefire, Netanyahu turned it down, no surprise there. And then we had a statement from the government of Saudi Arabia saying that the only way they will. engage in reprashment with Israel, something that they were working on before October 7th. The only way they would revisit that diplomacy would be if the United States and Israel committed to a two-state solution and the war in Gaza ended. So what do you make of the situation happening right now in the Middle East, in Israel and Gaza? I think the Saudi statement is extremely

important. Now, I think in order to explain why, it's important to explain something about the way in which the Saudis conduct diplomacy, which is that they like to avoid being forthright. If you look at the kind of statements that the Saudi Arabian government makes on foreign policy, they are always expressed in the mildest, most polite, most restrained language. I mean, they may be taking the hardest lines of private. They may be supporting all kinds of violent activities in all sorts of places. But generally, they like to avoid using strong language. They have used strong language in the past about Iran, but they have always avoided using strong language about their Western allies, first and foremost. the United States. A statement, as strong as the one that the Saudis issued last week, is remarkable.

And what made it even more remarkable and showed that the Saudis were issuing a rebuke, a public rebuke, against the Biden administration, is that the reason the Saudis gave for publishing this statement was certain that, comments made by John Kirby the spokesman of the National Security Council. Now Kirby actually, you actually look at his statements, he didn't say anything that other US officials haven't been hinting at and saying, which hasn't been circulating in the American media for weeks, you know, about all kinds of discussions and Lincoln, having meetings with the Saudis and trying to get the whole business of the rapprochement between Saudi Arabia

and Israel back on track and all of that. He didn't really go beyond that. He said, you know, these negotiations are going quite well, but the Americans of the past, the administration has implied that they are going well. The reason the Saudis latched onto Kirby's comments is because Kirby appeared to be speaking with the authority of the US government, of the administration itself.

And the Saudis are therefore saying what the administration is saying about the state of our negotiations over this normalisation of relations of relations with untrue. They are in fact saying the Biden administration is lying. Now that is, as I said, that is unprecedented. I've never known the Saudis to say that about any US government before. And they took the hardest possible line. They said they want to see a complete ceasefire in Gaza. They talked about what Israel is doing in Gaza as an act of aggression.

They referred to the brotherly Palestinian people. They said they want to see all US forces, Israeli forces, withdrawn from Gaza and they said that they want to see and Israel and the United States commit to a full-fledged Palestinian state within the 1967 borders with East Jerusalem

as its capital. There is no conceivable way that any current Israeli government and certainly not the Netanyahu government could agree to this as you absolutely rightly say Netanyahu has already rejected has just rejected

a proposal for a ceasefire that came from Hamas which is basically a four-month ceasefire and a pull-out of Israeli troops from Gaza well he was never going to agree to that but he's not going to agree to this even more hardline demand for the Saudis

so what the Saudis are doing is they're basically saying all this talk about us normalising relations with Israel is nonsense. The administration is lying about this. There are no negotiations going on. We've made opposition about this completely clear. And anybody who leads you to think that we are in discussion about normalising relations with Israel is not telling you the truth. It was an incredibly strong statement coming from the Saudis, and it comes, of course, against the backdrop of a steadily deteriorating situation in the Middle East.

Where does this leave us then with the war in Israel and in Gaza? Well, it tells us that the Saudis who are, of course, in contact with the United States have concluded that there is no diplomatic resolution of the conflict in Gaza in sight. they can see a gathering crisis, a military crisis across the Middle East. The United States is now launching bombing and missile attacks on the Houthis, not achieving anything. The Houthis are continuing to launch strikes against shipping in the Red Sea. Most of the merchant shipping is now going round circumnavigating Africa.

Instead, the British have been forced to pull out there, one destroyer, the HMS Diamond. There are rumours that it's been hit. I don't know about that. But anyway, it looks as if the British are pulling out. The Americans are bombing positions in Syria and Iraq. The Iraqis are furious about this. The Turks are furious about the situation.

They've launched their own bombing raids on America's Kurdish allies in Syria. The situation is steadily, steadily deteriorating. And the Saudis are very angry. They're saying this isn't going anywhere. American diplomacy has failed. Again, they're misrepresenting what we're saying. What we're going to have to do instead is presumably pursue our own diplomatic initiatives.

We've got our own police plan, which we're working on, which is all about the establishment of a Palestinian state. And I predict that the Saudis, along with others, are going to lead another big effort in the United Nations in a few weeks' time. probably in the General Assembly. And I suspect they're going to time that for when the deadline that ICJ gave to Israel

10 days ago expires. Yeah, I was going to just ask you the same thing pretty much, which is that the only way out of this, or at least at the moment, at the moment, the only way that this conflict can come to an end is if the Global South, Bricks, Russia, China, Saudi Arabia, South Africa, if it, with the UN, if they force the conflict to end,

the United States and Israel, if they, if they compel them to actually stop the war. I mean, I think that's the only possible route out of this at the moment. Yes. Yes. Yes. It is clear that we're not seeing, we're not seeing American diplomacy in the Middle East. And this is the thing, this is what the Saudis are telling us. the Americans are not engaging in actual diplomacy. They're going through performative actions which simulate diplomacy, but they are not diplomacy. What they're doing instead is that they're bombing

and launching missile strikes in all sorts of places, none of which are achieving any military objectives, but are causing the overall situation to deteriorate. And I think the Saudis want to hold things together and avoid an all-out war. And I certainly think they want to avoid an all-out war over the next few weeks, but we are going to see a big initiative

in the United Nations very soon. And the Saudis will be at center stage with that. But that's where it's going, in my opinion. Yeah. All right. Saudi Arabia relations with the United States an all-time low. An all-time low. I mean, never as bad as this,

even after 9-11, they didn't get as bad as this. I mean, remember, you know, 9-11, I mean, many people are shocked. I was shocked by this, but, you know, George W. Bush, he invited the Saudi ambassador to the White House. They were smoking cigars on the veranda, all that kind of things.

It was not as bad then. Today, relations between Saudi Arabia and the United States, United States are, I'm not saying a breaking point, but they are very bad, like they've never been before. And that is really, anybody who is familiar with the post-second World War history, the Middle East, will know how astonishing that is, what a complete transformation that is. The contrast, again, you know, with the way the Saudis received Putin a few weeks ago. And this statement could not be more marked.

And by the way, I get the impression that it's not just NBS. I get the impression that right across the Saudi political establishment, every level, all of the Saudi princes have now united around this. They see the American policy, the Biden administration's policy, as a disaster. and they're making their decisions. And those decisions basically are to put as much distance between them and this administration as possible.

The only way the United States can retrieve its relationship with Saudi Arabia is if there's a change of administration in November. Yeah, and we haven't even gotten into OPEC, dollar reserve currency. see any of that stuff with with regards to Saudi Arabia and the United States. So I mean, the implications of this is huge. All right. The durand. Dot locals.com. We are on Rumble Odyssey, bitch shoot, telegram, RockFit, and Twitter X, and go to the Duran shop, 15% off all t-shirts. Take care.