Geo-Strategy #4: Saudi Arabia's Trump Card Against Iran

okay um let's start class so let's review where we are um we are discussing or exploring why the United States would want to invade Iran and so far we have two good reasons the first good reason is called the Israel Lobby um there are in the is Lobby millions of Christian zionists who believe that a conflict in the Middle East especially between Israel and Iran will bring Jesus back to Earth they want their God Jesus to return to Earth and they believe that a war in the Middle East will force him to return that's the first reason second reason is the idea of an of Empire America is an Empire and as an Empire it has a lot of privileges for example it can just print as much money as it want right US dollars right now uh America is $34 trillion dollar in debt and the debt is growing by trillion dollars every two months America can do this as long as is as it as long as it is an Empire as long as people fear America but as we discussed last class with Putin's invasion of Ukraine uh people are now starting to rebel against the empire and therefore America must demonstrate it still is the military hegemon of the world and therefore I can do this by um invading Iran okay today we look at the third and final force driving conflict in the Middle East and it's really the conflict between s Arabia and Iran most people think that Iran Iran's major enemy in the Middle East is Israel in fact Iran's Iran's major enemy is Saudi Arabia these two are bitter Rivals and to understand why we have to look at their history okay so the year is 1979 at the the start of of at the start of 1979 Saudi Arabia and Iran are good friends okay so let's look at a map of the Middle East Iran is here uh it's next to Iraq uh Saudi Arabia is down here uh then this is Egypt um you have Yemen here Oman this is the straight of humus and this is the SE Canal okay uh theed SE basically and in 1979 uh Saudi Arabia and Iran were very good friends uh they had a lot of similar similarities they were both monarchies they were ruled by a king um they were secular they relied on American power to defend itself and they were both oil exporters both very prosperous oil oil exporters but then in 1979 a political earthquake radically changed the landscape of the Middle East in 1979 there was a bottom Up Revolution called the Islamic revolution before 1979 there was a general consensus agreement in the Middle East that religion and politics would be separated but in 1979 the people in Iran uh demanded three things okay first they demanded that um the king they will not be ruled by a king okay that's that's that's the first amand second is that the US should not interfere in domestic politics remember that before the king the Sha was supported by the American Military and the third demand is that as a Muslim people as people who believe in the Islamic religion the government should be focused on Islamic law okay so in the referendum 98% of the people of Iran voted to install an Islam Republic to replace their monarchy and this was complete unexpected and this caused an earthquake throughout the Middle East in November of 1979 600 religious extremists try to besiege Mecca okay Mecca is the holiest city in uh the Islamic religion because it it's the birthplace of the Prophet Muhammad 600 uh extreme extremists tried to take the city over and demand three things okay that the Saudi Arabian monarchy should applicate the United States should remove itself from the internal affairs of Saudi Arabia and Saudi Arabia should be governed by Islamic law now this Revolt was crushed by the military but from that day on there Iran and Saudi Arabia Arabia became better enemies because they were both trying to install their vision of Islam on the Middle East okay so this rivalry between Iran and uh Saudi Arabia took three forms okay the first form is religious so even though they're both Muslim countries Islamic Islamic countries they have different versions of the religion okay so um Saudi Arabia is Sunni and Iran is shiat now you may ask what the difference between these two different branches of the religion are and the answer is um no one actually knows it's very complicated issue the major difference is this in 610 the Prophet Muhammad in Medina in the city of Medina he had a vision uh to found a new religion called Islam okay and he spread this religion throughout the Middle East throughout the AR Arab world world forever transforming uh the Middle East when he died there's a problem of secession who would succeed uh the prophet as the leader of the religion the Shia people believe that only people of Muhammad's bloodline can be the leaders of the religion the Sunni disagreed and said that anyone who proved himself competent and faithful to religion could be the leader and so for hundreds of years these two groups the Sunni and the Shia fought a war over the secession and this led to a bitter rivalry that's lasted to this day okay now the majority of people in the world about 80% are Sunni okay the the majority of Muslims in the world are Sunni 10% are Shia okay so why this is important is that Saudi Arabia is a Sunni country and uh Iran is a Shia country and at the time of the Revolution Iran dedicated itself committed itself to spreading the Shia Revolution throughout the world okay now Saudi Arabia considers itself the leader of the Islamic world because it is home to both Mecca and Medina which are the two holiest cities in um the entire Islamic religion um as you as you may know there's a requirement that as a Muslim you must take a ha a pilgrimage to uh Mecca and Medina once in your lifetime okay and and because Saudi Arabia control Mecca and Medina that's really the source of Saudi Arabia's authority over the Islamic World Iran says Iran argued that because Saudi Arabia is ruled by a king that's anti- Muslim and because United States is defended by the US military that's also anti-muslim s Arabia is a heresy okay so Iran is dedicated itself to um subverting Saudi Arabia's Authority okay so does this all makes sense so far okay now Saudi Arabia is Sunni and it practices the most extreme form of Sunni uh religion called wahhabism okay wahhabism in 1744 the wahhabis okay which again are the most extreme Islamic uh group made an alliance with the alsad family of Saudi Arabia and the agreement was this that the W wahhabis could the W wahhabism would become the national religion of Saudi Arabia and the W wahabis would swear allegiance to the alide family okay but in the 1930s oil was discovered in Arabia in fact um Saudi Arabia proved to have the most valuable o oil resources in all the world okay and at that time as the world was modernizing oil was becoming more and more important and so that made Saudi Arabia extremely wealthy and as it became more and more wealthy it tried to become more Western more secular more Progressive more modern which brought it into conflict with the wahhabi okay now wahhabism accounts for 20 to 40% of uh all the people in Saudi Arabia so it is a very significant group more important Wabi people tend to be extremely fanatical so for example uh in 1979 the people who laid Siege to Mecca um were wahhabist and wahhabist were also responsible for terrorist attacks against tourists against foreigners in Saudi Arabia okay so Saudi Arabia has always had this problem with the wahhabis and the a way that Saudi Arabia has tried to resolve the conflict uh is to export the religion of wahhabism throughout the world so for example Osama bin ladin was a Saudi um citizen responsible for spreading wahhabism in Afghanistan and that's what started alqaeda okay so Saudi Arab Saudi trying to export wahhabism Iran is trying to export uh the Shia religion and so that they bring they come in conflict with with each other okay so the first source of tension between Iran and Saudi Arabia uh is over religion second is economical and what that means is that both countries or are oil exporters in fact Saudi Arabia is completely reliant on oil for its economy 40% of Saudi Arabia's economy GDP is based on oil exports Saudi Arabia is number one oil exporter in the world okay 75% of government revenues comes from from from its oil exports in other words Saudi Arabia does not actually collect taxes from its citizens it just sells oil okay Iran um also sells oil it's the number four oil exporter in the world but it's less reliant on oil because it has a diversified economy meaning that it has very strong human capital um it has a very well educated population that does all sorts of different activities okay science art um education so Saudi Arabia for the longest time has been has been trying to control the price of oil in order to maximize profits for example it wants to cut down it wants to cut back production in order to increase the price of oil which will increase profits but Iran often doesn't cooperate because Iran is trying to sell as much oil as possible in order to boister uh in order to boost its economy okay so there's economic economic conflict between these two countries and the third and final Conflict is geopolitical okay and geopolitical means that both countries are trying to exert as much influence as possible over the Middle East now Iran is trying to exert influence over the Middle East because um After the revolution in in 1979 many countries including Saudi Arabia and United States encouraged Iraq to invade Iran and this Invasion called the Iraq Iran War lasted eight years and it cost the lives of millions of um Iranians and from then on Iran has adopted a policy of aggressive um uh intervention in the Middle East in order to distract the United States and Israel okay so for example uh in Israel there are two groups opposing Israel Hamas and um hesah and they're both financed and supported politically uh by Iran and the point of of doing this is to distract Israel okay now Saudi Arabia is trying to exert influence over the Middle East because as one as number one oil exporter in to control shipping lanes okay uh it needs to control this area um and this area uh the St moves and the seus canal and 40% of all the world's oil passes through these two Straits and they go mainly to East Asia China South Korea and Japan mainly okay so because of these of these geopolitical tensions I ran and started IA have fought three three proxy wars okay they fought three Shadow Wars the first is in Iraq and now in Iraq as you know in 2003 America invaded Iraq and destroyed the country and after destroy the country there's a power vacuum and so basically Iran came in and try to take over the country and it could do so because 2third of the population were shiat and therefore they had Affinity uh with Iran and a third were Sunni so what happened was that to counter the Iranian influence Iraq Saudi Arabia started to finance the third the one-third of the sunnis against the Shia there so there was a very violent Civil War fought in Iraq after the invasion okay many people also believe that Saudi Arabia is responsible for the financing of the Islamic State okay or Isis because Isis really hates uh the Shia religion okay but um over time because Iran is has been so much more effective in projecting its power than Saudi Arabia um basically Iran Now controls much of Iraq okay so in this first war uh Iran defeated Saudi Arabia then they found another war in Syria um Syria's leader Assad uh faced a rebellion and Saudi Arabia America uh Israel support the rebels against Assad and Iran came in to support Assad as well as Russia and over time Assad was able to crush the Rebellion okay so in the second proxy war um Iran won as well now there's another proxy wall in Yemen okay and it started in 2016 so the wars in um Iraq and Syria they were important to Saudi Arabia but they they didn't really threaten Saudi Arabia but this war in Yan did threat in Saudi Arabia okay so for the longest time Saudi Arabia supported the Yemen political leadership and then there was a rebellion by the houthis okay the H the houthis and the houthis were Shia um villagers who lived in uh the mountains and they were trying to overthrow the government and Saudi Arabia was afraid that the houthis uh would become friends with Iran so s Arabia launched a massive invasion of Y man it was 160 150,000 Saudi Arabian troops they had war planes they were backed by the most advanced American weapons and Technology okay they also had a coalition of about 30 Nations including Egypt and the U UAE um the S Saudi Arabia named this operation decisive storm right which sounds like Desert Storm and The the strategy they use is what we call shock and all and shock and all is basically we have so many bombs we have so many um airplanes we have so many soldiers that we can in about a week's time destroy you okay so go in go fast be decisive destroy your enemy unfortunately uh this for Saudi Arabia this did not work and the reason why is first of all the houthis were in the mountains and so your bombs didn't really stop them in fact all your bombs did was make them really angry because with your bombs you were killing civilians okay so you're basically uniting entire population against you that's the first problem second problem is that the huies are in the mountains but Saudi Arabia has oil fields and guess what guys it's really really easy to blow up oil fields okay so that's what the hoies were doing they were sending like these cheap drones they might cost $1,000 $10,000 and they would blow up oil fields and ports okay Saudi Arabia has another problem problem okay Saudi Arabia has no fresh water it's in the desert it is a desert no water guys no Rivers so it relies entirely on desalination plants okay and this is extremely impressive technology right it takes salt water sea water and turn into fresh water it's very impressive but it's all on the coast and guess what guys the coast uh so Iran can blow blow these plants and then the hudies can blow these plants as well okay so Saudi Arabia basically lost this war because the houthis could inflict massive economic damage on Saudi Arabia so from this war Saudi Arabia learned three things okay the first thing it learned is that if it wants to defeat their enemies the houthis the syrians and the Iraqis they brought they also need to be able to defeat Iran okay that's the first thing they they learn second thing they learn is that um their economy is extremely vulnerable to attack at any point Iran with its missiles and drones to destroy the entire Saudi Arabian economy okay it can easily blow all the oil fields and the desalination plans so the third thing that Saudi Arabia learned from all this is is we really need America to fight Iran for us in the long term that's the only way we're going to survive as a nation okay we need we need to defeat Iran and we can't do it by ourselves we need America to do it for us okay unfortunately for Saudi Arabia um in 2001 9911 happened right 15 of the 19 hijackers were citizens of Saudi Arabia which meant that America was very unhappy with Saudi Arabia okay Americans didn't like s Saudi Arabia Americans also knew that there were a lot of Human Rights abuses in Saudi Arabia the other thing that happened is in 2003 America invaded Iraq Saudi Arabia tried to exert as much influence as possible in Washington DC to stop the war because they knew that if America invaded Iraq it would make Iran more powerful now as you know uh Saudi Arabia could not stop the war okay in 2008 Obama Barack Obama came into an office and Barack Obama's understanding the world was that okay the Middle East is a complete mess and it's hopeless I don't really want to deal with the Middle East plus China is rising the main threat to American power in the future will be in will be East Asia so he proposed something call the Asia pivot which is to transfer American Military resources from the Middle East to East Asia to counter the threat of China but to do that you needed to reduce tensions in the Middle East and so in 2015 he made a deal with Iran called the Iran nuclear deal and the deal was basically Obama said to Iran listen I know you're trying to develop nuclear weapons okay so what we're going to do is if you promise to not develop nuclear weapons we will live economic extensions on you so that you can prosper and Iran said yes okay and this really uh scared Saudi Arabia because if America leaves the Middle East and broke us a peace with Iran then Saudi Arabia would be extremely vulnerable okay so Saudi Arabia became very very very desperate its very existence was threatened also the economic outlook for Saudi Arabia was not that great remember the entire economy dependent on oil but guess what guys oil is a finite resource eventually you're going to run out oil okay now if if you're optimistic you'll be like well Saudi Arabia would run out of oil in about 7 years time or 80 years time okay but there are also some people who believe that Saudi Arabia will run up oil in about 10 years time and if saiab has no oil then it's entire economy collapses okay then you also have have a problem with global warming right climate change you also have a problem with the entire global economy is slowing down therefore the demand for oil is is decreasing so the economic outlook for Saudi Arabia is extremely Grim okay and that's why um in 2017 Saudi Arabia appointed a new leader called muhamad bin Salman okay the Crown Prince whoever calls NBS and NBS promised to be a new leader he was young he was Progressive he wanted women to drive he wanted young people to go uh to the movie theater okay and he proposed a new vision for Saudi Arabia called Vision 2030 okay but nbs's most important achievement is that he became friends with the new president Donald Trump okay so in 2016 Donald Trump became president of the United States and MBS decided that this is an opportunity for Saudi Arabia to reset relationships to to reset relations with America okay so Trump his first trip um outside the United States was to Saudi Arabia that was the first achievement second achievement is that so is that NBS became best friends with Trump's son-in-law jerk Kushner okay and jerk Kushner um was Trump's Middle East advisor and his job was to bring peace to the Middle East mainly but mainly between Israel and the Arab countries and to that extent Kush did a great job because NBS helped him okay so um his major achievement is something called the Abraham Accords the Abraham Accords is just to establish peace between Israel and the Arab countries so that they can unite against Iran together um so MBS was looking very good but then in 2018 he did something that scared the world okay um NBS had was a Visionary he had a plan for where to take Saudi Arabia he wanted to modernize Saudi Arabia but he was also young he was a tyrant he did not like to people who he did not like people who criticized him okay so there's a journalist named Jamal Hashi who worked for the Washington Post and who was a permanent resident of the United States he was a Saudi national and and um MBS had him killed and this caused an international uproar okay the CIA the US government conducted investigation and they and they determin those was NBS who ordered the ass assassination Trump protected MBS okay and then the most important thing that Trump did was in January 2020 Trump ordered the assassination of a man named Kasam salamani who is considered to be the second most powerful man in Iran after the Ayatollah okay the supreme religious leader of the country it is Kasam salamani who was responsible for Iran's uh policies in the Iraq War the Syria war and in the Yemen War okay so from the perspective of the of Saudi Arabia Kasam salamani is Public Enemy Number One he he is the greatest threat to Saudi Arabia now before okay America had many opportunities to assassinate Kasam salamani uh George W bush had the opportunity Barack Obama had the opportunity and both both believe that doing so would cause basically World War II okay because if you kill the number two leader of Iran Iran would have would have no choice but to go to war with you and that's why they both refrain from U killing Kasam salamani in fact when Trump made the the decision to assassinate salamani the entire military was stunned okay they couldn't believe this was happening so how how does this happen okay so um for some time there's some conflict between US soldiers and Shia militian in Iraq and the Pentagon felt it had to act okay so in these situations they have to go to the president and present options to the president of how best to respond and usually um the Pentagon will Design the choices so that the president does what the Pentagon thinks it's best okay so so an example is that um if I'm the military and I go to Trump I give you three choices okay the first choice is a one let's do nothing okay two is what you should do and three is let's blow up the world okay so when I present these three options to you you as a president being wise and strategic will obviously always pick option two right what you should do what the military suggest you should do okay unfortunately in this C in this instance Trump chose option three let's BL up the world guys and so they assassinated Kasam salaman okay so in other words it is very likely that if Trump stayed a second term the United States would have gone to war with Iran given how uh how things were progressing okay MBS was so happy about all this that he once BR privately to a friend that oh jar Kushner Trump son-in-law the man responsible for all Middle East policies well he's in my pocket meaning I own him okay and the evidence that that suggests this is that after uh Trump left office after Jared Kushner left office Jared Kushner set up a private Equity Fund and MBS and the stud government invested $2 billion in into the fun okay does that make sense so um we don't know how we don't know this for sure but it seems like Trump is doing exactly what the Saudis want which is to inflame tensions with Iran okay and um this suggests that if in November Trump wins a second term it is very possible that Trump will declare war on Iran or at the very least continue to escalate tensions with Iran okay which will very likely lead to World War II so in that respect the ele the election in November whether whether whether or not Trump comes back into office um is one of most consequential elections okay does that make sense guys okay any questions anything you want me to clarify before we end class okay so what we will do next class is is figure out if Trump will win in November and I will make the argument to you that it is almost very certain very likely that he will win in November okay so we will examine why next class