Title: Former CIA Agent John Kiriakou Takes Us Inside The Saudi Ter
Show: MintPress News
Date: 2015-09-23
URL: https://youtu.be/uqN6mNL-dfI
Duration: 19:00

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[00:04] Here we [Music] go. Hey guys, I'm Manar Muhawish. Earlier this month on Behind the Headline, I spoke with CIA whistleblower John Kuryaku, who explained how oil and resources have been the driving force behind every US military operation in

[00:36] the Middle East since the 1970s. From Iraq, Iran, and Afghanistan to where we are today in Syria. Kuryaku noted that these conflicts can be traced back to an alliance cemented between President Franklin D. Roosevelt and the House of Sah in 1943, roughly 10 years after Standard Oil of California, which later became Chevron discovered the world's second largest oil reserves in Saudi Arabia. Now, in return for giving the United States control of their oil reserves and airspace, Saudi Arabia

[01:08] would gain control over the oil market and enjoy the power, money, and influence that comes with it. But Saudi Arabia has used this very power, money, and influence to divide and conquer the Middle East and many parts of Africa through the unleashing of terrorism. Of course, none of that would be possible without the financial and arms support from its Western allies, including the United States. Pentagon officials have told me that Saudi Arabia has a printing press operation worth billions that is

[01:38] responsible for not just counterfeiting hadith or traditions and sayings of the prophet Muhammad but even manufacturing Islamic history books to be exported throughout the Muslim world. Now, the effects of these efforts to rewrite the history of a faith of over 1.5 billion people to suit the Saudi political agenda that limit women's rights, promote radicalism and tyrannical leadership are rippling across the region and the world through radical groups like ISIS and al-Nusra front.

[02:09] These are the very same terror groups the United States claims to be fighting in its so-called war on terror. to make sense of this often unhealthy and confusing relationship of interdependency and conflicting agendas is CIA whistleblower John Keryaku again. Take a look. So, thank you so much, John, for joining me again. Um, you know, continuing our conversation from earlier this month in 1943, uh, President Roosevelt declared, "The defense of

[02:41] Saudi Arabia is vital to the defense of the United States." In a nutshell, um, what has this meant for US foreign policy in the Middle East? Oh, I think this has been the the keystone of American foreign policy in the Middle East, for better or for worse. I mean, it's always great to have friends in the region, especially when you find yourself in a time of war and you suddenly need to have air bases or naval bases. But at the same time, we've committed ourselves uh now for for well

[03:13] more than half a century to uh defending um really a a right-wing an extreme right-wing uh government that has no respect for human rights, no respect for women's rights, no respect for religious freedoms, and um and in exchange we we buy their oil. We we really have a very uh simple relationship with the Saudis. we buy their oil and they buy our uh military hardware. It it's really that simple. Otherwise, we generally agree on

[03:45] very little in terms of of policy. But with that said, we are committed to the survival of the also regime and um we have proven time and again that we will walk away from our own commitments to international law and to human rights in order to defend and protect that regime. And you know, I've actually interviewed, and I told you this before, former Pentagon officials um like Wayne, Colonel Wayne Quist, who have said blatantly that Saudi Arabia is the largest manufacturer of radicalism in

[04:16] the world. In fact, Saudi Arabia literally engineers um and publishes thousands of fake hadiths and books and historical books about Islam and its history to justify their tyrannical rule while pushing an extremist perverted um radical ideology uh and perspective of you know Sunni Islam. Of course, most Sunnis would not appreciate that if they if they only knew. um their efforts are making their way across Sunni mosques and schools and madrasas in in the Middle East and Africa and have created

[04:47] groups like monster groups like ISIS and al-Nusra. So my question for you is I mean what else do we need to know about Saudi Arabia's terror factory? Oh, I have always believed that Saudi Arabia was the was the primary uh generator and creator of radicals and radical movements around not just the region but around the world. The it's it's the entire it's not just the government uh that that does this and that supports this extre extremism. It's

[05:18] the entire um structure of government and society in Saudi Arabia. You know, when you have when you have a chairman of the like um well, the former chairman, Sheikh bin Baz, for example, who swore until the day he died that the earth was flat and anyone who argued that the earth was round was subject to the death penalty. Uh we have a we the Saudis have a new uh uh leader in the Ulam by the name of Kakani who's from a very honorable and very old

[05:50] family but he has done absolutely nothing to improve as I said human rights uh political discourse the rights of women anything like that in Saudi Arabia. So really, you have you have a group of of religious extremists who tell the government and its leaders what they should think and what they should do. Now, behind closed doors, they think and do whatever they want. We know that that uh most if not

[06:23] all of the senior royals, for example, drink alcohol. Um they consort with women. They do all the things that the average Saudi is not allowed to do or not supposed to do. But in Saudi Arabia, everybody else is expected to tow the line. So that's domestically. Internationally, you have a government in Riyad that supports movements around the region and around the world that the United States and specifically the State Department have identified as terrorist

[06:54] groups. I'm talking about the Nusra front, for example. I'm talking about even even earlier uh the some of the jihadi groups in Afghanistan in the 1980s and 1990s. I'm talking about the Hambali movement for example in Southeast Asia. So here we find ourselves as an American government fighting these groups around the world when in fact our dear friends the Saudis are organizing them and financing them and they think nothing of of just flouting that to us. And of

[07:27] course, I mean, as you mentioned, this is politically motivated, not actually motivated, since a lot of these hadith that they're actually using are manufactured and rewritten by themselves. Um, but speaking of this push for terrorism, uh, let's talk about the the Shia oil crescent. Most people don't know that the Shia in the Middle East actually reside along uh the major oil and gas fields across the Middle East. And that just so happens to be where um, US bases are ba are based. and then also where Saudi influence is the

[07:57] highest. Um so how can so how can you know understanding this Shia oil base um how can this help us understand the economic implications of Saudi Arabia's anti-SI propaganda um and also it's its anti- um moderate Sunni propaganda as well and how has our war on terror only enabled Saudi Arabia's religious cleansing of the Middle East? Oh, that is that is such an important question and it's it's something that that I wish everybody who

[08:27] who watched the Middle East or studied the Middle East could understand. You're exactly right that most of the areas all through the Middle East, specifically um Iraq, Iran, and Saudi Arabia that have oil are generally populated by Shia Muslims. Now the Saudi government and really before the the second Gulf War, the Iraqi government under Saddam Hussein have done everything possible to make sure not only that Shia do not control

[09:00] uh the oil fields or the oil industry, but even the Shia don't benefit at all from the money that oil brings in. So that's why Saudi Arabia, as wealthy a country as it is, has so many poor people and most of those poor people are Shia Muslims. Now you see the same kind of thing in Bahrain, too. Bahrain is a majority Shia country. It's ruled by a Sunni royal family. And instead of spreading the wealth and trying to um

[09:31] trying to raise the economic status of their own Shia Muslims, they've instead begun importing people from Syria and and Pakistan primarily and giving them Bahraini citizenship so that Sunnis become the majority in Bahrain. You see that all over the place in the region, but the Saudis really are the most heavy-handed about it. the Saudis are the ones that use the iron fist. Um, and the the whole name of the

[10:01] game really is just control of the oil and control of the money. So, this use of, you know, religious extremism, I mean, obviously the Saudi monarchy and these Gulf Arab states don't really represent Sunni Islam. Um, I I I'm sure that most Sunnis would disagree with that. Um, and would say that they do not represent the religion. No, you're absolutely right. So this is this is not what Sunni Islam is all about. Not at all. So how are they able to do this? I mean we talked a little bit about um the manufacturing of hadiths and influencing

[10:32] um these books, but how exactly are they able to push this ideology and be successful um in brainwashing people to follow this route? Well, I think what most Americans don't understand is that Saudi Arabia really is a very closed society. It's It's not as closed as North Korea certainly, but but you know, try to get into Saudi Arabia without a without a sponsor and you can't get into Saudi Arabia. The Saudis were the were the last government in the Middle East to allow broadcast television in their

[11:03] country, for example. And the only reason they finally allowed television is because Shikbin Baz was convinced or became convinced that at least if they had television, they could broadcast the Quran 24 hours a day. And so at least when I lived in Saudi Arabia um there were two Arabic language channels, one English language channel and it was one channel was just Quran 20 24 hours a day. The other was religious discussion uh religious uh themed programming and

[11:34] then every once in a while they would put in a an episode of Doogie Hower or the Waltons or something like that. It was very odd. This is a way for the Saudi government to propagandize their own people. And over these many, many years, they've convinced their own people, or at least many of their own people, that this brand of of Sunni Islam, this this Wahhabi brand of Sunni Islam is the correct path. This is really the only true Islam. And if you talk to Saudis today, uh many of them uh

[12:05] really believe that. Wow. That is just absolutely insane. I mean the media of course you know at the end always becomes the lap dog of those in power but with all this talk about manufacturing um terrorism and instability through the use of Wahhabi uh Islam you know there's also a real call for freedom you know amongst Sunnis even to reject this ideology and Shiites to reject um this kind of oppression um but it seems like nearly every revolution across the Middle East um has

[12:36] been hijacked by Saudi Arabia's political ambitions Um, in Egypt is a really good example. Not that the Muslim Brotherhood was any better, but you know, the, you know, the CC government, you know, o overthrew the Muslim Brotherhood government. And now, you know, Egypt is the largest recipient of funds and arms um from Saudi Arabia. And in Syria, we have terror groups funded and armed by Saudi Arabia, ISIS and al-Nusra flourishing. And in Bahin, you talked a little bit about um the uh the demographic engineering. So, what do

[13:07] regular people in the Middle East need to do to truly free themselves from both Western imperialism, because let's be honest here, this is, you know, this is able to happen because of Western imperialism and interests, um, and also Saudi Arabia's political ambitions. What do people really need to do to free themselves from this? There's there's really no easy answer to that question. That that's a very important and really a very difficult question. I I would say that if there is going to be any change, any real change in the Middle East, it's

[13:38] going to take decades and it's going to have to be revolutionary, but not revolutionary in a violent way. Revolutionary in a democratic way. We we saw we saw really the beginnings of a of a truly democratic um uprising at the very start of the Arab Spring in Tunisia. And I think that for there to be any success in other countries, they're going to have to to follow that Tunisian model, at least from the early days of of the uprising. Now, honestly, I don't think

[14:10] there's there ever going to be any kind of real change, revolutionary change in Saudi Arabia. And you're right about the Saudis um really really not just supporting the CC government, but bankrolling the CC government and ensuring its its survival. Saudi Arabia has a very long history of meddling in Egyptian internal affairs going back to 1958 and to the to the revolution the nationalist revolution in in Egypt in 1958.

[14:40] So anybody participating in a popular uprising is going to have to to fight against Saudi money and Saudi weapons. And honestly, I I wish I could say that that there's a model, a real model uh for transition to democracy in the Middle East that doesn't include blood spilled in the streets, but I think such a model doesn't really exist. The only way you're going to be able to to counter the effects of Saudi involvement in other regional countries is is by shedding blood. Wow. That's very

[15:12] unfortunate. I mean, of course, I have a slightly terrible Yeah. And I and I and I you know I understand what you're saying but I think you know the bigger picture is that we're seeing a divide and conquer taking place from Egypt to Syria to Iraq to Yemen and this push from uh you know religious u you know sectarianism as as you put it. So I really think you know we have to hope for some unity amongst the people. Absolutely right. Absolutely right. And and there is there there is one model I

[15:44] would say it's not a perfect model but there there is one country that at least has begun a transition into into a uniquely Middle Eastern form of semi-democracy and and I think that's Kuwait. You know, Kuwaitis used to march in at the streets in the 1980s, nearly 1990s, and and there were riots and the police would fire tear gas and rubber bullets, and they would arrest a dozen or two dozen people and then let them out of prison a couple of weeks or a couple of months later. Um, but this

[16:15] continued to go on after the Iraqi invasion and occupation, after the reestablishment of the monarchy in Kuwait, people still took to the streets and the Savah family finally agreed that there had to be democratic elections. Now, the elections were stacked in a way in that the constitution was rewritten so that tribal families got an inordinately large number of parliamentary seats. But at the same time over the years even those tribal families have have really turned in

[16:46] favor of democracy. So while you still have a monarchy it's much more of a constitutional monarchy now than it was 20 or 30 years ago and you really do have a form of democracy in Kuwait that's unique to the Middle East. I think that's really the model and actually in Kuwait they do I mean absolutely represent uh more of that unity because they do have the Sunni large Sunni large Shia population and they're living side by side peacefully right engaging in very good relations. So hopefully that can be a model for the

[17:17] rest of the Middle East. Um I could and may I add something to that too? Absolutely. Go ahead. Kuwait had a Kuwait had a a tough time uh with their with elements of their Shia community in the early 1980s. There was a Hezbollah pres presence in Kuwait in the early 1980s and the Kuwaiti royal family really reacted with a very heavy hand and they went in and literally flattened with bulldozers an entire Shia neighborhood where this Hispa cell uh had established itself. They killed people. They arrested a lot of people

[17:49] and then they immediately began to try to rebuild relations, sectarian relations in the country. Again, one of the one of the reasons why that was sort of propelled was because of the Iraqi invasion of Kuwait. But now, you know, you've got a country that's 40 or 45% Shia. It has a Sunni royal family, but Shia are heavily represented in the uh in the uh majus and Shia have important positions of authority. There are Shia

[18:19] cabinet ministers. Many of the prominent business families, the Bahanis, for example, are Shia Muslims and people seem to get along well in uh in Kuwait. Again, I I think that might be a model for the rest of the region. So, what are they doing that's so different? I mean, they're represented, but what exactly is happening um at the base? At the base, they've given Shia Muslims exactly the same rights that Sunnis have. Plain and simple. That easy. It's easy. Awesome. Well, thank you so much, John. It's a pleasure to talk to you again and

[18:50] hopefully we'll have you on again hopefully in another couple weeks and we can continue the conversation about US relations in the Middle. Appreciate it. Thanks very much for having me. Thank you.
