we are press tv. to see whether kennedy's claims are true or false, we go back to the year 2000. as you are aware, russia is the biggest producer and exporter of natural gas with europe being its biggest customer. the russians. export 70% of their produced natural gas to europe. this means a steady source of income for the russians. russia has been using this as a tool to put pressure on europe. for example, when european countries in 2009, sided with ukraine in its price dispute with russia's gas company gasprom, the russians turned off the gas taps in response. all this shows that the europeans

would want to disentangle themselves from this predicament, and the united states would also love to see such huge source of revenue from its rival russia. the us is highly motivated as it tries to find an alternative to russia's gas. as a result, they have turned to qatar and azerbaijan for gas. but the fact is that europe's demand for gas could not be met via sea only, and that such huge supply could only be sent to the continent through pipeline. this was where the notion of the katari gas pipeline was put forth. that's the same energy transit route that would pass through saudi arabia, jordan, and syria and then reach europe via turkish terminals. robert f. kennedy jr. writes in

putin's view, the katar pipeline is a nato plot to change the status quo, deprive russia of its only foothold in the middle east, strangle the russian economy, and end russian leverage in the european energy market. this plan faced a big obstacle, the syrian government. elsewhere in his article, kennedy writes in 2009, syrians announce that they would refuse to sign the agreement to allow the pipeline to run through syria to protect the interests of their russian allies. they also announced commissioning of russian approved islamic pipeline with cooperation from iran and iraq. ولكنها ليست حصرا على

سوريا وايران وليست حكرا على سوريا وايران نتمنى ان تكون كل العلاقات بين دول المنطقه هي كالعلاقات السوريه والايرانيه عندما نقول بان لا العلاقه بيننا استراتيجيه وهامه في الشرق الاوسط لا يعني باننا نحتكر هذه العلاقه ونقرر مستقبلها this اسلام pipeline would transport iran's gas to the mediterranean through iraq and syria with its final destination being west and southwestern europe. the islamic pipeline project would become a huge source of revenue for syria and iraq as well as iran.

as a result, all the three countries insisted its execution. now, there were two problems: on the one hand, qatar's gas could not be transferred via syria. on the other hand, iran would gain a foothold in the european energy market. that's why they decided to remove the problem, namely the syrian government. president obama called on assad to step aside and announced the strongest set of sanctions today targeting the syrian government. these sanctions include the energy sector to increase pressure on the regime. the transition to democracy in syria has begun and it's time for assad to get out of the way. as president obama said this morning, no outside power can or should in

impose on this transition. cables released by the whistleblower organization wikileaks show that the israeli, saudi and us intelligence agencies started to give financial and intelligence assistance to the groups seeking to topple the syrian government. this states back to two years before the onset of protests in syria. regardless of the wikileaks cables, the most optimistic interpretation is that the 2011 protests over economic and political problems in syria provide. an opportunity implement the qatar gas pipeline to the mediterranean by topping the assad government. thus, the protests in syria soon turned into a full-blown armed conflict, unlike bahrain and tunisia, where demonstrations remained peaceful.

in a 2016 interview with an italian news outlet, bashar assad explained the issue of the pipeline and the unfolding of the crisis in this way, many political analysts think the syrian no to the pipeline roots proposed by qatar may be one of the reason why the war had begun in 2011, how important has been your no to qatar in the beginning of the war? it is one of the important factor that it wasn't offered to... publicly, but i think it was planned, there was two roots crossing syria, one of them is north, south, which is related to qatar as you just mentioned, and the other one was east, west to the mediterranean that cross iraq from iran, and i don't think many countries who opposed the

policy of syria didn't want syria to be uh, hub of power of energy, whether electricity or or oil or even uh... uh cross roads of railways and and so on. later an interview with russia today, the wikileaks founder showed cable that revealed saudi arabia and qatar were providing military assistance to anti-government-armed groups and even isis in syria. early 2014 email from hillary clinton, so not so long after she left secretary of state, to her campaign manager, john pedesta, uh, that email, it states uh, that isel, isis

is uh funded by saudi arabia and qatar, the governments of saudi arabia and qatar, now this is... the i actually i think this is the most significant email in the whole collection uh and perhaps because saudi and qatari money is spread um all over the place including including into many media institutions under hillary clinton uh and our clinton emails uh reveal significant discussion about it um the largest ever arms deal in the world was made with saudi arabia more than 80 billion. and of course the consequence of that is that this notorious terrorist group called isil or isis uh is created largely with money from the very

people who are giving money to the clinton foundation, yes, it's hard to believe. thanks to trump, we can believe much of these stuff. do you remember when donald trump described isis as a creation of obama and clinton during his 2016 presidential campaign? he is the founder of isis, he's the founder of isis, okay? he's the founder, he founded isis, and i would say the co-founder would be. another person who can easily answer these questions is qatar's former prime minister, hamad bin jassin. there's even uh

questions have been raised about how much funding cutter has done to some of the islamic groups in syria. look. in syria everybody did mistakes including your country, when the war or the the revolution happening in syria, all of us work through two operation room. one in jordan and one in turkey, the first one was in jordan, and there was countries, some of the gcc countries, among them the saudis, the emirates, qatar, united states and other air, and they was working from there, and all of us we was supporting the same group, in turkey we did the same, we discover by the time, you supported wrong group sometimes, but you stop, it doesn't mean that we did not do something. there, whichever way you look at this story, the support of qatar, saudi arabia and turkey of armed opposition forces

in syria is unequivocal. we should remember that in the us gas project, the turks and the saudies would also receive hefty transit duties for allowing the pipeline pass through their territories. the kataris themselves have admitted this when relations between qatar and... arabia sowered and the saudis put qatar under economic and political pressure, qatari officials tried to place the blame for what happened in syria on riyard. they were not aware that they were admitting to their role in the syria crisis too, and at the beginning, and i say this publicly, the beginning, we have the green light from king abdullah, late king abdullah, that we lead and they will support us. and this and that was a discussion direct with with the king abdullah and then they try to later they want

to change their opinion, they should inform us, we don't mind to be in the back seat and they they wanted to take the lead, yeah we don't mind they take the lead, they are the biggest big country, we we choose to be there because they don't want to appear in the beginning that they are you know completely involved, it was easy to change, easy to change the regime first first year, easy, easy, because there was no russian completely involvement, no iranian, there were accusations that qatar funded al-nasra, which was linked to al-qaeda, this happened, yes, i don't think we have a relation with somebody which united states and all the other allie does not know about it. in the midst of all this, leaders of some terrorist groups would make statements that... would serve as a clue for smart people, like this one, one of the

most prominent propaganda leaders of jabbat who was critical of saudi arabia for sanctioning qatar, believes the qataris were among the biggest supporters of the syrian opposition from the beginning. فقط مع الفصائل لكن انا لماذا ما العلاقه بيني وبين سوريا العلاقه بيني وبين سوريا ان شعب سوريا شعب ظلم ما العلاقه بيني وبين قطر العلاقه ان شعب قطر يجوز ان يحاصر ويمنع عنه يعني منفذه البري الوحيد فقلت يعني لا يجوز ان يحاصر خاصه ان الشعب قطر يعني عرف بوقوفه مع بالمنظمات الخيريه والاغاثيه مع جميع المستضعفين من المسلمين وكان اي شيء يروح يروح لتركيا وكان ينسق مع القوات الامريكيه اكان توزيع كل شيء. كان يتم عن طريق القوات الامريكيه والاتراك واحنا والاخوان الس وكان كل حد موجود العسكريين

الله اكبر الله اكبر الله اكبر الله اكبر الله the story of the silk road and qatar's pipeline project are not the only reasons for the war on syria. just look for us military bases in syria, other than tenf. from the

onset of the war in syria, all us military bases other than tanf were established in the countries north and northeast. at the time, the us set up the bases under the pretext of helping syrian kurds in the face of attacks by terrorist groups, especially isis. the kurds were content with the us military bases. and rejected help from the syrian army, but in 2019, trump suddenly announced he was withdrawing us forces from syria, however, it was later revealed. that the united states was not only planning to pull out their troops, but intended to beef up their military presence in places like tenf, but we are leaving soldiers to secure the oil, now we may have to fight for the oil, it's okay, maybe somebody else wants to you, which case they have hell of a fight, but there's massive amounts of oil, and we're securing it for a couple of reasons, number

one, it stops isis, because isis got tremendous wealth from that oil, we have taken it, secured, number two, and again somebody else may claim it, but either will negotiate a deal with whoever's claiming it if we think it's fair, or we will militarily stop them very quickly, we have tremendous power in that part of the world, we have the airporters right nearby, very big, very monstrous, very very powerful airport and very expensive airport that was built years ago, we're in there for we're in that middle east 8 trillion, so we don't want to be. let's take a look at this map. nearly all us military bases are close to syria's oil rich areas. trump justifies the us encircling and extortion of these oil wells by claiming that

the united states spent 8 trillion dollars. during his presidency, trump has frequently vowed to pull out us forces from the middle east, most particularly syria, but in the same period, the us has built six new bases in northeast syria, and one of the things that was brought out by the media, actually and wisely and correctly brought out, we have very few. what's going there anymore because we have our own oil and gas, we don't need it from the middle east anymore, and that's why we're pursuing a future, not only of energy independence, but not just words. you've been hearing energy independence for years and years and you'd hear it, we have real

independence, but what we want now is not independence, we want american energy. dominance, dominance, all this constitutes only part of the economic motive for qatar, saudi arabia, turkey and the united. states to wage a war on syria. now the key question is, in light of all the proof, should we keep on thinking that the war in syria is nothing but an ethno-religious conflict?

i think you thank you.

if you take israel for what it is, an outgrowth of the united states in west asia, then the... wars that the israeli military is fighting or america's by extension, and it is not just figurative thing to say, israel would not have survived in the past seven decades without american support. the united states has showered israel with billions in financial aid, military aid and other forms of support throughout its years of existence. israel would have been unable to survive without the us support throughout its short existence. in order to build the so-called iron. dome weapon system alone, america offered a whopping $1.6 billion from 2011 to 2021. last year,