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low and welcome to cross talk we're all things are considered. recent events coming out of saudi arabia are truly stunning crown prince mohammed bin solomon is said to be a reformer and on an anti-corruption drive others say differently saudi arabia is experiencing a life threatening crisis that could ignite a region wide complex and trumping ministration appears to be on board. talking saudi arabia i'm joined by my guest martin j. in beirut he is a freelance broadcast journalist also in beirut we have. he is

a political analyst and in washington we have joe he is a policy analyst at the arab center washington d.c. all right gentlemen crosstalk rules in effect that means you can jump in anytime you want i always appreciate martin let me go to you first in beirut there are so many elements of. what's going on with this story domestically in saudi arabia and of course across the region particularly in lebanon which of course always includes iran. if you could for our audience because it's not getting a lot of air time because of domestic politics in the u.s. and the u.k. how would you sum up what's actually going on in saudi arabia and in the region go ahead martin. well the both there's a link between both of them i mean saudi arabia is basically getting ready for a new king to take the throne and now this been some of the new crown prince who has been installed in the position by israel and america is very insecure about its position a very insecure about the future so he's created a sort of anti corruption purge which no one really believes basically wiping out

all the opposition anybody who's rival to anybody who could question him or dealt him and give him problems in the future but concurrent of that what we've seen the last few weeks is. more attacks on the saudi capital from yemen which is linked to the whole hariri thing and basically a massive fuse blowing in riyadh where this this entourage of people around have been someone who basically said our man in lebanon mr hariri is not doing enough for us he really hasn't done anything for us in the last year in terms of rebalancing this power balance that we have in the middle east between on one side saudi arabia and all the western and gulf arab countries on the other side iran and its affiliates basically study arabia has lost so much in the last five years that for this new saudi prince to come into power he needs to feel as though he's making a statement he needs to send a message to iran but he also is sort of holding out

a hand to has a pool of hariri to say country just give us a little bit back to show a little bit humility we lost so much in syria we lost so much and you know and we've made fools of ourselves in that. let me go to joe does that help politics works in the in the middle east i mean give me something no i don't think. it works that way i mean saudi foreign policy is been nothing less than a catastrophe over the last few years i mean and then going back in meddling in in lebanon trying to rebalance and whatever that means it's up to the lebanese people to do that what do you see in your mind what is going on in saudi arabia go ahead joe in washington. i mean obviously it's not them to grab power to push this and became very complicated the lot of princes a lot of branches in southern wouldn't family that wants to control and obviously you want to call so the. power since he came used on a first strike. he's making people who were there in washington or all of them

a couple times that all of the word and this is not only impacting of course of. the impact on lebanon on yemen or qatar we saw some. bit of humiliation of crisis in that sense and for that reason i see the what's happening inside lebanon as mostly linked to sell deposit right. and this is the scary part in that sense ok well aleem if i go to you also in beirut i mean if the crown prince wants to make a big splash if i can use that term or he's really it's all completely backfired on him in lebanon i mean instead of. seeding division you have actually see unity and even a quite a few western players are are a bit frustrated that you know this saudi arabia is destabilizing lebanon and that's not it's not very difficult to destabilize lebanon lebanon is

a very fragile place go ahead in beirut. well just to add to get said before about. solomon is that yes on the one hand he is trying to capitalize power prior to taking on the throne of the saudi kingdom but at. same time he's kind of tapping into some reforms that have gotten a bit of positive review internally and also externally so he's using that perhaps for example beside the issue of the entry reform agenda he's using some of the his statements on the need for social change and the need to you know address change the way the country is going for the last thirty years with you know giving women the right to drive and and other issues speaking to the youth so that's on one hand kind of to also complete the picture in terms of what i believe. man is doing but also when you when we get to lebanon yes indeed i mean we can't say with certainty that he has lost yet. absolutely as you rightly said there has been a display of national unity given what has happened in the last two weeks or less

than two weeks since how did his resignation which was extremely bizarre and it was described as bizarre not just by the how do you to media or the process by the media it was described as bizarre even by the international media given that you have a prime minister who is missing in action in riyadh but at the moment i just want to also add this is the point that anything we say at the moment is really uncertain given that we have not heard from how do you know face to face and he mentioned in his interview on on sunday november twelfth that there are there are a lot of secrets that he can only tell when he comes to lebanon and speak to president on ok well go back to martin uncertainty is the worst thing you need in a situation like this here i want to go back to the issue of reform and we had the crown prince and people around him talking about moderate islam that is remarkable coming out of riyadh i mean if he's you know like a bull in a china shop you know with his persian like that he does he could have the political strength base to be able to do something like that because i have to

wonder if that's just for western consumption that's my first take away go ahead barton. no i think you know firmly on the head yes the question that all journalists analysts want to ask is the same what howard. along with this guy around you know when you do when you're going to those measures when you go to such extreme measures to create all this destruction all this smoke and mirrors i mean the whole hariri drama is in many ways a distraction from what's going on in riyadh right now which is chaos and calamity you know i mean what's not getting reported by western journalists is the crackdown the human rights abuses and the crackdown on people being detained without trial and even being beheaded and then and some of these people are political opponents so i don't think we can talk about reform i mean i think when ali mentioned reformed i think he was very current to be so i think um give it letting women drive and maybe creating some program which may or may not work in two thousand and thirty you know having

a minister of fun is is all really very superficial and doesn't really have that much substance to it you know what we're seeing i think is is so you are going backwards you know i don't see anything going forward or not i'm not all positive and i think the fact that you need to go to those measures you need to take those extremes you need to use your man hariri in lebanon to try and destabilize a tiny country and you say to yourself you know it's easy to destabilize lebanon it's poor it's backward it basically doesn't really have hasn't really ever had a functional government in the five years i've been here you know so low hanging fruit of you know shaking that particular country but i mean i don't think we can take another we can take this guy seriously and what's happened with drama is the whole thing is massively backfire look at what's happened in lebanon in fire and now yes it's nothing less than bizarre illegal but let me go back to joe here i mean we had the president of the united states its first major foreign visit and he went to among the city's strip was to riyadh and the twitter in chief was

given full support to the crown prince here is there any cause and effect there because it's the feel like he's got kind of like a blank check from the u.s. because you know maybe it's twitter account you know that gives him a blank check from the president but from the rest of the you. administration it doesn't seem so clear again this is very callous risky behavior go ahead joe yes i mean obviously there is some policy differences between between the white house on one hand and then the department the pentagon on the other hand you saw and we saw in the vehicle thought a crisis for them to bridge the wire and then eventually the president called. gyptian present them of they were meeting in cairo and basically to stop the escalation and basically that they didn't force a solution on them but they are simple stop the escalation and the case of lebanon on that bridge was much quicker i'm not sure maybe because there are sort of was

and there was on the trip but that became more and basically the u.s. was able to do the saudi search it got a call in lebanon and basically at the top of that authority the government gave us they would need stability would not going to play with fire you know so we saw them to the saudi able to retrieve it in a very clear get a graduate way lead to how deeply moving their own so yes there's a big tension on on on on this issue and i think the concern is is. the expense of building i mean build a good relation with trump and his advisers including it's coming at the expense yeah of the saudi relations with the u.s. establishment because they feared now you're out of the country got exactly zero about levels actually we don't know about you're just playing with fire back to go out influence our u.s. forces and cut our u.s. influence in lebanon gambit but when you don't have to be on exactly i think we're

agreeing here let me go let me let me go to you i mean again i mean because the the position of the u.s. is very ambivalent here does it give the players on the ground a little bit more elbow room to do what they want to do because it seems like that's going clegg including the israelis by the way go ahead. yes i agree but of course we need to remember that we still even when you're reading the u.s. press and other in other reports we still don't know exactly what you want from the so years in the middle east but having said that we know one thing is that he has decided to single out iran as the main threat in the region and exactly so he has completely adopted the line with israel and saudi arabia now whether he's right i mean whether whether his plan is well thought out whether he has practical steps in doing that we know in the case of lebanon there has been increased sanctions by the u.s. congress against hezbollah and against. general motors talking about how. i have to

jump in here we're going to go to a hard break and after that break we'll continue our discussion on saudi arabia and some on iran state with r.t. .

yes will this is how the. welcome back to crossfire all things considered i'm peter about your money we're discussing saudi arabia.

ok martin let me go back to you brought up the topic where i wanted to go with on this program that let's talk about the iran angle here i mean it seems that that's part of the the chessboard right here is the crown prince trying to make some kind of you know grand gesture or leave his footprint in history i mean i mean again you know looking at what's going on in the region failure in syria failure in yemen i mean maybe you should step back a little bit here disable destabilizing lebanon i mean now you're you know we have this rhetorical war which is always there with their two one level level or another but i mean it looks like you know he's priming up the region to get used to a conflict with the route and of course you know the israelis officially unofficial leader always kind of egging that along there too so i mean this is what i find very worrisome someone that is not experienced coming in you know i could get china

in a. bull in a china shop shop kicking everything around arresting people worse taking their assets away and the we have the u.s. that's kind of sleep at the wheel that seemingly at least martin your thoughts and around. because basically to sum it up the american idea of the trump camps idea is that whatever we do with iran the middle east we can't really go wrong you know there is this idea that there is a huge safety net there and whatever whatever they actually try and pull of whatever initiative is whether it's military wanna whether it's what i believe will be an economic sanction crackdown call it what you would on lebanon you know they they feel as though that there's no accountability there it's almost as though they are there creating policies which in three four five years time they will be accountable to anyway but what we are seeing what we're witnessing in the middle east particularly with saudi arabia and lebanon with this whole context of iran is an israel coming closer and closer together with this paranoia which is being

stirred and provoked and goaded by the trumpet ministration particularly since the not sign the certificate for the iran deal signed off a couple of weeks ago this is just makes things much worse the hezbollah who are believed to be in yemen firing rockets at riyadh is just it's just stoking everything up and it's reached a point now where no logical argument matters anymore you know just today the foreign minister of saudi saudi arabia said we are talking now so our allies about a new policy towards iran what does that mean you know i mean i had one they cannot be in in m.b.'s his wildest dreams he cannot possibly imagine a military campaign against iran or hezbollah in lebanon can only be that mad yeah well no no no he's not mad he just get the americans and the israelis to do it and that's what really worries me ok. joe let me go to you i mean it's not going to work i agree ok martin when has it worked recently ok and that's the whole point i

want to go with joe here in washington you know ok let's look at iraq ok iraq after the legal invasion and occupation two thousand and three it falls into iran's fear of influence ok now you have this proxy war in syria who comes out the winner iran ok. blog. zenon fights isis they carry water for the iranians so ok they win again now why in the world would anyone on the crown of of the saudi royal family thinking they're going to throw the dice one more time i mean every it's could mistake mistake mistake mistake one after another oh sorry i forgot yemen go ahead joe. i believe that the saudis i mean never have a plan to confront iran i mean they never have the intention i'm sorry to confront it i'm not in the not today and this is why they went to was i called the weakest link which is there but on and on this is where they can basically force the head of but they cannot in syria they cannot in iraq so yes they were thought of the

u.s. and saudi authorities basically getting higher. and tense with iran in the past year or so but this is the translated to policy on the grown because we see in syria there's an agreement now between the u.s. and russia and you see iran you're getting close to control the iraqi syrian border the iraq you have saudi engagement you have a coexistence between quotation between the u.s. and iran and iraq throughout the through the legs to ation over there so that it's not it doesn't match what's happening on the ground and this was the u.s. message saudi arabia they do want lebanon to explode everything for us that it's very tricky what's happening we have to. deal with situations and see to try to contain iran that's not the time to go into a. conflict that's not the big priority for for the at this point which is liberal and you see no that's

a completely shift in that sense so again i mean the saudi authorities there's not much and will not much anything soon there toric specially in lebanon where the cell develops emotions are very very very limited. let's let's talk more about lebanon i mean. i think we all could agree that it's not over yet whatever this gambit is ok but you know the first signs are this solidified i mean people have come together to explain to our viewers what kind of consensus there is is there now in dealing with this situation they're seeing this foreign meddling from from saudi arabia and it's sent. shivers through the spine of a lot of people because i mean to remind our viewers you know people remember the war in the civil war it was horrific it was long and and they found some kind of consensus to move forward with lots of disagreements in a very complicated political system is it durable can it pull through this crisis

go ahead in beirut. in my opinion the consensus is that we do not want the lebanese people do not want another war they don't want to be dragged into another war on behalf of somebody else but for the you know for the sake of having also a comprehensive analysis of what the view is from lebanon and also in the region we need to talk about obviously saudi interference but we also need to talk about iranian involvement in lebanon as you well know hezbollah is an iranian and has a lot of power in lebanon but it's also been involved in the syria crisis and possibly in the yemen crisis in the iraq in iraq as well so we can't really discuss lebanon without talking about these two sides which is usually what is discussed today as the regional power play between saudi arabia and iran so yes in the last two weeks saudi arabia's role interfering in lebanon and what i consider to be an assault on lebanon sovereignty has come to the surface but we also need to see that it's part of a bigger problem of both powers trying to interfere or trying to flex their muscles

so to speak so let me also remind the viewers that part of what also saudi arabia claimed at least that this is all about or what the what its allies in lebanon were upset about was president rouhani of iran who mentioned two weeks ago perhaps nothing. options in the region including lebanon without the you know without iran's. so to speak consent to do so in one way or another one can see the hurried resignation as saudi arabia saying well look we can also influence things on the ground we can you know we can create put a hold on on a settlement that brought the president on to the presidency and how do you need to the premiership so in some ways just to sum it up briefly there is a consensus that we do not want a war if saudi arabia want a military confrontation with hezbollah it is my view that no party in lebanon want to start but at the same time what the how do you do as a good nation brought forward is that there is a need to have a discussion about the status of hezbollah going forward and also whether hezbollah

should disengage from any regional conflicts martin what made you wait wait on that because i mean hezbollah would say nothing succeeds like success i mean they play their cards very very carefully ok and they've come out on top and a throw away are also part of the number to call process they are elected democratically if you like it or not ok so i you know it seems to me that they have a pretty strong position in lebanese politics ok and they came about because of the illegal invasion of israel ok let's all remember the origins of all these things go ahead mark. well yeah i mean. it offers very much a nationalistic organization but as has grown and develops now into. an organization which permits but across the region here the problem we've got here is one of irony the saudis trying to take on iran and hezbollah is proxy on the region and they lost and every time they keep losing hezbollah keeps growing you know if

you look at hezbollah now i mean the israeli generals barely a week passes without israeli generals in the press down there israel talking about the strength of his rule since since has burst from the war in syria so you know the joke of words is a six hundred pound gorilla sits when it enters the room anywhere it likes applies very much to say. that we have now between saudi arabia and iran the problem for the saudis is hezbollah has just become too big too powerful across the region and now the saudis on the gross thing from a point of weakness not from a point of strength you know they've they've sort of kidnaps the lebanese prime minister we don't know exactly where he is exactly or what he's doing in saudi arabia there is this debacle and now which is a merger between now the international community in france is trying to usher him back to france there's a huge question mark over whether he will come back as a prime minister and do what everyone wants him to do which is to talk to has blood because frankly he's the only one the lebanese the saudis have got who can actually be put into that circle and who will be listened to and who can communicate with

has been come out with a deal the million dollar question is to the saudis really wants to negotiate a deal because they had an opportunity and they seem to have lost it i got to run it clear. hariri areas become so popular in the last two weeks more popularly could be ever an entire political career inside lebanon and yet the the saudis have not capitalized on that and said let's put him back into beirut to talk to has blown joe away you know that's a very interesting way of looking at it go ahead joe in washington. i mean i agree that has a role in that has grown beyond the. role that should be discussed the new way that doesn't impact you know the way libya has addition with the with the other border the concern about how. what's happening in syria and the bodies politics and the third way they were rushed or one of the nation was the mosque with most of all i think. a little bit concerned to her but

the issue is how saudi arabia approach this issue i mean the way they did it now basically they're they cripple their own he's. basically forced to resign yes that was his authority and this weaken him and that the first five a weaker. how do you know they're going to be going to him for almost five years though whether in his company in saudi arabia where the support of people on his right so basically i mean they should take a decision that what that they can do i mean if they want to go to war with. the one ready for that if they want to live the go to war to his beloved i'm not ready for that and they want the americans to do the reading so brazing can be put on life everybody's government so that. i'm here i think we've run out of time i think joe has really put it really well there's no game plan here that's what worries me many thanks to my guest in beirut and in washington and thanks to our viewers for watching us here next time and remember.

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this hour's headlines stories twitter removes it's a blue to perfect haitian from a number of far right public figures in an effort to tackle extremism and hate speech but questions are raised over how the pivotal measure is being applied. to lock horns in the u.n. security council over the extension of an investigation into the use of chemical weapons in syria. rebellion in the ranks one hundred former the french president launched a patrolling against his centrist movement saying it has no respect for democracy.