they could be a useful idiot i mean useful idiot you called me a useful idiot a useful idiot useful idiots go expressing my opinions on t.v. there are thousands of us doing it behind his record is a simple strategy we attack persons instead of talking about p.r. what's next why stop the fuel band me from getting this close to the white house i'm with a group code pink why not ban the color pink one hour stretch beyond the rock i should be sent to the town of london because i'm a traitor brick me although we'll put up with a lifetime of this sort of nonsense you don't scare me and i'll continue to voice my opinion i'll continue to speak out i'm in good company i'm in good company you going with me you want to do this because we are free thinkers.

it's the cradle of jazz. where are we. following welcome to cross talk anti-corruption drive others. joined by my guest martin jay 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 the 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 post is a link with between both of them i mean saudi arabia is basically getting ready for a new king to take the throne and this had been some of the new crown prince who has been installed in position by israel and america is very insecure about his position a very insecure about the future so he's created a sort of corruption purge which no one really believes basically wiping out all the opposition anybody who's a rival to anybody who could question him or dealt him thank you problems in the future but concurrence of that what we've seen the last few weeks. 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 money 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 in yellow and we've made fools of ourselves in that. but 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 now 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 is 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 of. the became very complicated the lot of princes a lot of branches in fatherhood and family that wants to control and obviously you want to call through the. power since he came used on a first. he's making people worry with an washable rather than a cup of them is that all of the word and this is not only impacting of course. the impact on lebanon on yemen or qatar we saw some of. the bit

of accumulation of the. for that reason i see the what's happening inside lebanon as mostly linked to solid 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 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 the guest said before about. mine 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 the 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 his resignation which was extremely bizarre and it was described as bizarre not just by the. 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. who is missing in action in riyadh but at the moment i just want to also 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 on 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 purging 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're going to nail firmly on the head yes the question that

all journalists and analysts want to ask is the same what how long would this guy be 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 come 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 room really very superficial and doesn't really have that much substance to it you know what we're seeing i think is is going backwards you know i don't i don't see anything going forward or not i'm not 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 slow 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 paxil it's a look at what's happened in lebanon you can find 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 cities on his trip was to riyadh and the twitter and chief was given full support to the crown prince here is there any cause and effect there because it seems that he feels 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 u.s. 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 there between the white house on one hand and the bottom of the pentagon on the other hand you saw we saw in the vehicle thought a crisis for them to bridge the wire and then eventually the president called. gyptian present the way they were meeting in cairo and basically to stop the escalation and basically they have been for the most of all there but they are for him to stop this collision because of labor on that bridge was much quicker i'm not sure maybe because to know if there was a mere withdraw i mean again i mean because 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 and other reports we still don't know exactly is that he's he's decided legally adopted the lie and israel sanctions by the u.s. congress gentlemen are just talking about how on iran stay with our team. i played for many clubs over the years so i know the game and so i got. the ball isn't only about what happens on the pitch for the final school it's about the passion from the fans it's the age of the super money. and spending to the twenty million. it's an experience like nothing else on it because i want to share what i think what i know about the beautiful guy great so well.

and thinks it's going to. welcome back across like where all things are considered to be discussing saudi arabia. ok martin let me go back to you are 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 we have this rhetorical war which is always there but they're to 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 round in 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 work like a china. i'm sorry a bull in a china shop shop kicking everything around arresting people worse taking their assets away and we have the u.s. that's kind of asleep at the wheel that seemingly at least martin your thoughts and around. because basically to sum it up the american ideal of the trump camp 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 that if they feel as though that there's no accountability there it's almost as though the. they're 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 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 arabia said we are talking. about a new policy towards iran what does that mean you know i mean what they cannot 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. let me go to you i mean that'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 illegal 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 the blog goes in and fights isis they carry water for the iranians ok they win again now why in the world would anyone 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 the. 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 what i call 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 does not translate into policy on the ground because we see in syria there is an agreement now between the u.s. and russia and you see iran you're getting close to call for the iraqi syrian border and the iraq you have saudi engagement you have coexistence between quotation between the u.s. and iran in iraq through the end through the six 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. deal with situations and see to try to contain iran is a 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 already is this solidify consensus there.