president vladimir putin and donald trump have held a telephone conversation the topics discussed included syria iran and north korea. openly to. make making it harder for them to reach wide audiences despite the tech giant previously admitting it found no violations when they investigated popularity on you tube. the prime minister finally arrives home following his surprise resignation in riyadh over two weeks ago. can give you more on those other headlines coming up. on to the political turmoil in saudi arabia with.

hello and welcome to crossfire where all things are considered. the political crisis inflicted upon lebanon by saudi arabia appears to receded at least for now is this a sign of things to come as the saudi royal family changes so to saudi arabia and the region is it time to buckle up and brace for impact. saudi arabia and the region i'm joined by my guest. and washington he's a saudi commentator in beirut we have charmaine now one the she is a journalist as well as a middle east geo political analyst and in toronto we cross the mohammad marandi is an associate professor at the university of are across the uk rules in effect that means you can jump in anytime you want and i very much appreciate jamal let me go

to you first in washington as we saw this. situation play out in lebanon i don't think it's come down yet we'll see what the next move is here but looking at what's going on in saudi arabia critics can make the claim that the the lebanon episode was to deflect from what was going on in saudi arabia and vice versa i mean how are they connected or they're just very different things happening at the same time go ahead in washington. to relieve the two different things happening and. saudi arabia houses just admit that he's going to make a complaint of. activities not only in the but in syria and in yemen maybe. issue was introduced. to hasty and such an impulsive but it succeeded in getting in the issue of has it will all know even the fringe to make any statements about how the law should be.

should be districted. hezbollah should not have a free hand in. case of this is just syria so this is all about a little bit and this is all about hezbollah then let me go to show i mean in beirut i mean one can easily make the claim that saudi arabia is meddling in lebanon and in yemen ok i mean i i don't see where you find the moral equivalence right there ok i mean so in beirut here i mean what is in play here because. you seeing a country like saudi arabia claim it's making reforms considering it's a in the ta crissy religious to talk recy and it's reaching out to the west saying it's reforming and it wants to reorder the middle east i mean. that's destabilizing in itself because we don't know what the outcomes are at home and we certainly know what the outcomes are abroad ok go ahead in beirut. the saudis are in

a very precarious situation i mean you know if you're going to take an. the stance in your neighborhood or at home one of the things you have to do is make sure you have cover so if you're going to move forward with an aggressive foreign policy you have to make sure you have stability and cohesion and at home. mohamed been on the crown prince or we often call him m.b.a.'s is in a dangerous position for himself because at home he's he's taken on the purging of the religious establishment and the royal family and even the business of stablish meant at the same time as he has. rockets and mortars coming in from yemen a war that he initiated. and neighboring states and many conflicts around him in the region most of which saudi arabia has had a hand in so you're right to criticize hezbollah for enter ference in arab

affairs is a mockery because there is no country more aggressively pursuing interventions in regional states and neighboring states than saudi arabia and we should point to the arab league meeting on sunday which was to do. yeah but at the same time hezbollah as a political party and has been elected by the people of lebanon i think that it's an important distinction as well it is and it's not for the so it's not up not for the saudis or anyone or to me but i showed i'm ok i have to let me let me i had folks i had a feeling this was going to happen which one let me let me let me bring in professor marandi so we're going to mix ok i had a question but i think you've heard enough professor marandi to answer what you've heard already on the program go ahead please we'll have is a part of the government and the government recognizes. the. has well our

armed wing and in lebanon and it is universally recognized that the only thing that deters another israeli attack on lebanon is hezbollah and if people look back the reason why hezbollah was created in the first place was the the israeli regime's occupation of lebanon its attack on the country and effectively they expelled the israelis. so hezbollah's very popular in fact it's the most popular party in lebanon it actually gives up its seat in the cabinet and in parliament to its own allies it only keeps a minimal number of seats just to be sure that they're in the debate. and to compare saudi arabia to hezbollah is really extraordinary we just recently heard and i think all your viewers should watch the interview of the former prime

minister of qatar when he spoke on t.v. not on al-jazeera but on t.v. and he explained that at the very beginning of the situation in syria. he went to saudi arabia and they began plotting against the syrian government and of course we also have other documents like the defense intelligence agency document of two thousand and twelve and so on that shows that saudi arabia from the very beginning was the exporting terrorism to syria and the prime minister also acknowledged that the nostra front was being funded and that back then the nostra fund was actually a part of isis because isis back then was i.s.i. the slimy state of iraq they created the most from a struggle for syria and then again when we look at when we look at yemen the saudi regime is creating a start it's creating starvation i don't mask ale unprecedented in human

history seven thousand people seventeen million people are on the verge of starvation or and the united states the western women the british milliner they are all silent about this which is quite graceless but there is no comparison it is that i mean saudi arabia and anyone else in and i point out to our viewers the sixty minutes report on c.b.s. was absolutely disgraceful in its bias ok jamal let me go back to you because if it's two against one here i want to be able to respond what we've heard of the program so far go ahead. what we should not pick and choose what we have a series of through devolution to be supported i wish he would do more support unfortunately even feel that my cunt that he is withdrawing its support to the studio live illusion and we shouldn't have done that because it is it is legitimate to support that evolution those people calling for the measure to do or did it to be supported actually somehow saudi arabia and they had any of the to getting in somehow causing for bashar assad and we shouldn't we should we should not do that

it is it is not in no interest yes i agree that the war in yemen is causing some suffering but. the host should not be allowed to rule eleven because they are not democratic. but ascribing to a vote sharing formula for yemen so somehow saw the. what the iranians are supporting what hezbollah is supporting the are not supporting. peaceful change democratic change in that we do east of supporting dictatorships or security of them although i doubt that it's a foregone kind of rich having saudi arabia supporting terrorist groups insincerity of saudi inside of syria i mean i i have a hard time good if i have a high excuse me but i have a hard time anyone from saudi arabia talking about democracy anywhere in the world let me go to share meaning in beirut here i mean again you know that this these reforms. about the wealthy well you need to have we have to have equal time for

everyone but you know and you know saudi arabia looks like it wants to be the hedge of money in the entire arab world i'm afraid that's a long time ago the number of missteps that they have gone through and then we in recent years have pretty much precluded that i mean the survival of the royal family should be the primary concern because without the royal family there is no saudi arabia ok i think you know they did should get their priorities straight go ahead in beirut mohamed be. it is doing exactly the opposite of that as i was saying earlier if you're going to take on an aggressive foreign policy or domestic policy you have to make sure your back is covered and your flanks are covered and you can see what lies ahead he's taken on all these issues at the same time but you know going to the point about about the you know hezbollah and iran interfering in the in the affairs of states and back to the arab league meeting on sunday the arab league charter says that there are you know states the inviolability of not just

sovereignty and territorial territorial integrity of all arab states but independents as well and the first time in their history that they significantly veered from this and intervene in the affairs of state allegedly to support a population against its government it was in libya and in syria and now they are doing so in yemen when when when the arab league takes these decisions and sideline syria and looks to sideline other countries potentially like lebanon they have no right per their charter you have an arab league that is being hijacked now and there are very few members of that league that actually subscribe to to what mohamed wants in the region i mean it's saudi arabia it's. not even the u.s. . but her reign that has no voice any longer and maybe some sort of half steps by some of the others but this is a very dangerous situation where one country is pretty much saying we can violate

every ok show me around us i want to and we have the right to do so we have about forty seconds before we go to the break go ahead mohamed interim if you want to respond to that go ahead i think the big issue is that mohamed bin saddam mom is behaving in a erratic manner he's not how creating things or thinking things through he one week he has a huge conference from foreign investors at the ritz carlton the next week he arrests all the billionaires princes and ministers and puts them in the ritz carlton. that's basically saying to all foreign investors and leave and all wealthy saudis to leave the country as well. ok gentlemen and lady i'm going to jump in here we're going to go to a short break and after that short break we'll continue our discussion on saudi arabia and the region stay with art.

years ago i traveled across the united states exploring america's deadly love affair with. a bad guy trying to get to one of my family members he would have better a lot better and i think it's fair and hurting whenever my my baby says my book was published in the year two thousand more than half a million americans have been killed by falling into the u.s. . team yes we did this is a middle school we go through drills and we put ourselves in real scenarios it was

interesting to see who actually got here. and i decided to return to the subject to track down each gun owner who i'd met and photographed those years ago i don't know that but we are not. welcome at the cross talk or all things considered i'm peter lavelle to remind you we're discussing saudi arabia and the region. can you explain what we all know that the crown prince and it's assuming that he will become king very soon can you explain his reforms i mean mohamed interim talked about this i guess a better word is this really a shaking down of members of the royal family that may or may not have committed massive acts of corruption ok fine but is that the way to move forward i mean

because if you want to have the rule of law so you break the law to have the rule of law you you state you take assets from people you legally but believing foreigners will we attempted to legally enter your saudi market i mean can't you see all the contradictions of what this quote unquote reform is all about because it looks like a power grab not in the name of a family but in the name of one man. go ahead jamal. very much could really. put it this way he is doing that are you seeing is the wrong way i've been very much supportive of reform in saudi arabia i called exactly for many of the things well how much money is doing it often used better but eventually in saudi arabia yes not only of fame really need to beat him don't need to be just addicted. to be a load but it. for the state they should not.

live as if they own or a share of the state it shouldn't equal citizen to us we the people of saudi arabia . he is there when the ice sings in saudi arabia but he's doing it in a hasty manner they will never be an economic development in saudi arabia. the one to thirty without fighting corruption but in the same time to house to beat on that unfair and see in an in an article a lot in the washington post i question with that he is becoming like president putin would he would just go all the poet out around him and i wouldn't live for saudi arabia i would like to see how well you know not what i'm hearing we have elections call me up when saudi arabia starts having elections and i'll be interested and invited me on the political parties to what i'm hoping for right ok that may assure me that when i'm lying or if i think. that i can go to you know i

find it really kind of foolhardy i mean so to be is a royal family it's not even a state really it's one family and it has one person striving to have all power to him self here so if you're going to reform saudi arabia you have to reform the royal family what are the chances of that happening. and not very good right now because. we're talking about a dictatorship where it was ruled by consent. at least with the thousands of. princes and members of the royal family that had who had a stake in the system today it's not clear who has the stake in the system besides besides the crown prince the would be king so i don't think he's going to have a very good chance of accomplishing even his domestic objectives because again the purges of the religious establishment even to some tribes the royal family the

business class and as to his vision for twenty thirty how can he accomplish this when when investors who are required for this kind of economic plan are are going to be extremely wary of putting dollars into into a kingdom. you know that is that is governed by a leader this erratic. mohamed would where to where does the u.s. play in all of this because i mean we have donald trump tweeting supporting the crown prince almost a blank check here do you think that kind of nudge him along that he's going to get a free pass and of course we know that relations between israel and saudi arabia are are right being they're getting closer and closer reports i've seen that even sharing intelligence here i mean you think the crown prince thought he had two really powerful forces in his corner and he was going to go out and make his bid in me fell flat on his face go ahead moment. yes i think that the saudi regime is

counting very much on trump support and i think. our your good guest in the united states suffered a lot at the hands of the saudi ruling family because of his criticisms of trump if i'm not mistaken. there's rarely connection with saudi arabia of course i think is really more hurtful to saudi arabia than it thinks because in public or in the public opinion in the region people recognize israel as an apartheid state that has kept palestinians basically in concentration camps in gaza and the which is treating them as has subhuman and any the close of the relationship gets the more unpopular the saudi regime becomes but i'd like to also point out a couple of other things about what's going on in saudi arabia and why i think that . this is very dangerous for the stability of the regime itself the be the erratic behavior is not only with regards to its sudden arrests of all these influential

people and it's not just the war where they're slaughtering hundreds of thousands of people due to disease and starvation although the western media for two years has been saying ten thousand people have been killed they don't want to tell the real numbers but then we see what he did in the tatar and outrageous behavior that the saudis showed towards that heavy people and they still they tried to strangle them as well they humiliated the prime minister of lebanon and forced him to grovel in front of the king how would investors come to a country when even a foreign prime minister has no protection in the country but the most important thing i think is that so to rabia some is a bit like libya it is not mike egypt or iran. and it's a nation state with an identity. it's founded upon him in the view was founded upon one person and when he was killed when he was here when he left the scene the

country fell apart and saudi arabia if if mohamed bin some money grows weaker as a result of the. immense amount of money that he's wasting in yemen in killing the and all the other crap multiple crises at home and abroad if saudi arabia grows unstable i don't think that the country will remain intact in jamal i know that you are a critic of the saudi government presumably you may be one of the ones where you're living in the u.s. if you could give the crown prince advice what would that advice be and what would be the advice to israel and the united states for example he was the void one marauder despite all the temptation. to rule this wired how smart is the old was into that is our stuff to the current database but it's hard to say but he is indeed during the course of history isn't he doing just the opposite. but i thought law but that was my advice to avoid being

a one month rule he need to broaden the consensus you need to create some form for the market to see about him he enjoys the support of the people did is no question of that it timoci in saudi arabia. it's very very quick solution could hear something like the chinese communist party would it have a huge membership of. equal people who could contribute and share power saudi arabia is going through a major transformation that existed to the country and that should not be looked did you think the ideas of what you think saudi arabia can survive this transformation it's seems to me really in severe doubts that it could on the past years on right here so you know i think. in the short term we're saudi arabia has enough forward enough legitimacy enough for us to survive for. the coming years but

challenges from within isn't even facing one hundred and some months high expectation that the measures that people don't know how it is it will not have any of those things go ahead go ahead and be a row does it have power and legitimacy how does that saudi arabia have the power legitimacy to carry through any of its agendas the arab league is as good as gone the g.c.c. is as good as gone you know am no no no no no initiative that's hard is it doing is that only we were it all let me just let me know it only comes with money and saudi arabia is bankrupt in terms of muslim legitimacy let's tell you're a no no no no no we have we're the relationship with israel and it will have my friend you know what peter going to wear and think this is going to and i think that it's going to end with the custody of the two holy mosques gone and they're deploying a very dangerous game whereas most of the countries in this region want stability and would like saudi arabia to act as they did before. you know with consensus and a system that was cautious and looked at its neighborhood in

a very cautious tentative way before it. sees we have a saudi arabia gone rogue ok john i'm able to sustain jeremy an hour and legitimately here now please respond before and then i want to go to my home and before we end the program go ahead ok the vertically corresponds on token for all my surrogate perspective can from within saudi arabia i'm not see in saudi with i would cite the people of saudi arabia they support. some monday support the monarchy does somewhat the system this is a reality there are difficulties which are economic meanly some difficulties are foreign but the country is stable ruled the country for ok maybe five six years with what with much more challenges but he house to fix the unemployment problem let me just let a serious risk let me let me go to mohammed he had that he could get that if we're

rapidly running out of time mohamed let me go to you i would i would i would put forward the following is that all of the problems that saudi arabia is experiencing internally and its foreign policy are all self-inflicted wounds every single one go ahead. well look we're out of the saudi regime basically is. is is is not is putting the lives of people like joe mama threat just man who's defending saudi arabia right now cannot go back to his own country this is the state of affairs in saudi arabia and the so did the united states when they occupied iraq they were infinitely more powerful than saudi arabia and look what iraq did to the american economy so do you arabia is engaging in mass murder in yemen it is spending its money like there's no tomorrow it's confronting tab it's confronting syria iraq it's been it's been the confronting iraq for years

and now lebanon and iran it is and at home it's now dealing both with the clerics as well as the royal family ministers and it's arresting generals as well this is definitely not a regime that has this sort of mohammed mohammed can put on site i'm sorry i wish i'd like to get away with it but would run out of time fascinating discussion many thanks to my guests in washington and in beirut and into the un and thanks to our viewers for watching us here r.t. see you next time and remember crosstalk. silly clinton fans and democrats they have a problem of putting all their efforts into chasing the rush again hoax and they're not therefore they don't have the resources to go field new candidates that might

have a chance of twenty so if they were to drop the russia gate and focus on just finding candidates to run a twenty eight team they might have a chance but at this rate they don't have a chance which means that they probably won't have a chance in twenty four. yes . i simply didn't look once or that didn't have been miles from the to the independent bus that's when he just left to visit. the counselors if i went up in a sauna and we were meeting there. was the set of my lemon who speculate him to me

or be here now with jamie as a hunk on the only. knowledge that bad of the good lesson but because he like the money but that never. seemed like him to make the point i mean it would be in the marrow have been floating closer here not because of me it's because he sees when i when i look. back at him it was quite controversial some of the people some people sore as a response some people sort of dangerous threatening whereas other people including you store as a symbol of something very different what was it. a powerful. protecting . my freedom.

for the people who criticize you want to base. a right wing lunatic. eighteen years ago i traveled across the united states exploring america's deadly love affair with the gun i witnessed the grim results of these weapons in hospital emergency rooms morgues in the confused of to mass of mass shooting spree. after each new massacre the newspaper headlines were always the side why did it happen here. says my book was published in the year two thousand more than half a million americans have been killed by firearms in the us. five hundred twenty seven thousand people dead and many more injured i decided to return to the subject to track down each gun owner who i'd met and photograph those years ago to

understand why despite this death toll there is such fierce resistance to even moderate gun control laws in the us. is there was a more on the trigger that's now the picture is about he's not trying to harm me. he's trying to protect me. i'm looking out for myself my family. friend neighbors.