hello and welcome to cross talk were considered i'm peter lavelle future historians may look back at donald trump's handling of the murder of jamal khashoggi as a case study of the lack of leadership and outright following his reasons for giving the saudis or rather the crown prince a free pass simply don't make sense why because it's all about iran. and saudi arabia i'm joined by my guess with the into around he's a professor of political science at the university of tehran in london we have jonathan steele he's an international affairs commentator and in leeds we have shockey he is a senior lecturer in middle east politics at the university of bradford all right gentlemen cross talk rules in effect that means you can jump in anytime you want

and i always appreciated jonathan let me go to you first in london how do you react to the liberal media's treatment of donald trump these of his statements regarding the crown prince the murder of shogi and yemen and i guess also iran go ahead jonathan. well they're tracking him for not doing enough to cut relations with saudi arabia or in some way to punish the crown prince mohammed bin some man for his apparent involvement in this a turntable affair but i mean there's an element of hypocrisy because the u.s. is hundred with saudi arabia for years and they've done some terrible things the fact is holding variation of yemen was would have been a good case much more important than the motive. for cutting down on relations but instead of that they're actually supporting the invasion of yemen humaine it's go to turn around here let me read to you something that donald trump said in the last

few days here saudi arabia would gladly withdraw from yemen if the iranians would agreed to leave they would immediately provide desperately needed humanitarian assistance additionally saudi arabia has agreed to spend billions of dollars in leading the fight against radical islamic terrorism do you make any sense of any of those words go ahead and. i think those words are actually very ridiculous because iran has no physical presence and yes i mean yes you're on has supported the cooties before but there's been such a blockade on yemen that you're on doesn't have the necessary means to even send humanitarian aid let alone be physically present there with regards to yemen i think we're witnessing the worst humanitarian crisis since world war two i mean save the children which is a british charity just announced that eighty five thousand children under the age of five years old have died out of starvation in the past three years and essentially we're seeing

a blind eye being shown especially by the american towards what the saudis are doing not only that but they have helped the saudis both in terms of refueling their aircraft as well as intelligence sharing all regarding the issue of islamic terrorism we have to again remember that fifteen out of the nineteen hijackers on the nine eleven terrorist attacks were saudi nationals so how can the saudis be fighting terrorism where when they are the root of terrorism in the region and they have been for many the most extreme form of islam which is why they have spread it all the cross the world so i don't think those statements by trying to make any sense i have a very strong sense that mr bolton written those words for the president here let me go to you in lee in leeds one of the i agree with jonathan steele i mean the hypocrisy of criticizing trump when you can look at every you know since the second world war the number of dictators that the united states is protected in funded in

a given legitimacy so i mean i really don't take the washington post in the new york times very seriously on this but what i think is serious here is if there is no pushback against the saudis for being involved in this horrific crime then it's actually enabling the crown prince of saudi arabia that he can actually do anything he wants now there will be no punishment whatsoever go ahead and leaves. yes it seems that. states. see any need for. a complete if we if you just use a huge element or people see what they think it would be a good idea to examine why four pieces in the six the city gates don't shock he's absolutely determined. for. their

insult to civil i think we still haven't completely exhausted why one hundred men in suddenly decided to choose two and actually if we should more like to use their hats the keys to the me when the sun wind down and chant one hundred percent determine. its case i strongly believe that it is the detail bit naive and simplistic and reductions to assume that my hammer went through all that to chill john mansel searches simply because he was criticizing. me simply because he was criticizing his foreign policy. in the region although this has been part of the prevailing narrative all the last few weeks but it seems there is an element of truth which is only seen in these regimes although i cannot find a belief i am one hundred percent but i strongly think that actually john mark karr

should she was a cio not because he was criticizing the sun but simply because perhaps he knew too much what he wanted to do it better very good point because you know he's been betrayed in western media some kind of dissident but he was really in many ways the ultimate insider is well here jonathan one of the interesting things that we've seen here is that we have had a number of senators lindsey graham. for example come out and say the most. demeaning things you could possibly say about a person and then we have the cia coming out with its high confidence message i hate that phrase but that they believe that the the trail of the go goes all the way back to the crown prince it seems to me that this is being picked up as a domestic political issue in the united states to go after trump what do you think . there is another point of that and of course to there is a difference of view between the cia and president trump on the question of russian

involvement in the direction of trying to sixteen etc so russian trump is already against the intelligence agencies on some of the big issues and so this is part of the ongoing war but i mean just to come back to your initial point about the nonsensical statements of trumpets made let's not forget the recent is twenty eleven trump was quoted as saying that saudi arabia is the world's biggest funder of terrorism and they're using petrol de petro dollars our own money to fund terrorists and shooting and killing our own people i mean it's done a complete one hundred ninety degree turn now suddenly is saudi arabia. yeah they i mean that twitter archive can be a bit troublesome it times let's go back to turn around one of the things i find interesting what one of the reasons why trump is still speaking about saudi arabia and the most the perla to terms i mean it is quite bizarre if you look at his twitter feed but it's really his administration is made of made it very clear that

the country that you reside in right now is going to target and moving israel in the saudis along with their plans for a say it regime change into iran they have to stick with the saudis because that's they're an intricate part of that plan is what is bothersome in is troublesome is that is they the washington has chosen saudi arabia to be a keep pillar in their anti ran policy go ahead. yes so they have been using saudi arabia the americans have been using saudi arabia as a proxy if you will to essentially confront iran nevertheless this hasn't been very successful on under donald trump yet rather than isolating iran they have actually ice of the themselves when they decided to leave the nuclear deal aside from saudi arabia the u.a.e. and israel virtually the entire international community was against this move and nearly the entire international community is supporting you on and the nuclear deal

to stay in place so it hasn't been very successful also i think we have to consider did the downsides of supporting the saudis now when mohammed bin samon came into power we have to remember that killing cautiously wasn't the first reckless behavior from them i mean he started to arrest his political opponents in the ritz carlton hotel the american state side and they didn't do anything they implemented a blockade on qatar they didn't do anything they kidnapped a lebanese prime minister and forced him to resign stood the americans gave them a free pass and even with canada when they cut relations with canada over just a single tweet they criticize saudi arabia over human rights again the americans didn't support the canadians which are their natural ally so essentially they allowed the saudis under the ryan of mohamed bin samon to continue with this reckless behavior that they this instance of which is the killing of she and as

a result of that even if they weren't directly involved in the killing i think they share a major responsibility in it absolutely we're going to go back to you in leads here or what you know and i want to talk about this in the second half of the program as well is what does the united states get out of its strategic relationship with saudi arabia other than the headaches go ahead. because. as we say it's struck with the last six so the months. larry. it's been talking about that fact in bitch don't want shot i'll be using. it be using his position as the president of the united states in order to expand he's existing business empire according to some reliable reports in two thousand and seventeen in own that shop company he's

at least sold city finds a million dollars for some of these states to part of their shell companies we shape up systematically. that divides and i very much need a lot of tools one of the pops your buyers will probably from saudi arabia or at least consumption it should add to that i have been a little doubt that i actually don't shop as some personal interests in common of keeping a nice warm relationship between washington well this started as a very interesting theory we're about to go to the break but i think one thing is absolutely clear the neo cons to be surrounded himself with there they're driving his policy here gentlemen i want to jump in here we're going to go to a short break and after that short break we'll continue our discussion on trump and saudi arabia stay with arg.

i've been saying the numbers mean that they matter you have over one trillion dollars in debt more than ten whitehall or find have to day. eighty five percent of global wealth if you want to be called her rich eight point six percent market shock thirty percent rise last year some with four hundred to five hundred three per second per second and going rose to twenty. thousand dollar. china's building two point one billion dollar ai industrial park but don't let the numbers overwhelm . the only numbers you need remember it was one business show you know for a minute the one and only. the british government and the british establishment and mrs and mrs mrs may have

looks themselves up into his studio about so called no deal just so he is incredibly misleading as i just said in so doing they've allowed the european union to impose completely draco union terms on the u.k. which would last anyway. and. i think that i would want to go fast but inside i'm. a dockside i think. going down to your neck side you can improve yourself. but it's also a bloody then job but i really believe this. bottom that we show our side that it's story and the band. can be shown what

a lot. of. good a place called camp sundown to get for people that can't decide and they're like so tired. like a safe house i guess they don't have to talk about what they go through with us because we understand her daughter katie was diagnosed with a very rare sun sensitive condition if i get sunburned i heal she does or she'll patients when they have problems with the walk to talk to her son and brains that are actually shrinking inside there. stone gets used to. the pain it is indescribable it's feels like a really really bad chemical burn but it goes through your skin in your muscles way down to the bone. there's no relief. we're not to sure.

welcome back to crossfire where all things considered i'm peter lavelle you were discussing trump and saudi arabia. ok let me go back to jonathan in london here i suppose it's the biggest problem in many ways is that it's really the united states isn't have a relationship with saudi arabia rather it has with this royal family and this is what makes the relations very difficult i mean there is speculation that as i mentioned earlier the cia with its report. placing essentially blame on the crown prince but there is there is widely it's widely speculated that the cia doesn't really like the crown prince very much and they would have preferred another

candidate and i as i said before we went to the break here there are the people that trump has surrounded himself with and they definitely have something for iran in mind ok and and saudi arabia is part of the team and whatever it takes to get the you know the neo-cons agenda to to her wish and they're willing to accept i think that's why when we are our guest in tehran mentioned all of these failures of the crown prince that's why they're overlooking them ok this is really the case here do you think there is a play jonathan to forward for for family change not necessarily regime change. well i mean if they had mohammed bin nayef who was previously the top sort of security person in riyadh he would have been better key and so on but it doesn't change the basic parameters of the huge deep relationship between the u.s. and saudi arabia i think it's not just because they're using saudi arabia against

iran and saudi arabia's very willingly going along with that they don't need much persuasion there are two other big factors one of course is the arms sales huge billion dollar sales of american weapons to saudi arabia which helps the american economy but the very big issue in israel the question of israel of course is already they want to do what this is now being called normalization which is to get the arab countries to start normalizing their collections with israel first on a commercial basis television sharing than political and diplomatic to allow israel to have a much freer hand in the middle east and the view we have been reports of on the table contacts between the saudi intelligence people and the israeli intelligence people whom we've seen. you know who went to oman recently in there as a contacts with arab countries as well in the gulf so that's really is a huge thing if they could get saddam going to come out openly declare that israel

was a normal states and they could have diplomatic relations with it that would be a huge prize for the total trump and the neocons yeah and a bit let me go back to. that and that would be a very big prize for jared because apparently that's part of his grand settlement for the middle east there but i don't know i mean if i were in the trump white house i would see that the trials and tribulations of benjamin netanyahu the prime minister he's in a tight spot politically. he's a he's acting foreign minister sorry defense minister right now. so you know you have this. of relations between saudi arabia in israel do you think that agenda will work in trying to isolate iran in the region because basically it's a sunni shia thing they're trying to play here go ahead and. yes but the fact is that the trump family and as especially jared kirshner have invested so much in mohamed bin samon that it's very difficult to undermine him or change him right now

i mean u.s. media actually reported that the list of princes that were arrested in the ritz carlton hotel the rivals of mohamed bin some on the list was actually given to m.b.'s by jared questionnaire and that's how that's how close they are the problem is however that the new issue of normalization of arab countries with israel is not a sunni shia thing it's actually a issue of the palestinians the position of the saudis has always been under fire had a non-drug the law that they would only normalize relations when a fair solution to the palestinian problem would be found and the problem we're having right now is this normalization is happening without any sort of more of the ocean for the palestinians is in fact the palestinian yes in fact the passage situation has even gotten worse for example when the negotiations and settlement happened in the early one nine hundred ninety s.

there were only one hundred thirty thousand settlers living in the occupied territories today there is over half a million so the two state solution has essentially died and we have to remember that the issue of normalization with israel is also very unpopular in the muslim world so it's actually going to be a very difficult task both for n.b.s. and for jerry to question or you know i've seen you know it's not the first time the west is used elite captured to get its way and i agree. if there is such a thing as an arab street you better you better check in with that before you start but the there is a normalization already of relations maybe not. so publicly but between israel and saudi arabia is the us why is it i'm not just saying trump now but the u.s. in general is it wise to put all its eggs in one basket i mean this relationship between saudi arabia and israel what is the downside because i don't see a whole really a whole lot of upside go ahead upstream in limbs leaves me looking at so

a lot of the sense of transforming. is seen as one of these three. iran centric to watch to effectively change everything in to political landscape. he needs he believes that actually. he's the alternate source of trouble and an american insecurity in the region and in all due to resists the reigning position in the middle east so he has to kind of create these alliances find will between washington d. . and reacts and it is not surprising tool all of the last three or four weeks when effectively every important politician expressing some concern about the situation particularly when we realize that there was the don't

recall election which then to southie a savage men and the killing of john for sure cheap easy to live in israel basically people like not on yahoo constantly said yes what's happened was not nice but at the same time easel and the huge what they call stability and security in the middle east that requires their continuous position. been inside so if you can assert their position well for american foreign policy within the seriousness of the front the it's at least then it doesn't make sense to means . and beat the lions in order to constitute a need to brush up. against you know as. well you know all i could you actually know i can say let me go to jonathan here right now the over the last fifteen years or so the more the west and its proxies in the in the region try to isolate around the more powerful rand i really don't understand there's no learning

curve these people just don't learn here jonathan one of the most tragic things i think for me and i made it a point on this program to continue discussing what's going on in yemen it took clique the murder of shogi to actually get the yemen story into the mainstream media and it was about time here what worries me is they giving you know giving dictators a free pass is nothing new ok at all all right but in this case here isn't it enabling saudi arabia's her refer to a murderous policy viz of yemen to go on checked. going to use and dejan it is going on in the united states has made some little minor adjustments they said they were intel with the refueling in-flight refueling of saudi air craft a bombing in yemen but about twenty percent of the flights involve u.s. refueling so the eighty percent is still going ahead the u.s. also has been calling for

a cease fire but cecily done unless you put some diplomatic clout behind it and threaten to with tool help from mohamed bin solomon he's never going to agree to a cease fire so there have been some pinpricks things acting. by the u.s. but there is another point i'd like to make which i think is important in the trump statement which is to say he parroted the comments to king solomon and mohammed bin some on the son and said which is to jamal khashoggi was linked to the muslim brotherhood president if that's true i don't know but the muslim brotherhood is the real danger of the saudis and that's why they hated so much. because it offers in political islam but with democratic rights and elections and proper political parties and so on which is why are they wanted to see it destroyed in egypt. because qatar helps out the muslim brotherhood are the bad relations with turkey because turkey is in a sense very similar to the muslim brotherhood having an islamic political party in

power so. are the. kinds to kushal. let's go back to iran here. i want to stay with the issue of yemen here what is it going it looks like there's just no political will because we have the defense secretary in the united states matters he's again saying that there will be talks in december but it sounds like it is the can gets keep getting kicked down the road i mean there is no political will in washington to to stop the saudis and their. destroying yemen what is the united states get out of that what is the west in general get out of a destroyed yemen where it's basically moving towards a form of genocide go ahead. yes the instability in the war in the middle east is good for washington in the short term because i mean they sell billions of dollars of weapons to disability so the saudis being involved in war is actually

good for business and i think that's something to donald trump made very clear in his recent statement essentially saying that this is part of the america first policy where you know the saudis can get away with what they're doing because they're bringing jobs and money to the united states well i would say i'm sorry i would really had really i would really contest that ok the deals that he's talking about are in the pipeline they're not even really find i mean the bombs on the planes they all came from the bush obama era tom pitts had no input zero impact on arms sale. as to saudi arabia at this point i'll give you the last word into iran go ahead yes i would totally agree with that the trump is is an expert in exaggerating numbers but i would say that even if those numbers were true in the long run this kind of policy of supporting an aggressive dictator like m.b.'s is going to be bad for us interests the saudis have for mentored

a lot of instability in terrorism in the region i mean when the rise of a group such as isis which came out of the illegal invasion of iraq essentially had a one how the ideology twelve out of twelve books out of amounts that i'm sorry i actually i have to jump in here more by i have to jump in here we're run out of time many thanks to my guests into around leeds and london and thanks to our viewers for watching us here at r.t.c. you next time and remember rostock schools. are. tracking gave americans a lot of new job opportunities i needed to come up here to make some money i

can make twenty five thousand dollars as a teacher or i can make fifty thousand dollars a year trucks or chose to truck people rushed to a small town in north dakota was an unemployment rate of zero percent it's like a gold rush it is very very similar to a gold rush but this beautiful story ended with pollution and of a station a lot of people have left here i don't know too many people here and just slowed down so much they lost their jobs that laid off the american dream is changing it's not what it used to be. it's a tough real. all of you deal with. a statistic from a couple excel came out that show the wealth and income gap around the world in different countries and then there's there's the u.s. there's there's france and then there's the u.k. here oh it's like wow this stuff incredible spread between this concentration and

then you've got the loyalists or people there in the tory party who support the queen whose whole point of breaks it was the support the queen ok so they just aerialist and a moron a policy because incredible poverty breaks it's all about supporting the queen and getting rid of their world contacts. dollars. dollars. dollars. on the dollar by dollar what are the. we got carried away here we care the music with us. we are a year we were dry gere. by you know going to get rid of those who are not go away who will not die quietly.

real the hard work we do is the. person storing all faces tending a secret operation if i'm see russian campaigns across you'll read that. according to documents exposed by hack group anonymous names of those involved in the contest in network have also been revealed. yet a vast fuel price demo spread out across from says a man wearing one of the government's threats since a blow up of petrol station. for applying.