Robert Inlakesh MintPress News

Iran’s IRGC have implemented an intensive strike strategy in the Strait of Hormuz, changing the nature of their conflict with the United States, while working alongside their regional allies to create new conditions on the ground. In this Monday’s episode of The Target looks at the shifts in the power balance and the battle-front in Yemen.

The United States has issued warnings to its citizens, through 11 different embassies and missions across West Asia, all as Israel signals its intent to launch yet another attack on the Islamic Republic of Iran. Meanwhile, Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) has been running military drills and testing new variations of its ballistic missiles, announcing publicly that it will use new weapons that have not previously been revealed if they are subjected to yet another US-Israeli aggression.

The Yemeni Armed Forces managed to shoot down an AH6i Helicopter over the border area with Saudi Arabia, in an embarrassing affair that exposed Riyadh’s denial propaganda. Yemen initially announced that they had shot down an Apache Helicopter. Because they misidentified the kind of aircraft, their Saudi opponents believed that they had scored an opportunity to create a damage control narrative.

Saudi Arabia then went on to announce that the helicopter, an AH6i, had simply malfunctioned and in the midst of admitting that the two pilots had died. Yemen’s Ansarallah-led government waited to allow Saudi propagandists to begin bragging about exposing their alleged lies, before releasing footage of them shooting the helicopter down and admitting that they had misidentified the aircraft initially.

On the show, Inlakesh also looks at some of the latest battle footage from Yemen, including of Yemen’s Armed Forces using quadcopter drones to take out enemy gathering with anti-personnel munitions and their successful defensive fight to repel an advance by Saudi-backed PLC forces.

He also spends time on the stream, dedicated to exposing British journalist Sami Hamdi’s false depiction of Yemeni history. The show goes through the distortion of the timeline of the Yemen-Saudi war, sectarian and tribalist arguments, while delving into the history of the Ansarallah movement and where it truly came from.

At a time when sectarianism and division is rampant, in an attempt to convince audiences that the regional resistance to US-imperialism and Israeli expansionism is itself just as evil as those it fights, this historical context cuts through the propaganda.

According to a recent report by Israel’s Institute for National Security Studies (INSS), a leading Tel Aviv-based think tank, has altered its security doctrine to consider all surrounding Arab Nations as a mere collection of tribes, opposed to real sovereign nations. We look at how this fits into the so-called ‘Greater Israel’ project and why it is likely doomed to fail.

Help expose the war machine. MintPress News follows the money behind war, surveillance and corporate power—investigating the weapons manufacturers, lobbyists, think tanks and political networks that profit while ordinary people pay the price. Funded entirely by readers and viewers, MintPress depends on your support to keep this journalism independent and freely accessible. Read, watch, share—and donate to support MintPress News.

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Iran Destroys U.S. Strike Plan as Yemen Acquires Khaibar Shekan Missiles to Strike Israel

Robert Inlakesh | MintPress News

Edited transcript of the supplied text, covering approximately 0:33–1:56:34. Timestamps, fillers and immediate repeated starts have been removed; clear transcription errors have been corrected. The speakers’ arguments and tone are retained. Embedded clip speakers are labeled where identifiable; unclear or missing words are marked in brackets. This transcript has not been checked against the recording,

Regional conflict overview

Robert Inlakesh: Welcome to [show title unclear] for MintPress News. I’m your host, Robert Inlakesh. Iran is pledging to turn Tel Aviv into scorched earth if its energy infrastructure is hit in what is expected to be the upcoming round of fighting as Israel deploys more mobile shelters and Tehran implements a new strike strategy in the Strait of Hormuz. The UAE is also coming under attacks of an unknown origin as Saudi Arabia ramps up its air strikes on civilian areas in Yemen only to suffer even larger blows to their oil infrastructure.

Got a lot to look into today. A lot of claims that have been going around which we’ll also be pulling apart in the stream. So stay tuned for that.

Urgent funding appeal

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Our aim is to raise $3,000 while we are here live today, which is very achievable. If everyone watching donated $10, we would surpass that with ease. And just in case you were wondering, this time we did take away the middlemen and you can donate directly to our campaign on our website at [donation address unclear in supplied text].

Escalation in the region

So we are on the verge of a new escalation. It seems the United States has issued warnings to 11 embassies throughout the region, including its [description of mission to Iran unclear] for US citizens to evacuate the region and has issued caution over an escalation with Iran and also they added in Yemen there as well. But we know the Iran conflict is of course something that is more relevant when it comes to the safety of US citizens or at least these security concerns.

We’ve also seen a massive uptick in military movement throughout the region. Aircraft being deployed. And so it does appear as if we are on the verge of another round of escalation and we’ll look into that why that may be and what are some of the factors that come into this.

Economic and political pressures

Here we have one of the major influences on what’s currently happening in the region at this time and that is of course inflation, rising prices of gas. I believe Brent crude surpassed $110 per barrel today. That’s not looking good for the Trump administration. So there’s been a lot of frustration there as they move towards the midterms. It doesn’t look like they’ve been able to stabilize things the way perhaps they would have wanted. The Israelis also seem to be shouting from the rooftop that they themselves are considering a preemptive strike against Iran just like the other rounds of so-called preemptive strikes which initiated the two wars that Israel has fought against Iran.

Illegal, completely in violation of the UN charter. Not that the UN Secretary General António Guterres would have anything to say about that because of course he is without a spine and has refused to even call it as such.

Infrastructure and naval threats

But with that being said, now looking at reality, the Israelis are actually getting scared because all of this rhetoric has resulted in some major threats coming from the Iranians. This is Haaretz’s News reporting on the threat to turn Israel into scorched earth. And that is because the Israeli strategy in another round of the war is expected to be one of going after and using the US to do this. Going after Iran’s energy infrastructure, its water infrastructure, right? They want to go after power plants, desalination facilities. Of course, Iran doesn’t depend very heavily on water desalination, except in some areas along the Persian Gulf coastline.

But of course, this has been under threat. We’ve had these psychotic threats from President Trump time and time again about destroying totally the Islamic Republic and annihilating a civilization and all of the rest of this stuff. So, it makes sense that the Iranians are also threatening this back. But the Iranians aren’t just threatening at this point. We’re also seeing that they continue to escalate their strikes in the Strait of Hormuz. This is a video that was published by the IRGC’s Navy again showing another vessel that they struck in the Strait of Hormuz.

We’ve had a lot of footage like this coming out. The Iranians have mined the Strait of Hormuz. So some of these ships including super tankers have ran into these mines. This is extremely dangerous, more dangerous actually than when they are hit with cruise missiles because when they’re hit with precision munitions, often it’s not as deadly. The mines threaten to break these ships in half and of course that could be catastrophic. However, there have been US soldier casualties aboard some of these tankers because the United States is desperately trying to get tankers through.

Less and less of them are coming through. And then we hear all of these reports about the airports in the United Arab Emirates suddenly closing down. The UAE’s airspace is suddenly closed. We get no explanation, but we do hear that there are some explosions going on and sounds of missiles in the Strait of Hormuz. Whether there have been some missile attacks that have been directed towards infrastructure in the UAE is something that of course we’re watching. It can’t be confirmed who did this, but we have some ideas about what could have been the causes.

The Yemen factor

And of course, we can’t forget Yemen in all of this. We looked at in the last show that there was some concern and even the corporate media clocked this that components to build ballistic missiles were making their way into Yemen and falling into the hands of the Ansar Allah government in Sanaa and their armed forces. This indicates that they’re trying to build ballistic missiles capable of hitting Israel and doing a lot more devastation than the kinds of ballistic missile attacks they conducted before.

Mind you, to remind everyone, Yemen’s Ansar Allah actually managed to hit in the vicinity of Ben Gurion airport before with a single ballistic missile that they fired in order to do it, the Israeli air defense has failed. So if they get their hands on these missiles, it will be a real game changer. And of course, even when it comes to the Saudis and their ability to defend against missile attacks coming from Yemen, it appears that they just have no capabilities.

They don’t have the ability to defend against these missile and drone attacks. And then we get into where this starts to become a little bit more interesting. First, we’ll take a look at this.

War strategies analyzed

Iran is claiming its commanders are claiming that the world is going to be amazed as they prepare for another round. And Iranian generals have been speaking with a certain kind of confidence about what they call new kinds of weapons that they possess that they haven’t revealed yet. Which of course we don’t have any insight into exactly what they do possess but they have been conducting over the past week now lots of drills they’re testing new ballistic missile capabilities and there’s a lot of evidence of that of course these are publicly announced drills a lot of them but people are filming some of these missiles as they’re being fired so we are getting some insight into what’s happening there they’re definitely ly preparing for another round.

Of course, no hope in sight of any further negotiations between the two sides. And just while we’re on this topic, again, this next round, either it goes one of two ways. The Israelis very clearly want to degrade Iran’s infrastructure. That’s their goal in this war. That’s always been their goal. Of course, they want regime change, but they understand quite well that regime change is not going to be accomplished by assassinating Iranian commanders, the supreme leader or anyone like that. They’re also not going to achieve these goals by trying to go after Iran’s missile bases and its nuclear facilities because as we have seen, the United States can with its strategic bombers attack these missile bases in some cases over 20 times and it does little to nothing to those sites.

They’ve all proven to be intact. The Iranians in the rounds that we’ve seen of the low-intensity firing between the United States and the IRGC have fired missiles from these bases. So, we know that they have not been destroyed. Like I said, the Israelis, of course, they’re taking precautions.

Regional alliances and risks

We have these mobile bunkers, which won’t really protect them against ballistic missiles, but at least it makes them feel better about themselves, I guess. So they’re deploying these. They’ve deployed more air defenses. That’s another aspect to all of this as well. We have those warnings that are going out. And so ultimately it goes one of two ways. Israel gets what it wants and the United States on its behalf alongside Israel itself goes after Iranian oil infrastructure. It goes after its power plants, its water facilities, all of that in the entire region blows up into a massive regional escalation.

The likes of which we haven’t seen before and it will be more dramatic than anything we saw in the first 40 days of the war after the US and Israel attacked Iran on February 28. Or they could go for what they believe to be a brief round where they perhaps go after targets like nuclear facilities. Trump gets to drop his mother of all bombs which will do little to nothing. It is completely meaningless. And they will try and conduct some maybe even special forces operations on the ground here and there.

But there might be a limited round that they could try to go to, but that won’t solve anything. If they want to go to a limited round where they conduct anything from an attempted land a ground invasion into some of these islands or they want to attack nuclear facilities again or whatever they decide to do to try and keep it limited and then go back to a temporary ceasefire then we’re just back at the starting point. We’re back again where we are right now, except the global economy would have suffered more.

There would be virtually no air defense systems left. And then the United States would have to go and attack once again if it’s refusing to do any an agreement and to force the Israelis, for instance, to withdraw from southern Lebanon. So, they’re stuck in a difficult situation because if they escalate, it makes the most sense to go all the way in. If they just do a small escalation, then we could just keep dragging this situation on. The global e economy suffers, inflation increases, the price of gas in increases.

And of course the other fronts are not silent. We don’t know what happens with the Lebanon front after such a situation and how long that will go on as well. So ultimately those are the two scenarios that we could see occurring. But the other front that is open right now and that is in a state of all-out war of course is the Yemen front. And that’s something that we definitely have to look at. The Egyptians appear to be signaling that they want to get involved in the war directly.

Geopolitics of the Red Sea

Now, if you’ve been listening to this show and you’ve been following the reporting that we’ve been doing, then you’d know that in mid-September, there was a visit by Mohammed bin Salman, the crown prince of Saudi Arabia to Egypt and CENTCOM was there proposing a regional coordination including Israel against Yemen, against the Ansar Allah government in Sanaa in an attempt to try and push their forces back and drive them out of Bab el-Mandeb, the strategic strait, which provides access to the Red Sea and then of course access as well to the Suez Canal and through there you get to Europe.

But if you’re Egypt right now and you want to engage in something like this, not only does it have a bad track record in Yemen with interfering in the 1960s, which ultimately contributed to why Israel was able to successfully pull off its attack and claim the Sinai Peninsula to occupy it illegally. I won’t get too much into that history and the ins and outs of it, but it was a terrible blunder and the Egyptian people know this. But also, if they get involved, then Yemen can close Bab el-Mandeb very easily and they can lock down the Red Sea, which means that nothing is coming through the Suez Canal.

And this will contribute to bankrupting Egypt even more than it is currently bankrupted. So that is going to have an enormous knock-on effect and it appears as if there is pressure being exerted right now on the Egyptians to stay out of this and I would say that the threat has been made that Bab el-Mandeb will be closed because if they do close it then Egypt’s economy is screwed. You close down the Suez Canal and Egypt is in trouble. The Egyptian military dictatorship run by Sisi is going to be in real trouble.

And so again, this is why Yemen is so incredibly important and who controls it is of the utmost important to all regional players, but of course the United States and the Israelis. And that’s why the Israelis have conspired to try and topple the government in Sanaa in Yemen because of course toppling that government and installing a puppet of the United States, Saudi Arabia and itself in power means that you have no troubles anymore in the Red Sea. And also there is no Arab government in the world or the entire Arab world.

There’s no government that is going to oppose you. All of them are on the side of the United States. And so you won’t have ballistic missiles fired in support of Gaza anymore. You won’t have a blockade in support of Gaza anymore. And this is something that frightens the current predicament is something that frightens the Israelis and it frightens their allies because recently we’ve been covering what’s been happening around Bab el-Mandeb. The Yemeni armed forces have advanced and taken another strategic high point which gives them complete control over Bab el-Mandeb.

They’ve secured the area this mountain range and they’ve fully pushed out the Saudi-backed forces from the area which enables them to close if they were to choose to do so. I’m not saying they will. They’ve been very explicit actually since capturing Bab el-Mandeb and the Mayun island there that they are not seeking to block international shipping. However, again if Egypt gets involved it is a possibility especially if Egypt decides to send soldiers and wants to get heavily involved in this conflict.

There are a number of strings that can be pulled and of course it’s not just Egypt that gets impacted by this.

Saudi-Israeli military coordination

This is all of Europe. So as you can see if we just pull up the map again here if Bab el-Mandeb is closed then you have to go all the way around Africa the whole continent in order to reach Europe which is not preferable a lot more expensive prices of goods are going to be impacted and already in European capitals and across countries like France we’re seeing the European spring begin and The European leaders are attempting to some of them to blame this on Iran and the closure of the Strait of Hormuz.

It’s out of our hands. Well, you could have done something to oppose the United States and Israel in launching an illegal war against Iran. But you didn’t because again, they don’t even have sovereignty at this point. They just go along and nod and be like, “Okay, yes, yes, Master Israel and United States. Okay, we’ll do what you want. It doesn’t matter if that destroys our economy and hurts our people. We’re going to go along with whatever you want. Even if it’s a violation of international law, even if it makes no sense for us domestically, we’re going to do what you want.

We’re going to answer to you, oh master. That’s basically the position that they’ve been in. And in case anyone was wondering, we’ve of course been covering that Israel is providing the intelligence and the military support to Saudi Arabia to choose its targets and bomb targets inside of Yemen and the civilian casualties have exploded in the last 48 hours in particular inside of Yemen with the targeting of residential areas and urban neighborhoods. But unless you wanted more clarification on what’s going on there, Donald Trump directly addressed this.

So we’ll take a look at what he said.

Reporter (embedded clip; opening words missing): …Saudi Arabia should accept the help that Israel is offering to fight the Houthi rebels?

Donald Trump (embedded clip): Yeah, I do. I think—

Reporter (embedded clip): Have you talked to MBS?

Donald Trump (embedded clip): I think they will. Sure. Israel’s been very helpful to Saudi Arabia. They certainly would do that.

[Clip fragment unclear.]

Robert Inlakesh: So, just in case you couldn’t hear because the volume is quite low on that, he said that Israel has been very helpful to Saudi Arabia and they’d accept Israel, directly bombing Yemen on their behalf.

And of course, they would, right? We’ve covered here on the show that bin Salman of course is in lock step with the Israelis when it comes to this that there was a private military retreat. This was revealed by Axios News where the head of the Saudi military and the Israeli military got together and chilled on a private military retreat in Germany and they discussed Yemen and Iran together of course as well when Netanyahu did his first publicly announced visit to the UAE to Abu Dhabi.

He also met with a Saudi delegate and that was revealed by Channel 14 news Israeli Hebrew media, Hebrew language media. So, we know that they’ve been collaborating and of course the Israelis have had involvement previously during this war that’s been going on for over a decade against Yemen. And not only has it had involvement and in that conflict, its involvement with Saudi Arabia goes back all the way to the 60s in covertly backing Saudis war effort inside of Yemen when there was the civil war in North Yemen that took place back then.

We just spoke about Egypt’s involvement supporting the Republican side, the Republican revolution side that overthrew the monarchy inside the country and Saudi Arabia was of course on the side of the monarchy and the Israelis were backing up Saudi Arabia its allies there as well. So this is something that has been going on for quite some time. So with that being said, there’s an interesting development. We’ll take a look at what’s been going on the on the ground inside of Yemen.

Battlefield developments

Because Saudi Arabia got dunked on in the last 24 hours because here’s Cairo vowing its support to Saudi Arabia. So the Saudis announced that two of their pilots were killed in a helicopter crash right near the Yemen border. They announced this publicly. Okay. And what initially had happened is that the spokesperson for the Yemeni armed forces claimed to have shot down a helicopter and they called it a Blackhawk helicopter which it turns out it wasn’t. The Saudis then decided that well if they can’t identify what the helicopter was then we’ll just say it malfunctioned.

And so their narrative was no the actual kind of helicopter that got shot down was different. And so you’re wrong, you’re lying. This was a malfunction. And then it crash landed and these two pilots tragically died. And then Saudi propagandists started, going on and bragging and talking about how the Yemenis are such liars and look at them. They don’t even know what was shot down. Yet they tried to tell us they knew that and all of that, right? They were laughing and they were mocking on social media and making memes and all of this.

And that entire time the Yemeni armed forces were just sitting back like, “Okay, all right.” So it was an AH6i helicopter that was shot down. Well, now we know exactly what the kind of helicopter is and that we know that for sure for certain the two pilots died. So here is a video of it actually happening. So they published this which showed them shooting it down. And the Saudis didn’t think that they had footage and they held back on releasing it for a little bit and then we saw the video of them shooting it down.

And then Saudi Arabia went quiet over that. And they got all the solidarity from their GCC allies in Egypt and everyone was, crying about the loss of these two pilots in the horrible malfunction that happened. And as you’re going to see here, it of course did malfunction after a projectile hit it. And then, yeah, that’s the conclusion of what happened there. So, the Saudis, of course, they claim that this is this is a malfunction right here. It’s a very interesting malfunction.

So, that’s the footage, there of them striking that helicopter and bringing it down. Of course, as well, when we’re playing all of this footage that we’re playing here on the stream today, this is not an endorsement of this footage. This is for educational purposes, and we’re going to be looking at some more of what’s been going on.

Combat footage and military prowess

So, in addition to bringing down that helicopter, striking it, the Yemeni air defense striking it, of course, they’ve also struck a Eurofighter Typhoon fighter jet, and they’ve actually shot down an F-15 fighter jet as well during this round of the war, which started back in July when Saudi Arabia bombed Sanaa International Airport, which restarted the conflict and broke the ceasefire. But of course, if you are to read in the corporate media, Yemen fired missiles into Saudi Arabia and that’s what started it, right?

The evil Houthis broke the ceasefire by responding to the bombing of their international airport. But we’ll leave out that part, of course, that’s not important in all of this. Conflicts always start according to the mainstream media the second that the side they don’t like does something. So, it doesn’t matter what happened before that. Like in Lebanon, for example, it was all Hezbollah’s fault and they were the ones that attacked first and all of the rest of this on October 8 was the first 2023 when Hezbollah burst fired.

But they fired where? Into the Shebaa Farms area which is part of Lebanon and the Ghajar village. Okay, areas that are part of Lebanon. They didn’t they’re illegally occupied territory. They’re not actually under international law, Israeli territory. And then Israel bombed their civilian neighborhood. So they started hitting back. Okay. And also they have that right because year after year the Israelis have been coming over the border, over the blue line into South Lebanon, building their security fence and wall inside Lebanese territory and committing daily violations of Lebanese airspace of their territory on the ground of their territorial waters which were actually demarcated officially in 2022.

But Israel doesn’t care about that. The same thing here. The same thing applies, right? The clock starts on October 7, 2023 in Gaza. And then when it comes to Saudi Arabia and Yemen, well, as soon as the Houthis fired missiles at Saudi Arabia, that’s when the clock starts, right? Nothing before that. The 400,000 people dead in the country, the conflict, the famine, the blockade that was ongoing at the time, the bombing of an international airport, or the fact that Saudi Arabia has bombed Yemeni airports at least 227 times [remainder unclear].

That doesn’t matter, right? So story about everything to do with Saudi Arabia. Nobody cares about Yemen. And so Yemen has also been continuing to target oil facilities in the east of the country. Those oil fields have come under attack today. There were Yemeni ballistic missile strikes on King Khalid airport. An airport in the south, an air base. They also targeted an Aramco facility in [place name unclear] which is along the western coast of the country. So they conducted a large number of missile strikes on a range of different facilities today.

And the situation on the ground is that the city of Taiz always good to pull this up on a map here to show where we’re talking about exactly especially in the Yemen context. And we’re going to be getting into the situation in Yemen and debunking some of the myths about it in the show today. Right. So this is Taiz here and basically they’ve already entered the city of Taiz the forces affiliated with Ansar Allah the government in the capital city of Sanaa here and they’ve cleared a number of neighborhoods it is just a matter of time before they take over the entire city and perhaps we’ll get into more about that as we go on.

But there’s been more footage that has also been released by the Yemeni armed forces. Again, as we play this here, this is not an endorsement of this footage. This is for educational purposes. And to of course let our viewers know what’s happening on the ground. So here they’re using quadcopter drones. We’ve edited this footage to to take out some of these attacks here the results of them so you can’t directly see what’s happening afterwards but these are the forces that are marked with those red arrows above their heads similar to what we saw of the [group name unclear] videos that were released by the armed wing of Hamas in Gaza.

They do the same thing here by marking the enemies with red arrows. So you’re seeing some of the results of these unguided munitions that are being dropped here on military vehicles positions of the Saudi-backed forces inside of Yemen. And the accuracy again we’ve we’ve seen quite a few of these videos published now. These are sped up and we’ve taken out some of the footage here so it doesn’t show certain things. If you want the full footage that should be uploaded to our social media accounts on X and Telegram.

But the accuracy that they have in dropping these unguided munitions from quadcopters is actually stunning at this point. Very skilled operators evidently, to drop these munitions. And obviously, they’re showing us the successful hits here, but there’s quite a few of these successful hits, taking out military vehicles, attacking these positions on the ground. This is also footage that was released from [place name unclear]. There was an attempted advance on the ground by the Saudi-backed forces here. This is in particular a pretty impressive shot.

This is using a guided anti-tank missile aiming it at a vehicle that is being driven by a Saudi-backed militant. And again the hit here is direct and from such a range as well. Many people have been stunned by the skill of these fighters on the ground and it shows that they are well trained, well-armed, well prepared. And of course the Saudi-backed forces here, you’re seeing some of the strikes on their positions as they’re trying to advance. They are trying time and time again to advance and seize positions from the Ansar Allah Yemeni armed forces.

You’re seeing some of these clashes here on the ground. It’s another military vehicle that gets targeted here. They’re showing the results of that. Every single time they advance, even if briefly they manage to make some progress, it’s another military vehicle that was targeted. The results of which obviously we can’t confirm precisely but these you can see these vehicles [unclear] around. They obviously retreated but they are getting battered each time. They’re having no success on any front really. They’re throwing everything they have at the Yemeni armed forces and they’re getting pummeled with ballistic missiles, these short-range ballistic missiles, guided anti-tank weapons.

They’re getting hit with artillery, the FPV drones as well, the first-person view drones, and as we saw before, they’re also using those quadcopters to drop unguided munitions on enemy forces and concentrations. Today in particular, there was an announcement and the footage we cannot show on YouTube because it is simply too gory. There were a number of military positions struck with short-range ballistic missiles from the Saudi-backed forces and at the very least the reports are 55 dead, hundreds wounded. And I can say after reviewing the footage itself that those sites were absolutely devastated.

Civilian impact of the war

So that’s what’s been happening on the battlefield continuing to happen week in week out. No real success from the Saudi-backed forces. Doesn’t matter how much money they pump into them. Recently we’ve seen that the United Arab Emirates decided to throw its weight back in behind what’s known as the Southern Transitional Council. Or STC. These are a separatist group but really just a proxy of the United Arab Emirates. Previously they were driven from actually participating in affairs officially inside of the country because the UAE tried to take over South Yemen, this the southern part of Yemen from Saudi Arabia’s proxies and then it got beaten back quite quickly and the UAE got forced out of Yemen.

Now, it looks like the UAE is throwing its weight back in. Maybe they’ve done some an agreement with the Saudis behind the scenes. I don’t know. Or maybe they’re just trying to act as opportunists in this time. They see that Saudi Arabia’s forces are collapsing and they want some stake in southern Yemen. So, that could be also part of it and why they are doing it this at this time. But it is important to note in all of this that there has been an uptick in the number of civilian casualties.

This report here cites Al Mayadeen and of course the Yemeni health ministry announced that a total of 64 civilians had been either martyred or injured. So killed or injured in Saudi strikes on the provinces of Saada, [two place names unclear] in the past 48 hours. And this is the total number of civilian casualties that have been documented since the renewal of this round of fighting here. And it is of note actually before we get on to the next point.

It is of note here that the civilian casualties this time around in this round have been much lower than in previous rounds. And one of the reasons for that, in my opinion, is that now that Yemen possesses these missile capabilities of seriously punishing Saudi Arabia, it’s more hesitant to commit civilian massacres. In the past, we saw that Saudi Arabia would commit outrageous massacres. We’re talking hundreds of people in a series of strikes, double tap strikes on the emergency workers, on the ambulance crews that would come in, attacks on school buses, all sorts of things.

My estimate is that unfortunately the Saudis are not backing down and they are becoming frustrated. We are starting to see the civilian death toll rise there to be more reports and videos are coming out and surfacing now of the civilian casualties including a lot of children who’ve been seriously injured and killed in these Saudi strikes. That will be a trend that continues and they will continue to escalate these civilian massacres out of pure frustration. That’s very likely to happen unfortunately. I truly hope and pray that it doesn’t but that appears to be what will happen.

And again, we can’t show those videos of what’s happened to civilians because it’s too bloody and gory here to show on YouTube. So, if you’re watching here on YouTube, unfortunately, we can’t show well, to be honest, looking at that footage is horrible to begin with. So, I guess it’s not unfortunate in that case.

Debunking false narratives

With that being said, there have been a number of different claims floating around about Yemen and of course there’s been a lot of propaganda from the pro-Saudi side which I believe that these people who are just on Saudi Arabia’s side here and are doing propaganda for it are not actually dangerous because they don’t change anyone’s minds. They don’t influence the narrative that much. People who are already, assuming that position have that position. So, I don’t believe it to be even necessary other than to laugh at it to confront that propaganda seriously. We’ve looked at some of their propaganda here.

One of them, one of these elements earlier in the show of them very blatantly lying about something or appears that way. We had the footage to back it up. But there’s another individual who has been publishing videos clips from an interview that he did about Yemen. And we’re going to use this as a teachable moment about what actually happened in Yemen and the conflict there how it emerged and pull apart these falsehoods and there’s a lot that have been spread. So the journalist I’m talking about he’s a British journalist.

His name is Sami Hamdi and he has historically done a lot of advocacy for Palestine. I myself wrote articles in defense of him when he was arrested in the United States and detained while he was there. I have no interest in him individually as a person, but rather his points and his points about Yemen are just factually so off the mark that I believe that we need to go through them and we need to confront them one by one. And from this again, this it can actually act as a teachable moment.

So we’re going to go through some of the clips of what he’s saying. I had to edit it. I will try my best to give all the credit and all of the let’s say context that he provides and not to just straw man these arguments. Often you get accused of doing that when you play clips. That’s not what I’m in the business of doing here, but I believe that a number of these arguments have to be combed. So, we’re going to take a look at that.

And what Sami Hamdi has been saying. And I believe that this is quite damaging unfortunately this rhetoric and we’re going to go through exactly why that is the case.

Sami Hamdi (embedded clip): The Saudis and the Houthis agree that Yemenis should not have the right to choose their leader. The Saudis and the Houthis agree that Yemen should not belong to Yemenis. The Saudis and the Houthis agree that Yemenis should not be consulted on who should lead them. The Saudis and the Houthis agree that Yemen that the Yemenis should not have a role in how Yemen is governed or the future of what Yemen should look like. And this is why when we’re talking about the Houthis and the Saudis as opposed to Yemenis and Saudis, this is why there is that distinction.

Robert Inlakesh: So before we go any further, the first point that he’s bringing up, the reason why I wanted to tackle this first and we’ll look at all the other points he’s making, I can’t go through everything because there are so many things that he gets factually incorrect that I would have to spend a few hours going through absolutely everything. And even when there are things that he does get factually correct, I believe the framing is incorrect on it. Not to say that absolutely everything that comes out of his mouth is wrong, but in this case he’s arguing that basically the Yemenis aren’t to sorry this the Houthis, so Ansar Allah are not to be deemed Yemen even and that they don’t believe that the Yemeni people have the right to choose who rules over them.

We’re going to get into why he argues that and what his argument is built on and we’ll tear that apart in a minute. But there is like this attempt to separate the Houthis which by the way the Houthis are a family. Okay, that’s a family name. Okay, it’s not they’re the actual group or movement on is much broader than just them. They come the Houthis themselves come from north Yemen a place called Saada. And they are definitely Yemen. They’re most certainly Yemen.

And the point that he’s trying to make here is a both sides point. Both sides are bad. Nobody’s a good, a good actor in this. Both of them suck. They’re basically equally as bad. Making a drawing a moral equivalency between the two. And then making these arguments as if the Houthis aren’t really actually Yemen. And he goes further into that. I’m not, trying to again straw man him. I’ll let him speak and or the clips of him speak and you’ll see exactly what I’m referring to here.

Historical context of the conflict

Sami Hamdi (embedded clip): Houthis at the time were blockaded in Saada in the north. They had they had just lost.

Robert Inlakesh: So here he’s commenting specifically on 2011 with the overthrow of Ali Abdullah Saleh who was the longtime dictator of Yemen. And in 2011 the people of Yemen during the Arab Spring went into an uprising to overthrow their leader. So that’s that’s what he’s talking about here.

Sami Hamdi (embedded clip): Their sixth attempt to take over Yemen. The Houthis from 2004 had launched campaign after campaign after campaign to assert themselves over Yemen and declare that the Houthi family have a divine right to rule.

Robert Inlakesh: Okay, this part here where he’s claiming that between 2004 and 2010 that the Houthis tried to take over Yemen is just completely factually incorrect. It’s not even slightly correct. Nobody serious argues this at all. Like this is just an invention. Now, either he’s himself making this up and he knows that he’s lying about this or he’s just been completely misled. And everyone can make up their own minds what about what they think about this. But I think this is such a terrible distortion of reality here and this merits a retraction because it’s completely incorrect.

In order to break this down and I’m sorry it takes some time to do we have to understand who this movement are the Ansar Allah. Okay. And what led to those conflicts that he’s talking about where he claims that the Houthis tried to take over Yemen and assert their dominance over Yemen. Okay, which was again for them at this time he mentioned that they were blockaded in the north in Saada, right? The idea that they could even do that, that was even in the cards for them to take over all of Yemen was just it’s just ludicrous.

They didn’t have the ability at that time to fight the Yemeni armed forces of then President Saleh and expel them from their own areas from the north even, let alone the entire country. And another key point here is they never asserted. You will never see public statements from Ansar Allah advocating that they wanted to take over the entirety of Yemen. That has never been a public platform of theirs. But the way he describes it is as if there is a public platform that they have had for a very long time to seize Yemen because of, and we’ll go into the whole theological thing that he argues here, a divine right to rule, right?

But in order to understand that you have to understand where the movement came from. So in 1990. Okay. The country becomes unified Yemen. Right? And in that period when Ali Abdullah Saleh is in power when he first comes to power, he sides with Saddam Hussein. Okay this is important context. He sides with Saddam Hussein through the first Gulf War. As a result of this, Yemen becomes very isolated. Saudi Arabia exerts massive economic pressure on them. The United States of course turns on them and Yemen is punished for the position of its leadership in support of Saddam Hussein when he invaded Kuwait.

Okay. So, you have a leader there that and he’s also Zaydi Shia, which is the exact same sect as the Houthi family, right? They’re also Zaydi. And so in that period, you have a leader that’s not what he would later become. He took a stance against the United States and the Gulf States. Okay? And so amidst this there is the Houthi family and from them comes Hussein al-Houthi who would be the first leader of the movement that he created in the early 1990s called the Believing Youth.

Right? It was a youth movement. The whole idea of it was to revive the religion of Zaydi Islam. It’s a Shia sect within Islam. So you have Sunni and Shia. This the Zadis are a branch off of Shia. Okay. They believed that over time what had happened inside of the country due to Saudi influence pushing Salafism on the country obviously with Yemen being united now it’s a the Zadis are a minority in the in the country a significant percentage of the population still but they are a minority the Sunnis are the majority that influence there is influencing the Sunnis from Saudi Arabia Wahhabism is being pushed inside the country.

But also the Zaydis themselves and different schools of thought over the years had started to change their views on different things. So and they believed that the religion was losing a lot of its influence prevalence in life. So it started as a Zaydi revivalist movement. That’s what Hussein al-Houthi the first leader led was a revivalist movement. But the backbone of this movement was anti-US imperialism, anti-Zionism and a critique of the Arab and Muslim countries and their policies towards the United States and the Israelis.

And they advocated pan-Islamic unity so that all the Muslim world should combine together regardless of sect in order to fight the United States and to fight the Israelis. Of course the governments, not the actual people of the United States. And this was what they argued. So, Hussein al-Houthi, he actually ran for Yemeni parliament. Okay? And he got in, he got elected, right? So, he participated in the democratic process in Yemen, right, to run and get into parliament through the Al-Haqq party inside of Yemen in the mid 1990s.

He later left parliament in 1997. Okay. What happened like during this period was that the Believing Youth this Zaydi revivalist movement was tolerated by the government. Okay. He could advocate Hussein al-Houthi the leader of the movement could advocate his positions publicly through the parliament right. And there was no major issue. When we then come to the early 2000s, Ali Abdullah Saleh has changed his position, right? He is now aligning with the United States in their war on terror against Saddam Hussein.

Aligning himself with the Saudis. And at the same time in the north there’s also this movement where in all their mosques they’re chanting down with the United States, death to Israel, death to America, all of this. And it’s quite embarrassing for the government. This reaches a turning point in 2004 and this is the first war that Sami Hamdi claims was a war to take over all of Yemen. They fought six wars to take over all of Yemen. That’s his narrative. This first war really was a raid.

It began as a raid to try and arrest Hussein al-Houthi, the leader of this movement, because they didn’t like what he was saying, what his movement was saying. Okay? And it was about Saudi influence. It was about US imperialism and it was critiques of the government and they didn’t like that. When they went in to try and arrest him, this turned into a massive armed clash and it resulted and that round ended with the killing of Hussein al-Houthi. Okay, they believed the government of Ali Abdullah Saleh and his armed forces believed that should have been the end of it.

But what happened is Abdul-Malik al-Houthi his brother took over that movement and when he took over that movement now they had a martyr. All right. And they became they started to strengthen themselves militarily and this led to a number of other conflicts and accusations of course who fired the first shot and all of that. But these campaigns and these wars were not to take over all of Yemen because the Ansar Allah were asserting that they had a divine right to rule over all of Yemen.

That is so incredibly false that it demands a retraction. It’s just so it’s a perversion of history that should not be tolerated. But these videos, these clips claiming this are all over the internet now. And some of them have gone viral and it’s it’s just incorrect. It’s just false. There’s just no truth to it. Okay. So, let’s continue.

Sami Hamdi (embedded clip; opening fragment unclear): The prophet Muhammad sallallahu alaihi wasallam and Ali Abdullah Saleh is top the Yemenis who protested. Yemenis get together and they agree to host a national dial.

Robert Inlakesh: So, a national so okay, here’s another point. Sorry to keep pausing this so much. We’ll play more of it and hear what he’s saying. Okay. Here to provide more context because we had to play clips of what he’s saying. I can’t play the entire thing. Time constraints of course. And so he’s arguing that when Ali Abdullah Saleh was overthrown, the Yemeni people got together and engaged in a national dialogue. Again, that’s not what happened when Ali Abdullah Saleh was overthrown.

What had happened is that the GCC states, the Gulf Cooperation Council states, chiefly Saudi Arabia put together, they drafted an agreement which would facilitate Ali Abdullah Saleh, the longtime dictator of Yemen to step down and hand over power. Okay, that’s what happened. That national dialogue in Yemen, the actual national dialogue which the GCC officially wanted to happen after they removed Ali Abdullah Saleh was delayed for a long time. So his timeline his timeline here is completely off

Sami Hamdi (embedded clip): begins under the auspices of the United Nations.

Robert Inlakesh: Again, sorry to pick on every point here, but like he makes it seem as if the United Nations was behind the national dialogue. And again, that’s not true. It was the GCC states, right? They are the ones that brokered the agreement and dialogue, right? The United Nations endorsed it and it helped facilitate this process on the ground, but it was not the one that organized it, right? It’s from the GCC states. And so notice another thing here is to keep in mind is that it’s instantly the GCC that is dictating to Yemen what direction their country is going in instantly from the get-go.

Sami Hamdi (embedded clip): Everybody engages with it and the insist that the Houthis should also take part in it as well. So the Houthis take part in national dialogue. Civil society is there and they start discussing constitution. They start discussing composition of government. They start discussing how the nature of the state should be after Ali Abdullah Saleh has ruled for decades. They come to an agreement that the country will be ruled through democratic elections. There will be an interim government. A southerner will be put as president Abdrabbuh Mansur Hadi in order to ease the southern separatist tendencies.

There will be an election where this president will run on his own. So he will have a democratic mandate. He will oversee an interim period and then there will be widespread elections and Yemenis will choose who should rule over them.

Robert Inlakesh: Okay. So this point again like I’m just going to address what he’s saying here. His timeline is completely off, right? And that’s why he’s able to make these arguments that he’s making and why they sound somewhat logical because his timeline is completely off. So the national dialogue starts in 2013. The revolution in Yemen begins in 2011. The Abdrabbuh Mansur Hadi who is has the democratic mandate. The idea of this was pushed by Saudi Arabia and the GCC. What they decided there was no national dialogue at this time.

What they decided is they would have an election where nobody else was in that election. It was just Hadi. On top of that, Hadi was the vice president to Ali Abdullah Saleh, the dictator, this dictatorship that was in place, okay, that the Yemeni people wanted to overthrow. So the Yemeni people rose up against Ali Abdullah Saleh and then the solution provided by the GCC in Saudi Arabia is to install his vice president and do a democratic election where only he is on the ballot, nobody else.

What democracy is that? What democratic process is that? And that’s why a large number of political parties and portion of civil society rejected this election as well. Now there were some who went along of course a vote took place and he ended up getting the mandate but that mandate period was supposed to be for two years. It was supposed to be for two years. During this period when he was in power, what did he do? Of course, he aligned with Saudi interests 100%.

He gets accused of the exact same corruption and the exact same problems that were happening under the previous administration of Ali Abdullah Saleh, except some people were even more opposed to him than before. When the dialogue starts, the national dialogue starts, it doesn’t start until the next year after President Hadi has his vote, democratic vote. Okay. The next year they start the national dialogues again brokered by the GCC states, right? The Gulf Cooperation Council states when those the national dialogue happens, it’s true Ansar Allah or the Houthis participated in it.

All of the factions participated in it. In that first year, already a member of the delegation, the Ansar Allah delegation was assassinated. Okay. If you go and zoom up to 2014, then what also happens is Hadi’s mandate, his democratic mandate is extended for another year. Okay? By who? Not by the people of Yemen that have a vote on this matter. No. Okay. Things start to deteriorate. The Ansar Allah forces move into the capital of Yemen and then there is the assassination of another member of the Ansar Allah delegation which leads to the overthrow of the government.

Right? So they go into the presidential palace. They put Hadi under house arrest. He resigns. His cabinet resigns. Okay, this happens. Okay, in reaction to the situation where a member of their delegation was assassinated. I’m not saying this to advocate for any side. I’m saying this to try and clear up what happened. Okay. Then by 2015, the Ansar Allah fully take over, right? They fully take over the government in Sanaa. They have dissolved the parliament by this point and they ally with the faction which has the most loyalty in the armed forces still which is Ali Abdullah Saleh the former dictator his faction and the majority of the armed forces side with Ansar Allah.

Okay. Hadi meanwhile he escapes to Aden in the south of the country. The Saudis organize a process which extends his mandate for another year in this period when he’s escaped to Aden. Okay, just to put this together. And he eventually goes to Saudi Arabia and he’s based in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia. And then in March of 2015, Saudi Arabia begins bombing Yemen, imposes a siege on Yemen. Okay? And we’ll get into all of this, okay?

Theological and political misconceptions

But his timeline mixes this all up in a way that completely favors an anti-anssar law narrative and it’s just incorrect. The national dialogue happened much later and that process, the framing is just completely off the mark.

Sami Hamdi (embedded clip): The Houthis throughout the national dialogue, they’re very well aware that if the national dialogue succeeds and elections are held, they’re a minority in Yemen. And even though they used to be part of the Zaydi sect, they have shifted dramatically to the Twelver sect.

Robert Inlakesh: Okay? This is blatant sectarianism at this point. Okay? Now, there’s no evidence that they are now Twelvers. Okay? Or they’re shifting towards Twelver Shiism. You can see some public celebrations of events in Sanaa that weren’t there before. There is no evidence. In fact, the whole point that he makes about Ansar Allah or the Houthis wanting to take over Yemen is the belief within Zaydi Islam that only direct descendants of the prophet Muhammad’s family are entitled to rule. Okay, that’s a belief within Zaydi Shiism.

So he makes that argument that they want to rule and they take over despite the fact actually there’s no statement Hussein al-Houthi Abdul-Malik al-Houthi any officials from the organization that represent presenting its public image do not argue that they want an imamate or they want the Houthi family or a member of or Abdul-Malik al-Houthi to be ruling over all of Yemen. They don’t say that publicly. That’s not something. Now, you could argue that’s actually, there’s a conspiracy that they have and you could argue a conspiracy theory.

I think it’s rational enough if you were to say, “Okay, I don’t trust the movement and it’s official propaganda.” But then in the face of that, you have a government now in Sanaa which has multiple political parties in it that runs the show. And yes, Ansar Allah has influence. Yes, they’re not going to be able to advocate the overhaul of the entire system of Ansar Allah. That’s not going to happen. Nobody’s arguing that they are. But it has never been their public platform to seize all of Yemen and to implement this divine right to rule.

However, he’s now saying in this clip, Sami Hamdi, he’s now saying that they’re shifting to Shia Islam. Twelver Shia Islam, which is the Shia of Iran and Iraq and Lebanon, right? So, the Islamic Republic of Iran is run by Twelvers. So if you are a Twelver Shia now, if they’re the Houthis are no longer Zadis even anymore, and the reason why people argue this stuff, and this is why I’m saying it’s strictly sectarianism, is because Sunni Muslims have a problem with condemning Zi Shia in the same way they do the Twelver Shia because their faith is much closer to Sunni Islam than it is than the than the Twelver Shia in Iran are to Sunni Islam.

So now you hear this point, they’re actually Twelvers. Okay. So if they’re Twelvers now, if they’re now Twelver Shia, the same ones as are in Iran, that means that the Houthis now don’t believe in the divine right of the [unclear] to rule because that’s not something that is inherent in the Twelver doctrine. So you make these claims and these assertions and it’s all of the assumption based upon false claim the wrong framing of the timeline and you wrap this all up and it’s just so incredibly contradictory that it makes no sense.

For example, the idea of Ansar Allah not wanting to have the people rule. In 2019, they put out a policy platform very publicly which advocated democracy or the democratic will of the Yemeni people. Also, Ansar Allah have been ruling over a territory where they rule over between 70 and 80% of the Yemeni public. That’s the territory that they control at 70 to 80% of the Yemeni population. For the longest time, that’s been a 50-50 split between Shia and Sunni. Okay? So, the Zaydis and the Sunnis, there’s been no mass popular revolt from the Sunnis.

And in fact, like this tribalistic thing as well, and this is why calling them the Houthis is feeding into tribalism and it doesn’t make any sense is because the movement is much broader than just the Houthis, by the way. But on top of this there has been a historic rivalry inside North Yemen between tribes right and the tribal confederations and the way the p the power structure is there. There are two separate genealogies. Okay. And these are all Zaydis. These are Zaydi Shia.

But there are two like separate genealogies. Okay. One is [name missing from supplied text], and the others are Adnanis. Okay. Adnanis are from the north. They’re originating from northern Arabian Peninsula in what is modern day Saudi Arabia. And the Houthis are of them and often they have direct lineage. Right? They have to the prophet’s family the prophet Muhammad’s family whereas on the other side they are like their lineage is from Yemen itself they are considered just native Yemeni that they don’t have that line to the prophet’s family. Okay. And these small things between tribes create problems Okay.

When you call them the Houthis and you frame it like this and you claim that they advocate something that they don’t actually publicly advocate. Now, do they believe that in their theology that and does Zaydi Islam teach that? Especially the Jarudi school of Zaydi Islam teach of course that’s part of their belief is they believe that me only descendants of the prophet’s family can be rulers. However, if you look at their public policy platform, this movement in particular, what it’s advocated, its relations between tribes, both descendants and non-descendants, its relations with Sunnis, its government that it’s formed, its calls for, democratic, decision-making, it doesn’t align with what you’re claiming it is.

So, you can make the assertion and you can say, I believe they’re lying, and I believe that’s not what their goal is. I believe they want to have an Islamic caliphate in all of Yemen that is commanded, by this one family which is like Saudi Arabia and the UAE and Oman and Kuwait and Qatar and Bahrain, okay, and Jordan and Morocco, right? Are they illegitimate because of that? If that’s the case. And then are the people revolting against them? Is there evidence that the people are revolting against them en masse and they’ve had these massive problems?

Again, there’s it’s either a complete lack of knowledge on this subject or just straight up lies. It’s one or the other. And so, if it’s a lack of knowledge, and I want to be charitable, if it’s a lack of knowledge, then this demands a retraction. It’s completely incorrect. And again, like when you mess up the history like this, when you make these claims so flippantly and you don’t actually find the facts to back up what you’re talking about, I it’s just propaganda and it’s and it’s false.

And ultimately what this messaging does is to say, well, yeah, just don’t support either side.

Political reality in Yemen

Both of them are equally as bad. And by extension, it justifies the Saudi narrative. Now, he’s very condemnatory of Saudi Arabia and Mohammed bin Salman. Like personally, he condemns them a lot. If you watch his videos, he does condemn Saudi Arabia, UAE. But his perspective is something else and we’ll get into that what perspective I think his aligns with which is something that is relatively alien to Yemen

Sami Hamdi (embedded clip): and the Houthis use the army elements of Ali Abdullah Saleh they march into and they topple the internationally recognized government they literally

Robert Inlakesh: again the internationally recognized government is the government that comes to power the vice president of the president that was overthrown in a popular revolution as an and is in essence installed by Saudi Arabia and the GCC, right? That’s that’s what the internationally recognized government is at that point. It actually has a claim to be an internationally recognized government. At least there was a vote. Hey, there was only one guy in that election, but at least there was a vote.

Sami Hamdi (embedded clip): Walk in the city and say this national dialogue that you guys had. This idea that Yemenis decide who should rule is haram. We do not accept it.

Robert Inlakesh: Again, they never said this. This is this is just a strip like again either he is being misinformed enormously about what has happened in Yemen or he’s just lying because it’s just not true. They never said that. That’s never what they advocated when they took power. Like you can go back and you can check this. You can go and cross reference, do what research you need to do. That’s not the position that they argued. Now yes, they took control.

Yes, they aligned with the armed forces, majority of which were loyal to Ali Abdullah Saleh. Okay, that’s all true, but the timeline is wrong and that was not their position. If it was their position, it wouldn’t actually make sense.

Sami Hamdi (embedded clip; opening unclear): Their alignment descended from the prophet Muhammad is the only one entitled to rule in this country. They march and is happy to do so because he believes in the chaos he will be able to emerge stronger. They put the president under house arrest and the Americans Obama who is negotiating his nuclear deal with the Iranians doesn’t want to provoke he doesn’t react to the Houthis taking instead John Kerry comes out and says that these Houthis can be reliable allies against al-Qaeda.

Robert Inlakesh: Okay. Again, in an invention like there’s I tried I because I don’t recall this have been having been the case. So I tried to search for any statement of the sort from John Kerry. No such statement seems to exist. And when John Kerry got involved in this, by the way, we’re talking about different years here. When John Kerry was getting involved properly in Yemen, that was in 2016. The war started. Saudi Arabia blockaded Yemen by air, land and sea and bombed Sanaa International Airport causing a massacre of civilians and started the conflict attacked Yemen in March of 2015.

Okay. So the John Kerry reaching out and his proposal to Ansar Allah where he actually did deliver a proposal in 2016 which ended up breaking down okay where there was some concessions offered again ultimately it didn’t work and the United States the Obama administration green lit Saudi Arabia’s campaign to attack Yemen. It was behind it. It supported the attack on Yemen in 2016. What was offered to the Ansar Allah? The Ansar Allah actually during the negotiation period what they were asking for contrary to the claim that Abdul-Malik al-Houthi has to run all of Yemen.

They were asking for autonomy in the north of the country and to have a participation in the political process of the entire country but to have autonomy in the north. That was their original proposal. Okay, that’s what they wanted. Now that’s all on record. The whole thing about John Kerry and saying that they can be useful against in fact the B sorry the Obama administration were making arguments to the contrary that it was helping the explosion of al-Qaeda despite the fact that Saudi Arabia allied itself of al-Qaeda.

Okay. And the contradictions are enormous.

Sami Hamdi (embedded clip): bin Omar who is the UN envoy goes to the Houthis and says that if you can clear this up within a couple of weeks then maybe we might be willing to recognize you and the Houthis announced a council and they tried to get as many political parties to join this council in order to

Robert Inlakesh: again what he’s describing here his timeline might be wrong but or his presentation of what the timeline appears to be may be wrong but again like trying to get other political parties to participate in all That does that sound like a movement that is strictly advocating the rule of one family like Saudi Arabia to its north by the way does it sound like something that

Sami Hamdi (embedded clip): they do get some international recognition parties refused to join Houthis have now established themselves in Saudi imposes the blockade the Houthis they’ve prime

Robert Inlakesh: okay that again that is egregiously false like again this the dialogue with ons I don’t know which dialogue he’s even talking about because if he’s talking about John Kerry and his involvement that’s in 2016 the blockade was imposed from the first day of the war so if he’s referring to the John Kerry arrangement and those negotiations that’s like the next here. So, I don’t know what specific thing he’s referring to there, but if he’s referring to John the initiative led by John Kerry, then again that’s that’s false.

Sami Hamdi (embedded clip; opening fragment unclear): or and their main enemy and the number of casualties they’ve inflicted on the Yemenis. Yemenis are their primary target because the Yemenis rejected the Houthi rule and they reject the idea that Abdul-Malik al-Houthi has a divine right to rule and the UEE now in the south is

Robert Inlakesh: okay again like it’s it’s just all like straw men arguments and knocking them down like that has not been there. Now you can say and you can say there’s a conspiracy for them to actually do that. You could make that argument. They’re not doing a very good job at it, right? In terms of setting up the system for it to function that way. But let’s say that you believe that’s the case and because that is in their Z doctrine, that’s something that they believe in.

Okay? Like that’s an argument there to make. Even the whole thing of they’re not Yemen. They’re still Yemen. They’re still Yemeni people. That’s what they are. Like any movement inside of Yemen that wants to rule the country, that’s the they’re a Yemeni movement. Now, they might want to rule, one family to rule, one political party to rule. This is just common. This is common place that this happens. We’re not talking about a fully democratic country, okay? We’re not talking about a two-party system of the United States which loves its, to advertise its version of democracy around the world.

Okay? We’re not talking about those systems. So everything he’s saying here is just so contradictory and so all over the place. And he says that the Yemeni people all reject this. There are Yemeni people that reject the rule of Ansar Allah especially in the south of the country in Aden where you have like separatist movements and socialists and all there socialists are actually siding with Ansar Allah as well. I don’t want to just put everyone in one bag, but they deliberately like this presentation deliberately promotes a version of the conflict which is not real.

They’re not publicly advocating that. And there has been no mass revolts from the Yemeni people. And when Sami Hamdi speaks of the Yemeni people, who is he even referring to? Who which party which groups the can you give examples of who this Yemeni people are because your timelines are messed up your representation of Ansar Allah as a political party is messed up so like what are we even talking about here and again this is why I say when we’re talking about Yemen and I’ve said this on the show before when we’re talking about Yemen there’s what’s actually happening in Yemen and you can assess that you can say I hate Ansar Allah.

I don’t like the Zaydi theology at all. I don’t like their anti-imperialist positions. I don’t like their economic positions. I think they’ve committed war crimes and they’ve done this and that and I don’t think they should be bombing Saudi Arab. You can make any, claims or arguments you want against them, but that again, that’s not what we’re talking about. We’re not talking about the Yemen sit the situation in Yemen on the ground. We’re now discussing and what I’m trying to debunk is Narnia.

It’s Narnia. It’s mental gymnastics to the absolute max and presenting a narrative which is just not true. And so when I’m looking at this, it’s just like, okay, you have to retract these things. If you don’t like Ansar Allah, right, and you want the Muslim Brotherhood to be in power inside of Yemen, advocate that. Just advocate that position right you don’t like them for X, Y or Z reasons you want a Sunni leadership and you and you prefer Muslim Brotherhood aligned forces advocate that directly you don’t have to and I don’t know again maybe it’s a misunderstanding maybe he has been he’s received information that is just factually incorrect but the framing that is happening here is what I have a problem with I have a problem with the framing because it’s a distortion of reality.

It’s revisionism. It’s not, and this is not correct. It’s not. So, we’re going to take a look at what he says to

Sami Hamdi (embedded clip; opening fragment unclear): end of the country into two. Saudi was unsure whether it wanted a united Yemen or a split Yemen into two. Saudi was unsure whether it preferred the Houthis or a free Yemen that chose the rulers that it wanted. Saudis were concerned that a repeat

Robert Inlakesh: Oh, and which rulers are these that the Yemeni people wanted? Let me take a guess.

Sami Hamdi (embedded clip): So, the Arab Spring might happen whereby undesirable elements that are closer to the Muslim Brotherhood might win elections.

Robert Inlakesh: Ding, ding, ding. Because that’s that is the argument that’s being made. But what I have a problem with is the mental gymnastics and the distortion of reality to reach that conclusion. Right? If you want to advocate for Muslim Brotherhood rule, you don’t have to make up this whole false narrative. But again, like it’s just it’s not consistent. It doesn’t make any sense. Just advocate for the Muslim Brotherhood. Just say you don’t like this group and this sect. You would rather a Sunni Muslim Brotherhood leadership.

That’s just advocate for that. But of course, that can sometimes get you in trouble in the West. So you’ve got to try and make other explanations as to what you’re arguing

Sami Hamdi (embedded clip): and therefore it is better to paralyze Yemen until they could form a government in its form that the Saudis would be content with.

Robert Inlakesh: So just to end on commenting on this right here and I know we spent quite some time on this today but I think it’s important and it’s also a teachable moment because it gives us the opportunity to talk about this again in the history. Okay. The Muslim Brotherhood aligned faction in Yemen is known as Islah. Okay. This faction now they had in the past a very large base of public support. They had a lot of youth support as well especially in the Taiz governor.

Right? So if we again pull up the map Taiz is the city now all the areas surrounding it right and a lot of the governor has been taken over by Ansar Allah Taiz is almost like it’s majority vast majority like 99% I think Sunni okay and the Ansar Allah are taking it over there now okay and again people who are part of the Ansar Allah movement there are Sunnis involved in it okay there are Sunnis that support it that back it up that fight on the side of Ansar Allah.

It’s not like this sectarian nonsense depiction that we have in the corporate media and in the Arabic language media similarly as well, right? It’s not like that sectarian argument does not work in reality. It works when you build a Narnia narrative but in Taiz they had a specific like a really big base of support especially amongst the youth. Okay, that’s actually real. What happened with Islah is that the party allied itself with Saudi Arabia. It fights currently, it has forces that are fighting currently on the ground on the side of the Saudi-led coalition.

Okay. Its leadership are based in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia and their alliance with the Saudi-backed forces including takfiri elements the Wahhabi groups. Okay. And these groups that exist and there’s a range of different al-Qaeda groups in the area in the region they allied with them and they lost a lot of public support they lost a lot of that youth base they lost a lot of that energy within the movement because of that decision. Okay. Now it people say it’s a strategic alliance with Saudi Arabia and not everyone’s happy about it and the Muslim Brotherhood doesn’t necessarily support it.

But that’s like the Muslim Brotherhood faction there. They’re losing Taiz right now like the Ansar Allah forces are clearing out the neighborhoods in Taiz city. It’s almost entirely Sunni. And by taking Taiz they will now be controlling a population that’s actually majority Sunni instead of Zaydi. Okay. And again we’re not seeing some mass Sunni revolt against them. Now will there be attempts to stir up tensions? I’m sure there will be. Okay. And is it possible that Yemeni people will get frustrated with their leadership and at some point turn on them and they don’t like this that and the other and they have criticisms of their government?

Yeah. If you are anywhere in the world you have criticisms of governments, rules, groups, all of that stuff and you will oppose them on a number of different issues. That is completely natural.

The moral case for resistance

But again, when we’re talking about countries in the Arab world, we like talk we talk about them from the west as if they are like in a parallel universe. They’re not actually part of our planet. Their societies don’t function anything like our fi societies function. Their people are not the same as us, right? And we shouldn’t view them as such. There’s either there’s good and there’s bad and there’s no in between. And so ultimately the argument that Sami Hamdi has come out and made and there’s others as well, but he has done it the most effectively.

That’s why I’m picking on his clips here. The argument that he’s making is if you are supporting Ansar Allah because of Palestine then you then the blood of the Yemeni people is cheap to you which is a ridiculous argument. It just is. It’s a very silly argument. It’s a very silly argument. And the Ansar Allah, by the way, and the Yemeni people that backed them in doing this, because the vast majority of the Yemeni population, even groups that hate Ansar Allah, supported them in firing missiles at the Israelis and blockading the Red Sea.

They had an enormous amount of support in Yemen for doing that. And they actually there was a dialogue because when we’re talking about the internationally recognized government now in 2022, Saudi Arabia kicked out Hadi. We don’t even know where he is, the internationally recognized president. We don’t even know where he is now, right? We’ve heard nothing from him. And they formed the Ritz Carlton Hotel government. Okay. Because yes, it was formed in the Ritz Carlton Hotel in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia, where they put together a bunch of warlords who live in Riyadh, who are controlled by Saudi Arabia as the new internationally recognized government over Yemen.

It’s a joke. It’s a joke. But if you are to follow the Arabi media or the English media speaking media, you will not get this perspective at all. You won’t get the history. You won’t get the context. Everything is propaganda and nonsense. The narratives that they spew are laughable, but also they at the same time they want to make you cry because the suffering of the people of Yemen has been so incredibly immense. And the majority of the people who have died in Yemen since 2015 have been because of the Saudi imposed blockade.

There’s no moral equivalency. Yemeni forces fighting each other on the ground and shelling areas, right? Sometimes with indiscriminate weapons and civilians being killed is not the same as Saudi Arabia, a foreign country that tried to decide the leadership of Yemen, then coming in and invading the country, right? Sending militants from Sudan and around the world in to fight for it and bombing the country and committing civilian massacres and blockading a country and starving its people and starving to death hundreds of thousands of people.

That’s not the same. There’s no moral equivalency. And there are two sides in this. One side which are the Saudi back forces, Saudi Arabia itself, which are aligned with Israel, aligned with the United States and US imperialism. And on the other side is a besieged Yemen, yes, Yemen indigenous government, right? Whether you like it or not, hate it, you can think whatever you want about it politically. That f was the only Arab government that fired missiles at Israel in defense of the only one.

And I apologize for getting charged here. They’re the only ones. And for doing that, by the way, and imposing their blockade, they had an ongoing negotiation in 2023 where they were going to be able to make their situation for them easier in terms of the aid that they’ve got, their economic standing, and make the lives of their people easier. And they sacrificed that. They sacrificed being able to have an easier life because that deteriorated and was that opportunity was gone when they imposed the blockade and when they fired at Israel.

So a besieged people who have experienced hundreds of thousands dying of starvation watch in Gaza as the people there are starving as the people there are being bombed and massacred in their schools in their mosques. Okay? They’re being ma massacred in their universities at their weddings at their funerals. Double tap strikes on their civilians, on their emergency workers, just like happened to them. They see the people in Gaza and they acted and no one can take away the fact that people supported that around the world regardless of terrorist labels and all of the other stuff that happened.

Objectively speaking, people around the world saw what they did as an honorable act, including people throughout Yemen. So in this conflict right now on one side is Israel, the United States and the Saudis and the Gulf States and the Arabs rulers that let down Gaza that helped destroy and massacre the children of Gaza. And then the one government in the world, the one government, not just the Arab world, in the world that actually took action, physical action. The rest were armed groups.

The only one is on the other side. And if it goes away, then there is no government in the region, in the Arab world, no force in the Arab world that will fire other than armed groups like Hezbollah that will fire on Israel, that will actually blockade Israel, that will try to fight for Palestine. They’re the only ones. So I would pose the question back, is Palestinian blood cheap? How seriously do you take the genocide in Gaza? That’s that’s a serious question.

It’s a serious question. I’m not going to sit here and pretend like everything this is a perfect movement and there’s nothing wrong with the Ansar Allah that they’ve ever done and look how perfect they are and Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. We have to acknowledge the facts and the facts are clear. And yes, in the grand scheme of things, if you’re looking at it as a geopolitical event, if you’re looking at this as a conflict, there is a side that is fighting Israel and the United States and the other side is with them.

And to that effect, we’ll take a look at this. This is a clip that has reemerged. This is from 2012. And this is the former head of the Israeli Shin Bet. We talk a lot on here. We’ve heard these people argue about the Sunni alliance and all of that, which doesn’t exist, okay? That they need this Sunni alliance and the Sunni powers are actually the threat to Israel, not the Iranians and their allies that are actually firing missiles on them and have, suffered assassinations, the murder of their religious leaders, massacres across their country, decades of sanctions and all of that.

They’ve suffered, right? But there’s this magical Sunni alliance that is going to emerge. Here’s the former head of the Israeli Shin Bet talking about that Sunni alliance

Former Shin Bet head (embedded clip; not named in supplied text): It is very important to create a coalition a Sunni coalition that will be led by Turkey and I believe that although the Israeli Palestinian conflict is not the major conflict, the major conflict in the Middle East is the Sunni Shia conflict. If we shall be able to create this coalition that will be supported with the international community led by America, we will be able to face Iran, we will be able to respond to the Iranian threat or to the nuclear capability that Iran is trying to acquire.

Interviewer (embedded clip): What do you mean by Sunni coalition?

Former Shin Bet head (embedded clip): Sunni coalition that it means that Turkey, with Egypt, with Jordan, with Saudi Arabia understand that the major conflict is with Shia led by Iran and they create this coalition that will face Iran, the Palestinian, Israeli.

Robert Inlakesh: Okay, so this is the coalition. Okay, I don’t think I even have to add any comments on that. I think it speaks for itself. Okay. And this is something they’ve act, it’s not like it was just a theory. In 2012, when he was saying this, they were actively fostering this in Syria because Israel began backing armed groups affiliated with al-Qaeda in Syria. They would later go on to aid Nusra Front which would change its name to Hayat Tahrir al-Sham which is now the ruling party in Syria that took over in the regime change.

Okay. They manufactured this. They were actively working on it as he was talking about it. All right. And then that results in what I like to call donkey brain. Okay. And this is cut. This clip is cut. The reason I’m playing it is not to say that this specific individual is advocating against, siding with Palestine. I don’t think that’s what he’s trying to argue at here. But just the way that this shapes people’s brains, okay, and the stupidity that leaves people’s mouths and then manifests itself on the battlefield with weapons, okay?

Because of this, this is in Syria. All right. This is a [religious speaker] who was talking. I believe this is a khutbah that he was giving last Friday. I’m not too sure.

Concluding thoughts on empire and resistance

But the reason again without getting into the specifics is to just address the mindset. Okay. That exists now in the region amongst some [Embedded non-English speech; no usable transcription supplied.] Okay. The reason why I play this is the mentality here. Okay. Without I didn’t see the rest of this, so I don’t know his overarching, what he thinks should be done and what these new minds should be and all of the rest of it. So, I’m not going to address that. I’m just going to say one thing because this way of thinking exists in the region and amongst also Muslims in the West who have been drawn into this sectarianism and what happened in Syria.

It’s just donkey brain. There is no thought behind it. Like but this is the kind of thinking Assad said something. Bashar al-Assad implemented something and therefore I should not do the same because Bashar al-Assad’s government implemented a decision that it’s compulsory. I didn’t know about a compulsory decision in the mosques to pray for the resistance in Gaza. It’s not really to a credit of the new Syrian government that now they’re not talking about that as much. I’m not saying there are not people in Syria talking about it.

There absolutely are. Okay. But, okay, you’re you’re giving a credit to the past leadership in doing this. But the element of it here, the donkey brain of it, right? And that’s what it is. It’s just like, okay, Bashar Assad had traffic lights in Damascus. Do you want to remove them too? Like does everything change? There were cars on the streets when Bashar al-Assad was in power. We should only have donkey carts now because Bashar ruled that there would be a car.

Like sometimes there are just like common sense things that have nothing to do with a specific leader in place. Or if that was the case, he could make the point that it was performative. It’s not real. We’re actually going to do it. But that’s not it. The argument is like it was compulsory to pray for the resistance in Gaza. So we can’t do that now because that’s not going to be genuine. Well, like, so you’re telling us you don’t care about Gaza and the resistance.

You don’t want to pray for them. Which obviously is a stupid position, especially for Syrians. They don’t believe that. Okay. But that’s the kind of statements and the kind of thinking that come from the brains of these people who have fallen victim to this whole narrative of the Sunni Shia divide and the worst enemy are the Iranians. Because of course you have to fight the people who are actually fighting Israel. The people who are actually fighting Israel and firing the missiles at Israel and have suffered immensely with their economies.

They’ve suffered civilian massacres against their population. They have been suffering for decade upon decade. Those people are not actually the real resistance. The real resistance are all the Sunni Arab countries that do deals with Israel. Their officials meet with the Israeli Mossad. They give up territory to them and don’t resist. Those people are the actual resistance. And Bashar al-Assad was worse than Hitler and he was worse than Genghis Khan and he’s worse than the [unclear] himself and he’s worse than everything and anything ever all over the world.

He killed 2,000 billion people. He did this. He did That’s the mentality. There is no rational thinking about yes, here are the things that he did and this is what he was. Okay, you no longer have Bashar anymore. You can’t use him as an excuse anymore. Bashar is no longer in power. He’s gone. Goodbye. It’s over. I thought you had the revolution to overthrow him because you were for something. But the Israeli the Israeli mission is not to create people that start a movement for something.

They want a movement against something. That’s it. They don’t have a plan. What’s the plan? Now, all these people from around the world, the propaganda that got them to go into Syria and to fight, that propaganda was also telling them that they’d go and fight Israel and the United States. Now those same propagandists have to shift the narrative and they have to say no you have to do deals with the United States. You have to do deals. People in the west at this point get it.

There was such a controversy over Ed Sheeran simply trying to do the both sides thing and kick Macklemore off of his tour. Okay. In popular culture in the West, people get it now. But somehow in Syria, a country that has its land occupied, its people being brutalized in the south of the country, where the Israelis have tanks and military vehicles inside the municipal boundaries of Damascus. Somehow you can’t see it. Somehow it’s okay that there’s this level of collaboration. Even the collaboration of Ed Sheeran in the west was too much for the western population.

The western population are less tolerant of this nonsense than these people who believe in the vision of the mass Sunni world and all of this. It’s a wonderful vision. Everybody in the world, I think, would be with the vast majority of the global public would be happy if all of these countries, Jordan, Saudi Arabia, right, Egypt, Syria, the Lebanese toilet regime, the Iraqi government, all of these governments over the region, right? I named the Iraqis, their Shia, I guess. Okay? And all of the governments that Turkey would they’d all cut relations with Israel and they’d align with their people and they’d merge together and they’d fight Israel.

But the argument doesn’t make any sense at this point because all of these people are on the border of occupied Palestine and they just watch the slaughter happen because their regimes are repressive and have deals with Israel. Do you think that the people wouldn’t have wanted to fight if there was no obstacle? I believe this. If there was no obstacle for the Syrian people, for the Jordanians, for the Egyptians to take up arms and to go across the border and in fact, you don’t have the army just backing them.

The state just says, “You can do it. We’re not going to stop you and you’re not going to have any repercussions from the state.” If they simply took that position, I believe that you would have tens of thousands of fighters going over the border within 24 hours. I seriously believe that’s how high tensions are and that’s what the public believes. But that has not translated into reality because these regimes are in the way. So this idea of some all like the Mecca agreement, okay, and all of this, the Israelis want that alliance because these are not Sunni governments.

They are governments with Sunni majority populations that they rule. Right? That those governments are not Sunni rulers. That’s just not true. Okay? It has they don’t care about that. They’re governing their populations. They’re running countries. They think in terms of pragmatism, what you can get and extract from this and that, right? For them, it’s more realism. It’s not religion. But the and the same for the Syrian regime. If the current leadership in Syria was even a small threat and we know Ahmed al-Sharaa has now openly spoken with Netanyahu.

Okay. If he was even a tiny threat, he would be killed. In fact, I predict if he does anything, he just steps out of line and he can’t control his own men. I think they will kill him for that even. Okay. I don’t even think that like it’s necess like he might not survive this situation because I don’t think Syria is actually stable at this point. Okay, not fully stable anyway. If you fight against them, they try and kill you. They try and hunt you.

They don’t do deals with you. They don’t speak to you on the phone. The only message you get from an Israeli prime minister is a 2,000-pound bomb, not a phone call. Okay? The guy that gets the phone call is a slave. You’re going to do this or else you’re going to see. That’s that’s that’s what’s happened in the region, right? And it’s unfortunate, right? But it also aligns with the Israelis. Now, what I’m saying about the slave relationship is this Israel’s security doctrine.

And we missed this. Like I wanted to actually cover this last week and I didn’t bring it up. So, if you’re watching this by the way, you got this far, please do hit that like button. Add a comment below as well. Let us know what you think. And also if you’re watching on YouTube, subscribe, hit that bell button, and we do have our fundraiser ongoing now as well. So, if you want to donate, you can do that or you can become one of our members here or on Patreon.

And we do thank all of you so much for your contributions. We’re 100% viewer-funded. So, we appreciate everyone that does help us and we see you and your comments as well. But just to continue on this, Israel has developed a new security doctrine, right? And this was put forth this policy paper by the Institute for National Security Studies, Tel Aviv, right? It’s a major think tank over there. And the view is that the Arab states are a collection of tribes.

Okay, so we go back to the whole thing about the Houthis and all of that and the insistence on giving just making them seem like some tribal group. That’s what Israel thinks. Israel thinks they’re all a bunch of tribes. There are no real countries. And the reason why it thinks this, and it also has developed a strategy of all-out war all the time, and any chance you go to war, you collapse all your neighboring states. And by the way, no one is going to be spared from this.

Egypt, for example, is on the target list because Egypt is the key, the collapse of Egypt is the key to expelling the population of Gaza, to ethnically cleanse Gaza. So, they won’t be spared from this. They might be for now. And Sisi, [unclear phrase]— he’s very happy with himself right now, dancing [unclear phrase]. But that can go away tomorrow. He’s dispensable. Okay. So, they might want to try and collapse Egypt. Syria, there’s already a mission. Syria, you just pull one of those cards and the whole thing collapses.

And the Israelis understand this. It’s just about when and why that they’re going to do this. But this strategy dates back to Oded Yinon’s plan and the concept of a greater Israel which all of the Israeli politicians are advocating for, right? Whether the Netanyahu coalition or the opposition. And that is that Israel will be an empire that will rule over. And the whole point of this is not that Israel will physically expand in the way that it’s been doing like in the West Bank and even in the Golan Heights, but it will have these arrangements with all of these sectarian warring tribal states in the region where it will bring them all under its control and it will exert pressure as an empire.

That will be the concept as an empire of greater Israel. That’s what it wants. And if you again if you read the policy paper, you read the academic article by Oded Yinon, that’s the plan. The plan is to do that. So you have to divide the Muslim and Arab world. You have to get them fighting each other. And part of the reason why the borders of the modern-day Middle East, West Asia, exist is because the British drew them up and the French drew them up to be that way specifically to divide populations.

Those borders are not even natural. Okay? Like Lebanon for instance was created as a breakaway region from Syria, right? Which was supposed to be like a Christian stronghold and outpost. That’s why they wanted to specifically carve out Lebanon for example. All those borders are created to create problems. And similarly the conflicts they create. They don’t invest billions of dollars. All of this propaganda, decades and decades that they invest in the military resources that they put into all of this to just allow for some Sunni alliance to spring out of nowhere and suddenly be victorious over them.

No, it’s not the way things work. If there was a threat there, then all of these so-called Sunni leaders would be assassinated. We don’t see that the only Sunni leaders that are assassinated are the Palestinian ones because they’re actually fighting Israel, right? Sometimes it’s just it’s obvious, 1 + 1 equals two. And sometimes the groups that are physically fighting Israel and their people are being killed for it are the resistance. Okay? And the people doing deals with Israel and are allowing Israel to take advantage of them, those are the allies of Israel or the slaves of Israel.

Okay, very basic. And I know our audience, our general audience understands this, but just in case anyone was wondering, right, where this where everything stands. But the Israelis are now ultimately to conclude this point, the Israelis are ultra-aggressive. They are expansionist. They have only a vision of constant warfare, invasion, and destruction. No empire’s ever existed like that for very long. That’s something that will lead to their destruction so incredibly quickly. And it is there are right now just to yeah again conclude this point the Israelis have created all these fronts. Okay. Around them through their project and they still wanted to stabilize more countries. Okay. Now in order for them to maintain like the status quo is fine for them they can maintain this they’ve they’re occupying about 70% of Gaza they’re inside Gaza obviously the West bank as well.

Growing settler attacks, talking about annexation, they occupy southern Lebanon and this chunk of southern Syria here as well. And they’re depending upon with them continuing to aggress more chaos, more social collapse, more economic distress, right? They’re betting on that none of these fronts instantly escalate against them. Okay? If the West Bank explodes alone, the amount of strain if an intifada if an uprising was to happen in the West Bank alone, the amount of strain of a mass nonviolent even, you don’t even have to have violent elements.

And by nonviolent, stone throwing and then clashing with the soldiers and all that. That alone would be so draining for them because they had to deploy their armed forces in like a collapse of the Palestinian Authority which are their puppets at the moment in the West Bank. If that happens, then that situation is incredibly difficult for them to manage. At the same time, if they had to fight the Lebanon front or if something starts happening from Syria at any of these times, because there are resistance groups there, they just can’t really do much at the moment.

Okay. If anything happens and it all happens at once, they’re screwed. Take out of the equation that Yemen is developing better ballistic missiles and they’re more trigger happy than the Iranians and the Iranians have insane capabilities, which we’ve seen demonstrated multiple times before. They’re also hundreds of thousands of Iraqi fighters as well that are over there, too. The future is not certain. If you start destabilizing Egypt as well at the same time, if Jordan becomes destabilized and all, you’re there are so many ways that this goes wrong for the Israelis and there’s no way they can manage it.

They already have a shortage of troops and a shortage of military vehicles. They can’t handle multiple fronts at once already and these are not all out war fronts. So, they’ve actually put themselves in a very compromised position. And with that said, that’s our stream for today. Again, please hit that like button if you like this show today. Add a comment below. Let me know what you think. If you think I got something wrong here, what you’d like to be addressed next.

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