MintCast
MintCast
America’s Decline in the Middle East and the Axis of Resistance, With Tim Anderson
Since 9/11, the United States has launched a series of attacks on sovereign nations, from Afghanistan and Iraq to Libya, Syria and beyond. These wars have left the region beleaguered and broken. But recently, as American power wanes, a new set of forces has emerged. An axis led by Iran, Syria and Yemen has emerged to counter U.S.-Israeli dominance and global giants, such as China and Russia, are increasingly being drawn into the region.
Could this lead to a new and even brighter future for West Asia?
Tim Anderson joins the show to discuss all things West Asia. Tim is a writer, academic, and director of the Center for Counter Hegemonic Studies. His latest book, “West Asia After Washington: Dismantling the Colonized Middle East,” explores this topic.
“It is quite obvious that the U.S.’ influence in this region [West Asia] is in decline,” Anderson told MintCast host Alan MacLeod, laying out several factors in said decline, including the embarrassing American withdrawal from Afghanistan, the unanimous demands from Iraq that the U.S. leave the country, the growing importance of Russia and China in the region the increasing importance of the BRICS economic bloc, the successful Russian operation to keep Assad in power in Syria; the Yemeni blockade of the Red Sea; the failure of the U.S. in Syria and the nosedive in global public opinion of the United States.
Anderson joined the show from Damascus, Syria – something that would have been nearly impossible until recently. He noted the tremendous destruction that the civil war had wrought upon the country, much of which is still occupied by the United States, Israel, and other actors. Nevertheless, despite American unilateral coercive measures (i.e., sanctions), life in the major cities is approaching normality again.
Anderson identifies Iran as a critical player in the formation of a counter-hegemonic axis. It has found allies in Syria, Lebanon, Palestine, and, crucially, China and Russia. This grand alliance of powers opposing U.S. policy in the region was something that American planners in the 1990s considered their greatest fear.
Nevertheless, a wounded animal is a dangerous one, and the U.S. is far from a spent force. And so, while American power wanes, the people of West Asia should still be on high alert.
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Welcome back to another edition of the Mintcast, the podcast from Mint Press News. I'm your host today, alan McLeod. Now the Middle East, or what should more properly be called West Asia, because it's only the Middle East to Western Europe, is a pivotal region in the globe. It's the main source of the planet's most crucial commodity, oil, and it's also the centre of global conflicts right now. Since 9-11, the United States has launched a wave of attacks on sovereign nations, from Iraq to Afghanistan to Syria and beyond, all of which have left the region battered and broken. But recently, as US power wanes, a new set of forces has been emerging. A new axis led by Iran, syria and Yemen has emerged to counter the US-Israeli dominance in the region, and global giants such as Russia and China are increasingly being drawn in as well. Could this lead to a new, perhaps even brighter future for West Asia? Here to talk about that today, and all things about the region, is Tim Anderson.
Alan Macleod:Tim is a writer and academic and the director of the Center for Counterhegemonic Studies. His latest book is called West Asia After Washington Dismantling the Colonized Middle East. Welcome to the show, tim. Thanks, alan, nice to see you. It's good to have you on finally. So, yeah, I understand that you're currently in Syria right now. In the news reports we see we often hear about the scale of the damage and the destruction. Could I first get you to discuss that particular country? Could you assess how Syria is functioning right now, what pressures it's and how safe it is there?
Tim Anderson:Well, syria is functioning. It has a functioning state with normal sort of services, which is not the norm in this region by any means necessarily. But there has been tremendous destruction from the war. There are still pockets of terrorist groups which find safe haven in the occupied parts of Syria, where the government of Turkey has occupied parts of northwest Syria and the US has occupied parts of the northeast and the east, and the Israelis occupy part of the south that they've occupied for quite some time. So in those areas they provide safe haven for armed groups which go out and and continue to do destabilization. But life in the major cities is by and large fairly secure, even though there are israeli attacks regularly.
Tim Anderson:You will have seen the attack on the um, the iranian embassy, recently, which is just down the road from where I am now. It's a very central part of Damascus. One of my friends had her leg shattered by that. She was walking by it, just by bad luck at the time. So there are these occasional attacks on the shrines, on the Shia shrines too, for example. The Israelis have really normalized this, but in a sense it's become part of normal life in a way.
Tim Anderson:But most of the areas have been liberated from those armed groups over the years, with the exception of those areas that are now directly occupied by three big powers, or these days, more properly called unilateral coercive measures by the US and, to some extent, the Europeans, which make it extremely difficult for even third parties to do business or trade with Syria.
Tim Anderson:It's a type of siege that the US has imposed on Cuba, venezuela, a number on Iraq, on Lebanon, on Iran. About 20-something countries are under these types of unilateral coercive measures now, and they're almost all from the US and the Europeans, so that economic pressure is very serious. It means that there are great pressures on any outside party that wants to do business with the countries that are under US unilateral sanctions, and that all means that the Syrian currency is very what do you say? There's a type of hyperinflation of the currency. Its value has gone down significantly during the crisis, but nevertheless Syria is one of those countries that actually produces its food, its clothes, a lot of its basic things. So somehow or other, even though salaries are very low, life goes on and people survive in some way. There has been tremendous emigration from the country. A lot of professionals have left, but nevertheless, in a sense, there's a sort of air of normality, in a way relative calm.
Alan Macleod:Well, let's talk about the US, then. It currently occupies large swaths of Syria, particularly in the northeast, if I'm not mistaken, but it's been unable to launch the Assad government from power. To what extent has Washington's ambitions been thwarted, then?
Tim Anderson:And is Syria finding new partners in Russia, china and Iran? That's helping them out there. Yes, as you say, the plan to topple the government in Damascus failed largely because the army held together. Syria has a national army which is comprised of all the different communities, all the different sects and religions. It's committed to pluralism and that's very popular constitutionally in terms of the army. It's very popular the idea of pluralism and anti-sectarianism in Syria. It's really a haven for minorities in many ways and that the US tried to use that against Syria, but it didn't really work.
Tim Anderson:So the government remained intact, more or less. The proxy militia, basically, which were al-Qaeda affiliated for the most part, were defeated where they stood alone. But now, as I said earlier, there is a foreign occupation. Two of the biggest NATO armies, turkey and the US and the Israelis in the south, are occupying. Three powers are occupying the country and that, as I said, provides a safe haven for these militia, which have always been proxies for those powers to come in and make occasional attacks and destabilise and try and divide the country. And in the case of the US occupation, it's mainly focused on the Syrian-Iraqi border in the north-east and in the south, and there's one border crossing which is controlled by the Syrians and the Iraqis and the Iranians and that's constantly bombed.
Tim Anderson:Because, in my opinion, the main objective of the US occupation here, which is relatively thin, but they make use of their proxy it's called Qasad here or the Syrian Democratic Forces. It's a Kurdish-led group. They want to divide Syria from the other countries. Basically, I had the chance to visit the northeast a couple of years ago and it's very interesting because it's a different type of occupation to the one in the northwest with the former Jabhat al-Nusra and the one in the south which the Israelis occupy now. It's a different sort of occupation. It's quite fragile, if you ask me, the Syrian state exists, although you see these maps with yellow areas, because it's supposedly controlled by the Kurdish groups. In reality, none of the cities and very few of the major towns are majority Kurdish or held by the Kurds. But that group has some weight there because the US military backs it up.
Tim Anderson:But the US military is mainly concerned about trying to divide the Syrians from the Iraqis and the Iranians and trying to disrupt the connections between them. You know there's this phobia that you read about in US intelligence and Israel intelligence magazines. They call an Iranian land bridge, which is the idea that Tehran would have access through Iraq, through Syria, to the Mediterranean, and the great fear of the Israelis is that would present a united, as they call, access of resistance here and a threat to the occupation of Palestine. But it's also in counter-hegemonic terms. It's something that would be a great benefit to the region because really the integration in terms of transport, commerce and communications and so on would be a great boon to the region. It's what's being held back because of this policy of divide and rule.
Alan Macleod:Basically, Well, you've brought up so many things that I want to touch on there. I guess the first one would be we used to hear a lot about Kurdish forces in Western press, even in the Western left, specifically specifically thinking about Rojava. That was really held up as something of a model to follow, but I feel like there's not really as much talk about that anymore in the West. Could you fill us in on what's going on there?
Tim Anderson:yes, um, the what's called the syrian democratic forces in english and in kassad in arabic. Here is a proxy that the us set up and they tried to pretend it was wider than the, the kurdish separatist. Really, the main force they've had to work with locally is indeed a kurdish separatist one which is a branch of the of the turkish Kurdish separatist one, which is a branch of the Turkish Kurdish separatist group. Effectively, they're a branch, and the largest Kurdish group and the largest Kurdish separatist movement is in Turkey, because of what happened since the Ottoman Empire and with the rise of Turkish nationalism and so on. So the idea of a Rojava or a separatist Turkish statelet in Syria is something of a springboard for the Turkish and the Turkish leadership. Kurdish leadership is effectively the leadership of the SDF or Qasad in Syria. There are some links with northern Iraq too, where there is, as a result of the federal system created under the US occupation, there is a training by Mossad and by the US and by the Kurdish base there, in Erbil, for example, of the separatists in Syria. But they don't have a popular base here, not even amongst the Kurdish population, which historically was not separatist. Basically. There are many Syrian leaders who have been Kurds. There is a stream of Syrian communists who were Kurdish. There is a stream of Syrian communists who were Kurdish. The great Caliph Saladin himself was a Kurd, but he wasn't a Kurdish separatist. He was trying to create a greater community in his time. So it's really driven by Turkish politics in many respects, or Turkish Kurdish politics.
Tim Anderson:It's not very powerful, as I said, in the northeast if you travel through there and you need permission to go there from the Syrian army. But the Syrian army is there. It's along the border. There's, quite deliberately, no clashes between the US and its proxy and the Syrian army, but they are there. They control the main national hospital in in Comishley and the airport and much of the northern border, for example. Of course, as you know, that proxy that the US set up has attracted the ire of Erdogan's Turkey, and so there are attacks from the Turkish side because in this case, the two NATO allies are running somewhat different agendas there in terms of, but they're both trying to divide and weaken Syria. So that group I mean.
Tim Anderson:I travelled through Hasakah province and there are SDF checkpoints there, but I was never stopped or even asked for my ID travelling through there. On the other hand, the Syrian checkpoints were more serious basically. So it's a funny sort of occupation In my mind. It's very fragile and, of course, when the US withdrew from Afghanistan, there was a huge wave of nervousness amongst those groups because they know that really, once the US leaves, there's no future for them here.
Tim Anderson:Basically, the Syrian army, the Syrian government, is tolerating them for the time being because they don't want to have a fight with them necessarily, and indeed the Syrian government armed them when there was, when there was some confrontation between ISIS terrorists and and the SDF back in some years ago. So there's no direct confrontation going on between the SDF and the Syrian government, but the SDF knows that their days are numbered really when the US pulls out. And the US have even tried to scare some of the Russians, for example, by saying you know who's going to fill this vacuum when we fall out, and raising the bogeyman of Iran, because of course Iran is the most important ally of Syria in this region and the most important independent state that's really got very similar, different ideology but very similar objectives to the Iraqis and the Syrians.
Alan Macleod:Well, in your latest book you really center Iran as a key piece of the changing region of West Asia. Iran obviously has been helping to armed groups in Iraq, yemen and even Hamas. Could I get your assessment of Iran's role and particularly what is going on in Palestine right now? How does that fit into this broader picture that you paint?
Tim Anderson:Yeah, iran's role is very important, and what's not well understood in the West is that, while Iran has this religious ideology and their obsession is this idea of Islamic civilisation, they're building their moral force with Islamic civilisation that doesn't transmit to its alliances in the region, for example in Palestine, and Iran is the major sponsor of the Palestinian resistance all of the factions, not just Hamas, but Hamas is the leading faction in Gaza at the moment. They're, of course, all Sunni Muslims. In Palestine there's hardly any Shia Muslims there. So this is something that crosses those sort of stereotypes that are thrown up in the West about a Shia crescent and the idea of Iran being some sort of evangelical movement there. With the relationship with Syria, it's interesting because in Syria, religious political parties are banned because they deliberately tried to suppress religious sectarianism, and so it's always been a matter of culture in Syria for many decades that it's even rude to ask someone's religion, because you're all Syrian and you all have the same rights and you belong to the same community basically, even though, of course, there are different religious communities here. So in that context, the alliance between Iran since the Iranian revolution and Syria has been rock solid. There haven't been any real serious ruptures there. And, of course, iran does support the Syrian state, just as it supports the Iraqi state, which is, however, the population in Iraq is majority Shia, but in Syria the population majority Sunni Muslim. There are many, many minorities in Syria. There are a large Christian minority, for example, and the state has really been committed to a pluralist or they call it secular, but I call it pluralist approach, basically, and Iran has never interfered with that at all.
Tim Anderson:I think you could say something similar even in in lebanon, where the although uh, the uh, the party hezbollah is a shia group and was originally committed to a islamic state.
Tim Anderson:They've changed all that because they realize that in the context of lebanon, lebanon is is made up of many different religious communities and they will never have a, an islamic state in in Lebanon. So they now have quite strong alliances with all of the other religious communities in Lebanon there. So Iran doesn't change that. And, of course, now that its alliances are growing with Russia and China and Venezuela, then there's no real evidence that Iran is exporting its particular ideology, but nevertheless, it's the most important, the largest independent state in this region. It's committed to allying itself with and defending the other independent states and independent peoples and building these international alliances too, without evangelising its religious ideology. So I think Iran is going to be the most important state in this region and transmitting some of the benefits of the new multilateral groups like the BRICS, for example, because it already has strong strategic alliances with China and Russia and it's developing strategic alliances in Latin America too. So it's shown a great deal of flexibility in foreign policy, and I don't think that's often recognised in Western media.
Alan Macleod:All right, well, let's talk about Iran and foreign policy. Actually, even when you were talking earlier about the US role in Syria and Iran, it was really I just kept thinking back to Venezuela, like how you were talking about the Syrian army was never really cracked by the United States. Similarly, in Venezuela, the country was sanctioned. They had all sorts of terroristic attacks placed upon them by groups affiliated to the United States. Political parties were sponsored by Washington, but one of the principal reasons why the US wasn't able to actually overthrow the Venezuelan government was because they never managed to turn the military establishment. They never managed to really get the army on board with the US agenda. You've been talking about how Iran has been forging links with Latin America and China and Russia and they're about to join, or maybe already have joined, the BRICS Economic Union. What sort of impact is that going to have on the region more generally?
Tim Anderson:Well, I think there is. Really there isn't a strong development of regional blocs here, historically, unlike Latin America, which has got 200 years of post-colonial history, where they've been talking about unification and so on for many, many decades, really for two centuries. In that context, the regional groups are poorly developed. There's an Arab League which is quite weak, which Iran isn't part of. There's a multilateral group the Organization of Islamic States is it but there isn't really a parallel in West Asia yet for that type of cooperative economic development. But nevertheless, iran is now a member of BRICS, it's joined BRICS, and its integration with Russia and China is moving very rapidly actually. In fact, many people argue that since the special military operation in Ukraine, that there's a greater symmetry in the relationship now between Iran and Russia, for example. But of course it's the energy industries that have helped push this along, basically with Russia and with China too to a degree, and with Venezuela, because Iran was the one that helped Venezuela restart its refineries when they were run down a few years ago. Basically because Iran has a very light type of crude petroleum and Venezuela has a very heavy one, and Venezuela wasn't independent enough a few years ago to restart their refineries, so Iran helped them in that way and broke the blockade that the Trump administration had tried to put on Venezuela back at that time. So of course, you've also got the fact that the US, just in the last two decades, has imposed its unilateral sanctions on so many countries, many of them being big oil producers. So they began with Iran, they moved to Venezuela, then they moved to Russia and, as a result of that, they were really creating an energy crisis around the world. And they went back to Venezuela just recently to do some sort of political deals to try and give the US companies access to the Orinoco Delta, which is where a lot of the new petroleum discoveries are. So the relationship between Iran and Russia, which are both big energy exporters, and also Venezuela to a degree and Venezuela's in the queue to join BRICS, but it hasn't joined yet. When Venezuela joins the BRICS members, now that the Saudis are also in BRICS, which is another interesting point BRICS will have the majority of the energy exporters in the world. Basically, now there's one other effect I think it's important to mention here in relation to BRICS, and that is that, of course, it's become increasingly popular in recent years, particularly in the global south, but it's also managed to draw in some states in this region which are really seen more as allies or, let's say, dependent on the US, like Saudi Arabia and Egypt, for example, and the Emirates, the United Arab Emirates. So those states are now in the bricks and sending a signal to many other global south states that it's not just the states that are identified as enemies or targets by the US, but also some other states are able to go into and enjoy the benefits of perhaps greater cooperation with China and Russia and the oil producers, for example. So I think that's something that's an overarching factor the growth of BRICS that's going to influence this region, the growth of BRICS that's going to influence this region.
Tim Anderson:But Iran's going to remain central to this region in terms of being the single largest independent state with great capacity, with very strong political will, quite a stable government, despite what some of the US media says. Quite stable, with a very high level of public trust in the government. It's shown by independent polls that the numbers that trust the government are quite high. Trust that strategically. I mean in terms of what they're doing for domestically.
Tim Anderson:They've made great advances in education and health, in human development generally, and that's flowed through into a level of industrialisation, which means that Iran is one of those states that began as dependent on oil exports and now is relatively diversified in terms of industrialization. Basically, so it isn't in the trap that some of those oil economies are the fact that they don't have any agriculture, they don't have any industry. Really they rely on the rents from fossil fuels. Iran still is important. It's energy exports, but nevertheless it's developing other sectors quite rapidly. But in relation to sponsoring the Palestinian resistance and the resistance in Lebanon, supporting the Syrian state, supporting the fledgling Iraqi state, which is still going through a hold of growing pains, and supporting the Yemenis, that role of Iran is what makes the US and the Israelis most angry at Iran, why they keep targeting them and using simply the name of Iran as a pretext for attacking and assassinating people in Iran and in the region.
Alan Macleod:Well, yeah, the title of your book is West Asia After Washington Dismantling the Colonized Middle East, and what you've been saying for the past few minutes makes it sound like you are starting to think that the US is something of a spent force in the region. Is this really the case? To what extent is the United States running out of steam there? And, on top of that, what do you think our future West Asia could look like?
Tim Anderson:Yes, well, I mean, in many parts of the world there's talk about the world moving from a unipolar state to a multipolar state, and I think that's what's happening. But of course, if you talk to some of the frontline army people, they will say look, we're still in a unipolar world in terms of what they're confronting. In many respects, for example, the US is clearly in command of most of the what do you call them? The armed groups, the terrorist groups, basically, and the Israelis too basically. For example, the satellite intelligence, the coordination between the US and those armed groups in the Syrian desert, for example, and the Israelis is a similar type of thing. And we saw it before with the war between Iraq and Iran, that the US was giving satellite intelligence and chemical weapons to Saddam to use against the Iranians, for example, and against his internal dissidents, basically. So the same sort of thing has been going on in Syria, with the aim of dividing and weakening. I think it's quite obvious that the influence of the US in this region is in decline. You can see that the retreat from Afghanistan was one element of that, the fact that the Iraqis are now universally or unanimously demanding that the US leave, and it's just the terms of the departure. That's important at the moment.
Tim Anderson:The fact that Russia and China are playing the role of a big power in the region, which otherwise you would expect a dominant hegemon to do. For example, it was not an accident. The Chinese reconciled the Iranians and the Saudis to a degree, and the Saudis had been a tool of the US in the region for a long time, particularly in terms of divide and rule and sponsoring some of those extremist Takfiri terrorist groups. The fact that BRICS is now effectively created, some sort of new relations between Iran and Egypt, for example. So there are the fact that Russia has played an active role for the last what nine years in Syria in trying to help stabilise Syria. The fact that the Israelis are being more alienated from Russia. There was good relationship a decade ago, but that's been degraded, partly because of the war in Ukraine, but also partly because perhaps the influence of the Zionists in the oligarchy in China has been declining. So I think it's certainly the case.
Tim Anderson:Then you see Yemen. The war on Yemen, which was supposedly led by the Saudis but really orchestrated by Washington. Washington's now giving the green light to the Saudis to go ahead and resume peace negotiations with what they call the Houthi rebels, which has really been de facto government of Yemen for the last nine years. Basically because the US and its allies were not able to defeat the Yemenis in their operation in the Red Sea trying to isolate their shipping from the Israelis, for example and they failed in their objectives in Syria, while they're still occupying part of it and trying to destabilise and weaken Syria and keep them divided from Iraq and Iran. So the influence in all respects, and now, of course, let's not forget Gaza and Palestine. Really, the prestige of the Israelis has taken a massive nosedive with this heavily publicised genocide going on in Gaza. Basically, it's discredited the Israelis like nothing before. The Israeli military has been smashed effectively and is highly dependent on international support.
Tim Anderson:It's really living on international support now, and things have changed in the world in relation to Palestine too, so things cannot go back to the way that they were so clearly, the region is in flux and the influence of the US is in decline. The influence of Russia and BRICS is gradually on the rise here. I don't want to overstate that at the moment because, as I say, the regional organizations here are not very strong, but nevertheless, iran has been taken to heart in terms of the relationships with Russia and China and to some extent with Latin America too. Iran has now strategic relationships with Venezuela, cuba and also little Nicaragua. What's in that? Partly because they're all under unilateral sanctions by the US. But more than that, the reason that they're under unilateral sanctions is because they're all under unilateral sanctions by the US. But more than that, the reason that they're under unilateral sanctions is because they actually have a political will to act independently, and that's what the US doesn't seem to tolerate at this time in history.
Tim Anderson:You know this book by Brzezinski, for example, the Grand Chessboard.
Tim Anderson:The idea was to destroy any new and emerging poles of power to maintain the US dominance in the world, and they're particularly obsessed with the relationships between Asia and Europe, and hence, you know, the obsession in West Asia is also to try and avoid the fact that China's Belt and Road and the relationships crossing Asia and Europe. So I think the region's changing. It's not really, we're not in a multipolar world yet, but we're heading in that direction, and one of the key elements of that, of course, is the role of the dollar, or the dictatorship of the dollar really, which is now deeply resented by many, many countries, particularly in the global south and there is a type of a revolt going on against that, although the mechanisms are still in process. I mean, up until now it's been mainly bilateral swaps we're talking about, but if there were a BRICS currency, I think many, many countries would try to seek refuge in that, because the dictatorship of the dollar is not just affecting those countries who are under siege effectively. It's also developmentally bad for many, many countries and their international relations.
Alan Macleod:Yeah, I mean to go back to Zbigniew Brzezinski's book the Grand Chessboard, I think he said in that book, which was written in the 1990s, I believe he said the worst of all possible outcomes for the US would be some sort of marriage of convenience between Russia, China and Iran. And unfortunately, US policy over the past decade or so whether it's the Democrats laser-like focus on Vladimir Putin and Russia, or more Republican-led attack on Beijing and China and bipartisan support for regime change in Iran has let these three countries come together in what amounts to an alliance around, as we've been talking about, has joined the BRICS alliance, and the United States has been really overusing their sanctions to the point where they've just done it far too many times, to the point where even countries that might be considered relatively close allies of the United States are starting to get very worried about the sort of foreign reserves they have in New York or wherever that might get confiscated for any reason whatsoever, after we've seen the United States confiscate gigantic amounts of money or gold from Venezuela or Russia or wherever. So, yeah, I mean China rising rapidly as the dominant industrial center of the world. I think that's pretty much clear that that's going on.
Alan Macleod:But, yeah, what does that mean for this region in West Asia? They've made certain diplomatic efforts in the past, I mean you mentioned earlier. I'm thinking especially of the Chinese brokered detente between Iran and Saudi Arabia, something that the United States seemed to be strongly opposing at the time. In fact, one thing that a lot of people don't know is Qasem Soleimani, the Iranian general and statesman, was actually in Iraq at the time of his assassination and he was there to meet Saudi officials and other officials to talk about moving towards a detente, and that's precisely when the United States targeted him. So I guess this rambling leads me to the point of what do you make of the Chinese role in this region? I presume you think it's going to increase in the coming years, and what will that mean?
Tim Anderson:I think it is increasing. And I think you're right too that it's the actions of the US itself which have contributed to creating its own nightmare in terms of losing its dominance in this region. Of course it's nothing to do with the security of the US itself, but it's to do with the ongoing hegemony of the US, its idea of keeping a foothold in Europe, a foothold in Asia and dominating things in between. Basically, a foothold in Europe, a foothold in Asia and dominating things in between, basically. But you're right about Soleimani, that the Iranians really had delegated to Iraq because they had good relationship with Iraq, then, after all, their neighbours the role of trying to have some sort of reconciliation with the Saudis. But in the end, of course, the Trump administration murdered Soleimani and Mohandas you know the two national heroes of those two countries of Iraq and Iran, and of course you know that gained them no friends in the region, basically. But because Soleimani had played an incredible role across the Levant, you know, in Lebanon, in Palestine, in Syria, in Iraq. But yeah, when the Iraqis couldn't do it effectively, the weight of the Chinese, the role was passed to them effectively and they were able to carry out that type of reconciliation. Of course the Chinese are big energy consumers, so they had an interest in both the Saudis and Iran.
Tim Anderson:Basically, the US has got away with these very ugly sanctions, really called genocidal in many cases. Look at the 62 years of a blockade on Cuba, for example. They got away with that in a way even though the whole world was effectively against them at the United Nations, but they just ignored that. But when they've begun to sanction these larger countries it's really backfired on them pretty seriously. They clearly haven't crippled the Russian economy in the way that they hope they might. Russia in many respects I think many, even US military people are admitting this. Now Russia has consolidated its position quite strongly. But the role of China is interesting, Of course. It's the biggest investor in many countries on Earth now, as you say, it dominates many sectors of industry and its technology is really seriously competing with Western technology in many areas now. So clearly it's already starting to play a more important role.
Tim Anderson:The Chinese came out at the UN and effectively defended the role of the Palestinian resistance in mounting attacks on the Israelis, which is a significant change in their position. You know they've always been very cautious and of course they were particularly cautious in relation to the US because there was a type of codependence for many years until Trump perhaps where China was making a lot of money out of the US. They didn't want to upset that relationship. Basically, even if the US saw them as rivals, nevertheless they were also using China for production in many respects, you know, with globalised production chains and so on. So the Chinese were reluctant to upset that relationship.
Tim Anderson:But really the US has started to do that, created the aggravation Now, the aggravation with Taiwan, of course, and unfortunately my own country, australia, has been drawn into that. Now there's these provocations that Australia, with the US, is making in the South China Sea, for example, and they'd love to have a Ukraine-like war there, I suppose, if they could get someone else to fight it. In many respects, this sort of antithesis to what the US is trying to do. They wanted to divide the Middle East or West Asia so that the other big powers wouldn't come in Russia and China but what they've done is they've created the reaction and Russia and China have come in Now in relation to Ukraine. Of course, they've made a lot of money out of the Ukraine war. It seemed ideal to many US politicians because someone else was fighting and dying in the war and to some extent others were paying for it too. But of course that's blowing up in their face now too, because if they lose, their prestige in the world and their role in Europe will be in question.
Tim Anderson:So in that context, china has been quietly developing, quietly advancing. It's notorious now that Chinese domestic infrastructure even is moving ahead. They're the greatest providers of fast rail train in the world. There are many exemplary reasons to why other people are looking for China now and I think that's why even the allies of the US are viewing with interest the fact that BRICS exists and there is an alternative way for them to develop and look for less coercive cooperation in the world. So of course, china is the big economic power in BRICS. Perhaps Russia has great political will and strategic importance and military importance really, but those countries like Egypt and the Emirates and the Saudis are very keen to have a decent, untrammeled relationship with the Chinese juggernaut. Basically, and so effectively, that's undermining the US global dominance.
Tim Anderson:And in this region I think the transmission is going to be largely through Iran, because Iran already has very important strategic relations with both Russia and China and in many respects that's going to mean if we want to simplify that down a little bit that China's Belt and Road initiative, you know, making use of infrastructure is something that's going to come in the first instance to Iran and pass on to the rest of the region.
Tim Anderson:In Russia terms, the Russian banks already have very close relations with the Iranian banks. All of them and this is the first step towards bypassing the SWIFT system, which is, of course, based in Europe but which the US has dominated for a number of years, and the SWIFT system and the dollar combined is really how the US manages to coerce so many countries, including the Europeans, for example, and try and prevent them from doing business. Now that influence is starting to weaken. You may have seen recently that the Indians have now got a contract, a 10-year contract to control an important Iranian port, and Washington has threatened India now with sanctions. So if they threaten India with sanctions they already threatened South Africa with sanctions how many other large independent countries are they going to threaten with sanctions? It's really like their countries are they going to threaten with sanctions? It's really like you know. Their power is going to diminish the more that they impose, as particularly on large countries.
Alan Macleod:Yeah, the US doesn't just use its military to dominate the region and the world, but also its economic power.
Alan Macleod:I mean, when we talk about the sort of level that sanctions could impose on certain countries, like if we think about Iraq in the 1990s, an estimated one million people died of the sanctions there.
Alan Macleod:They were officially United Nations backed, but it was the United States that was in charge. In fact, united Nations officials who were in charge of imposing these sanctions, one after another, resigned their names Dennis Halliday, hans von Skånek. These people resigned saying that this was a genocide that was going on, and out of this one million figure, apparently half a million of them were children under five. The sort of devastation it was able to wreak on Venezuela, where the economy contracted by something like 99%. They've also employed them effectively against Syria and Iran, but, as you said, in an increasingly multipolar world, these sanctions are just not having the same effect as they did, and it's really interesting to see countries like Saudi Arabia and the UAE and, as you said, even India, start to ignore the United States to the point where it seems absolutely clear that in just a few years, the United States has gone from being the unquestioned top dog to just one of the major players in the world.
Tim Anderson:It's really extraordinary, and let's not forget Yemen too.
Tim Anderson:Unlike the unilateral sanctions against Syria and Iran, the sanctions on Yemen, or what they call the Houthi rebels, which is really a coalition government led by Ansarullah called the National Salvation Government, they are UN Security Council sanctions because, based on the false information that Ansarullah, or what they call the Houthi rebels, were somehow in alliance with al-Qaeda.
Tim Anderson:But you find, most serious US commentators will admit that they've been fighting al-Qaeda and the Muslim Brotherhood in Yemen for many years and now, of course, they, despite those. You know it was called the worst humanitarian crisis on earth not so long ago and yet under those conditions they were able to defy effectively the Anglo-American naval coalition in the Red Sea and maintain, despite many things, that they were offered many bribes effectively to maintain that blockade of the Israeli shipping or shipping going to Israel. So the role of Yemen shouldn't be underestimated here. But they've done it under terrible circumstances and they're still suffering serious malnutrition and, of course, because militarily they effectively defeated the Saudis and the Emiratis, those two are now vying for peace, some sort of connection, and the US has been forced to accept that sort of reality, Not that they wanted it, they didn't want an independent state precisely for this region. That independent state at the head of the Red Sea and the Suez Canal could do precisely what it's doing now in relation to the Israelis. So Yemen's an important emerging force in this region too.
Alan Macleod:It has been extraordinary watching the poorest country in the region actually spearhead effective resistance against the Israeli attack on Gaza.
Alan Macleod:I mean, for more than a decade, as you were mentioning, yemen has been under brutal, brutal bombardment by a Saudi-led coalition which has been back to the hilt by the US.
Alan Macleod:The US is selling Saudi Arabia the weapons, it's providing diplomatic cover for the Saudi-led onslaught in international bodies like the United Nations, it's training Saudi pilots, it's even helping with the targeting, it's doing absolutely everything except pulling the trigger itself and, as an extent, yemen turned into the world's worst humanitarian crisis in the eyes of the united nations, where perhaps 400 000 or more yemenis were killed, most of them not in fighting but because of, uh, the terrible humanitarian conditions which uh, which flared up because the Saudi coalition was deliberately attacking things like hospitals and sewage works and water pipes and farms and things in order to starve out the population.
Alan Macleod:And yet Ansar Allah has taken this position that they are effectively carrying a humanitarian blockade of the Red Sea, and the United States and the West hasn't actually been able to stop that. But this is, in my opinion, kind of direct contrast to a lot of other Arab states in the region which have quietly or tacitly accepted or even in some ways kind of supported the Israeli efforts in Lebanon, syria and Gaza. What have you made of the reactions and the responses of other Arab states to Israel's attack on Gaza since October 7th?
Tim Anderson:Well, of course it's been a huge disappointment to the Palestinian people and many of the independent Arab peoples and Arab states here that the very wealthy Arab states in the Persian Gulf have really never done very much. They've thrown a bit of money but they've really done very little to help the Palestinian people. It's been the Persians, the Iranians that have been helping the Palestinian people and then now, more recently, as you say, the Yemenis. Also, of course, hezbollah, the resistance group in South Lebanon, which has drawn away very large parts of the Israeli military from Gaza throughout the last eight months. Basically, there's been a bit of a change in relation to the Saudis and the Emiratis. The Saudis, for example, are no longer funding any of those armed groups in Syria, but Qatar is. Qatar is still funding the Nusra HTS group in Italy. Basically the Emiratis.
Tim Anderson:But when it came to the Iranian retaliation, for example for the attack on its embassy in Damascus, which was a big fireworks display over Damascus too, when it happened, the Iranians warned the Persian Gulf Arab monarchies, basically Petro monarchies, that if they got involved they'd be targets too, and most of them pulled out. It was only Jordan that came in to assist, largely because the US military is based there to assist with the anti-air bringing down the drones and the cruise missiles and so on. And more recently, the Emiratis have asked that the US move their fighter planes from Abu Dhabi out of the Emirates because they didn't want to be a target for Iranian attack there, basically. So the US moved them to Qatar, which is the biggest air base they have in this region, and Qatar's played this strange sort of hybrid role, because they have also at different times sponsored Hamas, because through the Muslim Brotherhood links basically. But now they're closer to Turkey and they're still helping with the armed groups in north of Syria.
Tim Anderson:But nevertheless, even the Emiratis, who were pressured by Trump to do this normalisation with Israelis, got the US to move their warplanes out because they didn't want to be the meat and the sandwich, so to speak, because the Iranians had said any of you you know Gulf monarchies, persian Gulf monarchies that assist in with the Israelis or the US, you'll become targets too. And the Iranians have got their eyes on US bases in the Gulf and also on oil infrastructure in the Gulf, so they're taking that seriously too. And so all of those Arab states which have been very weak in terms of doing anything for the Palestinians. Rather, many of them have collaborated directly with the Israelis the Emirates, saudi and Jordan all of those, and, to a lesser extent, bahrain, some of the others. They are taking seriously this strategic change. You know that there is a new force in the region, that Iran has the capacity to defend itself and to hit back if it's attacked, and that, basically, by housing US military, they may make themselves targets if there's an escalation of things here.
Alan Macleod:All right, we're running out of time soon, but I did want to ask you another question that I found very interesting from your book. It's not something that's really talked about very much. Could you tell us a bit about the purge of Christians from West Asia and Washington's role in it? We often think about the region as being dominated by Islam or Judaism, but we don't really talk about the Christian minorities that have been there for 2,000 years. Yeah, can you fill us in on that?
Tim Anderson:Yeah, well, of course they are the oldest Christian communities in the world, in this region, in the Levant in particular, in Palestine, in Syria, for example, in Lebanon to an extent too, and used to be in Iraq. You know the Assyrians but if you go through, I guess my attention was first drawn to it by looking at northeast Syria and what had gone on there, with largely the Assyrian Christians in the northeast of Syria, where there's a crossover with Iraq and Syria in this respect. But in fact there had been effectively a type of ethnic cleansing by the Kurdish group, by SDF there, because they're trying to expand their presence in that region to justify the fact that they're trying to dominate the region. But they've never really been a majority, as I said, in any of the cities and only some of the smaller towns. So some of the people in Comishley were telling me, the former council of Comishley were telling me that there was this mission that the Israelis were on, based in Erbil, because they have an alliance effectively with the northern kurdistan region in iraq and they were training the sdf and they had a particular mission to try and they got some strategic alliances with with some of the kurdish groups there. Let's say, basically now in iraq, it was somewhat different because it was isis that was driving the christians out of many of the cities there. But of course, isis, properly understood, was created by the US through the Saudis there, precisely to weaken Iraq and prevent an alliance between Iraq and Iran. Then it passed across to Syria because about 10,000 Christians were driven out of Commission City and many of them ended up in my city, in Sydney, australia, because there was a process of selective immigration favouring mainly Christians in recent years, back in 2018 or so. This was revealed in conversations between former Prime Minister of Australia, malcolm Turnbull, and Trump back at that time.
Tim Anderson:If we look at Palestine, of course there are no Israeli Christians in Palestine. They're all Palestinian Arab Christians basically, and many of the towns and cities in Palestine, like Bethlehem for example, have been seriously depleted. Now I met an old Syrian priest in Damascus here and he's in his 90s now, but he's been writing successive letters to the popes, or successive popes, saying you talk about the Christians being driven out of this region, but you won't point a finger at anyone. You leave it open to the Western myth that it's something to do with Muslims in this region, but really Muslims and Jews and Christians have lived here for many, many centuries together. It was only in recent years that there's been this purge of Christians, and so he was criticising the successive popes for not pointing the finger at the Israelis or the US, basically, but that's really what's behind it.
Tim Anderson:The US has been behind, despite its claims to be a christian state. In many respects it's really been the force behind the, the purging of christians from iraq and syria and palestine, and there's been a serious diminution of the christian communities. They still exist. There are still very ancient churches in here, in malula, for example, where they still speak a language very close to Aramaic. There's an old chapel, hanania, in Damascus, where St Paul was baptised. You know, there's some very ancient churches in Syria and to some extent, in Iraq and in Palestine too, but really it's been the big push for the US to create this new Middle East, the idea of having a new Middle East that Condoleezza Rice announced in Palestine back in 2006,. That's been the force behind Christians being driven out of this region. They're still here, of course. There's still many of them here, but the numbers are seriously depleted.
Alan Macleod:Yeah, and of course, a lot of the most storied and oldest churches in Gaza have been destroyed during the Israeli attack as well, so that's certainly not helping. I'm thinking specifically about the St Porphyrius airstrike which destroyed that classic Greek Orthodox church, which there's been a church on that site for well over a thousand years getting on for 2000 there, over a thousand years, getting on for 2000 there. So, yeah, a lot of people don't realize that the Christian minority is actually persecuted in Western Asia to such an extent.
Alan Macleod:Yeah, that's true. Okay, very last question, then, just something that I was wondering about. I saw you describe yourself as a humanist in one of your interviews or lectures, so I wanted to know how does an Australian humanist come to see such a religiously conservative state as Iran as a vital bulwark against imperialism, and one worthy of support? Is that a contradiction, or does it flow so easily?
Tim Anderson:No, to me it's not a contradiction. Of course, I myself I don't support the idea of religious states or any state based on religion, and in fact, many Syrians agree with me in that respect. But, as I said, it hasn't affected the relations between Iran and Syria. I see religion really as something, or spiritual views, as something that inspires people to create certain values, certain social values. You can see the Iranians now having very productive relationships with Venezuela, with Russia, with China, which have very different cultural traditions.
Tim Anderson:So, as I said, the Iranians, in my view, while they have a very strong idea of Islamic ideology and Islamic civilization, they haven't been exporting that. They've been finding these other states, other peoples that share their values, expressed values and maybe inspired through other religions, through other cultures. But nevertheless, what's important about Iran is that they are a very capable state, capable, stable state. They're committed to principles which are, by and large, decent principles. They're able to have these productive relationships with other states and other big powers and they've also invested in their people. So, really, they've made some tremendous advances, as I said, in terms of human development. So, in terms of the values they share with the Russians, with the Venezuelans, I think we have to look for some values that are created, and it's interesting to me actually to see that values can cross cultures and be shared across cultures despite the different sources of inspiration.
Alan Macleod:Absolutely, tim Anderson. Thank you very much for your time. My final question is where can people follow you and read more of your stuff?
Tim Anderson:Well, I do have a Twitter account and some other accounts. Meta has largely banned me, but of course there's my books, the West Asia after Washington, and there's also a website that I run with some others called Center for Counterhegemonic Studies.
Alan Macleod:Thank you very much, tim Anderson, for being on the show today. All right, if you've made it this far, let me just give you a quick pitch for our Patreon. Right now, we are getting targeted. We are being deranked, demoted, deleted across the board. Our TikTok has been deleted. We've been demonetized from YouTube. Basically, everything is being thrown at us. So if you are in an economic position to help us, please do go over to patreoncom, slash mintpressnews and become one of our donors. Anything you can give us will go a long way. And if you're not in a position to help us economically, you can still help us by liking this video or bookmarking us, or even sharing this content with your friends. Until next time, I'm Alan McLeod, signing off for the Midcast. See you later.