Rouhani, Erdogan and Putin—Masters of Geopolitics

An Interview with Ken Timmerman

by Jerry Gordon and Rod Reuven Dovid Bryant (November 2019)

There are unfolding troubling geo-political developments in the Middle East with Iran, Saudi Arabia, Iraq, Yemen, Syria, Israel, Russia and Turkey, while President Trump appears to be withdrawing the US from the region. The bottom line: Iran intends to achieve its goal of controlling the area between the Persian Gulf, Red Sea and the Mediterranean supplying more than 25% plus of the world’s oil supply. All the while, Iran is perfecting its Shi’ite supremacist objective of surrounding and destroying Israel.

Notwithstanding the unresolved recent Israeli do-over election, given the second failure of Prime Minister Netanyahu to form a Knesset ruling coalition, Netanyahu developed an effective strategic diplomatic and national security policy. He has avoided war with Iran while punishing it in Syria, Lebanon, and Iraq through deconfliction arrangements with Russia’s Putin. The question is, will Netanyahu’s legacy survive in whatever national unity government emerges? A recent interview with Iran’s nefarious Quds Force Commander General Soleimani noted that, in 2006, Iran didn’t intervene in Lebanon against Israel as the US was engaged in War in Iraq, but now Iran and its proxies surround Israel on three sides and are seeking to fulfill Shi’ite supremacist doctrine of destroying Israel and bringing back the 12th Imam, Mahdi, to lead Iran and Islam to victory.

The Trump Peace Plan may be effectively over given the resignation of President Trump’s Special Envoy Jason Greenblatt who said “there’s no peace partner”—meaning the Palestinians.

Iraq may be falling apart racked by violent internal protests. Iran controls 100,000 Shi’ite Hashd al Shaabi Popular Mobilization Force militia fighters. Israel’s air force has attacked their warehouses stocked with precision missiles. Iraq may be effectively a “province of Iran ceding sovereignty to its neighbor.” The question remains will the US keep its remaining assets in Iraq at the strategic Al-Sad airbase near the Iraqi Syrian border?

Besides the Saudi failure to defend their oil facilities was the question of the Kingdom’s war making capabilities against the Houthi Iran proxy in Yemen. The ability of Iran and Iraqi proxies to launch a swarm of drones and cruise missiles devastated Saudi oil facilities and production. That signaled their intelligence uncovered gaps in radar of billion-dollar US anti-Missile defense systems pointed in the wrong direction. The threat to strategic Saudi oil production prompted President Trump to send 2,000 troops and technicians and additional anti-Missile systems, all funded by the Kingdom. The Houthi attack that destroyed a combined Saudi and Sudan force revealed this is really a war between Iran and Saudi Arabia. We could possibly see more Houthi cross border raids seeking to disable the Saudi Royal regime.

Saudi royals appear divided over anti-corruption strong arm actions by Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salam (MBS) and his taking responsibility for the murder of Washington Post columnist Jamal Khashoggi, despite the latter’s Muslim Brotherhood and support of Qatar. MBS is seeking reforms of conservative Sunni Wahhabism and diversifying economic reforms such as the languishing ARAMCO IPO. Some experts warn that Iran could play the Shi’ite card in the Saudi oil rich province through a network of Imams and Mosques. The takeaway is that the Saudis are not strong enough to take on Iran. Irony is that only the US, Israel and the UAE support MBS.

Erdogan’s objective in his “safe zone incursion” on October 9th into northeastern Syrian Kurdish homeland was to “smash Kurds in eastern Turkey, Syria, Iran and Iraq”. Erdogan, some experts believe, was the main patron of ISIS in Syria. That is reflected in his creation of a rebel Syrian National Army composed of former Al Qaeda, Al-Nusrah and ISIS fighters. They have committed war crimes against Kurdish communities in the safe zone corridor that internally displaced 300,000 residents in northeastern Syria. Another possible Erdogan objective in invading northeastern Syria might be to release the ISIS fighters at the Al Hol refugee and other prison camps in northeastern Syria guarded by the Kurdish-led YPG Syrian Democratic Force.

Russia sent military police units to monitor the withdrawal of Kurdish YPG fighters from the misnamed expanded “safe zone,” running the entire 400 kilometer Syrian border from the Euphrates River to the Iraqi Kurdistan frontier. Russian and Syrian flags now fly at abandoned US bases in northeastern Syria.

In reaction to the President Trump’s Syrian withdrawal decision, bi-partisan Congressional sanctions legislation against Turkey have been proposed. A US House resolution condemning the President’s decision withdrawing US troops from Syria passed by 354 to 60.

In the final weekend of October, a column of armored US forces re-entered northeastern Syria to implement a plan announced by the Pentagon to assist Syrian Democratic Forces in dealing with a resurgence of ISIS and protecting oil fields in Deir Ezzor province against a possible Iranian takeover. Russia’s Defense Ministry immediately branded the US action as “banditry.”

The threat of a recent North Korean missile launch from a submarine just before another round of US denuclearization talks upended scheduled discussions in Sweden. Then there was the controversy over opposite positions held by former National Security Council advisor John Bolton versus President Trump on Korean Peninsula, Iran and Middle East US national security interests that prompted Bolton’s resignation.

Against this background, and just prior to Turkey’s attack against the Kurds in Northeastern Syria, Rod Reuven Dovid Bryant and Jerry Gordon interviewed veteran Iran-watcher, best-selling author and investigative journalist Ken Timmerman to address the question does the US have a Middle East strategy?

Rod: It is on the point of surrounding Israel and possibly one day eliminating it, correct?

Jerry: Correct. That is Iran’s objective.

Rod: One of the things our counterparts often underestimate is that this is not just bloviating by a crazy government. Iran has a serious Middle East strategy in Iraq, Lebanon and Syria. I think that you and I have pretty much wondered whether the United States, NATO and the European Union really have a plan at all.

—Rod: I completely agree with you. I would add another element to this, as someone who served there during the First Gulf War, The land south of the Iraqi border is as flat as a pancake. You could fly a UAV nap-of-the-earth and it would never be detected, unless you have people on the ground that could observe it. You could fly it across the desert and no one would ever see it. This is a vast wasteland from the Saudi Border to Bahrain.

Ken: From Abqaiq in Saudi Arabia.

Ken: Right, and now it looks like it was both cruise missiles and drones that they were using.

Rod: What has been happening with the Saudis and the Yemeni Houthi war-fighting abilities?

Jerry: In late September 2019, there was a series of reports about a Saudi column overwhelmed by Houthi rebels capturing several hundred Saudi and Sudanese mercenaries and sending them back across the border. What does that say about the war making capabilities on the ground of the Saudis?

Rod: Are you intimating that it is not about Saudi war making preparation or fighting capabilities as much as for their tank commanders to really commit in Yemen? What interests do they have there?

Rod: What would be the reason why Saudi Arabia would not consider doing a full-court press against Iran by airstrikes, by involving themselves in Syria where Iran is operating?

Rod: Why do you suppose that Israel and the United States support him while the Saudi Army and many of his family members are against him?

Rod: Ken, you were talking about what Iran is doing with their proxy war and where all their assets are in the region. Could you provide us with some details?

Ken: They control much of the Iraqi central government. They control a force of hundred thousand Shi’ite men on the ground, the Hashd al-Shaabi or the Popular Mobilization Forces as they are sometimes called, the PMF. Those are Iranian owned, armed and controlled. Iraq is a country which has ceded it sovereignty to its neighbor, Iran. It is Iranian occupied territory.

Rod: Do you think that other nations and the United States will wash their hands and walk off?

Ken: This is always the temptation.

Rod: Right, Iraq remains a military asset because we have operations going on there all the time. Is US support of Iraq a toss-up?

Rod: I completely agree with that. My sons have fought and continue to fight in the Middle East. Their friends have died, their blood is spilled on those grounds. Many Kurds and other Iraqis have died working with the United States and the coalition to defeat ISIS and we just walk away. The US faces a very hard moral decision when you realize that we have paid such a hard price in terms of these lives lost. Forget about the money. We spend trillions over there and nothing to show for it. It really is a shame to me.

—to make America safe.

Jerry: We have another tyrant across the border from Iraq, Turkey’s Erdogan who crafted a deal to create a safe zone across four hundred kilometers of Syrian Kurdish territory in the Northeast. The danger there is that, if he completes this foray, he is going to pour two million Syrian refugees back into the country—probably reigniting ISIS—and the US will be forced to leave. What is your view, Ken?

Jerry: Ken, North Korea recently launched a missile from a submarine just prior to meeting with US diplomats to discuss denuclearization. What would your friend John Bolton say about that?

Ken: I think John has consistently warned about the North Korean threat. He never believed that the North Koreans were sincere about giving up nuclear weapons. In the long term he might be right. Where the President has been right is that he has at least bought time and to delay the advancement of their program. The President wants to put a cap on the nuclear program and their aggressive military activities. His goal is to stop North Korean expansionism, North Korean aggression, and eventually to walk it back. John Bolton was more skeptical that was possible. He favored the sanctions the President has implemented. Trump continues to impose sanctions. He really is a Jeffersonian in this sense— Jefferson was the one who said sanctions are the only alternative between appeasement and war. This President does not want war and he certainly is not going to appease either North Korea or Iran. He has been focusing on sanctions.

Jerry: Ken, there is a problem about a Whistleblower complaint with alleged ally, Ukraine, that may upset the 2020 Presidential Race.

Ken: You know, Donald Trump was right. He said he is the real Whistleblower here. He is blowing the whistle on the deep state. This is another attempt by the deep state to sabotage this President, to undo everything he has done in the past three years and to get him out of office. They never expected that Trump would release the actual text, the transcript of his talk with the new President in Ukraine and there is nothing there. There is no quid pro. It could backfire on the Democrats.

Rod: You mentioned in our last interview that you were in the process of completing a memoir on your career as an investigative journalist. Are you also writing a novel about the 2020 election? Can you talk about that?

Ken: This is going to be a two-book deal coming out hopefully around June of next year. The first is my memoir, my life. How I became a PLO hostage, arms dealer and an Israeli spy. The second book is a novel about how the 2020 election was stolen.

Rod: Ken, we are waiting with bated breath for you to finish these books. Until next week, we say shalom from here on Beyond the Matrix.

Listen to the Israel News Talk Radio – Beyond the Matrix interview with Ken Timmerman

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Jerome B Gordon is a Senior Vice President of the New English Review, author of The West Speaks, NER Press 2012, and co-author of Genocide in Sudan: Caliphate Threatens Africa and the World, JAD Publishing, 2017. Mr. Gordon is a former US Army intelligence officer who served during the Viet Nam era. He is producer and co-host of Israel News Talk Radio – Beyond the Matrix. He was the co-host and co-producer of weekly The Lisa Benson Show for National Security that aired out of KKNT960 in Phoenix Arizona from 2013 to 2016 and co-host and co-producer of the Middle East Round Table periodic series on 1330amWEBY, Northwest Florida Talk Radio, Pensacola, Florida from 2007 to 2017.

Rod Reuven Dovid Bryant is creator and host of Israel News Talk Radio-Beyond the Matrix.

Follow NER on Twitter @NERIconoclast