The Modern Middle East, Explained

0:00 (inquisitive music) (upbeat music) (John sighs and claps)- The Middle East,

0:13 the part of Asia that Europeans see as the middle of what they see as the east.

0:21 Sort of arbitrary.

0:22 Whatever, we call it the Middle East.

0:23 This part of the world is literally where civilization started,

0:28 right here, in modern-day Iraq.

0:30 And over the years, the borders here have been redrawn

0:33 many times as empires have ebbed and flowed through this region.

0:37 By the way, I didn't make this time lapse.

0:39 A very talented YouTuber did, and he deserves a medal for it.

0:43 (fanfare music) Or perhaps just a new patron.

0:46 Thanks, man.

0:47 Anyway, the most recent carving up of this region happened by European powers,

0:52 the French, the British, the Russians.

0:54 I mean, are we surprised?

0:56 No.

0:57 Like, of course.

0:57 Of course it was the British.

0:58 Of course it was the French.

0:59 Of course it was Europeans.

1:00 Of course.

1:01 The lines they drew didn't really take

1:03 into account language or ethnicity or regional identity.

1:07 They just sort of sliced it all up amongst themselves and said,

1:11 "These are our new regions of power in the Middle East." Eventually,

1:15 those European powers left, but the lines they drew stuck around and became

1:20 the skeleton for what the borders look like today.

1:23 And this is where our story starts,

1:26 in the 1930s, here in the modern Middle East.

1:29 At this point, across the ocean,

1:31 there was this growing superpower that had spent the last century moving west,

1:36 taking over this whole continent and beyond, deep into the Pacific Ocean.

1:40 We've talked about that a bit.

1:42 But things were changing.

1:43 The world had just fought a brutal world war that was fought

1:48 with new weapons that were powered by this new important substance, oil.

1:53 Germany lost that war,

1:54 in part because they didn't have access to enough oil to keep up

1:59 with this new style of warfare that relied a lot more on machines.

2:03 The young superpower realized that access to this stuff

2:06 would determine who would be powerful and who would not.

2:10 So they stopped looking west for a moment and turned east,

2:13 with hopes of finding the fuel they needed to build their power.

2:17 The U.S.

2:17 presence in the Middle East started with one little dot, right here.

2:21 But soon, that dot would expand

2:23 into a sprawling network of alliances, covert attacks,

2:27 flows of weapons, money, and the building of innumerable bases,

2:31 and eventually turning into full-on ground wars.

2:34 (intriguing music) This is how the U.S.

2:38 stole the Middle East.

2:39 (intriguing music)- Ready and willing to employ all means necessary.

2:44 Okay, so it's the 1930s and the U.S.

2:47 doesn't have a significant presence in the Middle East at this point.

2:50 But that's about to change, because there's a company based in California

2:53 that wants to explore this vast desert for oil.

2:57 [Narrator] 11,000 miles from San Francisco there lies a primeval desert,

3:03 a mass of drifting sand and sun-baked earth,

3:06 one third the size of the United States.

3:08 [Johnny] This was sort of a risky decision for the California company because,

3:11 first off, they had no idea if there was actually any oil here.

3:15 [Narrator] They knew it would mean sinking into the desert the money

3:17 of thousands of stockholders in a project that might well end in complete loss.

3:22 [Johnny] And second off,

3:23 this desert was a part of a very hardcore religious kingdom.

3:28 [Narrator] The fact that Mecca is the source and the shrine of Islam

3:32 gives Saudi Arabia a central place

3:34 in the Islamic and, therefore, the Arab world.

3:37 [Johnny] that was home to the holiest sites in Islam,

3:39 run by a dogmatic royal family that did not like outsiders,

3:44 especially non-believing Westerners.

3:46 But even still, the king of the desert

3:49 kingdom eventually gives the California company

3:51 permission to explore almost a million square

3:54 kilometers of this desert looking for oil.

3:57 And after a few years, the bet paid off.

3:59 And on March 3rd, 1938,

4:02 in this little patch of coastal desert, they struck gold.

4:06 Well, actually they struck oil, but it might as well have been gold.

4:09 (kinetic music) So, throughout the '30s and '40s,

4:17 American oil executives, workers,

4:19 and their families started flocking to the Middle East,

4:22 establishing the first significant American presence in the region.

4:26 They set up little cities around the oil

4:28 operation that were little slices of America,

4:31 full of the deepest sinful behavior,

4:34 like allowing women to drive and the consumption of alcohol.

4:39 [Narrator] Here is another American colony,

4:40 complete with air-conditioned houses,

4:43 two hospitals, and an outdoor movie theater.

4:46 This is the sort of stuff that is very off-limits in Saudi Arabia.

4:50 It's literally illegal at this point.

4:51 So you have a lot of Saudis who are not happy

4:53 about their government letting the Americans in to behave however they want.

4:58 But the oil kept flowing, and soon, the U.S.

5:00 government goes to the royal family and says,

5:02 "Listen, the oil is flowing better than ever.

5:05 This is awesome.

5:06 How about we build a little military base attached

5:09 to our little oil city so that we can,

5:12 you know, protect you and protect us and protect

5:14 the oil and stuff?" And the Saudis are like, "Okay.

5:18 Having the great Satan come to our country for oil is one thing,

5:21 but letting them set up a full-on military base on our soil,

5:25 (John inhales sharply) and especially when, like,

5:27 everyone in our country is not happy with their presence in the first place.

5:30 "But," said the royal family, "all of this oil is really valuable,

5:36 and it's really nice,

5:37 and we're getting super rich." So they're like, "Yeah, sure.

5:39 Set up the base." But there was one

5:41 stipulation that the Saudis had for the Americans.

5:43 "You are not allowed to literally plant a flag.

5:46 No flag poles of the United States.

5:48 You cannot put your flag anywhere on this base.

5:51 Instead, you can put a little plaque on the side of the building so

5:55 that your flag is not literally on our soil." And that was the deal.

5:58 And that's exactly what happened.

5:59 The U.S.

6:00 sets up its first military operation in the Middle East in the form

6:05 of a landing strip that is right next to this oil field.

6:07 (plane engine roaring) Okay, so all of this infrastructure that the Americans

6:13 were building required someone to build it.

6:16 They needed a construction company.

6:18 And there was one construction company that the Americans really

6:20 liked that helped them build their oil city and their base.

6:23 This company was founded and run by a guy named Mohammed.

6:27 Now, listen, do you think I'm really giving

6:29 you the backstory on the construction company that built

6:31 the air base in the oil city just because

6:33 that's interesting and I like to talk about construction?

6:37 No, this is actually very relevant to the story, and you'll see why very soon.

6:41 So the Americans and the Saudis are having

6:43 this forbidden oil bromance and it's going really well,

6:47 and they are just, the oil is flowing, everyone's getting rich.

6:51 And meanwhile the rest of the Middle East is

6:54 looking at Saudi Arabia and they're like, "Dude, WTF.

6:57 Why are you like in bed with America?

7:00 And, like, why are you letting them set up a landing

7:02 strip in your country?" And the Saudi royals are like,

7:06 "Do you realize how rich we're getting right now?

7:08 Like if you were in our position, you would do the same thing,

7:11 Egypt." Okay, so it's the 1950s and let's get back to Mohammed,

7:15 the construction guy.

7:16 His company, by this point, is thriving.

7:19 The American presence in oil land is just exploding

7:23 and he is building all of the stuff for it.

7:25 And so this guy just has a giant business.

7:29 And he starts to have children.

7:30 Well, in fact, he had a lot of children,

7:32 like 54 children because he had 22 wives,

7:36 because that is a thing in Saudi Arabia to this day.

7:40 Anyway, the point is one of Mohammed's sons is named Osama.

7:45 (downbeat electronic music) I told you this was going to be relevant.

7:51 Okay, a reminder that Saudi Arabia is not the entire Middle East.

7:54 So, I'm going to leave the Osama bin Laden cliffhanger for a moment

7:58 to tell you what else was going on in the Middle East at this time.

8:01 Remember that it was the hunt for oil that brought the U.S.

8:05 to Saudi Arabia originally.

8:06 But now in the '50s and '60s, there was a new reason for the U.S.

8:11 to think about the Middle East.

8:12 And that reason is because there's another big

8:15 superpower that has nuclear weapons called the Soviet Union,

8:18 who is coming into the region and saying to everyone,

8:21 "Come join team communism." And the U.S.

8:25 is like, "Hold my beer." (dramatic music) So in addition to oil, the U.S.

8:33 is now involved in trying to not let

8:35 the Soviet Union have any power in this region.

8:38 Over in Iran, there was a democratically-elected leader that the U.S.

8:42 didn't like.

8:42 They thought he was maybe a little too friendly with the Soviet Union.

8:46 So they worked together with the British

8:48 to literally overthrow the government of Iran so

8:52 that they could install a dictatorial leader

8:54 that was more friendly to the United States.

8:57 Little side note here.

8:58 The airport that I fly out of here in D.C.

9:01 is named after the guy who, like,

9:04 gave the go ahead for this coup in Iran, John Foster Dulles.

9:08 So, I'm reminded of the whole Iran thing every time I fly.

9:11 So the U.S.

9:11 has its oil thing.

9:12 It's now involved in trying to prop up a dictator in Iran.

9:16 There's another big thing happening that brings the U.S.

9:18 into the region, which is that the newly declared State of Israel is

9:22 starting to piss off its neighbors and starting to look to the U.S.

9:27 for support.

9:27 And the U.S.

9:29 gladly offers it, seeing Israel as a friendly nation

9:33 in the region that could be a big proponent of U.S.

9:37 interests.

9:38 So the U.S.

9:38 starts to fund Israel with tons of money and fighter jets,

9:42 and all of these things to help

9:44 them fight their wars against their Arab neighbors.

9:46 There was a debate happening in the United States on whether or not

9:49 they should actually do all of this to support Israel so intensely,

9:52 because they knew if they did,

9:53 they were going to piss off all of the neighbors in the Middle East.

9:57 And all of the neighbors are the ones who had the oil.

9:59 In the end, the U.S.

10:00 did decide to support Israel, and with that, came a major backlash

10:04 from all of these oil-producing countries in the neighborhood.

10:08 There's a crisis of such proportion that we probably haven't even

10:10 begun to grasp it yet as far as the country is concerned.

10:13 [Narrator] Scenes like this are becoming all

10:15 too common on both sides of the Atlantic.

10:17 But for America, they are more ominous.

10:20 They tell the Arabs that their oil weapon is wounding America,

10:23 the country that supports and supplies their enemy, Israel.

10:26 Eventually, this backlash against supporting Israel kind of calmed down.

10:29 There was some peace talks.

10:31 And anyway, let's get back to Mohammed, the construction guy,

10:33 and his son Osama, because this is where it really starts to heat up.

10:38 We decided to put together this compilation of all our Middle East

10:41 videos because there are transformative events

10:44 happening in the Middle East right now.

10:46 The recent attacks on Iran from the U.S.

10:48 and Israel have reshaped the Middle East and are

10:52 doing that right now as I'm recording this.

10:53 And hopefully these videos are providing some context,

10:56 but keeping up with the headlines is proving to be really difficult because

10:59 every source comes at it with a different angle and a different bias.

11:04 This is why I have partnered with Ground News.

11:07 They are the sponsor of this compilation.

11:09 And I've been using Ground News for over a year now.

11:12 They've been a partner of the channel and I'm really grateful they exist.

11:15 Ground News is an app and a website that allows you to very

11:18 quickly and thoroughly compare thousands of headlines from all around the world.

11:22 It organizes them and breaks them down by what their biases are,

11:26 their reliability, their factuality,

11:28 and even tells you who these outlets are owned by.

11:31 They've been recognized by the Nobel Peace Center for Advancing Media Literacy.

11:35 And lemme just show you how this works and why it matters.

11:38 Take one event like the story about Iran's next supreme leader,

11:41 the strikes on Iran,

11:43 and the killing of the Supreme leader in Iran was covered by over 800 outlets,

11:48 all with different angles.

11:50 With Ground News, you're able to quickly compare and see

11:53 how the left and the right are covering it differently.

11:55 For example, a left-leaning outlet emphasizes the human

11:58 response from the Iranian diaspora in Washington.

12:01 The right, represented by Fox News,

12:03 focuses on the political backlash of the attack framing

12:06 the critics of these strikes as siding with Iran,

12:09 or in their words, "Rooting for the Ayatollah."

12:12 Every news outlet chooses their narrative.

12:13 So do we.

12:14 This is impossible to avoid.

12:16 What Ground News does is it helps make that visible

12:20 by allowing you to quickly compare lots of different headlines.

12:22 I've used the app for years and I'm grateful it exists.

12:25 It's a kind of comparison that I can't get elsewhere.

12:27 It's an important part of being a critical consumer of the news.

12:30 And it's completely subscriber funded.

12:32 There's no, like, rich billionaire back there deciding what you see.

12:36 It's completely funded by all of us who pay for it.

12:39 If this is interesting to you,

12:40 you can get in on the Vantage Plan, which is the plan I use.

12:43 You can get 40% off if you go to ground.news/johnnyharris.

12:47 You can also scan the QR code here on screen.

12:50 You get that 40% off, it ends up being like five bucks a month for you

12:53 to get the whole picture on the events shaping the world.

12:55 With that, let's dive into our next video about the modern Middle East.

12:58 [Narrator] And it is this world

13:00 of religious authority and deeply-rooted traditions that is

13:03 now being challenged by the wealth of oil

13:05 and the Western invasion it has brought.

13:08 So it's now the '70s, and Mohammed bin Laden,

13:11 the construction guy, is now insanely rich.

13:14 His construction company is giant, his 54 children are also rich,

13:18 and his son Osama is growing up, and he is in his twenties,

13:23 and is looking around at all of this stuff happening in Iran and in Israel,

13:28 and is starting to feel really uncomfortable with the notion of his family

13:34 being so supportive of American presence in the Middle East and his government,

13:38 this religious kingdom, home of Mecca and Medina, being so okay with the U.S.

13:43 so embedded in the Middle East at this point.

13:45 "These are ancient holy lands.

13:48 Why is my government and my family supporting this great Satan

13:53 superpower coming in and becoming so involved in the Middle East?" So,

13:57 Bin Laden sets out on a lifelong quest

14:00 to fight back against these superpowers, not just the U.S.

14:04 but also the Soviet Union, invading the Middle East.

14:07 He heads to Afghanistan, where the Soviet Union is invading Afghanistan,

14:11 trying to take it over.

14:12 Bin Laden wants to fight back.

14:14 By the way, the same year in Iran, that dictator that the U.S.

14:18 put in gets overthrown in a giant religious revolution

14:23 that gets rid of the old dictator that the U.S.

14:25 liked and puts in a religious government headed by this guy, Ayatollah Khomeini.

14:31 This new government takes a bunch of Americans

14:33 hostage and starts off hating the United States.

14:37 And I mean, can you blame them?

14:38 If someone overthrew the person I elected, I would be pretty pissed too.

14:42 So anyway, back to Bin Laden.

14:43 He arrives to Afghanistan with a few things.

14:46 Number one, a bunch of money.

14:48 Remember his family's like super rich.

14:50 He also comes with construction infrastructure because he's,

14:53 like, a construction guy.

14:55 Like, his family knows construction and infrastructure building.

14:58 But most importantly, he comes with an obsessive dedication to fighting back

15:03 against any superpower that is invading the Middle East.

15:06 So, Osama joins in with all of these rebel

15:09 fighters who are fighting back against the Soviet Union,

15:12 and they fight a long, brutal war.

15:15 By the way, the U.S.

15:16 was secretly loving this, loving that the Soviet Union was getting,

15:19 like, beat back by these, like, rebel fighters.

15:22 So they end up sending loads of weapons and money and support to these fighters,

15:27 something that will come back to bite them a few decades later.

15:31 Eventually, Osama and the Afghan fighters beat back the Soviet Union.

15:36 It was 10 brutal years of war,

15:38 and by the end, these fighters were battle hardened.

15:42 Osama was now completely dedicated to his cause of fighting

15:46 back against superpowers who were coming into the Middle East.

15:49 So he returns back to Saudi Arabia,

15:52 where he starts raising money and awareness for his new

15:55 group that he started while he was in Afghanistan.

15:58 It's called Al-Qaeda.

15:59 And the mission of the group is to protect Islam through

16:03 violently striking back against big superpowers coming into the Middle East.

16:08 And Saudi Arabia is like, "(sighs) Osama, like, do you have to do this, dude?

16:11 Do you realize how rich we're getting?" Like,

16:13 Saudi princes are living on yachts in the south of France and, like,

16:16 flying in their private jets and they're like, "Dude, chill.

16:19 Like, it's fine.

16:20 We get it.

16:21 We don't like the United States, but, like, can you, like, maybe chill?

16:24 Our partnership with the United States is

16:26 actually turning out to be really great.

16:27 And I know, yeah, they're really

16:28 into Israel and they're really bad and everything,

16:30 but, like, they buy our oil and they give us weapons and we're, like,

16:34 doing just fine over here." Osama doesn't chill,

16:38 and the Saudi government eventually takes away his passport,

16:41 not letting him leave,

16:42 and told him to hush up with all the anti-American Holy War talk.

16:46 So, Osama finds another plan to maybe win back the heart of the royals.

16:51 (dark music) Saudi Arabia has a next-door neighbor named Iraq,

16:57 who was run by Saddam Hussein, who Osama sees as a really bad Muslim,

17:02 totally secular and brutal, and he's just like not a good guy.

17:06 Saddam is also cashing in on the oil boom.

17:08 He's building big palaces and statues of himself all over the country.

17:12 Oh yeah, and he also used the oil money to build a giant army,

17:15 like, the fourth biggest in the world.

17:18 With this massive army,

17:20 Saddam decided that he could maybe multiply his oil reserves if

17:24 he popped down to invade this little tiny country of Kuwait,

17:28 where there's also loads of oil.

17:30 This sort of freaked the Saudis out.

17:31 If Saddam with his giant army could grab Kuwait,

17:35 what would stop him from marching right across this desert into Saudi Arabia?

17:40 So there's this moment that, like, ugh,

17:42 it's like the moment of infamy of this whole thing,

17:45 where Osama goes to the Saudis and he says...

17:48 I volunteer as tribute.

17:50 He doesn't actually say, "I volunteer in tribute." That was "Hunger

17:53 Games."- I believe we have a volunteer.

17:55 But he effectively says, "I have me and my battle-hardened men who, like,

18:00 can go in and fight against Saddam

18:02 and defend the kingdom." And the Saudis are like,

18:06 "Um, no, we're not gonna, like, let this ragtag group of, like,

18:11 rebel fighters fight off the fourth-largest

18:13 army in the world." And Osama's like, "Well, we beat the Soviets.

18:17 Like, they're a big army with nuclear weapons

18:19 and everything." And the Saudis are like, "Yeah,

18:21 because you hid in the hills, in caves,

18:24 in Afghanistan." Prince Sultan literally told Bin Laden verbatim, quote,

18:29 "There are no caves in Kuwait." And then he asks them,

18:34 "What will you do when he lobs the missiles

18:36 at you with chemical and biological weapons?" Osama's response,

18:39 "We will fight them with our faith." (sinking

18:43 music) And the Saudis are like, "Um, awkward.

18:48 Sorry, dude.

18:49 Like...

18:49 (scoffs)" Instead the king met with somebody else that he thought would

18:53 make a much better fit than Bin Laden and his faith fighters.

18:57 (dramatic music) Dick Cheney had flown to Saudi

19:03 Arabia the day after Saddam had invaded Kuwait.

19:06 At this point, the bromance between the U.S.

19:08 and Saudi Arabia had cooled a little bit as Saudi had

19:11 gotten more and more flak for being in bed with the U.S.

19:14 But even despite this, he told Cheney to come

19:17 with as much force and as quickly as he could.

19:23 And that is exactly what Dick Cheney did.

19:26 Ready and willing to employ all means necessary.

19:30 (explosion booms faintly)- The U.S.

19:36 went insane here.

19:38 They recruited 37 other countries,

19:40 and then they sent more firepower in terms of ships and bombers

19:44 and troops and all this stuff than you and I could never imagine.

19:48 It was insanity.

19:49 And they totally crushed Saddam.

19:52 Within a few weeks, they had pushed Saddam back

19:55 and completely won over the hearts of the royals.

19:59 The bromance is back in business.

20:01 (subdued music) So, now you have these Saudis that are

20:04 beaming at the Americans for helping them fight off Saddam.

20:07 And you have a bunch of bases that the U.S.

20:09 set up to mount this attack.

20:12 Way more than before.

20:13 The U.S.

20:14 came with all of this firepower and manpower and bases and artillery.

20:19 And then they just sort of never left.

20:21 Something that really pissed off a lot of Saudis,

20:24 who were very uncomfortable with U.S.

20:27 presence to begin with.

20:28 But the guy who was most pissed off

20:30 than anyone in the Middle East at this point?

20:33 Osama bin Laden, who had not only been rejected by his own country,

20:38 but then who got chosen instead, but the great Satan, the United States,

20:43 a power that Osama had built his entire life fighting against.

20:48 So, Osama bin Laden starts to double down on his original mission.

20:51 He leaves Saudi Arabia and begins coordinating very precise

20:57 attacks that could really only be coordinated by a guy

21:00 who was good at technical details of a construction

21:03 company and who had lots of money to fund it.

21:05 He carries out attacks against the United States all around the world.

21:09 And by the late '90s,

21:11 he starts planning the attack that would change our world forever.

21:15 (siren wailing) (radios chatter) (audio whines) (soft dramatic music)- So,

21:25 this is just the first half of the story.

21:28 What happens next is something that we're all kind of familiar with.

21:32 (fanatics chant) (gunshots chatter) In fact,

21:38 I think we're all still kind of processing the U.S.

21:40 presence in the Middle East today and how that all went down.

21:44 But it deserves taking a look at, and I'm not going to do that right now.

21:47 I want to make a separate video for Iraq and Afghanistan and Israel and Iran,

21:52 and dive into each of these cases to show how the U.S.

21:55 presence in the Middle East is not just about oil.

21:58 In fact, oil is becoming less and less of a vital aspect of the U.S.

22:02 presence as we have alternative sources of this sort of energy.

22:05 Instead, our presence in the Middle East has become a fixture of how

22:09 we think about foreign policy and how we think about the map.

22:12 It's become so embedded in our military

22:15 doctrine and in our foreign policy doctrine

22:18 that it's proving to be really hard to think about how we could ever get out.

22:31 (soft dramatic music) One of the most important wars of the last

22:34 50 years is one that we don't hear about much.

22:36 When in 1980, two of the Middle East's most powerful countries, Iran and Iraq,

22:41 waged eight years of some of the worst

22:44 trench and chemical warfare since World War I,

22:47 leaving both countries devastated.

22:50 This is the war that fractured the Middle East into lines

22:53 that still play out in nearly every conflict there today.

22:57 It set the U.S.

22:58 and Iraq on a path that ultimately led to the American invasion.

23:01 And it defined Iran's often hostile relationship with the wider world.

23:06 This is the Iran-Iraq War.

23:12 It's 1979, and Iran is in the middle of a revolution.

23:15 (crowd chanting) The country is coming off

23:19 of decades of being ruled by the Shah, a king that the U.S.

23:23 and UK had installed in the 50s

23:25 after covertly overthrowing Iran's democratically-elected leader.

23:29 But after years of The Shah's corrupt autocratic rule,

23:33 a mass uprising violently overthrows him,

23:35 creating what becomes an Islamic republic,

23:39 headed by an Ayatollah named Ruhollah Khomeini.

23:42 (soft dramatic music) Khomeini, and a group of Shia religious scholars,

23:47 want to impose fundamentalist rule on the country and are

23:52 hostile to both the Western powers and the neighboring Soviet Union.

23:57 They establish a military force called the Islamic Revolutionary Guard,

24:01 which is meant to protect their hold on the revolution

24:04 and to suppress the other groups who helped overthrow the Shah.

24:08 The U.S.

24:08 is watching all of this in shock.

24:10 Their biggest ally in the region, and a major oil producer,

24:14 has just turned from friend to fierce enemy.

24:18 But the biggest tremors of this revolution are

24:20 felt in the rest of the Middle East.

24:22 (soft tense music) Iran sends out radio

24:25 broadcasts to Arab countries like Saudi Arabia, Lebanon, Kuwait, and Iraq,

24:30 calling for people to rise up and overthrow their own rulers.

24:34 They're trying to export their revolution to their neighbors

24:37 to gain new allies in the region.

24:39 Neighboring leaders, most of them Sunni Muslim, don't like this.

24:44 Saudi Arabia's king fears being overthrown just like the Shah was.

24:47 And in Iraq, Saddam Hussein sees

24:50 this Shia religious revolution on his eastern border

24:53 and worries that the Shia majority that he

24:55 rules over will rise up against him too.

24:58 But he also sees this as an opportunity.

25:01 Iran and Iraq have been fighting over this border territory for years.

25:06 This waterway is a critical access point to the Persian Gulf

25:09 where both countries export their oil to the rest of the world.

25:13 In a treaty between the two back in 1975,

25:17 Saddam had to give up full control of this waterway,

25:20 as well as access to oil-rich regions in what was now Iran.

25:25 Saddam hates this treaty and is considering taking the waterway back by force.

25:30 The Iranian Revolution has left the country weak and fractured.

25:34 Khomeini and his revolutionary guard are

25:36 still fighting other political factions for control.

25:39 The Iranian military, which used to be funded and trained by the United States,

25:44 is now weak, its leaders having been jailed or executed after the revolution.

25:50 Iran's military would normally be able to crush Iraq in an invasion,

25:54 but maybe not anymore.

25:56 Saddam sees this as an opportunity to weaken a major rival.

26:01 Saddam is also riding on a delusion that he himself

26:04 is going to unify the Arab world under his leadership.

26:07 If he invades Iran, maybe the rest of the Middle

26:10 East will rally behind him against this new common enemy.

26:14 He thinks it'll be a quick victory.

26:16 So in September of 1980,

26:18 he decides to prepare 10,000 Iraqi troops to cross the border to invade Iran.

26:23 (soft dramatic music) (engine rumbling) What's about to happen

26:25 here isn't just the start of a new war.

26:28 (guns boom) Saddam is kicking off a dynamic that will

26:33 dominate the Middle East for more than 40 years,

26:38 the fight between revolutionary change and status quo power.

26:43 (subdued music) The war officially starts when Saddam sends his air

26:53 force over the border in a surprise attack on Iranian air bases.

26:56 His 10,000 soldiers cross from Basra into Southern Iran.

27:01 Further north, Saddam opens a second front to seize

27:04 strategically-located border towns and put pressure on his enemy.

27:08 These air attacks mostly fail, and Iran responds with airstrikes of their own

27:12 into Iraqi territory hitting oil facilities.

27:15 Iran still has sophisticated jets that the United

27:19 States had given the previous regime.

27:20 This gives them an edge in the air.

27:23 (bombs booming) The war quickly sucks in the rest of the region.

27:28 Israel is among the first.

27:30 It wants to keep these two adversaries occupied,

27:33 fighting with each other, keeping both sides weak.

27:35 So almost immediately, Israel secretly sells supplies and parts to Iran.

27:40 This helps the Iranian Air Force keep planes in the air.

27:45 Now, Iran and Israel are not friends,

27:47 but Israel sees Iraq as a greater threat here.

27:50 So they're willing to support.

27:53 Iran needs to get its military organized if they're gonna fight this war.

27:57 So they release military officers that they had jailed during the revolution.

28:01 War tends to unify a nation, and in this case,

28:05 the fractured country of Iran is unifying around Iraq's invasion,

28:09 creating this irony that Saddam is the one

28:13 who actually cements Khomeini's hold on power.

28:17 Saudi Arabia and Kuwait also step in here,

28:20 giving billions of dollars to fund Iraq's war efforts.

28:23 They want to weaken Iran and turn back its revolution.

28:27 The Middle East is now dividing between, on one side,

28:30 Arab states who are ruled by aging,

28:32 Sunni monarchies and strongmen who fear change,

28:35 and on the other side, a Shia Iran bent on revolution,

28:40 on remaking the region in its image.

28:45 China is also watching this war.

28:47 They say they will maintain strict neutrality,

28:49 but they take the opportunity to sell weapons to both sides of the conflict.

28:54 They eventually become Iran's top supplier of weapons.

28:57 (subdued music) For most of 1981, the two armies are in a stalemate,

29:02 with Iraq holding small but important stretches of border territory.

29:07 The global powers see this stalemate and try to negotiate a ceasefire,

29:12 hoping that this conflict that threatens so much

29:14 of the global oil supply will end soon.

29:17 What they don't know is that this is really just the beginning.

29:22 Saddam agrees to the ceasefire, but Khomeini does not.

29:25 This war has become so useful to his goals,

29:28 unifying the country and keeping the military occupied so

29:32 that it doesn't become a rival to his power.

29:34 Khomeini needs the war to continue.

29:36 So Iran demands that Saddam Hussein step down.

29:40 They say the war will continue until his rule is ended.

29:43 Saddam, of course, refuses.

29:45 So Iran goes on the offensive.

29:48 Their forces are now organized.

29:50 Their officers have been freed from jail,

29:51 and they're able to recapture the territory that Saddam had taken,

29:55 even pushing into Iraq.

29:57 Saddam's hopes of a quick victory and a gain

30:00 of some valuable territory are now dead.

30:03 So he turns to the United States for support and the U.S.

30:06 agrees to help.

30:07 They hope to weaken Iran and its

30:10 call for anti-American Islamic revolution across the region.

30:14 So the U.S.

30:15 starts giving Saddam intelligence and satellite

30:17 imagery on Iranian troop movement.

30:20 Iraq also gets another big backer, the Soviet Union.

30:24 The Soviets are at war in neighboring

30:27 Afghanistan trying to suppress another religious uprising,

30:30 but they also have allies in this region.

30:32 So over the course of the war,

30:34 the Soviets become a top supplier of weapons to Iraq.

30:40 Now remember the situation between these two.

30:42 It's a tense moment in the Cold War,

30:44 and the United States and Soviet Union are suddenly

30:46 supporting the same side of this Middle East conflict,

30:49 both backing the country that will support the status quo,

30:53 nothing changing, allowing their great power struggle to continue as it has.

30:58 But by the summer of 1982, Iran is now pushing into Iraqi territory,

31:03 much of their campaign focused on the city of Basra.

31:06 If Iran can take Basra, it will cut off Iraq from the Persian Gulf,

31:11 preventing them from shipping out their oil.

31:13 Iraqi forces are outnumbered here, so they start to dig in and build trenches,

31:18 erecting barbed wire barriers, planting landmines,

31:21 and surrounding the city to stop Iran from taking it.

31:24 The fighting starts to resemble the brutal warfare of World War I,

31:28 waves of artillery strikes,

31:30 and the Iranian military resorting to human wave attacks where thousands of boys

31:35 and men charge over open fields leading to huge numbers of casualties.

31:40 Iran is not successful in taking the city,

31:43 but this attack does weaken Saddam, showing that he's vulnerable.

31:48 And this is where we need to look to the north to talk about the Kurds.

31:51 (subdued music) The Kurds are a minority group in the north of Iraq.

31:55 They've been long suppressed by Saddam Hussein,

31:58 and they see this moment as an opportunity

32:00 to break away from Iraq to make their own country.

32:03 So Kurdish forces start fighting with the Iraqi army, taking towns and villages.

32:08 So now Saddam is fighting two different armies,

32:11 one of which lives in his own country.

32:14 Iran starts sending support to the Kurds

32:17 who have a presence in this mountainous, oil-rich part of Iraq.

32:21 If the Kurds can hold it and keep Saddam's regime away from all of this oil,

32:26 it would have a major effect on this war.

32:29 This is a big deal for Saddam,

32:31 and he switches tactics to make sure he can control this northern area.

32:35 He escalates by using chemical weapons against

32:39 the Kurds as well as the Iranians.

32:42 Shells filled with mustard gas,

32:44 weapons that cause extreme burning and blindness,

32:48 a weapon that is illegal under international law,

32:50 but even still, the global powers who

32:53 are supporting him mostly look the other way.

32:55 The U.S.

32:56 starts sending technology and money to Saddam,

32:59 even restoring official diplomatic ties with Iraq.

33:02 This allows Iraq to buy technology from the United

33:05 States that helps them develop their weapons programs,

33:09 including the horrific chemical and biological weapons

33:13 that he will soon be using on the battlefield.

33:16 They need him to keep fighting because this war has changed.

33:19 It went from protecting Saddam from revolution

33:22 to now using Saddam to weaken Iran.

33:26 So they keep supporting him,

33:27 showing him that he can use chemical weapons without being punished.

33:31 The chemical attacks help push back Iranian forces,

33:35 and the war reaches a new stalemate.

33:41 1984 is the year that the oil war begins in this conflict.

33:47 Iraq starts attacking Iranian oil tankers in the Persian

33:50 Gulf using new jets provided by France, a new entrant to this conflict.

33:55 Saddam warns that he'll also attack any ship going into Iranian ports.

34:00 Iran retaliates by attacking oil tankers carrying Iraq's oil.

34:04 The oil that the entire globe relies on is

34:07 now at the center of this increasingly brutal conflict.

34:10 Hundreds of commercial ships are attacked by both sides,

34:14 resulting in the death of over 400 civilian sailors.

34:17 The U.S.

34:18 has to send in two frigates and a guided

34:20 missile destroyer into the Persian Gulf to escort U.S.

34:23 ships, hoping that their presence will stop these attacks.

34:28 Meanwhile, Iran is making progress on the ground,

34:30 slowly taking territory from Iraq and continuing

34:33 attacks on the vital port city of Basra.

34:36 (soft grim music) It's 1985 and Saddam is about to escalate to a new extreme.

34:43 He starts shooting missiles and dropping bombs

34:46 on Iranian cities all over the country, including the capitol.

34:49 This kills 16,000 people and leaves many homeless.

34:54 Iran responds, striking Iraqi cities, firing these massive missiles,

34:59 primarily at the capital of Baghdad.

35:04 These strikes hit civilian targets like a school

35:07 and a bus station with hundreds of casualties.

35:10 Civilians on both sides are now caught

35:12 in the crossfire of this brutally escalating war.

35:15 Their cities and their homes are not safe, so many flee.

35:18 These events leave an entire generation scarred by the trauma of war

35:22 and a disdain for the outside powers that have ripped their country apart.

35:29 And speaking of outside powers, this is when the U.S.

35:32 starts double dealing.

35:33 They start selling missiles to Iran,

35:35 which gives Iran an edge against Iraqi forces who the U.S.

35:41 is also supporting.

35:42 Behind all this is President Ronald Reagan,

35:44 who wants to use the money from this deal

35:47 to fund an anti-communist militia group in Nicaragua.

35:52 It's all supposed to be a secret,

35:54 but will eventually come out and be known as the Iran-Contra scandal.

35:59 Meanwhile, Kuwait is asking the U.S.

36:01 to be more aggressive to protect their oil tankers.

36:04 Iranian attacks on their ships have started to take a toll.

36:07 The U.S.

36:08 is getting more involved in the war.

36:10 Their presence in the Persian Gulf is growing.

36:13 They start putting American flags on Kuwaiti

36:16 tankers to deter Iran from attacking them.

36:21 And then in March of 1988,

36:23 Iran partners with the Kurdish fighters to take over the Iraqi town of Halabja.

36:28 The Kurds know that this is going to set Saddam off,

36:31 and they brace themselves for a brutal retaliation.

36:34 But what comes next is worse than anyone could have prepared for.

36:38 The Iraqi army drops bombs and artillery shells containing deadly chemicals,

36:43 blanketing the entire town with a cloud of deadly gas that sinks

36:47 into homes and buildings and the underground

36:50 shelters where many were hiding for protection.

36:53 It's a brutal attack that kills over 5,000 Iraqi Kurds,

36:57 mostly unarmed civilians.

37:00 And it was a part of a broader campaign that Saddam

37:03 was now waging to wipe out the Kurdish people entirely.

37:07 He now had what he believed was a justification.

37:10 So the Iraqi Army starts going village to village,

37:14 dropping chemical weapons on civilians and executing any survivors.

37:20 This resulted in an estimated 50 to 100,000 deaths

37:23 in what has now been deemed as a genocide,

37:26 one of the many war crimes committed by Saddam Hussein.

37:30 The U.S.

37:31 knows this is happening, and yet, according to now-public documents,

37:36 the official government line was to turn a blind eye,

37:39 to blame everything on Iran.

37:43 Saddam's horrific war crimes project a new fear onto the civilians in Iran who

37:49 now worry that a missile loaded with deadly gas could land on their cities.

37:53 Many flee to take shelter in the mountains.

37:55 And by now, after eight years of devastating war,

37:59 Iran's economy and social order is frayed.

38:02 Their leader, Ayatollah Khomeini, is feeling the pressure to end this war.

38:09 More than a million lives have been lost in this war.

38:12 All sides are looking for a way out.

38:15 And the UN Security Council is pressuring the parties to accept a ceasefire.

38:19 Then in July of 1988, a U.S.

38:22 ship in the Persian Gulf shoots down an Iranian passenger jet,

38:26 (soft tense music) killing all 290 civilians on board.

38:33 The U.S.

38:33 shakes it off as an unfortunate accident,

38:35 saying that they mistook the airliner for a hostile F-16 fighter jet.

38:40 They pay compensation to the victim's families,

38:42 and President Reagan sends a letter apologizing,

38:45 but the government never formally apologizes.

38:48 And the captain of the ship who did this later received a medal

38:51 which fed a deep suspicion in Iran that this attack was deliberate,

38:55 that it was a scheme to coerce them into accepting peace.

38:59 Fear of more American attacks, along with a new offensive by Iraq,

39:03 pushes the Iranian forces to withdraw from the country,

39:06 and both sides finally accept a ceasefire.

39:09 (subdued music) The war is finally over,

39:14 and after all of this, the borders were unchanged from before the fighting.

39:19 But in some ways, this was really just the first

39:22 round in a larger conflict that has continued through to today,

39:26 a war for the future of the Middle East,

39:29 one that the United States is deeply involved in but that most

39:33 expresses itself as a cold war between Saudi Arabia and Iran,

39:38 who now fuel civil wars around the region in Lebanon, Syria,

39:42 and Yemen, backing their own proxy fighters and making these conflicts worse.

39:47 But another major takeaway here is that this war

39:49 defined Iran's relationship to the rest of the world,

39:52 especially the United States.

39:54 Iranian hardliners came to feel confirmed in their belief that they could never

40:00 trust an outside world bent on Iran's

40:02 destruction and seemingly unconstrained in their violence,

40:05 leading some leaders to conclude that only nuclear

40:08 weapons could stave off disaster from the outside.

40:11 Saddam Hussein's Iraq emerged battered by this war,

40:15 humiliated by this failure against Iran.

40:18 He faced growing internal resistance from his people,

40:21 which he suppressed with more and more violence.

40:24 He also came out of this with huge war debts to Kuwait and Saudi Arabia.

40:29 Angry that his allies had billed him to fight

40:31 a war on their behalf, a few years later, Saddam invades Kuwait seeking its oil,

40:37 taking the spoils that he felt he was owed.

40:39 And this is when his one-time backer,

40:41 the United States, quickly turns against him,

40:44 expelling him from Kuwait and beating him back in a swift 43-day victory,

40:49 cutting him off from the world economy and turning him into a pariah, an enemy.

40:54 A decade after Saddam had gassed his own people, the U.S.

40:57 finally blamed him for it, turning it into a byword for his cruelty

41:01 and the centerpiece for their demand that he step down.

41:04 A few years later, George W.

41:06 Bush would cite these weapons of mass destructions,

41:10 the ones that he would never find,

41:11 as a reason to invade the country to topple Saddam.

41:15 Bush's war room was filled with the same officials who had

41:19 covered for Saddam and his war crimes in the first place,

41:22 and making it so crystal clear that, even though

41:25 this war between Iran and Iraq ended decades ago,

41:28 the Middle East we see today is built

41:31 off of what happened during those eight brutal years.

41:34 Before we go into the next video,

41:35 I just want to remind you that this is all made possible because of Ground News,

41:40 the sponsor of this compilation.

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42:01 (dramatic music) (keyboard clicking) In the summer of 2002,

42:14 the Director of the British Intelligence Agency,

42:16 MI6, Richard Dearlove, traveled to Washington D.C.

42:20 to meet with the Director of the CIA, George Tenet.

42:23 The topic of the meeting was Iraq and its leader, Saddam Hussein.

42:27 In the meeting, the CIA director

42:29 shared classified information with his British counterpart,

42:31 who then traveled back to London to 10 Downing Street,

42:35 the home of the Prime Minister, Tony Blair.

42:38 Dearlove told his Prime Minister everything about what was really

42:42 happening behind the scenes in the United States, how the U.S.

42:45 was planning to invade Iraq no matter what.

42:48 It was a highly classified meeting but notes

42:50 were taken and classified and put into a memo.

42:53 That memo was later leaked to British author and journalist, Michael Smith,

42:57 who published it in 2005 and that's what we're

43:00 looking at, a secret meeting and the memo it produced,

43:03 meant only for the eyes of top British officials.

43:06 It was an explosive leak.

43:08 What we see is that Dearlove tells his Prime

43:11 Minister everything he heard in Washington a few days earlier,

43:14 and that this was a very different story than

43:16 the one the Bush administration was telling to the public,

43:19 that an American invasion was inevitable,

43:21 that Bush's people were fixated on removing Saddam Hussein from power,

43:25 no matter what, and that the U.S.

43:27 government was blatantly cooking up intel and facts to help sell their invasion.

43:31 This document shows us how power really works in our world,

43:35 how a small group of people decided to topple a dictator,

43:39 to occupy a country, and then invented a story to support their plan.

43:43 It was a false story, but it helped them sell a horrifying war.

43:47 It's a story that is revealed in detail by the Downing Street memo.

43:52 (dramatic music continues)- States like these constitute an axis of evil.

43:56 One last chance to avoid war.

43:58 And the entire world will know that we will take whatever actions necessary.

44:04 On September the 11th,

44:06 enemies of freedom committed an act of war against our country.

44:09 The United States military has begun strikes

44:12 against Al-Qaeda terrorist training camps in Afghanistan.

44:15 [Johnny] Let's start by looking at another document from the fall of 2001

44:19 when Deputy Secretary of Defense Paul Wolfowitz created this memo for his boss,

44:23 Donald Rumsfeld, the Secretary of Defense.

44:26 This was just 10 weeks after the attacks that changed

44:29 the course of history but this document wasn't about that.

44:32 It was about Iraq, a country that had nothing to do with 9/11.

44:36 Rumsfeld reviewed the document before meeting with an army general.

44:40 He marked it up with his notes,

44:41 giving us insight into what the Secretary of Defense

44:44 of the United States was really thinking about after 9/11,

44:48 how this group of military leaders were set on, quote,

44:50 "building momentum" to topple Iraq's dictator,

44:53 Saddam Hussein, to decapitate the government,

44:56 a government that was no longer useful to them.

44:58 Saddam Hussein had been a useful client to the United States,

45:02 especially in the '80s when he was waging a war against Iran,

45:05 an enemy of the United States.

45:07 But those days were now over.

45:09 Saddam had turned into just a troublemaker in the region,

45:11 creating instability that could threaten the U.S.' easy access to oil.

45:16 Two hours ago, allied air forces began

45:19 an attack on military targets in Iraq and Kuwait.

45:22 This conflict started August 2nd when the dictator

45:25 of Iraq invaded a small and helpless neighbor.

45:28 [Johnny] And in many ways, Iraq was an old mess in need of cleaning up,

45:32 a mess that Bush Senior had failed to resolve during the first Gulf War.

45:36 Iraq was supposed to disarm itself after that war

45:39 but had kicked out the UN weapons inspector teams.

45:42 (brooding music) But that wasn't the main reason why,

45:45 right after 9/11, these guys were talking about invading Iraq.

45:48 A bigger reason is that these leaders wanted

45:50 to remind the world who the global superpower was.

45:54 They needed to after being brutally attacked on their own soil.

45:57 A non-U.S.-friendly regime, like Iraq,

46:00 couldn't be allowed to stand in a post 9/11 world,

46:03 or in the words of Rumsfeld himself, hours after the towers fell,

46:07 quote, "We need to bomb something else to show that we're big and strong

46:12 and not gonna be pushed around." Iraq and its leader was that something else.

46:18 And now, Bush and his advisors were looking at a plan to make it a reality.

46:22 But how to start the war?

46:24 Could they tie Saddam Hussein to something that Americans feared,

46:27 like 9/11 or anthrax?

46:29 Or could they tell a story about weapons of mass destruction?

46:32 What other countries could they bring in to support their invasion?

46:35 And, of course, the most important consideration,

46:38 Rumsfeld jots it here at the end,

46:40 they would need an influence campaign, they would need to sell the war.

46:44 And when should they begin?

46:46 How about right away?

46:47 (intense music)- Iraq continues to flaunt

46:50 his hostility toward America and to support terror.

46:52 [Johnny] Three months later, the President was telling the world that Iraq was

46:55 one of a group of evil countries that the U.S.

46:58 must oppose in the global fight against good and evil.

47:01 States like these constitute an axis of evil.

47:04 The price of indifference would be catastrophic.

47:07 [Johnny] By the summer of 2002,

47:08 this idea that Bush's advisors had scratched down

47:11 after 9/11 was developing into an official policy.

47:14 That handwritten influence campaign to sell the war was now in full swing.

47:19 There is no doubt that Saddam Hussein now has weapons of mass destruction.

47:23 The Iraqi regime has been free to pursue

47:25 the development of weapons of mass destruction.

47:28 We know they have weapons of mass destruction, there isn't any debate about it.

47:32 [Johnny] And this is exactly what the head of MI6 told Prime Minister Tony Blair

47:35 at his house in the summer of 2002 after meeting with the CIA in Washington.

47:40 It's what we see in the Downing Street memo that there

47:43 was a perceptible shift in attitude in Washington and that the U.S.

47:47 invasion of Iraq was now seen as inevitable and that they were now

47:51 fixing intelligence around a decision that they

47:54 had already made, and that the U.S.

47:56 wasn't really planning to work with the UN.

47:58 They didn't want weapons inspections or getting

48:00 UN approval for a military force.

48:02 And crucially, the head of the MI6 tells the Prime Minister that these Bush

48:07 people aren't really thinking much about the aftermath of such an invasion.

48:13 What is inevitable is not regime change,

48:14 it is disarmament of weapons of mass destruction.

48:17 (subdued music)- [Johnny] This memo wasn't supposed

48:19 to be seen by anyone but just a few, and that's why we can learn from it.

48:23 It serves as one of the most potent pieces of evidence

48:26 that the Bush administration was maneuvering two very different stories.

48:30 Their private story about the need to remove a dictator to project U.S.

48:34 power, which was in stark contrast to the public

48:36 story that they had to tell to sell the invasion, their influence campaign.

48:41 Any country on the face of the earth with an active

48:44 intelligence program knows that Iraq has weapons of mass destruction.

48:47 [Johnny] Because they knew that if they were really gonna sell this war,

48:50 they would need to convince not only the American

48:52 public but also Congress and at least partially, the international community.

48:57 What we learned in the Downing Street memo is that they

48:59 had settled on two main focus points for their story,

49:02 that Iraq has weapons of mass destruction

49:04 and that they're also working with the masterminds of 9/11.

49:08 Not long after this meeting between MI6 and the CIA,

49:11 Bush and his allies ramp up their influence campaign to sell their war.

49:16 We've learned that Iraq has trained Al-Qaeda members in bomb making,

49:20 poisons, and deadly gases.

49:22 [Johnny] The sales pitches to the American people

49:24 for an invasion of Iraq were made with absolute certainty.

49:27 Certainty that Iraq had WMDs.

49:30 He had agreed, and the UN had agreed, that he would not have a WMD program.

49:34 We know he does have one.

49:36 [Johnny] Certainty that they wanted to use

49:37 them against Americans and American allies.

49:40 Simply stated, there is no doubt that Saddam

49:43 Hussein now has weapons of mass destruction,

49:46 that he is amassing them to use against our friends,

49:49 against our allies, and against us.

49:52 [Johnny] Certainty that Iraq was harboring terrorists.

49:55 An Al-Qaeda terrorist escaped from Afghanistan and are known to be in Iraq.

50:00 [Johnny] And certainty that Iraq was working on obtaining nuclear weapons.

50:03 And Iraq's state-controlled media has reported numerous

50:06 meetings between Saddam Hussein and his nuclear scientists,

50:10 leaving little doubt about his continued appetite for these weapons.

50:15 [Johnny] And these speeches were working.

50:16 By the fall of 2002,

50:18 Americans were in favor of an invasion of Iraq by just a narrow majority.

50:22 But there was just one problem, that all of these statements were lies.

50:27 (moody music) Indeed,

50:29 this was already known in the secret rooms of Downing Street that the U.S.

50:34 was fixing their facts and their intel to match their already-made decision.

50:39 Iraq's supposed links to Al-Qaeda were based

50:41 on one interrogation of a guy whose testimony lacked,

50:45 quote, "specific details" and who was intentionally

50:47 lying about it to mislead his interrogators.

50:50 Bush and his allies knew this, it was clearly

50:53 documented back in February of 2002, and yet publicly,

50:56 the scary story about Al-Qaeda being in Iraq

50:59 continued to be sold by Bush and his people.

51:02 The Iraqi regime has plotted to develop anthrax,

51:05 nerve gas, and nuclear weapons for over a decade.

51:08 [Johnny] The case for weapons of mass destruction

51:09 in Iraq was equally thin and senior officials knew it.

51:13 Like in September, 2002,

51:15 when Donald Rumsfeld received this report from the Joint Chiefs

51:18 assessing what real evidence there actually was for WMD in Iraq.

51:22 The report is shockingly honest and it says

51:25 that the conclusion that Saddam has WMD, quote,

51:28 "Relied heavily on analytic assumptions and judgments rather than hard

51:33 evidence." That's word salad for it was speculation and conjecture.

51:37 The report goes on to say that they

51:38 didn't have anything solid on nuclear weapons-related facilities,

51:41 and concludes that they don't know of any facilities

51:43 where Saddam may be producing or testing biological weapons.

51:47 And so, we know now that they had almost

51:50 no evidence for their story about why the U.S.

51:53 should invade Iraq.

51:54 And yet even knowing this, they kept selling the same story,

51:58 convincing the American people.

52:00 There's no doubt in my mind he wants

52:01 to have a nuclear weapon and he's got some capacity.

52:05 Wherever threats are forming against our country, we will respond.

52:08 [Johnny] But they couldn't go on like this forever.

52:10 They knew that if they were really gonna sell this war,

52:12 they were going to need to show real convincing evidence,

52:15 not to the people, but to Congress.

52:19 And this is where we get another instance

52:20 of fixing the intelligence to fit the policy.

52:24 It came in September, 2002,

52:25 when President Bush asked Congress to give him the authority to invade Iraq.

52:29 In response, Senate leaders requested

52:32 an immediate National Intelligence Estimate,

52:34 which is a report from the entire intelligence

52:37 community meant to help Congress make informed decisions.

52:40 This could be really bad for Bush and his allies.

52:43 So he and the CIA get hard at work

52:45 pulling together a report that fits their story,

52:48 intelligence to back up all their public statements and speeches.

52:51 They come out with this highly redacted

52:53 report that they deliver in October of 2002.

52:56 The report makes some very strong claims.

52:59 They claim that Iraq has been building more WMD,

53:02 that they have chemical and biological weapons,

53:04 and that they will have a nuclear weapon during this decade.

53:08 And to congressional leaders, this appeared rock solid.

53:11 Here was the entire intelligence community coming together saying that Iraq

53:15 had horrific weapons and that they wanted to get more.

53:19 Saddam Hussein has composed a scarlet chapter of terror.

53:22 Our only responsible option is to confront this threat before Americans die.

53:28 There is no such thing as a Democrat or Republican war.

53:31 [Johnny] So in that same month,

53:32 based on this report and all of these public speeches,

53:34 Congress gives the green light for war.

53:37 (heart beat thumping) (distressing music)

53:41 But this National Intelligence Estimate was deeply flawed.

53:44 It was a perfect example of the fixed

53:47 intelligence described in the Downing Street memo.

53:49 It was put together in less than a month, totally rushed.

53:52 The report had been plagued by groupthink and directed

53:55 by political pressure with the Bush administration pushing

53:59 analysts to deliver a report that matched their conclusions

54:02 that they had already come to months earlier.

54:04 And they did this using very old intelligence.

54:07 The CIA hadn't had any human assets on the ground for years,

54:11 so their report wasn't even based off of anything after 1998.

54:15 But it didn't matter, Bush and his allies had successfully sold

54:18 the war to Congress and the American people.

54:21 But there was one last hurdle.

54:23 It was the international community, which would mean they would have to face

54:26 the UN process that they apparently had no patience for.

54:31 Iraq has answered a decade of UN demands with a decade of defiance.

54:36 [Johnny] So it's November, 2002,

54:37 and in response to the rising tensions between Iraq and the U.S.,

54:41 the UN Security Council passes this resolution, 1441.

54:45 It was a measure that was meant to give

54:47 Iraq a final opportunity to comply with weapons

54:50 inspections to show the world that they had

54:53 fully disarmed and had no weapons of mass destruction.

54:55 Bush and his allies saw this as an opportunity,

54:58 if they could somehow show that Iraq

55:00 wasn't complying with this new inspection process,

55:03 this resolution implied that they would be justified in invading the country.

55:07 Their long-desired war would be on.

55:10 But they had a problem, which is that Iraq and Saddam

55:13 Hussein were complying with the weapons inspections.

55:16 Over the course of four months,

55:18 UN weapons inspectors searched Iraq from top to bottom.

55:21 They were led by Hans Blix,

55:23 the former Head of the International Atomic Energy Agency.

55:26 They conducted over 900 inspections at over

55:29 500 locations and they didn't find anything,

55:32 no WMD, no biological weapons, no nuclear weapons programs.

55:38 Iraq has, on the whole, cooperated rather well.

55:40 Access has been provided to all sites we have wanted to inspect,

55:43 universities, military bases, presidential sites, and private residences.

55:48 [Johnny] Hans Blix did find two things that were important.

55:51 First, they did find some ballistic missiles that the UN

55:54 says have an effective range that makes them illegal,

55:56 so they would need to be destroyed by Iraq.

55:58 And second, there were some chemical weapons

56:01 that the Iraqi regime said cannot be accounted for.

56:04 But Blix insists that this does not mean that they have these weapons,

56:08 it just means that they need more time to work out the accounting situation.

56:12 But this error was exactly what

56:13 the Bush circle needed to justify their invasion.

56:16 [UN Announcer] I call now on the distinguished

56:18 Secretary of State of the United States of America.

56:22 [Johnny] They sent their most respected cabinet member to the UN,

56:25 Secretary of State, Colin Powell.

56:26 He came equipped with photos of what he says are mobile weapons facilities.

56:32 Saddam Hussein and his regime are concealing

56:34 their efforts to produce more weapons of mass destruction.

56:38 [Johnny] He plays tapes that he says

56:40 prove that the Iraqis are hiding their weapons.

56:43 [Powell] We evacuated everything to make sure it

56:45 was not around when the inspectors showed up.

56:48 [Johnny] And then he says that this is solid evidence that shows

56:51 that Iraq is violating the UN resolution that told them to disarm.

56:54 This whole thing contradicts what the UN weapons inspectors

56:57 had found in their hundreds and hundreds of inspections.

57:00 They bulldozed the process, and say they have justification to invade.

57:04 My colleagues, we have an obligation

57:05 to see that our resolutions are complied with.

57:09 They've got the American public on board,

57:11 they've got Congress on board, and now the UK is in lockstep.

57:16 This is the time for this house to show that we

57:18 will stand up for what we know to be right,

57:20 to show that we will confront the tyrannies and dictatorships

57:23 and terrorists who put our way of life at risk.

57:27 [Johnny] The Bush administration abandons the UN process, and that March,

57:30 his people do what they set out to do 18 months earlier,

57:33 when they were looking for something else to bomb (missile

57:36 roars) to show who's really in charge on the world stage.

57:40 My fellow citizens, American and coalition forces are

57:43 in the early stages of military operations to disarm Iraq,

57:46 to free its people, and to defend the world from grave danger.

57:50 America faces an enemy that has no regard

57:53 for conventions of war or rules of morality.

57:56 (tense music) (explosion booming) (gunshots pop)- [Johnny] Bush's war

58:13 took the life of an estimated half million Iraqis,

58:16 and thousands more who fought for their country.

58:19 And over the course of a decade occupying Iraq,

58:22 no weapons were found, no nuclear facilities, no mobile weapons labs.

58:27 In fact, it seemed like Iraq had dismantled its nuclear program back in 1991,

58:32 and the rest of its chemical and biological weapons just a few years later.

58:37 After the invasion, the U.S.

58:38 never allowed the UN inspectors back into the country to help with their search.

58:43 The U.S.

58:43 would never find a way to link the Iraqi regime to Al-Qaeda or to anthrax.

58:48 Colin Powell, the Secretary of State,

58:50 who played a major role in selling this war to the international

58:54 community would later say that he regrets his part in starting the war.

58:58 I deeply regret that some of the information

59:00 I presented which was multi-source was wrong.

59:02 [Johnny] Hans Blix, the Chief Weapons Inspector for the UN,

59:05 would comment later that year that, "It is sort of fascinating

59:08 that you can have 100% certainty about weapons of mass destruction

59:12 and zero certainty about where they are." We may never know

59:17 what was in the heart and minds of these senior leaders,

59:20 whether they truly believed their own lies,

59:23 whether they felt justified in the choices they made.

59:26 But what we can learn from this story is how

59:28 these leaders behaved when they thought no one was watching,

59:31 when they thought they could tell a compelling story

59:34 to the public while having a totally different set of motivations.

59:37 And how, with enough fear and enough deception,

59:41 you can lead an entire society into an unprovoked war,

59:45 changing the course of history in the process.

59:51 (subdued music) Up in the Zagros Mountains

59:55 have long lived a people called the Kurds.

59:57 They're a people with a centuries long history of fighting

1:00:01 back against invaders who have crossed through their lands,

1:00:04 resisting conquest in the name of defending their shared cultural identity.

1:00:08 Some living as nomads, a people with no friends but these mountains.

1:00:14 Eventually the Ottoman Empire did take over

1:00:17 all of this territory, but even then,

1:00:19 the Kurds maintained large amounts of autonomy and freedom in their land.

1:00:23 Then came World War I when the European powers

1:00:27 defeated the Ottoman Empire and conquered all of this.

1:00:32 The winners got together and discussed how they would carve it up between them.

1:00:36 If you look back at old European maps,

1:00:38 you'll see that all of this area would be labeled Kurdistan,

1:00:42 an area where the Kurdish people lived and had some self-rule.

1:00:46 So while drawing these lines,

1:00:48 the British wanted to mark all of this as Kurdish territory,

1:00:52 paving away for an independent country for the Kurds,

1:00:54 but the new leader of Turkey opposed this plan.

1:00:57 He didn't wanna give all this land and resources to the Kurds.

1:01:01 So he pushed the European forces out of Turkey.

1:01:05 They gave up on this plan to give the Kurds their own land.

1:01:08 And in the end, instead of drawing borders around the Kurds,

1:01:13 the Europeans drew borders through them.

1:01:21 What could have been Kurdistan was now five different territories,

1:01:25 the Kurds split between them.

1:01:27 (inquisitive music) But at first these were just lines

1:01:29 on a map and the Kurds continued to move through this region.

1:01:33 Eventually the Europeans left,

1:01:35 and these became independent countries with leaders

1:01:37 who wanted to consolidate and centralize power.

1:01:40 So these lines hardened,

1:01:42 restricting the Kurds' movement and their livelihood in this region.

1:01:45 But even still, across this region,

1:01:48 the Kurds didn't give up on their idea of someday gaining independence,

1:01:53 self-rule, or maybe even a country of their own.

1:01:55 (foreboding music) Throughout the 1900s,

1:02:02 the Kurds in each of these new countries took

1:02:04 different approaches to fight for an independent Kurdish state.

1:02:07 Some Kurds would use politics, others would use violence.

1:02:11 The early uprisings were crushed by the leaders

1:02:14 of these new countries who saw the Kurds as a threat to their efforts to unify

1:02:18 their country around a common language and culture.

1:02:22 Like in Iran, where the Kurds had some political rights,

1:02:26 but they fought for more.

1:02:27 They wanted autonomy and independence.

1:02:29 The government of Iran wouldn't have any of this.

1:02:31 They would crack down with violence on the Kurds,

1:02:34 often supported by Western powers.

1:02:36 By the 1970s, Iran was going through a revolution

1:02:39 and the Kurds tried again to rise up,

1:02:41 but this new regime had no tolerance for a group

1:02:45 that would challenge the leadership of the ruling religious leader.

1:02:49 So once again, they were put down.

1:02:54 Over in Iraq, Kurdish fighters fought hard against

1:02:57 the government throughout the 20th century, until the 1970s,

1:03:00 when this new regime came in and made a deal with the Kurds,

1:03:05 saying that they would be recognized as an ethnic

1:03:07 group and would be guaranteed political representation.

1:03:10 It seemed like a huge deal for the Kurds,

1:03:12 but it turned out to be a false promise.

1:03:15 The Iraqi regime, now led by Saddam Hussein,

1:03:18 would continue to repress the Kurds,

1:03:20 eventually dropping deadly chemical weapons on Kurdish towns in Iraq,

1:03:24 systematically killing thousands of Kurdish civilians in a genocide

1:03:28 supported by American-made supplies that were sold to Saddam.

1:03:33 Over in Syria, the Kurds were

1:03:35 treated decently under the French-controlled government.

1:03:38 (subdued music) They were citizens and had some rights.

1:03:43 But after the French left in the 40s,

1:03:45 the regimes that came after oppressed the Kurds,

1:03:48 and by the 1970s, the Syrian government was arresting and deporting them,

1:03:53 taking their land and giving it to Arabs.

1:03:56 In total, the Syrian government would remove 140,000 Kurds from the country.

1:04:02 Decades later, Syria and the United States would both

1:04:05 find the Kurds in Syria useful for their political goals.

1:04:11 But first, let's talk about Turkey.

1:04:13 (inquisitive music) There's more Kurdish people here than in any other country.

1:04:18 The same government that had fought against a Kurdish

1:04:21 state early on continued to oppress the Kurds,

1:04:24 denying them citizenship, outlawing their language,

1:04:27 and keeping them out of politics, all with the goal of wiping out their culture

1:04:31 from Turkey as a part of this Turkification campaign,

1:04:35 which tried to unify Turkey under one culture,

1:04:38 targeting the Kurds and other ethnic minorities.

1:04:41 Some Kurds fought back against this in the early years,

1:04:44 but were quickly crushed by the Turkish state,

1:04:46 (explosions boom) leading to the creation

1:04:49 of an armed insurgent group with communist ideology.

1:04:52 They're called the Kurdish Workers Party, or PKK,

1:04:55 and it would become one of the biggest Turkish resistance movements.

1:04:59 The PKK would use violence like suicide bombings and improvised explosives,

1:05:04 as well as youth militia fighters against the Turkish government,

1:05:08 tactics that they say are the only way to fight back against such oppression.

1:05:12 And as a result, Turkey and most

1:05:14 Western powers consider the PKK a terrorist group.

1:05:20 So that's how the Kurds in these four

1:05:22 countries became locked in a conflict with their governments.

1:05:26 They all have different struggles,

1:05:28 but they're all unified by the dream of some version of Kurdish independence.

1:05:32 (subdued music) But it doesn't take long for these regimes to see

1:05:36 that they could use the Kurds as a tool, as a weapon.

1:05:41 One of the earliest examples of this happens

1:05:43 at the end of World War II when the Soviet

1:05:45 Union sees an opportunity to gain land and access

1:05:48 to oil by supplying and arming the Kurds in Iran,

1:05:52 allowing them to rise up against the government

1:05:54 and declare their own country supported by the Soviet Union.

1:05:59 But it didn't work.

1:06:00 The U.S.

1:06:01 pressures the Soviets to leave, and now without support,

1:06:04 the government of Iran, which is backed by the U.S.

1:06:07 and UK, go on to crush this movement of Kurds in their country.

1:06:11 The Kurds are back to being repressed by the government.

1:06:16 In the 1980s, Syria uses the Kurds as a weapon against its

1:06:21 rival Turkey when it allows the PKK to start operating within Syria,

1:06:26 giving them money and weapons so that they can hurt Turkey.

1:06:31 Syria is doing this in spite of having spent years

1:06:35 removing hundreds of thousands of Kurds from its own country.

1:06:41 This escalates the conflict between these two,

1:06:43 and Turkey threatens to invade Syria.

1:06:48 So Syria backs down and kicks the PKK out to avoid being invaded,

1:06:53 showing once again how the Kurds' willingness to fight can

1:06:56 easily become a pawn in the geopolitics of the region,

1:07:00 discarded once they aren't useful anymore.

1:07:03 In the 1980s, Iran and Iraq both used the Kurds

1:07:06 at the same time as a weapon to hurt each other,

1:07:10 even as both are cracking down on Kurds in their own country.

1:07:14 Saddam Hussein funds and arms the Kurds in Iran,

1:07:17 while Iran funds the Kurds in northern Iraq,

1:07:21 both sides hoping to spark a Kurdish

1:07:23 uprising that will distract and weaken their enemy.

1:07:26 In Iraq, Saddam Hussein retaliates against the Kurds

1:07:30 in his country with that genocidal chemical

1:07:32 attack we talked about earlier that killed

1:07:34 at least 50,000 Kurdish people and probably much more.

1:07:39 Once again, the Kurdish dream of independence was used by outsiders as a weapon,

1:07:44 and the Kurdish people paid heavily for it.

1:07:46 (intense music) The U.S.

1:07:48 would get involved when in the '90s they would come

1:07:51 to this region fighting against Saddam Hussein for the first time.

1:07:55 The U.S.

1:07:55 rallies the Kurds, calling for them to overthrow Saddam.

1:07:59 George Bush Sr.

1:08:00 literally calls them to action with television

1:08:03 and radio broadcasts throughout the country.

1:08:05 That the Iraqi people should put him aside,

1:08:08 and that would facilitate the resolution

1:08:12 of all these problems that exist and certainly

1:08:15 would facilitate the acceptance of Iraq

1:08:18 back into the family of peace-loving nations.

1:08:21 [Johnny] And it seems to work.

1:08:22 It sparks an uprising that looks successful at first.

1:08:25 The U.S.

1:08:26 had instigated this uprising,

1:08:28 and they have forces in the region that they could send to support the Kurds,

1:08:33 but they do nothing.

1:08:34 This allows Saddam to regather his forces

1:08:37 and crush this coup and to increase this oppression,

1:08:41 ensuring that nothing like this ever happens again.

1:08:44 Now, the U.S.

1:08:45 and UK do eventually step in to create this no-fly zone meant

1:08:49 to protect the Kurds in the north and the Shiites in the south.

1:08:52 This gives the Kurds some autonomy over their region

1:08:55 and protects them from further airstrikes by the Iraqi Army.

1:08:59 Soon the U.S.

1:09:00 is back in Iraq.

1:09:01 It's 2003, and the Bush administration decides

1:09:04 to invade and remove Saddam from power.

1:09:07 The Kurds in Iraq hope that the U.S.

1:09:09 presence in this region will mean finally they will get their own state,

1:09:14 they will be independent.

1:09:15 They join the U.S.

1:09:17 in fighting against Saddam and his loyalists,

1:09:20 battling insurgents, and later against ISIS.

1:09:22 (gunshots crackle) The Kurds would even go on to hold a vote,

1:09:27 showing that 92% of the population was in favor of independence, but the U.S.

1:09:33 won't support this, worried that it might

1:09:36 destabilize this new Iraqi state that the U.S.

1:09:39 just propped up.

1:09:40 Even when the Kurds fight on the side of the U.S.

1:09:43 and their interests, U.S.

1:09:44 support for their cause still remains very limited.

1:09:48 They still look the other way as Turkey

1:09:50 bombs their towns in Iraq hunting for the PKK.

1:09:55 This same pattern has continued in recent years in the country of Syria,

1:10:00 a country that descended into civil war around 2011.

1:10:03 This chaos looked like an opportunity for the Kurds in Syria,

1:10:07 a chance to establish real control over what they see as a part of Kurdistan.

1:10:12 The PKK in Turkey helps create a new

1:10:15 Kurdish militia called the People's Protection Unit or YPG.

1:10:20 They seize large swaths of land in the north and they declare self-governance.

1:10:24 Around this same time, the terrorist group ISIS is taking huge swaths

1:10:28 of territory in the north and east of the country,

1:10:31 creating their so-called caliphate.

1:10:34 And here comes the U.S.

1:10:36 once again asking the Kurds for help,

1:10:39 hoping that they will fight against ISIS on the ground for them.

1:10:42 But because this group is allied with the PKK,

1:10:46 which they consider a terrorist group, the U.S.

1:10:49 asks this militia to rebrand themselves to the Syrian Democratic Forces,

1:10:53 which obscures their connection to the PKK.

1:10:56 The U.S.

1:10:57 then trains, funds, and arms them to fight ISIS.

1:11:00 The Kurds are, once again, the U.S.'s weapon.

1:11:04 This plan works, and with help from U.S.

1:11:07 airstrikes, this Kurdish militia kicks ISIS out of more and more land.

1:11:11 But Turkey hates this.

1:11:13 All they see is a potential Kurdish state right on their southern border,

1:11:17 a safe haven for the PKK that will

1:11:20 allow more attacks against the Turkish military.

1:11:22 But Turkey can't attack this branch of the Kurds

1:11:24 while they're being supported by the United States.

1:11:27 Lucky for them, there's a new president in the White

1:11:30 House and he's promised to pull the U.S.

1:11:32 out of the war in Syria.

1:11:33 And in 2019, to the dismay of the Kurds, he makes good on this promise.

1:11:38 With the U.S.

1:11:39 out of the way, Turkey invades,

1:11:41 launching airstrikes and artillery against the Kurds in this border region,

1:11:45 saying that their plan is to create

1:11:47 a 32-kilometer-deep safe zone right here along the border,

1:11:51 and that no Kurdish forces are allowed to be here.

1:11:53 The plan was to then resettle Syrian refugees currently living in Turkey.

1:11:59 It's a brutal campaign that looks a lot like

1:12:02 what Syria was doing to the Kurds in the '70s.

1:12:06 (missile whooshes) The U.S.

1:12:09 completely abandons the Kurds, even after using them to fight their enemy ISIS.

1:12:14 Turkey, a NATO and U.S.

1:12:16 ally, continues to bomb them using weapons from the United States.

1:12:21 They spend the next four years sending

1:12:23 drone strikes and airstrikes into Syria and Iraq,

1:12:26 anywhere they think the PKK has a presence.

1:12:29 (subdued music) This map shows all of their attacks during this time.

1:12:35 You can see that it's not just against the Kurds in Turkey,

1:12:39 but across this whole region.

1:12:45 Today, the Kurdish groups in this region vary more widely than ever,

1:12:49 each with different values and visions for the future,

1:12:53 forged from each of their unique struggles and traumas.

1:12:57 Kurdish groups still fight the government in Iran

1:12:59 with the goal of creating their own state.

1:13:01 The Kurds in Iraq did gain some autonomy from the U.S.

1:13:04 in the new Iraqi constitution, but it doesn't seem like this autonomy will last.

1:13:09 As recently, the Iraqi Army is fighting

1:13:12 with the Kurds to maintain control over the oil resources

1:13:16 in this area to keep the Kurds economically dependent

1:13:19 on the central government so that they never break away.

1:13:22 Once again, the U.S.

1:13:23 is not supporting the Kurds in this fight.

1:13:27 Turkey continues its offensive against the PKK

1:13:30 and other Kurdish groups in the region,

1:13:32 and they continue to crack down on the Kurds politically,

1:13:35 arresting Kurdish politicians and activists,

1:13:38 censoring journalists to intimidate the Kurdish

1:13:40 people from participating in the election.

1:13:43 The Kurds in Syria face a new and uncertain future.

1:13:47 They do have some autonomy up here in the north,

1:13:50 but are surrounded by enemies, no longer counting on any support from the U.S.

1:13:58 The story of the Kurds is the story

1:14:00 of a people who are willing to fight like few others,

1:14:04 all in the name of their culture and identity.

1:14:07 That willingness to fight has presented a threat to regional governments,

1:14:11 bent on control of their people and the resources within their borders.

1:14:16 That willingness to fight has also been hijacked by outside powers,

1:14:19 turning the Kurds into a pawn to fulfill geopolitical objectives,

1:14:24 each time showing how willing these powers are

1:14:27 to use the Kurds and then abandon their cause.

1:14:35 (tense music) (leader speaking in foreign language)- [Interviewer] Do

1:14:40 the Palestinians have a right to a separate state?

1:14:43 [Netanyahu] No, I don't think they do.

1:14:45 But...

1:14:46 In 2007, the head of military intelligence

1:14:49 for the Israeli army had a meeting with the U.S.

1:14:52 Ambassador in Tel Aviv.

1:14:54 We're looking at the classified cable that summarizes

1:14:56 what was talked about in this meeting.

1:15:00 The topic of discussion was Iran, Syria, the Gaza Strip, and Hamas.

1:15:05 (loudspeaker blares) Hamas had just won the Palestinian elections,

1:15:09 which kicked off a fight with the other Palestinian group,

1:15:12 which ended in Hamas taking over Gaza completely.

1:15:16 They controlled it.

1:15:16 And if you're an Israeli citizen or the U.S.

1:15:19 government, this is a terrible set of events.

1:15:21 Hamas is a violent extremist group known

1:15:24 to commit heinous violence against civilians in Israel,

1:15:27 and they were now in power.

1:15:29 They controlled the Gaza Strip an hour away from Tel Aviv.

1:15:31 But look at this leaked document.

1:15:33 In this leaked cable,

1:15:34 you see that the Israeli official says that Israel would be happy if Hamas took

1:15:38 over Gaza because it would mean that Israel

1:15:40 could now treat Gaza like a hostile country.

1:15:43 [Reporter] Three days post cease fire, and there's unrelenting bombing in Gaza.

1:15:48 This document is a view into a strategy

1:15:50 that right-wing factions within the Israeli government have used

1:15:53 for decades in an effort to win one

1:15:56 of the most divisive conflicts in the world today,

1:15:59 in which two groups are fighting over one piece of holy

1:16:03 land and one side is winning by using a very specific tactic,

1:16:06 one that the world says is illegal and immoral,

1:16:09 and one that worked for a short time, but that recently has been shown to be

1:16:15 a recipe for even worse violence and conflict and suffering.

1:16:19 (serious music) In this video,

1:16:22 I wanna lay out what this strategy looks like and show you how it failed.

1:16:25 I know this is a topic that is full

1:16:28 of deep emotions that has real stakes in people's lives.

1:16:32 Please know that I am earnest in my efforts

1:16:34 to tell this story with clarity and with accuracy.

1:16:37 And also please note that this is not a full

1:16:40 account of the conflict between Israel and its neighbors,

1:16:43 but I do hope that it sheds light on a view

1:16:45 of the conflict that sometimes gets lost in all of the yelling.

1:16:56 (Netanyahu speaking in foreign language) (crowd

1:17:03 cheering) (subdued music) For 2,000 years,

1:17:17 Jewish people around the world have been

1:17:20 persecuted and segregated and ostracized from society.

1:17:25 That is a fact.

1:17:26 By the time the 1800s came around,

1:17:28 it became clear that wherever the Jews went, persecution would follow.

1:17:39 This is when a movement emerged calling for Jews

1:17:42 to come together and to create a country

1:17:45 for themselves where they could govern themselves

1:17:47 and be free from all of this racist hatred.

1:17:50 The creation of a Jewish country would have at the top

1:17:53 of its priority list the security of the Jewish people.

1:17:56 But the big question was where?

1:17:57 Several places floated around in proposals, Argentina,

1:18:00 even modern-day Kenya, which back then was Uganda.

1:18:05 But most people in this movement wanted

1:18:08 the Jews to return to their historic homeland, a place called Palestine.

1:18:13 (gentle music) Where Jews built their temple and their culture 3,000 years ago,

1:18:20 but then were exiled, and now there was this call to return so

1:18:24 that Jews could feel safe after 18 centuries of Jewish suffering.

1:18:31 So as the 1900s came around, tens of thousands of Jews,

1:18:34 mostly from Europe, flocked to Palestine,

1:18:39 which eventually came under control of the British.

1:18:42 The British were getting ready to leave this region and were struggling

1:18:45 to contain the growing conflict between

1:18:47 native Arabs and all these Jewish immigrants.

1:18:50 Then in the 1940s came a horrific genocide against the Jewish people in Europe,

1:18:56 led out by Hitler and his Nazi regime.

1:18:58 This created a wave of international support for this idea

1:19:02 of giving the Jewish people a homeland where they could be safe.

1:19:05 Before they left, the British asked the UN

1:19:08 to determine what would replace them in Palestine,

1:19:11 and the UN decided that Palestine would become two new countries,

1:19:14 one for the Jews and one for the Palestinian

1:19:17 Arabs that had already been living in this region.

1:19:20 [Reporter] The Jewish state colored light, the Arab state dark.

1:19:23 Jaffa to go to the Arabs, Jerusalem internationalized.

1:19:26 But as happens when outsiders draw lines on old land, there was a problem here.

1:19:31 Within these borders that were meant for the new Jewish country,

1:19:35 hundreds of thousands of Palestinian Arabs were living who would soon have

1:19:39 to leave their homes to move to their side of the line.

1:19:43 (gentle distressing music) Okay, wait.

1:19:49 I'm gonna pause there.

1:19:50 Because as I said this is not a full history of the Arab-Israeli conflict.

1:19:54 We actually just made a video on our new channel Search Party,

1:19:57 which focuses on what happens next,

1:20:00 the conflict between Israel and its Arab neighbors.

1:20:03 You can go watch that.

1:20:04 Link's in the description.

1:20:05 It'll give you some useful context.

1:20:06 For now just know that this led to a horrific conflict.

1:20:09 Jewish militias forced over 700,000 Arabs out

1:20:12 of their homes turning them into refugees.

1:20:14 The proposed borders shifted around, turned into ceasefire lines,

1:20:18 and after all was said and done,

1:20:20 the Jewish people did indeed get their own country, the state of Israel.

1:20:24 (lofty music) And the two important points here are that number one,

1:20:28 the very foundation of the Israeli country is for security

1:20:31 of the Jewish people after nearly 2,000 years of persecution.

1:20:35 And number two, the location they chose to set it up was becoming,

1:20:39 as a result of this conflict, not much safer than Europe.

1:20:49 That's a tension that follows this whole story.

1:20:52 (inquisitive music) Okay, so now let's fast forward to 1967.

1:20:57 Israel has its country and they fight a short war with their Arab neighbors,

1:21:01 and they win that war and they take over all of this land.

1:21:05 It's a huge victory for them.

1:21:07 I'm gonna take away the Sinai Peninsula from here because they did give

1:21:09 that back to Egypt as part of a peace deal a few years later.

1:21:12 Israel now controls important pieces of land that enlarge their Jewish country.

1:21:19 Many saw this victory as a sign from God

1:21:23 that they were actually entitled to be here.

1:21:25 But once again, Palestinians,

1:21:27 nearly a million of whom had been kicked out of their homes,

1:21:30 were living here in the West Bank and the Gaza Strip,

1:21:33 which Israel now controlled, but they weren't really sure what to do with it.

1:21:37 And it's this territory that would become the stage

1:21:39 for the strategy that is the topic of this video,

1:21:42 where over time this land would be sliced up with roads and checkpoints,

1:21:47 walls and other military infrastructure that would

1:21:50 control the movement and lives of the Palestinians.

1:21:54 Soon, even Israeli citizens would start to move out here

1:21:57 in large numbers building full-on towns and further dividing up this territory.

1:22:03 Moving citizens into occupied territory like this is

1:22:06 something that the world has deemed illegal and immoral.

1:22:11 So this occupation starts in 1967 and it goes on for decades,

1:22:15 until eventually the Palestinians living here can't

1:22:18 handle it anymore and they start fighting back.

1:22:20 (intense music) This is known as the first uprising or Intifada.

1:22:30 It started with boycotts,

1:22:31 but escalated into mass protests where Palestinians of all ages would

1:22:36 throw stones and sometimes Molotov

1:22:38 cocktails at much better-equipped Israeli soldiers.

1:22:41 It was Palestinian rage exploding against Israeli occupation,

1:22:44 and it went on for years.

1:22:46 The Israeli government would respond by cracking down,

1:22:49 killing many Palestinians.

1:22:51 Another important thing that happens around the same

1:22:53 time down in the occupied Gaza Strip is

1:22:55 that a new movement forms promising to fight back

1:22:58 against this occupation calling for the destruction of Israel.

1:23:01 The group is called Hamas.

1:23:05 The first Intifada showed that this wasn't gonna work.

1:23:09 Chopping up Palestinian land, oppressing them, keeping them in this occupation,

1:23:14 was only going to produce more violence.

1:23:16 It wasn't gonna fulfill Israel's promise to provide

1:23:19 security and safety for the Jewish people.

1:23:21 They had to switch course.

1:23:23 The security of the Israeli people will be reconciled with the hopes

1:23:28 of the Palestinian people and there will be more security and more hope for all.

1:23:34 [Johnny] So in the 1990s,

1:23:35 they start getting serious about peace talks with the Palestinians,

1:23:38 and they come to this agreement called the Oslo Accords,

1:23:40 (stirring music) which for the first

1:23:43 time establishes a Palestinian government authority

1:23:45 and giving it power to govern pockets of land in the West Bank.

1:23:49 It also gave the Palestinians some authority over almost all of the Gaza Strip,

1:23:54 though there were still settlements in all of these places.

1:23:59 This was a big deal for this conflict.

1:24:01 Like, both sides were talking to each

1:24:02 other and coming to agreements that was giving,

1:24:04 like, authority to the Palestinians.

1:24:06 But another theme of the story is

1:24:08 that hardliners can use violence to derail peace.

1:24:11 And that's exactly what happened here.

1:24:12 (protesters chant) (brooding music) Right-wing Israelis start holding rallies,

1:24:17 calling their Prime Minister a traitor

1:24:19 and a Nazi for giving land to the Palestinians.

1:24:22 Some of these rallies are led by a now familiar character, Benjamin Netanyahu.

1:24:27 The people of Israel want a real peace and real peace means peace with security.

1:24:31 Peace they can trust with a partner they can trust,

1:24:34 and they don't feel they have it here.

1:24:36 We want a real peace, not a fake one.

1:24:38 [Johnny] But the peace talks continue.

1:24:40 With all our neighbors, a comprehensive peace.

1:24:44 And shortly after signing the second part

1:24:46 of this deal to give Palestinians some land,

1:24:48 the Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin is assassinated by a far-right Israeli.

1:24:53 Hamas conducts bus bombings.

1:24:56 And the next year, Benjamin Netanyahu is

1:24:58 elected as the prime minister of Israel.

1:25:02 And Netanyahu is a key figure in this story because his worldview embodies

1:25:07 a way of thinking that has taken root in Israel in recent years.

1:25:11 The idea that the only way to give true security to the Jewish people is

1:25:15 by doing whatever is necessary to stop the Palestinians

1:25:18 from having a state anywhere in these borders.

1:25:22 (gentle music)- Look, I'm 28 years old.

1:25:28 I've had to defend my country in two wars and in many battles.

1:25:31 Nobody wants peace more than Israel.

1:25:34 But the stumbling block to the road for peace is this demand for a PLO state,

1:25:38 which will mean more war, which will mean more violence in the Middle East.

1:25:42 And I think, I sincerely believe, if this demand is abandoned,

1:25:45 we can have real and genuine peace.

1:25:47 So that was Netanyahu.

1:25:48 He was a 28-year-old.

1:25:50 But when he becomes the prime minister a couple decades later,

1:25:53 he spends his term sabotaging the peace accords

1:25:57 that his predecessor had worked so hard to create,

1:25:59 claiming that the occupation of all

1:26:01 this land and its people wasn't actually conquest,

1:26:05 but rather the key for security of the Jewish people.

1:26:08 They had to do this.

1:26:09 Security was the one and only justification for all of this.

1:26:12 So under his watch settlers continue to move into the West Bank.

1:26:18 We found this leaked video of Benjamin Netanyahu

1:26:22 talking to some settlers in the West Bank.

1:26:24 (all speaking in foreign language)- The cameraman

1:26:29 does turn off the camera for a moment, but then turns it back on moments later.

1:26:34 (Netanyahu speaking foreign language)- He is admitting to sabotaging the peace

1:26:43 accords that the Israeli government had signed with the Palestinians,

1:26:49 that because he disagreed with them,

1:26:51 he wanted to sabotage them because he was so against

1:26:54 a Palestinian state or any form of Palestinian autonomy in this land.

1:26:58 And then he goes on to explain what his real thinking is on the situation.

1:27:02 (Netanyahu speaking foreign language)- Netanyahu

1:27:18 is a fantastic politician and statesman, and he's able to sort of cover up

1:27:22 a lot of these policies in the name of security.

1:27:25 But here we see what he really thinks as he's

1:27:29 talking to these settlers thinking he's not being recorded.

1:27:32 So unsurprisingly the appetite for peace breaks down on both sides.

1:27:37 Palestinians come to the conclusion

1:27:39 that the Israelis aren't really serious about

1:27:41 giving them any kind of autonomy in the West Bank or Gaza,

1:27:44 that their situation will never change.

1:27:46 And once again, they rise up in a second Intifada.

1:27:50 This one, much more violent, much more coordinated.

1:27:53 (intense music) Hamas becomes a major player

1:27:59 in the violence with suicide bombings and attacks.

1:28:03 Israel responds with great force and during the fighting,

1:28:06 1,000 Israelis and 3,000 Palestinians are killed.

1:28:10 At this point the Netanyahu way of seeing

1:28:12 the world is starting to look a lot better.

1:28:14 Peace talks didn't work.

1:28:16 All they did was produce more violence.

1:28:18 And so maybe the only way to ensure security is to go back to full-blown

1:28:22 occupation of controlling every move of the Palestinians

1:28:26 in the West Bank and the Gaza Strip.

1:28:27 So at this point the occupation gets more and more suffocating,

1:28:30 more walls, more barriers, more checkpoints, more settlements.

1:28:40 Then in 2005, Israel withdraws from the Gaza Strip,

1:28:43 letting the Palestinian Authority have total control there.

1:28:46 They turn their attention entirely

1:28:48 to their historic homeland of Judea and Samaria, which is the West Bank.

1:28:52 The next year, an election is held in the Palestinian Authorities and the winner

1:28:56 surprised the world and would create a new chapter for this conflict.

1:29:00 The winner of these elections was Hamas.

1:29:02 [Reporter] This is a very, very bad result for the Palestinians and for Israel.

1:29:08 The incumbent Palestinian party that had lost

1:29:10 the election tried to forcibly hold on to power,

1:29:13 and soon the two Palestinian parties were fighting with each other.

1:29:17 And it results in this split between the two Palestinian governments.

1:29:21 It turns into violence.

1:29:22 And when the dust settles,

1:29:23 there's suddenly a bitter divide between these two Palestinian groups,

1:29:27 Hamas completely taking over the Gaza Strip.

1:29:30 (subdued music) And this gets us back to our leaked document

1:29:35 that we started this video with where an Israeli official is saying

1:29:38 that they would actually be happy if Hamas took over the Gaza

1:29:42 Strip because now they can treat Gaza like a hostile country.

1:29:46 (harrowing music) (explosions boom) Now that they're not occupying it,

1:29:51 they're not responsible for the 2 million civilians who are living there.

1:29:55 They can impose a blockade to control anything

1:29:57 coming in and out of the Gaza Strip,

1:29:59 people, food, medicine, money, building supplies.

1:30:02 But there was another reason why Israel was

1:30:05 happy that Hamas now controlled the Gaza Strip.

1:30:08 The Palestinian government was now deeply divided,

1:30:10 Hamas ruling Gaza and the West Bank being run by a more moderate,

1:30:14 secular Palestinian faction.

1:30:15 And crucially neither considered the other to be legitimate,

1:30:19 which weakened their ability to negotiate for any kind of state,

1:30:22 for any kind of country,

1:30:24 especially when Hamas still refused to recognize Israel's right to even exist.

1:30:29 This division played right into the hands of the Israeli right.

1:30:38 And this gets us back to Benjamin Netanyahu,

1:30:40 that enemy of the earlier peace talks.

1:30:43 (brooding music) He gets elected once again in 2009, declaring himself Mr.

1:30:50 Security and promising to provide safety to Israeli

1:30:54 citizens who are still shaken from the second

1:30:56 Intifada and are now worried that Hamas

1:30:58 now controls the entirety of the Gaza Strip.

1:31:00 Netanyahu's playbook was already made clear.

1:31:03 He had said it point blank.

1:31:04 It's what he had been doing for years.

1:31:06 Sabotaging peace talks that would give Palestinians

1:31:08 any kind of authority over this land, and continuing to build settlements,

1:31:12 while continuing in his words in that leaked tape

1:31:14 to hit the Palestinians hard to make it unbearable for them.

1:31:18 A complete assault on the Palestinian government.

1:31:21 Dividing and slowly conquering the Palestinian people,

1:31:25 making life hard and desperate for them,

1:31:28 controlling their lives, watching their every move.

1:31:31 And this is where we get to this paradoxical alignment,

1:31:35 almost alliance between Benjamin Netanyahu and Hamas, the enemy of Israel.

1:31:41 (grim music) As long as Hamas held control over the Gaza Strip,

1:31:47 the Palestinian cause would remain weak and divided.

1:31:51 Netanyahu would feel justified in imposing

1:31:53 this crippling blockade of the Gaza Strip,

1:31:56 which in turn gave Hamas legitimacy among the people of the Gaza Strip,

1:31:59 showing that their armed struggle against Israeli oppression was justified,

1:32:03 provoking them to launch rockets into Israel to show that they

1:32:06 were actually doing something unlike the Palestinian Authority in the West Bank,

1:32:09 which in turn bolstered Netanyahu's narrative

1:32:12 that the Palestinians actually don't want peace,

1:32:14 they want violence and the destruction of Israel.

1:32:16 And the only way for security is more occupation, more oppression.

1:32:25 So instead of try to take Hamas out,

1:32:28 Netanyahu overtly supported them by approving huge transfers of untraceable

1:32:34 cash literally delivered in suitcases into the Gaza Strip,

1:32:38 cash that would inevitably end up in the hands

1:32:40 of Hamas to be used against Israel.

1:32:42 He legitimized Hamas by negotiating with them,

1:32:44 releasing a thousand Palestinian prisoners in exchange for one Israeli.

1:32:48 The Israeli soldier held captive by Palestinian militants

1:32:51 for five years is expected to be freed within days.

1:32:55 The more Netanyahu could keep Hamas in power in Gaza, but keep them contained,

1:33:00 the more he could ensure that Palestinians remain divided.

1:33:03 He could keep peace talks from ever happening,

1:33:05 which in turn gave him time to continue

1:33:08 to pursue his expansionist project in the West Bank.

1:33:11 And indeed, since 2009, when Netanyahu became the Prime Minister,

1:33:15 the number of settlements in the West Bank has only gone up.

1:33:18 (subdued music) And if you look at this map,

1:33:22 you can see how these settlements just weave through and carve up this land,

1:33:27 making it impossible to even fathom what a Palestinian state could look like,

1:33:31 which is precisely the point of the strategy.

1:33:39 I actually reported out here, visiting the settlements back when I was at Vox.

1:33:43 I did a series talking to the settlers,

1:33:45 trying to understand why they live out there,

1:33:46 what it's like to live in these settlements

1:33:48 that are strangely peaceful and banal and just mundane,

1:33:52 people living their lives, because they're protected by the army.

1:33:56 If you want a deeper dive on settlements, you can go watch that series.

1:33:59 But if you're Netanyahu over the last 16 years, you think your plan is working.

1:34:03 Like, you see all these settlements going up,

1:34:06 the international community can't do anything about it.

1:34:08 They keep supporting you.

1:34:09 Every once in a while there's some flare up in the West

1:34:11 Bank where Palestinians get into a fight with Israeli soldiers,

1:34:15 but it gets contained.

1:34:16 Every few years Hamas fires some rockets,

1:34:19 which then gives Israel the excuse to go, as they put it,

1:34:22 "cut the grass" by conducting a short, swift,

1:34:25 violent military campaign to keep Hamas at bay.

1:34:29 And every day that goes by, the notion

1:34:31 of a Palestinian state becomes less and less feasible.

1:34:33 (subdued music) This is one reason why a far

1:34:38 right Israeli lawmaker called Hamas "an asset." (pundit speaking

1:34:42 in foreign language) So divide and conquer has been

1:34:45 the name of the game in Israel for a long time,

1:34:47 but especially in the last 16 years under Netanyahu.

1:34:50 And again, to the people in charge, they think it's working.

1:34:54 Maybe this violent status quo,

1:34:56 this equilibrium can hold and the far right can get exactly what they want.

1:34:59 Security for the Jewish people and expansion into all of this land.

1:35:03 And maybe the occupation will break the Palestinian spirit and they

1:35:07 would give up on their dream of having a state.

1:35:10 But that's not what happened.

1:35:12 On October 7th, 2023, we saw how wrongheaded this theory of security was.

1:35:19 In an unprecedented surprise attack,

1:35:20 the militant Hamas rulers of Gaza sent dozens

1:35:23 of fighters into Israel by land, sea, and air.

1:35:27 This deadly attack launched by Hamas showed us that while Netanyahu's strategy

1:35:31 of divide and conquer might be good for taking over more land,

1:35:35 what it's not good for is making good on the original promise of Israel,

1:35:40 which is ensuring the security of the Jewish people.

1:35:43 In fact, his strategy has produced exactly the opposite.

1:35:47 (crowd chanting in foreign language) Now,

1:35:51 the responsibility for what happened on October 7th lies

1:35:55 with the people who committed those acts of terror,

1:35:58 Hamas fighters and their leaders.

1:36:00 There is no excuse or justification for their actions.

1:36:04 But the point I'm trying to make with this video

1:36:06 is that there's also others that need to stand accountable here.

1:36:09 Those who used Hamas as a pawn to continue this divide-and-conquer policy,

1:36:14 who are now engaged in a campaign of mass bloodshed on civilians,

1:36:18 they deserve to stand accountable as well,

1:36:21 to the Israeli people and to the countries that support Israel.

1:36:25 I believe in the need for a Jewish state.

1:36:27 I do.

1:36:27 I think that's a very reasonable proposal that Jewish

1:36:30 people should feel safe somewhere in this world.

1:36:32 And yet what we're looking at isn't it.

1:36:36 The Israeli project, the way that it's been wielded in its current form,

1:36:40 produces the exact opposite of security for the Jewish people.

1:36:48 (serious music) Look at this map.

1:36:51 This map shows the thousands of attacks

1:36:53 that have occurred right here on this border just

1:36:56 over the past year in this fight between

1:36:59 Israel and one of their biggest regional enemies, Hezbollah.

1:37:03 (soldiers chanting in foreign language) Hezbollah is one of the biggest

1:37:08 armed groups in the world that isn't a nation's military.

1:37:12 They have tens of thousands of trained soldiers and hundreds of thousands

1:37:16 of missiles and rockets capable of reaching targets all across Israel.

1:37:21 This threat led Israel to conduct a massive set of attacks against Hezbollah.

1:37:26 [Reporter] This large explosion was seen near Beirut International Airport.

1:37:30 [Johnny] In which they killed almost all

1:37:31 of the group's top leaders weakening Hezbollah immensely,

1:37:35 followed by a full-on invasion by Israeli

1:37:38 troops to denigrate this group even further.

1:37:41 This has been a massive escalation that is

1:37:44 now spilling over into this entire region.

1:37:46 And to understand how we got here,

1:37:48 you really have to understand where Hezbollah came

1:37:50 from and what this group's fierce 40-year struggle

1:37:53 tells us about how the modern Middle East

1:37:56 came together and how it's now coming apart.

1:38:02 (grim music) The story of Hezbollah really starts when

1:38:15 the vast Ottoman Empire broke apart in the early 1900s.

1:38:19 Europeans came in and sliced all of this up,

1:38:21 France taking all of this territory,

1:38:24 but then they drew a line here to carve out this little mountainous region,

1:38:28 one that was populated mostly by Maronite Christians,

1:38:32 but the border didn't include just Christians.

1:38:34 The French made sure to include this area

1:38:36 to the east and this area to the south.

1:38:39 Areas that contained large populations of Shia Muslims

1:38:43 who were now forced into this new country

1:38:45 where they were made a minority to the Christians

1:38:48 along with a few other religious groups.

1:38:50 We're gonna focus a lot down here on this Shia heartland that would

1:38:54 eventually become one of the most important regions in the whole Middle East.

1:38:57 (suspenseful music) (subdued music) In 1943,

1:39:08 Lebanon gains its independence from France.

1:39:11 It creates a constitution meant to balance

1:39:13 the power between all of these religious groups, but that balance wouldn't last.

1:39:18 Mostly thanks to what started happening down here where another

1:39:21 set of borders were being carved into the Middle East.

1:39:24 The British had controlled this, but in 1948,

1:39:27 they left and the UN helped draw these new lines,

1:39:30 creating a new Israel and Palestinian state.

1:39:34 Decades of war forced out millions of Palestinians,

1:39:38 many of whom ended up here in Lebanon.

1:39:41 These Palestinians are mostly Sunni Muslim,

1:39:44 so this upsets the carefully laid power balance in Lebanon and further

1:39:49 marginalizes the Shia Muslims who were fighting for their place in the country.

1:39:52 Then in 1971, an armed militia made up

1:39:56 of Palestinians called the Palestinian Liberation Organization moves to Lebanon,

1:40:00 and they turn this whole region, which, again,

1:40:03 was made up of mostly Shias, into their own little mini state.

1:40:06 You start to see that Lebanon is descending into division

1:40:10 between the different militias and powers controlling parts of the country.

1:40:14 And in the mid '70s, it all breaks down into a full-fledged civil

1:40:18 war between a dizzying number of religious factions.

1:40:23 It's a war that will pull in much of the Middle East,

1:40:25 (grim music) and it's a war whose most important region

1:40:29 is down here in this border zone between Israel and Lebanon.

1:40:32 The place that will soon give rise to Hezbollah.

1:40:35 Now, let's talk about Syria.

1:40:36 They're here right next door,

1:40:37 and they're watching this civil war and they decide to invade,

1:40:40 to prop up the Maronite Christian ruling class who've become Syria allies.

1:40:45 They want to do this to prevent

1:40:47 the Civil War from spilling over into their territory.

1:40:49 At this point, Syria also considers annexing the entire country of Lebanon,

1:40:53 making it a part of Syria.

1:40:55 But eventually, the relationship between

1:40:57 Syria and Maronite Christians breaks down,

1:41:00 and Syria continues to occupy this part of the country.

1:41:04 Meanwhile, to the south, Israel fears that Syria is growing too powerful.

1:41:09 It also wants to wipe out the PLO,

1:41:11 who is attacking them across the border from Lebanon.

1:41:14 So in 1978, Israel enters the fray invading

1:41:17 from the south and driving deep into the country.

1:41:20 Israel succeeds in temporarily suppressing the PLO, but in the process,

1:41:25 it displaces hundreds of thousands of locals, most of them Shia Muslims.

1:41:31 It eventually withdraws after a UN resolution.

1:41:34 But then, in 1982, after more PLO attacks, Israel invades again,

1:41:39 this time pushing all the way to Beirut, fighting both the PLO and Syria.

1:41:46 And this is where the conflict takes on a new dimension.

1:41:52 (high-strung music) It's 1979 and over in Iran, the people have risen up against

1:42:01 the U.S.-backed dictator in this Islamic revolution led

1:42:04 by a Shia Muslim cleric who wants

1:42:07 to spread this revolution throughout the region.

1:42:09 He's looking for allies, and in 1982,

1:42:12 they find their perfect match here in southern Lebanon.

1:42:16 It's a militia that rose to defend against outsiders trampling their heartland.

1:42:21 It's called the Hezbollah, which means party of God.

1:42:25 Iran picked this group in particular because it shares its goals

1:42:29 of Islamic Revolution and a deep distrust and disdain for Israel.

1:42:34 Iran starts providing Hezbollah with money,

1:42:36 weapons, soldiers, training, and leadership.

1:42:39 And in return, Hezbollah proclaims loyalty

1:42:42 to the Iranian Revolution and its supreme leader.

1:42:45 What started as Lebanon's civil war is now a regional war that is heating up.

1:42:49 So the United States enters leading an international

1:42:53 peacekeeping mission to try to calm these tensions.

1:42:55 But of course, Hezbollah and Iran hate this.

1:42:58 They now have two prime targets in their backyard,

1:43:01 Israel, and these Western powers led by the U.S..

1:43:05 So in 1983, they launched a series of terrorist attacks,

1:43:08 a truck bomb detonated in front of a U.S.

1:43:11 and French barracks in Beirut that kills over 300 people.

1:43:17 Most of the world blames not only Hezbollah, but also its backer, Iran.

1:43:21 The fighting continues until 1989 when the many groups

1:43:26 fighting this civil war come to a peace agreement,

1:43:28 one that bans all militias and requires them

1:43:30 to give their weapons back to the government.

1:43:33 But there's a big catch here.

1:43:34 Israel still occupies what they call

1:43:37 this security buffer zone in southern Lebanon.

1:43:40 So the peace agreement makes an exception specifically

1:43:43 for efforts that resist the Israeli occupation, a.k.a,

1:43:47 they allow Hezbollah to continue to exist,

1:43:50 turning them into something more than just

1:43:52 one of these militias fighting for their group.

1:43:54 It gives them a kind of official status

1:43:56 to continue acting as a defender of southern Lebanon,

1:44:00 the country's bulwark against Israel.

1:44:03 They also develop into more of a political

1:44:05 party that gains seats in Lebanon's legislature,

1:44:08 kind of serving as a parallel government providing

1:44:11 social services in the areas that it controls.

1:44:15 (subdued music) So let's look at Hezbollah in this moment,

1:44:23 because they find themselves in the middle

1:44:26 of shifting power games in the Middle East,

1:44:28 balancing their mandate to defend their Shia heartland,

1:44:31 which was their founding motivation,

1:44:33 but also trying to gain further influence in the region

1:44:36 while also appeasing the demands of their major supporter, Iran.

1:44:41 In 2005, Lebanon's prime minister is assassinated,

1:44:45 and most Lebanese blame Hezbollah,

1:44:47 along with its other foreign supporter, Syria,

1:44:50 Lebanese people rise up in mass protest,

1:44:52 and Syria eventually withdraws its forces

1:44:55 that have occupied Lebanon for 28 years.

1:44:58 Hezbollah is disgraced.

1:44:59 Its legitimacy is supposed to come from resisting foreign meddling,

1:45:03 and it's becoming clear that they have become a pawn

1:45:06 in the geopolitical game of regional powers, Syria and Iran.

1:45:11 But the group is able to turn Syria's withdrawal into their advantage.

1:45:16 The Syrian occupation had kept Lebanon somewhat stable, so as soon as they left,

1:45:21 it creates this power vacuum and allows Hezbollah to take more territory,

1:45:25 ramping up attacks across the border against Israel

1:45:28 and leading to another brief war with the IDF.

1:45:31 Hezbollah continues to be a useful proxy for Iran,

1:45:34 and Iran continues to fund them and arm them.

1:45:38 And by 2011, Iran and Syria pull

1:45:41 Hezbollah into another unpopular conflict, Syria's civil war.

1:45:45 But this hurts Hezbollah's reputation because now they're

1:45:49 fighting on behalf of Syria's brutal Iran-backed regime.

1:45:53 These once-liberators have turned into foot soldiers

1:45:56 of oppression doing the bidding of outsiders.

1:45:58 But its last source of legitimacy continues to be its resistance to Israel,

1:46:03 something that Lebanon's own government is too weak to do.

1:46:06 This remains their source of legitimacy today.

1:46:10 So on October 7th, 2023,

1:46:13 when Hamas and Israel descended into this most recent war,

1:46:16 Hezbollah jumped in, launching more attacks against Lebanon's southern border.

1:46:20 This is meant to support Hamas in the Gaza Strip

1:46:23 and to threaten Israel with a war on two fronts.

1:46:29 At first, it seemed to be working.

1:46:31 Tens of thousands of Israelis have had

1:46:33 to evacuate the towns and villages in northern Israel.

1:46:36 So Israel started firing back across the border,

1:46:39 forcing 90,000 people in southern Lebanon from their homes.

1:46:42 This, in addition to Israeli strikes on Iranian proxies and military officials,

1:46:48 led Iran to fire its first ever direct strike on Israel,

1:46:52 trying to deter it from going any further, but it didn't work.

1:46:56 In September of 2024, Israel escalated,

1:46:59 surprising Hezbollah with a series of attacks that killed

1:47:03 a large part of the group's top leadership, including their decades-long leader.

1:47:08 A few days later, Israel sent troops across

1:47:10 this border with the goal of further weakening Hezbollah,

1:47:13 trying to make the situation safe for Israelis

1:47:16 to return home to the north of the country.

1:47:18 And now with Hezbollah in shambles, its sponsor, Iran, felt compelled to act.

1:47:25 (missiles exploding)- Oh, Jesus.

1:47:26 [Danna] What we are all seeing with our own eyes is a major attack from Iran.

1:47:33 [Reporter] It's a major attack, Danna, and it's an escalation.

1:47:36 It's an escalation...

1:47:38 [Johnny] So even if Hezbollah eventually begins to rebuild itself,

1:47:42 it's unclear what role they will play in Iran's proxy network.

1:47:46 But what is clear is that the clash between these two Middle East

1:47:50 powers remains the central force animating

1:47:52 this region towards more and more violence.

1:47:55 And these recent events show us clearer than ever that Hezbollah was

1:48:00 just one foot soldier in this growing conflict between these two powers.

1:48:05 Checking in one last time to remind you

1:48:07 that this video is made possible by Ground News,

1:48:09 the sponsor of this compilation.

1:48:11 Ground News is the service that I use

1:48:14 to look deeper into the headlines that I'm consuming, very,

1:48:17 very deeply aligned with their mission to help reveal the narratives

1:48:21 behind all of the many headlines that are covering the world's news.

1:48:24 If you wanna get 40% off their Vantage Plan, which is the one I use,

1:48:27 you can go to ground.news/johnnyharris to get

1:48:30 in on that discount and support this very useful service.

1:48:33 Okay, onto the next video.

1:48:38 (subdued music) Along the banks of the most

1:48:40 important waterway on earth sits the country of Yemen,

1:48:44 a place that was two countries for decades until the year 1990,

1:48:48 when it was unified into one.

1:48:50 A fragile patchwork of groups all with different tribal backgrounds,

1:48:54 religious beliefs, and political aspirations.

1:48:56 The story I want to tell starts in the '90s,

1:48:59 when one group forms up in the northern mountains of Yemen.

1:49:03 It's started by a group of religious

1:49:05 Yemenis who call themselves the Believing Youth,

1:49:08 who were members of a Shiite Muslim sect called the Zaidi.

1:49:12 Zaidi Muslims used to be the majority when the country was split in two.

1:49:16 But in the new unified Yemen,

1:49:18 they became a minority and felt neglected and discriminated against.

1:49:22 At first, the group focuses on rebuilding the Zaidi religious identity,

1:49:26 hosting summer camps for young men and offering religious education.

1:49:30 But in the late 1990s, the group starts to change in important ways.

1:49:36 A member of Yemen's parliament resigns in protest and joins the Believing Youth.

1:49:42 He felt that the government of Yemen was corrupt and far

1:49:45 too influenced by Yemen's neighbor to the north, Saudi Arabia.

1:49:51 Al Houthi blamed outside influence for many of the country's problems.

1:49:55 So as he leaves the government,

1:49:57 Al Houthi uses his wealth and family connections in the Zaidi

1:50:00 community to become the leader of the Believing Youth.

1:50:03 He wants an Islamic revolution, modeled after the one in Iran.

1:50:07 One that kicks out any foreign influence and restores Islamic values.

1:50:11 [Reporter] Outrage with the speed of the human shout.

1:50:13 [Johnny] With Al Houthi's influence,

1:50:15 this group of young men in the mountainous region of Yemen starts to change.

1:50:19 They begin protesting Yemen's president, Ali Abdullah Saleh.

1:50:23 Soon they start taking up weapons, taking over territory,

1:50:27 and eventually setting up their own security checkpoints in their region.

1:50:31 The Believing Youth are starting to look a lot less like

1:50:33 a summer camp and a lot more like a militia, like a rebellion.

1:50:37 President Saleh, who had previously supported the Believing Youth,

1:50:40 is starting to get worried.

1:50:42 And then in 2001, the entire Middle East would change forever.

1:50:46 (dark music) After 9/11, the U.S.

1:50:48 launches a war on terror.

1:50:49 (reflective music) They asked President Saleh for help, and he cooperates,

1:50:56 taking military aid and allowing American

1:50:58 special forces to operate inside Yemen,

1:51:01 where the terrorist group Al-Qaeda has a presence.

1:51:05 18 months later, the U.S.

1:51:06 presence in the region would balloon even more

1:51:09 when the American military invades and occupies Iraq.

1:51:13 For Al Houthi and his group of young men,

1:51:15 this crosses a red line and deeply radicalizes the movement.

1:51:19 Al Houthi criticizes the president publicly for pandering

1:51:22 to what he sees as American imperialism in Muslim lands.

1:51:26 And many in Yemen agree, joining the movement and bolstering their numbers.

1:51:31 Al Houthi adopts the violent slogan that sits on the flag

1:51:35 of his movement to this day: God is great.

1:51:38 Death to America.

1:51:39 Death to Israel.

1:51:40 Curse on the Jews.

1:51:42 Victory to Islam.

1:51:45 President Saleh feels threatened by the growth of this increasingly

1:51:48 radical movement that is taking control of territory in the north.

1:51:52 He issues an arrest warrant and a bounty

1:51:54 for Al Houthi and brutally cracks down on their protests.

1:51:57 In response, the Believing Youth launch

1:51:59 an armed rebellion in the north of Yemen,

1:52:02 leading to counterattacks by the Yemeni military.

1:52:05 Shortly after the fighting begins, Al Houthi is killed in a cave in the north.

1:52:10 The rebels he leaves behind fight on with new conviction,

1:52:15 and the world would know them by the name of their martyr,

1:52:18 a symbol of imperial resistance that would soon be firing

1:52:22 rockets at Israel and hijacking cargo ships in the Red Sea.

1:52:27 (subdued music) By 2004, the Houthis have morphed into a full-blown rebellion,

1:52:39 fighting against Yemen's government from their northern strongholds.

1:52:42 They know this land well and they have local support,

1:52:45 allowing them to fight a guerrilla campaign against the government forces,

1:52:49 blending in with civilians, hiding in mountains and caves,

1:52:52 and allowing them to resist the much better-equipped Yemeni army.

1:52:56 As the conflict turns more violent,

1:52:58 more tribes in the region would feel that the military is being overly brutal,

1:53:02 leading them to join the Houthis.

1:53:04 And it's at this time that the conflict goes international.

1:53:07 The Houthis say that Saudi Arabia is letting

1:53:10 the government of Yemen position troops right across this border.

1:53:13 So they invade into Saudi Arabia, killing Saudi soldiers and taking hostages.

1:53:18 This pulls Saudi Arabia into the conflict,

1:53:21 as they respond with airstrikes and troops

1:53:23 and push the Houthis out of their territory, punishing them for this invasion.

1:53:27 Now, over here, Iran is watching this war, and they see an opportunity.

1:53:31 The Houthis are now fighting directly against their biggest rival, Saudi Arabia.

1:53:36 So they start secretly sending weapons to the Houthis.

1:53:39 At least that's what Saudi Arabia claims,

1:53:42 saying that they intercepted an Iranian ship filled with weapons

1:53:45 and military trainers on their way to the Houthis.

1:53:48 It looks like Iran is directly supporting the Houthis now.

1:53:52 Though how much support they provide behind

1:53:54 the scenes will always be intentionally unclear.

1:53:57 As the conflict between the Houthis and the government continues in the north,

1:54:01 Saudi Arabia has been fighting their own war on terror

1:54:04 against a branch of Al-Qaeda operating in Saudi Arabia.

1:54:08 Seeing that their days are numbered,

1:54:09 this branch of Al-Qaeda flees south over the border into Yemen,

1:54:13 where they merge their forces with the Yemen branch of Al-Qaeda.

1:54:17 They create Al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula, or AQAP,

1:54:22 one of the most dangerous and well-funded versions of the group to ever exist.

1:54:26 The group's goal is to create a strict Islamic state across the whole region,

1:54:31 while violently waging holy war against foreigners in Muslim lands.

1:54:34 (reflective music) This puts them at odds

1:54:40 with both the Yemeni government and the Houthis.

1:54:43 The conflict is getting more complicated.

1:54:46 Around 2011, the region starts to change in big ways.

1:54:50 In one country after another,

1:54:52 there's an outpouring of public anger on the streets,

1:54:55 demanding change from their government, removing old leaders.

1:54:59 This is called the Arab Spring.

1:55:00 It's upheaval that spirals the region into hope and chaos.

1:55:04 (protesters chanting in foreign language)- [Johnny] Iran and Saudi Arabia see

1:55:17 this as an opportunity to strategically choose sides in all of these countries,

1:55:21 in hopes that when the dust settles,

1:55:24 they will come out with a stronger hand of allies in the region.

1:55:27 And one of their main focuses is Yemen,

1:55:30 a country that is also rising up, calling for President Saleh to step down.

1:55:34 The corrupt dictator of Yemen is running out of time,

1:55:38 which is something the Houthis have been fighting for for years.

1:55:43 But Saleh refuses to step down, adding fuel to the uprising.

1:55:47 Saudi Arabia sees this situation at their southern border

1:55:50 and decides to step in with the help of the UN,

1:55:53 convincing Saleh to transfer power to his vice president,

1:55:57 in exchange for immunity from prosecution.

1:55:59 On his way out, Saleh takes the billions of dollars

1:56:02 that he corruptly amassed during his time in office,

1:56:05 and he also retains the loyalty of key parts of the military,

1:56:09 fighters that are only loyal to him.

1:56:11 But the people aren't satisfied with this new Saudi-backed president.

1:56:15 The government remains weak and unorganized.

1:56:17 Meanwhile, the Houthis are taking advantage

1:56:20 of this infighting and only getting stronger,

1:56:23 taking more and more territory from the government,

1:56:26 adding to their forces, and receiving more support from their backer, Iran,

1:56:30 who is supplying them with more training,

1:56:33 missiles, drones, and other advanced weapons.

1:56:35 They use these weapons in the fall of 2014 to march into southern Yemen,

1:56:40 taking over large swaths of territory.

1:56:45 Now that the Houthis have momentum,

1:56:47 the former President Saleh joins them in an alliance of convenience.

1:56:52 In fact, Saleh's forces are critical in helping

1:56:55 the Houthis take the capital city of Sanaa.

1:56:57 Saleh is now working with his former enemy, against his own vice president,

1:57:02 the man he had to give power to when he stepped down.

1:57:05 President Hadi and his government flee south as the Houthis take over,

1:57:09 but the Houthis are right behind them.

1:57:12 So Hadi has to flee to Saudi Arabia, trying to govern Yemen from there.

1:57:17 But the Houthis just keep gaining momentum.

1:57:20 By the middle of 2015, they now control the capital city completely,

1:57:24 where they create their own government

1:57:25 and take control of the government's military weapons,

1:57:28 helping them expand even further into the south.

1:57:31 Now that the Houthis are in power,

1:57:33 they run an oppressive regime that silences free speech,

1:57:36 crushes dissent through arrest and torture, and recruits children as soldiers,

1:57:41 all while imposing strict religious laws that undermine women's rights.

1:57:45 Meanwhile, Saudi Arabia is getting nervous.

1:57:48 Their southern neighbor is now controlled by a group

1:57:51 that is funded by their biggest enemy.

1:57:54 So they recruit the support of countries around the region and invade Yemen,

1:57:59 with the goal of removing the Houthis from power.

1:58:01 The war is led by Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman,

1:58:05 Saudi Arabia's up-and-coming leader and defense minister.

1:58:08 He starts with a widespread bombing campaign and a naval

1:58:11 blockade that prevents shipping in and out of the country,

1:58:14 with the goal of trying to cut off support coming in from Iran.

1:58:18 The crown prince turns to the United States

1:58:20 in need of more weapons for this war.

1:58:22 While the U.S.

1:58:23 leaders are reluctant to get involved in another Middle East conflict,

1:58:27 they also want to maintain a good relationship with Saudi Arabia,

1:58:30 who is their major security and energy partner in the region.

1:58:34 They also have an interest in weakening Al-Qaeda's growing presence in Yemen.

1:58:38 So in addition to supporting this war with logistics and intelligence,

1:58:42 President Obama approves billions of dollars of weapons: planes,

1:58:45 tanks, and even weapons banned by most

1:58:48 of the world for how dangerous they are for civilians, like cluster munitions.

1:58:52 (tense music) This quickly turns Saudi Arabia into the largest

1:59:00 importer of American weapons for the next four years.

1:59:03 So it's 2015, and Yemen is in a full-blown

1:59:06 war between the Houthis and Saudi Arabia and their coalition.

1:59:09 This is when Al-Qaeda, who's not on either side,

1:59:12 takes advantage of this chaos and makes a land grab in the middle of Yemen.

1:59:16 They take major cities and clash with government forces.

1:59:19 Also taking advantage of the instability is the terrorist group ISIS,

1:59:23 who come to Yemen and fight the Houthis and Al-Qaeda, at the same time.

1:59:28 Though their attacks are scattered,

1:59:30 and they don't control significant territory.

1:59:32 The U.S.

1:59:33 then gets more involved by launching airstrikes at Al-Qaeda

1:59:36 and ISIS targets to stop them from gaining any more territory.

1:59:40 They tried to kill their leadership.

1:59:42 But the U.S.

1:59:43 has to do this carefully because they don't want to engage the Houthis.

1:59:46 Their fight is with Al-Qaeda and ISIS.

1:59:49 In May of 2015, the Houthis attack

1:59:52 a city just across the border in Saudi Arabia,

1:59:54 killing two and taking hostages, forcing an airport to shut down.

1:59:58 The crown prince doesn't take being attacked on his own soil lightly,

2:00:02 especially by Iran's proxies.

2:00:04 So over the next 24 hours, the Saudis launch 130 airstrikes in Yemen,

2:00:09 hitting homes, schools, and hospitals.

2:00:12 Thousands are forced to flee from their home.

2:00:15 Hundreds are reported dead, though we'll never know the real death toll.

2:00:18 These strikes are almost immediately called war crimes.

2:00:22 But the crown prince doesn't back down.

2:00:24 His coalition then sends in ground troops from the south,

2:00:27 pushing back the Houthis and taking back the city of Aden.

2:00:30 He's behaving as if he's fighting his greatest enemy, Iran.

2:00:34 It's a vicious cycle that is common in proxy wars like this, and it

2:00:39 lands the people of Yemen in the worst humanitarian crisis in the world.

2:00:42 The international community tries to intervene

2:00:44 with diplomatic efforts to stop the fighting.

2:00:47 But over the next six years, those efforts would fail,

2:00:50 and Saudi Arabia would continue its brutal campaign, all using American weapons.

2:00:55 The Houthis continue to fight, to show that they are legitimate,

2:00:59 that they are the government of Yemen.

2:01:00 They aren't just doing Iran's bidding.

2:01:03 (somber music) The war continues to destroy cities and land,

2:01:08 and the blockade continues to keep trade out.

2:01:11 The Saudis continue to bomb indiscriminately.

2:01:14 And with time, 2 million Yemenis are displaced,

2:01:17 forced to leave their homes to flee this violence.

2:01:20 [Reporter] 150,000 civilians have had to-- [Johnny]

2:01:23 But this doesn't stop the Houthis from escalating their offensive.

2:01:26 They start attacking Saudi Arabia directly with missiles

2:01:28 and drones in their capital city and their civilian airports,

2:01:32 using weapons that most believe are coming from Iran.

2:01:34 (tense music) In December of 2017,

2:01:39 the Saudis and the UAE convinced President Saleh to break his alliance

2:01:44 with the Houthis and return to power as president of Yemen.

2:01:47 They hope that Saleh, the former dictator,

2:01:49 might be able to hold onto power and rule more effectively.

2:01:53 Saleh takes the deal and changes sides yet again,

2:01:56 breaking with the Houthis and joining the Saudi-led coalition.

2:01:59 (reflective music) Fighting breaks out between the Houthis and Saleh's militias,

2:02:04 and Saleh is killed just two days later.

2:02:07 (reflective music) Meanwhile, in the United States, there's a new president.

2:02:14 President Trump orders increased drone strikes and raids against Al-Qaeda,

2:02:19 helping government forces take back large amounts of territory.

2:02:22 Despite the war crimes committed using American weapons,

2:02:25 Trump approves more weapons sales to Saudi Arabia to wage this war.

2:02:30 And then in 2018, the conflict takes on a new dimension.

2:02:33 The UAE, who's a part of the Saudi-led coalition,

2:02:36 is starting to lose faith in the direction this war is going.

2:02:40 They don't like the current government of Yemen,

2:02:42 and they're losing soldiers on the ground.

2:02:44 It's damaging their reputation on the world stage.

2:02:47 So the UAE leaves the coalition.

2:02:49 But they still want to influence who will ultimately control Yemen,

2:02:53 so they start backing a new group

2:02:55 in the south called the Southern Transitional Council, or STC.

2:02:59 This group isn't aligned with the government or the Houthis.

2:03:03 They're calling for a separation of the southern part of Yemen.

2:03:06 They want their own state.

2:03:08 They want their own country.

2:03:09 So the UAE starts to withdraw their troops from the south of the country,

2:03:13 and the STC separatists start taking control of southern provinces.

2:03:17 The Saudi coalition is fracturing,

2:03:20 and yet another group is jumping into the fighting,

2:03:23 showing just how up for grabs Yemen has become.

2:03:29 By the fall of 2019, the war has reached maximum complexity.

2:03:33 You've got the Saudi coalition backing the former government of Yemen,

2:03:36 mostly relegated to the east of the country.

2:03:38 The UAE is now backing this separatist movement in the south,

2:03:42 who are fighting against the former government of Yemen.

2:03:45 The Houthis, backed by Iran,

2:03:47 still maintain majority control of the major cities in the north.

2:03:50 Al-Qaeda and its militia allies are still

2:03:53 fighting to control small slices of the country.

2:03:55 And the U.S.

2:03:56 continues to conduct airstrikes against Al-Qaeda and ISIS,

2:04:00 while supporting and selling more weapons to the Saudi coalition.

2:04:05 Yemen is fracturing further, and if there's any hope for peace,

2:04:09 power needs to be consolidated.

2:04:11 So Saudi Arabia and the UAE make amends, and then, together,

2:04:15 they convince the government of Yemen and the separatists in the south to form

2:04:20 a new coalition to fight against the Houthis together as a united front.

2:04:24 But it doesn't stop the Houthis, who are getting really good at fighting and are

2:04:28 firing more Iranian missiles and drones into Saudi Arabia,

2:04:31 hitting state-owned oil refineries and threatening

2:04:34 to drive up oil prices globally.

2:04:36 By January 2021, the Houthis,

2:04:39 a group started to provide religious summer camps to young men,

2:04:43 are now battle hardened, and they control 70 to 80% of the population of Yemen.

2:04:49 Later that year, the UN announces that approximately 20 million

2:04:53 of those people are dependent on humanitarian aid for their daily needs.

2:04:58 And at this point, the war starts to settle in to an uncomfortable stalemate.

2:05:03 (somber music) In April 2022,

2:05:07 the UN brokers a ceasefire, and the fighting stops.

2:05:13 Behind the scenes, Saudi Arabia and Iran

2:05:15 have been in diplomatic talks, sponsored by China.

2:05:19 Regional tensions are cooling,

2:05:21 which means that their proxy war in Yemen is also cooling.

2:05:25 Saudi Arabia has had enough of the fighting.

2:05:28 President Hadi resigns and hands power over to a council

2:05:32 meant to govern Yemen and manage the war.

2:05:34 And both sides are tired of the fighting.

2:05:37 So when that ceasefire is set to expire in October 2022,

2:05:40 the conflict mostly stays quiet, even without a new agreement.

2:05:44 By 2023, Saudi Arabia and Iran

2:05:47 have officially restored their diplomatic relations.

2:05:50 Saudi Arabia hoping that this means Iran will

2:05:53 stop supporting Houthis to attack their southern border.

2:05:58 But the Saudis keep their maritime blockade around the country,

2:06:01 making life in Yemen unlivable for millions.

2:06:04 But at this point, the heaviest of the fighting on all sides has stopped.

2:06:10 But then in the fall of 2023, the Houthis were back in the news.

2:06:14 After the Palestinian group Hamas launches a brutal attack into Israel,

2:06:19 the Israeli military invades the Gaza Strip,

2:06:22 vowing to destroy Hamas and free the hostages that they took.

2:06:26 The campaign leads to tens of thousands of Palestinian civilian deaths,

2:06:30 and it provokes a response from Iranian-backed groups all throughout the region.

2:06:34 The Houthis are one of those groups.

2:06:36 They launch drones and cruise missiles into southern Israel,

2:06:39 vowing that their attacks won't stop until the invasion of Gaza stops.

2:06:44 And then they start firing their missiles and drones

2:06:46 at cargo ships that are traveling through the Red Sea,

2:06:49 where 25% of container traffic travels, a major artery in our global economy.

2:06:55 In the days after these missiles start flying,

2:06:57 traffic through this Red Sea route declines by 73%.

2:07:01 In response, the U.S.

2:07:02 and UK shoot down Houthis missiles and drop bombs

2:07:05 on Houthis military targets in Yemen, pulling the U.S.

2:07:10 and its allies deeper into this enduring conflict.

2:07:13 (reflective music) The reason I wanted to tell

2:07:18 you the story of this conflict in Yemen.

2:07:20 Because it represents the vicious cycle present in a lot of proxy wars,

2:07:25 where geopolitical rivals use their neighbors

2:07:28 as battlefields instead of fighting each other directly.

2:07:31 They fund and add fuel to local conflicts,

2:07:34 escalating them to the entire country, and often to the entire region,

2:07:38 leaving violence and power vacuums in their wake,

2:07:41 which are then filled by bad actors trying to take advantage of the instability.

2:07:46 All of this changes borders, destroys cities, and ruins lives.

2:07:52 It's the story of powerful countries and their cynical

2:07:55 scramble for influence and power in vulnerable places,

2:07:59 leaving behind them a wake of tremendous human suffering.

2:08:03 (somber music) (brooding music)- [Reporter] Breaking news.

2:08:11 Because Yemen's Houthis rebels-- [Reporter] They could attack a commercial ship

2:08:15 and could bog the strait up for weeks, if not months.

2:08:20 (protestors chanting in foreign language)- [Johnny] There is a part

2:08:24 of the world that everyone is keeping an eye on right now.

2:08:27 The joint military strikes were a response to nearly two months of attacks

2:08:30 by the Iran-backed Houthis movement on cargo ships in the Red Sea.

2:08:34 [Johnny] It is becoming more and more important for the global

2:08:38 rivalries and tensions that are heating up on our globe right now.

2:08:41 It is this choke point in the Red Sea.

2:08:44 (subdued music) It's pretty small.

2:08:50 It's a few dozen kilometers wide,

2:08:52 but through this little choke point flows a lot of important things.

2:08:56 The internet, millions of barrels of oil per day,

2:08:59 30% of all container ships that connect global markets.

2:09:04 And this choke point is surrounded by unstable situations.

2:09:09 Countries that are in civil wars, rebel militias,

2:09:13 proxy wars, unstable governments, failed states, and pirates.

2:09:19 In recent decades, pirates have hijacked thousands of ships

2:09:22 here extracting hundreds of millions of dollars in ransoms,

2:09:26 a topic we did a whole deep dive on in another video.

2:09:28 And lately, as war has raged in the Gaza Strip,

2:09:31 the fiercely anti-Western Houthis rebels in Yemen have been firing

2:09:36 rockets at cargo ships traveling through this water leading the U.S.

2:09:39 and UK to strike back.

2:09:41 A ship attacked by Iran-backed Houthis rebels last month sank in the Red Sea.

2:09:46 [Johnny] The region is vital, yet volatile all at once.

2:09:49 And yet in the middle of all of this is this one beacon of stability,

2:09:54 a little piece of land that is easy to miss,

2:09:57 but that is more important than you might think.

2:09:59 It is the country of Djibouti.

2:10:01 (tense music) Djibouti is this small arid country right on the choke point,

2:10:11 and it is home to the militaries

2:10:13 of the United States of several European powers,

2:10:16 of Japan, Japan's only foreign military base, by the way,

2:10:19 and right down the road from the American base,

2:10:21 China's first military base outside of its country.

2:10:28 (subdued music) Qatar has peacekeepers here.

2:10:31 The United Arab Emirates ran the biggest port.

2:10:34 Eritrea seized some of its territory recently, and Ethiopia,

2:10:37 one of the largest countries in Africa,

2:10:40 runs almost all of its trade through Djibouti.

2:10:43 Ethiopia's landlocked, and this is their, like, gateway to the world.

2:10:46 It's a lot.

2:10:47 Djibouti is a lot.

2:10:48 There's a lot going on in Djibouti,

2:10:49 which is why today we are talking about this place.

2:10:53 I want to explore why so many powers want to be here,

2:10:57 why everyone is converging on this little tiny

2:11:00 patch of land the size of New Jersey.

2:11:02 And I wanna ask if little Djibouti, one of the poorest countries in the world,

2:11:07 can balance all these rival powers against

2:11:10 each other without falling victim to them.

2:11:12 [Austin] You know, 10 to 15% of global trade moves through the Red Sea.

2:11:17 We will not hesitate to defend lives and the free flow of commerce.

2:11:24 (subdued music)- This little choke point is

2:11:28 called the Bab-el-Mandeb, or Gate of Tears.

2:11:32 It used to be nothing but a recipe for shipwrecks.

2:11:36 It was known mostly for strong winds,

2:11:38 unpredictable crosscurrents and shallow reefs that made navigating it dangerous.

2:11:44 And it wasn't very valuable because if you go through it,

2:11:47 you just end up in the Red Sea, which was a dead-end for most of history.

2:11:51 That is, until a French company miraculously cut a canal

2:11:55 through this part of Egypt and changed the world forever,

2:11:59 nearly halving the time that it would take for Europeans to get

2:12:02 to Asia where they were all racing each other to conquer,

2:12:05 colonize, and bring back unfathomable wealth to their countries.

2:12:14 The Suez Canal was a massive upgrade to this hunt for resources.

2:12:19 Was this video kind of an excuse for me to buy these really old,

2:12:23 beautiful books about the Suez Canal?

2:12:24 Yes, it was.

2:12:26 For France, this engineering miracle called the Suez Canal

2:12:30 was their chance to beat out their big rival,

2:12:33 the British Empire, who was clearly winning the race,

2:12:36 dominating the routes to Asia before Suez opened.

2:12:39 The canal was supposed to change that.

2:12:41 So now you have a new front in this race,

2:12:43 a scramble for control over this new route to Asia.

2:12:46 This windy little choke point was no longer just the Gate of Tears.

2:12:51 It was an important bit of water, one of the most important on earth,

2:12:54 at least for the empires, they had to keep an eye on it.

2:13:00 So the British take this little island right at the choke point.

2:13:03 They put a lighthouse on it.

2:13:07 They also take control of a port just south of the choke point.

2:13:10 The Italians then show up and purchase this bit of coastline

2:13:13 from local sultans eventually taking over

2:13:15 this whole stretch of coast called Eritrea.

2:13:18 And the French would start fixating on this strip of sparsely

2:13:22 populated coast right on the banks of the choke point,

2:13:24 the land that would become Djibouti.

2:13:29 The sultans here told the French that, yes,

2:13:31 they could have a bit of this newly strategic land in exchange for protection.

2:13:36 The locals here knew what was going on.

2:13:38 The great empires were all scrambling and racing,

2:13:40 and they were going to use their prime real

2:13:43 estate to get what they wanted to leverage the situation.

2:13:47 Smart and totally a theme throughout this video.

2:13:53 So the French set up their colony,

2:13:54 they call it Cotes Francaises des Somalies or French Somaliland.

2:13:59 This choke point would become a key base for projecting power

2:14:03 and refueling on their way to carve up and plunder Asia.

2:14:06 (intense music) France would hold on to their little

2:14:11 colonial invention for a long time.

2:14:14 Even as the world would decolonize after World War II,

2:14:17 France held on to this strategic colony along

2:14:20 the choke point until eventually the locals rose up.

2:14:23 There were protests, they clashed with the local authorities,

2:14:26 and it led to an independence vote.

2:14:28 And in 1977, Djibouti became a new country.

2:14:40 Djibouti was independent, but they had a problem.

2:14:43 In the words of some "New York Times" reporting from 1977,

2:14:47 the tiny new nation had no army, less than one square mile of arable land,

2:14:51 and no resources except for sand, salt, and 20,000 camels.

2:14:57 Yeah, not good.

2:14:58 So once again, they made a deal with France.

2:15:01 Djibouti wouldn't be France's anymore,

2:15:03 but they would be allowed to retain a military base in the country

2:15:06 in exchange for security and protection as well as economic aid.

2:15:10 But this didn't change the fact that Djibouti

2:15:12 had very little natural resources or arable land.

2:15:14 Their economy fell into a crippling depression.

2:15:17 Eventually there was a civil war and it wasn't looking good for Djibouti.

2:15:20 Djibouti's salvation would eventually come when they realized

2:15:24 that they should harken back to the old

2:15:26 days and start exploiting the thing that had

2:15:29 made them valuable all those years ago: Their location.

2:15:33 [Reporter] Let's go.

2:15:34 Go, go, go, go!

2:15:35 Stop shooting, man.

2:15:36 Go!

2:15:36 A plane has crashed into the World Trade--

2:15:38 [Reporter] Can you tell us how this happened?

2:15:39 Not right now.

2:15:40 Our very freedom came under attack

2:15:42 in a series of deliberate and deadly terrorist acts.

2:15:46 [Johnny] Three months after 9/11,

2:15:48 the United States was about to come crashing into the Middle East in a new way,

2:15:52 and they asked Djibouti if they could set up a base there.

2:15:55 And Djibouti says yes.

2:15:57 Suddenly after the global war on terror,

2:15:59 America realizes that it's one of the key locations.

2:16:03 It matters to be there.

2:16:05 You had, you know, Al-Qaeda in Yemen, you had Al-Qaeda and even Horn of Africa.

2:16:10 So they needed a base.

2:16:12 And Djibouti was one country which was willing to offer it.

2:16:15 It would become America's only permanent

2:16:16 military base on the continent of Africa.

2:16:18 And it would be a key jumping-off point for George Bush's war on terror.

2:16:22 And reminder that it's now the 21st century.

2:16:26 Things have changed in the world.

2:16:27 And this little choke point was becoming more valuable again,

2:16:31 but for different reasons than the old days.

2:16:33 (ship horn blares) Number one, the world had become addicted to fossil fuels,

2:16:40 oil and gas, which was the lifeblood of their economies.

2:16:43 And most of that oil and gas was coming from over here,

2:16:46 from the land and waters of the countries around this Persian Gulf

2:16:51 where it was then put on ships and sent around the world,

2:16:55 a lot of it heading west through this vital choke point

2:16:58 up the Red Sea into the Suez Canal and onto Europe.

2:17:02 The world knew that their energy was vulnerable because Egypt in earlier

2:17:06 decades had weaponized the canal by closing it, by blocking it.

2:17:11 One time for eight years, inflicting immediate pain on the countries that rely

2:17:15 on this constant flow of energy and goods.

2:17:20 By the way, semi side note,

2:17:21 this flow of energy becomes even more important when Europe almost entirely

2:17:25 cuts ties with Russian natural gas after Russia invaded Ukraine in 2022.

2:17:29 So they have to get more natural gas from this region.

2:17:32 Qatar was not sad about that, let's put it that way.

2:17:34 Anyway, we're getting off topic.

2:17:36 Europe needs this route to stay stable.

2:17:38 They need these little dots to keep flowing.

2:17:43 So that's one reason that the choke point has become more vital than ever.

2:17:45 The other reason is China.

2:17:47 (subdued music) China rose to become a manufacturing superpower.

2:17:53 They make a lot of stuff and they send it to the West.

2:17:56 And a lot of that comes through this choke point.

2:17:59 And all of this vital trade is happening

2:18:01 in a region that is full of unstable governments,

2:18:04 rising anti-Western militias and Somali pirates making

2:18:09 this route precarious and dangerous and subject to problems.

2:18:16 So Djibouti has become this vital place here at the choke point,

2:18:20 an incredibly important strategic location in a sea of turmoil.

2:18:24 Okay, but there's more.

2:18:25 In addition to all of this global economy importance,

2:18:28 there's also regional importance to Djibouti.

2:18:30 Notice Djibouti's neighbor, Ethiopia,

2:18:33 the second most populous country in Africa,

2:18:35 and as you can see, one that is totally landlocked.

2:18:39 It is not good to be a big country

2:18:42 that is landlocked because the water is where we trade.

2:18:45 So Djibouti is the gateway to Ethiopia's

2:18:48 millions of people to trade with the world.

2:18:51 95% of Ethiopia's trade passes through Djibouti.

2:18:55 So Djibouti, this colonial creation from France in the 1880s

2:18:59 is now once again an incredibly important place on the map.

2:19:04 It's become, once again, a highly strategic location.

2:19:08 (inquisitive music) And when there are highly strategic locations,

2:19:13 superpowers start moving in.

2:19:14 In 2011, Djibouti approved Japan, a pacifist sort of non-military country,

2:19:21 to open a military base on Djibouti, their one and only foreign military base.

2:19:27 Then you have Italy who set up a military base here in 2013.

2:19:30 Spain and Germany also have a military presence here.

2:19:32 They're not permanently hosted with a base, they're actually hosted by France,

2:19:36 and the soldiers live in these hotels permanently.

2:19:41 Okay.

2:19:41 That's not weird at all.

2:19:42 But yeah, as you can see, the great powers are back.

2:19:45 They're back in Djibouti like the old days, not to compete with one another,

2:19:49 but to all band together to police this vital choke point so

2:19:52 that the global economy that has brought

2:19:54 prosperity to all of us can stay stable.

2:19:56 Everything keeps flowing.

2:19:57 Everyone is happy.

2:19:59 And this solved a big problem for Djibouti, who, again,

2:20:02 didn't have a big industry or any kind of resource.

2:20:05 They make a lot of money off of these leases to foreign countries,

2:20:08 which has helped build their economy.

2:20:11 And like the old days, when one side shows up, the rival won't be far behind.

2:20:16 (tense music)- China has agreed to set up a support base in Djibouti.

2:20:24 So the Chinese base is right here,

2:20:26 and they're gonna be watching us as we are watching them.

2:20:29 In 2016, Djibouti announces that they've been talking to China and that they've

2:20:34 agreed to give them land to open their own military base,

2:20:37 which was built and opened right down the road from the American base in 2017.

2:20:42 So China says they're there because of pirates.

2:20:45 Pirates have been wreaking havoc in this area.

2:20:47 So they're there to stabilize their economic interests because of pirates.

2:20:51 But as we discovered in our deep dive on pirates,

2:20:53 by 2017, the pirate issue was basically over.

2:20:57 There was almost no hijackings in this region.

2:20:59 I mean, look at this graph.

2:21:00 Oh, and the Chinese base has this big deep pier that is

2:21:05 like large enough to handle an aircraft carrier and nuclear submarines.

2:21:10 So this isn't about pirates.

2:21:12 China also did the most China thing when they moved in here,

2:21:14 which was instead of just building a base,

2:21:17 they also came with all of these big-ticket infrastructure projects

2:21:20 as like gifts to win the favor of the locals.

2:21:24 We're talking railway, pipeline, port, all very expensive,

2:21:29 all putting Djibouti into a lot of debt to China.

2:21:32 They're doing this all over Africa,

2:21:33 which we talk about in another deep dive video we did on the topic

2:21:37 mapping all of China's giant infrastructure

2:21:39 projects in Africa and what that means.

2:21:41 Man, a lot of shout outs to other videos today, huh?

2:21:43 So Djibouti is now the only place on earth where the United States and China,

2:21:47 these two rivals, have military bases right next to each other.

2:21:51 And so far everyone's been playing nice.

2:21:54 There's been no shenanigans other than both sides

2:21:56 accusing each other of spying on each other constantly.

2:21:59 Oh, and there was the lasers.

2:22:01 The U.S.

2:22:01 says that China was pointing lasers into the eyes

2:22:04 of pilots while they were taking off,

2:22:06 which like if they really did that, that's just like, why?

2:22:09 Why would you do that?

2:22:10 Like, why did you do that?

2:22:11 Don't do that.

2:22:12 Okay, but Djibouti doesn't let every country in.

2:22:15 Russia wanted to have their own base in Djibouti.

2:22:17 And Djibouti said no.

2:22:19 It probably helped that the American national security advisor

2:22:22 flew to Djibouti and told them that the U.S.

2:22:24 would double how much they're paying

2:22:26 for their lease if Djibouti didn't let Russia in.

2:22:29 (gentle music) Okay, but what about the people?

2:22:34 Djibouti isn't just one big military base.

2:22:36 There's almost a million people who live here and their day-to-day

2:22:40 probably consists of a lot of jet engine sounds.

2:22:44 I got to talk to my old grad school professor,

2:22:46 David Vine, who is an expert on U.S.

2:22:48 military bases and how they affect the locals.

2:22:51 So what we were talking about is a foreign government,

2:22:54 foreign military occupying large swaths of land,

2:22:58 fenced off, and hosting large amounts of weaponry,

2:23:03 high-powered weaponry of many, many kinds.

2:23:05 (Hassan speaking foreign language)- Because these bases

2:23:14 are so close to like the big city,

2:23:17 there have been accidents, especially with drones.

2:23:21 The U.S.

2:23:21 used to take off their drones and some

2:23:23 would fall and actually crash onto like civilian infrastructure.

2:23:26 So they had to open a separate airstrip (Hassan

2:23:29 speaking foreign language)- Apart from occasionally running over cows,

2:23:43 the soldiers mostly keep to themselves.

2:23:47 U.S.

2:23:47 soldiers don't even go into the city to like buy stuff.

2:23:50 All of it is flown in creating a little slice of America right in Djibouti.

2:23:54 Like, they don't even drink the water from Djibouti.

2:23:57 It's all flown in.

2:23:58 (Hassan speaking foreign language)- And then there's the dictator.

2:24:19 Well, I wanna welcome President Guelleh and his delegation here today.

2:24:22 The U.S.

2:24:22 base in particular, but also the French and Chinese bases,

2:24:25 which are the largest of the collection,

2:24:28 are all helping to prop up undemocratic regime that has, you know,

2:24:32 been accused of widespread human rights abuses- Every

2:24:36 time a foreign power makes a deal with Djibouti

2:24:39 and pays them a lot of money in exchange for them being able to be there,

2:24:42 they basically validate this terrible dictator who's been in power for 25 years.

2:24:47 There's no real elections, free press,

2:24:49 freedom of speech, plenty of human rights abuses.

2:24:53 But on the other side, there's at least one way that regular

2:24:56 people in Djibouti benefit from all of this.

2:24:59 Fewer people go hungry today than at the conclusion of the civil war.

2:25:03 And even though the economy is still poor,

2:25:04 all of this foreign aid still does support it.

2:25:07 Is that worth it to them?

2:25:09 I don't actually know.

2:25:10 And another version of this video that I wanna do someday

2:25:13 is to go there and talk to the people and hear what

2:25:15 their thoughts are about the bases in Djibouti and what that feels

2:25:19 like to live so close to all of these foreign militaries.

2:25:22 For now, we're talking about the geography, the history, the geopolitics.

2:25:25 (upbeat music) Okay, speaking of geopolitics,

2:25:31 there is another angle to this story that is devilishly complicated to get into.

2:25:37 And I'm not gonna get into all the juicy details.

2:25:39 You'll understand why when I start talking about it.

2:25:41 It has to do with the regional geopolitics, the rivalries,

2:25:45 and the concerns and the issues of all

2:25:46 of these countries that are right next to Djibouti, not just the outside powers.

2:25:50 I want to just give you a little sampling

2:25:51 of what this looks like because it's pretty wild.

2:25:53 So you have all these Gulf countries,

2:25:55 and some of them are not totally on the same team,

2:25:58 but almost all of them are thinking about the future

2:26:02 and they're realizing that oil is not gonna be

2:26:03 a big part of their future because oil is not

2:26:05 gonna be a big part of any of our future hopefully.

2:26:07 And they're realizing that they're going to need

2:26:10 to invest in the Horn of Africa, this region here,

2:26:13 which they believe is probably gonna be the future of their food,

2:26:16 their future bread basket.

2:26:17 So hold that for a second and then look at Ethiopia and Eritrea.

2:26:21 Ethiopia, as we mentioned, uses Djibouti as their gateway to the world.

2:26:25 They need it to feed their millions of people.

2:26:27 All of this geopolitics is also playing out in Djibouti,

2:26:31 this little country that has to navigate everyone's interests.

2:26:35 So here's a quick episode of this drama

2:26:36 to give you an idea of what it looks like.

2:26:38 (intense music) The United Arab Emirates, UAE,

2:26:42 used to be like best friends with Djibouti.

2:26:44 It was like one of their most important partners.

2:26:47 The UAE built and owned this giant

2:26:50 port that basically runs Djibouti's entire economy.

2:26:53 But then the UAE got really close

2:26:55 to Djibouti's neighbor and kind of enemy Eritrea.