This content explores the multifaceted geopolitical drivers behind a potential US invasion of Iran, focusing on the influence of the Israel lobby, the concept of American empire, and the deep-seated rivalry between Saudi Arabia and Iran, which has escalated into proxy conflicts and significant regional instability.
Mind Map
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okay um let's start class so let's
review where we
are um we are discussing or exploring
why the United States would want to
invade Iran and so far we have two good
reasons the first good reason is called
the Israel
Lobby um there are in the is Lobby
millions of Christian zionists who
believe that a conflict in the Middle
East especially between Israel and
Iran will bring Jesus back to Earth they
want their God Jesus to return to Earth
and they believe that a war in the
Middle East will force him to
return that's the first reason second
reason is the
idea of an of Empire America is an
Empire and as an Empire it has a lot of
privileges for example it can just print
as much money as it want right US
dollars right now uh America is $34
trillion dollar in debt and the debt is
growing by trillion dollars every two
months America can do this as long as is
as it as long as it is an Empire as long
as people fear America but as we
discussed last class with Putin's
invasion of Ukraine
uh people are now starting to rebel
against the empire and therefore America
must demonstrate it still is the
military hegemon of the world and
therefore I can do this by um invading
Iran okay today we look at the third and
final force driving conflict in the
Middle East and it's really the conflict
between s
Arabia and
Iran most people think
that Iran Iran's major enemy in the
Middle East is Israel in fact Iran's
Iran's major enemy is Saudi Arabia these
two are bitter
Rivals and to understand why we have to
look at their history okay so the year is
is
1979 at the the start of of at the start
of 1979 Saudi Arabia and Iran are good
friends okay so let's look at a map of
the Middle
East Iran is here uh it's next to
Iraq uh Saudi Arabia is down here uh
then this is Egypt
um you have Yemen here Oman this is the
straight of
humus and this is the SE Canal okay uh
theed SE
basically and in
1979 uh Saudi Arabia and Iran were very
good friends uh they had a lot of
similar similarities they were both
monarchies they were ruled by a
king um they were secular they relied on
American power to defend itself and they
were both oil exporters both very
prosperous oil oil
exporters but then in
in
1979 a political
earthquake radically changed the
landscape of the Middle East in 1979
there was a bottom Up
revolution before 1979 there was a
general consensus agreement in the
Middle East that religion and politics
would be
separated but in 1979 the people in Iran
uh demanded three things okay first they demanded
demanded that
that
um the king they will not be ruled by a
king okay that's that's that's the first
amand second is that the US should not
interfere in domestic politics remember
that before the king the Sha was
supported by the American
Military and the third demand is that as
a Muslim people as people who believe in
the Islamic
religion the government should be
focused on Islamic law okay
so in the referendum
98% of the people of Iran voted to
install an Islam Republic to replace their
their
monarchy and this was complete
unexpected and this caused an earthquake
throughout the Middle
East in November of 1979
1979
600 religious
extremists try to besiege Mecca okay
Mecca is the holiest city in uh the
Islamic religion because it it's the
birthplace of the Prophet Muhammad
600 uh extreme extremists tried to take
the city over and demand three things
okay that the Saudi Arabian monarchy should
should
applicate the United States should
remove itself from the internal affairs
of Saudi Arabia and Saudi Arabia should
be governed by Islamic
law now
this Revolt was crushed
by the
military but from that day on
there Iran and Saudi Arabia Arabia
became better
enemies because they were both trying to
install their
vision of Islam on the Middle
East okay so this rivalry between
Iran and uh Saudi Arabia took three
forms okay the first form is
religious so even though they're both
Muslim countries Islamic Islamic
countries they have different versions
of the religion okay so um Saudi
Arabia is
Sunni and Iran is
shiat now you may ask what the
difference between these two different branches
branches
of the religion are and the answer is um
no one actually knows it's very
complicated issue the major difference
is this in
610 the Prophet Muhammad in Medina in
the city of Medina he had a
vision uh to found a new religion called
Islam okay and he spread this religion
throughout the Middle East throughout
the AR Arab world world forever
transforming uh the Middle East when he
died there's a problem of secession who
would succeed uh the prophet as the
leader of the religion the Shia people
believe that only
people of Muhammad's
bloodline can be the leaders of the
religion the Sunni disagreed and said
that anyone who proved himself competent
and faithful to religion could be the
leader and so for hundreds of years
these two groups the Sunni and the Shia
fought a war over the
secession and this led to a bitter
rivalry that's lasted to this day okay
now the majority of people in the world about
about
80% are Sunni okay the the majority of
Muslims in the world are Sunni 10% are Shia
Shia
okay so why this is important is that
Saudi Arabia is a Sunni country
country
and uh Iran is a Shia
country and at the time of the
Revolution Iran dedicated itself
committed itself to spreading the Shia Revolution
Revolution
throughout the world okay now Saudi
Arabia considers itself the leader of
the Islamic world because it is home to
both Mecca and Medina which are the two
holiest cities in um the
entire Islamic
religion um as you as you may know
there's a
requirement that as a Muslim you must
take a ha a pilgrimage to uh Mecca and
Medina once in your lifetime okay and
and because Saudi Arabia control Mecca
and Medina that's really the source of
Saudi Arabia's
authority over the Islamic World Iran
says Iran argued that because Saudi
Arabia is ruled by a king that's anti-
Muslim and because United States is
defended by the US military that's also
anti-muslim s Arabia is a
heresy okay so Iran is dedicated itself to
to
um subverting Saudi Arabia's
Authority okay so does this all makes
sense so far okay now Saudi Arabia is
Sunni and it practices the most extreme
form of
Sunni uh religion called wahhabism okay
1744 the wahhabis okay which again are
the most extreme
Islamic uh
group made an alliance with the alsad
family of Saudi Arabia and the agreement
was this that the W wahhabis could the W
wahhabism would become the national
religion of Saudi
Arabia and the W wahabis would swear
allegiance to the alide family
okay but in the
1930s oil was discovered in
Arabia in fact um Saudi Arabia proved to
have the most valuable o oil resources
in all the world okay and at that time
as the world was modernizing oil was
becoming more and more important and so
that made Saudi Arabia extremely
wealthy and as it became more and more
wealthy it tried to become more Western
more secular more Progressive more
modern which brought it into conflict
with the wahhabi okay now wahhabism
accounts for 20 to
40% of uh all the people in Saudi Arabia
so it is a very significant
group more important Wabi people tend to
be extremely fanatical so for example uh
in 1979 the people who laid Siege to
Mecca um were
wahhabist and wahhabist were also
responsible for terrorist attacks
against tourists against foreigners in Saudi
Saudi
Arabia okay so Saudi Arabia has always
had this problem with the wahhabis and
the a way that Saudi Arabia has tried to
resolve the conflict uh is to export the
religion of wahhabism throughout the
world so for example Osama bin ladin was
a Saudi
um citizen responsible for spreading
wahhabism in Afghanistan and that's what started
started
alqaeda okay so Saudi Arab Saudi trying
to export wahhabism Iran is trying to
export uh the Shia religion and so that
they bring they come in conflict with
with each other okay so the first source
of tension between Iran and Saudi Arabia
and what that means is that both
countries or are oil exporters in fact
Saudi Arabia is completely reliant on
oil for its economy
40% of Saudi Arabia's economy GDP is
based on oil exports Saudi Arabia is
number one oil exporter in the world okay
okay
75% of government revenues comes from
from from its oil exports in other words
Saudi Arabia does not actually collect
taxes from its citizens it just sells
oil okay
Iran um also sells oil it's the number
four oil exporter in the world but it's
less reliant on oil because it has a
diversified economy meaning that it has
very strong human capital um it has a
very well educated
population that does all sorts of
different activities
okay science
art um
education so Saudi Arabia for the
longest time has been has been trying to
control the price of oil in order to
maximize profits for example it wants to
cut down it wants to cut back production
in order to increase the price of oil
which will increase
profits but Iran often doesn't cooperate
because Iran is trying to sell as much
oil as possible in order to
boister uh in order to boost its economy
okay so there's economic economic
conflict between these two countries and
the third and final Conflict is
geopolitical okay and geopolitical means
that both countries are trying to exert
as much influence as
possible over the Middle
East now Iran is trying to exert
influence over the Middle East because
um After the revolution in in
1979 many countries including Saudi
Arabia and United States encouraged Iraq
to invade Iran and this Invasion called
the Iraq Iran War lasted eight years and
it cost the lives of
millions of um Iranians and from then on
Iran has adopted a policy of
aggressive um uh intervention in the
Middle East in order to distract the
United States and Israel okay so for
example uh in Israel there are two
groups opposing Israel
Hamas and um hesah and they're both
financed and supported politically uh by
Iran and the point of of doing this is
to distract Israel okay now Saudi Arabia
is trying to exert influence over the
Middle East because as one as number one
oil exporter in to control shipping
lanes okay uh it needs to control this
area um and this area uh the St moves
and the seus canal and 40% of all the
world's oil passes through these two
Straits and they go mainly to East Asia
China South Korea and Japan
mainly okay so because of these of these geopolitical
geopolitical
tensions I ran and started IA have
fought three three proxy wars okay they
fought three Shadow Wars the first is in
Iraq and now in Iraq as you know in
2003 America invaded Iraq and destroyed the
the
country and after destroy the country
there's a power vacuum and so basically
Iran came in and try to take over the
country and it could do so because
2third of the population were shiat and
therefore they had Affinity uh with Iran
and a third were Sunni so what happened
was that to counter the Iranian
influence Iraq Saudi Arabia started to
finance the third the one-third of the
sunnis against the Shia there so there
was a very violent Civil War fought in
Iraq after the invasion okay many people
also believe that Saudi Arabia is
responsible for the financing of the
Islamic State okay or
Isis because Isis really hates uh the Shia
Shia
religion okay but um over time because
Iran is has been so much more effective
in projecting its power than Saudi
Arabia um basically Iran Now controls
much of Iraq okay so in this first war
uh Iran defeated Saudi Arabia
then they found another war in
Syria um Syria's leader Assad uh faced a
rebellion and Saudi Arabia America uh
Israel support the rebels against Assad
and Iran came in to support Assad as
well as Russia and over time Assad was
able to crush the Rebellion okay so in
the second proxy
war um
Iran won as well now there's another
proxy wall in Yemen okay and it started
in 2016 so the wars in
um Iraq and Syria they were important to
Saudi Arabia but they they didn't really
threaten Saudi Arabia but this war in
Yan did threat in Saudi Arabia okay so
for the longest time Saudi Arabia
supported the Yemen political
leadership and then there was a
rebellion by the houthis okay the H the
houthis and the houthis were
Shia um villagers who lived in uh the
mountains and they were trying to
overthrow the
government and Saudi Arabia was afraid
that the
houthis uh would become friends with
Iran so s Arabia launched a massive
invasion of Y man it was 160 150,000
Saudi Arabian troops they had war planes
they were backed by the most advanced
American weapons and Technology okay
they also had a coalition of about 30
UAE
um the S Saudi Arabia named this
operation decisive storm right which
sounds like Desert
Storm and The the strategy they use is
what we call shock and
all and shock and all is basically we
have so many bombs we have so many
um airplanes we have so many soldiers
that we can in about a week's time
destroy you okay so go in go fast be
decisive destroy your enemy
enemy
unfortunately uh this for Saudi Arabia
this did not work and the reason why is
first of all the houthis were in the
mountains and so your bombs didn't
really stop them in fact all your bombs
did was make them really angry because
with your bombs you were killing
civilians okay so you're basically
uniting entire population against you
that's the first problem second problem
is that the huies are in the
mountains but Saudi Arabia has oil
fields and guess what guys it's really
really easy to blow up oil fields okay
so that's what the hoies were doing they
were sending like these cheap drones
they might cost $1,000
$10,000 and they would blow up oil
fields and
ports okay Saudi Arabia has another
problem problem okay Saudi Arabia has no
fresh water
it's in the desert it is a desert no
water guys no
Rivers so it relies entirely on desalination
plants okay and this is extremely
impressive technology right it takes
salt water sea water and turn into fresh
water it's very
impressive but it's all on the
coast and guess what guys the coast uh
so Iran can blow blow these plants and
then the hudies can blow these plants as
well okay so Saudi Arabia basically lost this
this
war because the houthis could inflict
massive economic damage on Saudi
Arabia so from this war Saudi Arabia
learned three things okay the first
thing it learned is that if it wants to
defeat their enemies the houthis the
syrians and the Iraqis they brought they
also need to be able to defeat Iran okay
that's the first thing they they learn
second thing they learn is that um their
economy is extremely vulnerable to
attack at any point Iran with its
missiles and drones to destroy the
entire Saudi Arabian economy okay it can
easily blow all the oil fields and the desalination
desalination
plans so the third thing that Saudi
Arabia learned from all this is is we
really need America to fight Iran for us
in the long term that's the only way
we're going to
survive as a
nation okay we need we need to defeat
Iran and we can't do it by ourselves we
need America to do it for us okay
unfortunately for Saudi
Arabia um in
2001 9911 happened right
15 of the 19
hijackers were citizens of Saudi
Arabia which meant that America was very
unhappy with Saudi Arabia okay Americans
didn't like s Saudi Arabia Americans
also knew that there were a lot of Human
Rights abuses in Saudi Arabia the other
thing that happened is in
2003 America invaded Iraq Saudi Arabia
tried to exert as much influence as
possible in Washington DC to stop the
war because they knew that if America
invaded Iraq it would make Iran more
powerful now as you know uh Saudi Arabia
could not stop the war okay in
2008 Obama Barack Obama came into an
office and Barack Obama's understanding
the world was that okay
the Middle East is a complete
mess and it's hopeless I don't really
want to deal with the Middle East plus
rising the main threat to American power
in the future will be in will be East
Asia so he proposed something call the
Asia pivot which is to transfer American
Military resources from the Middle East
to East Asia to counter the threat of
China but to do that you needed to
reduce tensions in the Middle East and
so in
2015 he made a deal with Iran called the
Iran nuclear deal and the deal was
basically Obama said to Iran listen I
know you're trying to develop nuclear
weapons okay so what we're going to do
is if you promise to not develop nuclear
weapons we will live economic extensions
on you so that you can prosper and Iran
said yes okay and this
really uh scared Saudi Arabia because if
America leaves the Middle East and broke
us a peace with Iran then Saudi Arabia
would be extremely vulnerable
okay so Saudi Arabia became very very
very desperate its very existence was
threatened also the economic outlook for
Saudi Arabia was not that great remember
the entire economy dependent on oil but
guess what guys oil is a finite resource
eventually you're going to run out oil
okay now if if you're optimistic you'll
be like well Saudi Arabia would run out
of oil in about 7 years time or 80 years
time okay but there are also some people
who believe that Saudi Arabia will run
up oil in about 10 years
time and if saiab has no oil then it's
entire economy
collapses okay then you also have have a
problem with global warming right climate
climate
change you also have a problem with the
entire global economy is slowing down
therefore the demand for oil is is
decreasing so the economic outlook for
Saudi Arabia is extremely
Grim okay and that's why
why
um in
2017 Saudi Arabia appointed a new leader
called muhamad bin Salman okay the Crown
Prince whoever calls
NBS and NBS promised to be a new leader
he was young
he was Progressive he wanted women to
drive he wanted young people to go uh to
the movie theater okay and he proposed a
new vision for Saudi Arabia called
called Vision
Vision
2030 okay but nbs's most important
achievement is that he became friends
with the new president Donald Trump okay
so in 2016
Donald Trump became president of the
United States and MBS decided that this
is an
opportunity for Saudi Arabia to reset
relationships to to reset relations with
America okay
trip um outside the United States was to
Saudi Arabia that was the first
achievement second achievement is that
so is that NBS became best friends with
Kushner
okay and jerk
Kushner um was Trump's Middle East
advisor and his job was to bring peace
to the Middle East mainly but mainly
between Israel and the Arab countries
and to that extent Kush did a great job
because NBS helped him okay so um his
major achievement is something called
the Abraham Accords the Abraham Accords
is just to establish peace between
Israel and the Arab countries so that
together um so MBS was looking very good
2018 he did
something that scared the world okay um
NBS had was a Visionary he had a plan
for where to take Saudi Arabia he wanted
to modernize Saudi Arabia but he was
also young he was a tyrant he did not
like to people who he did not like
people who criticized him okay so
there's a journalist named Jamal
Hashi who worked for the Washington Post
and who was a permanent resident of the
United States he was a Saudi
national and and um MBS had him killed
and this caused an international uproar
okay the CIA the US government conducted
investigation and they and they determin
those was NBS who ordered the ass
assassination Trump protected
MBS okay and then the most important
thing that Trump did was in January
January
2020 Trump ordered the assassination of
salamani who is considered to be the
second most powerful man in Iran after
the Ayatollah okay the supreme religious
leader of the country it is Kasam
salamani who was responsible for Iran's
uh policies in the Iraq War the Syria
war and in the Yemen War okay so from
the perspective of the of Saudi Arabia
Kasam salamani is Public Enemy Number
One he he is the greatest threat to Saudi
Saudi
Arabia now before okay America had many
opportunities to assassinate Kasam
salamani uh George W bush had the
opportunity Barack Obama had the
opportunity and both both believe that
doing so would
cause basically World War II okay
because if you kill the number two
leader of Iran Iran would have would
have no choice but to go to war with you
and that's why they both refrain from U
killing Kasam
salamani in fact when Trump made the the
decision to assassinate salamani the entire
entire
military was stunned okay they couldn't
believe this was happening so how how
does this happen okay so um for some
time there's some conflict between US
soldiers and Shia militian in Iraq and
the Pentagon felt it had to act okay so
in these situations they have to go to
the president and present options to the
president of how best to respond and
usually um the Pentagon will Design the
choices so that the president does what
the Pentagon thinks it's best okay so so
an example is
that um if I'm the military and I go to
Trump I give you three choices okay the
okay so when I present these three
options to you you as a president being
wise and strategic will obviously always
pick option two right what you should do
what the military suggest you should do
okay unfortunately in this C in this
instance Trump chose option three let's
BL up the world guys and so they
assassinated Kasam salaman okay
so in other
words it is very
likely that if Trump stayed a second
term the United States would have gone
to war with Iran given
how uh how things were progressing
progressing
okay MBS was so happy about all this
that he once BR privately to a friend
that oh jar Kushner Trump son-in-law the
man responsible for all Middle East
policies well he's in my pocket meaning
I own him okay and the evidence that
that suggests this is that
after uh Trump left office after Jared
Kushner left office Jared Kushner set up
a private Equity
Fund and MBS and the stud government
invested $2
billion in into the fun
fun
okay does that make sense so
um we don't know how we don't know this
for sure but it seems like
Trump is doing exactly what the Saudis
want which is to inflame tensions with
Iran okay and um this suggests that if in
in
November Trump wins a second
term it is very
possible that Trump will declare war on
Iran or at the very least continue to escalate
escalate
tensions with Iran okay which will very
likely lead to World War II
so in that respect the ele the election
in November whether whether whether or
not Trump comes back into office um is
one of most consequential
elections okay does that make sense
guys okay any questions anything you
class okay so what we will do next class
is is figure out if Trump will win in
November and I will make the argument to
you that it is
almost very certain very likely that he
will win in
November okay so we will examine why
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