Juno News - January 29, 2021


Iran, Biden and Canada – Why the Middle East matters


Episode Stats


Length

5 minutes

Words per minute

209.63564

Word count

1,214

Sentence count

23

Harmful content

Hate speech

3

sentences flagged


Summary

Summaries generated with gmurro/bart-large-finetuned-filtered-spotify-podcast-summ .

In this episode, I talk about the Middle East and how it affects Canada and why it's important to know what's going on in the region. I also talk about some of the things we can learn from the Middle Eastern countries and how they can affect Canada.

Transcript

Transcript generated with Whisper (turbo).
Hate speech classifications generated with facebook/roberta-hate-speech-dynabench-r4-target .
00:00:00.000 So last week I spoke about Israel's vaccine rollout and what Canada might be able to learn
00:00:09.360 from their experience but I actually want to stay on the Middle East for a little bit because I 0.97
00:00:13.680 think there's a lot we can really unpack there and things that affect Canada that we don't always
00:00:18.240 necessarily think about. Now the first area I want to talk about is the energy sector and I know that
00:00:24.120 traditionally you know oil prices or what goes on in the Middle East affects oil prices and so that
00:00:28.440 has a huge effect on what goes on in Canada but I want to start in Washington actually before we
00:00:33.660 jump to the Middle East because President Biden not only cancelled Keystone XL but is really cracking
00:00:38.880 down on fracking and so American energy independence is possibly being threatened but why does that have
00:00:45.020 a huge effect on the Canadian economy and what does that have to do with the Middle East? Well
00:00:48.340 it has to do with the Middle East because President Trump as you may recall pulled out of the Iran deal
00:00:52.660 and some news reports basically say that the U.S. will return to the nuclear court as long as Iran
00:00:58.340 is complying. Now what does that mean? That means that Iran may not face sanctions. That means that
00:01:04.100 their economy might do better. That means that they may be able to refund some of the organizations
00:01:08.840 and cause trouble for their neighbors such as Israel, the UAE, Saudi Arabia. There's an ongoing
00:01:13.360 conflict in Yemen which most Canadians are not necessarily aware of because it really hasn't
00:01:17.460 been covered a lot in the mainstream media and I think it's really an underspoken about issue there
00:01:24.240 but the issue is again getting close to Iran might embolden the regime, might give them new funds and
00:01:31.680 reduce some of the sanctions which will free them up to be able to cause trouble. Iran is one of the 1.00
00:01:36.160 world's largest if not the largest state sponsor of terror and has a number of sort of covert operations
00:01:42.640 trying to stabilize its neighbors. You know in the WikiLeaks cable a lot of people thought that Israel was
00:01:47.740 pushing hard for America to bomb Iran and there's actually Saudi Arabia one of the countries pushing the
00:01:52.720 hardest for America to deal tough with Iran. So there's an entire coalition of surrounding countries
00:01:58.480 and this is what in many ways also pushed some of the peace deals was the fear of sort of Iranian
00:02:03.360 hegemony, Iranian overreach in that region and so that pushed a lot of the countries together.
00:02:08.300 President Biden also cancelled the F-35 or at the very least put it on hold but possibly cancelled
00:02:12.640 the F-35 deal to the UAE that was apparently part of the Israel peace deal between Israel and the UAE
00:02:19.060 that they would be having access to buy F-35 which we don't even have yet, we may never get but that
00:02:25.700 again this all really overshadows the energy sector and it's not just again important because of oil
00:02:30.920 prices but it's important because the energy independence to the United States and our exports
00:02:36.540 to the United States which are now very limited except by rail and our own energy independence because
00:02:41.480 we also tend to import a number of oil from a number of countries especially in eastern Canada. So
00:02:47.440 that is going to have a huge huge effect on what goes on in this country and that is really tied into
00:02:52.760 what goes on in the Middle East. Now the second area which is tied into the first is actually
00:02:57.860 relating to this story here and this story is about underground banks and underground money exchanges
00:03:06.020 that are really funded and pushed by the Iranian regime. Now this money laundering is basically using
00:03:12.740 money to finance terror and finance the drug trade and this is very concerning because this is happening
00:03:17.760 here in Canada. Now I'm very concerned not only because they are using our country for you know 1.00
00:03:24.180 nefarious purposes but also because of this and I'll explain why. This story here liberal writing
00:03:29.460 association accepted donation from accused Iranian money launderer. Now someone who CISA suspected of
00:03:35.360 laundering money for the Iranian regime made a $240 donation to a liberal writing association. Now
00:03:40.240 why am I concerned about this? Now you may think it's because the $240 donation you know maybe
00:03:45.780 buying some access or that that kind of thing. Now I don't think $240 buys you access but I think
00:03:51.120 what this does show is that the road from money laundering to political interference is actually
00:03:55.440 very short and possibly easily driven because when you have a lot of dirty money lying around it's
00:04:00.960 very easy to find purposes and things to do with that money especially since you've got to get rid of
00:04:05.020 it somehow and you know might as well buy some political favor while you're at it if you have to dump
00:04:09.720 some cash. So a couple things out of the Middle East that are very concerning. Now overall I think
00:04:15.400 you know the Middle East is is it's a different world than Canada in in many ways and I think we
00:04:20.960 can safely say that if Eastern Canada has a different culture than Western Canada or you know Toronto
00:04:26.920 has a very different culture than Western Canada or than Quebec I think it's very safe to say that the
00:04:32.360 Middle East has a very different culture than Canada and so I really think it is worth reading about
00:04:38.140 worth exploring but also remembering that things work very differently in that part of the world
00:04:43.320 and I think a lot of times people tend to get caught up in uh in sort of the preconceptions that we have
00:04:48.340 here. Now I not only have a background in the Middle East but I've also studied the Middle East extensively
00:04:52.720 and so I hope to bring you some of that information that we can unpack about why that is relevant to
00:04:57.620 Canadians but I think it is very important to remember that our already beleaguered energy
00:05:01.500 sector can be greatly affected by what goes on in the Middle East and not just because of oil prices
00:05:06.460 but greatly affected about the uh ongoing uh issues in the Middle East and uh also that the
00:05:13.720 Canadian government is not necessarily immune from foreign interference especially from
00:05:18.300 interference actors such as the Iranian regime so again as always a lot of stuff to think about
00:05:23.560 still trying to work on a Middle East explainer video for you just really trying to find that
00:05:27.480 format that place to really uh you know push that out and under what context but definitely still
00:05:32.200 working on things like that as I know a lot of you have requested it in the comments but
00:05:35.280 as always for True North I am Sam Ashkenazi thank you so so much for watching this video hope you
00:05:39.800 learned something about the Middle East don't forget to subscribe and hit that notification bell
00:05:42.840 so you can stay up to date with all the latest and greatest from True North thank you so much for
00:05:46.560 watching and have a good one