The Podcast of the Lotus Eaters - PREVIEW： Brokenomics ｜ The Constraints on War with Firas Modad

00:00:00.000 Hello and welcome to Brokonomics. Now in this episode I thought I'd do something different 0.89

00:00:27.420 because I've been talking about the Iran war a lot.

00:00:29.540 We're going to talk about the wider region

00:00:31.300 as it is affected by the Iran war.

00:00:34.940 And to help me with that,

00:00:36.040 I've got our geopolitics expert, Fares Moudad.

00:00:39.480 Thank you for coming on.

00:00:40.380 My pleasure always.

00:00:41.900 Thank you.

00:00:42.540 So, first caveat, this is being recorded on whatever it is,

00:00:46.760 Thursday morning, goes out on Tuesday.

00:00:49.320 So it's vaguely possible that over the weekend,

00:00:52.180 it all gets wrapped up,

00:00:53.660 goes in the win column for somebody,

00:00:55.700 um and and it's all behind us i feel fairly safe dedicating an hour of mine and yours time and a

00:01:02.760 couple of hours of the editors or the assumption that it probably won't be yeah um there is some

00:01:08.700 interesting news though apparently quitar have paid six billion in order to be able to traverse

00:01:15.720 the straits i think that's credible but too low honestly yes i think well the other thing that

00:01:23.860 gets me is it's just money. It's not, and we will remove US bases. Yes, exactly. The Qataris have 0.83

00:01:31.540 been making noises about neutralizing themselves from this war, which presupposes the removal of

00:01:37.920 the Odayd airbase. The problem with that is that's the only guarantee of Qatari independence.

00:01:45.880 In 1997, the Saudis almost invaded.

00:01:50.380 In 2017, the Saudis and the Emiratis almost invaded.

00:01:55.240 And the reason that base exists is to prevent that eventuality.

00:02:01.400 And so that's a problem for Qatar.

00:02:03.920 And in terms of the $6 billion, the Qataris reportedly, allegedly, paid a billion dollars in 2015 to a group of Iraqi militias who had kidnapped 28 Qatari princes.

00:02:23.600 They were hunting in Iraq, and the Iraqi militias found them.

00:02:29.820 And the Qataris say that they paid money to the Iraqi government.

00:02:32.860 the militias say the money went to them. Nobody really knows, but opening the Strait of Hormuz

00:02:40.940 is worth considerably more than six billion. Well, I would have thought it's worth more than

00:02:47.720 six lots of 28 princes. I mean, is it not the case that if the Gulf states don't open the straits,

00:02:55.260 not only does oil not go out, but food doesn't come in? Yes. So this is an existential crisis

00:03:01.200 because he's all very well worrying about the Iranians.

00:03:03.620 That's one problem.

00:03:05.140 But worrying about a couple of million of your citizens

00:03:07.620 watching their children starve

00:03:09.600 is a whole other level of problems for the leadership of these countries.

00:03:13.080 So we're not there yet.

00:03:14.700 And the way that it's working is that the Iranians are charging fees 1.00

00:03:18.160 for ships to go through the strait.

00:03:20.460 And they're giving them safe passage through an alternative pathway

00:03:26.780 which goes between the Iranian islands,

00:03:29.260 suggesting that the main international waterway is mined.

00:03:36.240 And they've turned back one ship recently,

00:03:39.120 a couple of days ago or yesterday,

00:03:41.240 whereby the ship hadn't properly paid,

00:03:45.840 whereas other ships are paying up to $2 million per passage.

00:03:49.940 And I hear they're paying it in yuan.

00:03:51.240 And they're paying it in yuan,

00:03:53.480 meaning that the Chinese are exchanging favors with the Iranians

00:04:01.520 getting more yuan into Iran

00:04:04.620 and the Iranians would use that money to buy equipment from China

00:04:07.820 which is already providing Iran with either them or the Russians

00:04:12.620 or probably both

00:04:13.620 but Iranian missiles have been plugged into Baidu

00:04:17.620 the Chinese equivalent of GPS

00:04:22.780 which is upgrading itself to become equivalent to Starlink

00:04:27.420 or the Chinese have other technologies that are trying to mimic Starlink

00:04:31.980 and Starshield which is the military arm of Starlink

00:04:36.320 that has the constant surveillance pretty much all over the globe.

00:04:42.140 And is what you're hinting at targeting?

00:04:44.160 Yes.

00:04:44.640 Right.

00:04:45.160 What I'm saying is that the Chinese are helping the Iranians 0.97

00:04:48.580 with targeting and with intelligence collection

00:04:50.340 as are probably the Russians.

00:04:52.780 Hmm. Frankly, I'm not surprised about the Russians because the Americans have been helping the Ukrainians are targeting, so why wouldn't they do that? 1.00

00:05:00.460 So one of the things I think you said on our recent Real Politics, it was very interesting, was that the Gulf states quite deliberately maintain a sub-size military because they are afraid that if they had a large military, that could replace the leadership of these countries.

00:05:18.980 Yes.

00:05:19.260 So these countries are now in a very awkward position,

00:05:22.940 but they need the Americans because that's their security guarantee.

00:05:26.520 That's how they manage to be in the position where they can go on,

00:05:29.580 28 of them at a time can go on a hunting trip in Iraq,

00:05:32.140 and they have the resources to spend a billion to get them back

00:05:35.080 and all the other luxuries that I'm sure these Gulf state leaders have.

00:05:39.080 But if they're now paying tribute to the Iranians,

00:05:43.860 that suggests to me that the Iranians are at least emerging

00:05:48.080 as the regional hegemon? And how do they get their head around having two sets of patrons?

00:05:56.960 That's the real problem that they've always faced. And the way that they've addressed it in the past

00:06:02.640 was, for example, with the Qataris having decent relations with the Iranians and being mediators

00:06:07.920 and all of that. The Omanis doing something similar. The UAE has always facilitated trade

00:06:14.260 for Iran and help them evade sanctions because they know that when push comes to shove, the

00:06:20.520 Iranians can start blowing up their ships, essentially, as they did in 2018. They attacked 1.00

00:06:26.860 a bunch of ships off the coast of Oman, and then the UAE sends a maritime delegation to discuss

00:06:33.520 shared security interests, meaning that they've accepted that, okay, we have to listen to you.

00:06:40.600 And the Iranians now are no longer satisfied with letting these guys have this two-way relationship. 0.64

00:06:49.600 And they're trying to make them choose.

00:06:52.660 But all of the military infrastructure in the Gulf is American.

00:06:57.700 There are some Chinese assets here and there, like the Saudi ballistic missile program is largely Chinese and so on.

00:07:04.620 But the bulk of the military is American.

00:07:07.900 and especially the air force it's either american or in the uae's case it's half french as well

00:07:14.020 yes and the uae had and has a strong military relationship with the french as well okay but

00:07:19.420 for a long time there was no alternative to the americans if you wanted to have

00:07:24.200 a very high level very credible level of security for your nations chinese technology weapon systems

00:07:32.940 tech, all the rest of it, financial resources, Russian military capability, it does start to

00:07:41.240 look like there is an emerging alternative to the Americans. Which is why getting into this war was 0.74

00:07:49.540 such a stupid idea. Because now... For the Americans. For the Americans. Yes. Because now, 1.00

00:07:56.740 if this war ends on Saturday, as is being rumored.

00:08:01.920 So what's the scenario in which it ends on Saturday?

00:08:04.820 Whereby Trump decides, I've accomplished what I wanted to achieve,

00:08:09.560 and I'm leaving.

00:08:10.840 But that would leave Iran as the pretty much uncontested hegemon of the region. 0.79

00:08:15.520 If Americans leave with the Straits under Iranian control, 0.94

00:08:20.420 will they call the shots now?

00:08:22.900 Yes.

00:08:23.180 that's that that is about as dire as you can get for the petrodollar system

00:08:28.380 and even in time the dollar reserve system yes essentially right so now that he's gotten himself

00:08:37.980 into this war now that trump has gotten himself into this war getting out of it is so much harder

00:08:43.820 so let's just carry on thinking through the gulf states

00:08:46.660 how do they feel about that what what is their temperament likely to i mean first of all can we

00:08:53.640 even assume that we can just say the gulf states no or does amman have radically different opinion

00:09:01.720 on this to say saudi and qatar how do they work through this group um we're in a situation where

00:09:08.600 we may be losing the us as a patron as a as the hegemon and we might get be getting it replaced 0.89

00:09:13.780 with Iranian, which is essentially a proxy for Russia and China. So the problem that they face

00:09:20.000 is that most of the purchases of Gulf oil go to Asia. Yes. With China being the largest buyer in

00:09:27.260 Asia. So that's one massive problem that they have. The second problem that they have is that 0.97

00:09:33.380 the Saudis have their own regional pretensions and regional ambitions,

00:09:37.560 and don't want to be playing second fiddle to the Iranians. Is that credible, given the earlier 0.99

00:09:43.160 point about them not having much in the way of the military because they've outsourced that?

00:09:46.860 In terms of the air force, the Yemen war forced the Saudis to upgrade their air force.

00:09:52.360 In terms of ground forces, they are quite weak, I would say, with a lot of American equipment,

00:09:59.180 but a huge amount of incompetence. And you're not allowed to actually make decisions unless

00:10:04.620 you're of the royal family. And so there is this integration between the royal family and the

00:10:11.140 military which they've used to try to control the army but this hasn't in the past stopped other

00:10:21.200 monarchies from being overthrown by lower lower levels of the military who have had enough

00:10:26.400 essentially and so if these guys actually commit their military and depend on it the military

00:10:31.980 becomes quite powerful yes and a country like saudi arabia which is named after the family

00:10:38.920 The House of Saud.

00:10:40.040 The House of Saud, exactly, runs into big problems there.

00:10:45.480 And with the rest of these countries,

00:10:47.320 these are compromises between the ruling family

00:10:50.040 and a bunch of other leading families.

00:10:53.460 That's how they exist, essentially.

00:10:55.480 If Saudi Arabia wakes up its potential because it's big and it's rich, 0.86

00:11:00.740 if somehow it wakes up its potential, I don't know how it does that,

00:11:03.280 Chinese tech, Russians come in and train an army of 4 million, 0.86

00:11:07.820 or whatever this scenario looks like,

00:11:11.020 do the rest of the Gulf states stay independent?

00:11:13.240 No.

00:11:13.920 Essentially, they get divided between Iran and Saudi Arabia.

00:11:17.940 Okay.

00:11:18.300 And a country like Kuwait, for example, ceases to exist.

00:11:21.400 Because for the Iranians, the big security challenge 1.00

00:11:24.080 is always a land invasion from Iraq, 0.91

00:11:28.320 which is where Iran is flat,

00:11:29.820 and the flatlands that terminate near the Iranian-Iraqi border

00:11:35.480 are also where the Iranian oil is concentrated.

00:11:39.420 Yes.

00:11:39.820 And Kuwait sits on that bit as well.

00:11:42.480 That is the live bit.

00:11:43.860 That's the flat oil bit.

00:11:45.360 So that region from Kuwait to Basra to Khuzestan

00:11:49.880 is largely flat

00:11:53.500 and is massive in terms of its oil resources.

00:11:58.360 And it terminates on the Saudi border

00:12:00.760 with a shared region between Saudi Arabia and Kuwait.

00:12:03.780 Yes.

00:12:05.480 And so for the Iranians, the security imperative is to seize all of this. 0.95

00:12:12.400 But if they seize all of this, that gets them at the border of the eastern province,

00:12:16.500 which is where the Saudi oil is, which is largely Shia.

00:12:20.100 And that is right next to Bahrain, which is also largely Shia.

00:12:25.820 And is it as simple as saying, if you're Shia, you're going to be far more sympathetic to Iran?

00:12:30.740 Yes.

00:12:30.940 It really, I mean, there are always exceptions to every rule, but the rule is the rule regardless of the exceptions.

00:12:40.460 And so the emergence of Iran as a hegemon, it changes the political dynamics in the whole region because it means that at least two of these countries no longer need to exist in their current form, Kuwait and Bahrain. 0.93

00:12:56.820 And that's a massive problem because the entirety of the American policy in the Gulf is predicated on keeping these small countries independent so that there isn't this massive concentration of oil wealth in one set of hands.

00:13:13.160 and the importance of keeping Saudi Arabia on side for the Americans

00:13:18.080 is to make sure that the biggest player in oil exports

00:13:21.920 isn't beholden to powers that are hostile to the United States.

00:13:28.660 Well, Saudi has always had a sort of special position.

00:13:31.060 When the petrodollar was getting set up,

00:13:33.220 the US went to the Saudis and said,

00:13:34.840 look, we give you security guarantees and we cooperate.

00:13:37.940 We will make sure you remain in power forever.

00:13:40.120 The Roosevelt-Emin Saad meeting.

00:13:42.220 Yes, yes.

00:13:43.160 but you will sell in dollars.

00:13:45.140 Nobody else got a deal quite that good.

00:13:47.220 The deal for everybody else looked closer to,

00:13:49.800 well, we'll be nice to you or we'll invade you.

00:13:52.280 So Saudi has always had a special... 0.99

00:13:54.460 So let's just think this through.

00:13:55.660 If this goes as badly as it could do,

00:13:58.680 so the doomsday scenario for the US,

00:14:01.960 Iran gets Kuwait and Iraq, 0.96

00:14:04.600 Saudi gets everything else. 0.99

00:14:07.740 Assuming the Saudi military doesn't break.

00:14:10.460 Yes.

00:14:10.780 and if they activate their air forces well their base defenses are weaker than those of the

00:14:19.240 americans even though the bases are shared and as the interceptors run out you have that scenario of

00:14:25.840 what you're seeing in ukraine which is sending big waves of drones to disable aircraft

00:14:30.260 and if you're russia you want that because then this opic plus configuration which is opic including

00:14:38.260 russia and others essentially is the energy hegemon of the world and is an energy hegemon 0.99

00:14:44.240 that can challenge china as well as the west because you're not dealing with iranian oil

00:14:50.500 anymore you're dealing with iranian iraqi and kuwaiti oil as one which is a game changer the

00:14:57.060 kuwaitis i think produce around three or four million barrels a day uh the iraqi is three or

00:15:03.820 four but with the potential for much more and the Iranians three and change so suddenly you have 0.99

00:15:11.500 Saudi that is pumping around 9 million barrels a day in stable times with a total capacity of 12

00:15:17.040 million suddenly you have another Iran and Russia aligned Saudi with its own 9 million barrels a day

00:15:28.100 and with the potential for 15.

00:15:31.520 If you look at the actual size of the resources,

00:15:34.940 the Iranians were producing 6 million barrels a day

00:15:36.960 in the days of the Shah.

00:15:38.420 But the sanctions and the chaos and all of that

00:15:41.200 brought that down to under 4.

00:15:44.540 Well, one of the effects of this war

00:15:46.680 is the breakdown of the sanctions regime,

00:15:49.120 especially if it really goes badly

00:15:52.340 and the Americans withdraw.

00:15:54.120 But what that points to is the inability

00:15:56.820 of the americans to withdraw and now that they are in the war they have to stay in it

00:16:03.140 well i mean this is the huge conundrum they cannot afford to have a bad outcome from this

00:16:10.400 but getting a good outcome could involve a lot of american lives unfortunately indeed and so

00:16:19.780 this is why every other american president resisted this war even though the israelis

00:16:25.700 have been pressing for it forever even though the plan was okay we have Iran surrounded in 0.98

00:16:31.920 Afghanistan and Iraq it's going to be next and then yes that's it so let's just finish off on 0.95

00:16:37.400 the Gulf states because this is fascinating so worst case scenario is perhaps Iran getting Iraq 0.99

00:16:43.000 and Kuwait Saudi could get the rest although it could start fragmenting as soon as it gets a large

00:16:49.360 enough military to be able to to occupy its neighbors it could credibly fragment in some

00:16:55.020 sort of way or collapse if the saudis get into the war the next thing that happens is that yemen 1.00

00:17:01.440 gets into the war right like the the saudis won't be fighting iran or just iran they'll be fighting

00:17:10.100 iran the iraqi militias and yemen meaning that they are facing a two-front war what's the shia

00:17:17.940 sunni split in iraq i mean what what proportion of them 60 percent shia 20 percent kurds 20 percent

00:17:23.360 suddenly okay so this comes down to see a shia versus sunny that's a real problem for that's a

00:17:28.880 real problem because i think something like uh 40 of the iraqi population is under 14.

00:17:36.800 so that's a massive youth bulge there what are you going to do with them well arm them

00:17:41.680 buy them cheap chinese guns and throw them and you don't need to be a burnham level propagandist to 0.96

00:17:46.720 get young men who don't have a lot to lose to fight. Exactly. So what about the smaller states

00:17:53.520 then? Because they obviously sound like they're in an incredibly precarious position and trying

00:17:58.480 to pick their way through this without upsetting, well, I don't know what their relations of the

00:18:04.580 smaller states are with Saudi Arabia, but without upsetting the Americans or the Iranians too much

00:18:10.180 while they figure out how this is going to land. Well, let's start with Oman. The only people with 1.00

00:18:15.040 ambitions on Oman are the UAE. They want to take Oman, that is their hope, because that then 1.00

00:18:21.220 transforms them from a minor country into a major one with enormous territory and with real

00:18:29.060 strategic depth. Can we speak of the UAE as a unified thing? Yes, because Abu Dhabi is by far

00:18:39.260 the largest and has the largest actual Emirati population and has the vast majority of the oil

00:18:45.860 wealth and is in control of pretty much all of the federal institutions. I see, okay. And so

00:18:52.800 more or less, yes, we can to a large extent. Even though the smaller ruling families aren't happy

00:19:01.520 with the level of dominance that is exercised by the al-Nahiyan, the ruling family of Abu Dhabi,

00:19:09.260 It's like medieval France. Paris is dominant, and then you've got the regional counts and lords.

00:19:14.500 Yes, exactly. For the UAE, they are the ones that are most decidedly pro-Israel.

00:19:22.320 Massively so.

00:19:23.800 How did they get there?

00:19:26.340 Their view, and the Israeli view, is essentially if you want to dominate a region that is largely hostile,

00:19:32.680 you have this alliance with the peripheral smaller powers in order to constrain the center

00:19:39.980 okay and so if you look at where the uae is and where israel is if they both expand they sort of

00:19:49.000 get rid of everyone in between i can see that but an also also an argument could be made

00:19:54.340 that if if the israelis had not taken the decisions that they had taken um they wouldn't

00:20:01.440 be in this situation in the first place which is why which is the depth of the alliance is reflected

00:20:09.300 in the fact that despite this war being forced on the uae and then complaining about it officially

00:20:15.880 they're doubling down in support of israel and the people who matter in terms of decision making

00:20:21.780 yes are more and more vocal in their condemnation of iran and more and more vocal in their support

00:20:28.720 for alignment with israel yeah i've seen them criticize everybody iran yes u.s and israel yes

00:20:35.340 but they're leaning on doubling down on american israel yes because they have to because they're

00:20:42.420 small states and they'll be swallowed if they don't essentially essentially okay and the kuwaitis 1.00

00:20:48.280 are kind of looking like they're doubling down but they're not making too much of a too much

00:20:52.740 noise about it. The Qataris are trying to extricate themselves from this somehow and hoping that if

00:20:59.540 Turkey comes out on top somehow their own security is guaranteed. What's Turkey's interest in this 0.94

00:21:05.640 ongoing situation? Turkey's interest in this is multifaceted. They don't want a very unstable Iran 0.98

00:21:11.760 on their borders. They don't want the kind of refugee flows that follow which destabilized 1.00

00:21:18.920 turkey during the syrian war with a population of 20 24 million so i went to turkey um during that

00:21:27.200 period of destabilization and that and and you'd go into the city center and there'd be camps of

00:21:33.560 syrians literally just in the middle of the street the whole middle of the street would be a shanty 1.00

00:21:38.400 town of syrians that just turned up yes and they don't want that with iran which is a much larger

00:21:44.660 population you're dealing with 90 90 something million people um they also don't want iran to

00:21:55.520 be the regional hegemon although they could sort of divvy up bits and pieces between them is that

00:22:02.080 because they want to be the do they have incredible yes shot yes they anatolia and persia are built

00:22:12.000 like fortresses. And so the expanse around them is their playground, be that the Caucasus or the 0.90

00:22:23.580 Levant or to a lesser extent the Gulf. And presumably Turkey has a huge advantage in that 0.56

00:22:28.980 being a NATO member, Israel can't bomb them. Although no NATO country is going to declare

00:22:35.540 war in support of Turkey against Israel, realistically speaking. The level of Israeli 0.87

00:22:41.280 influence over the west is such that this is not a realistic possibility but still bombing a nato

00:22:46.180 country when you're not a nato country i mean that does i mean i i agree you will probably end up like

00:22:51.480 that but that is a real head scratcher for people who've got to try and explain it to everybody else

00:22:56.040 yes it's it's a political problem but it's not an insurmountable one okay and already we're hearing

00:23:01.520 the israelis saying that turkey is the next iran i've heard them say that yes i mean it i mean

00:23:08.380 surely turkey can't be the regional hegemon it would have to share with iran they did manage it 0.62

00:23:14.780 in the past with some skirmishes here and there okay i mean most famously islam exists because 0.97

00:23:21.900 the byzantine empire and the persian empire exhausted themselves in a hundred years of war

00:23:27.440 that so enfeebled them that this bunch of desert tribesmen was able to occupy them both eventually 0.99

00:23:36.580 so there is precedent for them being in uh very prolonged insurmountable conflicts

00:23:45.580 there is also precedent for them figuring things out and navigating around each other

00:23:51.620 there is precedent for the persians surrounding basara to take it away from ottoman hands 0.90

00:23:57.200 and trying to contest that area so yes i mean i suppose we have to remember i mean today we

00:24:05.300 think of turkey as this sort of second world country that is trying to figure itself out but

00:24:09.300 i mean actually it was a great major power yes for a huge amount of history yes and it always was

00:24:16.680 holding anatolia gives you an enormous set of advantages some disadvantages because everybody

00:24:22.560 around you is because of the sea lanes because of the sea lanes but also because that once you

00:24:28.360 dominate Anatolia, you dominate the Fertile Crescent, which is the agricultural area along

00:24:36.580 the Euphrates and Tigris rivers, extending into Syria. And from that, you then expand into

00:24:44.560 Lebanon and Palestine. And from that, Egypt becomes a target. 0.98

00:24:49.300 I mean, it comes back to another choke point.

00:24:51.100 Exactly. And then on the other side of it, you have the Balkans,

00:24:54.580 which are fragmented disorganized chaotic so a great empire can enforce order i mean turkey

00:25:03.080 was an occupation of ukraine and of crimea and of bulgaria and romania romania and bulgaria

00:25:10.760 exist as independent states because the russians defeated the turks and liberated them

00:25:15.420 so it is naturally a great power and it's rebuilding its industry and modernizing its

00:25:23.580 industry and it is preparing itself to be a great power again i do want to come to israel but perhaps

00:25:30.780 before we do what about the smaller nations around israel so the lebanons the jordan jordans yeah

00:25:39.620 the so on the israeli ambition is greater israel and the logic here for the israelis is we don't

00:25:47.260 have enough people we don't have enough land and so we will take more land and import more people 1.00

00:25:53.440 from the jewish diaspora yes and so that requires a constant state of militarism and expansionism 0.93

00:26:02.440 and netanyahu was one of the people who deeply understood that his intellectual forefather is

00:26:10.300 is a guy by the name of jabotinsky who was of the view that we have to keep on fighting the arabs 0.70

00:26:15.680 until we they accept that we're permanently here and since they don't this might be a permanent

00:26:21.300 state of affairs until we break them that i mean that feels bold to me because there are small

00:26:29.540 countries surrounded by a lot of countries that and and it looked to me like they had been going

00:26:34.640 down the path of stabilizing relationships and that made sense to me but they can't fight all

00:26:40.320 of them you can't you can't fight the seers the sunnis they believe that since they defeated a

00:26:48.740 bunch of incompetent Arab armies in 1948, which were actually outnumbered. Despite the fact that

00:26:55.620 there were seven armies, they were actually outnumbered by the Jewish militias. And the

00:27:01.460 Jewish militias won, and Israel was established in 1948. In 1967, they beat Jordan, Egypt,

00:27:10.160 and Syria at the same time.

00:27:12.500 So in their minds, they can keep on doing this

00:27:16.620 because this is God's will for them to return to their homeland.

00:27:22.200 And what is the temperature check in the region?

00:27:25.800 Because you say that the smaller Gulf states are doubling down on Israel.

00:27:30.980 Some of them, yes.

00:27:31.800 Clearly, the Iranians are not there. 1.00

00:27:34.480 The Turks must be listening to them saying that Turkey is the next Iran. 0.74

00:27:38.800 The surrounding, so what about the smaller surrounding country?

00:27:41.000 I know Lebanon is currently being hammered,

00:27:43.540 but what is the temperature check around those other countries?

00:27:47.120 So in Lebanon, there's a big division

00:27:48.920 between those who want to keep fighting Israel and those who don't.

00:27:53.780 And those who, so it's sort of...

00:27:55.880 Is that a Christian-Muslim divide?

00:27:57.160 Not entirely.

00:27:59.080 There's Sunni Muslims who think we should wait, 1.00

00:28:02.780 essentially we should wait for Sunni powers to do it, 0.95

00:28:04.880 and side with the Sunni powers no matter what they say.

00:28:07.980 If they want peace now, peace now.

00:28:09.260 If they want to fight, we fight with them.

00:28:11.360 There are some Christians who want peace with Israel.

00:28:14.880 There are other Christians who don't 1.00

00:28:17.380 and fear the ensuing Sunni domination. 0.72

00:28:22.400 And then there is the Shia who largely want to keep fighting Israel 0.98

00:28:25.420 on the side of Iran to make sure that the Israelis 0.94

00:28:28.120 don't ethnically cleanse them from South Lebanon, 0.94

00:28:32.400 which is what the Israeli plan is and this isn't new it was the plan in 1993 it was the plan in

00:28:40.660 1996 it was the plan in 2006 and it's the plan again today in 2026. If you enjoyed that content

00:28:47.580 and of course you did because you are a smart person then why don't you go over to lotuseaters.com

00:28:53.440 where you can watch the whole episode for as little as five pounds a month which really is

00:28:58.880 not much money at all and you get loads of really good content.

The Podcast of the Lotus Eaters - March 31, 2026

PREVIEW： Brokenomics ｜ The Constraints on War with Firas Modad

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