The Podcast of the Lotus Eaters - August 11, 2026


PREVIEW LIVE： Realpolitik #59 ｜ Sowing the Seeds of Total Regional War


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Transcript

Transcript generated with Whisper (turbo).
Hate speech classifications generated with facebook/roberta-hate-speech-dynabench-r4-target .
00:00:00.480 Hello. Happy Monday, everyone. This is another episode of RealPolitik, and I am your host, Firas Madad.
00:00:07.660 So today we're going to be talking about how the war in the Middle East is evolving.
00:00:11.380 I know we've talked about it a lot, but I think something very different is now going on, and it's actually quite important. 0.85
00:00:18.920 Because if I'm right in my speculation, this is a bit of a game changer.
00:00:23.460 Now, in case you haven't heard, the Saudis, the Turks, and the Pakistanis signed on the 7th of August a mutual defense agreement.
00:00:33.680 And they brought in the president of Turkey and the prime minister of Pakistan.
00:00:38.520 And they signed essentially a new kind of NATO-like alliance that ensures that an attack against one of these countries is an attack against all of them. 0.52
00:00:49.960 and that means essentially that the Saudis that the Pakistanis and the Turks have stepped in
00:00:58.480 following repeated Iranian attacks on Saudi Arabia and declared that they were going to act
00:01:04.580 as security guarantors for the Saudis and if you look at a map you can see why this is a bit of a
00:01:11.180 problem for two countries in particular, Israel and Iran. For the Iranians, they have Pakistan
00:01:20.380 on their eastern border, along with Afghanistan. They've got Saudi Arabia here, the dominant force 0.80
00:01:28.180 in the Arabian Peninsula. And they've got Turkey. And if you look back at the history of these two
00:01:37.060 geographies, Anatolia here in Turkey and Persia fought each other many, many times over the course
00:01:47.240 of hundreds of years. They haven't fought each other since the 1700s properly, but before that
00:01:54.100 it was a pretty regular thing. And indeed, Iran back in the day when it was still Persia 0.97
00:02:00.500 looked to first the Portuguese and then the British as allies because it needed to check
00:02:06.580 the threat from Turkey. And from the Iranian perspective, not much really has changed.
00:02:15.140 This is here an article by one of the Turkish state media entities, essentially, that explains that
00:02:26.100 the Turks and the Iraqis are working on something called the Development Road Project,
00:02:31.940 which is meant to be funded by the Qataris who are I mean remember who the Qataris are they are 0.50
00:02:37.720 the main outpost of the Muslim Brotherhood under American supervision and their job is to finance
00:02:46.640 Islamist causes and the spread of Sunni extremism in order to help typically the United States in
00:02:56.460 its imperial ambitions, but over the course of the last couple of decades, their big priority
00:03:02.480 has been to help the United States as well as Turkey. So there is this plan that is being
00:03:07.340 proposed for Iraq, which is called the Development Road Project. Now, why is this important? First,
00:03:13.320 we'll explain why Iraq is important, and then we'll explain what the Turkish Qatari Development
00:03:19.160 road project is and why that is a huge problem for the Iranians.
00:03:25.660 If you look at Iran's geography, I've explained this in a previous series about the geopolitics
00:03:30.620 of Iran, basically there is a great salt desert here, there is a bunch of cities in the north
00:03:38.800 of the country, there is the western mountain ranges that make Iran into a fortress, but
00:03:46.880 is this massive vulnerability here in the south of the country where the land is a little bit
00:03:53.680 less mountainous a little bit easier to access for militaries and in the iran iraq war from 1980 to
00:04:01.280 1988 this was really where the land war where the ground war actually took place and iran is
00:04:09.600 insanely vulnerable to incursions from Iraq because right now Afghanistan is not a threat.
00:04:18.260 There is no Genghis Khan about to sweep through and conquer Iran. Pakistan is a manageable threat 1.00
00:04:25.140 and the border here is mountainous, quite difficult. Iran is most vulnerable here in the
00:04:31.840 south, in the vicinity of Basra, and the Pfau port here south of Basra, Iraq's only port. 0.94
00:04:41.240 So for the Iranians, their strategic imperative is to control at least southern Iraq. 0.51
00:04:48.920 This is non-negotiable for them, they have a bit of flexibility in the north, but the
00:04:52.720 south of Iraq is where they're really vulnerable.
00:04:56.300 the south of Iraq is Shia, the main Shia shrines, Najaf, Karbala, these are in the south. And
00:05:04.840 for the Iranians, religiously and geopolitically, they must be in control of this region. So when 1.00
00:05:13.400 the Americans invaded Iraq, the Iranians flooded that region with militias that are Shia Iraqi 0.74
00:05:22.380 that we're loyal to Iran. So what's Turkey proposing here? Turkey is proposing, essentially, 0.59
00:05:30.640 the following. The Development Road Project, which is what we're talking about here, may initially
00:05:36.160 appear to be a new transportation corridor extending from Iraq to Europe. It represents
00:05:41.420 a vision that is far broader in scope. This multimodal corridor will transport cargo arriving
00:05:48.220 at the Grand Pfau port from India, South Asia, and the Gulf, through Iraq to Turkey and onward
00:05:54.100 to Europe, creating a new axis of connectivity and global trade. The corridor will begin at the
00:06:00.000 Grand Pfau port in southern Iraq and proceed through Basra, Nasiriyah, Najaf, a holy city,
00:06:07.380 Samarra, just north of Baghdad, Mosul, on the border with Turkey, and go into Turkey. And then
00:06:15.580 will extend all along Turkey's southern border with Syria to terminate in Istanbul. So what are
00:06:23.460 the Turks saying? They're saying that they're going to connect this point here, the southernmost
00:06:29.160 point of Iraq, the only coastal region that it has, to Najaf, the holy city for the Shia,
00:06:36.120 and Karbala, the second holy city, on to Samarra here, and then continue all the way through Musul,
00:06:44.620 basically a Sunni stronghold,
00:06:46.860 and then run along parallel to the Syrian border
00:06:50.200 and then go on to Istanbul and Europe.
00:06:54.120 But that's not it. That's not all of it.
00:06:58.920 The plan is to integrate electricity transmission,
00:07:03.740 oil and gas pipelines, and telecoms infrastructure.
00:07:06.680 If you connect the telecoms infrastructure,
00:07:10.840 the roads, the railroads, and the oil,
00:07:13.900 to Turkey, Turkey becomes the dominant power overall of Iraq. And now with Turkey aligning
00:07:22.880 with Saudi Arabia in a mutual defense pact, that essentially means that the Saudis and the Turks
00:07:30.900 are moving together to take away Iraq from Iran. This is the interpretation of this whole
00:07:41.640 agreement. And it will be backed not just by Qatari financial power, which is enormous,
00:07:47.820 but it will be backed by Saudi financial power, which is a little more troubled because of the
00:07:54.800 war, but absolutely enormous. So this is the idea. And along with that, what's happening is that the
00:08:03.740 Saudis and the Turks are building a rail connection directly from Istanbul all the way
00:08:11.320 to Riyadh and then connecting to Oman and connecting to the rest of the Gulf states
00:08:17.640 and connecting to Mecca and Medina. So the Iranians are looking at this and what are they thinking?
00:08:25.640 Obviously they view the Pakistani-Saudi-Turkish pact as an alliance against them 0.91
00:08:32.920 because they've been attacking Saudi Arabia for quite some time and they've been messing 0.76
00:08:37.560 with the Saudis in Yemen and in Bahrain and in Iraq ever since the Islamic revolution kicked off
00:08:44.020 in 1979. So from the Iranian perspective, this is an existential threat because if the Sunni powers 1.00
00:08:53.460 have the rail connections to move freely between, say, Riyadh, Basra, and Istanbul, well, rail 0.79
00:09:04.120 connections, as in World War I and World War II, can be followed by armies. You just move the air
00:09:10.380 defenses and the special forces first, then you move the bulk of the army, and then you attack.
00:09:16.120 And where do you attack? You end up basically in the area of Havaz, where a lot of Iranian oil sits,
00:09:24.680 and where the main Iranian energy industry sits in Abadan, built by the British way back when they
00:09:32.180 were the dominant force in Persia. So this alliance is being presented as against Israel
00:09:40.120 and the Sunni powers are trying to say well you know it's the Israelis who should be afraid of 0.59
00:09:45.740 this alliance because the Sunnis are going to get together and liberate Palestine from the evil 0.94
00:09:53.820 Zionists or at least you hear some of that stuff online and that is partly true. It is a real real 0.98
00:09:59.920 threat to the Israelis, especially because of the rail plan to connect Riyadh to Istanbul via 0.94
00:10:05.580 Jordan and Syria, but it's also a massive threat to the Iranians. And again, you're seeing the 0.93
00:10:12.760 geopolitical interests of Iran and Israel kind of intersecting. This is the point that nobody
00:10:18.200 wants to listen to and nobody wants to believe. They have shared geopolitical interests.
00:10:24.240 This isn't the Saudis' first attempt at this, because just a couple of weeks ago,
00:10:28.740 they were trying to set up a maritime defense alliance to protect the Red Sea. And they signed
00:10:34.300 up Bahrain, okay, who cares, Bangladesh, okay, Djibouti, Egypt, which is much more important,
00:10:43.220 Jordan, Pakistan, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, obviously, Somalia, Sudan, Turkey, and the southern government
00:10:51.320 of Yemen. So the Saudis are basically, if you listen to the official statements that were being
00:10:58.160 made around the time that the Saudi-Pakistani-Turkish alliance was announced, it was clear
00:11:04.920 that the intent was to have more countries joining in that alliance and for there to
00:11:11.560 be an agreement between these three main Muslim powers that they would be collaborating with
00:11:17.840 all of the smaller countries and bringing them into their orbit as an alternative to 0.93
00:11:23.280 the United States orbit, and use that against both Israel and Iran. This is where this is going. 0.91
00:11:33.480 So this is a substantial shift. And what it means is that the most important Sunni states
00:11:39.980 basically have had enough, and are aligning with each other against the more problematic actors, 0.58
00:11:50.100 namely Israel, the UAE, and Iran. And this is genuinely historic, because it's not been since
00:11:59.960 the Ottoman times that anybody could claim the leadership of the Muslim world in this way, 0.80
00:12:06.140 and the Ottomans spent the last 200 years of their existence in slow and steady collapse.
00:12:12.100 uh the north africa was taken from them egypt was taken from them and then at the end of world war
00:12:20.140 one iraq syria and lebanon and and the levant and palestine were taken from them so this is a real
00:12:28.860 game changer here because what you're seeing is that these main powers have decided that we are
00:12:37.180 going to police the region on our own terms. And what the agreement between them says is that
00:12:43.280 they're going to be sharing intelligence, obviously, they are going to be co-developing
00:12:48.900 their military industries, and they are in a mutual defense pact, meaning that an attack
00:12:55.940 against one of them is an attack against all of them, which is exactly the language of NATO's
00:13:02.000 Article 5. That's the same exact language that they've committed to. And the Turkish foreign
00:13:07.800 minister came out and said, yes, this is exactly what we mean. An attack on one of us is an attack
00:13:12.800 on all of us. And who is attacking them? Well, in Pakistan's case, it's India. That's the main
00:13:19.440 threat that they face. And to a lesser extent, Afghanistan. But that's an insurgency problem, 0.99
00:13:25.120 not so much an existential military problem. Whereas India, despite Pakistan's very good 0.99
00:13:31.680 performance in the fights against India that have happened over the last decade, like in 2019 and in
00:13:37.380 2025, it's still a real existential problem for them. It's an alliance against Israel because 0.57
00:13:46.800 the Israelis are obviously saying that Turkey is the next target on their list, and the Turks are
00:13:52.640 basically setting up bases in Syria and have set up bases in Syria, and they will go deeper and 0.59
00:13:59.320 deeper into Syria, as much as their military capability allows them, because the deeper
00:14:05.040 they go in Syria, the more they can build radars and air defense systems inside Syrian
00:14:14.500 territory that are intended to protect the Turkish heartland from incursions by the Israelis.
00:14:23.500 And for Saudi Arabia, well, who's attacking them? 0.74
00:14:26.260 It's obviously Iran. 1.00
00:14:27.840 It's the Iranians that are smashing Saudi Arabia. 0.99
00:14:30.900 Although, let's not forget, when the Israelis decided that they were going to recognize Somaliland here as an independent state, 0.99
00:14:40.840 the Saudis saw that as a very real threat to them because they reached the conclusion that what the Israelis are trying to do is box them in on the Red Sea. 0.67
00:14:50.180 So Iran boxes them in on Hormuz, and then the Israelis step in to box them in on the Red Sea there at the very north. 0.51
00:15:01.680 This is where Israel sits, at the very north of the Red Sea. 0.72
00:15:04.860 And now with the partnership with Somaliland, they can deploy military assets right to the entrance of the Red Sea,
00:15:12.220 meaning that Saudi Arabia is under a de facto naval blockade.
00:15:16.320 So that's what's changing.
00:15:18.080 And the Saudis obviously are in a panic, which is why they rushed to sign these deals. Remember, the Saudi economy is doing quite badly. The non-oil GDP is falling substantially. Government revenues are falling. They're having to borrow a lot more. They're overspending relative to their budget.
00:15:38.980 Why? Because they're in the middle of a war and their main source of economic wealth, oil, has been heavily impacted.
00:15:48.700 So you're seeing that Aramco, the national oil company of Saudi Arabia, is making more money because they're selling oil at a much higher price.
00:15:57.780 But everything else in the Saudi economy is declining because these economies, given that they're in the middle of the desert and nobody actually wants to go live there, they rely on a sense of security.
00:16:08.160 They rely on the idea that this is a safe space to do business, unlike the rest of the Middle East, which is very unstable. And so if that perceived security goes, economic activity goes with it. 0.61
00:16:23.160 And with the Iranians shutting down trade through the Persian Gulf, and now the Houthis shutting down trade through the Red Sea, the Saudis are in very, very real trouble.
00:16:33.260 and their economy is suffering as a result and then you have the economies of Pakistan and Turkey
00:16:39.620 which are basket cases like Pakistan has been able to stabilize its currency over the last
00:16:44.580 few years the Turks have not but the Turkish currency if you look at a graph it's just
00:16:48.780 heading downwards all the time currency collapsing because they can't get enough foreign reserves in
00:16:55.920 there is a different conversation about whether or not this is partly deliberate I've argued in
00:17:01.400 the past that it is partly deliberate, but let's not get into that now. So the Saudis and the
00:17:08.620 Pakistanis and the Turks are trying to rally the Sunni world. And they're trying to say to all of
00:17:15.040 the smaller Sunni states, you've got to give us the right to establish military bases. You've got
00:17:21.040 to sign treaties with us. We are the ones who can actually defend you. And this is aimed at both
00:17:27.320 Iran and Israel. And the Saudis are obviously in a panic. Now, why would the Saudis be in a panic?
00:17:33.620 Well, because the Iranians, when basically they found out that this was happening, responded by 0.54
00:17:42.200 just continuing to hit tankers in the Strait of Hormuz. And the Houthi, which are a client of
00:17:53.360 Iran, an ally of Iran, a proxy of Iran, call them whatever you want. They just kept on smashing
00:17:59.280 Saudi Arabia. Like, you know, they sign on the 7th of August. On the 9th of August, the Houthi 1.00
00:18:06.000 are just smashing stuff in Saudi Arabia. They don't care about this alliance. Why? Well, let's
00:18:12.700 look at it this way. Where are the shared interests between these countries? Let's break it down.
00:18:18.040 The Saudis and the Turks need to dominate Jordan, Iraq and Syria, between them, because 0.95
00:18:26.840 that is how they contain Iran and that is how they contain Israel. 0.66
00:18:30.940 So they have a shared interest there.
00:18:34.120 The Saudis, the Turks and Pakistan have an interest in keeping the Red Sea open.
00:18:41.080 main port is Karachi here. All of their trade with the West does rely on the Red
00:18:49.180 Sea. They need that to be open because everything that Pakistan exports, it 0.96
00:18:55.120 tends to export it to the West. Textiles, things like that, they get it 1.00
00:19:00.820 from the West. And for a lot of their agricultural imports, they get those
00:19:05.320 either from Russia or from Ukraine or from Europe, and they have to go through
00:19:10.000 the Red Sea. So the intersection of interests between these three countries, the first major
00:19:18.100 area of intersection is Yemen. And the Yemenis, you've got the Houthi in control of the north of
00:19:25.300 the country, this chunk basically that I'm trying to trace with a mouse badly. The rest of Yemen 0.56
00:19:33.740 is in the hands of pro-Saudi forces. And fighting in Yemen has been escalating gradually, and now
00:19:42.200 it's getting to a point where the full resumption of the civil war in Yemen is getting near. 0.80
00:19:48.960 And a full resumption of the civil war, I mean, the Houthi could beat just Yemeni forces,
00:19:56.060 they could beat Yemeni forces backed by Saudi Arabia, but Pakistan and Turkey are significant
00:20:02.380 powers in the production of missiles and in the production of basic air defense or good enough
00:20:09.200 air defense and in the production of drones. So for the Houthi and for the Yemenis, they see this
00:20:17.040 alliance as also aimed against them in the same way that the Iranians see this as an alliance that
00:20:23.280 is aimed against them. It's the same exact logic because if they're going to partner with Saudi 0.87
00:20:28.900 Arabia, they're going to partner with Saudi Arabia in its proxy wars. And the most important 0.55
00:20:33.440 proxy war for Saudi Arabia is Yemen. And the most important proxy war for Saudi Arabia and Turkey
00:20:39.880 is Iraq. And Yemen is the area where Pakistan, Turkey, and Saudi are in full agreement.
00:20:46.620 They can't allow the Red Sea to be closed.
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