Valuetainment - October 11, 2026


“Turkey’s Definitely A Dangerous Nation” – Raymond Ibrahim On Erdogan And Ottoman Ambitions

Hosted by
Patrick Bet-David
Mentioned
Houthis Muhammad Africans Seljuks Barbary Ronaldo Raymond Erdogan Mandab Greeks Trump
“We’re Going To Race Off A Cliff” – Why A Former OpenAI Researcher Wants AI Regulation “Enabled By Western Policy” – Historian Challenges Europe’s Immigration Approach

Episode Stats


Length

9 minutes

Words per minute

186.22

Word count

1,825

Sentence count

134

Harmful content

Toxicity

6

sentences flagged

Hate speech

84

sentences flagged


Transcript

Transcript generated with Whisper (turbo).
Toxicity classifications generated with s-nlp/roberta_toxicity_classifier .
Hate speech classifications generated with facebook/roberta-hate-speech-dynabench-r4-target .
Hosts, guests, and mentioned names generated with spaCy (en_core_web_sm), reconciled against Wikidata.
00:00:00.000 You know, when you're saying Muslim, Islam is weak right now with manpower, right?
00:00:03.920 When you see Houthis, 10 years ago they had 30,000 people in their military.
00:00:08.440 They're at 350,000 right now.
00:00:10.060 They have, you know, taken over a handful of places already on the complete other choke point that we have.
00:00:15.800 You have the Strait of Hormuz here.
00:00:17.920 And the other side is what, Ben al-Madeb, or, you know, if I'm not pronouncing it correctly, Mandab, yeah, Abel al-Madeb Strait. 0.97
00:00:27.560 And so Houthis are there. 0.70
00:00:29.760 You got IRGC on this side. 0.99
00:00:31.920 And every time we say, we eliminated ISIS, we eliminated al-Qaeda, we eliminated,
00:00:36.700 they reappear in a different way somewhere else, right? 0.88
00:00:40.960 So when you're saying they're weak and you see how Houthis and IRGC have control of two straits,
00:00:47.120 at least it seems like it to the world, no matter how many times we say we own the strait, we control it, 0.64
00:00:52.060 everybody is still waiting to see what Iran is going to be doing.
00:00:54.560 How do they have so much power right now in that region? 0.52
00:00:58.440 Well, okay, so when I say they're weak, just so we understand, 0.97
00:01:01.080 what I mean is if, let's say, Islam, the Islamic world, 1.00
00:01:05.740 versus the rest of the world, and it's an all-out war, 1.00
00:01:08.220 okay, they're going to be done. 0.99
00:01:09.640 If it's just Islam versus the West, okay, in an all-out war, 0.98
00:01:12.960 just based on the technology that the West have, 0.99
00:01:15.140 they're going to be done, okay?
00:01:16.480 It's just that the West doesn't think that way.
00:01:18.200 It's never going to try to attack them that way.
00:01:20.200 But they have, in the particular cases you were mentioning,
00:01:22.420 they have that kind of power because it's local.
00:01:24.140 It's there. 0.96
00:01:25.520 Iran's been there. 1.00
00:01:26.880 The Hormuz Straits has been its thing for, what, centuries, millennia?
00:01:32.540 So they have that particular power due to their local proximity, right?
00:01:39.260 They have the power due to the local proximity.
00:01:41.360 No, no, they have control over these things just because they're—
00:01:44.980 How should U.S. and the rest of the world handle that as they're expanding? 0.70
00:01:49.680 Because if Houthis went from 30,000 to 350,000, they're twice the size of Israel. 0.98
00:01:53.860 Israel's at 165, whatever their number is.
00:01:56.620 And they now have the third largest military in the Middle East.
00:02:00.300 I think Iran's number one at 610.
00:02:02.000 And who was number two?
00:02:03.300 Egypt was two or four. 0.92
00:02:04.700 Egypt's number two. 0.97
00:02:05.540 And then you have them at number three.
00:02:08.560 Should the rest of the world just kind of mind their own business and not intervene?
00:02:12.380 Or what's your position based on the history? 0.99
00:02:15.040 Well, okay, so this is a good question because you're tying it in with Islam.
00:02:18.560 I'm talking about Islam, right, history, and you're bringing this in. 1.00
00:02:21.560 If the threat is that big, should we look aside and we'll be fine? 1.00
00:02:25.600 No, no.
00:02:26.220 If there's a serious threat, of course, the threat, you know, it needs to be handled one way or the other.
00:02:32.120 But here's my problem with that paradigm that you're presenting, which a lot of people do, is this.
00:02:38.060 Okay, we can talk about it as a real politic issue, which means, you know, it's Iran, not from an ideological religious point of view.
00:02:46.320 We can just say Iran's the enemy for whatever reason, and it should be dealt with. 0.80
00:02:49.680 But the question that you're asking, and I think a lot of people are suggesting, is, well, Iran is an Islamic power, and you are here talking about Islam, and then obviously Iran is horrible and we have to do something about it.
00:03:01.500 Now, the issue I have with that is, and I hear this often, is, well, I still think it's a real politic thing because historically the West's problems with Islam came from Sunni nations. 0.54
00:03:14.180 It was the Sunni
00:03:16.120 All the people that I talk about in these books
00:03:17.920 Historically, the caliphates were all Sunnis
00:03:20.760 Muhammad's followers 0.98
00:03:23.000 The Umayyads 1.00
00:03:24.360 The Abbasids, the Seljuks, the Ottomans 1.00
00:03:26.680 These are the Barbary pirates 1.00
00:03:28.280 All of these were Sunnis who terrorized 1.00
00:03:31.060 Now, I look at the West 1.00
00:03:32.940 And I see America
00:03:34.160 And right now, today, the most radical
00:03:36.900 In my opinion, nations 1.00
00:03:38.080 Are Saudi Arabia 1.00
00:03:39.380 This is the home of Wahhabism and Salafism 1.00
00:03:42.360 I know everyone gets shocked because they've had a great PR campaign going on, but they're the home. 1.00
00:03:47.060 That's the head of the snake. 1.00
00:03:48.080 That's the home of Islam, actually. 1.00
00:03:49.740 They're the ones who use all their money to fund Wahhabi, which is the same thing, radical literature, all around the world in the mosques, for example. 1.00
00:03:58.540 They're the ones who funded terrorist organizations. 0.97
00:04:01.560 Turkey is a Sunni nation. 0.97
00:04:03.780 The one country we didn't have a problem with historically were the Shias, the Persians. 0.99
00:04:08.800 It's kind of ironic. 0.91
00:04:10.000 There were times, believe it or not, there was a time when Jews and Persians were attacking Christians historically, like in the year 614 AD. 0.67
00:04:17.500 So I tell you all this because I look, and you can't tell me this is a religious thing when I see that Israel and America is allied with the really terrorist nations. 0.68
00:04:28.380 The Sunnis, Egypt, Saudi Arabia, Turkey. 0.70
00:04:32.720 That's actually the existential war was from there. 0.99
00:04:36.220 That's where the ideology comes.
00:04:37.640 So if you can ally with them, then this is not a religious war.
00:04:43.260 Because when I think of the grand jihad, it's not Iran. 0.97
00:04:46.760 Iran is a terrorist state. I'm not arguing that. 0.65
00:04:49.000 And it does what it does, and it should be attacked for or should be neutralized for that.
00:04:54.580 But if someone wants to make the argument that, oh, that's the head of the snake, 0.99
00:04:58.140 and if we can just neutralize Iran, everything's great, 0.58
00:05:00.980 and we're friends with Saudi Arabia and with Egypt and with Pakistan and with Turkey,
00:05:06.020 then this is not about Islam at all.
00:05:08.760 This is actually diplomacy and realpolitik, and that's fine by me. 0.78
00:05:12.680 I'm not arguing that.
00:05:13.700 But I think we need to really clarify and get our terms correct
00:05:16.920 and understand what this is.
00:05:18.560 So is America and Israel at war with Iran?
00:05:20.980 Yeah, they are. 0.96
00:05:21.860 Is there a legitimate reason? 0.90
00:05:23.000 Yeah, if there is, it's not because Iran's Islamic. 0.99
00:05:26.320 I don't think that. 0.98
00:05:27.080 Because America and Israel are friends with even more radical Islamic nations, 1.00
00:05:30.240 is what I'm trying to say. 0.99
00:05:31.400 So your concern is more Saudi than Iran?
00:05:33.800 Yeah, from a historical perspective, from an ideological perspective, 0.99
00:05:37.960 the West has been at war with the Sunnis. 0.97
00:05:40.720 So one may say, well, look at what MBS is doing.
00:05:44.920 He wants to bring business in.
00:05:46.960 He wants to invest.
00:05:48.720 You got, you know, even the most basic thing somebody would say is
00:05:52.720 Ronaldo chose to go play over there.
00:05:54.540 They want to bring sports, golf, soccer, all this stuff.
00:05:57.560 Maybe they're realizing, Raymond, maybe you have a blind spot.
00:06:00.800 Maybe they want to westernize, and maybe they want to kind of become partners.
00:06:05.320 Maybe that's what they're trying to do.
00:06:06.300 Maybe they just want to make money.
00:06:07.940 What would you say to that? 0.84
00:06:08.760 Well, I would say remember the doctrine of Takeya and all the lies that we talked about 1.00
00:06:12.780 and all the deception and all the leeway Muslims are given to actually deceive. 0.98
00:06:20.500 Yeah, on the surface, they're doing all these reforms.
00:06:23.540 That's not changing what their religion is about, which is what I described earlier, 0.99
00:06:27.720 which is hatred for the infidel, which is biding your time until the circumstance is right, 1.00
00:06:32.920 and then you expand, and then you attack, and then you subjugate, 0.85
00:06:35.740 it makes perfect sense for the descendants of Muhammad, in this case Saudi Arabia,
00:06:40.320 to be friends with the West, because he would have done the same thing when he was weak and outnumbered. 0.63
00:06:45.800 That doesn't change the long-term plan.
00:06:50.080 Here's my point. 1.00
00:06:50.740 If you want to be enemies with Iran because it's Islamic, well, you should be enemies with all these countries. 1.00
00:06:54.560 That would be more sincere and honest. 0.99
00:06:56.780 But if we're friends with these countries, then whatever beef we have with Iran, it's not because of religion.
00:07:02.560 It's not because of Islam, okay? 0.68
00:07:04.340 Because we are actually friends and in bed with the guys who are the historic and contemporary problem. 0.90
00:07:12.560 Look at the West in Europe. 1.00
00:07:14.040 All the terrorist attacks, they're all Sunnis. 1.00
00:07:16.140 I never hear of Iranians in Europe committing terrorists. 1.00
00:07:19.040 I'm not saying they don't exist, but it's always Africans from sub-Sahara, that's Sunni.
00:07:23.740 It's always Arabs, Sunnis. 0.92
00:07:26.120 It's always whoever. 1.00
00:07:27.640 These are all Sunni nations. 1.00
00:07:28.640 So if our problem in the West was actually if we wanted to get serious about the war against Islam, 0.98
00:07:34.300 we wouldn't be buddy-buddy with the countries that I mentioned, Saudi Arabia, for example. 0.56
00:07:38.800 All right? 0.85
00:07:39.200 Again, this isn't to say that Iran is good.
00:07:41.240 It's to say that if that's the case, then whatever issue we have with Iran, it's not about religion.
00:07:47.060 I don't think Trump is the current president.
00:07:50.100 I don't think he views it that way.
00:07:52.300 I don't think he's a religious guy.
00:07:54.020 I know.
00:07:54.420 But there's a lot of people who use that rhetoric,
00:07:56.940 and what they're doing is they're conflating different things.
00:07:59.700 I agree.
00:08:00.140 I think he's a businessman that's trying to broker deals.
00:08:02.280 And, you know, even just yesterday when the comment was made about,
00:08:07.100 hey, somebody said BB's not happy with you selling F-35s to Turkey.
00:08:11.220 And he says, I don't report to that guy.
00:08:13.540 I do whatever I think is right.
00:08:15.080 So what do you think about how close we are with Turkey right now
00:08:18.240 and even empowering them? 0.95
00:08:19.600 You think long-term they're a bigger threat than Iran in your eyes? 0.91
00:08:22.400 So Turkey was the historic, you know, all the battles I talk about here towards the end in these books, it's Turkey. 0.88
00:08:29.200 It's the Ottoman Empire.
00:08:31.200 Armenians, Assyrians, Greeks. 0.99
00:08:32.640 Yeah, they committed genocides, right? 1.00
00:08:34.600 And they don't even want to admit it at this point.
00:08:37.000 Everyone knows. 0.99
00:08:38.220 But they were the scourge of the Christian world and Europe for centuries. 0.99
00:08:42.940 And they still have those designs.
00:08:44.520 Someone like Erdogan, you know, styles himself as some sort of neo-Ottoman caliph, or he wants to be.
00:08:51.000 So Turkey is definitely a dangerous nation as far as its potential.
00:08:55.760 And so, yeah, this is what I mean. 0.98
00:08:57.780 If you want to be allied with Turkey, but then you say Iran's a bad guy,
00:09:01.460 okay, that's fine, but that tells me the issue is not ideological.
00:09:05.520 It definitely isn't.
00:09:06.740 He's not a true believer like you are in this sense.
00:09:09.560 This isn't something he studied.
00:09:10.820 Right.
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