Is intense and to annex parts of the region has also sparked outrage in the arab world. Has a fresh news update for you next hour but right now its time for crosstalk. Hello and welcome to cross talk were all things are considered im Peter Lavelle with the socalled afghan Peace Process in tatters u. S. Troops still in syria iraq more times than not agreeing with the rand maximum pressure on to rend failing and americas allies in the middle east at odds over yemen can anyone make heads or tails out of trumps Foreign Policy in the middle east it seems to be going from bad to worse. Cross talking crimes middle east policies im joined by my guest sharmeen no one the in beirut journalist as well as a middle east geo political analyst in los angeles were piii and he is an independent economic and geo political analyst former commodities trader and Strategic Planning advisor and in boy new series we cross to shah he he is a senior lecturer in middle east studies at the university of bradford u. K. Or across like rules in effect that means you can jump in anytime you want and i always appreciate should be let me go to you i mean you heard my introduction let me add some seasoning to the introduction we have this. Point person for the trumpet ministration on. This brian hawk writing emails trying to bribe the captain of one of those tankers that we have mike pompei all saying afghanistan was a 6 to 18 years and then we have a 30 year old taking over the helm of the middle east envoy for the United States i mean this program is titled vaudeville politics is that an appropriate title go ahead in beirut. I mean it sounds like it has really is a comedy of errors i mean i think part of the reason for this though is. The trump himself is not particularly interested in the middle east except in the sense that he would like to support israel as best he can and he would like to make money so sell weapons to. Gulf countries hes not particularly vested in the long term or middle term strategic objective you know the deep state. In terms of you know keeping troops in the region and so that the u. S. Maintains her germany those are not his priorities so. I would say that the u. S. Government is that odds with itself in terms of middle east policy on one hand you have the deep state that worked. You know consistently over the last few decades on its had gemini goals in the region and on the other hand you have trump who works entirely on instinct and what he thinks will benefit him most ok thats a very good analysis i think i mean ive seen i mean it would seem like the art of the deal just doesnt have any mojo in the region here because you know we have we can count juxtapose that to what happened in singapore and in in vietnam when it came to north korea he seems to kind of shaken that off and now hes talking about well hes open to meeting with the iranian leaders i mean its like showmen politics again the vaudeville motif appears to be appropriate go ahead in bonus areas. I think politics is a very good and accurate or describing the Current Situation. In washington and in addition to that what people really see at the moment is the climate of chaos look at what has been happening over the last 6 or 7 months at the United States the trunk of the men time and time again to say you know what we are really interested to make this work were going to meet with the iranians and we going to make the previous deal even better and at the same time the idea of the day week after week increasing the pressures not only the increasing the sanctions but they also sanctioning the cheap people that they want to negotiate or imagine trump is talking about the fact that hes looking for any opportunity to talk with the iranians and at the same time hes sanctioning being in foreign minister say we dont want to talk to the Ukrainian Foreign minister because he doesnt have enough power and at the same time the sanctioning me and Supreme Leader if you are sanctioning going to lucian regards any and foreign minister rainey and Supreme Leader after all who do you want to talk to ok well thats a very good point i mean pi let me go to you in los angeles im glad that ive seen brought that up i mean why would anyone in iran want to talk to donald trump in the United States walked away from the nuclear deal and then you have all of these theatrical and and i mean dont get me wrong i think meeting the north Korean Leader was a good idea but you need to have some traction afterwards this not a photo op and i think this is the criticism here youre not going to solve all the worlds problems with one meeting with one leader that that is usually the end process and if you have a very good idea maybe you can shake up the works i mean im not against these things here but why would. Adversaries or people made to be adversaries appointed as adversaries of the United States really want to talk to this administration because you cant really tell if theyre going to keep their word. It or not we dont even know what they know they dont even know if they know what they want when they have a conversation of this sort its all very confusing go ahead pine los angeles well i agree for the most part and quite honestly i personally dont think donald trump is in charge of anything in a functional capacity i mean i think hes really enjoying a extended. Retirement in the white house while basically reading from a prepared daily script discourtesy of the same essentially the same neoconservatives that were in charge of the george w. Bush administration as well as their variant cousins neo liberals and in the Obama Administration hes obviously been appointed to re reinstitute the madman theory that kissinger ran with nixon as you well know as a historian several decades ago the problem is in this interconnected age most of eurasia and the Southern Hemisphere nations are on to this game and know that hes basically there to either scare or intimidate or at the very least confuse these socalled adversaries so tear her on moscow beijing islam abide on current this point most nations know that trump is basically there is a placeholder while the people that are actually in charge are scrambling and actually sweating out of nervousness because the stakes have never been higher geopolitically or macroeconomic li transatlantic li and i should mean that you mentioned israel i mean it seems to me you know what this flurry of attacks attacking 3 countries in the region in rapid succession obviously this has to do with Bibi Netanyahu his reelection hopes because a b. I guess hes not elected he faces jail time so hes easy as this is pretty important stuff here but it seems to me also hes trying to keep Donald Trumps attention keeping his attention on the region which all of us on this program and most people watching this program know that donald trump has very little interest at all in Foreign Policy and probably even less interested in. In the middle east outside of what you said is arms sales go ahead and beirut. Yeah well i mean israel is in a very precarious position now i mean a few short years ago they thought that syria under us thought was over and therefore iran. Irans connection to lebanon would be clipped you know where hezbollah is and and this would ultimately we can the Iranian Alliance the resistance axis as they call it and you know fast forward a few years israel is surrounded on all sides by battle hardened. Fighters or soldiers and you know who have better misfiled and better arms than they ever had before. So you know aside from this being a preelection ploy. The israelis are in a very bad situation and theyre desperate and eager to get the United States to maintain its military presence in the area and now lets not forget that that was one of the main things that trump wanted to reverse when he was running for president and has made several attempts to do so not entirely successfully because theres such pushback from the u. S. Deep state and from obviously israel so i mean israels in a bad way i think its attacks on on all these countries show desperation more than anything else and its a way to head to iran without actually directing directly hitting iran because that would be something israel scared of and ultimately israel is pushing for that great fight between iran and the United States that it thinks will reverse its fortunes but i think theyre all in for a surprise well let me get. One is there is what were always surprised i mean at least it keeps things interesting and it will in a weird weird way speaking about israel and then trump coming out again like a showman. The salesman. Approaching a possible. Turnaround and that is something that terrifies the saudis and the israelis i mean we as soon as that has been was mooted days ago you had officialdom from israel and the saudi arabia going directly to washington d. C. To plead their case here i mean trump wants success at least the perception of success but its not going to come that way is it go ahead upstream in one of the areas i mean at this moment but hes really looking for is a full target unity with somebody like president but if you do look at the weeds in which he has been or his government cannot have been framing iran policy over the last couple of years it doesnt at least. It doesnt look that hes consistently looking for a man with iran he doesnt seem but hes looking for a meaningful solution for for this problem what we see is all too many inconsistency and in this Current Situation the iranian side despite the factionalism that is going on inside iran and you know any and political framework at least this Supreme Leader has made it Crystal Clear that at least in the Current Situation hes not interested in any type of phone negotiation because as far as these concerned that trump is not looking for a meaningful negotiation is looking for a full top opportunity and what you just mentioned about israel is absolutely right is the sign of desperation because what we see at the moment is a clear and classic example of diversion theory although the last 3 or 4 weeks mr netanyahu desperately has been trying to divert the attention of the people in israel to Foreign Policy and his kind of security agenda in. Region to distract him from basically hes only political and economic shortcomings and despite all the slight everything that he has over the last 3 weeks day hes no guarantee whatsoever all this has been since the 17th of september he john for him to go well after the elections then they roll out the deal of the century which has gotten a really cool reception all around im going to talk about that later were going to go to a short break right now and after that short break well continue our discussion on terms middle east policy stayed with our state. Politicians to do something to. Put themselves on the line. They did accept the reject. So when you want to be president. Some want to listen. To the right person this is why before 3 of the people. Im interested in the why. Question. Well you know they are they were kind of adopted because we were called pirates long. Been there in the smaller boats next to the harbor one sheep and its. The little self to be told fish already 90 percent of the dot and he wont recover. 50. 7 tons they do it several times a day with a complete oh you get an idea why. We have to understand we can still use to just. Be within this he does feel for you. Im doing this because i want the future world to future generations to have and enjoy the ocean we. Welcome across that were all Things Considered im Peter Lavelle 3 months were discussing trumps middle east policies. Ok on this program we always discuss very specific things we can talk about whats going on in yemen which we do and which we should because so much of the media doesnt want to talk about whats going on and of course we talk about iran we talk about israel we talk about syria but lets look at the region as a whole show i mean let me go to you 1st hear oh im sorry let me go to los angeles whos winning and whos losing in all of this here whats the position of the United States because it seems to me and trumps a gut he wants to get out they just wont let him out and he has not found. The the wherewithal to make his will come to fruition and thats his fault because hes the president of the United States but is the u. S. Power is receding and everybody in the region really knows it and israel and saudi arabia are very terrified of it go ahead in los angeles. I dont think trump wants to get out again just recapping on what i said before trump is there to confuse and throw other parties off they see north korea as a win in that sense of bringing the leader to the negotiating table they want to reprise that with other nations in the middle east and west asia those nations are buying it with regard to afghanistan why did he just do a 180 on his planned meet up with the taliban the process out here in the west in the u. S. And u. K. Will tell you that its because a few soldiers were killed its because of further lets not leave out the critical aspect of the afghanis yeah i mean i dont i mean with the with the pocket i nanis im like chinese im agreeing with you ok so there is no there is no intention there is no intention to get out of afghanistan afghanistans been 18 years tomorrow 911 marks the basis of being in afghanistan to establish a Critical Force for essentially containing eurasia and having a base for acting against russia and china in the medium to longer term so they dont want to get out of afghanistan yemen is bound to be split like the sudan had been theyre just biding their time while trying to suppress the who are these and iran theyre trying to split away from russian and chinese alliances in order to isolate iran inevitably hit iran as hard as they can in order to dissect and balkanize it and appropriate its resources this is reality as far as israel 890 s. Had feared or hurt sells own diaries were talking about the need for a greater israel stretching from the nile to the euphrates there biding time the need to hit syria and remove assad presence in afghanistan over the past 16 years all these are part and parcel toward the longer term aspect of wider imperial expansion up to the Euphrates River and including it ok but i mean let me go to shit i mean but everything we did say i understand the geo political ambitions but its good. Never works ok it has a terrible history of failure disaster in misery ok and thats what the Shifting Sands are in the region i mean remarkably enough you know ever since we could make from the end of the cold war to the present every single effort to quote unquote push a rand back to isolate iran to destroy it has just had the reverse effect ok one failure after another so whos winning and whos losing in the region lets go back to beirut. Well you know if. If the us was a stock on the stock market every time it made a move in the middle east youd bet against it and make a lot of money i mean i dont know how they keep you know failing so costly but i think in terms of the region obviously iran is doing well iran has you know maintained its territorial integrity stayed out of the fray. It has drawn major power alliances and support from russia and china its even had the europeans on its side for a good part of the last year and a bit you know because of their dismay over that in the iran deal it maintains its alliance its alliance in the region and stronger than ever its defeating in its adversaries like saudi arabia and all the military theaters in which you know these proxy wars are taking place so thats lets go to like the loser i mean saudi arabia is probably the biggest loser in this region right now and of course the saudis are american proxies so when saudi arabia loses so does the United States but the saudis have now lost in syria lost in iraq they lost in lebanon i mean they kidnapped the Prime Minister of this country and beat him up for gods sakes. So i didnt. The target and they lost in yemen well no but im coming to the whole thing ok but they lost they lost gods heart they lost with qatar and the g. C. C. Is you know forget it its over and of course theyre losing in yemen but more importantly the saudis particular m. B. s the crown prince has been absolutely reliant on mohamed bin desired of the u. A. E. For all his adventures and the saudis and the emirates hes are now at odds with each other and southern yemen so basically who are saudis allies theres not one last theres no one left and meanwhile the iranians are going from strength to strength now developing a land route all the way from iran right to the mediterranean so i think thats my takeaway of whos the biggest winner and whos the biggest loser in this region good type ology there ive seen your take on all disco head. I think if you are really looking forward to truly have to go way beyond that reaching in my opinion didnt read witness or what is happening at the moment in the middle east is on manufacturers over the last 5 years basically the import of them stood him in the least adult and all the 53 percent of these weapons that are pour into do reagent directly coming from the United States and other 20 and 30 percent of imports are done by american and other so in my opinion they are the true when it is. What you see that happening at the moment in the region the other group that in my opinion are winning our democracy and rights in india United States donald trump knows that without their support without their importance of is not going to have any meaningful chance whatsoever for the next victory in a president ial election and hes actually consistent policies over the last 2 years has proved that hes prepared to give them anything for busy for that Political Support basically did recognition or for drusilla and so many other pussies that they have seen over the last 2 years which effectively have made to chris and chris young writes in the United States then we missed one of the important witness or what is even happening at the moment in india reach you know pie if its very interesting thats a very interesting thing we heard from ive seen their meet the trump wants a quick photo op to show we have victory and the more the more desperate he gets for that that attempt to be able to show off to the world because he thats what he is is a show of these are very egotistical user narcissists we all know that we all know that people know what they voted for i dont but the harder he works to try to get that the more. Or he gives away to people that do not want to see his vision come to fruition ok he keeps he keeps going down to the deep state thinking that somehow theyre going to turn the trick for him but theyre not theyre going to intentionally obstruct everything he wants to do because its not in their interest its certainly not in the interests of the deep state and at the same time the cherry on top of the cake here is that trump knows that there is an anti interventionist sentiment in the United States they voted for him so he has to deliver for them something and hes not the as he is batting record is it when it comes to victories opposed to what fox news will say go ahead and pie in los angeles. Thats why i say that we shouldnt pay much more attention to the actual deep state because regardless of which party a politician personality or puppet is placed into the white house and or his or her cabinet their interests are continually improve so what was stated in the late ninetys with the late as a big never agencies tax the grand chessboard is still very much in play as far as macro strategy towards eurasia and containing the rise of russian china has been very successful over the past 20 years because as you alluded to earlier the more that they throw at a rising eurasian continent thats further integrating the more in jujitsu or fashion the force comes back at them but nonetheless trump is there in order to keep over 100000000 either unemployed underemployed or struggling americans economically a day. In order to you know convince them that hes the populist that theyve chosen and championing their causes meanwhile weve been in an economic depression since 2007 thats only now being given the signals to get worse as further you know asset consolidation is expected to go forward so i sense hes there in order to distract but that distraction game is getting harder and harder as the deep deep state is essentially scurrying and scrambling to figure out how to save face economically while containing further integration between these east south and west asian nations that are working splendidly with each other in order to erect the next global pillar economically whether its the belt and Road Initiative or you raise an Economic Union there are so many aspects that are being on a week by week basis finding success across your asia but washington and london are running around with their tails between their legs because theyre running out of options. How to be able to contain it while convincing their own populaces that they have their best interests at heart. And the media speaks for them ok thats one of the tragic things of our time the Mainstream Media is just an echo chamber for power its really shameful here. And were going to give you the last minute here it seems to me i mean youve all brought up really good points here but the reason why you cant have this break out of this group think its because of a greek word its hubris you cant miss it that you were wrong and that is the great tragedy particularly american involvement in the middle east now hubris 40 seconds go to you go ahead. You know peter i dont know that this sort of us flip flopping and not having direction is such a bad thing you know to be quite honest im im kind of ok with the us staying and you know when its a Coach Chamber and not being able to predict the short term medium term and long term expectations of other players on the world stage you know i dont know why all our conversations start and end with the United States is just not good at all important to players that once was and a lot of things are getting done without the United States so lets lets let them stay in their echo chamber and let the rest of us get on with things well if and thats essentially what is happening what will happen and well be covering it here on cross stock ok i want to think a whole of you for joining us here many thanks to my guest in beirut los angeles and going to cities and thanks to our viewers for watching us here at r. T. See you next time and remember obstacles. That is huge here these. Days. Thats for sure and. Theres a lot on the call for recall no because were going to do the false soldier you can see chum and do. With the bullets of some of the most of the lost ones the ones im not sick enough something. Dramatic video of the condition of the song to me shes on that sound a soft spot on my p. P. Down at this time i dont often. Need to promote. The d. C. To continue a clue for you so she could pull the ripples from the way. To. The present. Day there are good dentists and bad attitudes the bad news in yemen the United States. The good those who are in syria the cia and the u. S. Military were engaged in covert actions really throughout the world. Where they were assassinating populist leaders they were backing up right Wing Military windows funding an army of death squads theres no phones and because theres always a small pickup truck or a really good. Profit. And. I saw all the jolly roger sighing old have piqued my interest so i went. Into. My ask somebody what is this is a very convenient to get. They tell me. They believe in waiting to go fishing oh thats kind of interesting. Because we were called pirates for so long. The world is changing our tactics such and things. To look to give the government needs to. Feel like im sure theyve all seen whats happened in the. Cabin. Already in a very bad state like when they have been. Named. The pirates they used to be then told us. They have no income so i think its