TRTWORLD — Strait Talk
20261012 043000 UTC
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[00:00:22] Hundreds of flights out of Saudi Arabia's capital are being
[00:00:25] cancelled after the main
[00:00:27] of airport came under attack for second day. One person
[00:00:31] was killed and 11 people wounded in a Sunday afternoon
[00:00:34] attack which started fire
[00:00:36] in a terminal. Antaries from neighboring Yemen are
[00:00:40] claiming responsibility. They say they were also behind a
[00:00:43] missile strike on King Khalid international airport on
[00:00:47] Saturday, which killed 13 and injured more than
[00:00:50] 300.
[00:00:53] in Strikes across Gaza have killed at least four Palestinians as
[00:00:56] Israeli
[00:00:57] in
[00:00:57] of forces continue to push deeper into eastern. Gaza city. On
[00:01:01] Sunday, an
[00:01:02] of Israeli drone hit tens in southern Gaza, killing three
[00:01:05] people. Overnight, Israeli military vehicles
[00:01:09] advanced in shujaya under heavy gun fire,
[00:01:12] forcing dozens of families to
[00:01:14] flee. President Voladimir
[00:01:18] Zelenski says Russia has attacked Ukraine's energy
[00:01:21] facilities despite
[00:01:22] in a truce announced by US, by the US president.
[00:01:26] Donald Trump said Russia and Ukraine had agreed to stop.
[00:01:30] targeting each other's energy infrastructure. He announced the
[00:01:34] deal, but did not share any further details. It comes a
[00:01:37] day after Trump struck deal with Russian President Vladimir
[00:01:41] Putin to buy large quantities of
[00:01:43] diesel. Pakistan's government has
[00:01:47] taken control of Kaiba Paktonkwa, the stronghold of
[00:01:51] jailed former Prime Minister Imran Khan's party.
[00:01:55] Officials accused the provincial government of failing to tackle
[00:01:58] armed groups. "the elected administration has been
[00:02:02] suspended and the province's governor will now run it for
[00:02:06] six months. they blocked all the roots by
[00:02:10] placing containers. why have the roots been blocked? the public voted for
[00:02:14] them, where is democracy? who is not implementing the
[00:02:17] constitution? look here, wherever the constitution is not being
[00:02:20] implemented, you should get it implemented. why are you humiliating the
[00:02:25] of public?
[00:02:26] of and in india, the opposition alliance is expected to march."
[00:02:30] in the coming hours towards the Supreme Court to support the youth lead
[00:02:33] cockroach movement. The proposed demonstration comes a day after leaders
[00:02:37] of the movement released from detention. The
[00:02:41] news continues on TRT World after Straight
[00:02:44] Talk.
[00:02:53] of
[00:03:01] Barely two months old, the Mecca Alliance is facing its first
[00:03:04] test. Hoothi attacks against Saudi Arabia have triggered collective
[00:03:08] defense measures from Turkia,
[00:03:10] of Pakistan, and the Kingdom.
[00:03:12] of Could the crisis in Yemen turn the alliance into the new force in Middle East
[00:03:15] Security? I'll break it all down
[00:03:17] of here on Straight
[00:03:18] Talk.
[00:03:26] a
[00:03:30] a
[00:03:37] Hello and welcome to Straight Talk, I'm Yusuf arm. For decades, the U.S.
[00:03:41] has been the dominant security power in the Middle East, but its war with
[00:03:45] Iran is challenging that order, and the fallout is already taking
[00:03:49] shape. Two months ago, Turkia, Saudi Arabia and
[00:03:52] Pakistan signed new defense pact in Mecca. Under the
[00:03:56] agreement, attack on one member is considered attack on
[00:04:00] all that commitment is being tested for the first time, the
[00:04:04] trigger has come in Yemen. Yemen's ansarulah huti
[00:04:08] fighters have stepped up attacks on the kingdom, prompting the alliance to
[00:04:11] activate its collective defense measures. The Iran-back group
[00:04:15] controls much of northern Yemen and has launched missiles and drones
[00:04:19] at targets across Saudi Arabia, from airports and military
[00:04:23] sights in the south to oil infrastructure further north. Turkey
[00:04:27] is providing Riad with military equipment. and
[00:04:30] of technical support. The escalation comes as the regions already facing
[00:04:34] multiple conflicts. The US and Israel are at war with
[00:04:38] Iran, the straight of Hormus remains effectively closed,
[00:04:41] and
[00:04:42] of tensions between Turkey and Israel are rising. So as conflict
[00:04:46] reshapes the region, could the Mecca Alliance signal a fundamental shift
[00:04:50] of in who provides security in the
[00:04:51] of Middle East? Joining me now from
[00:04:55] Virginia USA is Douglas McGregor, he's a retired US
[00:04:59] colonel. combat veteran, a former senior advisor to the US
[00:05:03] secretary of defense and author. Colonel, great to have
[00:05:07] you on the show. I mean, obviously lot's been happening. I
[00:05:11] know you're closely following. everything in the region, and I mean, I
[00:05:14] don't want to look back, I want to look forward in our time together, and
[00:05:18] if we look at the war right now in Iran, where in the
[00:05:22] timeline are we, are we near the beginning, the middle, the
[00:05:25] end, and is the US closer to peace or a ground
[00:05:29] invasion, if those were the two ends the spectrum? Well, I think we should
[00:05:33] address this idea of a ground invasion right up
[00:05:35] front, uh, we really don't have an army capable of
[00:05:39] invading Iran, I think that needs to be understood. "the United
[00:05:43] States army is rather small, it's a fraction of its
[00:05:47] former self, we simply don't have the depth in terms of
[00:05:51] soldiers, equipment, and it's very difficult to move those
[00:05:55] forces right now into the region, so I i don't think we're talking
[00:05:58] about a ground invasion, what you might see at the most in
[00:06:02] the future is the use of potentially marine or
[00:06:06] airborne forces to sease islands, one or
[00:06:10] two in the Persian Gulf or..." perhaps a toe hold on
[00:06:14] the on the Iranian state, in other words,
[00:06:18] chabahar, perhaps something like that,
[00:06:22] but but no more. mean, the idea of flying into Iran
[00:06:25] in search of enriched uranium, i think has been
[00:06:29] tried and largely dropped, so you're talking about very, very
[00:06:33] limited use of airborne and amphibious
[00:06:37] infantry, and potentially some special ops, not much
[00:06:40] more. now as far as "where are we in this
[00:06:44] thing? that's, it's very hazardous to guess,
[00:06:48] because the president has made it clear as recently is
[00:06:51] today, that he's going to stay with us as long as
[00:06:54] it takes. he he's also begun
[00:06:58] emply that he may direct operations to begin
[00:07:01] sooner than the end of october. much depends on
[00:07:05] events in the gulf, but i think the Iranians have recently
[00:07:09] demonstrated that they actually control access
[00:07:12] to the person." gulf, they struck several ships that tried to slip
[00:07:16] through, and I think that's put the lie, so to say to
[00:07:19] the claims that President Trump has made, that the place is under our
[00:07:23] control, and that nothing comes in or goes out without without us
[00:07:26] and moreover, lots of oil is escaping, that's
[00:07:30] simply not true, so at this point
[00:07:34] it's hard to tell, we have some constraints on
[00:07:37] us, we're constrained by the availability of munitions and the
[00:07:41] production. missiles and rockets and so forth, and we're
[00:07:45] also confronting very serious financial
[00:07:48] crisis. how that will play out is anybody's guess,
[00:07:51] but we've never confronted this kind of
[00:07:55] national sovereign debt before, and we have an enormous problem
[00:07:59] with our national credibility. nobody wants to buy our
[00:08:03] debt, that's why the bond yields are rising and as they
[00:08:06] rise and inflation rises, it becomes that much more difficult for us
[00:08:10] to service the deb. so it's hard for me to imagine this
[00:08:14] dragging on for months into the future, but
[00:08:18] there is no end in sight at this point, and we are by no
[00:08:22] means at the end the conflict. let's let's leave it at that at this
[00:08:25] stage. there it, it went from the four days to the four weeks,
[00:08:29] to the four months, to the forever, basically. yes,
[00:08:33] mean, your lack of uncertainty regarding where in the
[00:08:37] timeline we are, what type of operation could be launched, is that
[00:08:41] stemming from they're not being clearcut objective,
[00:08:44] being message to the American public,
[00:08:48] because I mean if there's no objective or no one knows exactly
[00:08:52] what the objective is, I guess for someone who's been in many rooms where
[00:08:56] these types of decisions are made like yourself, it's hard to understand what comes
[00:09:00] next, well there is no coherent strategic
[00:09:03] framework for the operation, I've never seen any
[00:09:07] explicit strategic
[00:09:10] goal that... "we could put
[00:09:13] our, put on the wall and say, this is where we want to
[00:09:17] go, this is how long it's going to take, and this is what has to
[00:09:20] happen before we stop, and to be quite frank, the
[00:09:24] entire war is an Israeli war, the United States has
[00:09:28] no strategic interest in the destruction of Iran, never
[00:09:31] has, and the notion that now we have to continue
[00:09:35] to attack Iran to prevent it from developing nuclear weapon
[00:09:39] seems ludicrous, foolish, because..." "there is really
[00:09:43] nothing to stop the Iranians from developing nuclear weapon except their decision
[00:09:47] not to do so, and on the other hand, our goal
[00:09:51] has changed, I guess, our objective, if you want to call it that, has moved from
[00:09:54] simply destroying the regime to destroying whatever military
[00:09:58] capabilities exist, that hasn't worked very well because
[00:10:02] the underground missile cities, which are extremely difficult to reach, they're spread
[00:10:06] out across the country, widely dispersed, we haven't been
[00:10:10] able to utterly destroy command. control, and
[00:10:14] we've discovered that if you kill one set of leaders, you get
[00:10:18] new set of leaders, not that that's really news, I mean that's been
[00:10:21] everyone's experience throughout history, destroy the
[00:10:25] con, you get new con, if you kill the king, you get new king. much more
[00:10:29] hard, why people fail to, why people fail to realize that is is
[00:10:33] incredibly stupid to me, so I don't think that's it
[00:10:37] anymore, I think now we're looking at find whatever capabilities you
[00:10:41] think may be there and destroy them, including uh
[00:10:44] nuclear enrichment capabilities if they can find them, and then
[00:10:48] I think they just want induce the disintegration and failure
[00:10:52] the Iranian state, so basically just... degradation
[00:10:56] and uh scorched earth type of policy, what what's the Middle
[00:11:00] East going to look like after this war is over? I mean,
[00:11:03] we've heard the word post-American Middle East, will it be a post-American Middle
[00:11:07] East, will that be a quick exit? will it be a
[00:11:11] gradual drawdown, will the bases uh throughout the Gulf be
[00:11:15] rebuilt? I mean a lot of questions from gulf
[00:11:18] countries who are who are concerned for their security futures
[00:11:22] rightfully? well, we've demonstrated pretty... exclusively that we
[00:11:25] cannot protect any the countries in the middle east, we can't
[00:11:29] protect the the gulf statelets, we can't protect
[00:11:33] Saudi Arabia, and I don't think we can protect Israel, the
[00:11:37] Israelis of course are a little more robust, and we have
[00:11:41] invested more heavily there, particularly in terms of missile
[00:11:44] defense, but it's
[00:11:47] not a long-term solution, and that's the key to this whole
[00:11:50] thing. There's something that everybody that lives in the region needs
[00:11:54] to understand. "we are not permanent party
[00:11:58] in the region, that is, we don't live in the Middle East, we don't live in
[00:12:01] Asia, we don't live in Europe, we are preeminently a
[00:12:05] maritime and aerospace power, when we move into
[00:12:09] area, it's inevitably temporary, we're not
[00:12:12] permanently there, people look back on the last 80 years in Europe or the Middle
[00:12:16] East or elsewhere, and they seem to think this is a permanent condition,
[00:12:20] it isn't, so it's not a question of will we..."
[00:12:25] ultimately withdraw, that's an absolute certainty. The
[00:12:28] question is how we do it, how quickly, how suddenly? We depend
[00:12:32] heavily on air and naval power, and that's what you're seeing right now. You're trying to
[00:12:36] wage war against continental power of
[00:12:39] 93 million people. The place is almost the size of western
[00:12:43] Europe, two and a half times the size of Texas. It's
[00:12:47] surrounded by mountains that turn most the northern
[00:12:51] part the country into a fortress and into the south you have impassible.
[00:12:56] what a terrible place to fight, so then the next is you, and I got
[00:12:59] to answer this question for you, what does this all look like when it's over, well the first thing
[00:13:03] I think we can say with almost complete certainty is
[00:13:07] that the legacy of world war 1, and we're talking
[00:13:11] about pyco, that's finished, it's
[00:13:15] over, it's gone, when you look at the map the middle
[00:13:19] east, you have three long-term
[00:13:22] national state entities. "these are almost
[00:13:26] civilizational. who are they? well, one is Persia,
[00:13:30] we called Iran, but it's still Persia. the other
[00:13:33] is Turkia, and that has the legacy the
[00:13:37] Ottoman empire. that again is another civilizational state with
[00:13:40] its with its own brand of civilization. and then
[00:13:44] finally you have Egypt. well, what lies between
[00:13:48] these states and countries? essentially
[00:13:51] region that has been molded by foreign..."
[00:13:55] powers, Great Britain, France, the United States,
[00:13:59] those old borders are going to vanish, most of those structures will be
[00:14:02] gone, and it will be up to the three powers that I just
[00:14:06] mentioned, primarily, I would argue, Turkey and
[00:14:10] Iran to decide what
[00:14:11] the rest of it looks like, and I hope that when that time comes, that
[00:14:15] those two powers will be smart enough to act
[00:14:19] intelligently and swiftly to resolve as many differences
[00:14:23] as possible and to create new stability. because we will be gone.
[00:14:27] now the question is, and it's on everybody's mind, what happens to
[00:14:31] Israel? well, right now, the Israeli leadership has turned
[00:14:35] this war into an all or nothing proposition, it's do
[00:14:38] or die for the Israeli leadership, which i think is terrible
[00:14:42] mistake, because it doesn't leave much room for Israel to
[00:14:46] exist. if they insist on these
[00:14:49] genocidal impulses and a plan that they
[00:14:53] think they can employ us to kill. virtually all their enemies in the
[00:14:56] region, they're going to fail, and it will be very hard for
[00:15:00] Israel to continue to exist. on the other hand, if they were to
[00:15:03] have a sweeping change in government
[00:15:07] with new leadership that is willing to see things
[00:15:11] differently and live in the region as a neighbor,
[00:15:15] that could be changed, but right now, much as your foreign
[00:15:18] minister said, i think within the last 24 hours and i think he's
[00:15:22] correct, he said he sees no evidence. that the election in
[00:15:26] Israel is going to change anything, certainly nothing in terms of foreign and
[00:15:29] defense policy, and I think he's correct, it looks
[00:15:33] like maybe route A versus route B, but...
[00:15:38] X is the final destination still uh regarding the different
[00:15:41] Israeli candidates, but you painted a very interesting
[00:15:45] and pessimistic picture for us in the region here. I mean,
[00:15:49] no US presence, obviously a brand new security order, the
[00:15:53] potential for reorganization of borders, so that looks like
[00:15:57] very chaotic transition period. I mean, when
[00:16:01] there's these types of massive voids created in the middle east,
[00:16:04] obviously there's a lot of opportunists in the... region a lot of non-state
[00:16:08] actors who have always tried to fill in these types of
[00:16:11] voids. i want to ask you what your thoughts about the mechca alliance
[00:16:15] are the alliance between Turkia, Saudi Arabia and Pakistan.
[00:16:19] it was formed almost two months ago to the day, and
[00:16:22] I believe this, in the next coming three to four days it'll officially be
[00:16:26] ratified by the parliament, so it'll officially come to
[00:16:30] existence. can that be something that at least fills
[00:16:34] majority the void or is that still along?
[00:17:07] the old dynamics, that's why great powers like
[00:17:11] Turkia or Persia and potentially Egypt,
[00:17:14] although not in an aggressive way, are going to have influence that
[00:17:18] they once
[00:17:20] pre previously had. I i am not as pessimistic as
[00:17:23] you. my view is that when this status quo
[00:17:27] essentially vanishes, you will have
[00:17:31] the opportunity to build new things, but those new things
[00:17:35] will rest on old foundations, which make turn out to be more
[00:17:39] enduring and legitimate than what we have now,
[00:17:43] so I, I, I'm not pessimistic in that sense, but of course
[00:17:46] that depends on the leadership, and now you brought up key feature of all of this,
[00:17:50] this mecca agreement. I think it's too soon
[00:17:54] to tell, you know,
[00:17:58] we can't pass judgement on something that has only
[00:18:01] recently
[00:18:02] been signed, and we don't know what's going to be implemented and how it will be
[00:18:05] implemented uh... "you know, again, I, I don't know
[00:18:09] what Mr. Erdogan really plans, what he
[00:18:13] really wants, you'll
[00:18:15] have to ask him, he,
[00:18:17] he has to sort out very clearly and
[00:18:19] unambiguously what
[00:18:22] this alliance, if you want to call it an alliance, I,
[00:18:25] I think it's more like the ont that brought France and
[00:18:29] Britain and ultimately Russia together before World War
[00:18:32] I, does does Turk, does the turks want
[00:18:36] to be lock?" into an automatic
[00:18:39] trigger to enter conflict on the basis of this
[00:18:43] agreement. i think world war one was a catastrophe largely
[00:18:47] because the people that allied themselves against Germany and austria
[00:18:51] and
[00:18:51] then eventually against the ottomans did so on the basis
[00:18:55] of
[00:18:55] a of an automatic trigger. in other words, country x
[00:18:59] does this, that means y, z and so forth, all have to join
[00:19:03] it. so i think that's that's something has to be sorted out.
[00:19:08] "there's another issue here: tragically, as we saw during
[00:19:12] World War I, Christians don't have any trouble murdering each
[00:19:16] other. I think there's a lot of evidence that Muslims also don't
[00:19:20] have trouble murdering each other. I would hope that in the 21st
[00:19:23] century Christians and Muslims will reconsider the wisdom of
[00:19:27] killing their co-religionists. Uh, I would hope
[00:19:31] that Turkey in particular would look at the
[00:19:35] situation on the Arabian peninsula." and try to
[00:19:39] guide the actors on that peninsula towards peace as
[00:19:42] opposed to more conflict and war. another words, find a settlement,
[00:19:46] find a way to end the fighting down in Yemen and Southern
[00:19:49] Arabia, because the people killing each other down
[00:19:53] there are Muslims, they don't really have to kill each
[00:19:57] other, and I think that the Turks in particular could
[00:20:01] have a positive role there. now, as far as the Pakistanis are
[00:20:04] concerned, I think they're worried about so... Arabia which
[00:20:08] has been a source of financial support for them, and
[00:20:12] I'm I'm sure everyone is worried about the holy sites,
[00:20:15] how far do you go? again, remember small
[00:20:19] states, and even though Saudi Arabia is large a map, I
[00:20:23] consider to be a small state by comparison, and this is
[00:20:27] true for Lithuania, Latvia, Estonia, any number of small states around the
[00:20:31] world or Israel for that matter, they're always looking for a
[00:20:34] larger power that they can harness.
[00:20:38] to their interests that they can find who will fight their
[00:20:42] wars for them and i think that's
[00:20:45] something that the
[00:20:48] new mecca agreement
[00:21:20] opposed to a giant regional war that results from it.
[00:21:23] I don't know if that makes any sense, but it makes a lot of
[00:21:27] sense uh, but I mean, the Turks are very good at
[00:21:31] laying out their military objectives when they enter into
[00:21:35] something, and I mean
[00:21:36] from what I've seen so far over the past 24 hours, it's been
[00:21:40] very, very clear cut that they're just going to be there a defensive
[00:21:44] capability and not cross the border into Yemen any type
[00:21:47] of cross border operation. but aside from
[00:21:51] that, how do you see the Saudi Hothi war uh
[00:21:55] progressing right now? I mean, obviously very difficult geography, you have
[00:21:59] very veteran non-state actor unit that's
[00:22:02] basically been at warfrat over decade, I mean even much further if
[00:22:06] you go back through Yemen's history, so they're very war- hardened,
[00:22:10] very battle hardened and a geography that's kind of hard
[00:22:14] to uproot them, what does victory look like for the Saudis and
[00:22:18] what's the risk? "the Saudi
[00:22:21] control of much of what today we call or used to call Yamen
[00:22:25] is fairly recent. You've got to go back into the 1930s
[00:22:29] and look at the fighting that ensued then that resulted in
[00:22:33] the current borders between Saudi Arabia and
[00:22:35] Yemen. The point that I think is important for everybody to
[00:22:39] understand is that the war in Yemen between the Yemenis
[00:22:43] or the hooties and ultimately the House of
[00:22:46] Sud pre-existed. the Mecca
[00:22:50] agreement, these are these are conflicts that quite
[00:22:53] frankly have nothing to do with Saudi Arabia's
[00:22:57] relationship with Pakistan or Turkey, so I think that
[00:23:01] should be taken into consideration. Also, remember, the people
[00:23:05] in Yemen have been subjected to mass murder,
[00:23:08] starvation, uh, thirst, I mean, the
[00:23:12] treatment meeted out to them by the House of Sword is
[00:23:15] reprehensible, so I would hope that Turkia
[00:23:19] and Pakistan, Islamabad and and Ankara
[00:23:22] will try to persuade the House of Saw to reach an
[00:23:26] agreement with these people in some fashion. If they insist a
[00:23:30] ruthless war of extermination, I would certainly back
[00:23:34] away from it. I think that would be very bad idea, so I hope the
[00:23:38] if the if the Turks are willing to provide some defensive
[00:23:41] support to cities in terms of air
[00:23:44] defense, that's fine, but I i would hope they would
[00:23:48] otherwise stay out of this, because I no benefit to the Turks or the
[00:23:52] Pakistanis from participating in it? well, it's definitely going
[00:23:56] to be a trial by fire for very new
[00:23:58] defensive coalition, so we're going to
[00:24:01] have to see how it operates without much interoperability between
[00:24:05] the Pakistanies and the Turks, obviously one them with domestic and American hardware,
[00:24:09] the other one
[00:24:10] with lot of Chinese hardware, and the Saudis
[00:24:13] obviously not up to the professional level of a
[00:24:17] NATO standard army, so it's going to be... interesting to see how these
[00:24:21] kinks get worked out with zero joint
[00:24:23] exercises, so that'll be something to follow, but
[00:24:27] bubbling beneath the surface of everything that we've talked about is
[00:24:31] tensions between Israel and turkey. now after the
[00:24:34] outing of assad and effectively
[00:24:38] the removal of Iran influence in Syria, mean
[00:24:42] i i first thought, wow, this must be great for Israel, they
[00:24:45] got rid of Iran from Syria, that land bridge from
[00:24:49] hez. to Tehran has now been broken, the Turks are
[00:24:53] there a NATO country, Israelis are probably indirectly benefiting
[00:24:57] and happy, but a couple months afterwards, I began seeing
[00:25:00] this,
[00:25:01] uh, Turkis the next iran didn't take it seriously at first, then saw someone
[00:25:05] like Naftali Benet, a former prime minister and opposition party
[00:25:09] leader, repeat it, then I started seeing that American Israeli
[00:25:13] lobby cutouts uh repeating it and said, okay,
[00:25:16] someone's putting some money behind this message now, because it's getting...
[00:25:20] propagate, i started taking a lot more seriously, and now we're starting
[00:25:24] to see some type of indirect action, the bombing of base
[00:25:27] in Syria, lot more, lot more
[00:25:31] rhetoric at the prime minister level by
[00:25:34] Netanyahu, where is this going?
[00:25:38] there were many voices behind the scenes in Israel who over the last 10 to
[00:25:42] 15 years warned consistently against
[00:25:45] the notion that somehow or another was in Israel's
[00:25:49] interest. to drive Assad's government out
[00:25:53] of Syria, in other words, to replace the Assad government with something
[00:25:57] else. It's happened, we joined
[00:26:01] in along with MI6, the CIA and Masad
[00:26:04] worked very hard. We also went in and
[00:26:08] weaponized the Kurds, as did the
[00:26:11] Israelis as another means of undermining and weakening
[00:26:15] Assad, and so we have new Syria, and the new
[00:26:19] Syria is now problematic for
[00:26:21] Israel. I don't know why the Israelis ever thought that a
[00:26:25] government that came to power after Assad, that
[00:26:29] was as strongly Islamist as the government has turned. about to be in
[00:26:33] Damascus would ever be friendly to Israel, it it just
[00:26:37] makes no sense, but that's
[00:26:39] happened. does it make any difference
[00:26:43] to Turkia? well, that's a matter for Ankara to decide,
[00:26:47] but I think Ankara now realizes that they have de
[00:26:50] facto created a shared border with Israel,
[00:26:54] because Turkish influence now extends down into Damascus
[00:26:58] and across Syria, and the question
[00:27:02] is: how do the Israelis and and the turks deal with
[00:27:05] this? the problem for Turkey and I think for
[00:27:09] the entire region at this point is really this greater Israel
[00:27:13] project. if you were dealing with an Israeli government that
[00:27:17] say existed 25, 30 years ago,
[00:27:21] whose aims were actually quite limited and was interested
[00:27:25] in peace and prosperity, you might have
[00:27:29] the opportunity to sit down and negotiate. government doesn't
[00:27:33] seem to be very interested in peace and prosperity under any circumstances
[00:27:37] except those that they dictate, so that means that
[00:27:41] Israel wants its greater israel project, and by
[00:27:44] definition that means most of Syria, half of Iraq, nearly
[00:27:48] half of Arabia, a large portion of Egypt, and
[00:27:52] now we can all say that's insane, but
[00:27:55] unfortunately, we're supporting it, we're backing
[00:27:59] it, and there is no pressure, none.
[00:28:32] unity doesn't exist, so the question
[00:28:35] is, do do you andcara sit and
[00:28:39] wait until the israelis end up in
[00:28:42] Damascus, do you sit and wait until you're
[00:28:45] confronted with enemies coming at you from
[00:28:48] Israel,
[00:28:50] i don't know, or do you act, and then the question
[00:28:54] is, well turkey is still, turkey is still a member of NATO,
[00:28:58] but i'm not sure NATO is terribly meaningful anyway, and i don't think the
[00:29:02] tur be too concerned about that, NATO or the
[00:29:05] European components of it are certainly not going to intervene in that
[00:29:08] mess. i don't have any easy answers.
[00:29:11] what i'm trying to do though is tell you that what's changed and
[00:29:15] seems to be now a permanent fixture at least for the moment, is an
[00:29:19] Israeli government that will not compromise, and that boads
[00:29:23] ill for the future of turkish influence and power in the region.
[00:29:27] colonel Douglas McGregor, thank you very much, very enlightening
[00:29:30] conversation.
[00:29:35] And that's all for this edition of Straight Talk with me
[00:30:16] Saudi Arabias main airport is hit again. Yemen's hoothies
[00:30:20] launch second attack after killing 13 and injuring
[00:30:23] hundreds on Saturday. Hello and welcome to
[00:30:27] TRT World Live from Istanbul, I'm Yashini Padiachi.
[00:30:31] Also on this program. Donald Trump says an energy cease
[00:30:34] fire has been agreed by Russia and Ukraine, Vladimir
[00:30:38] Zelensky says he's
[00:30:39] surprised. Illegal Israeli
[00:30:43] settlers under the protection the army attack Palestinian
[00:30:47] olive farmers in the occupied West Bank.
[00:30:51] And India's opposition is preparing to rally in support the
[00:30:54] cockroach protests that have seen mass demonstrations and arrests in
[00:30:58] New Delhi.