O Oriente Médio moderno, explicado.

(inquisitive music) (upbeat music) (John sighs and claps) - The Middle East, the part of Asia that Europeans see as the middle of what they see as the east. Sort of arbitrary. Whatever, we call it the Middle East. This part of the world is literally where civilization started, right here, in modern-day Iraq. And over the years, the borders here have been redrawn many times as empires have ebbed and flowed through this region. By the way, I didn't make this time lapse. A very talented YouTuber did, and he deserves a medal for it. (fanfare music) Or perhaps

just a new patron. Thanks, man. Anyway, the most recent carving up of this region happened by European powers, the French, the British, the Russians. I mean, are we surprised? No. Like, of course. Of course it was the British. Of course it was the French. Of course it was Europeans. Of course. The lines they drew didn't really take into account language or ethnicity or regional identity. They just sort of sliced it all up amongst themselves And said, "These are our new regions of power in the Middle East." Eventually, those European powers left, but the lines they

drew stuck around and became the skeleton for what the borders look like today. And this is where our story starts, in the 1930s, here in the modern Middle East. At this point, across the ocean, there was this growing superpower that had spent the last century moving west, taking over this whole continent and beyond, deep into the Pacific Ocean. We've talked about that a bit. But things were changing. The world had just fought a brutal world war that was fought with new weapons that were powered by this new important substance, oil. Germany lost that war, in

part because they didn't have access to enough oil to keep up with this new style of warfare that relied a lot more on machines. The young superpower realized that access to this stuff would determine who would be powerful and who would not. So they stopped looking west for a moment and turned east, with hopes of finding the fuel they needed to build their power. The U.S. presence in the Middle East started with one little dot, right here. But soon, that dot would expand into a sprawling network Of alliances, covert attacks, flows of weapons, money, and

the building of innumerable bases, and eventually turning into full-on ground wars. (intriguing music) This is how the U.S. stole the Middle East. (intriguing music) - Ready and willing to employ all means necessary. - Okay, so it's the 1930s and the U.S. doesn't have a significant presence in the Middle East at this point. But that's about to change, because there's a company based in California that wants to explore this vast desert for oil. - [Narrator] 11,000 miles from San Francisco there lies a primeval desert, a mass of drifting sand and sun-baked earth, one third the size

of the United States. - [Johnny] This was sort of a risky decision for the California company because, first off, they had no idea if there was actually any oil here. - [Narrator] They knew it would mean sinking into the desert the money of thousands of stockholders in a project that might well end in complete loss. - [Johnny] And second off, this desert was a part of a very hardcore religious kingdom. - [Narrator] The fact that Mecca is the source and the shrine of Islam gives Saudi Arabia a central place in the Islamic and, therefore, the

Arab world. - [Johnny] that was home to the holiest sites in Islam, Run by a dogmatic royal family that did not like outsiders, especially non-believing Westerners. But even still, the king of the desert kingdom eventually gives the California company permission to explore almost a million square kilometers of this desert looking for oil. And after a few years, the bet paid off. And on March 3rd, 1938, in this little patch of coastal desert, they struck gold. Well, actually they struck oil, but it might as well have been gold. (kinetic music) So, throughout the '30s and '40s,

American oil executives, workers, and their families started flocking to the Middle East, establishing the first significant American presence in the region. They set up little cities around the oil operation that were little slices of America, full of the deepest sinful behavior, like allowing women to drive and the consumption of alcohol. - [Narrator] Here is another American colony, complete with air-conditioned houses, two hospitals, and an outdoor movie theater. - This is the sort of stuff that is very off-limits in Saudi Arabia. It's literally illegal at this point. So you have a lot of Saudis who are

not happy about their government letting the Americans in to behave however they want. But the oil kept flowing, and soon, the U.S. government goes to the royal family and says, "Listen, the oil is flowing better than ever. This is awesome. How about we build a little military base attached to our little oil city so that we can, you know, protect you and protect us and protect the oil and stuff?" And the Saudis are like, "Okay. Having the great Satan come to our country for oil is one thing, but letting them set up a full-on military

base on our soil, (John inhales sharply) and especially when, like, everyone in our country is not happy with their presence in the first place. "But," said the royal family, "all of this oil is really valuable, and it's really nice, and we're getting super rich." So they're like, "Yeah, sure. Set up the base." But there was one stipulation that the Saudis had for the Americans. "You are not allowed to literally plant a flag. No flag poles of the United States. You cannot put your flag anywhere on this base. Instead, you can put a little plaque on

the side of the building so that your flag is not literally on our soil." And that was the deal. And that's exactly what happened. The U.S. sets up its first military operation in the Middle East in the form of a landing strip That is right next to this oil field. (plane engine roaring) Okay, so all of this infrastructure that the Americans were building required someone to build it. They needed a construction company. And there was one construction company that the Americans really liked that helped them build their oil city and their base. This company was

founded and run by a guy named Mohammed. Now, listen, do you think I'm really giving you the backstory on the construction company that built the air base in the oil city just because that's interesting and I like to talk about construction? No, this is actually very relevant to the story, and you'll see why very soon. So the Americans and the Saudis are having this forbidden oil bromance and it's going really well, and they are just, the oil is flowing, everyone's getting rich. And meanwhile the rest of the Middle East is looking at Saudi Arabia and

they're like, "Dude, WTF. Why are you like in bed with America? And, like, why are you letting them set up a landing strip in your country?" And the Saudi royals are like, "Do you realize how rich we're getting right now? Like if you were in our position, you would do the same thing, Egypt." Okay, so it's the 1950s and let's get back to Mohammed, the construction guy. His company, by this point, is thriving. The American presence in oil land is just exploding and he is building all of the stuff for it. And so this guy

just has a giant business. And he starts to have children. Well, in fact, he had a lot of children, like 54 children because he had 22 wives, because that is a thing in Saudi Arabia to this day. Anyway, the point is one of Mohammed's sons is named Osama. (downbeat electronic music) I told you this was going to be relevant. Okay, a reminder that Saudi Arabia is not the entire Middle East. So, I'm going to leave the Osama bin Laden cliffhanger for a moment to tell you what else was going on in the Middle East at

this time. Remember that it was the hunt for oil that brought the U.S. to Saudi Arabia originally. But now in the '50s and '60s, there was a new reason for the U.S. to think about the Middle East. And that reason is because there's another big superpower that has nuclear weapons called the Soviet Union, who is coming into the region and saying to everyone, "Come join team communism." And the U.S. is like, "Hold my beer." (dramatic music) So in addition to oil, the U.S. is now involved in trying to not let the Soviet Union have any

power in this region. Over in Iran, there was a democratically-elected leader that the U.S. didn't like. They thought he was maybe a little too friendly with the Soviet Union. So they worked together with the British to literally overthrow the government of Iran so that they could install a dictatorial leader that was more friendly to the United States. Little side note here. The airport that I fly out of here in D.C. is named after the guy who, like, gave the go ahead for this coup in Iran, John Foster Dulles. So, I'm reminded of the whole Iran

thing every time I fly. So the U.S. has its oil thing. It's now involved in trying to prop up a dictator in Iran. There's another big thing happening that brings the U.S. into the region, which is that the newly declared State of Israel is starting to piss off its neighbors and starting to look to the U.S. for support. And the U.S. gladly offers it, seeing Israel as a friendly nation in the region that could be a big proponent of U.S. interests. So the U.S. starts to fund Israel with tons of money and fighter jets, and

all of these things to help them fight their wars against their Arab neighbors. There was a debate happening in the United States on whether or not they should actually do all of this to support Israel so intensely, because they knew if they did, they were going to piss off all of the neighbors in the Middle East. And all of the neighbors are the ones who had the oil. In the end, the U.S. did decide to support Israel, and with that, came a major backlash from all of these oil-producing countries in the neighborhood. - There's a

crisis of such proportion that we probably haven't even begun to grasp it yet as far as the country is concerned. - [Narrator] Scenes like this are becoming all too common on both sides of the Atlantic. But for America, they are more ominous. They tell the Arabs that their oil weapon is wounding America, the country that supports and supplies their enemy, Israel. - Eventually, this backlash against supporting Israel kind of calmed down. There was some peace talks. And anyway, let's get back to Mohammed, the construction guy, and his son Osama, because this is where it really

starts to heat up. We decided to put together this compilation of all our Middle East videos because there are transformative events happening in the Middle East right now. The recent attacks on Iran from the U.S. and Israel have reshaped the Middle East and are doing that right now as I'm recording this. And hopefully these videos are providing some context, but keeping up with the headlines Is proving to be really difficult because every source comes at it with a different angle and a different bias. This is why I have partnered with Ground News. They are the

sponsor of this compilation. And I've been using Ground News for over a year now. They've been a partner of the channel and I'm really grateful they exist. Ground News is an app and a website that allows you to very quickly and thoroughly compare thousands of headlines from all around the world. It organizes them and breaks them down by what their biases are, their reliability, their factuality, and even tells you who these outlets are owned by. They've been recognized by the Nobel Peace Center for Advancing Media Literacy. And lemme just show you how this works and

why it matters. Take one event like the story about Iran's next supreme leader, the strikes on Iran, and the killing of the Supreme leader in Iran was covered by over 800 outlets, all with different angles. With Ground News, you're able to quickly compare and see how the left and the right are covering it differently. For example, a left-leaning outlet emphasizes the human response from the Iranian diaspora in Washington. The right, represented by Fox News, focuses on the political backlash of the attack framing the critics of these strikes as siding with Iran, or in their words,

"Rooting for the Ayatollah." Every news outlet chooses their narrative. So do we. This is impossible to avoid. What Ground News does is it helps make that visible by allowing you to quickly compare lots of different headlines. I've used the app for years and I'm grateful it exists. It's a kind of comparison that I can't get elsewhere. It's an important part of being a critical consumer of the news. And it's completely subscriber funded. There's no, like, rich billionaire back there deciding what you see. It's completely funded by all of us who pay for it. If this

is interesting to you, you can get in on the Vantage Plan, which is the plan I use. You can get 40% off if you go to ground.news/johnnyharris. You can also scan the QR code here on screen. You get that 40% off, it ends up being like five bucks a month for you to get the whole picture on the events shaping the world. With that, let's dive into our next video about the modern Middle East. - [Narrator] And it is this world of religious authority and deeply-rooted traditions that is now being challenged by the wealth of

oil and the Western invasion it has brought. - So it's now the '70s, and Mohammed bin Laden, the construction guy, is now insanely rich. His construction company is giant, his 54 children are also rich, and his son Osama is growing up, and he is in his twenties, and is looking around at all of this stuff happening in Iran and in Israel, And is starting to feel really uncomfortable with the notion of his family being so supportive of American presence in the Middle East and his government, this religious kingdom, home of Mecca and Medina, being so

okay with the U.S. so embedded in the Middle East at this point. "These are ancient holy lands. Why is my government and my family supporting this great Satan superpower coming in and becoming so involved in the Middle East?" So, Bin Laden sets out on a lifelong quest to fight back against these superpowers, not just the U.S. but also the Soviet Union, invading the Middle East. He heads to Afghanistan, where the Soviet Union is invading Afghanistan, trying to take it over. Bin Laden wants to fight back. By the way, the same year in Iran, that dictator

that the U.S. put in gets overthrown in a giant religious revolution that gets rid of the old dictator that the U.S. liked and puts in a religious government headed by this guy, Ayatollah Khomeini. This new government takes a bunch of Americans hostage and starts off hating the United States. And I mean, can you blame them? If someone overthrew the person I elected, I would be pretty pissed too. So anyway, back to Bin Laden. He arrives to Afghanistan with a few things. Number one, a bunch of money. Remember his family's like super rich. He also comes

with construction infrastructure because he's, like, a construction guy. Like, his family knows construction and infrastructure building. But most importantly, he comes with an obsessive dedication to fighting back against any superpower that is invading the Middle East. So, Osama joins in with all of these rebel fighters who are fighting back against the Soviet Union, and they fight a long, brutal war. By the way, the U.S. was secretly loving this, loving that the Soviet Union was getting, like, beat back by these, like, rebel fighters. So they end up sending loads of weapons and money and support to

these fighters, something that will come back to bite them a few decades later. Eventually, Osama and the Afghan fighters beat back the Soviet Union. It was 10 brutal years of war, and by the end, these fighters were battle hardened. Osama was now completely dedicated to his cause of fighting back against superpowers who were coming into the Middle East. So he returns back to Saudi Arabia, where he starts raising money and awareness for his new group that he started while he was in Afghanistan. It's called Al-Qaeda. And the mission of the group is to protect Islam

Through violently striking back against big superpowers coming into the Middle East. And Saudi Arabia is like, "(sighs) Osama, like, do you have to do this, dude? Do you realize how rich we're getting?" Like, Saudi princes are living on yachts in the south of France and, like, flying in their private jets and they're like, "Dude, chill. Like, it's fine. We get it. We don't like the United States, but, like, can you, like, maybe chill? Our partnership with the United States is actually turning out to be really great. And I know, yeah, they're really into Israel and

they're really bad and everything, but, like, they buy our oil and they give us weapons and we're, like, doing just fine over here." Osama doesn't chill, and the Saudi government eventually takes away his passport, not letting him leave, and told him to hush up with all the anti-American Holy War talk. So, Osama finds another plan to maybe win back the heart of the royals. (dark music) Saudi Arabia has a next-door neighbor named Iraq, who was run by Saddam Hussein, who Osama sees as a really bad Muslim, totally secular and brutal, and he's just like not

a good guy. Saddam is also cashing in on the oil boom. He's building big palaces and statues of himself all over the country. Oh yeah, and he also used the oil money to build a giant army, like, the fourth biggest in the world. With this massive army, Saddam decided that he could maybe multiply his oil reserves if he popped down to invade this little tiny country of Kuwait, where there's also loads of oil. This sort of freaked the Saudis out. If Saddam with his giant army could grab Kuwait, what would stop him from marching right

across this desert into Saudi Arabia? So there's this moment that, like, ugh, it's like the moment of infamy of this whole thing, where Osama goes to the Saudis and he says... - I volunteer as tribute. - He doesn't actually say, "I volunteer in tribute." That was "Hunger Games." - I believe we have a volunteer. - But he effectively says, "I have me and my battle-hardened men who, like, can go in and fight against Saddam and defend the kingdom." And the Saudis are like, "Um, no, we're not gonna, like, let this ragtag group of, like, rebel

fighters fight off the fourth-largest army in the world." And Osama's like, "Well, we beat the Soviets. Like, they're a big army with nuclear weapons and everything." And the Saudis are like, "Yeah, because you hid in the hills, in caves, in Afghanistan." Prince Sultan literally told Bin Laden verbatim, quote, "There are no caves in Kuwait." And then he asks them, "What will you do when he lobs the missiles at you with chemical and biological weapons?" Osama's response, "We will fight them with our faith." (sinking music) And the Saudis are like, "Um, awkward. Sorry, dude. Like... (scoffs)"

Instead the king met with somebody else that he thought would make a much better fit than Bin Laden and his faith fighters. (dramatic music) Dick Cheney had flown to Saudi Arabia the day after Saddam had invaded Kuwait. At this point, the bromance between the U.S. and Saudi Arabia had cooled a little bit as Saudi had gotten more and more flak for being in bed with the U.S. But even despite this, he told Cheney to come with as much force and as quickly as he could. And that is exactly what Dick Cheney did. - Ready and

willing to employ all means necessary. (explosion booms faintly) - The U.S. went insane here. They recruited 37 other countries, and then they sent more firepower in terms of ships and bombers and troops and all this stuff than you and I could never imagine. It was insanity. And they totally crushed Saddam. Within a few weeks, they had pushed Saddam back and completely won over the hearts of the royals. The bromance is back in business. (subdued music) So, now you have these Saudis that are beaming at the Americans for helping them fight off Saddam. And you have

a bunch of bases that the U.S. set up to mount this attack. Way more than before. The U.S. came with all of this firepower and manpower and bases and artillery. And then they just sort of never left. Something that really pissed off a lot of Saudis, who were very uncomfortable with U.S. presence to begin with. But the guy who was most pissed off than anyone in the Middle East at this point? Osama bin Laden, who had not only been rejected by his own country, but then who got chosen instead, but the great Satan, the United

States, a power that Osama had built his entire life fighting against. So, Osama bin Laden starts to double down on his original mission. He leaves Saudi Arabia and begins coordinating very precise attacks that could really only be coordinated by a guy who was good at technical details of a construction company and who had lots of money to fund it. He carries out attacks against the United States all around the world. And by the late '90s, he starts planning the attack that would change our world forever. (siren wailing) (radios chatter) (audio whines) (soft dramatic music) -

So, this is just the first half of the story. What happens next is something that we're all kind of familiar with. (fanatics chant) (gunshots chatter) In fact, I think we're all still kind of processing the U.S. presence in the Middle East today and how that all went down. But it deserves taking a look at, and I'm not going to do that right now. I want to make a separate video for Iraq and Afghanistan and Israel and Iran, and dive into each of these cases to show how the U.S. presence in the Middle East is not

just about oil. In fact, oil is becoming less and less of a vital aspect of the U.S. presence as we have alternative sources of this sort of energy. Instead, our presence in the Middle East has become a fixture of how we think about foreign policy and how we think about the map. It's become so embedded in our military doctrine and in our foreign policy doctrine that it's proving to be really hard to think about how we could ever get out. (soft dramatic music) One of the most important wars of the last 50 years is one

that we don't hear about much. When in 1980, two of the Middle East's most powerful countries, Iran and Iraq, waged eight years of some of the worst trench and chemical warfare since World War I, leaving both countries devastated. This is the war that fractured the Middle East into lines that still play out in nearly every conflict there today. It set the U.S. and Iraq on a path that ultimately led to the American invasion. And it defined Iran's often hostile relationship with the wider world. This is the Iran-Iraq War. It's 1979, and Iran is in the

middle of a revolution. (crowd chanting) The country is coming off of decades of being ruled by the Shah, a king that the U.S. and UK had installed in the 50s after covertly overthrowing Iran's democratically-elected leader. But after years of The Shah's corrupt autocratic rule, a mass uprising violently overthrows him, creating what becomes an Islamic republic, headed by an Ayatollah named Ruhollah Khomeini. (soft dramatic music) Khomeini, and a group of Shia religious scholars, want to impose fundamentalist rule on the country and are hostile to both the Western powers and the neighboring Soviet Union. They establish a

military force called the Islamic Revolutionary Guard, which is meant to protect their hold on the revolution and to suppress the other groups who helped overthrow the Shah. The U.S. is watching all of this in shock. Their biggest ally in the region, and a major oil producer, has just turned from friend to fierce enemy. But the biggest tremors of this revolution are felt in the rest of the Middle East. (soft tense music) Iran sends out radio broadcasts to Arab countries like Saudi Arabia, Lebanon, Kuwait, and Iraq, calling for people to rise up and overthrow their own

rulers. They're trying to export their revolution to their neighbors to gain new allies in the region. Neighboring leaders, most of them Sunni Muslim, don't like this. Saudi Arabia's king fears being overthrown just like the Shah was. And in Iraq, Saddam Hussein sees this Shia religious revolution on his eastern border and worries that the Shia majority that he rules over will rise up against him too. But he also sees this as an opportunity. Iran and Iraq have been fighting over this border territory for years. This waterway is a critical access point to the Persian Gulf where

both countries export their oil to the rest of the world. In a treaty between the two back in 1975, Saddam had to give up full control of this waterway, as well as access to oil-rich regions in what was now Iran. Saddam hates this treaty and is considering taking the waterway back by force. The Iranian Revolution has left the country weak and fractured. Khomeini and his revolutionary guard are still fighting other political factions for control. The Iranian military, which used to be funded and trained by the United States, is now weak, its leaders having been jailed

or executed after the revolution. Iran's military would normally be able to crush Iraq in an invasion, but maybe not anymore. Saddam sees this as an opportunity to weaken a major rival. Saddam is also riding on a delusion that he himself is going to unify the Arab world under his leadership. If he invades Iran, maybe the rest of the Middle East will rally behind him against this new common enemy. He thinks it'll be a quick victory. So in September of 1980, he decides to prepare 10,000 Iraqi troops to cross the border to invade Iran. (soft dramatic

music) (engine rumbling) What's about to happen here isn't just the start of a new war. (guns boom) Saddam is kicking off a dynamic that will dominate the Middle East for more than 40 years, the fight between revolutionary change and status quo power. (subdued music) The war officially starts when Saddam sends his air force over the border in a surprise attack on Iranian air bases. His 10,000 soldiers cross from Basra into Southern Iran. Further north, Saddam opens a second front to seize strategically-located border towns and put pressure on his enemy. These air attacks mostly fail, and

Iran responds with airstrikes of their own into Iraqi territory hitting oil facilities. Iran still has sophisticated jets that the United States had given the previous regime. This gives them an edge in the air. (bombs booming) The war quickly sucks in the rest of the region. Israel is among the first. It wants to keep these two adversaries occupied, Fighting with each other, keeping both sides weak. So almost immediately, Israel secretly sells supplies and parts to Iran. This helps the Iranian Air Force keep planes in the air. Now, Iran and Israel are not friends, but Israel sees

Iraq as a greater threat here. So they're willing to support. Iran needs to get its military organized if they're gonna fight this war. So they release military officers that they had jailed during the revolution. War tends to unify a nation, and in this case, the fractured country of Iran is unifying around Iraq's invasion, creating this irony that Saddam is the one who actually cements Khomeini's hold on power. Saudi Arabia and Kuwait also step in here, giving billions of dollars to fund Iraq's war efforts. They want to weaken Iran and turn back its revolution. The Middle

East is now dividing between, on one side, Arab states who are ruled by aging, Sunni monarchies and strongmen who fear change, and on the other side, a Shia Iran bent on revolution, on remaking the region in its image. China is also watching this war. They say they will maintain strict neutrality, but they take the opportunity to sell weapons to both sides of the conflict. They eventually become Iran's top supplier of weapons. (subdued music) For most of 1981, the two armies are in a stalemate, with Iraq holding small but important stretches of border territory. The global

powers see this stalemate and try to negotiate a ceasefire, hoping that this conflict that threatens so much of the global oil supply will end soon. What they don't know is that this is really just the beginning. Saddam agrees to the ceasefire, but Khomeini does not. This war has become so useful to his goals, unifying the country and keeping the military occupied so that it doesn't become a rival to his power. Khomeini needs the war to continue. So Iran demands that Saddam Hussein step down. They say the war will continue until his rule is ended. Saddam,

of course, refuses. So Iran goes on the offensive. Their forces are now organized. Their officers have been freed from jail, and they're able to recapture the territory that Saddam had taken, even pushing into Iraq. Saddam's hopes of a quick victory and a gain of some valuable territory are now dead. So he turns to the United States for support and the U.S. agrees to help. They hope to weaken Iran And its call for anti-American Islamic revolution across the region. So the U.S. starts giving Saddam intelligence and satellite imagery on Iranian troop movement. Iraq also gets another

big backer, the Soviet Union. The Soviets are at war in neighboring Afghanistan trying to suppress another religious uprising, but they also have allies in this region. So over the course of the war, the Soviets become a top supplier of weapons to Iraq. Now remember the situation between these two. It's a tense moment in the Cold War, and the United States and Soviet Union are suddenly supporting the same side of this Middle East conflict, both backing the country that will support the status quo, nothing changing, allowing their great power struggle to continue as it has. But

by the summer of 1982, Iran is now pushing into Iraqi territory, much of their campaign focused on the city of Basra. If Iran can take Basra, it will cut off Iraq from the Persian Gulf, preventing them from shipping out their oil. Iraqi forces are outnumbered here, so they start to dig in and build trenches, erecting barbed wire barriers, planting landmines, and surrounding the city to stop Iran from taking it. The fighting starts to resemble the brutal warfare of World War I, waves of artillery strikes, and the Iranian military resorting to human wave attacks Where thousands

of boys and men charge over open fields leading to huge numbers of casualties. Iran is not successful in taking the city, but this attack does weaken Saddam, showing that he's vulnerable. And this is where we need to look to the north to talk about the Kurds. (subdued music) The Kurds are a minority group in the north of Iraq. They've been long suppressed by Saddam Hussein, and they see this moment as an opportunity to break away from Iraq to make their own country. So Kurdish forces start fighting with the Iraqi army, taking towns and villages. So

now Saddam is fighting two different armies, one of which lives in his own country. Iran starts sending support to the Kurds who have a presence in this mountainous, oil-rich part of Iraq. If the Kurds can hold it and keep Saddam's regime away from all of this oil, it would have a major effect on this war. This is a big deal for Saddam, and he switches tactics to make sure he can control this northern area. He escalates by using chemical weapons against the Kurds as well as the Iranians. Shells filled with mustard gas, Weapons that cause

extreme burning and blindness, a weapon that is illegal under international law, but even still, the global powers who are supporting him mostly look the other way. The U.S. starts sending technology and money to Saddam, even restoring official diplomatic ties with Iraq. This allows Iraq to buy technology from the United States that helps them develop their weapons programs, including the horrific chemical and biological weapons that he will soon be using on the battlefield. They need him to keep fighting because this war has changed. It went from protecting Saddam from revolution to now using Saddam to weaken

Iran. So they keep supporting him, showing him that he can use chemical weapons without being punished. The chemical attacks help push back Iranian forces, and the war reaches a new stalemate. 1984 is the year that the oil war begins in this conflict. Iraq starts attacking Iranian oil tankers in the Persian Gulf using new jets provided by France, a new entrant to this conflict. Saddam warns that he'll also attack any ship going into Iranian ports. Iran retaliates by attacking oil tankers carrying Iraq's oil. The oil that the entire globe relies on is now at the center

of this increasingly brutal conflict. Hundreds of commercial ships are attacked by both sides, resulting in the death of over 400 civilian sailors. The U.S. has to send in two frigates and a guided missile destroyer into the Persian Gulf to escort U.S. ships, hoping that their presence will stop these attacks. Meanwhile, Iran is making progress on the ground, slowly taking territory from Iraq and continuing attacks on the vital port city of Basra. (soft grim music) It's 1985 and Saddam is about to escalate to a new extreme. He starts shooting missiles and dropping bombs on Iranian cities

all over the country, including the capitol. This kills 16,000 people and leaves many homeless. Iran responds, striking Iraqi cities, firing these massive missiles, primarily at the capital of Baghdad. These strikes hit civilian targets like a school and a bus station with hundreds of casualties. Civilians on both sides are now caught in the crossfire of this brutally escalating war. Their cities and their homes are not safe, so many flee. These events leave an entire generation scarred by the trauma of war and a disdain for the outside powers that have ripped their country apart. And speaking of

outside powers, this is when the U.S. starts double dealing. They start selling missiles to Iran, which gives Iran an edge against Iraqi forces who the U.S. is also supporting. Behind all this is President Ronald Reagan, who wants to use the money from this deal to fund an anti-communist militia group in Nicaragua. It's all supposed to be a secret, but will eventually come out and be known as the Iran-Contra scandal. Meanwhile, Kuwait is asking the U.S. to be more aggressive to protect their oil tankers. Iranian attacks on their ships have started to take a toll. The

U.S. is getting more involved in the war. Their presence in the Persian Gulf is growing. They start putting American flags on Kuwaiti tankers to deter Iran from attacking them. And then in March of 1988, Iran partners with the Kurdish fighters to take over the Iraqi town of Halabja. The Kurds know that this is going to set Saddam off, and they brace themselves for a brutal retaliation. But what comes next is worse than anyone could have prepared for. The Iraqi army drops bombs and artillery shells containing deadly chemicals, blanketing the entire town with a cloud of

deadly gas that sinks into homes and buildings and the underground shelters where many were hiding for protection. It's a brutal attack that kills over 5,000 Iraqi Kurds, mostly unarmed civilians. And it was a part of a broader campaign that Saddam was now waging to wipe out the Kurdish people entirely. He now had what he believed was a justification. So the Iraqi Army starts going village to village, dropping chemical weapons on civilians and executing any survivors. This resulted in an estimated 50 to 100,000 deaths in what has now been deemed as a genocide, one of the

many war crimes committed by Saddam Hussein. The U.S. knows this is happening, and yet, according to now-public documents, the official government line was to turn a blind eye, to blame everything on Iran. Saddam's horrific war crimes project a new fear onto the civilians in Iran who now worry that a missile loaded with deadly gas could land on their cities. Many flee to take shelter in the mountains. And by now, after eight years of devastating war, Iran's economy and social order is frayed. Their leader, Ayatollah Khomeini, is feeling the pressure to end this war. More than

a million lives have been lost in this war. All sides are looking for a way out. And the UN Security Council is pressuring the parties to accept a ceasefire. Then in July of 1988, a U.S. ship in the Persian Gulf shoots down an Iranian passenger jet, (soft tense music) killing all 290 civilians on board. The U.S. shakes it off as an unfortunate accident, saying that they mistook the airliner for a hostile F-16 fighter jet. They pay compensation to the victim's families, and President Reagan sends a letter apologizing, but the government never formally apologizes. And the

captain of the ship who did this later received a medal which fed a deep suspicion in Iran that this attack was deliberate, that it was a scheme to coerce them into accepting peace. Fear of more American attacks, along with a new offensive by Iraq, pushes the Iranian forces to withdraw from the country, and both sides finally accept a ceasefire. (subdued music) The war is finally over, and after all of this, the borders were unchanged from before the fighting. But in some ways, this was really just the first round in a larger conflict that has continued

through to today, a war for the future of the Middle East, one that the United States is deeply involved in but that most expresses itself as a cold war between Saudi Arabia and Iran, who now fuel civil wars around the region in Lebanon, Syria, and Yemen, backing their own proxy fighters and making these conflicts worse. But another major takeaway here is that this war defined Iran's relationship to the rest of the world, especially the United States. Iranian hardliners came to feel confirmed in their belief that they could never trust an outside world bent on Iran's

destruction and seemingly unconstrained in their violence, leading some leaders to conclude that only nuclear weapons could stave off disaster from the outside. Saddam Hussein's Iraq emerged battered by this war, humiliated by this failure against Iran. He faced growing internal resistance from his people, which he suppressed with more and more violence. He also came out of this with huge war debts to Kuwait and Saudi Arabia. Angry that his allies Had billed him to fight a war on their behalf, a few years later, Saddam invades Kuwait seeking its oil, taking the spoils that he felt he was

owed. And this is when his one-time backer, the United States, quickly turns against him, expelling him from Kuwait and beating him back in a swift 43-day victory, cutting him off from the world economy and turning him into a pariah, an enemy. A decade after Saddam had gassed his own people, the U.S. finally blamed him for it, turning it into a byword for his cruelty and the centerpiece for their demand that he step down. A few years later, George W. Bush would cite these weapons of mass destructions, the ones that he would never find, as a

reason to invade the country to topple Saddam. Bush's war room was filled with the same officials who had covered for Saddam and his war crimes in the first place, and making it so crystal clear that, even though this war between Iran and Iraq ended decades ago, the Middle East we see today is built off of what happened during those eight brutal years. Before we go into the next video, I just want to remind you that this is all made possible because of Ground News, the sponsor of this compilation. Ground News helps me do these deep

dives by helping me compare lots of headlines And revealing the different biases and reliability of the facts in those headlines. You can go to ground.news/johnnyharris to get 40% off their Vantage Plan and start comparing headlines and seeing clearly into the news that you're consuming. (dramatic music) (keyboard clicking) In the summer of 2002, the Director of the British Intelligence Agency, MI6, Richard Dearlove, traveled to Washington D.C. to meet with the Director of the CIA, George Tenet. The topic of the meeting was Iraq and its leader, Saddam Hussein. In the meeting, the CIA director shared classified information

with his British counterpart, who then traveled back to London to 10 Downing Street, the home of the Prime Minister, Tony Blair. Dearlove told his Prime Minister everything about what was really happening behind the scenes in the United States, how the U.S. was planning to invade Iraq no matter what. It was a highly classified meeting but notes were taken and classified and put into a memo. That memo was later leaked to British author and journalist, Michael Smith, who published it in 2005 and that's what we're looking at, A secret meeting and the memo it produced, meant

only for the eyes of top British officials. It was an explosive leak. What we see is that Dearlove tells his Prime Minister everything he heard in Washington a few days earlier, and that this was a very different story than the one the Bush administration was telling to the public, that an American invasion was inevitable, that Bush's people were fixated on removing Saddam Hussein from power, no matter what, and that the U.S. government was blatantly cooking up intel and facts to help sell their invasion. This document shows us how power really works in our world, how

a small group of people decided to topple a dictator, to occupy a country, and then invented a story to support their plan. It was a false story, but it helped them sell a horrifying war. It's a story that is revealed in detail by the Downing Street memo. (dramatic music continues) - States like these constitute an axis of evil. One last chance to avoid war. And the entire world will know that we will take whatever actions necessary. On September the 11th, enemies of freedom committed an act of war against our country. The United States military has

begun strikes against Al-Qaeda terrorist training camps in Afghanistan. - [Johnny] Let's start by looking at another document from the fall of 2001 when Deputy Secretary of Defense Paul Wolfowitz created this memo for his boss, Donald Rumsfeld, The Secretary of Defense. This was just 10 weeks after the attacks that changed the course of history but this document wasn't about that. It was about Iraq, a country that had nothing to do with 9/11. Rumsfeld reviewed the document before meeting with an army general. He marked it up with his notes, giving us insight into what the Secretary of

Defense of the United States was really thinking about after 9/11, how this group of military leaders were set on, quote, "building momentum" to topple Iraq's dictator, Saddam Hussein, to decapitate the government, a government that was no longer useful to them. Saddam Hussein had been a useful client to the United States, especially in the '80s when he was waging a war against Iran, an enemy of the United States. But those days were now over. Saddam had turned into just a troublemaker in the region, creating instability that could threaten the U.S.' easy access to oil. - Two

hours ago, allied air forces began an attack on military targets in Iraq and Kuwait. This conflict started August 2nd when the dictator of Iraq invaded a small and helpless neighbor. - [Johnny] And in many ways, Iraq was an old mess in need of cleaning up, a mess that Bush Senior had failed to resolve during the first Gulf War. Iraq was supposed to disarm itself after that war but had kicked out the UN weapons inspector teams. (brooding music) But that wasn't the main reason why, right after 9/11, these guys were talking about invading Iraq. A bigger

reason is that these leaders wanted to remind the world who the global superpower was. They needed to after being brutally attacked on their own soil. A non-U.S.-friendly regime, like Iraq, couldn't be allowed to stand in a post 9/11 world, or in the words of Rumsfeld himself, hours after the towers fell, quote, "We need to bomb something else to show that we're big and strong and not gonna be pushed around." Iraq and its leader was that something else. And now, Bush and his advisors were looking at a plan to make it a reality. But how to

start the war? Could they tie Saddam Hussein to something that Americans feared, like 9/11 or anthrax? Or could they tell a story about weapons of mass destruction? What other countries could they bring in to support their invasion? And, of course, the most important consideration, Rumsfeld jots it here at the end, they would need an influence campaign, they would need to sell the war. And when should they begin? How about right away? (intense music) - Iraq continues to flaunt his hostility toward America and to support terror. - [Johnny] Three months later, the President was telling the

world that Iraq was one of a group of evil countries that the U.S. must oppose in the global fight against good and evil. - States like these constitute an axis of evil. The price of indifference would be catastrophic. - [Johnny] By the summer of 2002, this idea that Bush's advisors had scratched down after 9/11 was developing into an official policy. That handwritten influence campaign to sell the war was now in full swing. - There is no doubt that Saddam Hussein now has weapons of mass destruction. - The Iraqi regime has been free to pursue the

development of weapons of mass destruction. - We know they have weapons of mass destruction, there isn't any debate about it. - [Johnny] And this is exactly what the head of MI6 told Prime Minister Tony Blair at his house in the summer of 2002 after meeting with the CIA in Washington. It's what we see in the Downing Street memo that there was a perceptible shift in attitude in Washington and that the U.S. invasion of Iraq was now seen as inevitable and that they were now fixing intelligence around a decision that they had already made, and that

the U.S. wasn't really planning to work with the UN. They didn't want weapons inspections or getting UN approval for a military force. And crucially, the head of the MI6 tells the Prime Minister That these Bush people aren't really thinking much about the aftermath of such an invasion. - What is inevitable is not regime change, it is disarmament of weapons of mass destruction. (subdued music) - [Johnny] This memo wasn't supposed to be seen by anyone but just a few, and that's why we can learn from it. It serves as one of the most potent pieces of

evidence that the Bush administration was maneuvering two very different stories. Their private story about the need to remove a dictator to project U.S. power, which was in stark contrast to the public story that they had to tell to sell the invasion, their influence campaign. - Any country on the face of the earth with an active intelligence program knows that Iraq has weapons of mass destruction. - [Johnny] Because they knew that if they were really gonna sell this war, they would need to convince not only the American public but also Congress and at least partially, the

international community. What we learned in the Downing Street memo is that they had settled on two main focus points for their story, that Iraq has weapons of mass destruction and that they're also working with the masterminds of 9/11. Not long after this meeting between MI6 and the CIA, Bush and his allies ramp up their influence campaign to sell their war. - We've learned that Iraq has trained Al-Qaeda members in bomb making, poisons, and deadly gases. - [Johnny] The sales pitches to the American people for an invasion of Iraq were made with absolute certainty. Certainty that

Iraq had WMDs. - He had agreed, and the UN had agreed, that he would not have a WMD program. We know he does have one. - [Johnny] Certainty that they wanted to use them against Americans and American allies. - Simply stated, there is no doubt that Saddam Hussein now has weapons of mass destruction, that he is amassing them to use against our friends, against our allies, and against us. - [Johnny] Certainty that Iraq was harboring terrorists. - An Al-Qaeda terrorist escaped from Afghanistan and are known to be in Iraq. - [Johnny] And certainty that Iraq

was working on obtaining nuclear weapons. - And Iraq's state-controlled media has reported numerous meetings between Saddam Hussein and his nuclear scientists, leaving little doubt about his continued appetite for these weapons. - [Johnny] And these speeches were working. By the fall of 2002, Americans were in favor of an invasion of Iraq by just a narrow majority. But there was just one problem, that all of these statements were lies. (moody music) Indeed, this was already known in the secret rooms of Downing Street that the U.S. was fixing their facts and their intel to match their already-made decision.

Iraq's supposed links to Al-Qaeda were based on one interrogation of a guy whose testimony lacked, quote, "specific details" and who was intentionally lying about it to mislead his interrogators. Bush and his allies knew this, it was clearly documented back in February of 2002, and yet publicly, the scary story about Al-Qaeda being in Iraq continued to be sold by Bush and his people. - The Iraqi regime has plotted to develop anthrax, nerve gas, and nuclear weapons for over a decade. - [Johnny] The case for weapons of mass destruction in Iraq was equally thin and senior officials

knew it. Like in September, 2002, when Donald Rumsfeld received this report from the Joint Chiefs assessing what real evidence there actually was for WMD in Iraq. The report is shockingly honest and it says that the conclusion that Saddam has WMD, quote, "Relied heavily on analytic assumptions and judgments rather than hard evidence." That's word salad for it was speculation and conjecture. The report goes on to say that they didn't have anything solid on nuclear weapons-related facilities, and concludes that they don't know of any facilities where Saddam may be producing or testing biological weapons. And so, we

know now that they had almost no evidence for their story about why the U.S. should invade Iraq. And yet even knowing this, they kept selling the same story, convincing the American people. - There's no doubt in my mind he wants to have a nuclear weapon and he's got some capacity. - Wherever threats are forming against our country, we will respond. - [Johnny] But they couldn't go on like this forever. They knew that if they were really gonna sell this war, they were going to need to show real convincing evidence, not to the people, but to

Congress. And this is where we get another instance of fixing the intelligence to fit the policy. It came in September, 2002, when President Bush asked Congress to give him the authority to invade Iraq. In response, Senate leaders requested an immediate National Intelligence Estimate, which is a report from the entire intelligence community meant to help Congress make informed decisions. This could be really bad for Bush and his allies. So he and the CIA get hard at work pulling together a report that fits their story, intelligence to back up all their public statements and speeches. They come

out with this highly redacted report that they deliver in October of 2002. The report makes some very strong claims. They claim that Iraq has been building more WMD, that they have chemical and biological weapons, and that they will have a nuclear weapon during this decade. And to congressional leaders, this appeared rock solid. Here was the entire intelligence community coming together saying that Iraq had horrific weapons and that they wanted to get more. - Saddam Hussein has composed a scarlet chapter of terror. Our only responsible option is to confront this threat before Americans die. - There

is no such thing as a Democrat or Republican war. - [Johnny] So in that same month, based on this report and all of these public speeches, Congress gives the green light for war. (heart beat thumping) (distressing music) But this National Intelligence Estimate was deeply flawed. It was a perfect example of the fixed intelligence described in the Downing Street memo. It was put together in less than a month, totally rushed. The report had been plagued by groupthink and directed by political pressure with the Bush administration pushing analysts to deliver a report that matched their conclusions that

they had already come to months earlier. And they did this using very old intelligence. The CIA hadn't had any human assets on the ground for years, so their report wasn't even based off of anything after 1998. But it didn't matter, Bush and his allies had successfully sold the war to Congress and the American people. But there was one last hurdle. It was the international community, which would mean they would have to face the UN process that they apparently had no patience for. - Iraq has answered a decade of UN demands with a decade of defiance.

- [Johnny] So it's November, 2002, and in response to the rising tensions between Iraq and the U.S., the UN Security Council passes this resolution, 1441. It was a measure that was meant to give Iraq a final opportunity to comply with weapons inspections to show the world that they had fully disarmed and had no weapons of mass destruction. Bush and his allies saw this as an opportunity, if they could somehow show that Iraq wasn't complying with this new inspection process, this resolution implied that they would be justified in invading the country. Their long-desired war would be

on. But they had a problem, which is that Iraq and Saddam Hussein were complying with the weapons inspections. Over the course of four months, UN weapons inspectors searched Iraq from top to bottom. They were led by Hans Blix, the former Head of the International Atomic Energy Agency. They conducted over 900 inspections at over 500 locations and they didn't find anything, no WMD, no biological weapons, no nuclear weapons programs. - Iraq has, on the whole, cooperated rather well. Access has been provided to all sites we have wanted to inspect, Universities, military bases, presidential sites, and private

residences. - [Johnny] Hans Blix did find two things that were important. First, they did find some ballistic missiles that the UN says have an effective range that makes them illegal, so they would need to be destroyed by Iraq. And second, there were some chemical weapons that the Iraqi regime said cannot be accounted for. But Blix insists that this does not mean that they have these weapons, it just means that they need more time to work out the accounting situation. But this error was exactly what the Bush circle needed to justify their invasion. - [UN Announcer]

I call now on the distinguished Secretary of State of the United States of America. - [Johnny] They sent their most respected cabinet member to the UN, Secretary of State, Colin Powell. He came equipped with photos of what he says are mobile weapons facilities. - Saddam Hussein and his regime are concealing their efforts to produce more weapons of mass destruction. - [Johnny] He plays tapes that he says prove that the Iraqis are hiding their weapons. - [Powell] We evacuated everything to make sure it was not around when the inspectors showed up. - [Johnny] And then he

says that this is solid evidence that shows that Iraq is violating the UN resolution that told them to disarm. This whole thing contradicts what the UN weapons inspectors Had found in their hundreds and hundreds of inspections. They bulldozed the process, and say they have justification to invade. - My colleagues, we have an obligation to see that our resolutions are complied with. - They've got the American public on board, they've got Congress on board, and now the UK is in lockstep. - This is the time for this house to show that we will stand up for

what we know to be right, to show that we will confront the tyrannies and dictatorships and terrorists who put our way of life at risk. - [Johnny] The Bush administration abandons the UN process, and that March, his people do what they set out to do 18 months earlier, when they were looking for something else to bomb (missile roars) to show who's really in charge on the world stage. - My fellow citizens, American and coalition forces are in the early stages of military operations to disarm Iraq, to free its people, and to defend the world from

grave danger. America faces an enemy that has no regard for conventions of war or rules of morality. (tense music) (explosion booming) (gunshots pop) - [Johnny] Bush's war took the life Of an estimated half million Iraqis, and thousands more who fought for their country. And over the course of a decade occupying Iraq, no weapons were found, no nuclear facilities, no mobile weapons labs. In fact, it seemed like Iraq had dismantled its nuclear program back in 1991, and the rest of its chemical and biological weapons just a few years later. After the invasion, the U.S. never allowed

the UN inspectors back into the country to help with their search. The U.S. would never find a way to link the Iraqi regime to Al-Qaeda or to anthrax. Colin Powell, the Secretary of State, who played a major role in selling this war to the international community would later say that he regrets his part in starting the war. - I deeply regret that some of the information I presented which was multi-source was wrong. - [Johnny] Hans Blix, the Chief Weapons Inspector for the UN, would comment later that year that, "It is sort of fascinating that you

can have 100% certainty about weapons of mass destruction and zero certainty about where they are." We may never know what was in the heart and minds of these senior leaders, whether they truly believed their own lies, whether they felt justified in the choices they made. But what we can learn from this story is how these leaders behaved When they thought no one was watching, when they thought they could tell a compelling story to the public while having a totally different set of motivations. And how, with enough fear and enough deception, you can lead an entire

society into an unprovoked war, changing the course of history in the process. (subdued music) Up in the Zagros Mountains have long lived a people called the Kurds. They're a people with a centuries long history of fighting back against invaders who have crossed through their lands, resisting conquest in the name of defending their shared cultural identity. Some living as nomads, a people with no friends but these mountains. Eventually the Ottoman Empire did take over all of this territory, but even then, the Kurds maintained large amounts of autonomy and freedom in their land. Then came World War

I when the European powers defeated the Ottoman Empire and conquered all of this. The winners got together and discussed how they would carve it up between them. If you look back at old European maps, you'll see that all of this area would be labeled Kurdistan, an area where the Kurdish people lived and had some self-rule. So while drawing these lines, the British wanted to mark all of this as Kurdish territory, paving away for an independent country for the Kurds, But the new leader of Turkey opposed this plan. He didn't wanna give all this land and

resources to the Kurds. So he pushed the European forces out of Turkey. They gave up on this plan to give the Kurds their own land. And in the end, instead of drawing borders around the Kurds, the Europeans drew borders through them. What could have been Kurdistan was now five different territories, the Kurds split between them. (inquisitive music) But at first these were just lines on a map and the Kurds continued to move through this region. Eventually the Europeans left, and these became independent countries with leaders who wanted to consolidate and centralize power. So these lines

hardened, restricting the Kurds' movement and their livelihood in this region. But even still, across this region, the Kurds didn't give up on their idea of someday gaining independence, self-rule, or maybe even a country of their own. (foreboding music) Throughout the 1900s, the Kurds in each of these new countries took different approaches to fight for an independent Kurdish state. Some Kurds would use politics, others would use violence. The early uprisings were crushed by the leaders of these new countries who saw the Kurds as a threat to their efforts to unify their country Around a common language

and culture. Like in Iran, where the Kurds had some political rights, but they fought for more. They wanted autonomy and independence. The government of Iran wouldn't have any of this. They would crack down with violence on the Kurds, often supported by Western powers. By the 1970s, Iran was going through a revolution and the Kurds tried again to rise up, but this new regime had no tolerance for a group that would challenge the leadership of the ruling religious leader. So once again, they were put down. Over in Iraq, Kurdish fighters fought hard against the government throughout

the 20th century, until the 1970s, when this new regime came in and made a deal with the Kurds, saying that they would be recognized as an ethnic group and would be guaranteed political representation. It seemed like a huge deal for the Kurds, but it turned out to be a false promise. The Iraqi regime, now led by Saddam Hussein, would continue to repress the Kurds, eventually dropping deadly chemical weapons on Kurdish towns in Iraq, systematically killing thousands of Kurdish civilians in a genocide supported by American-made supplies that were sold to Saddam. Over in Syria, the Kurds

were treated decently Under the French-controlled government. (subdued music) They were citizens and had some rights. But after the French left in the 40s, the regimes that came after oppressed the Kurds, and by the 1970s, the Syrian government was arresting and deporting them, taking their land and giving it to Arabs. In total, the Syrian government would remove 140,000 Kurds from the country. Decades later, Syria and the United States would both find the Kurds in Syria useful for their political goals. But first, let's talk about Turkey. (inquisitive music) There's more Kurdish people here than in any other

country. The same government that had fought against a Kurdish state early on continued to oppress the Kurds, denying them citizenship, outlawing their language, and keeping them out of politics, all with the goal of wiping out their culture from Turkey as a part of this Turkification campaign, which tried to unify Turkey under one culture, targeting the Kurds and other ethnic minorities. Some Kurds fought back against this in the early years, but were quickly crushed by the Turkish state, (explosions boom) leading to the creation of an armed insurgent group With communist ideology. They're called the Kurdish Workers

Party, or PKK, and it would become one of the biggest Turkish resistance movements. The PKK would use violence like suicide bombings and improvised explosives, as well as youth militia fighters against the Turkish government, tactics that they say are the only way to fight back against such oppression. And as a result, Turkey and most Western powers consider the PKK a terrorist group. So that's how the Kurds in these four countries became locked in a conflict with their governments. They all have different struggles, but they're all unified by the dream of some version of Kurdish independence. (subdued

music) But it doesn't take long for these regimes to see that they could use the Kurds as a tool, as a weapon. One of the earliest examples of this happens at the end of World War II when the Soviet Union sees an opportunity to gain land and access to oil by supplying and arming the Kurds in Iran, allowing them to rise up against the government and declare their own country supported by the Soviet Union. But it didn't work. The U.S. pressures the Soviets to leave, and now without support, the government of Iran, Which is backed

by the U.S. and UK, go on to crush this movement of Kurds in their country. The Kurds are back to being repressed by the government. In the 1980s, Syria uses the Kurds as a weapon against its rival Turkey when it allows the PKK to start operating within Syria, giving them money and weapons so that they can hurt Turkey. Syria is doing this in spite of having spent years removing hundreds of thousands of Kurds from its own country. This escalates the conflict between these two, and Turkey threatens to invade Syria. So Syria backs down and kicks

the PKK out to avoid being invaded, showing once again how the Kurds' willingness to fight can easily become a pawn in the geopolitics of the region, discarded once they aren't useful anymore. In the 1980s, Iran and Iraq both used the Kurds at the same time as a weapon to hurt each other, even as both are cracking down on Kurds in their own country. Saddam Hussein funds and arms the Kurds in Iran, while Iran funds the Kurds in northern Iraq, both sides hoping to spark a Kurdish uprising That will distract and weaken their enemy. In Iraq,

Saddam Hussein retaliates against the Kurds in his country with that genocidal chemical attack we talked about earlier that killed at least 50,000 Kurdish people and probably much more. Once again, the Kurdish dream of independence was used by outsiders as a weapon, and the Kurdish people paid heavily for it. (intense music) The U.S. would get involved when in the '90s they would come to this region fighting against Saddam Hussein for the first time. The U.S. rallies the Kurds, calling for them to overthrow Saddam. George Bush Sr. literally calls them to action with television and radio broadcasts

throughout the country. - That the Iraqi people should put him aside, and that would facilitate the resolution of all these problems that exist and certainly would facilitate the acceptance of Iraq back into the family of peace-loving nations. - [Johnny] And it seems to work. It sparks an uprising that looks successful at first. The U.S. had instigated this uprising, and they have forces in the region that they could send to support the Kurds, but they do nothing. This allows Saddam to regather his forces and crush this coup and to increase this oppression, Ensuring that nothing like

this ever happens again. Now, the U.S. and UK do eventually step in to create this no-fly zone meant to protect the Kurds in the north and the Shiites in the south. This gives the Kurds some autonomy over their region and protects them from further airstrikes by the Iraqi Army. Soon the U.S. is back in Iraq. It's 2003, and the Bush administration decides to invade and remove Saddam from power. The Kurds in Iraq hope that the U.S. presence in this region will mean finally they will get their own state, they will be independent. They join the

U.S. in fighting against Saddam and his loyalists, battling insurgents, and later against ISIS. (gunshots crackle) The Kurds would even go on to hold a vote, showing that 92% of the population was in favor of independence, but the U.S. won't support this, worried that it might destabilize this new Iraqi state that the U.S. just propped up. Even when the Kurds fight on the side of the U.S. and their interests, U.S. support for their cause still remains very limited. They still look the other way as Turkey bombs their towns in Iraq hunting for the PKK. This same

pattern has continued in recent years in the country of Syria, a country that descended into civil war around 2011. This chaos looked like an opportunity for the Kurds in Syria, a chance to establish real control over what they see as a part of Kurdistan. The PKK in Turkey helps create a new Kurdish militia called the People's Protection Unit or YPG. They seize large swaths of land in the north and they declare self-governance. Around this same time, the terrorist group ISIS is taking huge swaths of territory in the north and east of the country, creating their

so-called caliphate. And here comes the U.S. once again asking the Kurds for help, hoping that they will fight against ISIS on the ground for them. But because this group is allied with the PKK, which they consider a terrorist group, the U.S. asks this militia to rebrand themselves to the Syrian Democratic Forces, which obscures their connection to the PKK. The U.S. then trains, funds, and arms them to fight ISIS. The Kurds are, once again, the U.S.'s weapon. This plan works, and with help from U.S. airstrikes, this Kurdish militia kicks ISIS out of more and more land.

But Turkey hates this. All they see is a potential Kurdish state right on their southern border, a safe haven for the PKK that will allow more attacks against the Turkish military. But Turkey can't attack this branch of the Kurds while they're being supported by the United States. Lucky for them, there's a new president in the White House and he's promised to pull the U.S. out of the war in Syria. And in 2019, to the dismay of the Kurds, he makes good on this promise. With the U.S. out of the way, Turkey invades, launching airstrikes and

artillery against the Kurds in this border region, saying that their plan is to create a 32-kilometer-deep safe zone right here along the border, and that no Kurdish forces are allowed to be here. The plan was to then resettle Syrian refugees currently living in Turkey. It's a brutal campaign that looks a lot like what Syria was doing to the Kurds in the '70s. (missile whooshes) The U.S. completely abandons the Kurds, even after using them to fight their enemy ISIS. Turkey, a NATO and U.S. ally, continues to bomb them using weapons from the United States. They spend

the next four years sending drone strikes and airstrikes into Syria and Iraq, Anywhere they think the PKK has a presence. (subdued music) This map shows all of their attacks during this time. You can see that it's not just against the Kurds in Turkey, but across this whole region. Today, the Kurdish groups in this region vary more widely than ever, each with different values and visions for the future, forged from each of their unique struggles and traumas. Kurdish groups still fight the government in Iran with the goal of creating their own state. The Kurds in Iraq

did gain some autonomy from the U.S. in the new Iraqi constitution, but it doesn't seem like this autonomy will last. As recently, the Iraqi Army is fighting with the Kurds to maintain control over the oil resources in this area to keep the Kurds economically dependent on the central government so that they never break away. Once again, the U.S. is not supporting the Kurds in this fight. Turkey continues its offensive against the PKK and other Kurdish groups in the region, and they continue to crack down on the Kurds politically, arresting Kurdish politicians and activists, censoring journalists

to intimidate the Kurdish people from participating in the election. The Kurds in Syria face a new and uncertain future. They do have some autonomy up here in the north, But are surrounded by enemies, no longer counting on any support from the U.S. The story of the Kurds is the story of a people who are willing to fight like few others, all in the name of their culture and identity. That willingness to fight has presented a threat to regional governments, bent on control of their people and the resources within their borders. That willingness to fight has

also been hijacked by outside powers, turning the Kurds into a pawn to fulfill geopolitical objectives, each time showing how willing these powers are to use the Kurds and then abandon their cause. (tense music) (leader speaking in foreign language) - [Interviewer] Do the Palestinians have a right to a separate state? - [Netanyahu] No, I don't think they do. But... - In 2007, the head of military intelligence for the Israeli army had a meeting with the U.S. Ambassador in Tel Aviv. We're looking at the classified cable that summarizes what was talked about in this meeting. The topic

of discussion was Iran, Syria, the Gaza Strip, and Hamas. (loudspeaker blares) Hamas had just won the Palestinian elections, which kicked off a fight with the other Palestinian group, which ended in Hamas taking over Gaza completely. They controlled it. And if you're an Israeli citizen or the U.S. government, this is a terrible set of events. Hamas is a violent extremist group known to commit heinous violence against civilians in Israel, and they were now in power. They controlled the Gaza Strip an hour away from Tel Aviv. But look at this leaked document. In this leaked cable, you

see that the Israeli official says that Israel would be happy if Hamas took over Gaza because it would mean that Israel could now treat Gaza like a hostile country. - [Reporter] Three days post cease fire, and there's unrelenting bombing in Gaza. - This document is a view into a strategy that right-wing factions within the Israeli government have used for decades in an effort to win one of the most divisive conflicts in the world today, in which two groups are fighting over one piece of holy land and one side is winning by using a very specific

tactic, one that the world says is illegal and immoral, and one that worked for a short time, but that recently has been shown to be a recipe for even worse violence and conflict and suffering. (serious music) In this video, I wanna lay out what this strategy looks like and show you how it failed. I know this is a topic that is full of deep emotions that has real stakes in people's lives. Please know that I am earnest in my efforts to tell this story with clarity and with accuracy. And also please note that this is

not a full account of the conflict between Israel and its neighbors, but I do hope that it sheds light on a view of the conflict that sometimes gets lost in all of the yelling. (Netanyahu speaking in foreign language) (crowd cheering) (subdued music) For 2,000 years, Jewish people around the world have been persecuted and segregated and ostracized from society. That is a fact. By the time the 1800s came around, it became clear that wherever the Jews went, persecution would follow. This is when a movement emerged calling for Jews to come together and to create a country

for themselves Where they could govern themselves and be free from all of this racist hatred. The creation of a Jewish country would have at the top of its priority list the security of the Jewish people. But the big question was where? Several places floated around in proposals, Argentina, even modern-day Kenya, which back then was Uganda. But most people in this movement wanted the Jews to return to their historic homeland, a place called Palestine. (gentle music) Where Jews built their temple and their culture 3,000 years ago, but then were exiled, and now there was this call

to return so that Jews could feel safe after 18 centuries of Jewish suffering. So as the 1900s came around, tens of thousands of Jews, mostly from Europe, flocked to Palestine, which eventually came under control of the British. The British were getting ready to leave this region and were struggling to contain the growing conflict between native Arabs and all these Jewish immigrants. Then in the 1940s came a horrific genocide against the Jewish people in Europe, led out by Hitler and his Nazi regime. This created a wave of international support for this idea of giving the Jewish

people A homeland where they could be safe. Before they left, the British asked the UN to determine what would replace them in Palestine, and the UN decided that Palestine would become two new countries, one for the Jews and one for the Palestinian Arabs that had already been living in this region. - [Reporter] The Jewish state colored light, the Arab state dark. Jaffa to go to the Arabs, Jerusalem internationalized. - But as happens when outsiders draw lines on old land, there was a problem here. Within these borders that were meant for the new Jewish country, hundreds

of thousands of Palestinian Arabs were living who would soon have to leave their homes to move to their side of the line. (gentle distressing music) Okay, wait. I'm gonna pause there. Because as I said this is not a full history of the Arab-Israeli conflict. We actually just made a video on our new channel Search Party, which focuses on what happens next, the conflict between Israel and its Arab neighbors. You can go watch that. Link's in the description. It'll give you some useful context. For now just know that this led to a horrific conflict. Jewish militias

forced over 700,000 Arabs out of their homes turning them into refugees. The proposed borders shifted around, turned into ceasefire lines, and after all was said and done, the Jewish people did indeed get their own country, the state of Israel. (lofty music) And the two important points here are that number one, the very foundation of the Israeli country is for security of the Jewish people after nearly 2,000 years of persecution. And number two, the location they chose to set it up was becoming, as a result of this conflict, not much safer than Europe. That's a tension

that follows this whole story. (inquisitive music) Okay, so now let's fast forward to 1967. Israel has its country and they fight a short war with their Arab neighbors, and they win that war and they take over all of this land. It's a huge victory for them. I'm gonna take away the Sinai Peninsula from here because they did give that back to Egypt as part of a peace deal a few years later. Israel now controls important pieces of land that enlarge their Jewish country. Many saw this victory as a sign from God that they were actually

entitled to be here. But once again, Palestinians, nearly a million of whom had been kicked out of their homes, were living here in the West Bank and the Gaza Strip, which Israel now controlled, but they weren't really sure what to do with it. And it's this territory that would become the stage for the strategy that is the topic of this video, Where over time this land would be sliced up with roads and checkpoints, walls and other military infrastructure that would control the movement and lives of the Palestinians. Soon, even Israeli citizens would start to move

out here in large numbers building full-on towns and further dividing up this territory. Moving citizens into occupied territory like this is something that the world has deemed illegal and immoral. So this occupation starts in 1967 and it goes on for decades, until eventually the Palestinians living here can't handle it anymore and they start fighting back. (intense music) This is known as the first uprising or Intifada. It started with boycotts, but escalated into mass protests where Palestinians of all ages would throw stones and sometimes Molotov cocktails at much better-equipped Israeli soldiers. It was Palestinian rage exploding

against Israeli occupation, and it went on for years. The Israeli government would respond by cracking down, killing many Palestinians. Another important thing that happens around the same time down in the occupied Gaza Strip is that a new movement forms promising to fight back against this occupation calling for the destruction of Israel. The group is called Hamas. The first Intifada showed that this wasn't gonna work. Chopping up Palestinian land, oppressing them, keeping them in this occupation, was only going to produce more violence. It wasn't gonna fulfill Israel's promise to provide security and safety for the Jewish

people. They had to switch course. - The security of the Israeli people will be reconciled with the hopes of the Palestinian people and there will be more security and more hope for all. - [Johnny] So in the 1990s, they start getting serious about peace talks with the Palestinians, and they come to this agreement called the Oslo Accords, (stirring music) which for the first time establishes a Palestinian government authority and giving it power to govern pockets of land in the West Bank. It also gave the Palestinians some authority over almost all of the Gaza Strip, though

there were still settlements in all of these places. This was a big deal for this conflict. Like, both sides were talking to each other and coming to agreements that was giving, like, authority to the Palestinians. But another theme of the story is that hardliners can use violence to derail peace. And that's exactly what happened here. (protesters chant) (brooding music) Right-wing Israelis start holding rallies, calling their Prime Minister a traitor and a Nazi for giving land to the Palestinians. Some of these rallies are led by a now familiar character, Benjamin Netanyahu. - The people of Israel

want a real peace and real peace means peace with security. Peace they can trust with a partner they can trust, and they don't feel they have it here. We want a real peace, not a fake one. - [Johnny] But the peace talks continue. - With all our neighbors, a comprehensive peace. - And shortly after signing the second part of this deal to give Palestinians some land, the Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin is assassinated by a far-right Israeli. Hamas conducts bus bombings. And the next year, Benjamin Netanyahu is elected as the prime minister of Israel. And Netanyahu

is a key figure in this story because his worldview embodies a way of thinking that has taken root in Israel in recent years. The idea that the only way to give true security to the Jewish people is by doing whatever is necessary to stop the Palestinians from having a state anywhere in these borders. (gentle music) - Look, I'm 28 years old. I've had to defend my country in two wars and in many battles. Nobody wants peace more than Israel. But the stumbling block to the road for peace is this demand for a PLO state, which

will mean more war, Which will mean more violence in the Middle East. And I think, I sincerely believe, if this demand is abandoned, we can have real and genuine peace. - So that was Netanyahu. He was a 28-year-old. But when he becomes the prime minister a couple decades later, he spends his term sabotaging the peace accords that his predecessor had worked so hard to create, claiming that the occupation of all this land and its people wasn't actually conquest, but rather the key for security of the Jewish people. They had to do this. Security was the

one and only justification for all of this. So under his watch settlers continue to move into the West Bank. We found this leaked video of Benjamin Netanyahu talking to some settlers in the West Bank. (all speaking in foreign language) - The cameraman does turn off the camera for a moment, but then turns it back on moments later. (Netanyahu speaking foreign language) - He is admitting to sabotaging the peace accords that the Israeli government had signed with the Palestinians, that because he disagreed with them, he wanted to sabotage them because he was so against a Palestinian

state or any form of Palestinian autonomy in this land. And then he goes on to explain what his real thinking is on the situation. (Netanyahu speaking foreign language) - Netanyahu is a fantastic politician and statesman, and he's able to sort of cover up a lot of these policies in the name of security. But here we see what he really thinks as he's talking to these settlers thinking he's not being recorded. So unsurprisingly the appetite for peace breaks down on both sides. Palestinians come to the conclusion that the Israelis aren't really serious about giving them any

kind of autonomy in the West Bank or Gaza, that their situation will never change. And once again, they rise up in a second Intifada. This one, much more violent, much more coordinated. (intense music) Hamas becomes a major player in the violence with suicide bombings and attacks. Israel responds with great force and during the fighting, 1,000 Israelis and 3,000 Palestinians are killed. At this point the Netanyahu way of seeing the world is starting to look a lot better. Peace talks didn't work. All they did was produce more violence. And so maybe the only way to ensure

security is to go back to full-blown occupation Of controlling every move of the Palestinians in the West Bank and the Gaza Strip. So at this point the occupation gets more and more suffocating, more walls, more barriers, more checkpoints, more settlements. Then in 2005, Israel withdraws from the Gaza Strip, letting the Palestinian Authority have total control there. They turn their attention entirely to their historic homeland of Judea and Samaria, which is the West Bank. The next year, an election is held in the Palestinian Authorities and the winner surprised the world and would create a new chapter

for this conflict. The winner of these elections was Hamas. - [Reporter] This is a very, very bad result for the Palestinians and for Israel. - The incumbent Palestinian party that had lost the election tried to forcibly hold on to power, and soon the two Palestinian parties were fighting with each other. And it results in this split between the two Palestinian governments. It turns into violence. And when the dust settles, there's suddenly a bitter divide between these two Palestinian groups, Hamas completely taking over the Gaza Strip. (subdued music) And this gets us back to our leaked

document that we started this video with where an Israeli official is saying that they would actually be happy If Hamas took over the Gaza Strip because now they can treat Gaza like a hostile country. (harrowing music) (explosions boom) Now that they're not occupying it, they're not responsible for the 2 million civilians who are living there. They can impose a blockade to control anything coming in and out of the Gaza Strip, people, food, medicine, money, building supplies. But there was another reason why Israel was happy that Hamas now controlled the Gaza Strip. The Palestinian government was

now deeply divided, Hamas ruling Gaza and the West Bank being run by a more moderate, secular Palestinian faction. And crucially neither considered the other to be legitimate, which weakened their ability to negotiate for any kind of state, for any kind of country, especially when Hamas still refused to recognize Israel's right to even exist. This division played right into the hands of the Israeli right. And this gets us back to Benjamin Netanyahu, that enemy of the earlier peace talks. (brooding music) He gets elected once again in 2009, Declaring himself Mr. Security and promising to provide safety

to Israeli citizens who are still shaken from the second Intifada and are now worried that Hamas now controls the entirety of the Gaza Strip. Netanyahu's playbook was already made clear. He had said it point blank. It's what he had been doing for years. Sabotaging peace talks that would give Palestinians any kind of authority over this land, and continuing to build settlements, while continuing in his words in that leaked tape to hit the Palestinians hard to make it unbearable for them. A complete assault on the Palestinian government. Dividing and slowly conquering the Palestinian people, making life

hard and desperate for them, controlling their lives, watching their every move. And this is where we get to this paradoxical alignment, almost alliance between Benjamin Netanyahu and Hamas, the enemy of Israel. (grim music) As long as Hamas held control over the Gaza Strip, the Palestinian cause would remain weak and divided. Netanyahu would feel justified in imposing this crippling blockade of the Gaza Strip, which in turn gave Hamas legitimacy among the people of the Gaza Strip, showing that their armed struggle against Israeli oppression was justified, provoking them to launch rockets into Israel To show that they

were actually doing something unlike the Palestinian Authority in the West Bank, which in turn bolstered Netanyahu's narrative that the Palestinians actually don't want peace, they want violence and the destruction of Israel. And the only way for security is more occupation, more oppression. So instead of try to take Hamas out, Netanyahu overtly supported them by approving huge transfers of untraceable cash literally delivered in suitcases into the Gaza Strip, cash that would inevitably end up in the hands of Hamas to be used against Israel. He legitimized Hamas by negotiating with them, releasing a thousand Palestinian prisoners in

exchange for one Israeli. - The Israeli soldier held captive by Palestinian militants for five years is expected to be freed within days. - The more Netanyahu could keep Hamas in power in Gaza, but keep them contained, the more he could ensure that Palestinians remain divided. He could keep peace talks from ever happening, which in turn gave him time to continue to pursue his expansionist project in the West Bank. And indeed, since 2009, when Netanyahu became the Prime Minister, the number of settlements in the West Bank has only gone up. (subdued music) And if you look

at this map, you can see how these settlements Just weave through and carve up this land, making it impossible to even fathom what a Palestinian state could look like, which is precisely the point of the strategy. I actually reported out here, visiting the settlements back when I was at Vox. I did a series talking to the settlers, trying to understand why they live out there, what it's like to live in these settlements that are strangely peaceful and banal and just mundane, people living their lives, because they're protected by the army. If you want a deeper

dive on settlements, you can go watch that series. But if you're Netanyahu over the last 16 years, you think your plan is working. Like, you see all these settlements going up, the international community can't do anything about it. They keep supporting you. Every once in a while there's some flare up in the West Bank where Palestinians get into a fight with Israeli soldiers, but it gets contained. Every few years Hamas fires some rockets, which then gives Israel the excuse to go, as they put it, "cut the grass" by conducting a short, swift, violent military campaign

to keep Hamas at bay. And every day that goes by, the notion of a Palestinian state becomes less and less feasible. (subdued music) This is one reason why a far right Israeli lawmaker called Hamas "an asset." (pundit speaking in foreign language) So divide and conquer has been the name of the game in Israel for a long time, but especially in the last 16 years under Netanyahu. And again, to the people in charge, they think it's working. Maybe this violent status quo, this equilibrium can hold and the far right can get exactly what they want. Security

for the Jewish people and expansion into all of this land. And maybe the occupation will break the Palestinian spirit and they would give up on their dream of having a state. But that's not what happened. On October 7th, 2023, we saw how wrongheaded this theory of security was. - In an unprecedented surprise attack, the militant Hamas rulers of Gaza sent dozens of fighters into Israel by land, sea, and air. - This deadly attack launched by Hamas showed us that while Netanyahu's strategy of divide and conquer might be good for taking over more land, what it's

not good for is making good on the original promise of Israel, which is ensuring the security of the Jewish people. In fact, his strategy has produced exactly the opposite. (crowd chanting in foreign language) Now, the responsibility for what happened on October 7th lies with the people who committed those acts of terror, Hamas fighters and their leaders. There is no excuse or justification for their actions. But the point I'm trying to make with this video Is that there's also others that need to stand accountable here. Those who used Hamas as a pawn to continue this divide-and-conquer

policy, who are now engaged in a campaign of mass bloodshed on civilians, they deserve to stand accountable as well, to the Israeli people and to the countries that support Israel. I believe in the need for a Jewish state. I do. I think that's a very reasonable proposal that Jewish people should feel safe somewhere in this world. And yet what we're looking at isn't it. The Israeli project, the way that it's been wielded in its current form, produces the exact opposite of security for the Jewish people. (serious music) Look at this map. This map shows the

thousands of attacks that have occurred right here on this border just over the past year in this fight between Israel and one of their biggest regional enemies, Hezbollah. (soldiers chanting in foreign language) Hezbollah is one of the biggest armed groups in the world that isn't a nation's military. They have tens of thousands of trained soldiers and hundreds of thousands of missiles and rockets capable of reaching targets all across Israel. This threat led Israel to conduct a massive set of attacks against Hezbollah. - [Reporter] This large explosion was seen Near Beirut International Airport. - [Johnny] In

which they killed almost all of the group's top leaders weakening Hezbollah immensely, followed by a full-on invasion by Israeli troops to denigrate this group even further. This has been a massive escalation that is now spilling over into this entire region. And to understand how we got here, you really have to understand where Hezbollah came from and what this group's fierce 40-year struggle tells us about how the modern Middle East came together and how it's now coming apart. (grim music) The story of Hezbollah really starts when the vast Ottoman Empire broke apart in the early 1900s.

Europeans came in and sliced all of this up, France taking all of this territory, but then they drew a line here to carve out this little mountainous region, one that was populated mostly by Maronite Christians, but the border didn't include just Christians. The French made sure to include this area to the east and this area to the south. Areas that contained large populations of Shia Muslims who were now forced into this new country where they were made a minority to the Christians Along with a few other religious groups. We're gonna focus a lot down here

on this Shia heartland that would eventually become one of the most important regions in the whole Middle East. (suspenseful music) (subdued music) In 1943, Lebanon gains its independence from France. It creates a constitution meant to balance the power between all of these religious groups, but that balance wouldn't last. Mostly thanks to what started happening down here where another set of borders were being carved into the Middle East. The British had controlled this, but in 1948, they left and the UN helped draw these new lines, creating a new Israel and Palestinian state. Decades of war forced

out millions of Palestinians, many of whom ended up here in Lebanon. These Palestinians are mostly Sunni Muslim, so this upsets the carefully laid power balance in Lebanon and further marginalizes the Shia Muslims who were fighting for their place in the country. Then in 1971, an armed militia made up of Palestinians called the Palestinian Liberation Organization moves to Lebanon, and they turn this whole region, which, again, was made up of mostly Shias, into their own little mini state. You start to see that Lebanon is descending into division Between the different militias and powers controlling parts of

the country. And in the mid '70s, it all breaks down into a full-fledged civil war between a dizzying number of religious factions. It's a war that will pull in much of the Middle East, (grim music) and it's a war whose most important region is down here in this border zone between Israel and Lebanon. The place that will soon give rise to Hezbollah. Now, let's talk about Syria. They're here right next door, and they're watching this civil war and they decide to invade, to prop up the Maronite Christian ruling class who've become Syria allies. They want

to do this to prevent the Civil War from spilling over into their territory. At this point, Syria also considers annexing the entire country of Lebanon, making it a part of Syria. But eventually, the relationship between Syria and Maronite Christians breaks down, and Syria continues to occupy this part of the country. Meanwhile, to the south, Israel fears that Syria is growing too powerful. It also wants to wipe out the PLO, who is attacking them across the border from Lebanon. So in 1978, Israel enters the fray invading from the south and driving deep into the country. Israel

succeeds in temporarily suppressing the PLO, But in the process, it displaces hundreds of thousands of locals, most of them Shia Muslims. It eventually withdraws after a UN resolution. But then, in 1982, after more PLO attacks, Israel invades again, this time pushing all the way to Beirut, fighting both the PLO and Syria. And this is where the conflict takes on a new dimension. (high-strung music) It's 1979 and over in Iran, the people have risen up against the U.S.-backed dictator in this Islamic revolution led by a Shia Muslim cleric who wants to spread this revolution throughout the

region. He's looking for allies, and in 1982, they find their perfect match here in southern Lebanon. It's a militia that rose to defend against outsiders trampling their heartland. It's called the Hezbollah, which means party of God. Iran picked this group in particular because it shares its goals of Islamic Revolution and a deep distrust and disdain for Israel. Iran starts providing Hezbollah with money, weapons, soldiers, training, and leadership. And in return, Hezbollah proclaims loyalty to the Iranian Revolution and its supreme leader. What started as Lebanon's civil war is now a regional war that is heating up.

So the United States enters leading an international peacekeeping mission to try to calm these tensions. But of course, Hezbollah and Iran hate this. They now have two prime targets in their backyard, Israel, and these Western powers led by the U.S.. So in 1983, they launched a series of terrorist attacks, a truck bomb detonated in front of a U.S. and French barracks in Beirut that kills over 300 people. Most of the world blames not only Hezbollah, but also its backer, Iran. The fighting continues until 1989 when the many groups fighting this civil war come to a

peace agreement, one that bans all militias and requires them to give their weapons back to the government. But there's a big catch here. Israel still occupies what they call this security buffer zone in southern Lebanon. So the peace agreement makes an exception specifically for efforts that resist the Israeli occupation, a.k.a, they allow Hezbollah to continue to exist, turning them into something more than just one of these militias fighting for their group. It gives them a kind of official status to continue acting as a defender of southern Lebanon, the country's bulwark against Israel. They also develop

into more of a political party that gains seats in Lebanon's legislature, kind of serving as a parallel government providing social services in the areas that it controls. (subdued music) So let's look at Hezbollah in this moment, because they find themselves in the middle of shifting power games in the Middle East, balancing their mandate to defend their Shia heartland, which was their founding motivation, but also trying to gain further influence in the region while also appeasing the demands of their major supporter, Iran. In 2005, Lebanon's prime minister is assassinated, and most Lebanese blame Hezbollah, along with

its other foreign supporter, Syria, Lebanese people rise up in mass protest, and Syria eventually withdraws its forces that have occupied Lebanon for 28 years. Hezbollah is disgraced. Its legitimacy is supposed to come from resisting foreign meddling, and it's becoming clear that they have become a pawn in the geopolitical game of regional powers, Syria and Iran. But the group is able to turn Syria's withdrawal into their advantage. The Syrian occupation had kept Lebanon somewhat stable, So as soon as they left, it creates this power vacuum and allows Hezbollah to take more territory, ramping up attacks across

the border against Israel and leading to another brief war with the IDF. Hezbollah continues to be a useful proxy for Iran, and Iran continues to fund them and arm them. And by 2011, Iran and Syria pull Hezbollah into another unpopular conflict, Syria's civil war. But this hurts Hezbollah's reputation because now they're fighting on behalf of Syria's brutal Iran-backed regime. These once-liberators have turned into foot soldiers of oppression doing the bidding of outsiders. But its last source of legitimacy continues to be its resistance to Israel, something that Lebanon's own government is too weak to do. This

remains their source of legitimacy today. So on October 7th, 2023, when Hamas and Israel descended into this most recent war, Hezbollah jumped in, launching more attacks against Lebanon's southern border. This is meant to support Hamas in the Gaza Strip and to threaten Israel with a war on two fronts. At first, it seemed to be working. Tens of thousands of Israelis have had to evacuate the towns and villages in northern Israel. So Israel started firing back across the border, forcing 90,000 people in southern Lebanon from their homes. This, in addition to Israeli strikes on Iranian proxies

and military officials, led Iran to fire its first ever direct strike on Israel, trying to deter it from going any further, but it didn't work. In September of 2024, Israel escalated, surprising Hezbollah with a series of attacks that killed a large part of the group's top leadership, including their decades-long leader. A few days later, Israel sent troops across this border with the goal of further weakening Hezbollah, trying to make the situation safe for Israelis to return home to the north of the country. And now with Hezbollah in shambles, its sponsor, Iran, felt compelled to act.

(missiles exploding) - Oh, Jesus. - [Danna] What we are all seeing with our own eyes is a major attack from Iran. - [Reporter] It's a major attack, Danna, and it's an escalation. It's an escalation... - [Johnny] So even if Hezbollah eventually begins to rebuild itself, it's unclear what role they will play in Iran's proxy network. But what is clear is that the clash between these two Middle East powers remains the central force animating this region towards more and more violence. And these recent events show us clearer than ever That Hezbollah was just one foot soldier

in this growing conflict between these two powers. Checking in one last time to remind you that this video is made possible by Ground News, the sponsor of this compilation. Ground News is the service that I use to look deeper into the headlines that I'm consuming, very, very deeply aligned with their mission to help reveal the narratives behind all of the many headlines that are covering the world's news. If you wanna get 40% off their Vantage Plan, which is the one I use, you can go to ground.news/johnnyharris to get in on that discount and support this

very useful service. Okay, onto the next video. (subdued music) Along the banks of the most important waterway on earth sits the country of Yemen, a place that was two countries for decades until the year 1990, when it was unified into one. A fragile patchwork of groups all with different tribal backgrounds, religious beliefs, and political aspirations. The story I want to tell starts in the '90s, when one group forms up in the northern mountains of Yemen. It's started by a group of religious Yemenis who call themselves the Believing Youth, who were members of a Shiite Muslim

sect called the Zaidi. Zaidi Muslims used to be the majority When the country was split in two. But in the new unified Yemen, they became a minority and felt neglected and discriminated against. At first, the group focuses on rebuilding the Zaidi religious identity, hosting summer camps for young men and offering religious education. But in the late 1990s, the group starts to change in important ways. A member of Yemen's parliament resigns in protest and joins the Believing Youth. He felt that the government of Yemen was corrupt and far too influenced by Yemen's neighbor to the north,

Saudi Arabia. Al Houthi blamed outside influence for many of the country's problems. So as he leaves the government, Al Houthi uses his wealth and family connections in the Zaidi community to become the leader of the Believing Youth. He wants an Islamic revolution, modeled after the one in Iran. One that kicks out any foreign influence and restores Islamic values. - [Reporter] Outrage with the speed of the human shout. - [Johnny] With Al Houthi's influence, this group of young men in the mountainous region of Yemen starts to change. They begin protesting Yemen's president, Ali Abdullah Saleh. Soon

they start taking up weapons, taking over territory, and eventually setting up their own security checkpoints In their region. The Believing Youth are starting to look a lot less like a summer camp and a lot more like a militia, like a rebellion. President Saleh, who had previously supported the Believing Youth, is starting to get worried. And then in 2001, the entire Middle East would change forever. (dark music) After 9/11, the U.S. launches a war on terror. (reflective music) They asked President Saleh for help, and he cooperates, taking military aid and allowing American special forces to operate

inside Yemen, where the terrorist group Al-Qaeda has a presence. 18 months later, the U.S. presence in the region would balloon even more when the American military invades and occupies Iraq. For Al Houthi and his group of young men, this crosses a red line and deeply radicalizes the movement. Al Houthi criticizes the president publicly for pandering to what he sees as American imperialism in Muslim lands. And many in Yemen agree, joining the movement and bolstering their numbers. Al Houthi adopts the violent slogan that sits on the flag of his movement to this day: God is great.

Death to America. Death to Israel. Curse on the Jews. Victory to Islam. President Saleh feels threatened by the growth of this increasingly radical movement that is taking control of territory in the north. He issues an arrest warrant and a bounty for Al Houthi and brutally cracks down on their protests. In response, the Believing Youth launch an armed rebellion in the north of Yemen, leading to counterattacks by the Yemeni military. Shortly after the fighting begins, Al Houthi is killed in a cave in the north. The rebels he leaves behind fight on with new conviction, and the

world would know them by the name of their martyr, a symbol of imperial resistance that would soon be firing rockets at Israel and hijacking cargo ships in the Red Sea. (subdued music) By 2004, the Houthis have morphed into a full-blown rebellion, fighting against Yemen's government from their northern strongholds. They know this land well and they have local support, allowing them to fight a guerrilla campaign against the government forces, blending in with civilians, hiding in mountains and caves, and allowing them to resist the much better-equipped Yemeni army. As the conflict turns more violent, more tribes in

the region would feel that the military is being overly brutal, leading them to join the Houthis. And it's at this time that the conflict goes international. The Houthis say that Saudi Arabia is letting the government of Yemen position troops right across this border. So they invade into Saudi Arabia, killing Saudi soldiers and taking hostages. This pulls Saudi Arabia into the conflict, as they respond with airstrikes and troops and push the Houthis out of their territory, punishing them for this invasion. Now, over here, Iran is watching this war, and they see an opportunity. The Houthis are

now fighting directly against their biggest rival, Saudi Arabia. So they start secretly sending weapons to the Houthis. At least that's what Saudi Arabia claims, saying that they intercepted an Iranian ship filled with weapons and military trainers on their way to the Houthis. It looks like Iran is directly supporting the Houthis now. Though how much support they provide behind the scenes will always be intentionally unclear. As the conflict between the Houthis and the government continues in the north, Saudi Arabia has been fighting their own war on terror against a branch of Al-Qaeda operating in Saudi Arabia.

Seeing that their days are numbered, this branch of Al-Qaeda flees south over the border into Yemen, where they merge their forces With the Yemen branch of Al-Qaeda. They create Al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula, or AQAP, one of the most dangerous and well-funded versions of the group to ever exist. The group's goal is to create a strict Islamic state across the whole region, while violently waging holy war against foreigners in Muslim lands. (reflective music) This puts them at odds with both the Yemeni government and the Houthis. The conflict is getting more complicated. Around 2011, the region

starts to change in big ways. In one country after another, there's an outpouring of public anger on the streets, demanding change from their government, removing old leaders. This is called the Arab Spring. It's upheaval that spirals the region into hope and chaos. (protesters chanting in foreign language) - [Johnny] Iran and Saudi Arabia see this as an opportunity to strategically choose sides in all of these countries, in hopes that when the dust settles, they will come out with a stronger hand of allies in the region. And one of their main focuses is Yemen, a country that

is also rising up, calling for President Saleh to step down. The corrupt dictator of Yemen is running out of time, which is something the Houthis have been fighting for for years. But Saleh refuses to step down, adding fuel to the uprising. Saudi Arabia sees this situation at their southern border and decides to step in with the help of the UN, convincing Saleh to transfer power to his vice president, in exchange for immunity from prosecution. On his way out, Saleh takes the billions of dollars that he corruptly amassed during his time in office, and he also

retains the loyalty of key parts of the military, fighters that are only loyal to him. But the people aren't satisfied with this new Saudi-backed president. The government remains weak and unorganized. Meanwhile, the Houthis are taking advantage of this infighting and only getting stronger, taking more and more territory from the government, adding to their forces, and receiving more support from their backer, Iran, who is supplying them with more training, missiles, drones, and other advanced weapons. They use these weapons in the fall of 2014 to march into southern Yemen, taking over large swaths of territory. Now that

the Houthis have momentum, The former President Saleh joins them in an alliance of convenience. In fact, Saleh's forces are critical in helping the Houthis take the capital city of Sanaa. Saleh is now working with his former enemy, against his own vice president, the man he had to give power to when he stepped down. President Hadi and his government flee south as the Houthis take over, but the Houthis are right behind them. So Hadi has to flee to Saudi Arabia, trying to govern Yemen from there. But the Houthis just keep gaining momentum. By the middle of

2015, they now control the capital city completely, where they create their own government and take control of the government's military weapons, helping them expand even further into the south. Now that the Houthis are in power, they run an oppressive regime that silences free speech, crushes dissent through arrest and torture, and recruits children as soldiers, all while imposing strict religious laws that undermine women's rights. Meanwhile, Saudi Arabia is getting nervous. Their southern neighbor is now controlled by a group that is funded by their biggest enemy. So they recruit the support of countries around the region and

invade Yemen, With the goal of removing the Houthis from power. The war is led by Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, Saudi Arabia's up-and-coming leader and defense minister. He starts with a widespread bombing campaign and a naval blockade that prevents shipping in and out of the country, with the goal of trying to cut off support coming in from Iran. The crown prince turns to the United States in need of more weapons for this war. While the U.S. leaders are reluctant to get involved in another Middle East conflict, they also want to maintain a good relationship with

Saudi Arabia, who is their major security and energy partner in the region. They also have an interest in weakening Al-Qaeda's growing presence in Yemen. So in addition to supporting this war with logistics and intelligence, President Obama approves billions of dollars of weapons: planes, tanks, and even weapons banned by most of the world for how dangerous they are for civilians, like cluster munitions. (tense music) This quickly turns Saudi Arabia into the largest importer of American weapons for the next four years. So it's 2015, and Yemen is in a full-blown war between the Houthis and Saudi Arabia

and their coalition. This is when Al-Qaeda, who's not on either side, takes advantage of this chaos and makes a land grab in the middle of Yemen. They take major cities and clash with government forces. Also taking advantage of the instability is the terrorist group ISIS, who come to Yemen and fight the Houthis and Al-Qaeda, at the same time. Though their attacks are scattered, and they don't control significant territory. The U.S. then gets more involved by launching airstrikes at Al-Qaeda and ISIS targets to stop them from gaining any more territory. They tried to kill their leadership.

But the U.S. has to do this carefully because they don't want to engage the Houthis. Their fight is with Al-Qaeda and ISIS. In May of 2015, the Houthis attack a city just across the border in Saudi Arabia, killing two and taking hostages, forcing an airport to shut down. The crown prince doesn't take being attacked on his own soil lightly, especially by Iran's proxies. So over the next 24 hours, the Saudis launch 130 airstrikes in Yemen, hitting homes, schools, and hospitals. Thousands are forced to flee from their home. Hundreds are reported dead, though we'll never know

the real death toll. These strikes are almost immediately called war crimes. But the crown prince doesn't back down. His coalition then sends in ground troops from the south, Pushing back the Houthis and taking back the city of Aden. He's behaving as if he's fighting his greatest enemy, Iran. It's a vicious cycle that is common in proxy wars like this, and it lands the people of Yemen in the worst humanitarian crisis in the world. The international community tries to intervene with diplomatic efforts to stop the fighting. But over the next six years, those efforts would fail,

and Saudi Arabia would continue its brutal campaign, all using American weapons. The Houthis continue to fight, to show that they are legitimate, that they are the government of Yemen. They aren't just doing Iran's bidding. (somber music) The war continues to destroy cities and land, and the blockade continues to keep trade out. The Saudis continue to bomb indiscriminately. And with time, 2 million Yemenis are displaced, forced to leave their homes to flee this violence. - [Reporter] 150,000 civilians have had to- - [Johnny] But this doesn't stop the Houthis from escalating their offensive. They start attacking Saudi

Arabia directly with missiles and drones in their capital city and their civilian airports, using weapons that most believe are coming from Iran. (tense music) In December of 2017, the Saudis and the UAE convinced President Saleh To break his alliance with the Houthis and return to power as president of Yemen. They hope that Saleh, the former dictator, might be able to hold onto power and rule more effectively. Saleh takes the deal and changes sides yet again, breaking with the Houthis and joining the Saudi-led coalition. (reflective music) Fighting breaks out between the Houthis and Saleh's militias, and

Saleh is killed just two days later. (reflective music) Meanwhile, in the United States, there's a new president. President Trump orders increased drone strikes and raids against Al-Qaeda, helping government forces take back large amounts of territory. Despite the war crimes committed using American weapons, Trump approves more weapons sales to Saudi Arabia to wage this war. And then in 2018, the conflict takes on a new dimension. The UAE, who's a part of the Saudi-led coalition, is starting to lose faith in the direction this war is going. They don't like the current government of Yemen, and they're losing

soldiers on the ground. It's damaging their reputation on the world stage. So the UAE leaves the coalition. But they still want to influence who will ultimately control Yemen, so they start backing a new group in the south called the Southern Transitional Council, or STC. This group isn't aligned with the government or the Houthis. They're calling for a separation of the southern part of Yemen. They want their own state. They want their own country. So the UAE starts to withdraw their troops from the south of the country, and the STC separatists start taking control of southern

provinces. The Saudi coalition is fracturing, and yet another group is jumping into the fighting, showing just how up for grabs Yemen has become. By the fall of 2019, the war has reached maximum complexity. You've got the Saudi coalition backing the former government of Yemen, mostly relegated to the east of the country. The UAE is now backing this separatist movement in the south, who are fighting against the former government of Yemen. The Houthis, backed by Iran, still maintain majority control of the major cities in the north. Al-Qaeda and its militia allies are still fighting to control

small slices of the country. And the U.S. continues to conduct airstrikes against Al-Qaeda and ISIS, while supporting and selling more weapons to the Saudi coalition. Yemen is fracturing further, and if there's any hope for peace, power needs to be consolidated. So Saudi Arabia and the UAE make amends, And then, together, they convince the government of Yemen and the separatists in the south to form a new coalition to fight against the Houthis together as a united front. But it doesn't stop the Houthis, who are getting really good at fighting and are firing more Iranian missiles and

drones into Saudi Arabia, hitting state-owned oil refineries and threatening to drive up oil prices globally. By January 2021, the Houthis, a group started to provide religious summer camps to young men, are now battle hardened, and they control 70 to 80% of the population of Yemen. Later that year, the UN announces that approximately 20 million of those people are dependent on humanitarian aid for their daily needs. And at this point, the war starts to settle in to an uncomfortable stalemate. (somber music) In April 2022, the UN brokers a ceasefire, and the fighting stops. Behind the scenes,

Saudi Arabia and Iran have been in diplomatic talks, sponsored by China. Regional tensions are cooling, which means that their proxy war in Yemen is also cooling. Saudi Arabia has had enough of the fighting. President Hadi resigns and hands power over to a council meant to govern Yemen and manage the war. And both sides are tired of the fighting. So when that ceasefire is set to expire in October 2022, the conflict mostly stays quiet, even without a new agreement. By 2023, Saudi Arabia and Iran have officially restored their diplomatic relations. Saudi Arabia hoping that this means

Iran will stop supporting Houthis to attack their southern border. But the Saudis keep their maritime blockade around the country, making life in Yemen unlivable for millions. But at this point, the heaviest of the fighting on all sides has stopped. But then in the fall of 2023, the Houthis were back in the news. After the Palestinian group Hamas launches a brutal attack into Israel, the Israeli military invades the Gaza Strip, vowing to destroy Hamas and free the hostages that they took. The campaign leads to tens of thousands of Palestinian civilian deaths, and it provokes a response

from Iranian-backed groups all throughout the region. The Houthis are one of those groups. They launch drones and cruise missiles into southern Israel, vowing that their attacks won't stop until the invasion of Gaza stops. And then they start firing their missiles and drones at cargo ships that are traveling through the Red Sea, where 25% of container traffic travels, A major artery in our global economy. In the days after these missiles start flying, traffic through this Red Sea route declines by 73%. In response, the U.S. and UK shoot down Houthis missiles and drop bombs on Houthis military

targets in Yemen, pulling the U.S. and its allies deeper into this enduring conflict. (reflective music) The reason I wanted to tell you the story of this conflict in Yemen. Because it represents the vicious cycle present in a lot of proxy wars, where geopolitical rivals use their neighbors as battlefields instead of fighting each other directly. They fund and add fuel to local conflicts, escalating them to the entire country, and often to the entire region, leaving violence and power vacuums in their wake, which are then filled by bad actors trying to take advantage of the instability. All

of this changes borders, destroys cities, and ruins lives. It's the story of powerful countries and their cynical scramble for influence and power in vulnerable places, leaving behind them a wake of tremendous human suffering. (somber music) (brooding music) - [Reporter] Breaking news. Because Yemen's Houthis rebels- - [Reporter] They could attack a commercial ship And could bog the strait up for weeks, if not months. (protestors chanting in foreign language) - [Johnny] There is a part of the world that everyone is keeping an eye on right now. - The joint military strikes were a response to nearly two

months of attacks by the Iran-backed Houthis movement on cargo ships in the Red Sea. - [Johnny] It is becoming more and more important for the global rivalries and tensions that are heating up on our globe right now. It is this choke point in the Red Sea. (subdued music) It's pretty small. It's a few dozen kilometers wide, but through this little choke point flows a lot of important things. The internet, millions of barrels of oil per day, 30% of all container ships that connect global markets. And this choke point is surrounded by unstable situations. Countries that

are in civil wars, rebel militias, proxy wars, unstable governments, failed states, and pirates. In recent decades, pirates have hijacked thousands of ships here extracting hundreds of millions of dollars in ransoms, a topic we did a whole deep dive on in another video. And lately, as war has raged in the Gaza Strip, the fiercely anti-Western Houthis rebels in Yemen have been firing rockets at cargo ships traveling through this water leading the U.S. and UK to strike back. - A ship attacked by Iran-backed Houthis rebels last month sank in the Red Sea. - [Johnny] The region is

vital, yet volatile all at once. And yet in the middle of all of this is this one beacon of stability, a little piece of land that is easy to miss, but that is more important than you might think. It is the country of Djibouti. (tense music) Djibouti is this small arid country right on the choke point, and it is home to the militaries of the United States of several European powers, of Japan, Japan's only foreign military base, by the way, and right down the road from the American base, China's first military base outside of its

country. (subdued music) Qatar has peacekeepers here. The United Arab Emirates ran the biggest port. Eritrea seized some of its territory recently, and Ethiopia, one of the largest countries in Africa, runs almost all of its trade through Djibouti. Ethiopia's landlocked, and this is their, like, gateway to the world. It's a lot. Djibouti is a lot. There's a lot going on in Djibouti, which is why today we are talking about this place. I want to explore why so many powers want to be here, why everyone is converging on this little tiny patch of land the size of

New Jersey. And I wanna ask if little Djibouti, one of the poorest countries in the world, can balance all these rival powers against each other without falling victim to them. - [Austin] You know, 10 to 15% of global trade moves through the Red Sea. We will not hesitate to defend lives and the free flow of commerce. (subdued music) - This little choke point is called the Bab-el-Mandeb, or Gate of Tears. It used to be nothing but a recipe for shipwrecks. It was known mostly for strong winds, unpredictable crosscurrents and shallow reefs that made navigating it

dangerous. And it wasn't very valuable because if you go through it, you just end up in the Red Sea, which was a dead-end for most of history. That is, until a French company miraculously cut a canal through this part of Egypt and changed the world forever, nearly halving the time that it would take for Europeans to get to Asia where they were all racing each other to conquer, colonize, and bring back unfathomable wealth to their countries. The Suez Canal was a massive upgrade to this hunt for resources. Was this video kind of an excuse for

me to buy these really old, beautiful books about the Suez Canal? Yes, it was. For France, this engineering miracle called the Suez Canal was their chance to beat out their big rival, the British Empire, who was clearly winning the race, dominating the routes to Asia before Suez opened. The canal was supposed to change that. So now you have a new front in this race, a scramble for control over this new route to Asia. This windy little choke point was no longer just the Gate of Tears. It was an important bit of water, one of the

most important on earth, at least for the empires, they had to keep an eye on it. So the British take this little island right at the choke point. They put a lighthouse on it. They also take control of a port just south of the choke point. The Italians then show up and purchase this bit of coastline from local sultans eventually taking over this whole stretch of coast called Eritrea. And the French would start fixating on this strip of sparsely populated coast right on the banks of the choke point, the land that would become Djibouti. The

sultans here told the French that, yes, they could have a bit of this newly strategic land in exchange for protection. The locals here knew what was going on. The great empires were all scrambling and racing, and they were going to use their prime real estate to get what they wanted to leverage the situation. Smart and totally a theme throughout this video. So the French set up their colony, they call it Cotes Francaises des Somalies or French Somaliland. This choke point would become a key base for projecting power and refueling on their way to carve up

and plunder Asia. (intense music) France would hold on to their little colonial invention for a long time. Even as the world would decolonize after World War II, France held on to this strategic colony along the choke point until eventually the locals rose up. There were protests, they clashed with the local authorities, and it led to an independence vote. And in 1977, Djibouti became a new country. Djibouti was independent, but they had a problem. In the words of some "New York Times" reporting from 1977, the tiny new nation had no army, less than one square mile

of arable land, and no resources except for sand, salt, and 20,000 camels. Yeah, not good. So once again, they made a deal with France. Djibouti wouldn't be France's anymore, but they would be allowed to retain a military base in the country in exchange for security and protection as well as economic aid. But this didn't change the fact that Djibouti had very little natural resources or arable land. Their economy fell into a crippling depression. Eventually there was a civil war and it wasn't looking good for Djibouti. Djibouti's salvation would eventually come when they realized that they

should harken back to the old days and start exploiting the thing that had made them valuable all those years ago: Their location. - [Reporter] Let's go. Go, go, go, go! Stop shooting, man. Go! - A plane has crashed into the World Trade- - [Reporter] Can you tell us how this happened? - Not right now. - Our very freedom came under attack in a series of deliberate and deadly terrorist acts. - [Johnny] Three months after 9/11, the United States was about to come crashing into the Middle East in a new way, and they asked Djibouti if

they could set up a base there. And Djibouti says yes. - Suddenly after the global war on terror, America realizes that it's one of the key locations. It matters to be there. You had, you know, Al-Qaeda in Yemen, you had Al-Qaeda and even Horn of Africa. So they needed a base. And Djibouti was one country which was willing to offer it. - It would become America's only permanent military base On the continent of Africa. And it would be a key jumping-off point for George Bush's war on terror. And reminder that it's now the 21st century.

Things have changed in the world. And this little choke point was becoming more valuable again, but for different reasons than the old days. (ship horn blares) Number one, the world had become addicted to fossil fuels, oil and gas, which was the lifeblood of their economies. And most of that oil and gas was coming from over here, from the land and waters of the countries around this Persian Gulf where it was then put on ships and sent around the world, a lot of it heading west through this vital choke point up the Red Sea into the

Suez Canal and onto Europe. The world knew that their energy was vulnerable because Egypt in earlier decades had weaponized the canal by closing it, by blocking it. One time for eight years, inflicting immediate pain on the countries that rely on this constant flow of energy and goods. By the way, semi side note, this flow of energy becomes even more important when Europe almost entirely cuts ties with Russian natural gas after Russia invaded Ukraine in 2022. So they have to get more natural gas from this region. Qatar was not sad about that, let's put it that

way. Anyway, we're getting off topic. Europe needs this route to stay stable. They need these little dots to keep flowing. So that's one reason that the choke point has become more vital than ever. The other reason is China. (subdued music) China rose to become a manufacturing superpower. They make a lot of stuff and they send it to the West. And a lot of that comes through this choke point. And all of this vital trade is happening in a region that is full of unstable governments, rising anti-Western militias and Somali pirates making this route precarious and

dangerous and subject to problems. So Djibouti has become this vital place here at the choke point, an incredibly important strategic location in a sea of turmoil. Okay, but there's more. In addition to all of this global economy importance, there's also regional importance to Djibouti. Notice Djibouti's neighbor, Ethiopia, the second most populous country in Africa, and as you can see, one that is totally landlocked. It is not good to be a big country that is landlocked because the water is where we trade. So Djibouti is the gateway to Ethiopia's millions of people to trade with the

world. 95% of Ethiopia's trade passes through Djibouti. So Djibouti, this colonial creation from France in the 1880s Is now once again an incredibly important place on the map. It's become, once again, a highly strategic location. (inquisitive music) And when there are highly strategic locations, superpowers start moving in. In 2011, Djibouti approved Japan, a pacifist sort of non-military country, to open a military base on Djibouti, their one and only foreign military base. Then you have Italy who set up a military base here in 2013. Spain and Germany also have a military presence here. They're not permanently

hosted with a base, they're actually hosted by France, and the soldiers live in these hotels permanently. Okay. That's not weird at all. But yeah, as you can see, the great powers are back. They're back in Djibouti like the old days, not to compete with one another, but to all band together to police this vital choke point so that the global economy that has brought prosperity to all of us can stay stable. Everything keeps flowing. Everyone is happy. And this solved a big problem for Djibouti, who, again, didn't have a big industry or any kind of

resource. They make a lot of money off of these leases to foreign countries, which has helped build their economy. And like the old days, when one side shows up, the rival won't be far behind. (tense music) - China has agreed to set up a support base in Djibouti. - So the Chinese base is right here, and they're gonna be watching us as we are watching them. - In 2016, Djibouti announces that they've been talking to China and that they've agreed to give them land to open their own military base, which was built and opened right

down the road from the American base in 2017. So China says they're there because of pirates. Pirates have been wreaking havoc in this area. So they're there to stabilize their economic interests because of pirates. But as we discovered in our deep dive on pirates, by 2017, the pirate issue was basically over. There was almost no hijackings in this region. I mean, look at this graph. Oh, and the Chinese base has this big deep pier that is like large enough to handle an aircraft carrier and nuclear submarines. So this isn't about pirates. China also did the

most China thing when they moved in here, which was instead of just building a base, they also came with all of these big-ticket infrastructure projects as like gifts to win the favor of the locals. We're talking railway, pipeline, port, all very expensive, all putting Djibouti into a lot of debt to China. They're doing this all over Africa, which we talk about in another deep dive video We did on the topic mapping all of China's giant infrastructure projects in Africa and what that means. Man, a lot of shout outs to other videos today, huh? So Djibouti

is now the only place on earth where the United States and China, these two rivals, have military bases right next to each other. And so far everyone's been playing nice. There's been no shenanigans other than both sides accusing each other of spying on each other constantly. Oh, and there was the lasers. The U.S. says that China was pointing lasers into the eyes of pilots while they were taking off, which like if they really did that, that's just like, why? Why would you do that? Like, why did you do that? Don't do that. Okay, but Djibouti

doesn't let every country in. Russia wanted to have their own base in Djibouti. And Djibouti said no. It probably helped that the American national security advisor flew to Djibouti and told them that the U.S. would double how much they're paying for their lease if Djibouti didn't let Russia in. (gentle music) Okay, but what about the people? Djibouti isn't just one big military base. There's almost a million people who live here and their day-to-day probably consists of a lot of jet engine sounds. I got to talk to my old grad school professor, David Vine, Who is

an expert on U.S. military bases and how they affect the locals. - So what we were talking about is a foreign government, foreign military occupying large swaths of land, fenced off, and hosting large amounts of weaponry, high-powered weaponry of many, many kinds. (Hassan speaking foreign language) - Because these bases are so close to like the big city, there have been accidents, especially with drones. The U.S. used to take off their drones and some would fall and actually crash onto like civilian infrastructure. So they had to open a separate airstrip (Hassan speaking foreign language) - Apart

from occasionally running over cows, the soldiers mostly keep to themselves. U.S. soldiers don't even go into the city to like buy stuff. All of it is flown in creating a little slice of America right in Djibouti. Like, they don't even drink the water from Djibouti. It's all flown in. (Hassan speaking foreign language) - And then there's the dictator. - Well, I wanna welcome President Guelleh and his delegation here today. - The U.S. base in particular, but also the French and Chinese bases, which are the largest of the collection, are all helping to prop up undemocratic

regime that has, you know, been accused Of widespread human rights abuses - Every time a foreign power makes a deal with Djibouti and pays them a lot of money in exchange for them being able to be there, they basically validate this terrible dictator who's been in power for 25 years. There's no real elections, free press, freedom of speech, plenty of human rights abuses. But on the other side, there's at least one way that regular people in Djibouti benefit from all of this. Fewer people go hungry today than at the conclusion of the civil war. And

even though the economy is still poor, all of this foreign aid still does support it. Is that worth it to them? I don't actually know. And another version of this video that I wanna do someday is to go there and talk to the people and hear what their thoughts are about the bases in Djibouti and what that feels like to live so close to all of these foreign militaries. For now, we're talking about the geography, the history, the geopolitics. (upbeat music) Okay, speaking of geopolitics, there is another angle to this story that is devilishly complicated

to get into. And I'm not gonna get into all the juicy details. You'll understand why when I start talking about it. It has to do with the regional geopolitics, the rivalries, And the concerns and the issues of all of these countries that are right next to Djibouti, not just the outside powers. I want to just give you a little sampling of what this looks like because it's pretty wild. So you have all these Gulf countries, and some of them are not totally on the same team, but almost all of them are thinking about the future

and they're realizing that oil is not gonna be a big part of their future because oil is not gonna be a big part of any of our future hopefully. And they're realizing that they're going to need to invest in the Horn of Africa, this region here, which they believe is probably gonna be the future of their food, their future bread basket. So hold that for a second and then look at Ethiopia and Eritrea. Ethiopia, as we mentioned, uses Djibouti as their gateway to the world. They need it to feed their millions of people. All of

this geopolitics is also playing out in Djibouti, this little country that has to navigate everyone's interests. So here's a quick episode of this drama to give you an idea of what it looks like. (intense music) The United Arab Emirates, UAE, used to be like best friends with Djibouti. It was like one of their most important partners. The UAE built and owned this giant port that basically runs Djibouti's entire economy. But then the UAE got really close to Djibouti's neighbor and kind of enemy Eritrea. This was very worrisome because Djibouti doesn't want Eritrea to become the

new Djibouti. They're a mortal threat. They don't want the UAE to just shut down Djibouti's, like, strategic offering. Okay, fast forward to like 2017, the UAE with their close friend, Saudi Arabia, are in a feud with Qatar, which also has a military presence in Djibouti right up here on this border. Now that Qatar and the UAE are fighting with each other, they turn to Djibouti and say, "Hey, you are too close with the UAE. We're out of here." Qatar takes their soldiers out of this border area, and right away, Eritrea takes some of this land

from Djibouti. This may seem like some petty border skirmishes, but remember where we are here. This is the vital choke point, Bab-el-Mandeb, every inch of land matters. Every little conflict could be the spark that stops the global economy. And what this little flare up shows us is how Djibouti finds itself in the center of conflicts between other countries that it kind of doesn't want to be in the middle of, but, like, has found itself in the middle of because it hosts all of their militaries. But wait, there's more. Djibouti is actually really good at this.

They know how to play the game and to play all these powers off of each other and we'll see what happens next. So they're kind of beholden to the UAE, UAE has way too much leverage over them. So finally it all comes to a head and they kick the UAE out from this really vital port, and they give a massive chunk of it to, wait for it, China, the new arrival to Djibouti that no one wants to mess with. They now have the port and Djibouti is now on their side and the UAE can't do

anything about it. Djibouti saved itself from one power by pleasing a bigger power. Do you see how this works? Do you see what game they're playing here? (subdued music) So that is why this tiny country in East Africa is so important. It's kind of the definition of geopolitics, politics happening because of geography. To project legitimacy. This choke point is only going to become more important. Day by day, we're seeing it happen. I mean, like right now as I'm filming this, the Houthis rebels are like potentially cutting internet cables in this choke point. - Three crew

members have been killed in a Houthis- - The first death since Houthis rebels began attacking shipping in the Red Sea. - After months of bombing merchant ships to punish the West for supporting the IDF war in Gaza. I mean, it's this kind of threat that Djibouti was set up to handle. That is why all these foreign militaries are here. And yet for me, there is a subtler threat that is emerging here, which you can see when you just look at this map of bases. Djibouti hosts rival countries during a time when we are transitioning away

from a rules-based order where all the great powers have an incentive to work together under one system that is dominated by the United States that deeply benefits the United States and its allies. But that works because the United States imposes and protects those rules. Those rules are being challenged. And what is emerging is a system that is messier, more disruptive to these reliable rules that have kept everything stable, kept the United States on top. And unfortunately we know all too well what happens when great powers start competing with each other more and more over vital

resources and vital geographies. In fact, most of the history of war is what happens when great powers are competing with each other. It's ugly, it's messy, it's violent. It provokes a zero-sum way of thinking, competition racing to secure and control and exploit vital geographies like strategic choke points that lead into the most important waterway on the planet. As this rivalry heats up, Djibouti's role is going to become more complex. Its government will continue to do what it's done, playing the big powers off each other, exploiting its great real estate to benefit itself. But I believe

that there comes a point in every escalating conflict where you kind of have to choose sides. I want Djibouti to continue to embody the positive sum thinking that has kept the world relatively stable these last 70 years. But it's definitely playing with a very delicate balancing act and there's a chance that it could stumble. So as you all know, I will be keeping an eye on the global order as well as Djibouti to try to see where this is going, to see if the great powers can continue to cooperate and compete, but cooperate. Or if

we're heading back into the old days where competition threatens to rip the world apart. I don't think it's inevitable, but it's gonna take effort to avoid it. (subdued music) I've been sleeping every night in the desert. Up here in the northwest corner of Saudi Arabia. (weighty music) It's quiet up here. All you can hear is the wind and the sand that it whips off these endless dunes. (sand rustles) But not far from where I sleep there's a new sound. (construction rumbles and drones) For years I've been hearing about this trillion-dollar futuristic city that the kingdom

of Saudi Arabia is building atop this sand. They're calling it Neom, and they're investing a huge amount of their vast oil wealth into making it come to life. I've been hearing about all the reasons it can't work, how this is all just a mirage of royal ambitions. And yet even from space, you can see that they're building it, they're building something. Why would anyone try to build a futuristic city in a barren desert? That is a question I've had for a very long time, and one I intend to get to the bottom of. (inquisitive music)

So I'm going into Neom to see what it looks like, to get a sense of its scale. We're looking at this fleet of dump trucks. The amount of construction activity is insane, and it hasn't stopped as we've been driving along The Line. The magnitude, I've never seen anything close. They're building mountains out there. I'm joined by my friend Solom, Who was born in a tent out here. He knows this desert better than anyone, every dune, every valley. All the secret water spots hidden deep in red rock slot canyons. I asked Solom to bring me out

into the desert, not only to get up close on the construction of Neom, but also to show me how people live out here, to introduce me to members of his tribe, how they've survived for centuries. Nomadic Bedouin, who represent the origin story of this desert kingdom. (Bedouin people laughing) I wanted to put a human face to this collision of worlds, old and new. (wondrous music) I believe this little shape on the map represents the story of Saudi Arabia, where it came from, how it got here, and why it is attempting to build these cities in

the sand. (truck horn blaring) I'm officially in Neom, and let me tell you what I'm seeing so far. (trucks droning) Trucks, trucks, trucks. Dump trucks, cargo trucks, Trucks carrying excavators, trucks carrying more trucks. I've never seen so many trucks in my entire life. Oh, and these roads, a lot of them are brand new, a lot of them don't even show up on Google Maps. Like I'm looking at my phone and I'm just sort of floating in no man's land because these are all brand-new roads. This is new, everything is popping up so quickly. (laughs) There's

so many trucks. (upbeat music) All of the sudden, Solom turned off one of these pristinely new roads. Why do you deflate the tires? - For the dune. - We're now gonna start driving just into the desert. (bright music) Wow, this car can go everywhere. Are we going up this dune? - Yeah. - Oh, wow. (engine revs) - Oh, yeah. - Whoo. Geez, this is insane. (ethereal music) (Johnny laughs) (bright music) Man. It's gorgeous. Okay, now we're really in the desert. We found a little canyon to camp in. (fire crackling) And while I thought we'd be

eating granola bars or canned soup, Solom had other plans. - [Solom] Have you tried camel meat before? - [Johnny] Nuh-uh. - You will try it tonight. - Really? - Hashi. Hashi is the young camel. - [Johnny] Ah, rice with camel meat. The evening tradition here is to wind down with a cup of coffee. Saudi coffee is unroasted and green, infused with cardamom. It's a different taste, I like it though. But it's still very caffeinated. Oh, and then after the coffee comes... - Tea? - Ah, thank you. Which, again, is very delicious, but how can they

drink so much coffee before bed? Yeah, I can't drink too much because I- - Oh yeah. - The caffeine, I won't be able to sleep. - Yeah. - [Johnny] In the morning I'll drink a lot of it. - Okay. (gentle music) - Wow. Mm, wow. That's good. So until what age did you live in the desert? - Maybe until seven. - Till seven? - Yeah. - Did you like it? - Yeah, I like it. - Yeah. - I like it. It's so rare to find families. Real families living in the desert. (Johnny laughing) The people

that we are going to, they are real Bedouins. (Bedouins people laughing) But when we moved to the city I study. (cars honking) I go back. - Oh, you go back to the desert? - Yeah. (gentle music) Even for me, I like to have a job in the city, but I want the Bedouin life. I want them to stay. - Soon we'll meet the Bedouin nomads who sleep under these stars every night. Look at this night full of incredible stars. Wow. The Saudi desert is proving to be exceptionally peaceful, despite the army of trucks that, by

the way, are still working here in the dead of night. They don't ever stop and haven't for years. (Johnny exhales) It is so silent here. My brain doesn't know what to do about it. It's so silent and... (serene music) (Johnny chuckles) But as the sun rises and Solom feeds me dates and green coffee, oh, and of course more tea, I'm thinking about my mission for today. (driving music) My plan is to drive all throughout Neom, to all the big construction sites and show you what they're planning on building out here with their initial budget of

$500 billion, which has since ballooned to an estimated $1.5 trillion. And you're about to see why. So I made it to the coast, and I'm looking at the beautiful Red Sea, which is a very beautiful kind of blue in fact. - [Presenter] This is Oxagon, the place where ideas can change the world. - [Johnny] Oxagon is planned to be their futuristic industrial city. Half of it built on the water. It'll be a port where shipping can connect the world to a bunch of high-tech manufacturing, research, and logistics. And there's Sindalah, which is gonna be right

here on the Red Sea. It's going to be a luxury resort island with plenty of parking for yachts. Hello. We picked up a hitchhiker who has been working on Sindalah for years. How's it looking in Sindalah? - [Hitch Hiker] Finished like 99%. - Really? - Yeah. (upbeat music) Sindalah. (drone buzzes) And then there's Magna, (light fluttery music) which is actually the name of one of these coastal villages we've just been driving next to that is no longer a village. They forcibly relocated thousands of people for this project. Atop the ruins of these villages, the kingdom

is building 12 luxury coastal resorts and communities. (birds squawking) Hey, just one quick clarification here, all of those visuals are 3D renders. They are visualizations done by Neom to see what they want this to look like. This stuff doesn't exist yet, and I think that maybe is obvious, but it looks so real that I just want to just make crystal clear. I'm showing a lot of this stuff from the hypey promo visuals that have come out from Neom. So that's one thing. Also, check out some of this footage I got while I was on a

dune. It's floating around on this dune. This is me shooting from the drone, but suddenly on the other side of this massive dune, there are these green circles. When I was planning my trip to Saudi Arabia, I got really interested in these things, but that has nothing to do with Neom, so I hopped on the phone with my new colleague, Christophe, And asked him to go down the deep dive rabbit hole of why there's a bunch of green circles in the Saudi desert. And he did so, and he made an entire video about what he

learned. That video is live right now on our new channel tunnel_vision, I think you're gonna like it. (bright music) Built on some pretty wild designs, ideas and concepts, including... - [Presenter] A vast subterranean digital community inside a mountain, Magna, the coast of Neom. - [Johnny] Yeah, right there is perfect. (Solom speaking foreign language) - And then there's Trojena up here in the mountains. Yes, there are big mountains here. It's going to be a luxury tourist destination for adventure and wellness retreats, complete with an artificial lake and outdoor activities like mountain biking and skiing. Yes, I

just said skiing. Up here in the mountains it gets kind of cold in the winter and snow falls. Definitely not enough for skiing, but enough for them to make fake snow and make ski slopes. They're building a manmade lake, in fact, they're doing it right now, I'm looking up at the mountain and seeing the plumes of smoke from the dynamite that they're using (explosions boom) to do whatever they need to do to build an artificial lake. Oh, and by the way, that's the mountain where Moses talked to God and got the 10 Commandments like a

few thousand years ago. - There is no freedom without the law. (lofty music) Who is on the Lord's side? - [Presenter] Welcome to Trojena, the mountains of Neom. (Johnny laughing) - This is all so strange. (Johnny laughing) And then of course, the one you've maybe heard about. (grand airy music) And yes, it's being built. I've been driving along it all morning and I can't really fathom what I'm seeing. I continue to have my mind blown at a scale of this. They say The Line is gonna be a futuristic city that stretches 170 kilometers and run

on renewable energy and artificial intelligence. They want 10 million people to come live here, like a whole New York city of people inside of this line in the desert. Just the digging alone, the amount of earth that they're moving is jaw dropping. The magnitude is like they're building mountains out there and moving so much earth. (crashing music) Now I thought I had seen a lot of trucks before, but as I drove along The Line, I started to get slightly dizzy. Having a hard time processing the scale of all of this, all of these machines working

nonstop, every hour of every day for years. Moving sand, making mountains and carving a straight line into the desert. (wind rustling) All of this seems impossible. So much of the reporting on Neom has been focused on how implausible, expensive, and delusional this project is. And that's all well and good if that's what you wanna focus on, but to me that's not that interesting. What I'm most interested in understanding is why. (gentle music) We found a little cave last night and camped here. Solom invited some of his friends out. Hey guys. - Hi. - How's it

going? - Good. - This is so cool, right? - Yeah, it is. (fire crackling) - [Johnny] We all sat around the fire, me listening while they laughed and joked in Arabic. (Solom and friends speaking Arabic) And then began cooking yet another delicious meal. This time, goat cooked in goat milk with flatbread. Wow, this is awesome. - Yeah. (Solom speaking Arabic) - Mm, wow. So good. I'm admittedly a little groggy after sleeping a few nights on the desert floor. (warm music) We're just sledding down a massive dune in a car and it's as smooth as butter.

Where they're making Trojena it's gonna be kind of crazy. To have skiing in Saudi Arabia, right? - That's a big change here. - Yeah. - It was like a hiking trail. - Yeah. Really? - [Solom] But with this, no, this is new. - Today, Solom is introducing me to members of his tribe. Is this them? Hello. It'll be the polar opposite of yesterday's tour through Neom's construction. He put on his traditional Saudi clothing so as not to surprise the members of his tribe that he has indeed become a modern city man. (gentle music) We arrived

to a remote patch of desert where a few tents are set up. The elder of this family warmly invites me in. Johnny, hi. To sit for coffee. (Bedouin peoples speaking Arabic) And then of course more tea. Wow. And at this point, I'm just embracing the caffeine. They tell me that the only Westerners they've ever seen out here are the ones looking for oil. And that it's very strange to see me showing up to learn about their culture and especially with a camera. (Bedouin peoples speaking Arabic) - [Johnny] So how long have you lived here? -

[Tribesman] This is two months here. - Months? - Yeah. - Wow. (Tribesman speaking Arabic) (sheep bleating) - I got to meet their animals, extended members of this nomadic family. (camel grunting) So this family's been here on this site, and they'll move again when the season tells them to. They basically are here grazing their camels and their goats. And God, they've got a beautiful view. Oh, my God, those mountains. So wait, he's the shepherd? You're the shepherd? - Yeah. - Wow. That's cool. Do you ever get lost in the desert? (Solom speaking Arabic) - No. -

No, he's a pro. He's a pro on that donkey. (Bedouin people speaking Arabic) - These people's lives depend on moving these animals through the desert in search for scarce food. A theme I hear from a lot of people who live out here is the, just sense of peace and simplicity that they get, that they realize that the city could never bring. What do you like about out here that makes you stay? (tribesman speaking Arabic) So when you go to the city- - Ah, city. - City, no. (both laugh) This is a better life. Man, this

sunset is gorgeous. (tribesman singing) Okay. Yeah, yeah, that's good. (warm adventurous music) As the group faces east to perform their fourth of five prayers they do each day, I'm looking west. (gentle music) Just over those mountains, the kingdom of Saudi Arabia is digging a giant line in the sand. Working day and night to reshape this desert, building their high-tech eco city. For most of its history, this was the way of life out here on this peninsula. And it may have remained such to this day, but eventually the Bedouin on this peninsula united, and unbeknownst to

anyone, was sitting atop a sea of black gold. - [Narrator] Oil in commercial quantities, averaging about 200,000 barrels a day. To handle this huge volume, the expanding program requires an increase of permanent personnel to a total of more than 15,000 Arabs. - [Johnny] Oil changed everything. The kingdom rapidly modernized. - [Narrator] The king sees the oil development as the greatest single means to modernize his country and improve the living standards of his people. - [Johnny] All while still maintaining a deep connection with Islamic law, (muezzin sings) and the rules and norms of Bedouin life. And

despite this rapid modernization, hundreds of thousands of people still maintain the nomadic lifestyle. It is a link to their past. (tribesman chatter in Arabic) Nice. (tribesman chatter in Arabic) - [Solom] They're talking about something that they see it these days. The people travel by like bike- - Cycling? Oh. - Yeah. - The conversation goes into the night and I knew I had to ask them about Neom. Can you ask them what their thoughts are on all the building that's happening? I have to be sensitive here 'cause I'm reminded where I am. Saudi Arabia isn't a

place where citizens, nomads or not, can speak critically about their kingdom. I got nervous looks and vague answers. But one thing is for certain that the Saudi government has been paying and compensating anyone who has been affected by these projects. (tribesmen speaking Arabic) - [Johnny] Out of respect, I decide not to push it, it's not worth it. (tribesmen speaking Arabic) - [Johnny] We're sitting around a huge platter of camel meat and fragrant rice. So where I'm from, there's no camels. - Ah. - No camels, I've never seen a camel until yesterday. The elder generously showing

his hospitality by finding the juiciest chunks of camel meat and fat and passing them to me. Thank you. (elder speaking Arabic) - Yeah. And I'm realizing that this moment is a glimpse into one of the oldest-surviving cultures on earth. (elder speaking Arabic) - Thank you. (Bedouin people speaking Arabic) (gentle music) - The family invites us to sleep near their tent. Another night, another sky full of stars. I'm really feeling it, just how fast the change has come to this desert, Where nomads whose movement and lifestyle hark back to the earliest civilizations and who are now

living a stone's throw away from the construction of a futuristic city that is attempting to define the next chapter of human civilization. (distressing music) It feels like too much to process. (gentle music) (elder speaking Arabic) - I couldn't help but feel worried for this link to the past. (Bedouin people speaking Arabic) (Johnny and Bedouin people laughing) (wind whispering) - So oil transformed this desert, but soon a problem began to arise. (serious music) Slowly, the world has started coming to terms with the reality that burning oil to run our world is turning the planet into a

place that's not conducive for human life. (futuristic music) The International Energy Agency predicts that the world will hit peak oil demand in 2030, At which time demand will start to fall. Other predictions say it'll take longer, but everyone agrees that the future of this world is not oil. This is bad news for Saudi Arabia, a country that has nothing but oil. - [Announcer] Aramco, the state-owned oil company, second-quarter profit are tumbling by more than a third from last year's record highs. - Oil transformed this desert kingdom into a modern, powerful country. And in order for

them to retain that status, they're going to need to use the money from that oil to transform themselves again. Enter, Neom. (futuristic music) Saudi Arabia wants to replace its oil economy with new economies, new industries, some of which they want to invent. This kingdom that has been historically closed is now open, welcoming tourists for the first time. - [Presenter] Welcome to Arabia. Get your visa now. - Let's go to Sindalah! Are here. - [Johnny] Hoping to attract the world, this is something neighboring Dubai has done successfully. - [Presenter] The spirit of Dubai. - But Saudi

Arabia plans to do it on a whole new level. I'll tell you one thing, the water here is beautiful. On that note, I was surprised at how welcome I felt here. Every person I met greeted me with kindness and eagerness to show me their culture. (tribesman chatter in Arabic) But it's not just about tourism, Neom is manufacturing, sustainability technology, sports, education, media, and even an attempt to reinvent cities themselves. (inquisitive music) They also want to use all this oil money to stay on top of global energy. All of this hot sun is great for solar

energy. And while driving around, I saw endless fields of wind turbines. And they can use this to make new forms of hydrogen energy that they can ship around the world. And the reason why all these promo videos look like a Hollywood movie is because they can't do this without investors from the outside world. (presenter speaking Arabic) - [Johnny] They need people to come live here. - [Vlogger] So my husband got offered a job for Neom in Saudi Arabia, and we decided to make the move. - [Johnny] They need them to play here, raise children here,

somehow have a life here, and most crucially to invest in these projects. - And what are we calling it? - The Line. - The Line. - The Line. - [Johnny] So not unlike a startup, Neom is pitching the world on this impossible-sounding vision with the hopes that people will buy it, invest in it, and make some version of it a reality. So do you feel excited about it Neom? Like- - Yes. - Yeah? Why? - I wouldn't do this business without Neom. - Oh wow. - Before Neom. - Wow. - Everyone wanna, like, check out

on internet what is Neom. Then they need a tour guide. To have more than 30 tour guides working with me. - Wow. - So it's a big business now and it's all because of Neom. - [Johnny] So while Solom is seeing the benefits of this project, the effects for others in this region are less certain. We're driving by some of the towns that have been demolished. The people forced to move to make way for the construction of Neom. They were given money to rebuild their lives somewhere else. But some refused to leave, signing a petition

to protest this forced eviction. One even posted to social media voicing his outrage, a risky move in a place where freedom of speech isn't really a thing. (gunshots pop) Soon he was locked in a shootout with security forces that left him dead. - [Reporter] This is when Saudi officials reportedly handed over the body of Abdul Rahim al-Huwaiti to his tribe. His family denies the official narrative that Rahim was a terrorist. - [Johnny] At least 47 other villagers were detained on terror-related charges, and five of them are now on death row. (gentle optimistic music) The scale

and riskiness of these projects speaks to the scale of Saudi Arabia's challenge. They need something to keep them afloat after oil goes away, so they're betting the family farm on a few massive projects. Many will likely fail, but even if a few of these work out as planned, it could be their next oil. Lifting this kingdom into the future, that's the calculus here. But what's clear is that this kingdom isn't stopping anytime soon. (grand airy music) - Our economy is in recession and the civilized world faces unprecedented dangers. Yet the state of our union has

never been stronger. (crowd cheering) (subdued music) (subdued music continues) (subdued music continues) (subdued music continues) (inquisitive music) (upbeat music) (John sighs and claps) - The Middle East, the part of Asia that Europeans see as the middle of what they see as the east. Sort of arbitrary. Whatever, we call it the Middle East. This part of the world is literally where civilization started, right here, in modern-day Iraq. And over the years, the borders here have been redrawn many times As empires have ebbed and flowed through this region. By the way, I didn't make this time lapse.

A very talented YouTuber did, and he deserves a medal for it. (fanfare music) Or perhaps just a new patron. Thanks, man. Anyway, the most recent carving up of this region happened by European powers, the French, the British, the Russians. I mean, are we surprised? No. Like, of course. Of course it was the British. Of course it was the French. Of course it was Europeans. Of course. The lines they drew didn't really take into account language or ethnicity or regional identity. They just sort of sliced it all up amongst themselves and said, "These are our new

regions of power in the Middle East." Eventually, those European powers left, but the lines they drew stuck around and became the skeleton for what the borders look like today. And this is where our story starts, in the 1930s, here in the modern Middle East. At this point, across the ocean, there was this growing superpower that had spent the last century moving west, taking over this whole continent and beyond, deep into the Pacific Ocean. We've talked about that a bit. But things were changing. The world had just fought a brutal world war that was fought with

new weapons That were powered by this new important substance, oil. Germany lost that war, in part because they didn't have access to enough oil to keep up with this new style of warfare that relied a lot more on machines. The young superpower realized that access to this stuff would determine who would be powerful and who would not. So they stopped looking west for a moment and turned east, with hopes of finding the fuel they needed to build their power. The U.S. presence in the Middle East started with one little dot, right here. But soon, that

dot would expand into a sprawling network of alliances, covert attacks, flows of weapons, money, and the building of innumerable bases, and eventually turning into full-on ground wars. (intriguing music) This is how the U.S. stole the Middle East. (intriguing music) - Ready and willing to employ all means necessary. - Okay, so it's the 1930s and the U.S. doesn't have a significant presence in the Middle East at this point. But that's about to change, because there's a company based in California that wants to explore this vast desert for oil. - [Narrator] 11,000 miles from San Francisco there

lies a primeval desert, A mass of drifting sand and sun-baked earth, one third the size of the United States. - [Johnny] This was sort of a risky decision for the California company because, first off, they had no idea if there was actually any oil here. - [Narrator] They knew it would mean sinking into the desert the money of thousands of stockholders in a project that might well end in complete loss. - [Johnny] And second off, this desert was a part of a very hardcore religious kingdom. - [Narrator] The fact that Mecca is the source and

the shrine of Islam gives Saudi Arabia a central place in the Islamic and, therefore, the Arab world. - [Johnny] that was home to the holiest sites in Islam, run by a dogmatic royal family that did not like outsiders, especially non-believing Westerners. But even still, the king of the desert kingdom eventually gives the California company permission to explore almost a million square kilometers of this desert looking for oil. And after a few years, the bet paid off. And on March 3rd, 1938, in this little patch of coastal desert, they struck gold. Well, actually they struck oil,

but it might as well have been gold. (kinetic music) So, throughout the '30s and '40s, American oil executives, workers, and their families started flocking to the Middle East, establishing the first significant American presence in the region. They set up little cities around the oil operation that were little slices of America, full of the deepest sinful behavior, like allowing women to drive and the consumption of alcohol. - [Narrator] Here is another American colony, complete with air-conditioned houses, two hospitals, and an outdoor movie theater. - This is the sort of stuff that is very off-limits in Saudi

Arabia. It's literally illegal at this point. So you have a lot of Saudis who are not happy about their government letting the Americans in to behave however they want. But the oil kept flowing, and soon, the U.S. government goes to the royal family and says, "Listen, the oil is flowing better than ever. This is awesome. How about we build a little military base attached to our little oil city so that we can, you know, protect you and protect us and protect the oil and stuff?" And the Saudis are like, "Okay. Having the great Satan come

to our country for oil is one thing, but letting them set up a full-on military base on our soil, (John inhales sharply) and especially when, like, everyone in our country Is not happy with their presence in the first place. "But," said the royal family, "all of this oil is really valuable, and it's really nice, and we're getting super rich." So they're like, "Yeah, sure. Set up the base." But there was one stipulation that the Saudis had for the Americans. "You are not allowed to literally plant a flag. No flag poles of the United States. You

cannot put your flag anywhere on this base. Instead, you can put a little plaque on the side of the building so that your flag is not literally on our soil." And that was the deal. And that's exactly what happened. The U.S. sets up its first military operation in the Middle East in the form of a landing strip that is right next to this oil field. (plane engine roaring) Okay, so all of this infrastructure that the Americans were building required someone to build it. They needed a construction company. And there was one construction company that the

Americans really liked that helped them build their oil city and their base. This company was founded and run by a guy named Mohammed. Now, listen, do you think I'm really giving you the backstory on the construction company that built the air base in the oil city just because that's interesting and I like to talk about construction? No, this is actually very relevant to the story, and you'll see why very soon. So the Americans and the Saudis are having this forbidden oil bromance and it's going really well, and they are just, the oil is flowing, everyone's

getting rich. And meanwhile the rest of the Middle East is looking at Saudi Arabia and they're like, "Dude, WTF. Why are you like in bed with America? And, like, why are you letting them set up a landing strip in your country?" And the Saudi royals are like, "Do you realize how rich we're getting right now? Like if you were in our position, you would do the same thing, Egypt." Okay, so it's the 1950s and let's get back to Mohammed, the construction guy. His company, by this point, is thriving. The American presence in oil land is

just exploding and he is building all of the stuff for it. And so this guy just has a giant business. And he starts to have children. Well, in fact, he had a lot of children, like 54 children because he had 22 wives, because that is a thing in Saudi Arabia to this day. Anyway, the point is one of Mohammed's sons is named Osama. (downbeat electronic music) I told you this was going to be relevant. Okay, a reminder that Saudi Arabia is not the entire Middle East. So, I'm going to leave The Osama bin Laden cliffhanger

for a moment to tell you what else was going on in the Middle East at this time. Remember that it was the hunt for oil that brought the U.S. to Saudi Arabia originally. But now in the '50s and '60s, there was a new reason for the U.S. to think about the Middle East. And that reason is because there's another big superpower that has nuclear weapons called the Soviet Union, who is coming into the region and saying to everyone, "Come join team communism." And the U.S. is like, "Hold my beer." (dramatic music) So in addition to

oil, the U.S. is now involved in trying to not let the Soviet Union have any power in this region. Over in Iran, there was a democratically-elected leader that the U.S. didn't like. They thought he was maybe a little too friendly with the Soviet Union. So they worked together with the British to literally overthrow the government of Iran so that they could install a dictatorial leader that was more friendly to the United States. Little side note here. The airport that I fly out of here in D.C. is named after the guy who, like, gave the go

ahead for this coup in Iran, John Foster Dulles. So, I'm reminded of the whole Iran thing every time I fly. So the U.S. has its oil thing. It's now involved in trying to prop up a dictator in Iran. There's another big thing happening that brings the U.S. into the region, which is that the newly declared State of Israel is starting to piss off its neighbors and starting to look to the U.S. for support. And the U.S. gladly offers it, seeing Israel as a friendly nation in the region that could be a big proponent of U.S.

interests. So the U.S. starts to fund Israel with tons of money and fighter jets, and all of these things to help them fight their wars against their Arab neighbors. There was a debate happening in the United States on whether or not they should actually do all of this to support Israel so intensely, because they knew if they did, they were going to piss off all of the neighbors in the Middle East. And all of the neighbors are the ones who had the oil. In the end, the U.S. did decide to support Israel, and with that,

came a major backlash from all of these oil-producing countries in the neighborhood. - There's a crisis of such proportion that we probably haven't even begun to grasp it yet as far as the country is concerned. - [Narrator] Scenes like this are becoming all too common on both sides of the Atlantic. But for America, they are more ominous. They tell the Arabs that their oil weapon is wounding America, The country that supports and supplies their enemy, Israel. - Eventually, this backlash against supporting Israel kind of calmed down. There was some peace talks. And anyway, let's get

back to Mohammed, the construction guy, and his son Osama, because this is where it really starts to heat up. We decided to put together this compilation of all our Middle East videos because there are transformative events happening in the Middle East right now. The recent attacks on Iran from the U.S. and Israel have reshaped the Middle East and are doing that right now as I'm recording this. And hopefully these videos are providing some context, but keeping up with the headlines is proving to be really difficult because every source comes at it with a different angle

and a different bias. This is why I have partnered with Ground News. They are the sponsor of this compilation. And I've been using Ground News for over a year now. They've been a partner of the channel and I'm really grateful they exist. Ground News is an app and a website that allows you to very quickly and thoroughly compare thousands of headlines from all around the world. It organizes them and breaks them down by what their biases are, their reliability, their factuality, and even tells you who these outlets are owned by. They've been recognized by the

Nobel Peace Center for Advancing Media Literacy. And lemme just show you how this works and why it matters. Take one event like the story about Iran's next supreme leader, the strikes on Iran, and the killing of the Supreme leader in Iran was covered by over 800 outlets, all with different angles. With Ground News, you're able to quickly compare and see how the left and the right are covering it differently. For example, a left-leaning outlet emphasizes the human response from the Iranian diaspora in Washington. The right, represented by Fox News, focuses on the political backlash of

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what you see. It's completely funded by all of us who pay for it. If this is interesting to you, you can get in on the Vantage Plan, which is the plan I use. You can get 40% off if you go to ground.news/johnnyharris. You can also scan the QR code here on screen. You get that 40% off, it ends up being like five bucks a month For you to get the whole picture on the events shaping the world. With that, let's dive into our next video about the modern Middle East. - [Narrator] And it is this

world of religious authority and deeply-rooted traditions that is now being challenged by the wealth of oil and the Western invasion it has brought. - So it's now the '70s, and Mohammed bin Laden, the construction guy, is now insanely rich. His construction company is giant, his 54 children are also rich, and his son Osama is growing up, and he is in his twenties, and is looking around at all of this stuff happening in Iran and in Israel, and is starting to feel really uncomfortable with the notion of his family being so supportive of American presence in

the Middle East and his government, this religious kingdom, home of Mecca and Medina, being so okay with the U.S. so embedded in the Middle East at this point. "These are ancient holy lands. Why is my government and my family supporting this great Satan superpower coming in and becoming so involved in the Middle East?" So, Bin Laden sets out on a lifelong quest to fight back against these superpowers, not just the U.S. but also the Soviet Union, invading the Middle East. He heads to Afghanistan, where the Soviet Union is invading Afghanistan, trying to take it over.

Bin Laden wants to fight back. By the way, the same year in Iran, that dictator that the U.S. put in gets overthrown in a giant religious revolution that gets rid of the old dictator that the U.S. liked and puts in a religious government headed by this guy, Ayatollah Khomeini. This new government takes a bunch of Americans hostage and starts off hating the United States. And I mean, can you blame them? If someone overthrew the person I elected, I would be pretty pissed too. So anyway, back to Bin Laden. He arrives to Afghanistan with a few

things. Number one, a bunch of money. Remember his family's like super rich. He also comes with construction infrastructure because he's, like, a construction guy. Like, his family knows construction and infrastructure building. But most importantly, he comes with an obsessive dedication to fighting back against any superpower that is invading the Middle East. So, Osama joins in with all of these rebel fighters who are fighting back against the Soviet Union, and they fight a long, brutal war. By the way, the U.S. was secretly loving this, loving that the Soviet Union was getting, like, beat back By these,

like, rebel fighters. So they end up sending loads of weapons and money and support to these fighters, something that will come back to bite them a few decades later. Eventually, Osama and the Afghan fighters beat back the Soviet Union. It was 10 brutal years of war, and by the end, these fighters were battle hardened. Osama was now completely dedicated to his cause of fighting back against superpowers who were coming into the Middle East. So he returns back to Saudi Arabia, where he starts raising money and awareness for his new group that he started while he

was in Afghanistan. It's called Al-Qaeda. And the mission of the group is to protect Islam through violently striking back against big superpowers coming into the Middle East. And Saudi Arabia is like, "(sighs) Osama, like, do you have to do this, dude? Do you realize how rich we're getting?" Like, Saudi princes are living on yachts in the south of France and, like, flying in their private jets and they're like, "Dude, chill. Like, it's fine. We get it. We don't like the United States, but, like, can you, like, maybe chill? Our partnership with the United States is

actually turning out to be really great. And I know, yeah, they're really into Israel and they're really bad and everything, but, like, they buy our oil and they give us weapons and we're, like, doing just fine over here." Osama doesn't chill, and the Saudi government eventually takes away his passport, Not letting him leave, and told him to hush up with all the anti-American Holy War talk. So, Osama finds another plan to maybe win back the heart of the royals. (dark music) Saudi Arabia has a next-door neighbor named Iraq, who was run by Saddam Hussein, who

Osama sees as a really bad Muslim, totally secular and brutal, and he's just like not a good guy. Saddam is also cashing in on the oil boom. He's building big palaces and statues of himself all over the country. Oh yeah, and he also used the oil money to build a giant army, like, the fourth biggest in the world. With this massive army, Saddam decided that he could maybe multiply his oil reserves if he popped down to invade this little tiny country of Kuwait, where there's also loads of oil. This sort of freaked the Saudis out.

If Saddam with his giant army could grab Kuwait, what would stop him from marching right across this desert into Saudi Arabia? So there's this moment that, like, ugh, it's like the moment of infamy of this whole thing, where Osama goes to the Saudis and he says... - I volunteer as tribute. - He doesn't actually say, "I volunteer in tribute." That was "Hunger Games." - I believe we have a volunteer. - But he effectively says, "I have me and my battle-hardened men who, like, can go in and fight against Saddam and defend the kingdom." And the

Saudis are like, "Um, no, we're not gonna, like, let this ragtag group of, like, rebel fighters fight off the fourth-largest army in the world." And Osama's like, "Well, we beat the Soviets. Like, they're a big army with nuclear weapons and everything." And the Saudis are like, "Yeah, because you hid in the hills, in caves, in Afghanistan." Prince Sultan literally told Bin Laden verbatim, quote, "There are no caves in Kuwait." And then he asks them, "What will you do when he lobs the missiles at you with chemical and biological weapons?" Osama's response, "We will fight them

with our faith." (sinking music) And the Saudis are like, "Um, awkward. Sorry, dude. Like... (scoffs)" Instead the king met with somebody else that he thought would make a much better fit than Bin Laden and his faith fighters. (dramatic music) Dick Cheney had flown to Saudi Arabia the day after Saddam had invaded Kuwait. At this point, the bromance between the U.S. and Saudi Arabia had cooled a little bit as Saudi had gotten more and more flak for being in bed with the U.S. But even despite this, he told Cheney to come with as much force and

as quickly as he could. And that is exactly what Dick Cheney did. - Ready and willing to employ all means necessary. (explosion booms faintly) - The U.S. went insane here. They recruited 37 other countries, and then they sent more firepower in terms of ships and bombers and troops and all this stuff than you and I could never imagine. It was insanity. And they totally crushed Saddam. Within a few weeks, they had pushed Saddam back and completely won over the hearts of the royals. The bromance is back in business. (subdued music) So, now you have these

Saudis that are beaming at the Americans for helping them fight off Saddam. And you have a bunch of bases that the U.S. set up to mount this attack. Way more than before. The U.S. came with all of this firepower and manpower and bases and artillery. And then they just sort of never left. Something that really pissed off a lot of Saudis, who were very uncomfortable with U.S. presence to begin with. But the guy who was most pissed off Than anyone in the Middle East at this point? Osama bin Laden, who had not only been rejected

by his own country, but then who got chosen instead, but the great Satan, the United States, a power that Osama had built his entire life fighting against. So, Osama bin Laden starts to double down on his original mission. He leaves Saudi Arabia and begins coordinating very precise attacks that could really only be coordinated by a guy who was good at technical details of a construction company and who had lots of money to fund it. He carries out attacks against the United States all around the world. And by the late '90s, he starts planning the attack

that would change our world forever. (siren wailing) (radios chatter) (audio whines) (soft dramatic music) - So, this is just the first half of the story. What happens next is something that we're all kind of familiar with. (fanatics chant) (gunshots chatter) In fact, I think we're all still kind of processing the U.S. presence in the Middle East today and how that all went down. But it deserves taking a look at, and I'm not going to do that right now. I want to make a separate video for Iraq and Afghanistan and Israel and Iran, and dive into

each of these cases to show how the U.S. presence in the Middle East is not just about oil. In fact, oil is becoming less and less of a vital aspect of the U.S. presence as we have alternative sources of this sort of energy. Instead, our presence in the Middle East has become a fixture of how we think about foreign policy and how we think about the map. It's become so embedded in our military doctrine and in our foreign policy doctrine that it's proving to be really hard to think about how we could ever get out.

(soft dramatic music) One of the most important wars of the last 50 years is one that we don't hear about much. When in 1980, two of the Middle East's most powerful countries, Iran and Iraq, waged eight years of some of the worst trench and chemical warfare since World War I, leaving both countries devastated. This is the war that fractured the Middle East into lines that still play out in nearly every conflict there today. It set the U.S. and Iraq on a path that ultimately led to the American invasion. And it defined Iran's often hostile relationship

With the wider world. This is the Iran-Iraq War. It's 1979, and Iran is in the middle of a revolution. (crowd chanting) The country is coming off of decades of being ruled by the Shah, a king that the U.S. and UK had installed in the 50s after covertly overthrowing Iran's democratically-elected leader. But after years of The Shah's corrupt autocratic rule, a mass uprising violently overthrows him, creating what becomes an Islamic republic, headed by an Ayatollah named Ruhollah Khomeini. (soft dramatic music) Khomeini, and a group of Shia religious scholars, want to impose fundamentalist rule on the country

and are hostile to both the Western powers and the neighboring Soviet Union. They establish a military force called the Islamic Revolutionary Guard, which is meant to protect their hold on the revolution and to suppress the other groups who helped overthrow the Shah. The U.S. is watching all of this in shock. Their biggest ally in the region, and a major oil producer, has just turned from friend to fierce enemy. But the biggest tremors of this revolution Are felt in the rest of the Middle East. (soft tense music) Iran sends out radio broadcasts to Arab countries like

Saudi Arabia, Lebanon, Kuwait, and Iraq, calling for people to rise up and overthrow their own rulers. They're trying to export their revolution to their neighbors to gain new allies in the region. Neighboring leaders, most of them Sunni Muslim, don't like this. Saudi Arabia's king fears being overthrown just like the Shah was. And in Iraq, Saddam Hussein sees this Shia religious revolution on his eastern border and worries that the Shia majority that he rules over will rise up against him too. But he also sees this as an opportunity. Iran and Iraq have been fighting over this

border territory for years. This waterway is a critical access point to the Persian Gulf where both countries export their oil to the rest of the world. In a treaty between the two back in 1975, Saddam had to give up full control of this waterway, as well as access to oil-rich regions in what was now Iran. Saddam hates this treaty and is considering taking the waterway back by force. The Iranian Revolution has left the country weak and fractured. Khomeini and his revolutionary guard Are still fighting other political factions for control. The Iranian military, which used to

be funded and trained by the United States, is now weak, its leaders having been jailed or executed after the revolution. Iran's military would normally be able to crush Iraq in an invasion, but maybe not anymore. Saddam sees this as an opportunity to weaken a major rival. Saddam is also riding on a delusion that he himself is going to unify the Arab world under his leadership. If he invades Iran, maybe the rest of the Middle East will rally behind him against this new common enemy. He thinks it'll be a quick victory. So in September of 1980,

he decides to prepare 10,000 Iraqi troops to cross the border to invade Iran. (soft dramatic music) (engine rumbling) What's about to happen here isn't just the start of a new war. (guns boom) Saddam is kicking off a dynamic that will dominate the Middle East for more than 40 years, the fight between revolutionary change and status quo power. (subdued music) The war officially starts when Saddam sends his air force over the border in a surprise attack on Iranian air bases. His 10,000 soldiers cross from Basra into Southern Iran. Further north, Saddam opens a second front to

seize strategically-located border towns and put pressure on his enemy. These air attacks mostly fail, and Iran responds with airstrikes of their own into Iraqi territory hitting oil facilities. Iran still has sophisticated jets that the United States had given the previous regime. This gives them an edge in the air. (bombs booming) The war quickly sucks in the rest of the region. Israel is among the first. It wants to keep these two adversaries occupied, fighting with each other, keeping both sides weak. So almost immediately, Israel secretly sells supplies and parts to Iran. This helps the Iranian Air

Force keep planes in the air. Now, Iran and Israel are not friends, but Israel sees Iraq as a greater threat here. So they're willing to support. Iran needs to get its military organized if they're gonna fight this war. So they release military officers that they had jailed during the revolution. War tends to unify a nation, and in this case, the fractured country of Iran is unifying around Iraq's invasion, Creating this irony that Saddam is the one who actually cements Khomeini's hold on power. Saudi Arabia and Kuwait also step in here, giving billions of dollars to

fund Iraq's war efforts. They want to weaken Iran and turn back its revolution. The Middle East is now dividing between, on one side, Arab states who are ruled by aging, Sunni monarchies and strongmen who fear change, and on the other side, a Shia Iran bent on revolution, on remaking the region in its image. China is also watching this war. They say they will maintain strict neutrality, but they take the opportunity to sell weapons to both sides of the conflict. They eventually become Iran's top supplier of weapons. (subdued music) For most of 1981, the two armies

are in a stalemate, with Iraq holding small but important stretches of border territory. The global powers see this stalemate and try to negotiate a ceasefire, hoping that this conflict that threatens so much of the global oil supply will end soon. What they don't know is that this is really just the beginning. Saddam agrees to the ceasefire, but Khomeini does not. This war has become so useful to his goals, unifying the country and keeping the military occupied so that it doesn't become a rival to his power. Khomeini needs the war to continue. So Iran demands that

Saddam Hussein step down. They say the war will continue until his rule is ended. Saddam, of course, refuses. So Iran goes on the offensive. Their forces are now organized. Their officers have been freed from jail, and they're able to recapture the territory that Saddam had taken, even pushing into Iraq. Saddam's hopes of a quick victory and a gain of some valuable territory are now dead. So he turns to the United States for support and the U.S. agrees to help. They hope to weaken Iran and its call for anti-American Islamic revolution across the region. So the

U.S. starts giving Saddam intelligence and satellite imagery on Iranian troop movement. Iraq also gets another big backer, the Soviet Union. The Soviets are at war in neighboring Afghanistan trying to suppress another religious uprising, but they also have allies in this region. So over the course of the war, the Soviets become a top supplier of weapons to Iraq. Now remember the situation between these two. It's a tense moment in the Cold War, and the United States and Soviet Union are suddenly supporting the same side of this Middle East conflict, both backing the country that will support

the status quo, nothing changing, Allowing their great power struggle to continue as it has. But by the summer of 1982, Iran is now pushing into Iraqi territory, much of their campaign focused on the city of Basra. If Iran can take Basra, it will cut off Iraq from the Persian Gulf, preventing them from shipping out their oil. Iraqi forces are outnumbered here, so they start to dig in and build trenches, erecting barbed wire barriers, planting landmines, and surrounding the city to stop Iran from taking it. The fighting starts to resemble the brutal warfare of World War

I, waves of artillery strikes, and the Iranian military resorting to human wave attacks where thousands of boys and men charge over open fields leading to huge numbers of casualties. Iran is not successful in taking the city, but this attack does weaken Saddam, showing that he's vulnerable. And this is where we need to look to the north to talk about the Kurds. (subdued music) The Kurds are a minority group in the north of Iraq. They've been long suppressed by Saddam Hussein, and they see this moment as an opportunity to break away from Iraq to make their

own country. So Kurdish forces start fighting with the Iraqi army, taking towns and villages. So now Saddam is fighting two different armies, one of which lives in his own country. Iran starts sending support to the Kurds who have a presence in this mountainous, oil-rich part of Iraq. If the Kurds can hold it and keep Saddam's regime away from all of this oil, it would have a major effect on this war. This is a big deal for Saddam, and he switches tactics to make sure he can control this northern area. He escalates by using chemical weapons

against the Kurds as well as the Iranians. Shells filled with mustard gas, weapons that cause extreme burning and blindness, a weapon that is illegal under international law, but even still, the global powers who are supporting him mostly look the other way. The U.S. starts sending technology and money to Saddam, even restoring official diplomatic ties with Iraq. This allows Iraq to buy technology from the United States that helps them develop their weapons programs, including the horrific chemical and biological weapons that he will soon be using on the battlefield. They need him to keep fighting because this

war has changed. It went from protecting Saddam from revolution to now using Saddam to weaken Iran. So they keep supporting him, showing him that he can use chemical weapons without being punished. The chemical attacks help push back Iranian forces, and the war reaches a new stalemate. 1984 is the year that the oil war begins in this conflict. Iraq starts attacking Iranian oil tankers in the Persian Gulf using new jets provided by France, a new entrant to this conflict. Saddam warns that he'll also attack any ship going into Iranian ports. Iran retaliates by attacking oil tankers

carrying Iraq's oil. The oil that the entire globe relies on is now at the center of this increasingly brutal conflict. Hundreds of commercial ships are attacked by both sides, resulting in the death of over 400 civilian sailors. The U.S. has to send in two frigates and a guided missile destroyer into the Persian Gulf to escort U.S. ships, hoping that their presence will stop these attacks. Meanwhile, Iran is making progress on the ground, slowly taking territory from Iraq and continuing attacks on the vital port city of Basra. (soft grim music) It's 1985 and Saddam is about

to escalate to a new extreme. He starts shooting missiles and dropping bombs on Iranian cities all over the country, including the capitol. This kills 16,000 people and leaves many homeless. Iran responds, striking Iraqi cities, firing these massive missiles, primarily at the capital of Baghdad. These strikes hit civilian targets like a school and a bus station with hundreds of casualties. Civilians on both sides are now caught in the crossfire of this brutally escalating war. Their cities and their homes are not safe, so many flee. These events leave an entire generation scarred by the trauma of war

and a disdain for the outside powers that have ripped their country apart. And speaking of outside powers, this is when the U.S. starts double dealing. They start selling missiles to Iran, which gives Iran an edge against Iraqi forces who the U.S. is also supporting. Behind all this is President Ronald Reagan, who wants to use the money from this deal to fund an anti-communist militia group in Nicaragua. It's all supposed to be a secret, but will eventually come out and be known as the Iran-Contra scandal. Meanwhile, Kuwait is asking the U.S. to be more aggressive to

protect their oil tankers. Iranian attacks on their ships have started to take a toll. The U.S. is getting more involved in the war. Their presence in the Persian Gulf is growing. They start putting American flags on Kuwaiti tankers to deter Iran from attacking them. And then in March of 1988, Iran partners with the Kurdish fighters to take over the Iraqi town of Halabja. The Kurds know that this is going to set Saddam off, and they brace themselves for a brutal retaliation. But what comes next is worse than anyone could have prepared for. The Iraqi army

drops bombs and artillery shells containing deadly chemicals, blanketing the entire town with a cloud of deadly gas that sinks into homes and buildings and the underground shelters where many were hiding for protection. It's a brutal attack that kills over 5,000 Iraqi Kurds, mostly unarmed civilians. And it was a part of a broader campaign that Saddam was now waging to wipe out the Kurdish people entirely. He now had what he believed was a justification. So the Iraqi Army starts going village to village, dropping chemical weapons on civilians And executing any survivors. This resulted in an estimated

50 to 100,000 deaths in what has now been deemed as a genocide, one of the many war crimes committed by Saddam Hussein. The U.S. knows this is happening, and yet, according to now-public documents, the official government line was to turn a blind eye, to blame everything on Iran. Saddam's horrific war crimes project a new fear onto the civilians in Iran who now worry that a missile loaded with deadly gas could land on their cities. Many flee to take shelter in the mountains. And by now, after eight years of devastating war, Iran's economy and social order

is frayed. Their leader, Ayatollah Khomeini, is feeling the pressure to end this war. More than a million lives have been lost in this war. All sides are looking for a way out. And the UN Security Council is pressuring the parties to accept a ceasefire. Then in July of 1988, a U.S. ship in the Persian Gulf shoots down an Iranian passenger jet, (soft tense music) killing all 290 civilians on board. The U.S. shakes it off as an unfortunate accident, Saying that they mistook the airliner for a hostile F-16 fighter jet. They pay compensation to the victim's

families, and President Reagan sends a letter apologizing, but the government never formally apologizes. And the captain of the ship who did this later received a medal which fed a deep suspicion in Iran that this attack was deliberate, that it was a scheme to coerce them into accepting peace. Fear of more American attacks, along with a new offensive by Iraq, pushes the Iranian forces to withdraw from the country, and both sides finally accept a ceasefire. (subdued music) The war is finally over, and after all of this, the borders were unchanged from before the fighting. But in

some ways, this was really just the first round in a larger conflict that has continued through to today, a war for the future of the Middle East, one that the United States is deeply involved in but that most expresses itself as a cold war between Saudi Arabia and Iran, who now fuel civil wars around the region in Lebanon, Syria, and Yemen, backing their own proxy fighters and making these conflicts worse. But another major takeaway here is that this war defined Iran's relationship to the rest of the world, Especially the United States. Iranian hardliners came to

feel confirmed in their belief that they could never trust an outside world bent on Iran's destruction and seemingly unconstrained in their violence, leading some leaders to conclude that only nuclear weapons could stave off disaster from the outside. Saddam Hussein's Iraq emerged battered by this war, humiliated by this failure against Iran. He faced growing internal resistance from his people, which he suppressed with more and more violence. He also came out of this with huge war debts to Kuwait and Saudi Arabia. Angry that his allies had billed him to fight a war on their behalf, a few

years later, Saddam invades Kuwait seeking its oil, taking the spoils that he felt he was owed. And this is when his one-time backer, the United States, quickly turns against him, expelling him from Kuwait and beating him back in a swift 43-day victory, cutting him off from the world economy and turning him into a pariah, an enemy. A decade after Saddam had gassed his own people, the U.S. finally blamed him for it, turning it into a byword for his cruelty and the centerpiece for their demand that he step down. A few years later, George W. Bush

would cite these weapons of mass destructions, The ones that he would never find, as a reason to invade the country to topple Saddam. Bush's war room was filled with the same officials who had covered for Saddam and his war crimes in the first place, and making it so crystal clear that, even though this war between Iran and Iraq ended decades ago, the Middle East we see today is built off of what happened during those eight brutal years. Before we go into the next video, I just want to remind you that this is all made possible

because of Ground News, the sponsor of this compilation. Ground News helps me do these deep dives by helping me compare lots of headlines and revealing the different biases and reliability of the facts in those headlines. You can go to ground.news/johnnyharris to get 40% off their Vantage Plan and start comparing headlines and seeing clearly into the news that you're consuming. (dramatic music) (keyboard clicking) In the summer of 2002, the Director of the British Intelligence Agency, MI6, Richard Dearlove, traveled to Washington D.C. to meet with the Director of the CIA, George Tenet. The topic of the meeting

was Iraq And its leader, Saddam Hussein. In the meeting, the CIA director shared classified information with his British counterpart, who then traveled back to London to 10 Downing Street, the home of the Prime Minister, Tony Blair. Dearlove told his Prime Minister everything about what was really happening behind the scenes in the United States, how the U.S. was planning to invade Iraq no matter what. It was a highly classified meeting but notes were taken and classified and put into a memo. That memo was later leaked to British author and journalist, Michael Smith, who published it in

2005 and that's what we're looking at, a secret meeting and the memo it produced, meant only for the eyes of top British officials. It was an explosive leak. What we see is that Dearlove tells his Prime Minister everything he heard in Washington a few days earlier, and that this was a very different story than the one the Bush administration was telling to the public, that an American invasion was inevitable, that Bush's people were fixated on removing Saddam Hussein from power, no matter what, and that the U.S. government was blatantly cooking up intel and facts to

help sell their invasion. This document shows us how power really works in our world, how a small group of people decided to topple a dictator, to occupy a country, and then invented a story to support their plan. It was a false story, but it helped them sell a horrifying war. It's a story that is revealed in detail by the Downing Street memo. (dramatic music continues) - States like these constitute an axis of evil. One last chance to avoid war. And the entire world will know that we will take whatever actions necessary. On September the 11th,

enemies of freedom committed an act of war against our country. The United States military has begun strikes against Al-Qaeda terrorist training camps in Afghanistan. - [Johnny] Let's start by looking at another document from the fall of 2001 when Deputy Secretary of Defense Paul Wolfowitz created this memo for his boss, Donald Rumsfeld, the Secretary of Defense. This was just 10 weeks after the attacks that changed the course of history but this document wasn't about that. It was about Iraq, a country that had nothing to do with 9/11. Rumsfeld reviewed the document before meeting with an army

general. He marked it up with his notes, giving us insight into what the Secretary of Defense of the United States was really thinking about after 9/11, how this group of military leaders were set on, quote, "building momentum" to topple Iraq's dictator, Saddam Hussein, to decapitate the government, a government that was no longer useful to them. Saddam Hussein had been a useful client To the United States, especially in the '80s when he was waging a war against Iran, an enemy of the United States. But those days were now over. Saddam had turned into just a troublemaker

in the region, creating instability that could threaten the U.S.' easy access to oil. - Two hours ago, allied air forces began an attack on military targets in Iraq and Kuwait. This conflict started August 2nd when the dictator of Iraq invaded a small and helpless neighbor. - [Johnny] And in many ways, Iraq was an old mess in need of cleaning up, a mess that Bush Senior had failed to resolve during the first Gulf War. Iraq was supposed to disarm itself after that war but had kicked out the UN weapons inspector teams. (brooding music) But that wasn't

the main reason why, right after 9/11, these guys were talking about invading Iraq. A bigger reason is that these leaders wanted to remind the world who the global superpower was. They needed to after being brutally attacked on their own soil. A non-U.S.-friendly regime, like Iraq, couldn't be allowed to stand in a post 9/11 world, or in the words of Rumsfeld himself, hours after the towers fell, quote, "We need to bomb something else to show that we're big and strong And not gonna be pushed around." Iraq and its leader was that something else. And now, Bush

and his advisors were looking at a plan to make it a reality. But how to start the war? Could they tie Saddam Hussein to something that Americans feared, like 9/11 or anthrax? Or could they tell a story about weapons of mass destruction? What other countries could they bring in to support their invasion? And, of course, the most important consideration, Rumsfeld jots it here at the end, they would need an influence campaign, they would need to sell the war. And when should they begin? How about right away? (intense music) - Iraq continues to flaunt his hostility

toward America and to support terror. - [Johnny] Three months later, the President was telling the world that Iraq was one of a group of evil countries that the U.S. must oppose in the global fight against good and evil. - States like these constitute an axis of evil. The price of indifference would be catastrophic. - [Johnny] By the summer of 2002, this idea that Bush's advisors had scratched down after 9/11 was developing into an official policy. That handwritten influence campaign to sell the war was now in full swing. - There is no doubt that Saddam Hussein

now has weapons of mass destruction. - The Iraqi regime has been free To pursue the development of weapons of mass destruction. - We know they have weapons of mass destruction, there isn't any debate about it. - [Johnny] And this is exactly what the head of MI6 told Prime Minister Tony Blair at his house in the summer of 2002 after meeting with the CIA in Washington. It's what we see in the Downing Street memo that there was a perceptible shift in attitude in Washington and that the U.S. invasion of Iraq was now seen as inevitable and

that they were now fixing intelligence around a decision that they had already made, and that the U.S. wasn't really planning to work with the UN. They didn't want weapons inspections or getting UN approval for a military force. And crucially, the head of the MI6 tells the Prime Minister that these Bush people aren't really thinking much about the aftermath of such an invasion. - What is inevitable is not regime change, it is disarmament of weapons of mass destruction. (subdued music) - [Johnny] This memo wasn't supposed to be seen by anyone but just a few, and that's

why we can learn from it. It serves as one of the most potent pieces of evidence that the Bush administration was maneuvering two very different stories. Their private story about the need to remove a dictator to project U.S. power, which was in stark contrast to the public story that they had to tell to sell the invasion, their influence campaign. - Any country on the face of the earth With an active intelligence program knows that Iraq has weapons of mass destruction. - [Johnny] Because they knew that if they were really gonna sell this war, they would

need to convince not only the American public but also Congress and at least partially, the international community. What we learned in the Downing Street memo is that they had settled on two main focus points for their story, that Iraq has weapons of mass destruction and that they're also working with the masterminds of 9/11. Not long after this meeting between MI6 and the CIA, Bush and his allies ramp up their influence campaign to sell their war. - We've learned that Iraq has trained Al-Qaeda members in bomb making, poisons, and deadly gases. - [Johnny] The sales pitches

to the American people for an invasion of Iraq were made with absolute certainty. Certainty that Iraq had WMDs. - He had agreed, and the UN had agreed, that he would not have a WMD program. We know he does have one. - [Johnny] Certainty that they wanted to use them against Americans and American allies. - Simply stated, there is no doubt that Saddam Hussein now has weapons of mass destruction, that he is amassing them to use against our friends, against our allies, and against us. - [Johnny] Certainty that Iraq was harboring terrorists. - An Al-Qaeda terrorist

escaped from Afghanistan and are known to be in Iraq. - [Johnny] And certainty that Iraq was working on obtaining nuclear weapons. - And Iraq's state-controlled media has reported numerous meetings between Saddam Hussein and his nuclear scientists, leaving little doubt about his continued appetite for these weapons. - [Johnny] And these speeches were working. By the fall of 2002, Americans were in favor of an invasion of Iraq by just a narrow majority. But there was just one problem, that all of these statements were lies. (moody music) Indeed, this was already known in the secret rooms of Downing

Street that the U.S. was fixing their facts and their intel to match their already-made decision. Iraq's supposed links to Al-Qaeda were based on one interrogation of a guy whose testimony lacked, quote, "specific details" and who was intentionally lying about it to mislead his interrogators. Bush and his allies knew this, it was clearly documented back in February of 2002, and yet publicly, the scary story about Al-Qaeda being in Iraq continued to be sold by Bush and his people. - The Iraqi regime has plotted to develop anthrax, nerve gas, and nuclear weapons for over a decade. -

[Johnny] The case for weapons of mass destruction in Iraq was equally thin and senior officials knew it. Like in September, 2002, when Donald Rumsfeld received this report From the Joint Chiefs assessing what real evidence there actually was for WMD in Iraq. The report is shockingly honest and it says that the conclusion that Saddam has WMD, quote, "Relied heavily on analytic assumptions and judgments rather than hard evidence." That's word salad for it was speculation and conjecture. The report goes on to say that they didn't have anything solid on nuclear weapons-related facilities, and concludes that they don't

know of any facilities where Saddam may be producing or testing biological weapons. And so, we know now that they had almost no evidence for their story about why the U.S. should invade Iraq. And yet even knowing this, they kept selling the same story, convincing the American people. - There's no doubt in my mind he wants to have a nuclear weapon and he's got some capacity. - Wherever threats are forming against our country, we will respond. - [Johnny] But they couldn't go on like this forever. They knew that if they were really gonna sell this war,

they were going to need to show real convincing evidence, not to the people, but to Congress. And this is where we get another instance of fixing the intelligence to fit the policy. It came in September, 2002, when President Bush asked Congress to give him the authority to invade Iraq. In response, Senate leaders requested An immediate National Intelligence Estimate, which is a report from the entire intelligence community meant to help Congress make informed decisions. This could be really bad for Bush and his allies. So he and the CIA get hard at work pulling together a report

that fits their story, intelligence to back up all their public statements and speeches. They come out with this highly redacted report that they deliver in October of 2002. The report makes some very strong claims. They claim that Iraq has been building more WMD, that they have chemical and biological weapons, and that they will have a nuclear weapon during this decade. And to congressional leaders, this appeared rock solid. Here was the entire intelligence community coming together saying that Iraq had horrific weapons and that they wanted to get more. - Saddam Hussein has composed a scarlet chapter

of terror. Our only responsible option is to confront this threat before Americans die. - There is no such thing as a Democrat or Republican war. - [Johnny] So in that same month, based on this report and all of these public speeches, Congress gives the green light for war. (heart beat thumping) (distressing music) But this National Intelligence Estimate was deeply flawed. It was a perfect example of the fixed intelligence Described in the Downing Street memo. It was put together in less than a month, totally rushed. The report had been plagued by groupthink and directed by political

pressure with the Bush administration pushing analysts to deliver a report that matched their conclusions that they had already come to months earlier. And they did this using very old intelligence. The CIA hadn't had any human assets on the ground for years, so their report wasn't even based off of anything after 1998. But it didn't matter, Bush and his allies had successfully sold the war to Congress and the American people. But there was one last hurdle. It was the international community, which would mean they would have to face the UN process that they apparently had no

patience for. - Iraq has answered a decade of UN demands with a decade of defiance. - [Johnny] So it's November, 2002, and in response to the rising tensions between Iraq and the U.S., the UN Security Council passes this resolution, 1441. It was a measure that was meant to give Iraq a final opportunity to comply with weapons inspections to show the world that they had fully disarmed and had no weapons of mass destruction. Bush and his allies saw this as an opportunity, if they could somehow show that Iraq wasn't complying with this new inspection process, this

resolution implied That they would be justified in invading the country. Their long-desired war would be on. But they had a problem, which is that Iraq and Saddam Hussein were complying with the weapons inspections. Over the course of four months, UN weapons inspectors searched Iraq from top to bottom. They were led by Hans Blix, the former Head of the International Atomic Energy Agency. They conducted over 900 inspections at over 500 locations and they didn't find anything, no WMD, no biological weapons, no nuclear weapons programs. - Iraq has, on the whole, cooperated rather well. Access has been

provided to all sites we have wanted to inspect, universities, military bases, presidential sites, and private residences. - [Johnny] Hans Blix did find two things that were important. First, they did find some ballistic missiles that the UN says have an effective range that makes them illegal, so they would need to be destroyed by Iraq. And second, there were some chemical weapons that the Iraqi regime said cannot be accounted for. But Blix insists that this does not mean that they have these weapons, it just means that they need more time to work out the accounting situation. But

this error was exactly what the Bush circle needed to justify their invasion. - [UN Announcer] I call now On the distinguished Secretary of State of the United States of America. - [Johnny] They sent their most respected cabinet member to the UN, Secretary of State, Colin Powell. He came equipped with photos of what he says are mobile weapons facilities. - Saddam Hussein and his regime are concealing their efforts to produce more weapons of mass destruction. - [Johnny] He plays tapes that he says prove that the Iraqis are hiding their weapons. - [Powell] We evacuated everything to

make sure it was not around when the inspectors showed up. - [Johnny] And then he says that this is solid evidence that shows that Iraq is violating the UN resolution that told them to disarm. This whole thing contradicts what the UN weapons inspectors had found in their hundreds and hundreds of inspections. They bulldozed the process, and say they have justification to invade. - My colleagues, we have an obligation to see that our resolutions are complied with. - They've got the American public on board, they've got Congress on board, and now the UK is in lockstep.

- This is the time for this house to show that we will stand up for what we know to be right, to show that we will confront the tyrannies and dictatorships and terrorists who put our way of life at risk. - [Johnny] The Bush administration abandons the UN process, and that March, his people do what they set out to do 18 months earlier, when they were looking for something else to bomb (missile roars) to show who's really in charge on the world stage. - My fellow citizens, American and coalition forces are in the early stages

of military operations to disarm Iraq, to free its people, and to defend the world from grave danger. America faces an enemy that has no regard for conventions of war or rules of morality. (tense music) (explosion booming) (gunshots pop) - [Johnny] Bush's war took the life of an estimated half million Iraqis, and thousands more who fought for their country. And over the course of a decade occupying Iraq, no weapons were found, no nuclear facilities, no mobile weapons labs. In fact, it seemed like Iraq had dismantled its nuclear program back in 1991, and the rest of its

chemical and biological weapons just a few years later. After the invasion, the U.S. never allowed the UN inspectors back into the country to help with their search. The U.S. would never find a way to link the Iraqi regime to Al-Qaeda or to anthrax. Colin Powell, the Secretary of State, Who played a major role in selling this war to the international community would later say that he regrets his part in starting the war. - I deeply regret that some of the information I presented which was multi-source was wrong. - [Johnny] Hans Blix, the Chief Weapons Inspector

for the UN, would comment later that year that, "It is sort of fascinating that you can have 100% certainty about weapons of mass destruction and zero certainty about where they are." We may never know what was in the heart and minds of these senior leaders, whether they truly believed their own lies, whether they felt justified in the choices they made. But what we can learn from this story is how these leaders behaved when they thought no one was watching, when they thought they could tell a compelling story to the public while having a totally different

set of motivations. And how, with enough fear and enough deception, you can lead an entire society into an unprovoked war, changing the course of history in the process. (subdued music) Up in the Zagros Mountains have long lived a people called the Kurds. They're a people with a centuries long history of fighting back against invaders who have crossed through their lands, resisting conquest in the name of defending their shared cultural identity. Some living as nomads, a people with no friends but these mountains. Eventually the Ottoman Empire did take over all of this territory, but even then,

the Kurds maintained large amounts of autonomy and freedom in their land. Then came World War I when the European powers defeated the Ottoman Empire and conquered all of this. The winners got together and discussed how they would carve it up between them. If you look back at old European maps, you'll see that all of this area would be labeled Kurdistan, an area where the Kurdish people lived and had some self-rule. So while drawing these lines, the British wanted to mark all of this as Kurdish territory, paving away for an independent country for the Kurds, but

the new leader of Turkey opposed this plan. He didn't wanna give all this land and resources to the Kurds. So he pushed the European forces out of Turkey. They gave up on this plan to give the Kurds their own land. And in the end, instead of drawing borders around the Kurds, the Europeans drew borders through them. What could have been Kurdistan was now five different territories, the Kurds split between them. (inquisitive music) But at first these were just lines on a map and the Kurds continued to move through this region. Eventually the Europeans left, and

these became independent countries with leaders who wanted to consolidate and centralize power. So these lines hardened, restricting the Kurds' movement and their livelihood in this region. But even still, across this region, the Kurds didn't give up on their idea of someday gaining independence, self-rule, or maybe even a country of their own. (foreboding music) Throughout the 1900s, the Kurds in each of these new countries took different approaches to fight for an independent Kurdish state. Some Kurds would use politics, others would use violence. The early uprisings were crushed by the leaders of these new countries who saw

the Kurds as a threat to their efforts to unify their country around a common language and culture. Like in Iran, where the Kurds had some political rights, but they fought for more. They wanted autonomy and independence. The government of Iran wouldn't have any of this. They would crack down with violence on the Kurds, often supported by Western powers. By the 1970s, Iran was going through a revolution and the Kurds tried again to rise up, but this new regime had no tolerance for a group that would challenge the leadership of the ruling religious leader. So once

again, they were put down. Over in Iraq, Kurdish fighters fought hard against the government throughout the 20th century, Until the 1970s, when this new regime came in and made a deal with the Kurds, saying that they would be recognized as an ethnic group and would be guaranteed political representation. It seemed like a huge deal for the Kurds, but it turned out to be a false promise. The Iraqi regime, now led by Saddam Hussein, would continue to repress the Kurds, eventually dropping deadly chemical weapons on Kurdish towns in Iraq, systematically killing thousands of Kurdish civilians in

a genocide supported by American-made supplies that were sold to Saddam. Over in Syria, the Kurds were treated decently under the French-controlled government. (subdued music) They were citizens and had some rights. But after the French left in the 40s, the regimes that came after oppressed the Kurds, and by the 1970s, the Syrian government was arresting and deporting them, taking their land and giving it to Arabs. In total, the Syrian government would remove 140,000 Kurds from the country. Decades later, Syria and the United States would both find the Kurds in Syria useful for their political goals. But

first, let's talk about Turkey. (inquisitive music) There's more Kurdish people here than in any other country. The same government that had fought against a Kurdish state early on continued to oppress the Kurds, denying them citizenship, outlawing their language, and keeping them out of politics, all with the goal of wiping out their culture from Turkey as a part of this Turkification campaign, which tried to unify Turkey under one culture, targeting the Kurds and other ethnic minorities. Some Kurds fought back against this in the early years, but were quickly crushed by the Turkish state, (explosions boom) leading

to the creation of an armed insurgent group with communist ideology. They're called the Kurdish Workers Party, or PKK, and it would become one of the biggest Turkish resistance movements. The PKK would use violence like suicide bombings and improvised explosives, as well as youth militia fighters against the Turkish government, tactics that they say are the only way to fight back against such oppression. And as a result, Turkey and most Western powers consider the PKK a terrorist group. So that's how the Kurds in these four countries became locked in a conflict with their governments. They all have

different struggles, But they're all unified by the dream of some version of Kurdish independence. (subdued music) But it doesn't take long for these regimes to see that they could use the Kurds as a tool, as a weapon. One of the earliest examples of this happens at the end of World War II when the Soviet Union sees an opportunity to gain land and access to oil by supplying and arming the Kurds in Iran, allowing them to rise up against the government and declare their own country supported by the Soviet Union. But it didn't work. The U.S.

pressures the Soviets to leave, and now without support, the government of Iran, which is backed by the U.S. and UK, go on to crush this movement of Kurds in their country. The Kurds are back to being repressed by the government. In the 1980s, Syria uses the Kurds as a weapon against its rival Turkey when it allows the PKK to start operating within Syria, giving them money and weapons so that they can hurt Turkey. Syria is doing this in spite of having spent years removing hundreds of thousands of Kurds from its own country. This escalates the

conflict between these two, And Turkey threatens to invade Syria. So Syria backs down and kicks the PKK out to avoid being invaded, showing once again how the Kurds' willingness to fight can easily become a pawn in the geopolitics of the region, discarded once they aren't useful anymore. In the 1980s, Iran and Iraq both used the Kurds at the same time as a weapon to hurt each other, even as both are cracking down on Kurds in their own country. Saddam Hussein funds and arms the Kurds in Iran, while Iran funds the Kurds in northern Iraq, both

sides hoping to spark a Kurdish uprising that will distract and weaken their enemy. In Iraq, Saddam Hussein retaliates against the Kurds in his country with that genocidal chemical attack we talked about earlier that killed at least 50,000 Kurdish people and probably much more. Once again, the Kurdish dream of independence was used by outsiders as a weapon, and the Kurdish people paid heavily for it. (intense music) The U.S. would get involved when in the '90s they would come to this region fighting against Saddam Hussein for the first time. The U.S. rallies the Kurds, calling for them

to overthrow Saddam. George Bush Sr. literally calls them to action With television and radio broadcasts throughout the country. - That the Iraqi people should put him aside, and that would facilitate the resolution of all these problems that exist and certainly would facilitate the acceptance of Iraq back into the family of peace-loving nations. - [Johnny] And it seems to work. It sparks an uprising that looks successful at first. The U.S. had instigated this uprising, and they have forces in the region that they could send to support the Kurds, but they do nothing. This allows Saddam to

regather his forces and crush this coup and to increase this oppression, ensuring that nothing like this ever happens again. Now, the U.S. and UK do eventually step in to create this no-fly zone meant to protect the Kurds in the north and the Shiites in the south. This gives the Kurds some autonomy over their region and protects them from further airstrikes by the Iraqi Army. Soon the U.S. is back in Iraq. It's 2003, and the Bush administration decides to invade and remove Saddam from power. The Kurds in Iraq hope that the U.S. presence in this region

will mean finally they will get their own state, they will be independent. They join the U.S. in fighting against Saddam And his loyalists, battling insurgents, and later against ISIS. (gunshots crackle) The Kurds would even go on to hold a vote, showing that 92% of the population was in favor of independence, but the U.S. won't support this, worried that it might destabilize this new Iraqi state that the U.S. just propped up. Even when the Kurds fight on the side of the U.S. and their interests, U.S. support for their cause still remains very limited. They still look

the other way as Turkey bombs their towns in Iraq hunting for the PKK. This same pattern has continued in recent years in the country of Syria, a country that descended into civil war around 2011. This chaos looked like an opportunity for the Kurds in Syria, a chance to establish real control over what they see as a part of Kurdistan. The PKK in Turkey helps create a new Kurdish militia called the People's Protection Unit or YPG. They seize large swaths of land in the north and they declare self-governance. Around this same time, the terrorist group ISIS

is taking huge swaths of territory in the north and east of the country, creating their so-called caliphate. And here comes the U.S. once again asking the Kurds for help, hoping that they will fight against ISIS on the ground for them. But because this group is allied with the PKK, which they consider a terrorist group, the U.S. asks this militia to rebrand themselves to the Syrian Democratic Forces, which obscures their connection to the PKK. The U.S. then trains, funds, and arms them to fight ISIS. The Kurds are, once again, the U.S.'s weapon. This plan works, and

with help from U.S. airstrikes, this Kurdish militia kicks ISIS out of more and more land. But Turkey hates this. All they see is a potential Kurdish state right on their southern border, a safe haven for the PKK that will allow more attacks against the Turkish military. But Turkey can't attack this branch of the Kurds while they're being supported by the United States. Lucky for them, there's a new president in the White House and he's promised to pull the U.S. out of the war in Syria. And in 2019, to the dismay of the Kurds, he makes

good on this promise. With the U.S. out of the way, Turkey invades, launching airstrikes and artillery against the Kurds in this border region, saying that their plan is to create a 32-kilometer-deep safe zone right here along the border, And that no Kurdish forces are allowed to be here. The plan was to then resettle Syrian refugees currently living in Turkey. It's a brutal campaign that looks a lot like what Syria was doing to the Kurds in the '70s. (missile whooshes) The U.S. completely abandons the Kurds, even after using them to fight their enemy ISIS. Turkey, a

NATO and U.S. ally, continues to bomb them using weapons from the United States. They spend the next four years sending drone strikes and airstrikes into Syria and Iraq, anywhere they think the PKK has a presence. (subdued music) This map shows all of their attacks during this time. You can see that it's not just against the Kurds in Turkey, but across this whole region. Today, the Kurdish groups in this region vary more widely than ever, each with different values and visions for the future, forged from each of their unique struggles and traumas. Kurdish groups still fight

the government in Iran with the goal of creating their own state. The Kurds in Iraq did gain some autonomy from the U.S. in the new Iraqi constitution, but it doesn't seem like this autonomy will last. As recently, the Iraqi Army is fighting with the Kurds to maintain control over the oil resources in this area to keep the Kurds economically dependent on the central government so that they never break away. Once again, the U.S. is not supporting the Kurds in this fight. Turkey continues its offensive against the PKK and other Kurdish groups in the region, and

they continue to crack down on the Kurds politically, arresting Kurdish politicians and activists, censoring journalists to intimidate the Kurdish people from participating in the election. The Kurds in Syria face a new and uncertain future. They do have some autonomy up here in the north, but are surrounded by enemies, no longer counting on any support from the U.S. The story of the Kurds is the story of a people who are willing to fight like few others, all in the name of their culture and identity. That willingness to fight has presented a threat to regional governments, bent

on control of their people and the resources within their borders. That willingness to fight has also been hijacked by outside powers, turning the Kurds into a pawn to fulfill geopolitical objectives, each time showing how willing these powers are To use the Kurds and then abandon their cause. (tense music) (leader speaking in foreign language) - [Interviewer] Do the Palestinians have a right to a separate state? - [Netanyahu] No, I don't think they do. But... - In 2007, the head of military intelligence for the Israeli army had a meeting with the U.S. Ambassador in Tel Aviv. We're

looking at the classified cable that summarizes what was talked about in this meeting. The topic of discussion was Iran, Syria, the Gaza Strip, and Hamas. (loudspeaker blares) Hamas had just won the Palestinian elections, which kicked off a fight with the other Palestinian group, which ended in Hamas taking over Gaza completely. They controlled it. And if you're an Israeli citizen or the U.S. government, this is a terrible set of events. Hamas is a violent extremist group known to commit heinous violence against civilians in Israel, and they were now in power. They controlled the Gaza Strip an

hour away from Tel Aviv. But look at this leaked document. In this leaked cable, you see that the Israeli official says that Israel would be happy if Hamas took over Gaza because it would mean that Israel could now treat Gaza like a hostile country. - [Reporter] Three days post cease fire, And there's unrelenting bombing in Gaza. - This document is a view into a strategy that right-wing factions within the Israeli government have used for decades in an effort to win one of the most divisive conflicts in the world today, in which two groups are fighting

over one piece of holy land and one side is winning by using a very specific tactic, one that the world says is illegal and immoral, and one that worked for a short time, but that recently has been shown to be a recipe for even worse violence and conflict and suffering. (serious music) In this video, I wanna lay out what this strategy looks like and show you how it failed. I know this is a topic that is full of deep emotions that has real stakes in people's lives. Please know that I am earnest in my efforts

to tell this story with clarity and with accuracy. And also please note that this is not a full account of the conflict between Israel and its neighbors, but I do hope that it sheds light on a view of the conflict that sometimes gets lost in all of the yelling. (Netanyahu speaking in foreign language) (crowd cheering) (subdued music) For 2,000 years, Jewish people around the world have been persecuted and segregated and ostracized from society. That is a fact. By the time the 1800s came around, it became clear that wherever the Jews went, persecution would follow. This

is when a movement emerged calling for Jews to come together and to create a country for themselves where they could govern themselves and be free from all of this racist hatred. The creation of a Jewish country would have at the top of its priority list the security of the Jewish people. But the big question was where? Several places floated around in proposals, Argentina, even modern-day Kenya, which back then was Uganda. But most people in this movement wanted the Jews to return to their historic homeland, a place called Palestine. (gentle music) Where Jews built their temple

and their culture 3,000 years ago, but then were exiled, And now there was this call to return so that Jews could feel safe after 18 centuries of Jewish suffering. So as the 1900s came around, tens of thousands of Jews, mostly from Europe, flocked to Palestine, which eventually came under control of the British. The British were getting ready to leave this region and were struggling to contain the growing conflict between native Arabs and all these Jewish immigrants. Then in the 1940s came a horrific genocide against the Jewish people in Europe, led out by Hitler and his

Nazi regime. This created a wave of international support for this idea of giving the Jewish people a homeland where they could be safe. Before they left, the British asked the UN to determine what would replace them in Palestine, and the UN decided that Palestine would become two new countries, one for the Jews and one for the Palestinian Arabs that had already been living in this region. - [Reporter] The Jewish state colored light, the Arab state dark. Jaffa to go to the Arabs, Jerusalem internationalized. - But as happens when outsiders draw lines on old land, there

was a problem here. Within these borders that were meant for the new Jewish country, hundreds of thousands of Palestinian Arabs were living who would soon have to leave their homes to move to their side of the line. (gentle distressing music) Okay, wait. I'm gonna pause there. Because as I said this is not a full history of the Arab-Israeli conflict. We actually just made a video on our new channel Search Party, which focuses on what happens next, the conflict between Israel and its Arab neighbors. You can go watch that. Link's in the description. It'll give you

some useful context. For now just know that this led to a horrific conflict. Jewish militias forced over 700,000 Arabs out of their homes turning them into refugees. The proposed borders shifted around, turned into ceasefire lines, and after all was said and done, the Jewish people did indeed get their own country, the state of Israel. (lofty music) And the two important points here are that number one, the very foundation of the Israeli country is for security of the Jewish people after nearly 2,000 years of persecution. And number two, the location they chose to set it up

was becoming, as a result of this conflict, not much safer than Europe. That's a tension that follows this whole story. (inquisitive music) Okay, so now let's fast forward to 1967. Israel has its country and they fight a short war with their Arab neighbors, and they win that war and they take over all of this land. It's a huge victory for them. I'm gonna take away the Sinai Peninsula from here because they did give that back to Egypt as part of a peace deal a few years later. Israel now controls important pieces of land that enlarge

their Jewish country. Many saw this victory as a sign from God that they were actually entitled to be here. But once again, Palestinians, nearly a million of whom had been kicked out of their homes, were living here in the West Bank and the Gaza Strip, which Israel now controlled, but they weren't really sure what to do with it. And it's this territory that would become the stage for the strategy that is the topic of this video, where over time this land would be sliced up with roads and checkpoints, walls and other military infrastructure that would

control the movement and lives of the Palestinians. Soon, even Israeli citizens would start to move out here in large numbers building full-on towns and further dividing up this territory. Moving citizens into occupied territory like this is something that the world has deemed illegal and immoral. So this occupation starts in 1967 and it goes on for decades, until eventually the Palestinians living here can't handle it anymore and they start fighting back. (intense music) This is known as the first uprising or Intifada. It started with boycotts, but escalated into mass protests where Palestinians of all ages would

throw stones and sometimes Molotov cocktails at much better-equipped Israeli soldiers. It was Palestinian rage exploding against Israeli occupation, and it went on for years. The Israeli government would respond by cracking down, killing many Palestinians. Another important thing that happens around the same time down in the occupied Gaza Strip is that a new movement forms promising to fight back against this occupation calling for the destruction of Israel. The group is called Hamas. The first Intifada showed that this wasn't gonna work. Chopping up Palestinian land, oppressing them, keeping them in this occupation, was only going to produce

more violence. It wasn't gonna fulfill Israel's promise to provide security and safety for the Jewish people. They had to switch course. - The security of the Israeli people will be reconciled with the hopes of the Palestinian people and there will be more security and more hope for all. - [Johnny] So in the 1990s, they start getting serious about peace talks with the Palestinians, and they come to this agreement called the Oslo Accords, (stirring music) which for the first time establishes a Palestinian government authority And giving it power to govern pockets of land in the West

Bank. It also gave the Palestinians some authority over almost all of the Gaza Strip, though there were still settlements in all of these places. This was a big deal for this conflict. Like, both sides were talking to each other and coming to agreements that was giving, like, authority to the Palestinians. But another theme of the story is that hardliners can use violence to derail peace. And that's exactly what happened here. (protesters chant) (brooding music) Right-wing Israelis start holding rallies, calling their Prime Minister a traitor and a Nazi for giving land to the Palestinians. Some of

these rallies are led by a now familiar character, Benjamin Netanyahu. - The people of Israel want a real peace and real peace means peace with security. Peace they can trust with a partner they can trust, and they don't feel they have it here. We want a real peace, not a fake one. - [Johnny] But the peace talks continue. - With all our neighbors, a comprehensive peace. - And shortly after signing the second part of this deal to give Palestinians some land, the Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin is assassinated by a far-right Israeli. Hamas conducts bus bombings.

And the next year, Benjamin Netanyahu is elected as the prime minister of Israel. And Netanyahu is a key figure in this story because his worldview embodies a way of thinking that has taken root in Israel in recent years. The idea that the only way to give true security to the Jewish people is by doing whatever is necessary to stop the Palestinians from having a state anywhere in these borders. (gentle music) - Look, I'm 28 years old. I've had to defend my country in two wars and in many battles. Nobody wants peace more than Israel. But

the stumbling block to the road for peace is this demand for a PLO state, which will mean more war, which will mean more violence in the Middle East. And I think, I sincerely believe, if this demand is abandoned, we can have real and genuine peace. - So that was Netanyahu. He was a 28-year-old. But when he becomes the prime minister a couple decades later, he spends his term sabotaging the peace accords that his predecessor had worked so hard to create, claiming that the occupation of all this land and its people wasn't actually conquest, but rather

the key for security of the Jewish people. They had to do this. Security was the one and only justification for all of this. So under his watch settlers continue to move into the West Bank. We found this leaked video of Benjamin Netanyahu talking to some settlers in the West Bank. (all speaking in foreign language) - The cameraman does turn off the camera for a moment, but then turns it back on moments later. (Netanyahu speaking foreign language) - He is admitting to sabotaging the peace accords that the Israeli government had signed with the Palestinians, that because

he disagreed with them, he wanted to sabotage them because he was so against a Palestinian state or any form of Palestinian autonomy in this land. And then he goes on to explain what his real thinking is on the situation. (Netanyahu speaking foreign language) - Netanyahu is a fantastic politician and statesman, and he's able to sort of cover up a lot of these policies in the name of security. But here we see what he really thinks as he's talking to these settlers thinking he's not being recorded. So unsurprisingly the appetite for peace breaks down on both

sides. Palestinians come to the conclusion that the Israelis aren't really serious about giving them any kind of autonomy in the West Bank or Gaza, that their situation will never change. And once again, they rise up in a second Intifada. This one, much more violent, much more coordinated. (intense music) Hamas becomes a major player in the violence with suicide bombings and attacks. Israel responds with great force and during the fighting, 1,000 Israelis and 3,000 Palestinians are killed. At this point the Netanyahu way of seeing the world is starting to look a lot better. Peace talks didn't

work. All they did was produce more violence. And so maybe the only way to ensure security is to go back to full-blown occupation of controlling every move of the Palestinians in the West Bank and the Gaza Strip. So at this point the occupation gets more and more suffocating, more walls, more barriers, more checkpoints, more settlements. Then in 2005, Israel withdraws from the Gaza Strip, letting the Palestinian Authority have total control there. They turn their attention entirely to their historic homeland of Judea and Samaria, which is the West Bank. The next year, an election is held

in the Palestinian Authorities and the winner surprised the world and would create a new chapter for this conflict. The winner of these elections was Hamas. - [Reporter] This is a very, very bad result for the Palestinians and for Israel. - The incumbent Palestinian party that had lost the election tried to forcibly hold on to power, and soon the two Palestinian parties were fighting with each other. And it results in this split between the two Palestinian governments. It turns into violence. And when the dust settles, there's suddenly a bitter divide between these two Palestinian groups, Hamas

completely taking over the Gaza Strip. (subdued music) And this gets us back to our leaked document that we started this video with where an Israeli official is saying that they would actually be happy if Hamas took over the Gaza Strip because now they can treat Gaza like a hostile country. (harrowing music) (explosions boom) Now that they're not occupying it, they're not responsible for the 2 million civilians who are living there. They can impose a blockade to control anything coming in and out of the Gaza Strip, people, food, medicine, money, building supplies. But there was another

reason why Israel was happy that Hamas now controlled the Gaza Strip. The Palestinian government was now deeply divided, Hamas ruling Gaza and the West Bank being run by a more moderate, secular Palestinian faction. And crucially neither considered the other to be legitimate, which weakened their ability to negotiate for any kind of state, for any kind of country, especially when Hamas still refused to recognize Israel's right to even exist. This division played right into the hands of the Israeli right. And this gets us back to Benjamin Netanyahu, that enemy of the earlier peace talks. (brooding music)

He gets elected once again in 2009, declaring himself Mr. Security and promising to provide safety to Israeli citizens who are still shaken from the second Intifada and are now worried that Hamas now controls the entirety of the Gaza Strip. Netanyahu's playbook was already made clear. He had said it point blank. It's what he had been doing for years. Sabotaging peace talks that would give Palestinians any kind of authority over this land, and continuing to build settlements, while continuing in his words in that leaked tape to hit the Palestinians hard to make it unbearable for them.

A complete assault on the Palestinian government. Dividing and slowly conquering the Palestinian people, Making life hard and desperate for them, controlling their lives, watching their every move. And this is where we get to this paradoxical alignment, almost alliance between Benjamin Netanyahu and Hamas, the enemy of Israel. (grim music) As long as Hamas held control over the Gaza Strip, the Palestinian cause would remain weak and divided. Netanyahu would feel justified in imposing this crippling blockade of the Gaza Strip, which in turn gave Hamas legitimacy among the people of the Gaza Strip, showing that their armed struggle

against Israeli oppression was justified, provoking them to launch rockets into Israel to show that they were actually doing something unlike the Palestinian Authority in the West Bank, which in turn bolstered Netanyahu's narrative that the Palestinians actually don't want peace, they want violence and the destruction of Israel. And the only way for security is more occupation, more oppression. So instead of try to take Hamas out, Netanyahu overtly supported them by approving huge transfers of untraceable cash literally delivered in suitcases into the Gaza Strip, cash that would inevitably end up in the hands of Hamas to be

used against Israel. He legitimized Hamas by negotiating with them, Releasing a thousand Palestinian prisoners in exchange for one Israeli. - The Israeli soldier held captive by Palestinian militants for five years is expected to be freed within days. - The more Netanyahu could keep Hamas in power in Gaza, but keep them contained, the more he could ensure that Palestinians remain divided. He could keep peace talks from ever happening, which in turn gave him time to continue to pursue his expansionist project in the West Bank. And indeed, since 2009, when Netanyahu became the Prime Minister, the number

of settlements in the West Bank has only gone up. (subdued music) And if you look at this map, you can see how these settlements just weave through and carve up this land, making it impossible to even fathom what a Palestinian state could look like, which is precisely the point of the strategy. I actually reported out here, visiting the settlements back when I was at Vox. I did a series talking to the settlers, trying to understand why they live out there, what it's like to live in these settlements that are strangely peaceful and banal and just

mundane, people living their lives, because they're protected by the army. If you want a deeper dive on settlements, you can go watch that series. But if you're Netanyahu over the last 16 years, you think your plan is working. Like, you see all these settlements going up, the international community can't do anything about it. They keep supporting you. Every once in a while there's some flare up in the West Bank where Palestinians get into a fight with Israeli soldiers, but it gets contained. Every few years Hamas fires some rockets, which then gives Israel the excuse to

go, as they put it, "cut the grass" by conducting a short, swift, violent military campaign to keep Hamas at bay. And every day that goes by, the notion of a Palestinian state becomes less and less feasible. (subdued music) This is one reason why a far right Israeli lawmaker called Hamas "an asset." (pundit speaking in foreign language) So divide and conquer has been the name of the game in Israel for a long time, but especially in the last 16 years under Netanyahu. And again, to the people in charge, they think it's working. Maybe this violent status

quo, this equilibrium can hold and the far right can get exactly what they want. Security for the Jewish people and expansion into all of this land. And maybe the occupation will break the Palestinian spirit and they would give up on their dream of having a state. But that's not what happened. On October 7th, 2023, we saw how wrongheaded this theory of security was. - In an unprecedented surprise attack, the militant Hamas rulers of Gaza sent dozens of fighters into Israel by land, sea, and air. - This deadly attack launched by Hamas showed us that while

Netanyahu's strategy of divide and conquer might be good for taking over more land, what it's not good for is making good on the original promise of Israel, which is ensuring the security of the Jewish people. In fact, his strategy has produced exactly the opposite. (crowd chanting in foreign language) Now, the responsibility for what happened on October 7th lies with the people who committed those acts of terror, Hamas fighters and their leaders. There is no excuse or justification for their actions. But the point I'm trying to make with this video is that there's also others that

need to stand accountable here. Those who used Hamas as a pawn to continue this divide-and-conquer policy, who are now engaged in a campaign of mass bloodshed on civilians, they deserve to stand accountable as well, to the Israeli people and to the countries that support Israel. I believe in the need for a Jewish state. I do. I think that's a very reasonable proposal that Jewish people should feel safe somewhere in this world. And yet what we're looking at isn't it. The Israeli project, the way that it's been wielded in its current form, produces the exact opposite

of security for the Jewish people. (serious music) Look at this map. This map shows the thousands of attacks that have occurred right here on this border just over the past year in this fight between Israel and one of their biggest regional enemies, Hezbollah. (soldiers chanting in foreign language) Hezbollah is one of the biggest armed groups in the world that isn't a nation's military. They have tens of thousands of trained soldiers and hundreds of thousands of missiles and rockets capable of reaching targets all across Israel. This threat led Israel to conduct a massive set of attacks

against Hezbollah. - [Reporter] This large explosion was seen near Beirut International Airport. - [Johnny] In which they killed almost all of the group's top leaders weakening Hezbollah immensely, followed by a full-on invasion by Israeli troops to denigrate this group even further. This has been a massive escalation that is now spilling over into this entire region. And to understand how we got here, you really have to understand where Hezbollah came from and what this group's fierce 40-year struggle tells us about how the modern Middle East came together and how it's now coming apart. (grim music) The

story of Hezbollah really starts when the vast Ottoman Empire broke apart in the early 1900s. Europeans came in and sliced all of this up, France taking all of this territory, but then they drew a line here to carve out this little mountainous region, one that was populated mostly by Maronite Christians, but the border didn't include just Christians. The French made sure to include this area to the east and this area to the south. Areas that contained large populations of Shia Muslims who were now forced into this new country where they were made a minority to

the Christians along with a few other religious groups. We're gonna focus a lot down here on this Shia heartland that would eventually become one of the most important regions in the whole Middle East. (suspenseful music) (subdued music) In 1943, Lebanon gains its independence from France. It creates a constitution meant to balance the power between all of these religious groups, but that balance wouldn't last. Mostly thanks to what started happening down here where another set of borders were being carved into the Middle East. The British had controlled this, but in 1948, they left and the UN

helped draw these new lines, Creating a new Israel and Palestinian state. Decades of war forced out millions of Palestinians, many of whom ended up here in Lebanon. These Palestinians are mostly Sunni Muslim, so this upsets the carefully laid power balance in Lebanon and further marginalizes the Shia Muslims who were fighting for their place in the country. Then in 1971, an armed militia made up of Palestinians called the Palestinian Liberation Organization moves to Lebanon, and they turn this whole region, which, again, was made up of mostly Shias, into their own little mini state. You start to

see that Lebanon is descending into division between the different militias and powers controlling parts of the country. And in the mid '70s, it all breaks down into a full-fledged civil war between a dizzying number of religious factions. It's a war that will pull in much of the Middle East, (grim music) and it's a war whose most important region is down here in this border zone between Israel and Lebanon. The place that will soon give rise to Hezbollah. Now, let's talk about Syria. They're here right next door, and they're watching this civil war and they decide

to invade, to prop up the Maronite Christian ruling class who've become Syria allies. They want to do this to prevent the Civil War From spilling over into their territory. At this point, Syria also considers annexing the entire country of Lebanon, making it a part of Syria. But eventually, the relationship between Syria and Maronite Christians breaks down, and Syria continues to occupy this part of the country. Meanwhile, to the south, Israel fears that Syria is growing too powerful. It also wants to wipe out the PLO, who is attacking them across the border from Lebanon. So in

1978, Israel enters the fray invading from the south and driving deep into the country. Israel succeeds in temporarily suppressing the PLO, but in the process, it displaces hundreds of thousands of locals, most of them Shia Muslims. It eventually withdraws after a UN resolution. But then, in 1982, after more PLO attacks, Israel invades again, this time pushing all the way to Beirut, fighting both the PLO and Syria. And this is where the conflict takes on a new dimension. (high-strung music) It's 1979 and over in Iran, the people have risen up against the U.S.-backed dictator in this

Islamic revolution led by a Shia Muslim cleric Who wants to spread this revolution throughout the region. He's looking for allies, and in 1982, they find their perfect match here in southern Lebanon. It's a militia that rose to defend against outsiders trampling their heartland. It's called the Hezbollah, which means party of God. Iran picked this group in particular because it shares its goals of Islamic Revolution and a deep distrust and disdain for Israel. Iran starts providing Hezbollah with money, weapons, soldiers, training, and leadership. And in return, Hezbollah proclaims loyalty to the Iranian Revolution and its supreme

leader. What started as Lebanon's civil war is now a regional war that is heating up. So the United States enters leading an international peacekeeping mission to try to calm these tensions. But of course, Hezbollah and Iran hate this. They now have two prime targets in their backyard, Israel, and these Western powers led by the U.S.. So in 1983, they launched a series of terrorist attacks, a truck bomb detonated in front of a U.S. and French barracks in Beirut that kills over 300 people. Most of the world blames not only Hezbollah, but also its backer, Iran.

The fighting continues until 1989 When the many groups fighting this civil war come to a peace agreement, one that bans all militias and requires them to give their weapons back to the government. But there's a big catch here. Israel still occupies what they call this security buffer zone in southern Lebanon. So the peace agreement makes an exception specifically for efforts that resist the Israeli occupation, a.k.a, they allow Hezbollah to continue to exist, turning them into something more than just one of these militias fighting for their group. It gives them a kind of official status to

continue acting as a defender of southern Lebanon, the country's bulwark against Israel. They also develop into more of a political party that gains seats in Lebanon's legislature, kind of serving as a parallel government providing social services in the areas that it controls. (subdued music) So let's look at Hezbollah in this moment, because they find themselves in the middle of shifting power games in the Middle East, balancing their mandate to defend their Shia heartland, which was their founding motivation, but also trying to gain further influence in the region while also appeasing the demands of their major

supporter, Iran. In 2005, Lebanon's prime minister is assassinated, and most Lebanese blame Hezbollah, along with its other foreign supporter, Syria, Lebanese people rise up in mass protest, and Syria eventually withdraws its forces that have occupied Lebanon for 28 years. Hezbollah is disgraced. Its legitimacy is supposed to come from resisting foreign meddling, and it's becoming clear that they have become a pawn in the geopolitical game of regional powers, Syria and Iran. But the group is able to turn Syria's withdrawal into their advantage. The Syrian occupation had kept Lebanon somewhat stable, so as soon as they left,

it creates this power vacuum and allows Hezbollah to take more territory, ramping up attacks across the border against Israel and leading to another brief war with the IDF. Hezbollah continues to be a useful proxy for Iran, and Iran continues to fund them and arm them. And by 2011, Iran and Syria pull Hezbollah into another unpopular conflict, Syria's civil war. But this hurts Hezbollah's reputation because now they're fighting on behalf of Syria's brutal Iran-backed regime. These once-liberators have turned into foot soldiers of oppression doing the bidding of outsiders. But its last source of legitimacy continues to

be its resistance to Israel, something that Lebanon's own government is too weak to do. This remains their source of legitimacy today. So on October 7th, 2023, when Hamas and Israel descended into this most recent war, Hezbollah jumped in, launching more attacks against Lebanon's southern border. This is meant to support Hamas in the Gaza Strip and to threaten Israel with a war on two fronts. At first, it seemed to be working. Tens of thousands of Israelis have had to evacuate the towns and villages in northern Israel. So Israel started firing back across the border, forcing 90,000

people in southern Lebanon from their homes. This, in addition to Israeli strikes on Iranian proxies and military officials, led Iran to fire its first ever direct strike on Israel, trying to deter it from going any further, but it didn't work. In September of 2024, Israel escalated, surprising Hezbollah with a series of attacks that killed a large part of the group's top leadership, including their decades-long leader. A few days later, Israel sent troops across this border with the goal of further weakening Hezbollah, trying to make the situation safe for Israelis to return home to the north

of the country. And now with Hezbollah in shambles, Its sponsor, Iran, felt compelled to act. (missiles exploding) - Oh, Jesus. - [Danna] What we are all seeing with our own eyes is a major attack from Iran. - [Reporter] It's a major attack, Danna, and it's an escalation. It's an escalation... - [Johnny] So even if Hezbollah eventually begins to rebuild itself, it's unclear what role they will play in Iran's proxy network. But what is clear is that the clash between these two Middle East powers remains the central force animating this region towards more and more violence.

And these recent events show us clearer than ever that Hezbollah was just one foot soldier in this growing conflict between these two powers. Checking in one last time to remind you that this video is made possible by Ground News, the sponsor of this compilation. Ground News is the service that I use to look deeper into the headlines that I'm consuming, very, very deeply aligned with their mission to help reveal the narratives behind all of the many headlines that are covering the world's news. If you wanna get 40% off their Vantage Plan, which is the one

I use, you can go to ground.news/johnnyharris to get in on that discount and support this very useful service. Okay, onto the next video. (subdued music) Along the banks of the most important waterway on earth sits the country of Yemen, a place that was two countries for decades until the year 1990, when it was unified into one. A fragile patchwork of groups all with different tribal backgrounds, religious beliefs, and political aspirations. The story I want to tell starts in the '90s, when one group forms up in the northern mountains of Yemen. It's started by a group

of religious Yemenis who call themselves the Believing Youth, who were members of a Shiite Muslim sect called the Zaidi. Zaidi Muslims used to be the majority when the country was split in two. But in the new unified Yemen, they became a minority and felt neglected and discriminated against. At first, the group focuses on rebuilding the Zaidi religious identity, hosting summer camps for young men and offering religious education. But in the late 1990s, the group starts to change in important ways. A member of Yemen's parliament resigns in protest and joins the Believing Youth. He felt that

the government of Yemen was corrupt and far too influenced by Yemen's neighbor to the north, Saudi Arabia. Al Houthi blamed outside influence for many of the country's problems. So as he leaves the government, Al Houthi uses his wealth and family connections in the Zaidi community to become the leader of the Believing Youth. He wants an Islamic revolution, modeled after the one in Iran. One that kicks out any foreign influence and restores Islamic values. - [Reporter] Outrage with the speed of the human shout. - [Johnny] With Al Houthi's influence, this group of young men in the

mountainous region of Yemen starts to change. They begin protesting Yemen's president, Ali Abdullah Saleh. Soon they start taking up weapons, taking over territory, and eventually setting up their own security checkpoints in their region. The Believing Youth are starting to look a lot less like a summer camp and a lot more like a militia, like a rebellion. President Saleh, who had previously supported the Believing Youth, is starting to get worried. And then in 2001, the entire Middle East would change forever. (dark music) After 9/11, the U.S. launches a war on terror. (reflective music) They asked President

Saleh for help, and he cooperates, taking military aid and allowing American special forces to operate inside Yemen, where the terrorist group Al-Qaeda has a presence. 18 months later, the U.S. presence in the region would balloon even more When the American military invades and occupies Iraq. For Al Houthi and his group of young men, this crosses a red line and deeply radicalizes the movement. Al Houthi criticizes the president publicly for pandering to what he sees as American imperialism in Muslim lands. And many in Yemen agree, joining the movement and bolstering their numbers. Al Houthi adopts the

violent slogan that sits on the flag of his movement to this day: God is great. Death to America. Death to Israel. Curse on the Jews. Victory to Islam. President Saleh feels threatened by the growth of this increasingly radical movement that is taking control of territory in the north. He issues an arrest warrant and a bounty for Al Houthi and brutally cracks down on their protests. In response, the Believing Youth launch an armed rebellion in the north of Yemen, leading to counterattacks by the Yemeni military. Shortly after the fighting begins, Al Houthi is killed in a

cave in the north. The rebels he leaves behind fight on with new conviction, and the world would know them by the name of their martyr, a symbol of imperial resistance that would soon be firing rockets at Israel And hijacking cargo ships in the Red Sea. (subdued music) By 2004, the Houthis have morphed into a full-blown rebellion, fighting against Yemen's government from their northern strongholds. They know this land well and they have local support, allowing them to fight a guerrilla campaign against the government forces, blending in with civilians, hiding in mountains and caves, and allowing them

to resist the much better-equipped Yemeni army. As the conflict turns more violent, more tribes in the region would feel that the military is being overly brutal, leading them to join the Houthis. And it's at this time that the conflict goes international. The Houthis say that Saudi Arabia is letting the government of Yemen position troops right across this border. So they invade into Saudi Arabia, killing Saudi soldiers and taking hostages. This pulls Saudi Arabia into the conflict, as they respond with airstrikes and troops and push the Houthis out of their territory, punishing them for this invasion.

Now, over here, Iran is watching this war, and they see an opportunity. The Houthis are now fighting directly against their biggest rival, Saudi Arabia. So they start secretly sending weapons to the Houthis. At least that's what Saudi Arabia claims, saying that they intercepted an Iranian ship filled with weapons and military trainers on their way to the Houthis. It looks like Iran is directly supporting the Houthis now. Though how much support they provide behind the scenes will always be intentionally unclear. As the conflict between the Houthis and the government continues in the north, Saudi Arabia has

been fighting their own war on terror against a branch of Al-Qaeda operating in Saudi Arabia. Seeing that their days are numbered, this branch of Al-Qaeda flees south over the border into Yemen, where they merge their forces with the Yemen branch of Al-Qaeda. They create Al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula, or AQAP, one of the most dangerous and well-funded versions of the group to ever exist. The group's goal is to create a strict Islamic state across the whole region, while violently waging holy war against foreigners in Muslim lands. (reflective music) This puts them at odds with both

the Yemeni government and the Houthis. The conflict is getting more complicated. Around 2011, the region starts to change in big ways. In one country after another, There's an outpouring of public anger on the streets, demanding change from their government, removing old leaders. This is called the Arab Spring. It's upheaval that spirals the region into hope and chaos. (protesters chanting in foreign language) - [Johnny] Iran and Saudi Arabia see this as an opportunity to strategically choose sides in all of these countries, in hopes that when the dust settles, they will come out with a stronger hand

of allies in the region. And one of their main focuses is Yemen, a country that is also rising up, calling for President Saleh to step down. The corrupt dictator of Yemen is running out of time, which is something the Houthis have been fighting for for years. But Saleh refuses to step down, adding fuel to the uprising. Saudi Arabia sees this situation at their southern border and decides to step in with the help of the UN, convincing Saleh to transfer power to his vice president, in exchange for immunity from prosecution. On his way out, Saleh takes

the billions of dollars that he corruptly amassed during his time in office, and he also retains the loyalty of key parts of the military, fighters that are only loyal to him. But the people aren't satisfied with this new Saudi-backed president. The government remains weak and unorganized. Meanwhile, the Houthis are taking advantage of this infighting and only getting stronger, taking more and more territory from the government, adding to their forces, and receiving more support from their backer, Iran, who is supplying them with more training, missiles, drones, and other advanced weapons. They use these weapons in the

fall of 2014 to march into southern Yemen, taking over large swaths of territory. Now that the Houthis have momentum, the former President Saleh joins them in an alliance of convenience. In fact, Saleh's forces are critical in helping the Houthis take the capital city of Sanaa. Saleh is now working with his former enemy, against his own vice president, the man he had to give power to when he stepped down. President Hadi and his government flee south as the Houthis take over, but the Houthis are right behind them. So Hadi has to flee to Saudi Arabia, trying

to govern Yemen from there. But the Houthis just keep gaining momentum. By the middle of 2015, they now control the capital city completely, where they create their own government And take control of the government's military weapons, helping them expand even further into the south. Now that the Houthis are in power, they run an oppressive regime that silences free speech, crushes dissent through arrest and torture, and recruits children as soldiers, all while imposing strict religious laws that undermine women's rights. Meanwhile, Saudi Arabia is getting nervous. Their southern neighbor is now controlled by a group that is

funded by their biggest enemy. So they recruit the support of countries around the region and invade Yemen, with the goal of removing the Houthis from power. The war is led by Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, Saudi Arabia's up-and-coming leader and defense minister. He starts with a widespread bombing campaign and a naval blockade that prevents shipping in and out of the country, with the goal of trying to cut off support coming in from Iran. The crown prince turns to the United States in need of more weapons for this war. While the U.S. leaders are reluctant to

get involved in another Middle East conflict, they also want to maintain a good relationship with Saudi Arabia, who is their major security and energy partner in the region. They also have an interest In weakening Al-Qaeda's growing presence in Yemen. So in addition to supporting this war with logistics and intelligence, President Obama approves billions of dollars of weapons: planes, tanks, and even weapons banned by most of the world for how dangerous they are for civilians, like cluster munitions. (tense music) This quickly turns Saudi Arabia into the largest importer of American weapons for the next four years.

So it's 2015, and Yemen is in a full-blown war between the Houthis and Saudi Arabia and their coalition. This is when Al-Qaeda, who's not on either side, takes advantage of this chaos and makes a land grab in the middle of Yemen. They take major cities and clash with government forces. Also taking advantage of the instability is the terrorist group ISIS, who come to Yemen and fight the Houthis and Al-Qaeda, at the same time. Though their attacks are scattered, and they don't control significant territory. The U.S. then gets more involved by launching airstrikes at Al-Qaeda and

ISIS targets to stop them from gaining any more territory. They tried to kill their leadership. But the U.S. has to do this carefully because they don't want to engage the Houthis. Their fight is with Al-Qaeda and ISIS. In May of 2015, the Houthis attack a city just across the border in Saudi Arabia, killing two and taking hostages, forcing an airport to shut down. The crown prince doesn't take being attacked on his own soil lightly, especially by Iran's proxies. So over the next 24 hours, the Saudis launch 130 airstrikes in Yemen, hitting homes, schools, and hospitals.

Thousands are forced to flee from their home. Hundreds are reported dead, though we'll never know the real death toll. These strikes are almost immediately called war crimes. But the crown prince doesn't back down. His coalition then sends in ground troops from the south, pushing back the Houthis and taking back the city of Aden. He's behaving as if he's fighting his greatest enemy, Iran. It's a vicious cycle that is common in proxy wars like this, and it lands the people of Yemen in the worst humanitarian crisis in the world. The international community tries to intervene with

diplomatic efforts to stop the fighting. But over the next six years, those efforts would fail, and Saudi Arabia would continue its brutal campaign, all using American weapons. The Houthis continue to fight, to show that they are legitimate, that they are the government of Yemen. They aren't just doing Iran's bidding. (somber music) The war continues to destroy cities and land, and the blockade continues to keep trade out. The Saudis continue to bomb indiscriminately. And with time, 2 million Yemenis are displaced, forced to leave their homes to flee this violence. - [Reporter] 150,000 civilians have had to-

- [Johnny] But this doesn't stop the Houthis from escalating their offensive. They start attacking Saudi Arabia directly with missiles and drones in their capital city and their civilian airports, using weapons that most believe are coming from Iran. (tense music) In December of 2017, the Saudis and the UAE convinced President Saleh to break his alliance with the Houthis and return to power as president of Yemen. They hope that Saleh, the former dictator, might be able to hold onto power and rule more effectively. Saleh takes the deal and changes sides yet again, breaking with the Houthis and

joining the Saudi-led coalition. (reflective music) Fighting breaks out between the Houthis and Saleh's militias, and Saleh is killed just two days later. (reflective music) Meanwhile, in the United States, there's a new president. President Trump orders increased drone strikes and raids against Al-Qaeda, helping government forces take back large amounts of territory. Despite the war crimes committed using American weapons, Trump approves more weapons sales to Saudi Arabia to wage this war. And then in 2018, the conflict takes on a new dimension. The UAE, who's a part of the Saudi-led coalition, is starting to lose faith in the

direction this war is going. They don't like the current government of Yemen, and they're losing soldiers on the ground. It's damaging their reputation on the world stage. So the UAE leaves the coalition. But they still want to influence who will ultimately control Yemen, so they start backing a new group in the south called the Southern Transitional Council, or STC. This group isn't aligned with the government or the Houthis. They're calling for a separation of the southern part of Yemen. They want their own state. They want their own country. So the UAE starts to withdraw their

troops from the south of the country, and the STC separatists start taking control of southern provinces. The Saudi coalition is fracturing, and yet another group is jumping into the fighting, showing just how up for grabs Yemen has become. By the fall of 2019, the war has reached maximum complexity. You've got the Saudi coalition Backing the former government of Yemen, mostly relegated to the east of the country. The UAE is now backing this separatist movement in the south, who are fighting against the former government of Yemen. The Houthis, backed by Iran, still maintain majority control of

the major cities in the north. Al-Qaeda and its militia allies are still fighting to control small slices of the country. And the U.S. continues to conduct airstrikes against Al-Qaeda and ISIS, while supporting and selling more weapons to the Saudi coalition. Yemen is fracturing further, and if there's any hope for peace, power needs to be consolidated. So Saudi Arabia and the UAE make amends, and then, together, they convince the government of Yemen and the separatists in the south to form a new coalition to fight against the Houthis together as a united front. But it doesn't stop

the Houthis, who are getting really good at fighting and are firing more Iranian missiles and drones into Saudi Arabia, hitting state-owned oil refineries and threatening to drive up oil prices globally. By January 2021, the Houthis, a group started to provide religious summer camps to young men, are now battle hardened, and they control 70 to 80% of the population of Yemen. Later that year, the UN announces that approximately 20 million of those people Are dependent on humanitarian aid for their daily needs. And at this point, the war starts to settle in to an uncomfortable stalemate. (somber

music) In April 2022, the UN brokers a ceasefire, and the fighting stops. Behind the scenes, Saudi Arabia and Iran have been in diplomatic talks, sponsored by China. Regional tensions are cooling, which means that their proxy war in Yemen is also cooling. Saudi Arabia has had enough of the fighting. President Hadi resigns and hands power over to a council meant to govern Yemen and manage the war. And both sides are tired of the fighting. So when that ceasefire is set to expire in October 2022, the conflict mostly stays quiet, even without a new agreement. By 2023,

Saudi Arabia and Iran have officially restored their diplomatic relations. Saudi Arabia hoping that this means Iran will stop supporting Houthis to attack their southern border. But the Saudis keep their maritime blockade around the country, making life in Yemen unlivable for millions. But at this point, the heaviest of the fighting on all sides has stopped. But then in the fall of 2023, the Houthis were back in the news. After the Palestinian group Hamas Launches a brutal attack into Israel, the Israeli military invades the Gaza Strip, vowing to destroy Hamas and free the hostages that they took.

The campaign leads to tens of thousands of Palestinian civilian deaths, and it provokes a response from Iranian-backed groups all throughout the region. The Houthis are one of those groups. They launch drones and cruise missiles into southern Israel, vowing that their attacks won't stop until the invasion of Gaza stops. And then they start firing their missiles and drones at cargo ships that are traveling through the Red Sea, where 25% of container traffic travels, a major artery in our global economy. In the days after these missiles start flying, traffic through this Red Sea route declines by 73%.

In response, the U.S. and UK shoot down Houthis missiles and drop bombs on Houthis military targets in Yemen, pulling the U.S. and its allies deeper into this enduring conflict. (reflective music) The reason I wanted to tell you the story of this conflict in Yemen. Because it represents the vicious cycle present in a lot of proxy wars, where geopolitical rivals use their neighbors as battlefields instead of fighting each other directly. They fund and add fuel to local conflicts, Escalating them to the entire country, and often to the entire region, leaving violence and power vacuums in their

wake, which are then filled by bad actors trying to take advantage of the instability. All of this changes borders, destroys cities, and ruins lives. It's the story of powerful countries and their cynical scramble for influence and power in vulnerable places, leaving behind them a wake of tremendous human suffering. (somber music) (brooding music) - [Reporter] Breaking news. Because Yemen's Houthis rebels- - [Reporter] They could attack a commercial ship and could bog the strait up for weeks, if not months. (protestors chanting in foreign language) - [Johnny] There is a part of the world that everyone is keeping

an eye on right now. - The joint military strikes were a response to nearly two months of attacks by the Iran-backed Houthis movement on cargo ships in the Red Sea. - [Johnny] It is becoming more and more important for the global rivalries and tensions that are heating up on our globe right now. It is this choke point in the Red Sea. (subdued music) It's pretty small. It's a few dozen kilometers wide, but through this little choke point flows a lot of important things. The internet, millions of barrels of oil per day, 30% of all container

ships that connect global markets. And this choke point is surrounded by unstable situations. Countries that are in civil wars, rebel militias, proxy wars, unstable governments, failed states, and pirates. In recent decades, pirates have hijacked thousands of ships here extracting hundreds of millions of dollars in ransoms, a topic we did a whole deep dive on in another video. And lately, as war has raged in the Gaza Strip, the fiercely anti-Western Houthis rebels in Yemen have been firing rockets at cargo ships traveling through this water leading the U.S. and UK to strike back. - A ship attacked

by Iran-backed Houthis rebels last month sank in the Red Sea. - [Johnny] The region is vital, yet volatile all at once. And yet in the middle of all of this is this one beacon of stability, a little piece of land that is easy to miss, but that is more important than you might think. It is the country of Djibouti. (tense music) Djibouti is this small arid country right on the choke point, and it is home to the militaries of the United States Of several European powers, of Japan, Japan's only foreign military base, by the way,

and right down the road from the American base, China's first military base outside of its country. (subdued music) Qatar has peacekeepers here. The United Arab Emirates ran the biggest port. Eritrea seized some of its territory recently, and Ethiopia, one of the largest countries in Africa, runs almost all of its trade through Djibouti. Ethiopia's landlocked, and this is their, like, gateway to the world. It's a lot. Djibouti is a lot. There's a lot going on in Djibouti, which is why today we are talking about this place. I want to explore why so many powers want to

be here, why everyone is converging on this little tiny patch of land the size of New Jersey. And I wanna ask if little Djibouti, one of the poorest countries in the world, can balance all these rival powers against each other without falling victim to them. - [Austin] You know, 10 to 15% of global trade moves through the Red Sea. We will not hesitate to defend lives and the free flow of commerce. (subdued music) - This little choke point is called the Bab-el-Mandeb, or Gate of Tears. It used to be nothing but a recipe for shipwrecks.

It was known mostly for strong winds, unpredictable crosscurrents and shallow reefs that made navigating it dangerous. And it wasn't very valuable because if you go through it, you just end up in the Red Sea, which was a dead-end for most of history. That is, until a French company miraculously cut a canal through this part of Egypt and changed the world forever, nearly halving the time that it would take for Europeans to get to Asia where they were all racing each other to conquer, colonize, and bring back unfathomable wealth to their countries. The Suez Canal was

a massive upgrade to this hunt for resources. Was this video kind of an excuse for me to buy these really old, beautiful books about the Suez Canal? Yes, it was. For France, this engineering miracle called the Suez Canal was their chance to beat out their big rival, the British Empire, who was clearly winning the race, dominating the routes to Asia before Suez opened. The canal was supposed to change that. So now you have a new front in this race, a scramble for control over this new route to Asia. This windy little choke point was no

longer just the Gate of Tears. It was an important bit of water, one of the most important on earth, at least for the empires, they had to keep an eye on it. So the British take this little island right at the choke point. They put a lighthouse on it. They also take control of a port just south of the choke point. The Italians then show up and purchase this bit of coastline from local sultans eventually taking over this whole stretch of coast called Eritrea. And the French would start fixating on this strip of sparsely populated

coast right on the banks of the choke point, the land that would become Djibouti. The sultans here told the French that, yes, they could have a bit of this newly strategic land in exchange for protection. The locals here knew what was going on. The great empires were all scrambling and racing, and they were going to use their prime real estate to get what they wanted to leverage the situation. Smart and totally a theme throughout this video. So the French set up their colony, they call it Cotes Francaises des Somalies or French Somaliland. This choke point

would become a key base for projecting power and refueling on their way to carve up and plunder Asia. (intense music) France would hold on to their little colonial invention for a long time. Even as the world would decolonize after World War II, France held on to this strategic colony along the choke point until eventually the locals rose up. There were protests, they clashed with the local authorities, and it led to an independence vote. And in 1977, Djibouti became a new country. Djibouti was independent, but they had a problem. In the words of some "New York

Times" reporting from 1977, the tiny new nation had no army, less than one square mile of arable land, and no resources except for sand, salt, and 20,000 camels. Yeah, not good. So once again, they made a deal with France. Djibouti wouldn't be France's anymore, but they would be allowed to retain a military base in the country in exchange for security and protection as well as economic aid. But this didn't change the fact that Djibouti had very little natural resources or arable land. Their economy fell into a crippling depression. Eventually there was a civil war and

it wasn't looking good for Djibouti. Djibouti's salvation would eventually come when they realized that they should harken back to the old days and start exploiting the thing that had made them valuable all those years ago: Their location. - [Reporter] Let's go. Go, go, go, go! Stop shooting, man. Go! - A plane has crashed into the World Trade- - [Reporter] Can you tell us how this happened? - Not right now. - Our very freedom came under attack in a series of deliberate and deadly terrorist acts. - [Johnny] Three months after 9/11, the United States was about

to come crashing into the Middle East in a new way, and they asked Djibouti if they could set up a base there. And Djibouti says yes. - Suddenly after the global war on terror, America realizes that it's one of the key locations. It matters to be there. You had, you know, Al-Qaeda in Yemen, you had Al-Qaeda and even Horn of Africa. So they needed a base. And Djibouti was one country which was willing to offer it. - It would become America's only permanent military base on the continent of Africa. And it would be a key

jumping-off point for George Bush's war on terror. And reminder that it's now the 21st century. Things have changed in the world. And this little choke point was becoming more valuable again, but for different reasons than the old days. (ship horn blares) Number one, the world had become addicted to fossil fuels, oil and gas, which was the lifeblood of their economies. And most of that oil and gas was coming from over here, from the land and waters of the countries around this Persian Gulf where it was then put on ships and sent around the world, a

lot of it heading west through this vital choke point Up the Red Sea into the Suez Canal and onto Europe. The world knew that their energy was vulnerable because Egypt in earlier decades had weaponized the canal by closing it, by blocking it. One time for eight years, inflicting immediate pain on the countries that rely on this constant flow of energy and goods. By the way, semi side note, this flow of energy becomes even more important when Europe almost entirely cuts ties with Russian natural gas after Russia invaded Ukraine in 2022. So they have to get

more natural gas from this region. Qatar was not sad about that, let's put it that way. Anyway, we're getting off topic. Europe needs this route to stay stable. They need these little dots to keep flowing. So that's one reason that the choke point has become more vital than ever. The other reason is China. (subdued music) China rose to become a manufacturing superpower. They make a lot of stuff and they send it to the West. And a lot of that comes through this choke point. And all of this vital trade is happening in a region that

is full of unstable governments, rising anti-Western militias and Somali pirates making this route precarious and dangerous and subject to problems. So Djibouti has become this vital place here at the choke point, an incredibly important strategic location in a sea of turmoil. Okay, but there's more. In addition to all of this global economy importance, there's also regional importance to Djibouti. Notice Djibouti's neighbor, Ethiopia, the second most populous country in Africa, and as you can see, one that is totally landlocked. It is not good to be a big country that is landlocked because the water is where

we trade. So Djibouti is the gateway to Ethiopia's millions of people to trade with the world. 95% of Ethiopia's trade passes through Djibouti. So Djibouti, this colonial creation from France in the 1880s is now once again an incredibly important place on the map. It's become, once again, a highly strategic location. (inquisitive music) And when there are highly strategic locations, superpowers start moving in. In 2011, Djibouti approved Japan, a pacifist sort of non-military country, to open a military base on Djibouti, their one and only foreign military base. Then you have Italy who set up a military

base here in 2013. Spain and Germany also have a military presence here. They're not permanently hosted with a base, they're actually hosted by France, and the soldiers live in these hotels permanently. Okay. That's not weird at all. But yeah, as you can see, the great powers are back. They're back in Djibouti like the old days, not to compete with one another, but to all band together to police this vital choke point so that the global economy that has brought prosperity to all of us can stay stable. Everything keeps flowing. Everyone is happy. And this solved

a big problem for Djibouti, who, again, didn't have a big industry or any kind of resource. They make a lot of money off of these leases to foreign countries, which has helped build their economy. And like the old days, when one side shows up, the rival won't be far behind. (tense music) - China has agreed to set up a support base in Djibouti. - So the Chinese base is right here, and they're gonna be watching us as we are watching them. - In 2016, Djibouti announces that they've been talking to China and that they've agreed

to give them land to open their own military base, which was built and opened right down the road from the American base in 2017. So China says they're there because of pirates. Pirates have been wreaking havoc in this area. So they're there to stabilize their economic interests because of pirates. But as we discovered in our deep dive on pirates, By 2017, the pirate issue was basically over. There was almost no hijackings in this region. I mean, look at this graph. Oh, and the Chinese base has this big deep pier that is like large enough to

handle an aircraft carrier and nuclear submarines. So this isn't about pirates. China also did the most China thing when they moved in here, which was instead of just building a base, they also came with all of these big-ticket infrastructure projects as like gifts to win the favor of the locals. We're talking railway, pipeline, port, all very expensive, all putting Djibouti into a lot of debt to China. They're doing this all over Africa, which we talk about in another deep dive video we did on the topic mapping all of China's giant infrastructure projects in Africa and

what that means. Man, a lot of shout outs to other videos today, huh? So Djibouti is now the only place on earth where the United States and China, these two rivals, have military bases right next to each other. And so far everyone's been playing nice. There's been no shenanigans other than both sides accusing each other of spying on each other constantly. Oh, and there was the lasers. The U.S. says that China was pointing lasers into the eyes of pilots while they were taking off, which like if they really did that, that's just like, why? Why

would you do that? Like, why did you do that? Don't do that. Okay, but Djibouti doesn't let every country in. Russia wanted to have their own base in Djibouti. And Djibouti said no. It probably helped that the American national security advisor flew to Djibouti and told them that the U.S. would double how much they're paying for their lease if Djibouti didn't let Russia in. (gentle music) Okay, but what about the people? Djibouti isn't just one big military base. There's almost a million people who live here and their day-to-day probably consists of a lot of jet

engine sounds. I got to talk to my old grad school professor, David Vine, who is an expert on U.S. military bases and how they affect the locals. - So what we were talking about is a foreign government, foreign military occupying large swaths of land, fenced off, and hosting large amounts of weaponry, high-powered weaponry of many, many kinds. (Hassan speaking foreign language) - Because these bases are so close to like the big city, there have been accidents, especially with drones. The U.S. used to take off their drones and some would fall and actually crash onto like

civilian infrastructure. So they had to open a separate airstrip (Hassan speaking foreign language) - Apart from occasionally running over cows, the soldiers mostly keep to themselves. U.S. soldiers don't even go into the city to like buy stuff. All of it is flown in creating a little slice of America right in Djibouti. Like, they don't even drink the water from Djibouti. It's all flown in. (Hassan speaking foreign language) - And then there's the dictator. - Well, I wanna welcome President Guelleh and his delegation here today. - The U.S. base in particular, but also the French and

Chinese bases, which are the largest of the collection, are all helping to prop up undemocratic regime that has, you know, been accused of widespread human rights abuses - Every time a foreign power makes a deal with Djibouti and pays them a lot of money in exchange for them being able to be there, they basically validate this terrible dictator who's been in power for 25 years. There's no real elections, free press, freedom of speech, plenty of human rights abuses. But on the other side, there's at least one way that regular people in Djibouti benefit from all

of this. Fewer people go hungry today than at the conclusion of the civil war. And even though the economy is still poor, all of this foreign aid still does support it. Is that worth it to them? I don't actually know. And another version of this video that I wanna do someday is to go there and talk to the people and hear what their thoughts are about the bases in Djibouti and what that feels like to live so close to all of these foreign militaries. For now, we're talking about the geography, the history, the geopolitics. (upbeat

music) Okay, speaking of geopolitics, there is another angle to this story that is devilishly complicated to get into. And I'm not gonna get into all the juicy details. You'll understand why when I start talking about it. It has to do with the regional geopolitics, the rivalries, and the concerns and the issues of all of these countries that are right next to Djibouti, not just the outside powers. I want to just give you a little sampling of what this looks like because it's pretty wild. So you have all these Gulf countries, and some of them are

not totally on the same team, but almost all of them are thinking about the future and they're realizing that oil is not gonna be a big part of their future because oil is not gonna be a big part of any of our future hopefully. And they're realizing that they're going to need to invest in the Horn of Africa, this region here, which they believe is probably gonna be the future of their food, their future bread basket. So hold that for a second and then look at Ethiopia and Eritrea. Ethiopia, as we mentioned, uses Djibouti as

their gateway to the world. They need it to feed their millions of people. All of this geopolitics is also playing out in Djibouti, this little country that has to navigate everyone's interests. So here's a quick episode of this drama to give you an idea of what it looks like. (intense music) The United Arab Emirates, UAE, used to be like best friends with Djibouti. It was like one of their most important partners. The UAE built and owned this giant port that basically runs Djibouti's entire economy. But then the UAE got really close to Djibouti's neighbor and

kind of enemy Eritrea. This was very worrisome because Djibouti doesn't want Eritrea to become the new Djibouti. They're a mortal threat. They don't want the UAE to just shut down Djibouti's, like, strategic offering. Okay, fast forward to like 2017, the UAE with their close friend, Saudi Arabia, are in a feud with Qatar, which also has a military presence in Djibouti right up here on this border. Now that Qatar and the UAE are fighting with each other, they turn to Djibouti and say, "Hey, you are too close with the UAE. We're out of here." Qatar takes

their soldiers out of this border area, and right away, Eritrea takes some of this land from Djibouti. This may seem like some petty border skirmishes, but remember where we are here. This is the vital choke point, Bab-el-Mandeb, every inch of land matters. Every little conflict could be the spark that stops the global economy. And what this little flare up shows us is how Djibouti finds itself in the center of conflicts between other countries that it kind of doesn't want to be in the middle of, but, like, has found itself in the middle of because it

hosts all of their militaries. But wait, there's more. Djibouti is actually really good at this. They know how to play the game and to play all these powers off of each other and we'll see what happens next. So they're kind of beholden to the UAE, UAE has way too much leverage over them. So finally it all comes to a head and they kick the UAE out from this really vital port, and they give a massive chunk of it to, wait for it, China, the new arrival to Djibouti that no one wants to mess with. They

now have the port and Djibouti is now on their side and the UAE can't do anything about it. Djibouti saved itself from one power by pleasing a bigger power. Do you see how this works? Do you see what game they're playing here? (subdued music) So that is why this tiny country in East Africa is so important. It's kind of the definition of geopolitics, politics happening because of geography. To project legitimacy. This choke point is only going to become more important. Day by day, we're seeing it happen. I mean, like right now as I'm filming this,

the Houthis rebels are like potentially cutting internet cables in this choke point. - Three crew members have been killed in a Houthis- - The first death since Houthis rebels began attacking shipping in the Red Sea. - After months of bombing merchant ships to punish the West for supporting the IDF war in Gaza. I mean, it's this kind of threat that Djibouti was set up to handle. That is why all these foreign militaries are here. And yet for me, there is a subtler threat that is emerging here, which you can see when you just look at

this map of bases. Djibouti hosts rival countries during a time when we are transitioning away from a rules-based order where all the great powers have an incentive to work together under one system that is dominated by the United States that deeply benefits the United States and its allies. But that works because the United States imposes and protects those rules. Those rules are being challenged. And what is emerging is a system that is messier, More disruptive to these reliable rules that have kept everything stable, kept the United States on top. And unfortunately we know all too

well what happens when great powers start competing with each other more and more over vital resources and vital geographies. In fact, most of the history of war is what happens when great powers are competing with each other. It's ugly, it's messy, it's violent. It provokes a zero-sum way of thinking, competition racing to secure and control and exploit vital geographies like strategic choke points that lead into the most important waterway on the planet. As this rivalry heats up, Djibouti's role is going to become more complex. Its government will continue to do what it's done, playing the

big powers off each other, exploiting its great real estate to benefit itself. But I believe that there comes a point in every escalating conflict where you kind of have to choose sides. I want Djibouti to continue to embody the positive sum thinking that has kept the world relatively stable these last 70 years. But it's definitely playing with a very delicate balancing act and there's a chance that it could stumble. So as you all know, I will be keeping an eye on the global order as well as Djibouti To try to see where this is going,

to see if the great powers can continue to cooperate and compete, but cooperate. Or if we're heading back into the old days where competition threatens to rip the world apart. I don't think it's inevitable, but it's gonna take effort to avoid it. (subdued music) I've been sleeping every night in the desert. Up here in the northwest corner of Saudi Arabia. (weighty music) It's quiet up here. All you can hear is the wind and the sand that it whips off these endless dunes. (sand rustles) But not far from where I sleep there's a new sound. (construction

rumbles and drones) For years I've been hearing about this trillion-dollar futuristic city that the kingdom of Saudi Arabia is building atop this sand. They're calling it Neom, and they're investing a huge amount of their vast oil wealth into making it come to life. I've been hearing about all the reasons it can't work, how this is all just a mirage of royal ambitions. And yet even from space, you can see that they're building it, they're building something. Why would anyone try to build a futuristic city in a barren desert? That is a question I've had for

a very long time, and one I intend to get to the bottom of. (inquisitive music) So I'm going into Neom to see what it looks like, to get a sense of its scale. We're looking at this fleet of dump trucks. The amount of construction activity is insane, and it hasn't stopped as we've been driving along The Line. The magnitude, I've never seen anything close. They're building mountains out there. I'm joined by my friend Solom, who was born in a tent out here. He knows this desert better than anyone, every dune, every valley. All the secret

water spots hidden deep in red rock slot canyons. I asked Solom to bring me out into the desert, not only to get up close on the construction of Neom, but also to show me how people live out here, to introduce me to members of his tribe, how they've survived for centuries. Nomadic Bedouin, who represent the origin story Of this desert kingdom. (Bedouin people laughing) I wanted to put a human face to this collision of worlds, old and new. (wondrous music) I believe this little shape on the map represents the story of Saudi Arabia, where it

came from, how it got here, and why it is attempting to build these cities in the sand. (truck horn blaring) I'm officially in Neom, and let me tell you what I'm seeing so far. (trucks droning) Trucks, trucks, trucks. Dump trucks, cargo trucks, trucks carrying excavators, trucks carrying more trucks. I've never seen so many trucks in my entire life. Oh, and these roads, a lot of them are brand new, a lot of them don't even show up on Google Maps. Like I'm looking at my phone and I'm just sort of floating in no man's land because

these are all brand-new roads. This is new, everything is popping up so quickly. (laughs) There's so many trucks. (upbeat music) All of the sudden, Solom turned off one of these pristinely new roads. Why do you deflate the tires? - For the dune. - We're now gonna start driving just into the desert. (bright music) Wow, this car can go everywhere. Are we going up this dune? - Yeah. - Oh, wow. (engine revs) - Oh, yeah. - Whoo. Geez, this is insane. (ethereal music) (Johnny laughs) (bright music) Man. It's gorgeous. Okay, now we're really in the desert.

We found a little canyon to camp in. (fire crackling) And while I thought we'd be eating granola bars or canned soup, Solom had other plans. - [Solom] Have you tried camel meat before? - [Johnny] Nuh-uh. - You will try it tonight. - Really? - Hashi. Hashi is the young camel. - [Johnny] Ah, rice with camel meat. The evening tradition here is to wind down with a cup of coffee. Saudi coffee is unroasted and green, infused with cardamom. It's a different taste, I like it though. But it's still very caffeinated. Oh, and then after the coffee

comes... - Tea? - Ah, thank you. Which, again, is very delicious, But how can they drink so much coffee before bed? Yeah, I can't drink too much because I- - Oh yeah. - The caffeine, I won't be able to sleep. - Yeah. - [Johnny] In the morning I'll drink a lot of it. - Okay. (gentle music) - Wow. Mm, wow. That's good. So until what age did you live in the desert? - Maybe until seven. - Till seven? - Yeah. - Did you like it? - Yeah, I like it. - Yeah. - I like it.

It's so rare to find families. Real families living in the desert. (Johnny laughing) The people that we are going to, they are real Bedouins. (Bedouins people laughing) But when we moved to the city I study. (cars honking) I go back. - Oh, you go back to the desert? - Yeah. (gentle music) Even for me, I like to have a job in the city, but I want the Bedouin life. I want them to stay. - Soon we'll meet the Bedouin nomads who sleep under these stars every night. Look at this night full of incredible stars. Wow.

The Saudi desert is proving to be exceptionally peaceful, despite the army of trucks that, by the way, are still working here in the dead of night. They don't ever stop and haven't for years. (Johnny exhales) It is so silent here. My brain doesn't know what to do about it. It's so silent and... (serene music) (Johnny chuckles) But as the sun rises and Solom feeds me dates and green coffee, oh, and of course more tea, I'm thinking about my mission for today. (driving music) My plan is to drive all throughout Neom, to all the big construction

sites and show you what they're planning on building out here with their initial budget of $500 billion, which has since ballooned to an estimated $1.5 trillion. And you're about to see why. So I made it to the coast, and I'm looking at the beautiful Red Sea, which is a very beautiful kind of blue in fact. - [Presenter] This is Oxagon, the place where ideas can change the world. - [Johnny] Oxagon is planned to be their futuristic industrial city. Half of it built on the water. It'll be a port where shipping can connect the world to

a bunch of high-tech manufacturing, research, and logistics. And there's Sindalah, which is gonna be right here on the Red Sea. It's going to be a luxury resort island with plenty of parking for yachts. Hello. We picked up a hitchhiker who has been working on Sindalah for years. How's it looking in Sindalah? - [Hitch Hiker] Finished like 99%. - Really? - Yeah. (upbeat music) Sindalah. (drone buzzes) And then there's Magna, (light fluttery music) which is actually the name of one of these coastal villages we've just been driving next to that is no longer a village. They

forcibly relocated thousands of people for this project. Atop the ruins of these villages, the kingdom is building 12 luxury coastal resorts and communities. (birds squawking) Hey, just one quick clarification here, all of those visuals are 3D renders. They are visualizations done by Neom to see what they want this to look like. This stuff doesn't exist yet, and I think that maybe is obvious, but it looks so real that I just want to just make crystal clear. I'm showing a lot of this stuff from the hypey promo visuals that have come out from Neom. So that's

one thing. Also, check out some of this footage I got while I was on a dune. It's floating around on this dune. This is me shooting from the drone, but suddenly on the other side of this massive dune, there are these green circles. When I was planning my trip to Saudi Arabia, I got really interested in these things, but that has nothing to do with Neom, so I hopped on the phone with my new colleague, Christophe, and asked him to go down the deep dive rabbit hole of why there's a bunch of green circles in

the Saudi desert. And he did so, and he made an entire video about what he learned. That video is live right now on our new channel tunnel_vision, I think you're gonna like it. (bright music) Built on some pretty wild designs, ideas and concepts, including... - [Presenter] A vast subterranean digital community inside a mountain, Magna, the coast of Neom. - [Johnny] Yeah, right there is perfect. (Solom speaking foreign language) - And then there's Trojena up here in the mountains. Yes, there are big mountains here. It's going to be a luxury tourist destination for adventure and wellness

retreats, complete with an artificial lake and outdoor activities like mountain biking and skiing. Yes, I just said skiing. Up here in the mountains it gets kind of cold in the winter and snow falls. Definitely not enough for skiing, but enough for them to make fake snow and make ski slopes. They're building a manmade lake, in fact, they're doing it right now, I'm looking up at the mountain and seeing the plumes of smoke from the dynamite that they're using (explosions boom) to do whatever they need to do to build an artificial lake. Oh, and by the

way, that's the mountain where Moses talked to God and got the 10 Commandments like a few thousand years ago. - There is no freedom without the law. (lofty music) Who is on the Lord's side? - [Presenter] Welcome to Trojena, the mountains of Neom. (Johnny laughing) - This is all so strange. (Johnny laughing) And then of course, the one you've maybe heard about. (grand airy music) And yes, it's being built. I've been driving along it all morning and I can't really fathom what I'm seeing. I continue to have my mind blown at a scale of this.

They say The Line is gonna be a futuristic city that stretches 170 kilometers and run on renewable energy and artificial intelligence. They want 10 million people to come live here, like a whole New York city of people inside of this line in the desert. Just the digging alone, the amount of earth that they're moving is jaw dropping. The magnitude is like they're building mountains out there and moving so much earth. (crashing music) Now I thought I had seen a lot of trucks before, but as I drove along The Line, I started to get slightly dizzy.

Having a hard time processing the scale of all of this, all of these machines working nonstop, every hour of every day for years. Moving sand, making mountains and carving a straight line into the desert. (wind rustling) All of this seems impossible. So much of the reporting on Neom has been focused on how implausible, expensive, and delusional this project is. And that's all well and good if that's what you wanna focus on, but to me that's not that interesting. What I'm most interested in understanding is why. (gentle music) We found a little cave last night and

camped here. Solom invited some of his friends out. Hey guys. - Hi. - How's it going? - Good. - This is so cool, right? - Yeah, it is. (fire crackling) - [Johnny] We all sat around the fire, me listening while they laughed and joked in Arabic. (Solom and friends speaking Arabic) And then began cooking yet another delicious meal. This time, goat cooked in goat milk with flatbread. Wow, this is awesome. - Yeah. (Solom speaking Arabic) - Mm, wow. So good. I'm admittedly a little groggy after sleeping a few nights on the desert floor. (warm music)

We're just sledding down a massive dune in a car and it's as smooth as butter. Where they're making Trojena it's gonna be kind of crazy. To have skiing in Saudi Arabia, right? - That's a big change here. - Yeah. - It was like a hiking trail. - Yeah. Really? - [Solom] But with this, no, this is new. - Today, Solom is introducing me to members of his tribe. Is this them? Hello. It'll be the polar opposite of yesterday's tour through Neom's construction. He put on his traditional Saudi clothing so as not to surprise the members

of his tribe that he has indeed become a modern city man. (gentle music) We arrived to a remote patch of desert where a few tents are set up. The elder of this family warmly invites me in. Johnny, hi. To sit for coffee. (Bedouin peoples speaking Arabic) And then of course more tea. Wow. And at this point, I'm just embracing the caffeine. They tell me that the only Westerners They've ever seen out here are the ones looking for oil. And that it's very strange to see me showing up to learn about their culture and especially with

a camera. (Bedouin peoples speaking Arabic) - [Johnny] So how long have you lived here? - [Tribesman] This is two months here. - Months? - Yeah. - Wow. (Tribesman speaking Arabic) (sheep bleating) - I got to meet their animals, extended members of this nomadic family. (camel grunting) So this family's been here on this site, and they'll move again when the season tells them to. They basically are here grazing their camels and their goats. And God, they've got a beautiful view. Oh, my God, those mountains. So wait, he's the shepherd? You're the shepherd? - Yeah. - Wow.

That's cool. Do you ever get lost in the desert? (Solom speaking Arabic) - No. - No, he's a pro. He's a pro on that donkey. (Bedouin people speaking Arabic) - These people's lives depend on moving these animals through the desert in search for scarce food. A theme I hear from a lot of people who live out here is the, just sense of peace and simplicity that they get, that they realize that the city could never bring. What do you like about out here that makes you stay? (tribesman speaking Arabic) So when you go to the

city- - Ah, city. - City, no. (both laugh) This is a better life. Man, this sunset is gorgeous. (tribesman singing) Okay. Yeah, yeah, that's good. (warm adventurous music) As the group faces east to perform their fourth of five prayers they do each day, I'm looking west. (gentle music) Just over those mountains, the kingdom of Saudi Arabia is digging a giant line in the sand. Working day and night to reshape this desert, building their high-tech eco city. For most of its history, this was the way of life out here on this peninsula. And it may have

remained such to this day, but eventually the Bedouin on this peninsula united, and unbeknownst to anyone, was sitting atop a sea of black gold. - [Narrator] Oil in commercial quantities, averaging about 200,000 barrels a day. To handle this huge volume, the expanding program requires an increase of permanent personnel to a total of more than 15,000 Arabs. - [Johnny] Oil changed everything. The kingdom rapidly modernized. - [Narrator] The king sees the oil development as the greatest single means to modernize his country and improve the living standards of his people. - [Johnny] All while still maintaining a

deep connection with Islamic law, (muezzin sings) and the rules and norms of Bedouin life. And despite this rapid modernization, hundreds of thousands of people still maintain the nomadic lifestyle. It is a link to their past. (tribesman chatter in Arabic) Nice. (tribesman chatter in Arabic) - [Solom] They're talking about something that they see it these days. The people travel by like bike- - Cycling? Oh. - Yeah. - The conversation goes into the night and I knew I had to ask them about Neom. Can you ask them what their thoughts are on all the building that's happening?

I have to be sensitive here 'cause I'm reminded where I am. Saudi Arabia isn't a place where citizens, nomads or not, can speak critically about their kingdom. I got nervous looks and vague answers. But one thing is for certain that the Saudi government has been paying and compensating anyone who has been affected by these projects. (tribesmen speaking Arabic) - [Johnny] Out of respect, I decide not to push it, it's not worth it. (tribesmen speaking Arabic) - [Johnny] We're sitting around a huge platter of camel meat and fragrant rice. So where I'm from, there's no camels.

- Ah. - No camels, I've never seen a camel until yesterday. The elder generously showing his hospitality By finding the juiciest chunks of camel meat and fat and passing them to me. Thank you. (elder speaking Arabic) - Yeah. And I'm realizing that this moment is a glimpse into one of the oldest-surviving cultures on earth. (elder speaking Arabic) - Thank you. (Bedouin people speaking Arabic) (gentle music) - The family invites us to sleep near their tent. Another night, another sky full of stars. I'm really feeling it, just how fast the change has come to this desert,

where nomads whose movement and lifestyle hark back to the earliest civilizations and who are now living a stone's throw away from the construction of a futuristic city that is attempting to define the next chapter of human civilization. (distressing music) It feels like too much to process. (gentle music) (elder speaking Arabic) - I couldn't help but feel worried for this link to the past. (Bedouin people speaking Arabic) (Johnny and Bedouin people laughing) (wind whispering) - So oil transformed this desert, but soon a problem began to arise. (serious music) Slowly, the world has started coming to terms

with the reality that burning oil to run our world is turning the planet into a place that's not conducive for human life. (futuristic music) The International Energy Agency predicts that the world will hit peak oil demand in 2030, at which time demand will start to fall. Other predictions say it'll take longer, but everyone agrees that the future of this world is not oil. This is bad news for Saudi Arabia, a country that has nothing but oil. - [Announcer] Aramco, the state-owned oil company, second-quarter profit are tumbling by more than a third from last year's record

highs. - Oil transformed this desert kingdom into a modern, powerful country. And in order for them to retain that status, they're going to need to use the money from that oil To transform themselves again. Enter, Neom. (futuristic music) Saudi Arabia wants to replace its oil economy with new economies, new industries, some of which they want to invent. This kingdom that has been historically closed is now open, welcoming tourists for the first time. - [Presenter] Welcome to Arabia. Get your visa now. - Let's go to Sindalah! Are here. - [Johnny] Hoping to attract the world, this

is something neighboring Dubai has done successfully. - [Presenter] The spirit of Dubai. - But Saudi Arabia plans to do it on a whole new level. I'll tell you one thing, the water here is beautiful. On that note, I was surprised at how welcome I felt here. Every person I met greeted me with kindness and eagerness to show me their culture. (tribesman chatter in Arabic) But it's not just about tourism, Neom is manufacturing, sustainability technology, sports, education, media, And even an attempt to reinvent cities themselves. (inquisitive music) They also want to use all this oil money

to stay on top of global energy. All of this hot sun is great for solar energy. And while driving around, I saw endless fields of wind turbines. And they can use this to make new forms of hydrogen energy that they can ship around the world. And the reason why all these promo videos look like a Hollywood movie is because they can't do this without investors from the outside world. (presenter speaking Arabic) - [Johnny] They need people to come live here. - [Vlogger] So my husband got offered a job for Neom in Saudi Arabia, and we

decided to make the move. - [Johnny] They need them to play here, raise children here, somehow have a life here, and most crucially to invest in these projects. - And what are we calling it? - The Line. - The Line. - The Line. - [Johnny] So not unlike a startup, Neom is pitching the world on this impossible-sounding vision with the hopes that people will buy it, invest in it, and make some version of it a reality. So do you feel excited about it Neom? Like- - Yes. - Yeah? Why? - I wouldn't do this business

without Neom. - Oh wow. - Before Neom. - Wow. - Everyone wanna, like, check out on internet what is Neom. Then they need a tour guide. To have more than 30 tour guides working with me. - Wow. - So it's a big business now and it's all because of Neom. - [Johnny] So while Solom is seeing the benefits of this project, the effects for others in this region are less certain. We're driving by some of the towns that have been demolished. The people forced to move to make way for the construction of Neom. They were

given money to rebuild their lives somewhere else. But some refused to leave, signing a petition to protest this forced eviction. One even posted to social media voicing his outrage, a risky move in a place where freedom of speech isn't really a thing. (gunshots pop) Soon he was locked in a shootout with security forces that left him dead. - [Reporter] This is when Saudi officials reportedly handed over the body of Abdul Rahim al-Huwaiti to his tribe. His family denies the official narrative that Rahim was a terrorist. - [Johnny] At least 47 other villagers were detained on

terror-related charges, and five of them are now on death row. (gentle optimistic music) The scale and riskiness of these projects speaks to the scale of Saudi Arabia's challenge. They need something to keep them afloat after oil goes away, so they're betting the family farm on a few massive projects. Many will likely fail, but even if a few of these work out as planned, it could be their next oil. Lifting this kingdom into the future, that's the calculus here. But what's clear is that this kingdom isn't stopping anytime soon. (grand airy music) - Our economy is

in recession and the civilized world faces unprecedented dangers. Yet the state of our union has never been stronger. (crowd cheering) (subdued music) (subdued music continues) (subdued music continues) (subdued music continues)