0:00 (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.
0:47 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
1:33 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
2:19 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,
3:06 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
3:51 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.
4:38 - [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,
5:25 (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
6:12 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.
6:57 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.
7:45 (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)
8:31 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
9:17 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
10:04 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
10:51 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.
11:38 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.
12:25 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,
13:11 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?"
13:57 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.
14:42 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
15:29 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
16:15 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,
17:02 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...
17:48 - 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,
18:34 "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.
19:23 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
20:09 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
20:57 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.
21:44 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.
22:31 (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)
23:18 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
24:04 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
24:50 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
25:36 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.
26:23 (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,
27:10 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
27:56 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.
28:45 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
29:31 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.
30:20 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.
31:06 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.
31:51 (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
32:38 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.
33:26 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,
34:14 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,
34:59 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,
35:44 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,
36:31 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
37:16 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.
38:02 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.
38:48 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
39:35 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,
40:21 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
41:07 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
41:54 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
42:41 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,
43:26 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
44:12 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.
44:58 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)
45:43 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?
46:29 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.
47:14 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
47:59 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
48:44 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.
49:30 - 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.
50:15 - [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.
51:02 - 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.
51:47 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,
52:34 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.
53:22 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.
54:07 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
54:53 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.
55:40 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.
56:26 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,
57:12 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)
57:58 (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
58:44 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
59:30 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
1:00:16 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.
1:01:05 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
1:01:50 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.
1:02:36 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
1:03:22 on Kurdish towns in Iraq, systematically killing thousands of Kurdish civilians
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