Jeffrey Goldberg published another one of his blockbuster interviews (he’s interviewed Obama once or twice and I believe Netanyahu as well). This time his “get” was Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed ibn Salman, who is in the midst of an international charm offensive, touring the world to introduce his new “brand” on the international stage. He’s flashing a very large wallet full of Saudi petro-cash which he’s offering to arms merchants, infrastructure and technology companies in every country he’s visiting. Presidents and prime ministers are salivating on behalf of their own corporate titans at the prospect of tens of these billions flowing into their national treasury.
Saudi Arabia employs public relations consultants earning millions of dollars to peddle ibn Salman’s agenda in the media and to lobby legislatures around the world. That explains how Goldberg managed to snag this interview. Goldberg is known as the journalist every politician approaches if he wants to reach the American Jewish community–by which I mean in this case, the leadership of the major Israel Lobby organizations. As The Atlantic’s managing editor, he’s considered the Walter Cronkite of Jewish journalists. Instead of being like Cronkite’s Voice of God as a broadcaster, Goldberg is the Voice of Israel.
Saudi Arabia’s new alliance with Israel means that the Saudi prince, perforce, has thrown in his lot with the Israel Lobby. Ibn Salman understands the power it wields in American politics. If he wishes to influence our Middle East policy to attack Iran, then he knows that he must muster both domestic public opinion and political will to do so.
Ibn Salman, like many of his new allies in the Lobby, isn’t especially thoughtful or innovative in his ideas. In fact, he peddles the same old tired clichés about Iran we’ve heard for decades. Not only that, but in this interview he repeats ideas he’s already offered in previous interviews. He plagiarises himself!
He compares the Ayatollahs to Nazi German and Hitler:
Goldberg: You speak extraordinarily bluntly about Iran and its ideology. You’ve even equated the supreme leader to Hitler. What makes him a Hitler? Hitler is the worst thing you can be.
MbS: I believe that the Iranian supreme leader makes Hitler look good.
Goldberg: Really?
MbS: Hitler didn’t do what the supreme leader is trying to do. Hitler tried to conquer Europe. This is bad.
Goldberg: Yes, very bad.
MbS: But the supreme leader is trying to conquer the world. He believes he owns the world. They are both evil guys. He is the Hitler of the Middle East. In the 1920s and 1930s, no one saw Hitler as a danger. Only a few people. Until it happened. We don’t want to see what happened in Europe happen in the Middle East. We want to stop this through political moves, economic moves, intelligence moves. We want to avoid war.
Goldberg: Is the problem in your mind religious?
MbS: As I told you, the Shiites are living normally in Saudi Arabia. We have no problem with the Shiites. We have a problem with the ideology of the Iranian regime. Our problem is, we don’t think they have the right to interfere with our affairs.
This isn’t exactly Holocaust denial. But it is Holocaust distortion. It’s the sort of nonsense the ADL denounces regularly…except when it comes from the mouths of Israeli allies, who are untouchable. Hitler killed not just 6-million Jews. He killed millions of gays and gypsies and Communists. He killed tens of millions of Russians. Nor did he stop at conquering Europe. He conquered large swaths of North Africa as well. And could he have, he would’ve conquered more. Further, he had an alliance with the Japanese who also conquered huge swaths of Asia. So imputing limited expansionist ambitions to Hitler is patently false.
Unlike Hitler, Iran arguably is defending its interests. As a major Shiite power, it defends fellow Shiites like Assad in Syria and Hezbollah in Lebanon. Further, as Israel exerts its own territorial ambitions in the region, Iran reacts by defending its allies threatened by Israeli aggression. Iran has a military force nowhere near as powerful today as the Wehrmacht was in its day. Iran can no more invade and conquer a Sunni country than Saudi Arabia could invade Iran and overthrow its government (at least not on its own, it couldn’t). The notion that Iran wants to take over the world is preposterous. And notice Goldberg, cracker-jack interviewer that he is, doesn’t prod ibn Salman in the least on his outlandish exaggerations.
Many politicians have an occupational propensity to distort history, even lie about it. The only ones they hurt in doing so are themselves and their constituents. The difference in ibn Salman’s case is that his cynical debasement of the Holocaust in pursuit of his own political interests could lead to regional war.
When I collaborated with Shamai Leibowitz to publish summaries of Justice Department intercepts of Israeli diplomatic discussions in its DC embassy, we did that because we thought it would expose Israel’s ambitions to wage war against Iran. Today, I’m doing the same in terms of exposing the debased and false premises on which ibn Salman builds the case for war against Shia Islam. He must not exploit this historical tragedy and the sacred memories of its victims for such purposes. Goldberg let’s him get away with murder, metaphorically speaking.
Yesterday, I published a post arguing that Goldberg’s Atlantic and Bennet’s New York Times were normalizing the alt-Right in their respective publications’ page. But they are also normalizing the lies and distortions of the Israel Lobby and its Saudi allies.
H/t John Dickerson.
“As a major Shiite power, it defends fellow Shiites like Assad in Syria and Hezbollah in Lebanon.”
WRONG!
Alawites are not Shiites, in fact, Shiites don’t like Alawites at all.
https://www.juancole.com/2015/08/secular-alawites-crescent.html
Iran isn’t defending fellow Shiites, they are merely playing one Arab against another in order to further ‘divide and conquer’ the Arab world.
You can’t really fault Ibn Salman for seeing Iran’s strategy for what it is.
@ Doctor John: You are abysmally ignorant. Alawites are an offshoot of Shia Islam. Why do think that Shia Hezbollah and Shia Iran came to Assad’s aid? Because they share the same barber?
You’re about the 50th hasbarist who’s come along here spouting your authority in understanding the Iranian “mentality” and geo-political strategy. Yet you know nothing except what you’re told in whatever shmatteh you use to inform you about these matters: mostly likely some training course offered by Hasbara Central. Further, moron, Iranians aren’t “Arabs.” Call an Iranian “Arab” and you’ll get an icy stare, not to mention they’re know that you’re an ignoramus when it comes to knowing a thing about Iran.
I’m reporting you to Hasbara Central. You really need a refresher course on these matters if you want to have any credibility as a hasbarist.
Iban Salman doesn’t “see Iran’s strategy for what it is.” He sees the Satan he wants to see and makes up the rest. As you do.
@Richardo
I never said the Iranians are Arabs. Where the hell did you get that one? Alawites are Arabs.
As far as whether Alawites are Shia, I say let the Shia answer that one; if that’s okay with you.
http://www.shiachat.com/forum/topic/234999267-are-alawi-considered-shia/
Yes, there are 200,000 Shia living in Syria, and yes, there are two very holy Shia shrines in Syria, but that still doesn’t make Alawites Shia. If the Alawites are an off-shot of Twelver Shiism, that doesn’t make them any less heretical.
“Yet you know nothing except what you’re told in whatever shmatteh you use to inform you about these matters’
The Guardian is a shmatteh, too?
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2016/oct/08/iran-iraq-syria-isis-land-corridor
@ Dr. John: I trust your views about Islam as much as I trust Bibi to run an honest government. Which is to say, not at all. So stop offering your claims.
But here’s The Telegraph: “The Alawites are an offshoot of Shia Islam…”
And Wikipedia: “The Alawis, also rendered as Alawites (Arabic: علوية Alawiyyah/Alawīyah), are a syncretic sect of the Twelver branch of Shia Islam…”
Islamic Monthly: “Alawites became a Shia offshoot a thousand years ago.”
You are done in this thread. Do not post another comment here.
Iran isn’t defending fellow Shiites, they are merely playing one Arab against another in order to further ‘divide and conquer’ the Arab world.
You can’t really fault Ibn Salman for seeing Iran’s strategy for what it is.’…’
Whatever. The fact of the matter is that what you’re proposing is the equivalent of thinking the Pope is standing up to the Lutherans because he’s the Calvinists’ friend.
…and if that makes no sense to you, perhaps you’re not qualified to comment.
Richard, I think you should stick to contemporary middle east politics and leave world war two to others. I have never read that Hitler wanted to conquer the world, for example, and I have read a lot.
@ Greg Gilbert: Go read my comment rules right now, Greg. You’ll note they say that I don’t give a crap what you think about my skills or quality of analysis. If I did I would’ve asked your opinion, and I didn’t. So you stick to writing comments that are on topic & deal with the specific subject of the post (unlike what you did here). And leave the posting to me. And if you don’t like what I write, don’t let the door hit you on the way out…
Just because you didn’t read something doesn’t mean it’s not true. Nor did I say that Hitler wanted to conquer the world. But together with Japan and Italy that’s pretty much what the three Axis powers tried to do. Their ambition was greater than their power to realize it, fortunately for us.
Thanks Richard.
[comment deleted: a link to a YouTube video is not a valid comment here. Refer to the comment rules if you want to understand what constitutes a legitimate comment.]
I run a lot off my intuitive impressions of people — and while it may be a self-sustaining loop of some kind, it seems to prove out pretty well. Both Obama and Trump, for example, turned out to be about what I expected.
Morsi was a good man, I think Erdogan is about the best to be expected in Turkey as it exists today, the Ayatollah Khomeini was a fanatic, but moral enough, in his way. And so on.
The crown prince I do not like, or trust. I don’t want to get in the car with that man, daddy.
‘…They are both evil guys. He is the Hitler of the Middle East…’
It’s really a pity. After all, if you describe somebody as a ‘Hitler’ we already can infer that you disagree with him. Now the comparison means nothing beyond that.
How can all this nonsense about Iran as ‘the sponsor of international terrorism’ or ‘seeking to conquer the world’ be seriously proffered, anyway? It’s decidedly rich for the leader of Saudi Arabia to denounce others as ‘the sponsor of international terrorism,’ since if ANYONE sponsors international terrorism, it’s Saudi Arabia. Where did the 9/11 bombers come from, and who funded ISIS?
Iran is not a paradise. It’s more or less what it claims to be alright, an Islamic revolution — but it’s gone wrong. However, it’s not especially expansionist, and its leader doesn’t bear the faintest resemblance to Hitler.
The threat here is decidedly not Iran. It’s that crown prince, and whatever evil scheme he’s pushing. And what worries me is not the good crown prince himself, but that so much of the power structure of the West is shaking his hand and earnestly nodding their agreement. Something’s up, and whatever it is, it’s thoroughly vile.
@Richard Silverstein: You are absolutely correct. Iranians are Iranians and have been since the begining. Even calling them Persians is inaccurate because, as my Iranian friends have attested, it was Greeks that first called them Persians in connection to Persepolis. And yes, Greeks and Iranians can get along.
I’ve been a long time reader, but this is my first comment.