New Mexico Jewish Link Fall/Winter 2018, Volume 48, Number 4
By Diane Joy Schmidt
Bob Baer, former CIA spy and current Middle East expert for CNN and Time Magazine will be speaking in Santa Fe on January 21 at 7:30 at the James A. Little Theater. George Clooney played Baer in the film Syriana, based on his memoir See No Evil. Baer spoke with us from Washington D.C. the morning of October 10th, just 8 days after the killing in the Saudi embassy in Turkey of Jamal Khashoggi, journalist and critic of the Saudi government. Baer said that if Khashoggi was killed, his body would likely have been dismembered and dissolved in a vat of lye. The body has yet to be found. The Crown Prince of Saudi Arabia Mohammed bin Salman Al Saud (known by his initials MBS), is widely considered to have ordered the killing. Baer explained, “MBS thinks he’s got the support of Donald Trump and Jared Kushner so he probably thinks at the end of the day that ultimately he’ll get a pass.” Interview edited for clarity and length.
Link: The American and Israeli governments have been pursuing alignment with Saudi Arabia and the Sunni Arab states against Iran.
Baer: Who created this problem for Israel? it was George W. Bush invading Iraq in 2003. That was singularly one of the most stupid things in the world, because it empowered Iran. Netanyahu, he’s saying privately, ‘those idiots, idiots!’ America invades Iraq, lets the Iranians in, overthrows a dictator, and sets this example for the Syrians.
We are much worse off for what Bush and Cheney did, and in all fairness, we have put Israel in much more danger than we have in our entire history. The Iranians are truly bastards-they are bastards.
So if you look at ] Lebanon, Syria and Iraq, (and Iran), all Shia, it today is a threat to Israel and you’ve got to say, ‘Oh, who made this happen?’ And who made this happen—it’s American bumbling, which has endangered Israel.
Link: Can Saudi Arabia be trusted?
Baer: No, they can’t be trusted. This kid, 33 years old, MBS, he’s not a kid, he doesn’t know what to do about Iran and for that matter neither do we. We don’t know anything about the country. I was the last CIA officer to visit Iran, and that was in 2005.
We don’t have anybody there. There are 73 million Iranians. That we can change the regime or not is a complete guess. And I do think it is a strategic threat, an existential threat to Israel. Because, if they simply fill up Syria and Lebanon with rockets, once they bring the S300 and if they eventually bring the S400 into Syria, the balance changes. And nobody in this country has a clue what to do next. There is no plan.
I spent time in Israel [. . .] We were talking to the chief of police about threats, and he just segues into the Russian mafia threat—that just scares the hell out of Israel.
Link: What’s in your crystal ball at this point?
Baer: I think if they continue the way they are, we’re sliding towards chaos and a regional war. I can’t give you timing on that, but obviously the Saudis, with taking that risk with Khashoggi, they’re worried about the stability; they’re worried about the Muslim Brotherhood. They’re worried about Iran being more radicalized, as a force of disruption.
Friends of mine have just been thrown into these dungeons, for a royal family, they’re never heard from again. It’s a reflection of a paranoia, instability, that I’ve never seen in the Gulf States. So, I just see increasing instability in the Middle East, and increasing instability in the Middle East usually leads to a larger conflict.
Link: Is there any way to avoid it?
Baer: I don’t think so. I just don’t think so. And I look at the long-term problems: The Arabian aquifer is dried out. The Saudis just pumped it dry, for agriculture. And I look at the Indus Valley aquifer, pumped dry. You’ve got population problems.
Just a general irrationality running through humanity, from Washington DC to German Nazis coming back. All those things disturb me.
The fact that the far right in Austria is back, full on, and led a raid on their domestic intelligence service on the 28th of February. We’ve never seen that, ever, in Europe Post-WWII. The domestic intelligence service is the ally of the U.S. They seized files of neo-Nazis related to investigations. They wanted to find out what the domestic intelligence service knew about the Nazis. These people are Nazis, period. There are Nazis in Italy.
And the immigration thing has led to the ascendence of the European Right. I see it in France. They are psychopaths, and they are completely anti-Semitic. Who would have ever thought that Nazis would come back in Austria?
For your readers, what you have to understand, is that French Jews are going to get caught up in this bigotry. It’s nothing they’ve done. But if this trend continues, people who are slightly different are (going to be) getting caught up, and that includes people going to synagogues. That’s my prophetic view, you can’t prove it, but you see it all over.
Link: Is it also in part because of global warming?
Absolutely. Once the anxiety takes over, people react to the Other, in a horrible way. Anybody who’s a little bit different. It’s irrational.
Link: Do you see Trump as a logical outcome of our ignoring Russian influence in our elections?
This goes way back. The Russians, I call them agents of disruption, back in the early 70’s and 80’s the Russian mob embedded gangsters here. This became the foundation for involving money in America in 2016. You can’t put money directly into a campaign.
All they wanted in 2016, they were out to destroy Hillary Clinton. They thought we were responsible for overthrowing Yanukovych, Ukraine’s former president, in 2014. It got too close for the Russians, because they have a policy of protecting the near abroad—and that means Russians who are living in these satellite countries like the Ukraine, they feel they have an obligation to protect them and that this liberal government that came in was going to oppress the Russians in the Eastern Ukraine.
It’s action-reaction with the Russians: you do something bad to us, we’re going to do something bad to you. We’re going to disrupt your elections in 2016.
They had no clue Trump was going to win—he’s not the Manchurian Candidate. They left their fingerprints all over this – this troll factory in St. Petersburg was easily identified.
I don’t know if they’ve got blackmail on Trump. The point is, they’re undermined our institutions. More than half of Americans believe that Trump’s being blackmailed by the KGB. It never happened in our country before. It’s an act of political sabotage like we’ve never seen, since the war of 1812. They’ve undermined our institutions more than anybody ever has, ever. I think they want us to believe that there’s a tape.
They’ve (the Russians) have been brilliant about it. As a former professional- it’s hats-off, congratulations, you guys are good. Look at the damage done to the FBI, this poisonous political environment the Russians have managed to create, which has so divided Americans, they’re more divided than the Civil War.
Link: Russians can’t be too happy about Iran – they’ve got all these countries that were part of the USSR surrounding them that are mostly Muslim.
That’s the deal the Russians have with Iran. Go wreak havoc in the Middle East all you want, but don’t touch the Northern Caucasus. That’s the deal.
D: But their success in the Middle East will embolden….
I think what’s going to happen is, Khomeini’s revolution, its success is a defeat for the Sunnis, for the Saudis. And the Chechens are Sunnis. And all those people are, and there’s going to be a sort of defeatist deference to Iran, as opposed to ‘we can start a popular revolution like in Syria, with the Islamic State, and overthrow these governments and win,’ that’s not going to happen.
The Northern Caucasus are all Sunni. Everywhere you look the Sunnis have lost—they’ve lost in Yemen, in Lebanon, they’ve lost in Syria, they’ve been completely defeated in Iraq. Putin defeated them in Chechnya, the Northern Caucasus. They’re left with Saudi Arabia, which is basically toothless. The Palestinians are toothless, they’re all Sunni; there may be a few Shia there, but almost none. So, anywhere you look at the Sunnis, they’ve been defeated.
Link: Osama bin Ladin was from Saudi Arabia, and he was a Sunni fundamentalist . . .
The way it all started was, Khomeini’s revolution comes along in 1978-79; then the Sunnis say, ‘Look what it did for the Iranian fundamentalists, we’ll do the same thing,’ so the Saudis start dumping money and people into Sunni causes—including what would become Al Queda. It was an arms race.
Link: Do you think that Sunni and Shia fundamentalists could get together against Europeans?
No, I don’t think so, they’re always going to be divided, killing each other. I just don’t think it’s ever going to happen.
Link: What’s next for our nation?
A society that believes in conspiracy theories is easily manipulated into violence. . . .I see the makings of a violent political confrontation simply because our institutions are under attack, our norms are under attack.
Link: In this country I don’t think we know how bad it can get when you lose the rule of law.
No, we don’t have a clue, we live in a bubble, we don’t know what fascism is, we don’t know what political violence is.
Link: So what are you up to now?
] I’m trying to figure out Russian stuff, and I’m writing a book about faith and global warming, and what the effects are going to be as people get more anxious. You just have to go with the science. Global warming is on its way and there’s no concerted effort to stop it. So, for great migrations and political disturbance and war, it’s inevitable.
You have to look at the math. By 2050, you can’t add 2 billion more people to the surface of the earth, and not have a cataclysmic catastrophe.
Let me put it to you this way. Women are going to get us out of this mess in this election and 2020, or they’re not. I don’t see that white males, other than try to hold on to power, are doing much. I know Trump thinks that American institutions are the enemy: Russia is our friend, American institutions are the enemy, including the press.
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