 West Asia key strategic region in the world is in tumult and it's all kinds of tumult some of which is even positive over the past month we've heard all kinds of discussions talking place the Saudis and the Iranians are talking the Saudis and the Houthis in Yemen are talking Syria, Russia, Iran, Turkey all of these players many of whom have had very difficult relationships in the past are talking or are going to talk soon and all of this actually raises a lot of questions is the face of West Asia going to change is some of the violence that has become so endemic to the region are going to end maybe at the same time we also have Palestine where these answers seem way more clear Israelis are continuing their brutal assault on Palestinians whether it be in the city of old Jerusalem whether it be in the rest of the West Bank whether it be in Gaza blockades all kinds of attacks arrests continuing the violence from 2022 we'll be looking at the larger West Asian region in this special show by People's Dispatch so Praveer a lot on our menu today and no surprise because so much has been happening in West Asia over the past few months very difficult to keep up of course we have some some of the more you know usual unfortunately usual cycles of violence like in Palestine but we should we should talk about what more interesting has been the fact that there's been some signs of rapprochement of traditional rivals we've talked about the Saudi Arabia Iran discussions that are taking place but two I think maybe center the discussion first let's maybe first move to what Yemen which is really you know the latest news is that there has been a prisoner exchange agreement I believe some 900 prisoners the Saudis are released to the Houthis they're likely to be more prisoner exchange arrangements in the next few weeks so we're looking at something that we thought was very difficult which is like an eight year conflict suddenly you know maybe moving towards a solution so what prompted Saudi Arabia which was really bombarding Yemen like anything to really come to the table let's go back to the earlier map that you showed us here the interesting part of it the battle which was really we're talking about is over Yemen of course Saudi Arabia had attacked the Houthis in Yemen because the Houthis had taken over from those forces who are aligned or very close to Saudi Arabia and Saudi Arabia wanted this area to be under their control or influence this is also important because if you see this particular seaway and that's important because this finally connects to the Mediterranean to the Arabian Sea the Indian Ocean whatever you want to call it therefore Yemen has a very strategic position in it and particularly Aden which has been an ancient harbor a trading port of enormous significance in the world and in this attack on Yemen we had of course the United Arab Emirates joining it so this is not that it was a simply Saudi Arabia it was a joint United Arab Emirates Saudi forces which attacked the Houthis who opposed the I will not call it puppet but Saudi Arabia's allies in Yemen and carved out a position for themselves at least in northern Aden and northern Yemen so this was the battle which was going on it's a much more complex picture of Yemen which we won't won't get into but Houthis have a history of big good fighters so they not only were successful in beating back the the Saudi Arabian forces and the Emirati forces they were also attacking the Saudi Arabian Aramco facilities even the airport all of this was proving a huge thorn on the Saudi side that too with very little equipment the drones basically well yes drones and missiles you see Yemenis are not that technologically backward as people might think they have had their own air force the ability to manufacture at least low end missiles and low end drones which of course they would have probably got technological help from Iran which is what everybody says but a lot of it is also the fact the Yemenis are people who have the skills to do a whole lot of things with help and support they can do it so therefore these attacks which are taking place in Saudi Arabia particularly Aramco meant that if Houthis could not be defeated then it will remain as a permanent thorn in Saudi side particularly the Aramco facilities so here was the issue that it is not simply a question between Saudi Arabia and Yemen Iran is also into the mix for very obvious reasons and of course United Arab Emirates even the Houthis have attacked the Emirates again the airport and so on so they all decided the time has come to stop this war now this is something the world has been asking for quite some time Yemen has been hugely harmed the population have faced enormous deprivation we have had you know diseases come up which we haven't seen cholera epidemic for example come up which we haven't seen no clean drinking water the schools etc are all shut what happens to children malnutrition whole range of things and Yemen has a very rich history if you remember the the kind of cities that were there in medieval Yemen which are really eight storied and so on these have been things which are engineering terms in front lines of the world in terms of technology and other things see Yemen has a huge culture so has Yemen in terms of trade it starts some just a backwater so therefore Saudis attempt to subdue it having failed the question is how do they come together so let's go back to the map that you had started with this is the Yemen map let's start with this area this is probably some of the what are called the jihadist forces very right wing with tacit support of Saudi Arabia which are there then there is the adhan the southern part of this area which is centered on adhan which seems to have been backed by United Arab Emirates with certain forces which have seems to be holding that area then we have Sana and the Houthis really occupying this area and that's where the battle has been with Saudi Arabia this is where they have been marib is a town over there on which battle is going on but they have been attacking with drones and other things the Saudi Arabian forces they have attacked physically inside Saudi Arabia over here so this is something which bothers the region so it's not just between Yemen and Saudi Arabia Iran is obviously involved because we know that Yemenis have been supported by Iran at least with knowledge technological help probably even some arms and ammunition and Oman is a rich country which does not want war its borders so Oman has been a peacemaker not only in the this case Yemen and Saudi Arabia both seem to be meeting in Oman but also Oman has been a peacemaker between Saudis and the Iranians so in fact a major initiative over here was taken with Oman in the loop also Iraq in the loop Soleimani was coming to discuss some of these issues in Iraq when he was killed so this has been the larger dynamics of the region and it seems now United Arab Emirates is also part of the peace process but the discussions in Oman it seems with what you talked about prisoner exchange all of these issues it seems this is a harbinger of peace in the Yemen war but also peace breaking out which is very very problematic for the United States peace breaking out in the region in which the larger set of forces essentially Saudis United Arab Emirates Qatar and Iran all of them including of course the Syrian battlefield all of them willing to look at solutions within the region not going to countries outside to mediate for their peace if you go back to the map that you had shown before that the larger issue is that we have peace breaking out between Iran and Saudi Arabia and also it seems to now involve Syria and Syria means peace not only between Iran and Saudi Arabia but also Turkey is involved because Turkey has been very much a player in this area so how can these forces come together on the Syrian issue and it seems now Saudi Arabia and Syria are talking about re-admitting Syria back into the Arab League of Nations and therefore they were thrown off because when the various struggles broke out against Assad the question of who was behind the struggle we will not get into this stage there's no question the Turkey backed the struggle in a big way intervened in Syria the United States intervened in Syria so you had all kinds of forces who are active in Syria now it seems they're also willing to come to the table and work out their own disengagement now that for the United States is a huge change that it is no longer the country to go to in order to negotiate or intercede on behalf of one or the other it ceases to the king be the kingmaker which it was in this area I think one of the experts had said that the important thing is not that you know who is involved but who is not involved exactly that who is not involved is the United States you see this is an area if you go back to President Carter he had declared this entire area as a strategic area for the United States because oil is a strategic asset of the United States therefore this was supposed to be a part of United States strategic assets and therefore they could go to war against any country which interfered with that now that of course doesn't take into account the fact that these countries are independent so they have the right to take their own decisions and of course at the time Iran was the basic issue because as you know their puppet Shah of Iran had been overthrown and of course President Carter was humiliated with the embassy and holding of the embassy personnel hostage which is what Iranian street government forces who took over from Shah of Iran did at that time so that was the what he was smarting under but the net result of saying this is our backwaters nobody can enter that was of course a huge slap to all the countries over there and it's taken about 40 years before now slowly the pendulum has swung back that we will decide our own future and not it will not be decided by any other country so next in line would be then Turkey and Syria absolutely yeah it's interesting you mentioned Syria for a while because a lot of lot happening in Syria as well we know that the Saudi foreign minister might go to Syria soon there's going to be an invitation for Syria to join the Arab League Saudi Arabia also working much more closely with Turkey after years of very bad relations following the Khashoggi incident also interesting because last year we did see Turkey make a lot of noises about continuing its military operations especially in these regions but keeping all this in mind you know do we see sort of do we see Syria sort of developing into you know how do we see the situation developing considering that Syria still really split up into pieces and the United States like this map shows the blue areas represent the US allies the various forces working under their direction under their control still has a very substantial presence in Syria this is an interesting issue because nobody has invited US forces into Syria so even government has not even the islamist forces supposedly the enemies of the United States in their global war on terror they have not who invited them so they seem to have invited themselves and they still hold if we take this area as well as this area into account which is the where the US forces still hold the territory this is about 30 percent of Syria's territory now this is a really a desert and so is this not very thickly populated but it has oil in this part of the area and a lot of oil goes by the Kurdish areas which really are here and they go into really Iraqi held Kurdish territories from there they go into Turkey and this is a how if you remember President Trump had said well the oil will pay for our occupation and he had said Syria we are leaving but we'll still control the oil well so that still happens even if Biden has become the president that hasn't stopped you still see oil going out of Syria and that is a part of the US occupation now this occupation is being done in connivance with or in conjunction with forces which had aligned earlier with the Islamist forces which now have broken free of that and have gone under US Umbrella. Al-Tanaf is again another area again nobody's invited them there there is it also is the connection between Damascus over here and Syria and Baghdad in fact so this is right there to stop that connection of course there are other connections also between Syria and Iraq but that was the original route which has been stopped Al-Tanaf sitting over there again providing some Umbrella to Islamist forces and of course Turkey is in these areas as you know and they are in fact saying that we will not let the Kurdish forces gain control of the area Kurdish forces are here they are here and the Kurdish forces at the moment are trying to be in between the United States and Syria which is a difficult position for them because their main enemy is really Turkey who also want to take this entire area away because they feel that Kurdish entities in Turkey are people who are being supported from here in the same entities and therefore they feel that is a PKK which is the Kurdish entity in Turkey that they are the ones who are really over here rather than indigenous Kurdish people of Syrian origin so this is a complicated picture but again why is us here because as we have said right in the beginning nobody's invited us in so this is where Turkey Syria Iraq are three forces who should be sitting down and discussing how to bring peace to the area and in fact Syria today the Syrian government does not control these parts of the of Syrian territory large portion of the populated regions are under the Syrian government so I think Turkey who has been in negotiations with Syria under Russian ages they have been having Astana talks a number of times these discussions have taken place slowly that process hopefully will make it possible to bring peace in Syria between Turkey and Syria but the question is what happens to the US forces over here will they let go that easily or fighting against them is that even feasible for Syria to fight against the United States these are the questions or will it be that if the whole region unites and said we will talk about peace and bring peace ourselves then US will be forced to vacate this area is a question that we have to see how it goes in the future but the real issue what you have raised raised is yes Turkey and Syria are willing to talk and if what we have seen happens between Saudis and Iran then I think between Syria and Turkey also the possibility of peace is there this is a huge threat to the United States because if peace breaks out in the region then the US threat is the people will be able to bring about what they want how they want their future to be without the tutelage or the intervention of the United States which means the strategic resources of this area will no longer be under their tacit control right just to sort of also clarify for the audience we have multiple dynamics here like I said Saudi Arabia and Turkey talking on the one hand Saudi Arabia and Syria talking on the one hand we know that Syria and Iran are very close Hezbollah is involved Saudi Arabia and Iran talking so like you said all these dynamics while in parallel nonetheless seem to indicate you know a kind of convergence which does look possible but if there's something that is kind of sticking out in this region unfortunately and where people are really suffering it's maybe the last area we need to talk about which is Palestine and you know it's it's one of those conflicts we talked about often on our channel and which seems to be escalating by the year so let's maybe go to Palestine and see what's really happening right so Praveen of course the latest news or at least the news over the past few weeks this is a month of you know the month of Ramadan going on and as usual as has happened in 2022 in 2021 there have been continuous attacks on Palestinians al-Aqsa mosque in occupied East Jerusalem of course being the center of a lot of these attacks attacks by both Israeli security forces attacks by say Jew illegal Jewish settlers of course trying to claim that space trying to you know although it's against the laws and of course also the continuing violence over the past few months we know that 2022 was the most you know most violent year from since 2005 huge number of people especially attacks in the West Bank over here some very important cities continuously being attacked like Janine but you know the question has also been the interesting thing has been that Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu and the far right government also facing protests inside you know by one section of Israeli so so huge amount of chaos at this point of time and violence against the Palestinians so so maybe let's first go to the East Jerusalem issue and al-Aqsa and why this continues to be such a point of conflict or oppression so to get back a little to what you're saying earlier that old Jerusalem city is only about two square kilometers is a small part of the existing Jerusalem city and over there if you take the old Jerusalem which is what we are seeing the two square kilometers in which the al-Aqsa complex is situated it had what are called Jewish quarters, Armenian quarters, Christian quarters and Muslim quarters it was split in four sections and the each of the sections operated in peace with each other and so there was a peace between all communities for a very long time it's not there have been historical struggles which have continued and so they now broken is continuing or has broken out again so this is of course something which is important to all three Abrahamic religions the Jewish the Christians and the Muslims partly because if you remember that this is where supposedly the first two temples were now the second temple which is the little the last one that existed was destroyed by Romans, the Muslims had nothing to do with it so it was really the Romans who destroyed it and therefore this association of the third temple with the al-Aqsa complex is something that the Jewish settler population particularly the extreme writing variety of it says or whips up every time saying we need to build the temple here the temple has to be built here only because this is where the old temple was again the Solomon's first temple and the second temple which is demolished by the by the Romans we do not know where they were or historically are there remnants of this over there but that doesn't really matter you know when mythology takes over history it has a dimension of its own so the settler population or the what you call the really the right wing settler population has been trying every year to desecrate the complex so that's really what they do they try and do and therefore attacks of the complex particularly at the time this is also unfortunately both the Jewish religion and the Islamic religion both observe the lunar calendar so the Passover and the Ramazan basically take place almost together and therefore the religious temple heightens in this period so every time the call of the al-Aqsa mosque is preserve our sanctity by putting people inside the basically this is the dome of a rock over there which is where Muhammad is supposed to have ascended and this is the the mosque so man the mosque so the people stay there at night so continuous attacks by right wing forces but also Israeli armed forces police whatever attack the people inside the complex for a number of days finally the last three days of Ramadan they allowed the peaceful peaceful at least celebrations to take place there are no attacks after there was really a huge outcry in the world on this pictures came photographs videos all of this showed the kind of settler police security forces violence that took place in the complex so this is something which is recurring but in this particular case it also had the tacit support of Netanyahu who is facing a huge inner struggle among the Jewish community it is not that it is the basic the old Palestinian population who have been disenfranchised over the period of time who officially are Arab Israelis but nevertheless they don't really get a whole lot of things in terms of what their rights are so it is not they were protesting this time Netanyahu's protests came from what would be called the secular Jewish population who identify themselves as Jews who identify this is their land but do not identify themselves as wanting to be completely sectarian or going back to the position which are there amongst the certain settler population that all the Arab population is to be thrown out of this land this exclusively ours nobody else can stay here except Jewish population so this throwing out business is what is where finally the line is drawn disenfranchising them in various ways is still okay but throwing them out they know would put them outside the pale of civilized nations and therefore they have been saying no this is not okay that division which was manifest in Netanyahu's attempt to pass a judicial reform we should have meant they could he could have nullified the conviction which he already has for corruption so the parliament could say he is not guilty and then the court would have to accept that and also a whole bunch of religious laws could be passed which would effectively make the non-Jewish population particularly the Arab population who are both Christians and Muslims disenfranchise them completely that is what was the battle which is going on and in this when Netanyahu aligned with extreme right because he needed to be the prime minister otherwise he was going to go to jail the conviction would have stood so that issue there has been to some extent papered over by this struggle and perhaps that is the reason why the struggle assumes this force because then it papered over the struggle internal to the Israeli state which is a huge number of even reservists the army air force reservists are not willing to come and serve and if they don't serve half of Israel's army doesn't exist because his reservists are the ones who confer at least 50 percent of the armed forces in Israel and they are not permanent armed forces so all of this meant that either he had to come to and re-approach Ma with his own people or he had to whip up an external issue and I guess Al Aqsa mosque is always an easy incendiary issue which brings the Jewish population in one place but also what happens after the Al Aqsa mosque issue coming up that Israel actually attack parts of Lebanon parts of Syria and of course always Gaza is a focal point of attack so attacks took place in these three areas so again it heats up the area it creates a war atmosphere and of course the reserve forces then reservists who are earlier protesting and because Netanyahu withdrew partially from his judicial reforms he's got one month time to settle this issue that they went back to the army and air force and therefore the bombings which is the regular Israeli activity they took place all of it happens when the Al Aqsa mosque is attacked all of these things also are companion so to say in what happens so they there is protest from here a few rockets are launched and of course in Israel the launchers attacks on this area they're clear they're also careful not to attack Lebanon too deep because Hezbollah has proven itself to be a strong force so therefore they're little more wary about that they also finding it difficult to enter Gaza at will and conduct military operation so the operation seems to be more rocket fire and within limits so that there is no really large reaction to what they're doing because Lebanon also Hezbollah has a lot of rockets Syria has not attacked Israel as yet though in Jullan Heights there's still conflict going on Syria claims Jullan Heights is there because that is what was taken over in the 68 war so that is very much something that Syria feels should go back to it and of course there are attacks therefore on Syrian forces also by Israel so these every time Al Aqsa mosque issue comes up these also heat up so if there is a larger piece that breaks out in the area then what happens to Israel's politics what happens to Palestine is not a minor issue because one of the safety that Israel had is our enemies are divided they are fighting against each other Jordan is not going to go with them only Syria is a problem Hezbollah is a problem Iraq is no longer such a big problem so this is something we can handle but Iran supporting Syria Lebanon is only one issue peace breaking out between all these areas if you take the Abraham Accords which is the basis of Israel thinking it could get a certain number of Arab states with it Islamic states if you will with it and therefore will be able to break out of its isolation that doesn't seem to be happening if you remember the Abraham Accords included Bahrain it included United Arab Emirates it included also Morocco and Sudan as well Morocco and Sudan as well the big discussion was whether Saudi Arabia would be would come into it but they held out they were trying very hard to get Saudi Arabia into it and unfortunately without Saudi Arabia this peace is incomplete because Saudi Arabia was seen to be a staunch US ally and therefore railroading or arm twisting Saudis to join the Abraham Accords is a big play if that succeeded then Saudis are after all the protectors of the Makkah Medina the holy sites of Islam therefore they would have thought it could be thought that their stamp would make Israel legitimate in the region that did not happen Saudis did not do that and now with Saudis making up with Iran that whole Abraham Accords seem to have disappeared into thin air so that importance of the same Abraham Accords seems to be no longer there I think that's the other big thing that is taking place in the region that we have a different dynamic taking place and what we see is a larger peace breaking out this would involve Turkey it would involve Syria Saudi Arabia Iran and of course United Arab Emirates also will be a big player in all of this so Yemen is only a part of the issue but Syria and Yemen are the sites of the struggle but the real struggle is between the larger players in the region and that is where the US hold is slipping and they are negotiating among themselves and they are willing to accept Russian as a more independent and you know impartial negotiator between Turkey and Syria and China between Saudi Arabia Iran I think that is a really a huge change in the overall scenario for this region and I think that is something which the US is not able to understand or stomach because they never expected something like this to happen the seem to have been taken aback by the shall we say the speed at which the events have not to mention that Saudi Arabia UAE among the countries which as part of OPEC plus have agreed to once again cut their oil production and that's not making the US happy thank you so much for talking to us and giving us an idea like you said the threat of peace is really what the United States fears at this point although I think for people in the rest of the world this could be a really good thing because the key issue like you said remains Palestine how long will this circle of violence against the Palestinians continues a very important issue but thank you so much and we'll come back to some of these topics in future episodes as well so there you have it the question of peace very very important on the minds of all of us at a time when there's so much war conflict so many global challenges if there could be some measure of peace some measure of stability in West Asia you would see millions of people benefiting especially the people in Yemen who suffered one of the worst humanitarian crisis of this century we'll be tracking some of these developments in the coming months and weeks as well until then keep watching People's Dispatch