Middle East

Middle East (Region)
Of particular geopolitical interest primarily because of the fossil fuel reserves of the Persian Gulf.

The Middle East is a region of the world. Situated between Europe, Asia and Africa, the Middle East is of strategic importance.

 

An Office Holder on Wikispooks

Name	From	To	Description
Gary Sick	1975	1980	"the point man in the White House dealing with Iran" under Carter

 

Related Quotations

Page	Quote	Author	Date
Tariq Ali	“and then the NGOs bought off many of the best people with the tacit understanding that they could not engage directly in politics if they wanted to receive funding or assistance. Unfortunately the NGOs have helped remove secular intellectuals from politics - their impact on intellectual life in the Muslim world needs to be tabulated,\.”	Tariq Ali	2005
Joe Biden	“It will not be six months before the world tests Barack Obama like they did John Kennedy. The world is looking. We're about to elect a brilliant 47-year-old senator president of the United States of America. Remember I said it standing here if you don't remember anything else I said. Watch, we're gonna have an international crisis, a generated crisis, to test the mettle of this guy. I can give you at least four or five scenarios from where it might originate," Biden said to Emerald City supporters, mentioning the Middle East and Russia as possibilities. And he's gonna need help. And the kind of help he's gonna need is, he's gonna need you - not financially to help him - we're gonna need you to use your influence, your influence within the community, to stand with him. Because it's not gonna be apparent initially, it's not gonna be apparent that we're right.”	Joe Biden Time Magazine	2008
Joe Biden	“Our allies in the region were our largest problem in Syria. The Turks were great friends, and I have a great relationship with Erdogan, [who] I just spent a lot of time with, [and] the Saudis, the Emirates, etcetera. What were they doing? They were so determined to take down Assad, and essentially have a proxy Sunni-Shia war, what did they do? They poured hundreds of millions of dollars and tens of tons of weapons into anyone who would fight against Assad – except that the people who were being supplied, [they] were al-Nusra, and al-Qaeda, and the extremist elements of jihadis who were coming from other parts of the world. Now, you think I'm exaggerating? Take a look. Where did all of this go? So now that's happening, all of a sudden, everybody is awakened because this outfit called ISIL, which was al-Qaeda in Iraq, when they were essentially thrown out of Iraq, found open space and territory in [eastern] Syria, [and they] work with al-Nusra, who we declared a terrorist group early on. And we could not convince our colleagues to stop supplying them. So what happened? Now, all of a sudden – I don't want to be too facetious – but they have seen the lord. Now we have ... been able to put together a coalition of our Sunni neighbors, because America can't once again go into a Muslim nation and be the aggressor. It has to be led by Sunnis. To go and attack a Sunni organization. And so what do we have for the first time? President Erdoğan told me, he is an old friend, said you were right, we let too many people through, now we are trying to seal the border.”	Joe Biden The Washington Post	2014
Donald Trump	“Islamic terrorism is eating up large portions of the Middle East. They've become rich. I'm in competition with them. They just built a hotel in Syria. Can you believe this? They built a hotel. When I have to build a hotel, I pay interest. They don't have to pay interest, because they took the oil that, when we left Iraq, I said we should've taken”	Donald Trump	June 2015
Donald Trump	“When Mexico sends its people, they're not sending their best. They're not sending you. They're not sending you. They're sending people that have lots of problems, and they're bringing those problems with us. They're bringing drugs. They're bringing crime. They're rapists. And some, I assume, are good people. But I speak to border guards and they tell us what we're getting. And it only makes common sense. It only makes common sense. They're sending us not the right people. It's coming from more than Mexico. It's coming from all over South and Latin America, and it's coming probably – probably – from the Middle East. But we don't know. Because we have no protection and we have no competence, we don't know what's happening. And it's got to stop and it's got to stop fast.”	Donald Trump	June 2015
US/Foreign policy	“The US/Saudi/Israeli alliance against Iran is the most important geo-political factor in the region today. It is high time this alliance stopped both funding ISIS and pretending to fight it; schizophrenia is not a foreign policy stance.”	Craig Murray	20 December 2018

 

Nation states

Nation state	Description
Bahrain	Oil rich Arab nation, formerly part of the British Empire.
Egypt	Strategically important due particularly to the Suez canal.
Iran	Iran possesses the 4th largest oil reserves of any nation state.
Iraq	Iraq possesses the 5th largest oil reserves of any nation state.
Israel	Renewing the Memorandum of Understanding in September 2016, whereby the American taxpayer agreed to pay Israel $38 billion over a 10-year period
Jordan	Middle Eastern kingdom.
Kuwait	Kuwait has the 6th largest oil reserves of any nation state.
Lebanon	Religiously diverse Middle Eastern country.
Oman	The oldest independent state in the Arab world.
Palestine
Qatar	Oil rich, gas richer!
Saudi Arabia	Longtime political ally of the USA, Saudi Arabia possesses larger easily accessible oil reserves than any other nation state.
Syria	A nation state in the Middle East being targeted by NATO countries and their terrorist proxies with a "humanitarian intervention"/"War on Terror" campaign to effect 'regime change'.
Turkey	Turkey is a nation state at the south east corner of Europe.
United Arab Emirates	The United Arab Emirates has the 7th largest oil reserves of any nation state.
Yemen	A war torn country in the Middle East

 

Related Documents

Title	Type	Publication date	Author(s)	Description
Document:Arabs Beware the Small States Option	article	29 July 2013	Sharmine Narwani	A succinct introduction to proposals, widely canvassed among Western Elites but otherwise largely suppressed, to impose a new political settlement on the entire Middle East involving the re-ordering of its national borders along sectarian lines. These proposals represent the increasingly dominant leitmotif of 21st century Globalist driven Middle-Eastern policy.
Document:Backing the Wrong Horseman	blog post		Craig Murray	The neo-con drive to dominate the Middle East, in alliance with Saudi Arabia and Israel, has caused an apocalyptic level of death and destruction, which I put (an extremely conservative figure) at 5 million dead. Now compare that to the worldwide death toll from coronavirus: 220,000. Let me say that again. Western aggressive wars to coronavirus: 5,000,000 versus 220,000.
Document:Bitter Roots - The Bases of Present Conflicts in the Middle East	speech	1977	J. Rives Childs
Document:Syria Turkey Israel and a Greater Middle East Energy War	report	12 October 2012	William Engdahl	A comprehensive report on the struggle to control Middle East oil and gas, exposing the plans behind Western/Israeli diplomatic and military activity towards Syria & Iran. The current state of affairs accords very closely with a publication of the Brookings Institution's "Saban Centre for Middle East Studies" - the PDF of which was removed from the Brookings web site in early October.
Document:Twenty Years On, We’ve Learned Nothing From 9/11	Speech	17 September 2021	Ron Paul	20 years on from 9/11, Ron Paul says that The Establishment in the United States has learned nothing since the attacks.
Document:US bombs Syria and ridiculously claims self defence	Article	26 February 2021	Caitlin Johnstone	The US can bomb who it likes, whenever it likes, and when it does it is only ever doing so in self-defence, because the entire planet is the property of Washington DC. It can seize control of entire clusters of nations, and if any of those nations resist in any way, they are invading America’s sovereignty.
Document:Western Power And The Middle East	working paper		Denis Healey