“Turkey’s Definitely A Dangerous Nation” – Raymond Ibrahim On Erdogan And Ottoman Ambitions

Patrick Bet-David (0:00)

You know, when you're saying Muslim, Islam is weak right now, with manpower, right? When you see Houthis, 10 years ago, they had 30,000 people in their military. They're at 350,000 right now. They have, you know, taken over a handful of places already on the complete other choke point that we have. You have the Strait of Hormuz here. And the other side is what, Ben-Al-Madeb, or, you know, if I'm not pronouncing it correctly, uh, uh, Mandab, yeah, the Mandab Strait. And so Houthis are there. You got IRGC on this side. And every time we say, we eliminated ISIS, we eliminated al-Qaeda, we eliminated, they reappear in a different way somewhere else, right?

So when you're saying they're weak, and you see how Houthis and IRGC have control of two straits, at least it seems like it to the world, no matter how many times we say we own the Strait, we control it, everybody is still waiting to see what Iran is going to be doing. How do they have so much power right now in that region?

Raymond Ibrahim (0:58)

Well, okay, so when I say they're weak, just so we understand, what I mean is if let's say Islam, the Islamic world versus the rest of the world, and it's an all-out war, okay, they're going to be done. If it's just Islam versus the West, okay, in an all-out war, just based on the technology that the West have, they're going to be done. Okay, it's just that the West doesn't think that way, it's never going to try to attack them that way. But they have, in the particular cases you're mentioning, they have that kind of power, because it's local, it's there. Iran's been there, the Hormuz Strait's been its thing, for what, centuries, millennia?

So they have that particular power due to their local proximity, right?

Patrick Bet-David (1:39)

They have the power due to the local proximity?

Raymond Ibrahim (1:41)

No, no, they have control over these things, just because they're-

Patrick Bet-David (1:45)

How should US and the rest of the world handle that as they're expanding?

Because if Houthis went from 30,000 to 350,000, they're twice the size of Israel, Israel's at 165,000, whatever their number is, and they now have the third largest military in the Middle East. I think Iran's number one at 610,000, and who was number two? Egypt was two or four? Egypt's number two, and then you have them at number three.

Should the rest of the world just mind their own business and not intervene, or what's your position based on the history?

Raymond Ibrahim (2:14)

Well, okay, so this is a good question because you're tying it in with Islam. You're talking about Islam, right, history, and you're bringing this in.

Patrick Bet-David (2:21)

If the threat is that big, should we look aside and we'll be fine?

Raymond Ibrahim (2:25)

No, no, if there's a serious threat, of course, the threat, you know, it needs to be handled one way or the other. But here's my problem with that paradigm that you're presenting, which a lot of people do, is this, okay? We can talk about it as a real politic issue, which means, you know, it's Iran, not from an ideological, religious point of view. We can just say Iran's the enemy for whatever reason, and it should be dealt with. But the question that you're asking, and I think a lot of people are suggesting, is, well, Iran is an Islamic power, and you are here talking about Islam, and then obviously Iran is horrible and we have to do something about it. Now, the issue I have with that is, and I hear this often, is, well, I still think it's a real politic thing, because historically, the West's problems with Islam came from Sunni nations, okay? It was the Sunni, all the people that I talk about in these books, historically, the Caliphates were all Sunnis, okay? It was Muhammad's followers, the Umayyads, the Abbasids, the Seljuks, the Ottomans. These are the Barbary pirates. All of these were Sunnis who terrorized. Now, I look at the West and I see America, and right now, today, the most radical, in my opinion, nations are Saudi Arabia. This is the home of Wahhabism and Salafism. I know everyone gets shocked because they've had a great PR campaign going on, but they're the home. That's the head of the snake. That's the home of Islam, actually. They're the ones who use all their money to fund Wahhabi, which is the same thing, radical literature, all around the world, in the mosques, for example. They're the ones who funded terrorist organizations. Turkey is a Sunni nation.