Erdogan, already battling his own economic woes, faces a coalition determined to squash his and Libya’s planned theft of Greece’s off shore oil. Arabic sources identify the Gas Club members as: Egypt, Israel (including Palestinian support,) Jordan, Italy, Cyprus, Italy, and Greece. Can Erdogan keep propping up Libya’s puppet government and will Russia and Iran jump in to save him? Brad analyses the ongoing and increasingly volatile developments in western Asia.
Retired after 25 years in the CIA as Chief of Station, Brad Johnson now devotes his efforts to his non-profit Americans for Intelligence Reform. Having spent most of his career overseas, his unique understanding of and experience with global hot spots provides you with news the mainstream media won’t. Please subscribe and support our work.
See the YouTube channel playlist for more insight into Erdogan’s neo-Ottoman aggressions.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R7NNbttpszM
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brad johnson september the 24th of 2020
00:03
um one place that’s certainly always
00:06
worth keeping tabs on
00:08
as it was such an excellent marker for
00:10
the obama clinton
00:11
foreign policy uh would be libya
00:15
and the complete catastrophe that they
00:18
made of that place
00:19
and it looks to me like a few a few
00:22
places have ambitions on on
00:26
claiming libya as an asset what’s going
00:28
on there now
00:30
yeah there’s some extraordinarily
00:32
interesting developments on this
00:33
now just laying the groundwork for this
00:36
uh essentially you have this
00:38
uh small entrenched uh government of
00:41
uh that’s in power that is it’s been
00:44
recognized by europe although that
00:47
recognition is beginning to weaken and
00:50
uh they’re backed by turkey turkey has
00:52
troops and
00:53
and equipment in there militarily
00:54
backing them they were almost wiped out
00:56
they were down to just
00:58
the uh capital of tripoli and general
01:01
haftar’s the
01:02
opposition group uh had taken over the
01:05
entire country and was closing in on
01:07
tripoli
01:07
turkey moved in started fighting back
01:09
and now the battle has moved to the
01:11
second largest
01:12
city in turkey all right excuse me libya
01:14
which is cert now
01:15
you’ve got russians in there now backing
01:17
um
01:18
the general have tar troops the united
01:20
states has
01:21
in large part stayed out of all of this
01:23
or not not particularly involved
01:26
but turkey desperately needs to have
01:28
libya
01:29
stand as is with this little government
01:32
that they’re backing the puppet
01:33
government there
01:34
and they need them because that’s that
01:37
peace treaty
01:38
where they drew lines between the two
01:42
coastlines of libya
01:44
and turkey and said this is our
01:47
joint area so they they the the swath of
01:51
ocean
01:51
that exists between them in the
01:53
mediterranean sea they divide in half
01:55
and that’s their sphere of influence so
01:58
one of turkey’s kind of justifications
02:00
legal justifications for
02:02
a lot of their aggression in the
02:03
mediterranean is based on
02:05
this this treaty with libya so that they
02:08
really need this to stand now
02:10
that government there uh the puppet
02:13
government of turkey
02:14
in libya has got real problems so
02:17
turkey’s in there and they’re shooting
02:18
this has this has evolved such that
02:20
general haftar’s forces is now
02:22
on the other hand getting a lot of
02:25
backing
02:25
and russia included and this wagner
02:28
group which is
02:29
kind of a black water type group except
02:32
for russian
02:33
they’re essentially russian mercenaries
02:35
who come in and
02:36
fight they actually are mercenary troops
02:38
so they come in and have
02:40
uh air fighter aircraft and helicopters
02:43
and
02:43
and and actually move troops in and
02:45
shoot them up sort of stuff so they’re
02:47
uh
02:48
they’re very active in that area as well
02:50
so it’s interesting how these sides have
02:53
have started to form now a very
02:55
interesting additional development out
02:57
of all of that
02:58
is that seven countries
03:02
have signed an agreement according to
03:04
arabic reporting this hasn’t
03:06
isn’t being reported in the united
03:08
states but these seven countries have
03:11
created this uh natural resource
03:14
exploitation
03:15
club and they call it the gas club okay
03:18
don’t owe me
03:19
you know not my fault that’s the name
03:20
but so they’ve got this gas club
03:22
those countries very interesting list
03:25
egypt
03:26
israel palestinian authority
03:29
uh jordan cyprus greece and italy
03:33
now who you know this this
03:36
is the coalition opposition
03:39
who is left off that list turkey so
03:43
this this is clearly uh put in place
03:47
to combat this libyan
03:51
turkish agreement on the ocean resources
03:54
there
03:55
and they’ve got this seven country
03:57
agreement depending on how you count uh
04:00
palestinian authority
04:01
but these countries are all the ones
04:04
cyprus greece
04:05
italy that these are ones that are in
04:07
the way
04:08
of what turkey is trying to do and then
04:11
you’ve got
04:12
egypt israel and jordan who are those
04:15
are
04:15
significant countries who recognize the
04:18
danger of the in the future of what
04:21
turkey’s doing so this is an
04:23
extraordinarily
04:24
important um
04:27
development in this battle that’s going
04:29
on there and those are the countries we
04:31
have seen
04:32
egypt uh who shares a border with libya
04:35
threatened to bring in troops depending
04:37
on what turkish troops do
04:39
so again this this ratchets everything
04:41
up a much larger notch
04:43
and is a very serious setback to
04:46
turkish president erdogan for his
04:48
expansionist goals so
04:50
uh he’s got some real problems
04:52
developing there so we’ll see what
04:53
happens in another report we talked
04:55
about is build up of a navy
04:57
but this is starting to get to the point
04:58
where he he doesn’t have enough
05:00
resources and can’t develop on his own
05:03
enough resources to combat these sorts
05:06
of coalitions because you have the eu
05:08
back in greece
05:09
and now you have this seven country
05:12
agreement for exploitation of
05:14
oil and gas in the in the uh seas there
05:18
around
05:18
turkey which the greek waters and
05:20
italian waters and
05:22
cyprus of course which has been long
05:24
been an issue
05:25
uh so this this development does
05:29
point to uh everyone in that entire
05:32
region understands exactly the problem
05:34
and they’re working to combat it so that
05:37
is something that president erdogan did
05:38
not count on and with his poor economy
05:41
and all he uh he’s just not in a
05:42
position to combat these types of
05:44
coalitions or to face down
05:46
these types of coalitions so where will
05:48
he turn and that’s going to be the
05:50
interesting aspect of this
05:51
is what is he going to do is he going to
05:52
try to build up again is he going to
05:55
is he going to try to start a shooting
05:56
war i mean just we’ll have to see how
05:58
that that
05:59
turns out but now at this point his
06:00
natural allies of china and iran
06:03
are they’re going to have to get much
06:05
closer in order to be able to do
06:06
anything effective when you’ve got
06:08
arab countries and regional countries
06:10
joining together
06:12
to offset turkey so very interesting
06:15
development very important
06:17
and i believe turkey is still purchasing
06:20
illegal fuels or dealing in illegal
06:23
fuels from
06:24
islamic state-held areas so iran in
06:28
particular they’re buying oil from iran
07:01
you
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