President-elect Donald Trump shared a video in which Columbia professor Jeffery Sachs sharply criticized US Middle East policy and accused Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of helping to lead the US into “endless wars“ in the region.
In the video, posted without comment to Trump’s Truth Social account on Tuesday, Sachs said Netanyahu is “a deep, dark son of a bitch“ who led the US into multiple follies in the Middle East and now wants America to fight a war with Iran on Israel’s behalf. “Netanyahu had, from 1995 onward, the theory that the only way we’re going to get rid of Hamas and Hezbollah is by toppling the governments that support them. That’s Iraq, Iran and Syria. The guy is nothing if not obsessive,“ the professor said, “He’s gotten us into endless wars and because of the power of all of this in US politics, he’s gotten his way.“
In 2002, Netanyahu gave an address to Congress to help sell Americans on the invasion of Iraq. “If you take out Saddam, Saddam’s regime, I guarantee you that it will have enormous positive reverberations on the region,” the prime minister said at the time. “And I think that people sitting right next door in Iran, young people, and many others, will say the time of such regimes, of such despots is gone.”
The Iraq War would result in hundreds of thousands of murdered Iraqi civilians, thousands of dead Americans, trillions of dollars wasted, and a government in Baghdad more aligned with Tehran than ever. Additionally, the power and security vacuum created by Saddam’s ouster led to the rise of al-Qaeda in Iraq, and later the group’s uglier, more violent iteration, the Islamic State.
As of 2019, a majority of Americans believed the war in Iraq was not worth fighting and a mistake.
After US neocons deposed Saddam, the Iraqi people elected a Shi’ite-led government that favored strong ties with Tehran, a result directly at odds with Netanyahu’s predictions. Washington and its Middle East allies then became concerned that there existed a “Shi’ite Crescent” in the region stretching from Iran, through Iraq and Syria, to Hezbollah in southern Lebanon. The resulting policy shift – as outlined in Seymour Hersh’s key 2007 piece, ”The Redirection” – has put the United States on the path to direct confrontation with the Islamic Republic and done little to reduce Tehran’s broader influence in the region.
Professor Sachs explained that President Barack Obama then ordered the CIA to launch an operation that supported Sunni militant groups attempting to overthrow President Bashar al-Assad in Syria. At the time, the Defense Intelligence Agency internally warned that the CIA’s support for jihadist factions could result in the creation of an ”Salafist Principality,” effectively predicting the rise of the ISIS ‘Caliphate.’
Sachs’ criticisms of American interventionism and Israeli influence on US politics have resulted in attacks from high-ranking officials in Tel Aviv, with Diaspora Affairs Minister Amichai Chikli saying Sachs belonged to a group of “fringe Holocaust deniers, conspiracy theorists, and blood libel enthusiasts who oppose the State of Israel.”
In the video, a two-minute compilation of a longer interview posted by Wall Street Apes, Sachs slams the US media for failing to cover the CIA’s support for the extremists fighting to topple Assad, noting the New York Times had only mentioned the operation, dubbed ‘Timber Sycamore,’ a total of three times.
Despite his apparent endorsement of the critical views expressed in the clip, Trump has labeled himself as Israel’s “best friend” and repeatedly promised to increase US support for the Jewish State after he returns to the White House.
