Truth the first casualty in the Middle East
Yet again, tensions in the Middle East seem set to explode — but this time, it’s so much harder to figure out who is telling the truth, writes Michael McGuire.
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It’s hard not to be concerned about what is going on at the moment in the Middle East.
It’s even harder to figure out who is telling the truth and who, if anyone, is to be believed about who is responsible for attacking Saudi Arabia’s Abqaiq oil facility over the weekend.
US President Donald Trump says Iran is behind the drone strikes on the oil plant which produces five per cent of the world’s oil supplies. Saudi Arabia also points the finger at Iran. Iran has denied responsibility.
Which leaves the one party who is claiming it was them — Houthi rebels in Yemen who have been at war with Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates since 2015. But the Houthis’ main backers are the Iranians.
Who can you possibly believe from that lot of liars and madmen?
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But it’s an indication of just how far the credibility of the US has fallen in international affairs that it’s almost impossible to take anything Donald Trump says at face value.
It’s possible he’s telling the truth about the strikes on Saudi Arabia, but how would you know? Trump is not known to have a close relationship with the truth.
The intertwining and frequent substitution of fact and fantasy have been the defining feature of his presidency.
At times, Trump appears to have only a passing acquaintance with reality. His grasp of anything beyond self-interest in even more tenuous.
That the credibility gap between a great power such as the US and a degenerate, brutal theocracy like Iran has narrowed to such an extent is possibly the saddest outcome of the Trump era.
Iran is a country that was going to send female football fan Sahar Khodayari to jail for six months because she tried to enter a stadium to watch a match. She died last week after setting herself on fire outside court.
Then we have the Saudis. They are telling us Iranian missiles were used to attack Abqaiq. And, again, maybe they’re right, but this is Saudi Arabia.
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It’s the country with a penchant for murdering journalists in overseas embassies and then cutting them up. Their commitment to truth and transparency is not exactly top notch. Trump is also a big fan of the Saudis.
Saudi Arabia is also heavily involved in creating possibly the world’s worst humanitarian crisis in Yemen. Yemen is the poorest country in the Middle East and it’s estimated by the UN that almost a quarter of a million people will have been killed by the end of this year if the fighting continues.
Somewhere around 60 per cent of the dead will be children under five, mostly due to a lack of food, health services and working infrastructure. More than 13 million people are at risk of starvation, according to the UN.
The war started in 2014 when the Houthis ousted President Abdrabbuh Mansour Hadi.
The Saudis and the UAE joined the war to reinstate their ally Hadi. Iran is on the side of the rebels. Yemen has become a proxy war between Iran and Saudi Arabia. Iran is lashing out at US sanctions which stop it selling oil.
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The situation in Yemen is as ugly as it gets and it’s unlikely to improve. In this atmosphere, truth, or even an approximation of it, is left by the wayside.
Politics and politicians have always struggled to convince that truth is their No. 1 priority, but it seems to be getting worse.
The lies become more stupid and pointless. Leaders are becoming less credible by the week, whether it’s Vladimir Putin in Russia, Boris Johnson in Britain, Benjamin Netanyahu in Israel or Xi Jinping in China. Their every statement has to be assessed by an internal bulls. t filter.
Then there’s our own Scott Morrison who outright denied he had ever called the disgraced Labor senator Sam Dastyari “Shanghai Sam’’. Of course, he did. Many times. On Twitter, in interviews. Everywhere.
Back-pedalling, he fell back on the defence he “misheard’’ the question. It was all a bit Trumpian really.
Michael McGuire is a senior writer for The Adelaide Advertiser.
Originally published as Truth the first casualty in the Middle East
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