Sir Richard Dearlove, who as head of Britain’s Secret Intelligence Service was up to his ears in orchestrating the U.S.’s 2003 invasion of Iraq, asserted Oct. 16 that the most “profound issue, long-term, in the Middle East,” is the struggle for power between the Sunni and Shia leaderships, and today, “we” are coming close to the point of decision in that conflict. “My expectation is that Saudi Arabia will assert its position” in this final conflict, and the “Shia theocracy” in Iran will fall, he pronounced. The battle will be “very costly to the countries of the region,” but in the long run they will benefit, he cheerfully added.
Dearlove’s “forecast”—a statement of British imperial intent—was made to Tom Burges Watson, the host of the Saudi state-owned Al Arabiya’s Global News Tonight program, in a half-hour interview. Dearlove, only formally “retired,” is working overtime to further the decades-long British policy, cooked up by the fanatic geopolitical strategist Bernard Lewis, of promoting perpetual religious conflict in the region.
Working to sell that British strategy to “his Saudi friends,” Dearlove argued that the UK should be taking a “more forward stance” in providing military support for Saudi Arabia against the Houthis; the UK has used its Royal Air Force to bomb Yemen before, and could do that again. Likewise, he is eager to see Egypt dragged into this fight, stating that Egypt, with its “formidable” military capability, has “a crucial role to play… I do not expect them to continue to sit this out for long,” he declared.
He said he believes that President Trump has not given U.S. military backing to Saudi Arabia because another U.S.-Israeli attack on Iran is imminent, so Trump does not want to split U.S. forces. Bombing a country of 90 million people into submission will not work as a strategy, Dearlove opined, but “kinetic” action (bombing) can support the strategy that he insists will bring down the Iran regime: squeezing, isolating its economy, as Scott Bessent is, in his view, so correctly doing. Dearlove suggested twice that seizing control of, or destroying, Iran’s Kharg Island would “hugely” damage the Iranian economy, which is already in “very, very deep trouble.”
Experienced intelligence liar that he is, Dearlove repeatedly insisted that Iran’s government is weaker than people say ("more on the back foot than many realize"), hated by its people, and its military capabilities extensively degraded, and therefore can be brought down—a prediction he has made over recent years almost as frequently as he infamously assured the world that Vladimir Putin was deathly ill and would die any minute.
That lie notwithstanding, he said “significant violence” is still expected, before success can be achieved. Dearlove forecast that after President Trump “loses” the midterm elections, he will concentrate on securing his “legacy,” that being of having been the president who brought down the Venezuelan and Cuban “regimes” (he views the latter as a done-deal, any day now), and Iran’s Shia regime.
