Ayman Dean (3:21)

Hi.

Aviv (3:22)

It is truly an honor and fascinating to have you here. Thank you for agreeing to come on. We turned to you and asked you after reading your book Nine Lives My Time as MI6's top spy inside Al Qaeda. If that doesn't hold the listener's attention, you know nothing will. I want to start off essentially by asking you to introduce yourself through your story, through this extraordinary story you tell about your childhood, about what it's like living in deeply conservative Muslim societies. Bahraini family in Saudi Arabia. I grew up, okay, I was born in 1981, so 9, 11 happened when I was 20. I grew up with a very particular picture of what Saudi Islamic society is. And reading your book, there's something much, much more complex and human about that society, even at its very conservative, at its most conservative. And so I would love to dig into that. Tell us about your childhood in particular. I was fascinated by how you talk about women and your mother and the home in this deeply religious society, and someone who memorized the Koran at a young age, which is a classic sort of goal of a believing. A believing Muslim. So I'm going to now stop asking this very extended question and let you talk.

Ayman Dean (4:46)

Thank you so much, Havi, for having me. And I want to extend also the thanks to your listeners. Well, I mean, first of all, I was born in 1978, and so it was just only three months before the most catastrophic year in our living memory. I would say it was 1979, when the Islamic Republic was established through the Islamic revolution in Iran. Saddam Hussein came to power, the Soviets invaded Afghanistan, you know, starting the whole jihad, modern jihad cycle. And of course, not so catastrophic was the visit by Sadat to Jerusalem and the Camp David Peace Accord. Now, all of these events shaped my life, but in particular, one event that shaped my life later, especially in Saudi Arabia, was also in 1979, which defined Saudi Arabia for a generation to come, was the siege of the Grand Mosque of Mecca. So I was born in the wrong year, I would say, like, in comparison to my five older siblings. All of them used to tell me that Saudi Arabia was so different prior to 1979. It was conservative, but it was discovering itself. It was slowly and gradually coming out of its shell and started to feel more comfortable with, you know, Westernization and Western films and movies being shown in cinemas. There used to be cinemas in Saudi before 1979. Yes, there used to be female waiters in restaurants in Saudi Arabia before 1979. But then 1979, just three months after I was born, it was the event that shook the kingdom to the core when a group of Salafists, followers of Juhman al Atabi and the, you know, the movement is called Al Mahtasibin, you know, those who doing hizbah or, you know, the prohibition of vice and the promotion of virtue, seized the Grand Mosque of Mecca, announced that they have the Mahdi with them. So already there is some eschatology there, you know, to add to this salad. And for 18 days, the grand Mosque of Mecca, most sacred part of Islam, was a battleground in which we saw not only just Jordanian special forces come in to help the Saudi forces retake the Grand Mosque, but we saw some French special forces coming in to help who just at the border of the harem, at the sanctuary, converted to Islam in order to perform the mission. And, you know, and this is one of the fun facts, like, you know, when we talk about that, but what really happened is that after that, the reality is that Saudi Arabia was so shocked by the fact that these group, this group of people, 400 men who seized the Grand Mosque were doing it because they felt that the kingdom was going too far on the path of Westernization and liberalization and modernization. And so they wanted to take it back. And take it back they did. Yes, they failed in the uprising they staged, but in reality, they succeeded in making the royal family go back on their vision of modernizing the kingdom and thought, well, if we want to keep a grip on power, we might as well go back to conservatism. And as a result, I grew up in that newly applied conservative society that his late Majesty King Khalid enacted after the events of 1979, and then after that, of course, enacted by his successor, his late Majesty King Fahd. For me, I grew up, you know, in what I call, like, in basically the King Fahd, Saudi Arabia, conservative, austere. And it was a place where there is definitely now segregation, no cinemas, you know, were there anymore. Society was segregated, you know, according to men and women, men and women. Like, for me, I had only six. Sorry, I have only five older brothers. And, you know, and the only female in the house was my mom. And so for Me, you know, women were, you know, and, you know, not to be seen. I used to have just. You.

Aviv (9:39)

You write that you literally didn't see a woman unveiled except in your home, your mother. For how long? For how many years?

Ayman Dean (9:47)

Well, until I was 16. You know, really, like, I mean, you know, from the age of nine, you know, all the female cousins, I think by nine, ten, that's it, all the female cousins that I used to have, all of them started to veil based on the culture and the norms at the time. And so I didn't see their faces after that. And so from, I would say from 10 until 16, six years, that's it. Like, I mean, you only see them ironically on tv, on Egyptian or Syrian or Lebanese TV sitcoms or TV shows and that's it, or movies. But in real life, they are segregated. In real life, you don't see them. And so that's the first thing I've noticed, like, in, I mean, growing up, is the fact that there is segregation. But also with it comes the. The fact that where I was born in itself was a fascinating place. I was born in Khubar, and Khubar is, in my opinion, the most fascinating town in Saudi Arabia, hands down. And I know, lucky. I mean, some people will say, no, it's Riyadh or dead whatever, but no, sorry, I mean, I would say it's Khubar. And for the following reasons. First of all, it is the home of Aramco, the largest oil company in the world and the producer. The largest producer of oil in the world until at least when I grow up. When I was growing up, like, it was, it was the case. My uncle, my, you know. Well, actually, I would say my three uncles and my dad, all of them work for Aramco. So I'm an Aramco boy through and through, almost. I have currently 29 members of the current extended family, cousins and second cousins who currently work for Aramco. And so, and they are, some of them are third and fourth generation Aramco. So you can say, like, you know, that, you know, almost if I ever like, basically were to have my blood taken, you know, forget the metallic, you know, smell, you might as well smell the oil out of it.

Aviv (12:03)

It's all oil in there.

Ayman Dean (12:04)

Right, exactly. What does that mean? It means basically that we were, you know, more accustomed to seeing Americans, Brits, Dutch, Scots, you know, so usually, like, you know, we used to see Australians. Like, I mean, so we were more accustomed to see foreigners than other parts of Saudi Arabia. So that was one thing that Made the inhabitants of that town more curious around the world, about the world than the rest of Saudi Arabia. That's one thing. And the second thing also is the fact that we were having access. And actually, I remember this, like, I mean, all the other parts of Saudi Arabia used to hate us for this, but we used to have access to more TV stations than the rest of Saudi Arabia. So because we were Khubar, so we had access to Kuwait tv, Qatar tv, Bahrain tv, which were. And Abu Dhabi tv, Dubai tv, which was far more liberal, you know, than, you know, Saudi tv. So the rest of Saudi regions were strictly Channel one, Channel two. That's it for me, however, and my.

Aviv (13:09)

Compatriot, it was, yeah, because of the foreigners. It's because Khubar also has a big Shia population. It's more diverse. It's an international commercial center. Because of the oil. Right, so is that why that you can't restrict TV in a hotel of a. Of a commercial, you know, of an international.

Ayman Dean (13:26)

No, because it was analog. It was analog. And we were geographically next to these countries. Pure geography. It's pure geography that we were next door to Kuwait, next door to Bahrain, next door to Qatar, next door to Abu Dhabi and Dubai. And so our analog in the TV at the time, like, and they used to catch all of these channels. And as you touched on it already, you know, roughly about at that time, it used to be 40% of the population of the Eastern Province, in a way, or Shia. Now, I think it has been reduced with significant migration from other parts of the country to 25%. But at that time it used to be 40% Shia, the population there and growing up. It's the 80s. It's a war between the Shia Islamic Republic in Iran, led by Khomeini and the, you know, the Sunni led, you know, Iraq, led by Saddam Hussein, and eight years war between the two sides. And of course, in the school, we used to taunt each other. The Sunni boys used to support Saddam and the Shia boys used to support Khomeini. Whenever the Iranians used to make significant gains in the war, they used to taunt us about it, even though we were kids. We were 7 and 8 and 9. But we understood all of these things because the fact that we were growing up, it's the equivalent of growing up in, you know, in Belfast, you know, where you have, you know, the Catholics and the Protestants like, taunting each other. It's the same thing here, except our schools were mixed. And that led to even more taunts between the two sides. We were studying next to each other. But I can tell you, I mean we were, you know, absolutely, you know, Gulfs apart in terms of our political leanings and who do we support and you know, how do we see the future?

Aviv (15:22)

How did that, I mean, I'm sorry, how did that work in the Middle east generally? Different religious groups, different minorities often. And this is an inheritance of the Ottomans and this is true in Israel, it's true in Lebanon, it's true in Syria. Have their own schools, their own school systems, their own ideologies. They can have their own court systems and their own religious worlds. Sunni and Shia study together in a school that also, because it's Saudi Arabia taught Islam. What Islam did they learn? How did, how did a school unite Sunni and Shia and teach Islam in Saudi Arabia in the 1990s?

Ayman Dean (15:51)

Well, it didn't unite them. It's just like, you know, basically, you know, this is the curriculum. The curriculum is based on Salafi Islam according to the teachings of Sheikh Mohammed Mahdu Wahhab. You know, you memorize the book of Tawheed, you know, which is his main, you know, pamphlet, let's put it, his manifesto, if we can put it this way.

Aviv (16:13)

And all the Shia kids just had.

Ayman Dean (16:14)

To do that and memorize it and have to pass the exam in it. And we used to rub their noses in it actually. I mean, we used to enjoy it. So. And, but at the same time. Yeah, but at the same time we used to see immediately the difference even among Shia themselves. We used to see that the Shia of Alhsa region, the oasis of Alhsa, were far more tolerant and lenient and, you know, open minded and easy with us because they used to follow Najaf rather than Qom in Iran while the Shia of Katif and Zihat and Safwa and all of these places, which is on the coast rather than the coastal Shia rather than the oasis Shia. They used to follow Qom and as a result they were more loyal to Iran and they were more hardliner with us. And it's just fascinating that the fact that they had to learn by heart the writings of Muhammad bin Abdul Wahhab and have to pass the exams. They had no separate schools whatsoever. They had separate courts. They are called the Ja' Fari courts. But that's the only separate thing they have. But apart from that, all the schools were united in teaching the Saudi curriculum at the time which included the essential writings of Muhammad bin Abdul Wahhab.

Aviv (17:34)

That's fascinating. Regular listeners will remember we had a conversation with Hussein Abdul Hussein, who is Shia Arab from Iraq, who really feels that the Iranian version of revolutionary Shi' ism of Khamenei Khomeini and then Khamenei overwhelmed the much more moderate Arab Shiism that he wants to bring back and hopes Iran's Shiism is in collapse because of the latest war with Israel, etc. So it's interesting hearing another signal of that kind of divide that's very deep and very serious in your experience. Let me push forward a little bit. In your life, you are now a teenager, it is now the early 90s, and you read the writings of a gentleman named Saeed Qutb and decide to join the jihad. Can you tell us that story?

Ayman Dean (18:29)

Well, for whatever reason, I mean, 1991 was not exactly lucky. I mean, the best year of my life. First of all, we, our town was targeted by more than 100 ballistic missiles by Saddam Hussein during the January and February of 1991. From February until May of 1991, we had the black winter when Saddam blew up all the 700 oil wells in Kuwait. And the, you know, and the wind, which were, you know, southwards, I mean, brought all the smoke and gave us a three months of black cloud winter where the day was night. And then by May it was over. But then by August, my mother passed away. Brain aneurysm. She was only 49 at the time. I was 12. So for me it was of course like basically a time when I was absolutely still trying to find myself. I just finished memorizing the Quran a month before she passed away. She was so happy about it.

Aviv (19:40)

Can we just stop on that one? In the book you talk about, first of all, her influence over you. We just talked about you not seeing any woman's face for those at that six year age group. Your mother being the only female really present in the home. She was a big inspiration also for your turn for your religious learning, for your scholarship. She was very proud of you for being, you know, a clever kid who loved to read, was very bookish. What is involved in a 12 year old learning to memorize the Quran? This is a very old Muslim tradition ideal even I would say. By the way, it's similar to Judaism in the Middle Ages where the learning and in the Talmudic period where the learning of the memorization itself was a separate function. It was considered tremendously honorable and young people aspired to it. Tell us more about that, your mother's influence and also that, what was that Islam in your life as such a young person?

Ayman Dean (20:30)

I think for my Mother, like, you know, she thought that, okay, my two oldest siblings, like, you know, we're going to become chemical engineers, and. And the third joined them as well on this journey. So from. From her point of view, if I showed already an aptitude towards religious learning. And I was very curious about religion since I was young, since at least nine, when I started to show serious curiosity about it. And I started going to join an Islamic awareness circle in a mosque. And it was a Salafist one, of course. So for her, you know, she encouraged it. She thought, okay, I want, you know, someone who is a half of the Quran. Like, you know, I mean, in my house it's a blessing. And she encouraged it. And from my point of view, I saw Islam, Lakina, I mean, as not just more than a set of rituals or set of beliefs also, but also I saw it as a story. It was. There is a historical narrative to it. There is a story. Of course, at the beginning, the story was extremely rosy and beautiful and flawless. Of course, Lakina, I mean, that view started to change, you know, with time as someone, you know, as I started to grow up. But at that time, it was a story. And who. Which point me to a child who doesn't like stories. It's not so different from the yeshiva, like in a. Basically in, you know, in Israeli society, like in a. Where, you know, Jewish kids go and learn the Torah and, you know, devote themselves, you know, to the Torah. It's the same thing here, basically. It's a devotion towards learning Islam and Islamic faith, you know, with its own entirety. You know, it's like from the creed, you know, from the jurisprudence, you know, from the point of the recitation of the Quran itself, from the interpretation of the text and slowly, gradually understanding of the history, the narrative, the story again, it's. We come back to the story. So my mother passed away, and I remember that caused me incredible grief, you know, in a way, I can't even find the words to describe it. And I remember in the month, a month or two after that, I remember I went to one of my teachers in the school who I admired so much, and I asked him the question. I said, I'm finding it extremely difficult, like, you know, to come to terms with this and with grief, like in. I mean. And so he told me that you already finished memorizing the Quran, and most of the books of interpretation you're reading are ancient ones like Ibn Kathir and Al Qurtubi and Tabari and Al Ahlusi, and all of these ancient ones why don't you read it through the prism of a literary, philosophical but also personal journey of a man who went through considerable amount of grief and wrote the interpretation of the Quran according to that grief. So from his point of view, since he said that this author wrote all of this interpretation of the Quran through the prism and perspective of grief nine years in prison, you might as well read it. And I said, who? And he said, come on, you should have guessed it by now. Is Fi Zilal Quran in the shades of the Quran for Sayyid Qutb. So I thought, well, we have it at home. It was a kind of a required reading. And I started then reading. And I can tell you that despite everything I think of Seth Qutb right now and I have so many things to say about him and his negative impact, you know, on the Muslim world right now. But man, he could write and write so deep and he could touch your heart directly because you can tell that he went through these years of mistreatment and torture and violations in prison. Nine years in Nasser's prisons in the 1950s and 60s, there were no picnic. And so you can tell that through the prism of pain and grief he was transforming the verses of the Quran that he was interpreting while he was interpreting them from a revolutionary point of view, infecting them with socialist, revolutionary flavor. However, when he was interpreting the verses about patience, about grief, about endurance, I mean they were poetic, there is no question about it. And he was able, I mean, for example, like in when he was talking about the personality of the Prophet Muhammad and I remember there was one particular verse when he's talking about the humanity, the fact that the Prophet is a human, you know, basically and the humanity of the Prophet when he talks about him and the influences that were on him and said that, he said, look at this person, he's a boy, he's six year old and he is returning from Medina where he's, he's already an orphan, you know, he's lost his father and he's already an orphan coming back with his mom, a sickly mum from Medina where he was visiting his, you know, uncles from his mother's side there coming back to Mecca. But because his mother was taken ill, the caravan left her and him, you know, alone, you know, until the next caravan come and pick them when she feels better. But hours after the caravan leave, she died. And he is talking about this, you know, six year old boy stranded in the desert, you know, with a dead mother. And then he is talking about the grief, how he dealt with it. And the fact that how could he have imagined that he as a six year old boy stranded in a desert with the dead body of his mom and doesn't know what to do with it until the next caravan came and helped him with the burial and then it took him back to Mecca to his grandfather. How could he have imagined that he would change the world in a way that he would have never dreamed of? And so he was saying that the lowest point of grief is your start to a much, much higher journey towards changing not yourself, but changing possibly the world. And I remember I'm reading this and I'm shaking. I'm thinking that why am I grieving? Even like, you know, when the Prophet's grief was far greater than mine and then I, you know, should learn from this rather than basically be buried deep in mine. And this is when this idea of changing the world, being part of history, not being a spectator on the side and also the caravan, the idea of a desert like joining the caravan, which also was a title of a book by Abdullah Azzam, the godfather of the jihad in Afghanistan which was available everywhere in Saudi Arabia at the time, joined the caravan. And you know, and it was one of the things that resonated with me. And so this is what prepared me for the fact that once there was the path open to go to join the jihad in Bosnia. I just took it without even thinking twice about it.

Aviv (28:20)

You read Said Qutb for a few years from when you're 12 and your mother dies until you're 16 at Mecca Reading it and then you make this decision and you go off, you're not even 18 yet, you're 16. When you go off to the jihad in Bosnia. What did jihad mean to you? What were you hoping to accomplish there? What specifically? This little boy, lonely and adrift, but also deeply learned already for a 12 year old certainly in Islam finds in the story of the Prophet himself no less this deep identification that is powerful, that is enormous. But a 16 year old getting up and going off to Bosnia to fight, that's a leap. Tell us about that leap.

Ayman Dean (28:58)

Well, I mean, this is exactly what Seth Qutb said when he said that our words are just nothing but candles that will remain unlit unless if we are willing to die and actually we die, you know, for the sake of these words then they are lit and they will shine, you know, the path forward for those who, you know, will follow our path. And I think for me at the time the Bosnian, you know, conflict was on our screens every day you know, and of course Lakina, I mean, it was resonating because for us we see for the first time we hear about them even, you know, we have the Bosnian Muslims, I mean they are, you know, blue and green eyed, you know, blonde and brown haired Muslims. But they are killed because their names were Ahmad and Mehmet and Mursad and Mustafa and all of that. It didn't matter that they were genetically Serbs who just converted to Islam, you know, 500 years ago. I mean they, you know, this is one of the reasons why when mass graves are found, you know, and still to this day they are found between now and then, they have difficulty finding out if they are Serbs or, you know, or Bosnians because they have the same DNA. Sadly, I mean, sadly, I mean, just shows you the fact that it was purely on religious rather than racial, you know, background. And so for us, like in, I mean, for me when I was growing up, I felt that that made me like, you know, identify more with my faith rather than my nation state, rather than the, you know, that the environment around me. I started feeling like, you know, that state quote of call towards the Ummah and the kingdom of God on earth, as he used to call it all the time. Like, you know, basically how do we bring it about? We bring it about by actually practicing what is lost for generations, which is the obligation of Jihad. So I just finished that Umrah that like in a religious, that in a religious journey in Mecca. And when I came back I was told that my friend, childhood friend, and someone who was three years older than mine because most of my friends at the time were either three or four or five years older than mine. I mean, unfortunately that's a reality when you are a nerd and, and most of your, you know, age peers are not exactly catching up with you.

Aviv (31:20)

So I have no idea what you're talking about. That was never my experience.

Ayman Dean (31:25)

I'm sure it was yours. I'm sure it was yours too. And so I went to his house to say goodbye because I knew he was going off to Bosnia. But in these 10 minutes I'm walking to his house, I decided I want to go with him because I felt that I was ready. It just, I didn't know it and until I saw, you know, it's like you, you see this light at the end of the tunnel and you think I'm going to follow it. So when I knocked on his door, you know, and I said, I heard that you're going with two others. And so I'm sure you know, there is a room for someone else. And he said, oh, you know, someone else was going. I said to him, you idiot, I'm not talking about someone else. I'm talking about me joining you. And he said, come on, you're just only 16. I just turned 16. Like, I mean, literally. And I remembered the question he asked me, which changed his mind and changed my life. He asked me the question. He said, for God's sake, look at you. You're 16. You're a book, you know, nerd, bookish, nerdy individual. Do you think the jihad needs you? So I said to him, come on, Khalid. I mean, I'm not even, you know, arrogant to even think that it needs me, but I need it. I'm the one who is in desperate need for it. So you have to take me with you, because it's not about, like, you know, what jihad needs. Jihad doesn't need any of us, but we need it, including me. Especially me. And he said to me, okay, that's the right attitude. Which means basically, like, you're coming. And so from his point of view, even though he was trying to tell me it's not a picnic, people die. I said to him, yeah, I know, but I said to him, I don't want to be, you know, feeling in several years ahead that the caravan came and went and passed me by, and I did not join it, and I remained on the side of the road. I don't want to be left behind.

Aviv (33:27)

I don't think people in the west today really understand the power of religion, the power of this poetry, the power of this belonging, the power of a young man seeking the dignity of doing something dangerous and meaningful and useful. It's something that is lacking, I think, in Western. What does a young American man. I think there's also for women, but just specifically in this context of going off to do good, to fight the good fight in the world, you, at the time you write, really understood jihad as a defensive act. And Bosnia, that was easy to frame it that way also. Right. Because that was a situation in Bosnia that would not be true, for example, in some other places.

Ayman Dean (34:14)

Of course.

Aviv (34:15)

Yeah. And you go off to join it. And then there's this amazing. I don't know how to put this. It was fun. Was jihad fun? Can you explain that to us? What was that experience of you would be in several countries over several years? What was it like to be actually a jihadi who eventually actually basically joins up with Osama bin Laden in Al Qaeda?

Ayman Dean (34:41)

I mean, I wouldn't say I Don't.

Aviv (34:43)

Mean, I don't mean fun. I don't mean it in the shallow sense. Exactly.

Ayman Dean (34:46)

Thrilling. It's thrilling is adrenaline, you know, adrenaline filled thrill. I mean, that's the best I can describe it. And not only that, but the nobility of it. I mean, in Bosnia in particular, I felt that there was something noble about it. I mean, because it was a clear cut ethnic cleansing. It was a clear cut, you know, genocide. You know, 60,000 women were raped by, you know, the Serbs, according to UN figures of the time. And, you know, and the massacres were of course, there for everyone to see. It's not like, you know, basically this is a. It was almost at the beginning a one sided fight. And so you feel the sense of nobility, you feel the sense that you are being chosen. I mean, and also like when you arrive and you think, oh my God, I'm going to go there and I'm going to join thousands of other volunteers. And then as soon as you land, you find, you know, what is my number or my number of 403 or something like that. Like, you know, basically. Is that it? You know, Am I the 400th volunteer? Yeah. I mean, and then it hits you straight away like, you know, I mean, that were quite few and out of, out of a billion Muslims at the time, like, you know, you feel that like, you know, only one out of 2 million, you know, answered the call. And then they tell us immediately there you're God's chosen. You know, people like, you know, who answered the call when millions others did not. So you are as he, as they. I remember like Anwar Shaban, Sheikh Anwar Shaban, who was the leader of the Jamaah Islamiya in Italy and then became the leader of the Mujahideen Brigade in Bosnia. He said to us like this, he said, you are the safwa. Safwa means the chosen ones. And so that of course, if it doesn't fill your heart with, you know, that kind of pride, I mean, you know, what will fill your heart with pride like this. We were four individuals who went to Bosnia. It was October of 1994. And if I fast forward all the way to December of 1995 when the war ended, the two who came with us with me and Khalid were dead already. Khalid would go on later to become the leader of Al Qaeda in Arabia between 2002 and 2004. And that's just to show you that Bosnia graduated many of the future leaders of Al Qaeda, many people who were paramount to the 911 planning were there Ramz ibn Shib was there. Khalid Sheikh Mohammed was there. Although he came at the end. Many leaders of the Al Qaeda in Arabia were there. Many leaders of Al Qaeda in Yemen were there. That gave birth to the. Because, you know, like, the Afghan jihad was kind of, you know, anti communist. The Bosnian jihad became anti Western. It became the breeding ground for anti Western resentment.

Aviv (37:50)

It became that breeding ground because it was primed for by everybody having read Said Ibor, because the west had failed to come to Bosnia's aid until four years in where Clinton finally orders NATO finally bombs Belgrade. But what was the grounds for anti Western resentment out of Bosnia? Serbia was associated with the West.

Ayman Dean (38:10)

You already answered this. The whole idea is the failure of the United nations. And unfortunately, the United Nation forces there, especially, like in the Spanish and British and Canadian forces, like, you know, we're not exactly behaving the best, like, ever. Like. And this is. And the reality is that they were useless. I mean, the UN did not stand for the United Nations. It stood for the useless nations. And that sense of failure. I mean, do they want the war to continue like this? And so I think by the end of it, the resentment grew and grew as that they only intervened when the Bosnians were finally able to turn the table and start gaining and recovering territories from the Serbs. And, and that's, I think, what was the perception at that time. And of course, when the Dayton Accord happened and, you know, by. I still remember that day, December 14th of 1995, when we finally had the, you know, the peace treaty signed. One of the conditions is that we, as the foreign fighter contingency there were there, like, you know, we have to leave. And so we decided, you know what? We leave. And I remember when I left, I already spent about 14 months there. And I remember that when I arrived in Istanbul several days after and I was looking at the mirror, I just turned 17. And I remember, like. And I was looking at the mirror, like, I mean, in the hotel room, and I was thinking, I feel like I have aged 14 years because of everything that we have seen, you know, throughout this conflict. And I think that is a common thing among many people who were participants in the horrors of war and conflict all over the world.

Aviv (40:11)

So we're now at the end of 1995, take us to 1998, that the next three years in which you, I think it's fair to say, climb the ranks certainly of Al Qaeda. And then in 1998, there's the great pivot where you're recruited by MI6 and you choose to be recruited by MI6 because you've seen some things that trouble you. This defensive jihad is something else by then. So just walk us through that history and then that pivot is fascinating to me. I think I want to talk about when did someone who got so much out of this world suddenly come to believe that this world is actually bad or a problem or deeply flawed in some way?

Ayman Dean (40:54)

I think my problem is that I'm annoyingly inquisitive and still to this day, which means basically I manage to offend everyone equally. And because of that, I always ask questions. I never shy away from asking questions. It all started really, you know, near the end of our time in Bosnia when Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, who would become later known as the mastermind of 9 11, he spoke eloquently and elegantly about going to Afghanistan and joining the camps there that were reopening in order to graduate a new breed of jihadists. And so I listened to what he has to say. He gave me a piece of paper with a number on it, a man called Abu Zubaydah, who would later, of course, currently serving time in Guantanamo. And he told me, whenever you feel that you are ready to join us there, just dial this number, tell them it's from me and they will pick you up. However, I wanted to go to Chechnya at the time. And so I went to Azerbaijan. I spent five months there as a. I will call it an office jihadist. Like, I was there as a part of a team of five people only doing the logistics and helping, diverting a lot of the funds that were coming from Muslim private donors from around the world towards the Chechen refugees. And we were diverting it, of course, like, I mean, towards the Chechen jihadists led by Ibn Khattab at the time. And so I remember we used to joke about it that 2,000 people inside Chechnya, the whole brigade inside Chechnya who were fighting the Russians and giving the Russians the hardest time possible between 95 and 96. So we were saying that ironically, if the Russians were to send just a team of Alpha or Amun likenamin team into this villa, we were in, in Baku in Azerbaijan and shoot us. There were only five of us lucky now, and we were unarmed. They will win the war. I mean, because three times a week we were sending trucks full of equipments and cash and fuel and medicine and equipments and electronics, you know, everything they need to survive. So these 2,000 people couldn't have continued the fight without us five people there. And this is where I learned the power of finance, you know, and the power that follow the money. Amazingly, these five months I spent in Baku would have a incredible effect or incredible footprint on me becoming a banker in later years. But that's something else. So.

Aviv (43:58)

But you got to get your training, your professional training somewhere.

Ayman Dean (44:01)

Exactly. So I, so yeah, so after that I, the war in Chechnya ended. I realized like, you know, that okay, what am I going to do here? And so I went to Afghanistan. I followed what Khalid Sheikh Mohammed wanted me to do. I joined a camp and then throw many twists and turns that they want to talk about the Philippines, that's another story. It will take us like, you know, I mean hours to recall it. But then August 97, I was in Afghanistan and by complete coincidence I met with the head of Bin Laden's bodyguard, Hamza Al Ghamdi. I just returned from the Philippines, spending eight months there. He was fascinated about what's happening there in Mindanao. And then after spending few hours with me, he just told me, I really, I want to invite you to join us. And I remember one thing he said to me which still resonates with me to this day. He said, we can't let Shaykh Abdullah, of course he means Salman Bin Laden. We can't let Shab Abdullah be surrounded by those, you know, idiotic self serving Egyptians, you know. And I was like, okay, I know what you mean. So you know, like I know the eternal enmity between Saudis and Egyptians which is always beneath the surface, you know. So even then, even in the mountains of Afghanistan, it was still true. So I made my way to Kandahar, went to the headquarters there in Tarnak Farms, just next to the airport in Kandahar. And it's just the same evening like you know, I mean he just, after the Aisha prayer, like, you know, he just dragged me into to see Osama Bin Laden. And this is when I met him. And I remember one of the things Osama Bin Laden was, I can tell like he was thinking like, you know, I was hoping he was taller but because of course like you know, for, for him anyone is short. He was such a tall man and very imposing. But of course like you know, the first thing he asked me, he said, do you know what you are, you know, getting into? And honestly after everything that Hamza Ghamdi told me, Lakhana, I mean in the long walk I had with him in Jarlabad when he was trying to convince me to join, I felt like, you know, I knew what I was going into. I said yes, and then, you know, after that, of course, like, you know, he extended his hand, I extended mine, you know, and I shook his hand. And then I recited the oath of allegiance, you know, that I will. I give him my oath of allegiance. You know, in hardship and in good times, in bad times, I fight alongside whoever he fights and I make peace with whoever he makes peace with. And that God is my witness. That's it. It's the Bay' at Al Harb. It's the allegiance of war. And my understanding is that we are going to. Our aim and goal is to expel the American forces out of the Arabian Peninsula. That's our aim and goal. I thought, like, I mean, that's what we're going to do, fighting against American forces that are based in Saudi or Kuwait or UAE or all these places.

Aviv (47:17)

Can I ask why Bosnia was. It is not hard to argue that that was profoundly defensive. Salafist ideology aside, that was a defensive act to fight for the Bosnians in that war. The Americans were in Saudi Arabia at the invitation of the Saudi government. They weren't killing Saudis, they weren't fighting Saudis. They weren't imposing themselves on Saudis. What was the religious theory or just literally the purification of the holy land of Arabia, or was there something beyond that?

Ayman Dean (47:47)

There were three justifications. The first thing, defensive from the point of view that these forces are there to implement a unjust siege against our. According to bin Laden, like in our Iraqi brothers and sisters who were dying in their tens of thousands for malnutrition. Especially when we come, when we talk about, you know, children, of course, like, you know, that was exaggerated. There was a lot of, like an exaggeration, like, you know, of the effect of the sanctions on Saddam's regime. But that's how it was framed. That's the first thing. The second thing, these forces are enabling the continued occupation. Remember that SA bin Laden, that's his message of continued occupation of the Holy Land by the Israelis. So that's the second justification. And then the third justification is the fact that the Arabian Peninsula is not supposed to be a host to any foreign non Muslim army, no matter what, according to Islamic jurisprudence. So three religious justifications for this jihad against the American armed presence in the region. From my side, I was convinced, even though I was only 19 at the time. But what should, you know, I mean, I wouldn't argue at the time. And you know, and I remember the first thing, you know, I remember that Osama bin Laden said, well, you know, he was just saying it like in a I think affectionate manner, manner like. And basically he was saying to Hamza Gamdi, you know, referring to me, he said, I don't think he's a commander's material. So we're going to send him to Abu Khabab. So of course going to work with Abu Khabab, who is the Egyptian who was the, the most celebrated bomb maker, jihadist circles ever seen, you know, in the past 50 years, you know, was in itself an honor. So it's an honor and a privilege that if you were chosen to go and study, you know, bomb making, poison, toxicology, poison making, like you know, and chemical and biological weapons, it's an honor. And so you will be sent to a secluded, you know, camp with only four participants and an instructor. That's it. And I was elated, you know, that I was bestowed with such honor. And as a result, because they said they thought like, and I had temperament for it and I was sent to spend the next 11 months with Abu Khab in his camp. And so how are you, how are.

Aviv (50:32)

Your, how are your bomb making skills today? Rusty or. I, I, I meant that obviously it's hard to, it's hard to leave a joke, you know, when it's ripe on the tree and not to pull it down. But, but how, but how much did you learn? Was it a professional, serious infrastructure kind of, that they could rely upon. Did you actually train seriously and intensively?

Ayman Dean (50:58)

Yes, without a doubt. Because at the end of the day Al Qaeda would be spending so much money acquiring all the chemicals and the equipments and the tools and so they want to see a return on their investment. And so I remember when I arrived there, I noticed that there were only four of us. And I also noticed like in how rudimentary the place is. You know, it's only. We are on a slope of a mountain, three really rooms made of mud, like, you know, huts, like basically. And I was thinking all these chemicals stored in this in a way, if, you know, I used to joke later, like in life, like I said, if a British health and safety inspector were to go there and, and look at the, you know, state of the place, you know, they will have a heart attack. They will think like, how could you store chemicals like this next to each other in such conditions?

Aviv (51:55)

There would be many problems if that British health inspector showed up in that place.

Ayman Dean (51:59)

Oh indeed. Apart from that, I don't think a heart attack will be the cause of death. But anyway.

Aviv (52:05)

But what's interesting also is that, is that you were not a commando, you were for example, in Bosnia, a medic. And they had complexity, they had positions, they had, I think the Americans call it mo's. Everybody had different kinds of jobs and expertise. And you trained in was much, much more. When I was in the idf, in basic training, I got yelled at a lot by a sergeant. And that sergeant, when you, you were running, you know, without not properly or forgot something in the tent while you were supposed to have all of your equipment, the sergeant would say, this isn't the Taliban. You got to be professional here. Yeah, this is the idf. Right. That's what they would say. The impression is that it's a kind of lackadaisical kind of showing up volunteers, a bunch of people just running around doing whatever they get, can manage. And in fact, it was much, much more serious, professionalized, hierarchical. There were bank accounts, there were investments. There's a lot of thinking, organizational thinking behind all of it. That's just a fascinating thing to see from the inside. And that was your experience throughout, right?

Ayman Dean (53:11)

Yeah. At the end of the day, like, we were a bunch of, a bunch of militarized civilians. We were not a bunch of professional military fighting force. We were militarized civilians. That's who we were. And so to ask me to become a commando in Afghanistan, you know, is unrealistic. But to ask me to be, you know, to use my intellect to have a crash course in chemistry and to learn it like, you know, basically so quickly and, you know, to excel in it within, you know, let's say, 11 months period, that was expected. So they knew how to take advantage, full advantage of each one's talents and abilities. So they are not wasted. Because there is no point of. For example, they were telling me, like, we're not going to select you for suicide bombing zone. No, like, you know, basically you will be the one who making the vest, you will be the one who making the, the vehicles. Like, you know, we need, you know, one like you for every hundred suicide bombers in the future. And so that's the idea, you know, that's what they wanted, right? Yeah. Because at the end of the day, suicide bombers are expendable. They are low iq, however you happen to be high iq, you know, it's a waste to send you, you know, to somewhere to die.

Aviv (54:25)

Right. Because the person who will replace you making the next bombs will make poorer bombs, presumably. So this is actually the best use of resources for the organization. So in 1998, you arrive in Qatar, you're arrested, and you make a choice, and you have several choices to make. You make the choice actually to join MI6 to become their undercover guy in Al Qaeda. Why?

Ayman Dean (54:54)

Why? How do you say who?

Aviv (54:56)

Literally, you tell this story, I mean, so much of what and who you are and how you understand your role in the world and all the things that you draw dignity from are invested in this world. And you turn on this world, and you turn on this world in a way that is, you become loyal to MI6 going after Al Qaeda. Something happens and tell us that. What was that?

Ayman Dean (55:24)

You see, August 1998, you know, we, you know, I wake up to the shouts and, you know, and, you know, takbeer, you know, and Allahu Akbar and all of that, like, and, you know, celebratory gunfire. And what happened? Oh, we just destroyed the largest CIA station in East Africa. What? And so then I started to learn about the attacks on the American embassies in Nairobi in Kenya, and Dar es Salaam in Tanzania. And for me, I remember that I started getting the news slowly, gradually, about who did it. One of my friends, actually was the one who drove the van into the US Embassy in Nairobi. And I've learned about the devices. I learned, like, you know, how many people killed at the beginning. Like, I mean, and then how many people wounded. And then this is when I started hearing on the radio, especially Kuwait radio, which I used to listen to, across. Across the mountains, coming, like, you know, basically to us. I heard that 224 people were killed, 12 of them Americans. The rest were just ordinary civilian Africans in. Who were going on about their daily lives. They were in the wrong place at the wrong time. But because the 800 kilogram bomb was filled with thousands of shrapnels and nails, it caused 5,000 wounded. You know, it actually, like, I mean, wounded 5,000 people. 150 of them were blinded for life. And I remember that, first of all, after the first 24, 48 hours of trying to process what was happening and thinking, wow, that was great. Into thinking, oh, dear. Because several things hit me at once. First, this is not attacking American forces in Saudi Arabia. This is attacking, you know, mostly Africans who have nothing to do with whatever, like, in the basic, whatever beef we have with the Americans in Africa. And in addition, what hit me even more was the fact that they are preparing me to build these devices in the future for similar atrocities. You see, until then, when I joined Al Qaeda, not a single atrocity was committed by them. At that time, nothing was committed. So I joined them fresh. They are just fresh coming out of Sudan. They haven't done anything like this. And so it was their first ever attack and introduction to the world. And it is the equivalence of someone handing you a gun for the first time in your life and telling you, pointing to you at someone blindfolded, you have no idea who they are or whether what they have done or if they deserve to die. And they tell you shoot them. And obedient psychopaths will do it, like, and they will shoot. Not me though. You know, first of all, I'm not low iq, I'm not psychopathic. You know, I am a, a cat loving, you know, God fearing individual, you know, who, you know, who's a nerd, like in, basically. And I then realized that, goodness, you know, I just finished, you know, training with Abu Khabb just two weeks ago and this is the gun in my hand. And one day they will put me in front of that blindfolded person and tell me to shoot. And it will be soon rather than, you know, later. And so I, you know, it hit me. And then when I went to the mufti of Al Qaeda, the town of Abdullah Muhajir, who's the dean of the Sharia college at the time, I asked the question, I said, I mean, I'm not doubting anything, so please don't, you know, think anything else of me. But please can you explain to me how do we justify killing so many civilians to get at 12American diplomats? I mean, seriously, like, I mean, can you just tell me? Because one day I will be the one being sent to do that. So he went on, first of all, he starts saying, first of all, Ayman, come on, they are a bunch of Africans, who cares? That's the first, you know, red flag, which I was thinking, you know, myself, shall I tell the Somalis that we have here in the camp that you just said a bunch of Africans because there were many Somalis who died in Kenya that day.

Aviv (60:13)

Kenya itself is 10, 15% Muslim.

Ayman Dean (60:16)

Exactly.

Aviv (60:17)

Presumably Muslims who died in that attack.

Ayman Dean (60:19)

Roughly, roughly, roughly about, you know, 55 Muslims, like, you know, killed that day, most of them Somalis. And so he, when he said bunch of Africans, I was thinking, should I tell the Somalis in the camp here, like. And I don't think they will have a very friendly conversation with you if they, if you, if they hear you say that. But then he went on to say that we have a fatwa, you know, the terrorist fatwa, you know, the Ibn Taymiyyah fatwa. The fatwa that if the enemy shield himself behind civilians, then we have the right to do you know to attack. And whoever die among the civilians, God will be kind enough to them to show them to heaven. And that's it.

Aviv (60:58)

Tell us more about that fatwa. Tell us more. Just about the background.

Ayman Dean (61:02)

Yeah. So I asked him, you know, what is this fatwa? He said, oh, you will find it in his. In Ibn Taymiyyah's comprehensive works and, you know, and letters. And I was thinking, okay, that's 37 volumes, for God's sake. Thank you so much. But you see, two weeks later, I never forgot. I was, by complete coincidence in the Al Qaeda's major headquarters in Kabul. And they have the biggest library there. It's my favorite place at the time there in Afghanistan. I used to love that library. So I went there, I found. I found it. The last two volumes of this 37 is actually the NDCs. And so I went into the NDCs, I looked for it. Tetarrus, you know, human shield. Found it in the 28th volume, opened it, and I found that it is a repetition of older fatwas from the Mongol times. So when the Mongol invasion happened in the early 1200s against the Muslim cities of Central Asia, in Uzbekistan and Kyrgyzstan and all of these places, they were sending urgent questions, urgent requests for fatwas saying that the Mongols, whenever they conquer a city, they take the civilians from one city, make them push the siege towers towards the next, towards the walls of the next city in order to, well, you know, basically conquer it. And so they were saying, can we shoot arrows and javelins or whatever, like, you know, at our fellow brothers, Muslim brothers, who were pushing the siege towers, even though they were doing it against their will? And the fatwa came back and they said, well, they are dead anyway. I mean, they will be killed by the Mongols after the battle is over. They are expendable. So kill them. Prevent the Sish towers from reaching your walls. Save yourselves. And I was, like, reading this, and I'm thinking, that's not what happened in Kenya or Tanzania. Yes. I mean, I don't see the American, you know, Americans pushing siege towers towards Mecca and Medina. It was really Ibn Taymiyyah here. You know, for Ibn Taymiyyah, everyone lying like, you know, basically and interpreting, you know, his writings the wrong way. You know, he was talking about the fact that if it is a life and death situation, then you do it, but there was no urgent life and death situation here. And I decided to leave. And I was waiting for the pretext. I was waiting for the fact that there was a scheduled. A properly scheduled medical checkup. In Qatar that I have to go to because working with chemicals, having typhoid and malaria the year earlier also like, you know, has damaged my liver and I have to go anyway to Qatar. And it was scheduled and everyone knew about it. So as soon as I was on the aircraft leaving Peshawar airport, going to Doha, I renounced my oath, you know, to Osama bin Laden, I renounced my oath to Al Qaeda. I thought like in, I mean, good reasons to Afghanistan, to Pakistan, to all of this. I'm out, arrive in Qatar, long story short, got arrested because, hey, they were waiting for me.

Aviv (64:06)

Actually, turns out that you didn't try to get arrested.

Ayman Dean (64:09)

No, no, no. I actually arrived there thinking, hey, I'm going to be a history teacher, I'm going to join, you know, I'm going to go back into education, I'm going to go to university and I'm going to go and, and become a history teacher. And much to the relief of my would be students, it never happened. So, you know, the Qataris were waiting for me because of a French intelligence tip off in advance that I'm arriving. And so I always thought of myself as not that much important. But then the French and other intelligence agencies had different idea that they thought, no, yes, you might be 20 year old but you are important, important enough to be on our radar. And so as soon as I landed, I was arrested by the Qataris. But as soon as I started their interrogation, I mean, they were extremely surprised by my friendliness and cooperation and me being like in the open, you know, with them about everything, never denying anything. And then with like, like within like, I mean, 40 minutes they were saying like, you know, hang on here, is there anything wrong here? Like, you know, why are you being so cooperative? I mean, that's a double agent. Yeah. And so I said, well, I just left. And then I explained to them exactly what I explained to you. The, they were, they were Qataris. There were some Qatari officers, but also they had with them Sudanese and Jordanian auxiliary officers, you know, who are, you know, supporting the function of the Qatari intelligence because it didn't have enough manpower at the time. Remember it was 1998, you know, in order to fill the intelligence service at the time, they all left, you know, spent, I don't know, 15, 20 minutes outside the room and then came back giving me hugs, you know, basically and saying, well done, well done. Like an, I mean we can't say thank you enough, like, you know, for really seeing the light here. Well done, Will, you know, we are going to make Your stay here comfortable with us. We will bring your meals from the Sheraton Hotel next door, like, and we will make sure, like, you know, you're absolutely comfortable. What do you need? I said, as long as you give me a bunch of books, I'll be fine. I mean, for entertainment, like, I need to read to pass the time. And of course, I was doing the debriefings with them. And so, you know, and after nine days of debriefings, through which I alerted them to an impending attack in Yemen and things happening there, and they then told me the truth, that, look, nothing will make us happier. I remember the. The Minister of Interior at the time met me. He said, like, nothing will make me happier than to keep you in Qatar here and especially with me next door. Like, I mean, just to ask you all the questions I need. But here in Qatar, you'll be running into your friends on daily basis. You know, it's a 250,000 population in this city. You will be meeting your friends on daily basis, you know, in the mosque, in the supermarket, everywhere. It's not safe for you here, so you need to be adopted, let's put it this way, by a major agency that can protect you. And so I said, you know, and who do you have in mind? And he said, well, either the. The French are very keen on you. And I said, I don't like the French. I don't like even to learn their language, even. So sorry. The Americans, not easily. Like, I mean, I just survived their, you know, cruise missile attack on my camp just, you know, several weeks ago. No. And then they said, the British. And given the fact. And I didn't know that. I didn't know the fact that my father also in the 1960s, you know, cooperated with the British intelligence, you know, and had a role with them. I didn't know about that. I knew about that later. And the fact that my grandfather was a British officer in the British army in Iraq, you know, because he was a Durrani of Afghan origin. He joined them there in Durand in Khyber Pass in Afghanistan, Pakistan, and then, you know, which is, at the time, British Raj, and then ended up in Iraq. And this is where he married my grandmother. And then we became like, in a. Basically purely Arab, even though we are Durranis, in a. Basically originally from the Durrani clan of Afghanistan. So he, you know, so I had that affinity. And because I've been to London before, you know, doing a mission for Al Qaeda there. And so I was like, thinking, okay, that's Far more familiar and easier for me. And they are more familiar with the region. So, yes, I said, okay, how long do I have to take a decision? They said, half an hour. Okay, half an hour.

Aviv (69:08)

I'm sorry. There's a CIA guy in French intelligence and MI6 sitting in the waiting room waiting for you to make a decision. Why was there.

Ayman Dean (69:16)

I think the French were waiting. However, it's the Americans and the Brits were waiting in their respective capitals. And so I was told, okay, you will be put on an airplane this evening, you know, and straight to London. And I'm thinking, oh, my God. Okay, fine. And so I arrived in London and I remember that I was met by two agents from both MI5 and MI6 at the airport. They were extremely, you know, kind and welcoming. And after the first two hour debriefing, they said that Christmas came early. We didn't know that Santa was living in Afghanistan sending wonderful gifts. And that is an amazing coup. Yeah, this is. This is the beginning. Yeah, this is the beginning of 8 years journey with them.

Aviv (70:11)

You go back to Al Qaeda and you remain embedded in Al Qaeda for those eight years. What are those eight years like undercover in Al Qaeda? I'm almost gonna skimp on the juiciest pieces here, mainly to get people to buy your book. You know, it's good for you, it's good for me. Just to move the podcast along. What are those eight years like?

Ayman Dean (70:31)

They reminded me also of what Abu Khab ominously told us when we sat down for the first lesson in bomb making. He said, in bomb making and also in espionage, your first mistake is the last mistake. You will never live to make another mistake. And, oh, boy, it's true in marriage, too. But. Yes, exactly, exactly, exactly. So, wow. Yeah. You will never live to make it and to make another mistake. And so if I, you know, can you imagine eight years, you know, one wrong word from me, one slip of the tongue, and you are a head shorter and six feet under. And, you know, and with the addition of some people peeing on your grave, also like an. I mean, so there is no dignity, even that death. But nonetheless, I did it. And I did it because I felt like, you know, I mean, I would be extremely hypocritical if I was willing to die for the other side and not willing to die for this side. And at the end of the day, this is when the change of heart came, like, you know, that I started to believe passionately in the nation state and the sanctity of the nation state. All nation states. You know deserve within the modern framework of the 21st century to have their flag, identity, borders protected. And with all honesty, that include the State of Israel as well in the region, as well as Saudi Arabia, as well as Iraq, as well as Iran. I mean, I want Iran to stay within its borders. I mean, I want Israel to stay within its borders. I want Saudi Arabia to stay within its borders. But these borders must be protected, you know, and. And each nation have the right to protect them. Each nation must push back against transnational ideologies, whether it is a Muslim Brotherhood or Al Qaeda or ISIS or the Taliban or anyone.

Aviv (72:24)

Sorry, is there a Muslim ummah?

Ayman Dean (72:30)

There is the spiritual Muslim Ummah. There isn't the political one. There hasn't been, you know, for roughly, I think, you know, 12, 50 years now, 1300 years, I would say.

Aviv (72:39)

So what kind of loyalty do you feel today? You know what, let's unpack it just directly. Let's just dive into it.

Ayman Dean (72:45)

Yeah.

Aviv (72:46)

Islam has spent what I have told my listeners, and I lay this out in its 32nd version so that you can explain to them where I went wrong. They're hearing stuff about Islam from a Jewish Israeli. I can only apologize that there is a debate within Islam sparked by, you know, 200 years ago, roughly, give or take, whether it's the British Empire coming to Egypt or it's Napoleon landing in Egypt before that, this discovery that Islam is very backward, very weak and the west has charged ahead and advanced and that created a kind of theological crisis for this lineage that we talked about, because we're very interested in who Hamas are and what they think that produces Hamas, the Muslim Brothers and their teachers, you know, from Rida to Abdukh to Al Afghani and these thinkers in Egypt. And this is a discourse that spreads. It spreads to Shia Islam in the revolutionary regime of Iran. It spreads all over the Muslim world. These people are red from Malaysia to Morocco, and they come to recreate an Islam that is political, that looks at pan Islamism. The borders, the boundaries, the nation states fail them in the collapse of Arab nationalism and pan Arabism under Nasser and all of that stuff. So there's this deep, deep, profound idea that Hamas draws from Al Qaeda drew from that. There is this Ummah, this Ummah's arising is part of Islam returning to its rightful place in history instead of this fallen place to which it had fallen in its weakness in the face of Muslim, of, excuse me, Western imperialism. Tell us, sort of, what's the grand historical vision that you had then of Islam? What were you trying to Redeem. Is it literally just protecting Muslims in Bosnia, or was there a larger sense of the awakening? Bin Laden's theory of the 911 attacks was that an American reprisal against the Muslim world would awaken and unify the Muslim world. And so there was this sense of awakening that needed to happen. You had that idea or it was something else. And what do you think today? How do you understand that Muslim world? Is it just that all the transnational ideologies end up burning everything to the ground and everything they've touched, they've destroyed, basically, whether it's Hezbollah in Lebanon, Hamas in Gaza, or the Taliban in Afghanistan. Walk us through your thinking.

Ayman Dean (75:06)

In reality, my understanding of our role, I mean, up until, like, you know, the East Africa bombings in 1998, was to start this awakening within the Muslim world into understanding that we are all one Muslim nation, one Muslim Ummah. And I believed in the Muslim Ummah. I just didn't know that the Muslim Ummah existed spiritually. It just. It did not exist politically and it never existed. I always drank that Kool Aid that, you know, that we were always one united, you know, Muslim Ummah. When in fact, like, I mean, looking at the history, oh, my God, like, in our history is as bloody as the Mongols and as the Europeans and as the Aztecs and everyone else. Like, I mean, in the world, like, you know, we are humans after all, you know, filled with that human nature of ambition, of brutality, of, you know, you know, of fighting with passion in order for whatever we believe in. However, I think when the East Africa warmings happened and I just felt that epiphany, I felt as if I can see 20 years ahead. And I felt that this will not stop here. This will not stop until we are bombing compounds, ministries and police headquarters inside Saudi Arabia, killing our own brothers and cousins and friends and schoolmates, you know, fighting, you know, Arab to Arab, Muslim to Muslim, Bedouin to Bedouin. And for what exactly? If this is what God wants, you know, basically, I mean, okay, if I say, like, I'm fighting against some other faith, maybe this is what God wants. But does God want really? Like, you know, basically us, you know, cousins and brothers killing each other, like, you know, for the sake of who is right about what is the modern vision of Islam should be. This is when I remember during the first year working for MI5 and MI6, I started to read more and more about the nation state and the role of the nation state and the differences between why the Muslim Ummah failed, why the Muslim world failed. I would Say largely. And then this is when I started to realize a theory of mine I started to develop and then started to champion over the past seven, seven, eight years that really it's not all of them failed. You know what failed was the secular, dictatorial, autocratic systems. Those that ones that failed. The ones I'm So even the ones.

Aviv (77:51)

That claimed the mantle of Islam, for example, the Ottoman Sultan.

Ayman Dean (77:55)

Yes.

Aviv (77:56)

Who claimed to be a Khalif, but in fact was not, was something else. It was very much a worldly.

Ayman Dean (78:03)

Yeah. The last Khalifa, like who had any rule over the entire Muslim world was Abu Jafar Al Mansur, like in the second Abbasid Caliph. So really like, I mean, we're talking about the first four caliphs, Rashidun, and then the 14 Umayyads, and then the two Abbasids, and then that's it. Andalusia broke away, then Morocco broke away, then Tunisia broke away, and then the political Ummah broke up and never united ever since. And that was when. That was in the year 140 of the Hijra Lakhina, basically, which is about roughly 780 A.D. since 780, you know, that's more than 1200 years ago. We don't have a single unified political entity. So no Ottoman emperor can say, oh, he ruled over the Muslim world. Excuse me, like, you know, most of North Africa wasn't yours and Nejd wasn't yours and you know, Iran and Persia and of course behind that is India and Central Asia wasn't yours either. So at the end of the day, like you actually they ruled over more Christians than Muslims. So in southeastern Europe, I would say, like, for me, the only successful model really wasn't nationalism, socialism or whatever, like in all generals, military or anything like that. The only successful model that finally captured the essence that is enough to represent modern day Islam while at the same time adopt modernity is the monarchy system system. So the Middle east is divided into really in terms of the Arab Middle east or the Muslim Middle east is divided into two zones, the royal zone and the non royal zone. The royal zone is the most successful. Absolutely. Throughout the Mena region. That's the most successful with even Jordan and Morocco. They are inherently stable in comparison to the neighbors who are inherently unstable. But if you look at, you know, the theocratic model, Iran, it's hell on earth for its own people and for the neighbors. If you look at the democratic systems that are in Lebanon and Iraq, it is so sectarian. It is so, you know, influenced by tribes without the tribe having its own rightful place in the system. And as a result it is so manipulated. Look at, you know, Yemen, look at, you know, all the other countries, Libya, you know, the. And they are in civil wars. Look at Syria. I'm one of those people who is like begging Ahmad Shara, like, you know, just declare it a kingdom, call yourself a king and let's be done with it. Because the only successful model in the Middle east, you know, among the Arabs and Muslims will always be the monarchy. I argued for this when I was only a 22 year old undercover, you know, MI6 agent when I argued that the, you know, in my paper for MI6 at the time before the Bonn conference, please restore Muhammad Zahar Shah, you know, to the throne of Afghanistan. Because in a king in Afghanistan is nothing, just like in the Arab world is nothing but a glorified tribal sheikh. He will have the authority to unite the tribes together, to bring them together and, and within the kingdom, which is what, unfortunately what a secular republic excludes completely. A secular republic excludes faith as an institution and exclude the tribe as an institution. But these two institutions find their way and find their place comfortably within a system of monarchy. Because a monarch is a paternal semi religious figure who the allegiance to him is similar to the allegiance to the Caliph is, you know, and is similar to how Muawiyah, the first king in Islam, you know, ruled the Umayyad, the founder of the Umayyad dynasty and every other dynasty since then legitimate. It's thousands of years of tradition. I think by now we have safely come to the end of the trial period. If it ain't broke, don't fix it. I've been preaching this like, you know, before the Bonn conference and I was told that the White House, it will never agree, you know, to a monarchy system because American democracy, you know, find monarchy anathema to, you know, the spirit of American democracy. And I said at that time, and I hope like in a basic, you know, I will try to use a child friendly term here, I said fluff American democracy, you know, really let them fluff the fluff out. I mean, in all honesty, we need stability, not experiment. And this is when, you know, I became a, you know, a totally avowed monarchist believing that the nation state, even with its, all its, you know, faults and shortcomings, it's the best way for Islam to find its place, its rightful place as a spirit, as a spiritual religion, as a ritual religion, to find its place in the world and to adopt modernity. And you know, don't if you don't believe me, look at Oman, look at Saudi Arabia, look at Morocco, look at the United Arab Emirates, look at Qatar and look at Saudi Arabia. Of all like, you know, how it changed when there is an enlightened monarch on the throne here. And this is what I've been saying throughout that forget all about the ideologies, what defeats ideologies more than anything else. What cleansed the UAE of the Muslim Brotherhood was its royal families. What cleansed Oman of the Muslim Brotherhood was its royal family. And what cleansed Saudi Arabia of its jihadists basically was its royal family.

Aviv (84:21)

The view of the Middle east held by Israeli intelligence, I mean the PhDs in the assessment divisions of army intelligence, not necessarily the generals, but the scholars of Israeli intelligence is a view of the Middle east that says that there are three or four axes and one AXI is the Shia led by Iran. One AXI is what they call the conservative Muslims. And this is also something I've done a podcast episode about. Conservative Muslims are all the monarchies they tell us. These are states that went through the Arab Spring unharmed, untouched. Syria collapsed. State after state collapsed. Egypt collapsed. Jordan held firm. Morocco held firm. The Saudis held firm. Bahrain had a problem, had a rebellion, but it was a Shia Sunni issue, a lot of it instigated by Iran. And yet the Bahraini government held firm. And so wherever you have these monarchies, you have this conservative Islam. The third axis is radical Islam. The Muslim Brothers, the Salafists, whether it's Hamas, the AKP party of Erdogan. The Israelis include Qatar in there because they perceive Qatar as very much in terms of radical Islam on the other side of the right. Now, the entirety of the Abraham Accords process is with these monarchies and the entire, I think Sudan is the addition, but it hasn't yet signed on the dotted line. Right? And then there's a fourth axis which is, as the Israelis like to put it, is other. It's, you know, the Jews, the Druze, the Kurds, you know, all these that don't fit into any of the Arab Muslim boxes easily. And we tend to fight for each other and protect each other and help each other in different ways in the Middle East. It sounds to me, I hope I'm hearing the same thing. I hope I'm not imposing on you my own view of the Middle east, but that, that is your essential understanding of the Middle east as someone who came from that, from the background that you came from. In other words, the Arab Sunni world is essentially today divided into two camps. The radicals, the people who read Qutb or various scholars around the Wahhabis. But that version of the Wahhabis, the revolutionary, we'll call it Sunnism, and the conservatives. And navigating that civil war almost in Arab Sunni Islam is the great task of our time. That's the kind of thing an Israeli intelligence official might tell us today if they happen to have a PhD. Is that something that you think is an accurate view of the Middle East? What are they missing? How do you see that?

Ayman Dean (86:55)

I think one of the reasons why banks, energy, energy companies, multinationals, big corporations, defense, they don't employ scholars and PhDs. They usually employ people, you know, basically like, you know, who have the similar background, like in the intelligence and the defense. And the reason is because basically, like, I mean, we see more of the world than people in their ivory towers. But what you portrayed is somewhat accurate, but it is still needs, you know, to, you know, add some meat to it. And that meat is the fact that the battle right now is between the monarchies of the region versus the transnational ideologies. The monarchies represent the pinnacle of stable modern nation state. And the transnational ideologies mean by that three types. Which is Sunni militant Islam, whether it is, you know, Shabab, Taliban, all of these. You have political Sunni Islam, which is a Muslim Brotherhood, and then you have the Shia political and militant Islam, because the Shia can have their political and militant Islam merged together within the framework of the orbit of Tehran and the IRGC related groups. They have, of course, like, and everything is laced with eschatology and the battle for the Mahdis. I mean, I used to say, like, you know, Al Qaeda and ISIS have their own Mahdi and Houthis with them, you know, and the Houthis and the Hezbollah and everyone else and the Iranians have their own Mahdi. And it's a battle of two Mahdis, you know, when in fact there is no Mahdi. I mean, basically like, you know, all of these are Abbasid fabrications that find their way into the Hadith, you know. And since then, I have now completely disavowed the belief in the Mahdi. I don't believe in any Mahdi. I believe like in all of these were fabrications, you know, made by scholars who wanted to carry favor with the Abbasids, you know, and so this is, I think, where we see the battle line between those who believe in the nation states, especially monarchical nation states, and those who want to bring down the nation states to establish their empires on mountains of skulls and, you know, you know, and oceans of blood. And this is where the battle lines are drawn. I am on the side of the modern nation states within Islam. I believe in the monarchies. I believe the monarchs are paternal glorified tribal leaders who do not kill their own people. In fact, like, they might discipline their people, but they do not kill them. They have that paternal social contract between them and their, you know, people. Tell me, Haviv, have you ever heard about boats capsizing in the Mediterranean carrying Saudis or Emiratis or Qataris or Kuwaitis or Omanis? Of course not. And the reason is because basically these people never leave their land and they retain their population for a reason. Even though they are not exactly like the paragon of free speech or freedom of conscience. I'm the first one to raise my hand and say, no, they are not on the same par as, for example, let's say, Europeans or even the Israelis, but in terms of freedom of conscience and thought. But something is magical about these systems. They retain their population. That was Iran before the 1979, you know, revolution. That was Afghanistan before King Mohammed Zahar Shah was deposed, you know, in 1975. That is the reality. You know, we need, you know, to return to a system that actually guarantees safety, security, stability, law and order, prosperity for everyone. Not to be the experimental political lab for PhD, you know, ivory tower dwellers, you know, in London or D.C. or Berkeley or Yale or Harvard or anyone else. We know our region. I think you are one of our tribes. You are Ben Israel. You are one of the tribes here in the region. You came from a line of kings. You should understand that more than anyone else.

Aviv (91:19)

If Westerners thought of Israeli Jews as an Arab tribe among many Arab tribes of the Middle east, they would understand every single reaction Israeli Jews had to every single event.

Ayman Dean (91:27)

I will say Abrahamic, Semitic tribe.

Aviv (91:30)

Half of Israeli Jews are the grandchildren of people who came from the Arab world. I don't know why talking to people that were.

Ayman Dean (91:36)

Yeah.

Aviv (91:36)

And they're half of. I mean, we're all intermarried. So then, you know, they're. We all have some roots of some kind. Except for me. I'm pure Ashkenazi and I'm very embarrassed about it on my. In my neighborhood. But you said something that bothered me about Syria on Twitter, on X. Excuse me. And so I would like you to flesh that out very quickly. And then I want to take you to the thing that's, I think, much more serious and painful for me directly, which is obviously Israel and Gaza and also how it's playing out in the Muslim world. And then I'm going to let you go and be a free man because you've just. You have so much to tell us that is so fundamental to our world and our experience and our understanding of what's happening that there simply is no way for an ordinary Westerner to get it. You have argued, you know, this question of the massacre of the Druze in Sweden came up. I have a great many Druze friends. I served in the army with Druze friends. My direct commander in my infantry platoon was a Druze officer. And I feel a deep. It's hard to say this in American English. It's very easy to say this in Hebrew. But I feel a absolutely deep camaraderie and loyalty to the Druze because they are there for us and they die for us. And we have that exact same duty to them. And then Julani, who, you know, Ashala, leads this group called Jabba Tad Nusra, he led them. And they've changed their names and they've changed and all of this complexity. You are not opposed to Jabal Al Nusra, which is a group that swore loyalty to Al Qaeda. And so I would like to know why. Why you think Giuliani is not what I would say just a sort of ordinary Westerner might want to think of him as Al Qaeda in that caricature of Al Qaeda that we might have. And also why the story of Sueda was not any kind of simple Sunni radicals massacre the Druze and the Israelis come to their defense, which, by the way, Israeli leaders were convinced it was for the first few days. Now, I still think there was a massacre. I still think those massacres continue. And I still think Israel has a responsibility to protect the Jews. But the Jews of Syria are also divided into different camps, into different groups. And there's complexity here. And you are very bullish, very optimistic about Mr. Giulani and the possibility of establishing a Syria that, even though it comes from that ideological place, is stable, is reasonable, can make peace with Israel, for example. So how did you see that play out? And what do you think that tells us about, you know, A, the future of Syria, B, how minorities can live in this world that you're describing as paternalistic and a lot more stable. And I agree with you. Every Israeli agrees with you. Better a Saudi Middle east than a Hamas Middle east or, you know, Iranian Middle East. How do you understand Syria right now?

Ayman Dean (94:23)

Well, this is where I always used to say, like, you know, basically that knowledge is burden. And, you know, the more you know about the situation, especially when you Know, you know, not only the, you know, the surface, not just, only the layer below the surface, but the second and the third and the fourth and the fifth layer below the surface. This is when it becomes a burden because then you're saying things that are not obvious to others and then people think like, you know, what the hell, I mean, you are anti Al Qaeda, for God's sake, and you are, you know, sympathizing with someone who swore an allegiance, Al Qaeda. And it's like, you know, calm down, boys. Like, I mean, because I know more than you do, way more than you do about this issue, you know, not just from now, but from many, many years.

Aviv (95:10)

You even know more than me on this issue. I just wanted. Yes, a little bit more.

Ayman Dean (95:16)

A little bit.

Aviv (95:18)

What are we missing? What are we missing? First of all, he's very much impressed us that he put on a suit that he. But, but then again, there has been this massacre of the Alawites. There has been Christians fleeing. He did, when he was in charge of Idlib a few years back, forcibly convert at least sort of publicly on paper as a stunt maybe, but it wasn't experienced as a stunt by those minorities. A Christian village and an Alawite village. How do I know if he's good or evil? Where do I look to find that out?

Ayman Dean (95:46)

I think this is, in my opinion, one of the first instance in history where you have the leader, the radical leader of a radical organization becoming de radicalized and then starting de radicalizing the top tier leadership and then going into the second tier leadership and the third tier leadership and top down de radicalization as opposed to the other way around. And I was aware of it, I was completely made aware of it in a chance meeting in Berlin with one of the senior intelligence officers from the Five Eyes in March of 2018. So I'm talking about a knowledge I have like in a basically extending more than eight years. And we were talking specifically about Dulani and Idlib and what's happening there. And I was absolutely surprised that when I was taken into the confidence of that senior intel officer, like, you know, who was serving at that time, holding the Syria file at that time, and I was supplying him with information and he said to me that actually, you know, if you want to know, like in a basically something that will, you know, surprise you, Jiulani has now completely, completely switched to the American side. And that was, remember March of 2018, remember 2018. And I said, how? He said, well, it all started, you know, when he was in Boca and then like in another prisons, like, you know, I mean, American jailers, like, you know, were befriending him, and especially American librarian, you know, the jail library, and the jail librarians, like, you know, were in particular impressed by how many books he was reading and the fact that he was starting to depart the idea of global jihad and thinking about jihad being. Being an instrument to fight injustice rather than being a global, aimless, you know, jihad like in a foreign empire. And then, of course, he comes out of prison, 2011, straight away sent to Syria. He established, you know, a Jabhat Al Nusra there, even though it was funded by ISIS initially. But he was completely at odds with ISIS leadership about the direction of the group. He doesn't want Syria to be a staging ground for any terrorism against any other nation whatsoever, especially the Americans. And then when the pressure was on him so much, In April of 2013, just before the split with ISIS happened, he went to the Turkish military intelligence and to Hakam Fadan in particular. And he just said, I don't want basically to be part of this. How do we extricate ourselves from this situation? And so this is when the split with ISIS happened. He managed to keep hold of about 40% of the group, kept them as a Nusra, 60% went with ISIS. But then, you know, what happened with ISIS. So what happened is for the next several years, he was passing on to the Turks every single bit of intelligence on ISIS camps, weapon depots, location of their leaders, exact coordinates. So the Turks were passing it on to the Americans. Drones, fighter jets, everything you can imagine decimated isis. But then he, of course, when he left isis, in order to remain legitimate in the eyes of his followers, he gave his allegiance to Al Qaed. Al Qaeda decided, oh, great, thank you so much. We're going to send now our own leaders to you. So they started sending people like Abu Al Faraj, al Masri and Abardel Al Muhajir and Ibrahim Sayasa and all of these leaders, only for them to be killed one after another by American drones. Somehow, someone somewhere was leaking their, you know, locations. Why? Because Al Julani was leaking their locations to the Turks, and the Turks were giving it to the Americans. And then brownie points, one brownie point after another. And so at some point, the Americans worked it out and told in late 2017, they told Hakam Fidan, we know who your source is. We want to meet him. And so a meeting was arranged. And it was in January, just two months before I met that intelligence officer. In January of 2018 the meeting happened. And in that meeting, Al Julani Lakhido basically asserted that, you know, I have no interest whatsoever in anything that is remotely related to global jihad. We despise, you know, this idea completely. And we made sure that anyone who is trying to make Idlib a staging ground, you know, for attacks against any other nation, will meet his demise before he even achieve it. So he was asked the question, what do you want? And he said it exactly like this. He said, to rule Syria. That was what I was told in March of 2018. And so I was thinking that that was smart. But does, you know, those around him know that? And the answer was, most of the first tier leadership know that, know his strategy. They have converted to that. They are now more or less similar to Saudi Wahhabist ideology of the nation state comes first. So. And they are doing that conversion slowly and gradually, you know, from the top down. So in 2020, in July, that's another evidence of this. I met with a senior Syrian businessman who lives in the uae. And I remember he had a. Debts, problems and everything and all of that. And he said to me, ayman, finally, I'm going to pay my debts and I'm going to move to Turkey. Everything will be fine. I will tell you, I will, I will tell you. I have the exact location of Al Julani. He is quarantining for Covid. He is in this exact location. And he showed it to me. He showed me on the phone where Jelani is. And he had the proof of life. He had Julani's video in, inside that house. And he said, I just passed it on to the Americans. It's only a matter of time before I collect a $10 million reward on him. I said to him, it's not going to happen. They're not going to target him. Trust me. He said to me, no, no, no. What do you mean? I said, trust me, they are not going to target him. He's just too useful for them. And, you know, several days passed by, you know, 10 days almost. And I called him, I said, you know, my dear friend, no attack yet. He said, oh, those American bastards, they told me they put it all the way to the chain of command at the time. It was President Trump, by the way. And it came back from the White House to the, to the Department of Defense saying that it doesn't serve the national security interests of the United States to target this man, even though there is $10 million reward on him.

Aviv (102:54)

So once it's on, you can't lift the reward. Right, because then you clarify that he's working for you, so they have to leave the reward, but then never act on it.

Ayman Dean (103:02)

Exactly. The man mirrors my journey. Everything about him reminds me of me. Everything. Every word he's saying from. From, say it quote, indoctrination all the way to the nation state and the Chicago Club and, you know, infatuation with Milton Friedman. Yes. I'm not kidding. Seriously, you know, the man mirrors my journey. And so, however I was, you know, dismantling things from within, he was changing, changing things from the top, something that no one ever achieved before. So he has a difficult task here. And this is why I was enraged when I saw the Israelis attacking. And it's like, oh, wait, wait a minute. You should be working with this man. Because this man is the guarantee that Syria is going to be radicalized for the next 20 years, not the other way around, you know, because he is the one who is making sure that radical people are either expelled or imprisoned. Look at the prisons of Idlib. How many people there from the jihadists, like, who are Egyptians or Iraqis or whatever, who currently, like, you know, basically languishing in Idlib jails, just like the jihadis in Saudi Arabia who are languishing in Saudi jails.

Aviv (104:23)

Right. In other words, in Idlib, you have these jihadis and he's keeping a lid on them, and he can be trusted to do so.

Ayman Dean (104:30)

He just. Just like the monarchies and he. And he wants to be a monarch in the future, you know, at some stage. Like, you know, basically he want to be the king of Syria. A United Kingdom, kingdom of Syria. Now, the problem here is, you know, it's not the Druze. The Druze were always painted as patriotic Syrians in Syria. And remember, like, you have to understand that the Druze of Syria are very different from the Druze of Lebanon, are very different from the Druze of, you know, Israel. That the three are very different, you know, in terms of, you know, culture, political, like, you know, I mean, machinations, all of that. So it's a mistake, like, you have to treat all the three as the same. And also at the same time, if it were, you know, everything would have been fine if it wasn't for one particular man, you know, in Sueda, who I blame personally for this entire mess. It's not that the jihadists want to kill the Druze. I mean, look, the jihadists want to kill everyone, to be honest. Like, you know, basically they want to kill even Sunni, you know, people who, you know, dance and drink and party. But the reality here is the fact that we have someone already keeping a lid on them and de. Radicalizing them. You know, that is genuine and we can see that. We see his efforts on the ground. The problem here is we have one man who. Dr. Ayman Al Safadi, you know, the foreign minister of Jordan. In 2015, he put out a tweet before he became foreign minister and deputy prime minister of Jordan. He said Hekmat Al Hijari is the, you know, source of all the problems. That's the current Drew's leader. Yeah, In Sweden, one of them, to be honest. Like, there are two other Al Hannawi and Al Jarbuh. But there are, you know, he is the most outspoken and the most militant out of them. Imagine in 2015, 10 years ago, though, the current deputy minister, prime minister and, you know, foreign minister of Jordan, describing him as the biggest liability in Suaida and that he is a trouble. He said that 10 years ago. Now, the surprise here is that Ayman Al Safadi is a Druz himself from the Druze of Jordan. So he said himself that. And I have recent, as you can read my tweets, I speak to diplomats in Jordan and they tell me that the biggest problem in Sweda is Hekmat Al Hijri because he is genuinely mentally unstable who have, just like Gaddafi, have different positions every few hours. And, you know, he changed his mind depending on who he meets, you know, last and who he speak to last. And so, you know, as a result, the Al Jarbu and Al Hannawi were more than happy to coexist and to actually cooperate with the new government. They made progress. And their request of fully Druze police force, fully Druze judiciary, and fully Druze civil service in Suwaydah was agreed to, however, seven months. And Hekmat Al Hijri is saying, no, no, no, no, no. And without any good explanations as to. Yeah, but we're giving you everything you want. He said, no, I want a secular government in Damascus. Well, we are secular. We have no religious leader, like in a. Basically, like. No, no, I want a genuine secular. Yeah. Did you look at your head, mate? Like, you know, basically you have a religious hat on your head and you are the leader of the. The political and military undisputed leader of the Druze in South Suede. Like, I mean, it's like, you know, glass houses and rocks and all of that. Like, you know, I mean, you see.

Aviv (108:14)

Do you think the Israelis didn't understand any of this?

Ayman Dean (108:17)

Yeah, unfortunately, no, because of domestic political issues.

Aviv (108:23)

Why did the Israeli Druze say, we desperately need your. Hundreds of people cross the border, you know, just in a pirate way, just on their own as vigilantes to go save the Jews of South Sueda. Golan Jews who are, you know, some of them think they're Israeli. Most of them think they're still kind of Syrian. They don't really know. But people who are very familiar with the situation in Sueda. Why, how did the Israelis, never mind the failure of Israeli intelligence or understanding or politicians, pull the trigger a little too fast when the Trump administration said, according to an alleged leak that I think the Trump administration has since denied, Netanyahu was just a little too easy on he bombs everything. But there was nevertheless this sense that the Druze are telling us what's happening. Why would these Druze say it that way?

Ayman Dean (109:09)

Blind tribalism at the end of the day is a blind tribalism. It doesn't matter. Like in a. Basically like, I mean, like the Arabic saying, like, I mean, support your brother. Whether oppressed or oppressor, you know, that is the Arab, you know, mentality. It's a tribe, you know, it's a tribe with a tribe.

Aviv (109:26)

Once the Jews are dying, it doesn't matter who's doing the killing and who started it.

Ayman Dean (109:29)

Exactly. And how do you stop it? And by the way, like, you know, many atrocities were committed by the, you know, members of the military and later members of the tribal forces when they entered into Sueda. No question about it. But to call it genocide is. Or ethnic cleansing is like. It's a disservice to a pure analysis and honest analysis. Why? Because it's a fight between two militias, for God's sake, or an army and a militia. Because that's exactly what happened, you know, all of these things avoidable. Everything was avoidable, to be honest, because the Druze were given Sweden, were given almost considerable amount of autonomy, and it was, you know, with guarantees that there will be no weapons south of Damascus. That's it. The Syrians were telling me that we are happy with the demilitarized zone. We don't care. Like, I mean, at the end of the day, you know, if the Israelis want to, you know, invade, let them invade. They will meet the tribes of Daraa, you know. You know, let them. Let them try the tribes of Daraa, you know, Rasda will be another cake. Rasda will be considered a cakewalk talk in comparison. So, you know, the government in Damascus, if you ask them, what do you want and do you know, what is the word they always say in Syrian accent? You know, we want to live. In other words, we want to have higher standards of living for our people. But at the same time, they are doing their best to de radicalize people who have been radicalized by 14 years of traumatic conflict where a million people died, 14 million displaced, and they just experience power after 54 years being bereft of power. I'm talking about the Sunnis of Syria. So, you know, the neighbors need to work with them in order to achieve that. And you know what? You know, Netanyahu could have picked up the phone to Ashar and say, hey, I wanted to give the Druze 1, 2, 3, 4, 5. And in return, I'm going to help you with the drought and all the agricultural challenges that you have, because we are the best in the region with that. Will you do that for me? Ashara would have said yes, and the Syrian people would have valued this gesture for the 20 years to come.

Aviv (111:43)

Do you think Ashara would say yes now after Israel bombed military HQ in Damascus?

Ayman Dean (111:50)

I would say yes if it means that Syria remains united and there is a Israeli backing for a united Syria and potential in the future for a united Syrian monarchy.

Aviv (112:04)

Okay, final question. Thank you so much for your time. I don't know. I don't know how to do this. Maybe I'll just invite you for another four hours some other time.

Ayman Dean (112:13)

Happy to do so.

Aviv (112:16)

Gaza, we Israelis, you know, after October 7th, I said on some podcasts, I don't think our enemies understand what they have awakened. All of our history, 140 years of the history that produced the Jews of Israel as a cohesive society, teach us that we no longer can trust in our own analyses of whether the enemy is deterred. We thought we understood Hamas. It turned out we did not. And so we no longer trust our own judgment of whether Hezbollah is deterred, whether the Khomeini is deterred, whether anybody is deterred. And so the new Israeli vision by October 9th was very clear to people like me and to every serious pundit of Israel. Many, many of us. The new Israeli vision was no more monsters on any borders, no more enemies that we have clever theories about the deterrence. And so we went to a war, first in Gaza, then in Lebanon. Hezbollah insisted on joining that war, but we wanted Hezbollah to join in that war because we wanted the chance to shatter this thing forever. Because we can never have monsters on our borders ever again. Because we simply can't believe that our own intelligence telling us they're deterred. Nobody's ever deterred in the Israeli imagination, ever. Again. And we went to Iran. Iran was said to be this enormous challenge and turned out to be an unbelievable cakewalk. We have dead, we have buildings shattered, we have thousands displaced. It is not 1% of what the pessimists said that war would mean for Israel and for the Middle East. Hezbollah turned out to be a cakewalk because of 10 years of incredibly professional and astonishing, astonishingly clever intelligence work, etc. And Gaza, that weakest of our enemies, but the one that surprised us because we did not understand it, because it had managed to compartmentalize to a point where Israeli intelligence couldn't see it, because of a catastrophic Israeli failure. Gaza turned out to be the thing that we still now struggle to understand, how to get through, how to achieve the basic world goal, which is Hamas disarmed and removed. That's the war goal. That was the Cabinet decision two years ago almost. And along the way, Gaza has suffered terribly. I think that the basic Israeli understanding of the Gaza war is basically World War II. In Germany, the Allies destroyed Germany, demolished Germany. My complaint to Benjamin Netanyahu has been that while the Allies were demolishing Germany, it was understood that that was because the Nazis were holding on, because they wouldn't surrender. We will do whatever it takes to remove Nazism, but once we remove Nazism, there is the great rebuilding. The Israelis need to say that there is the great rebuilding because otherwise they are just destroying. And they are destroying at enormous scales because there are 500km of tunnels under this tiny territory of 25km. But Gaza is the place where the Israelis are struggling. Gaza is also the place where there is enormous suffering, enormous suffering. In Lebanon, the civilian death toll is tiny compared to the destruction wreaked on Hezbollah. In Iran, it's even smaller compared to the catastrophe it represents militarily. In Gaza, the civilians are suffering far more than Hamas. So much of Hamas is dead. Maybe that's. I don't know. I don't want to get into the. Never mind the semantics. The point is there's massive suffering. There's widespread terrible hunger in Gaza right now. There's a big debate about whether it's actually starvation. Okay, fine, but there's no doubt they're suffering. Has the Middle east radicalized against Israel? Is Hamas exactly that kind of transnational enemy or is it a nationalist enemy in the model that you told us? So many questions that I have about Gaza, are the Abraham Accords still possible? How do you. Do you know if the Saudis demand to pell Palestinian state for movement forward with an Abraham Accord? Does that mean also the West Bank. I have to tell you, there's not a single Israeli I know who isn't in some way afraid of pulling out of any part of the west bank because they absolutely believe that Hamas will take over anywhere they pull out of. Because Hamas is the only real story that exists in Palestinian politics that Palestinians cling to. So this is something that we don't know how to solve, we're not going to solve anytime soon. It's tremendous, tremendous suffering involved on their side. On our side. 90% of Israelis think the Palestinians want to destroy us utterly. 90% of Palestinians, it turns out, roughly, think that the Israelis want to destroy them utterly. I don't know how this conflict ends anytime soon. And in the meantime, the entire Middle east is watching it and obsessing about it and seeing nothing else almost on their television screens. How do you understand Gaza? What should the Israelis do? How bad is it? Is there an Abraham Accords to come out of it? And I'll think up another seven or eight questions. No, this is it. This is the last question. Tell us what someone who comes from your past and knows what you know understands that Gaza conflict.

Ayman Dean (117:27)

I was. It was September 17, 2023, so it was just my birthday. And I was in the presence of the Irish ambassador here in the uae, and I was giving a talk to the Irish business group here in the United Arab Emirates. And there were 200 people in front of me. And I was talking about the recent positive outcome in the region. First, we have the March 2023 detente between Tehran and Riyadh brokered by Beijing in order to secure supplies of energy and make sure there is no shooting war between the GCC and Iran. And then we have the imec, the India Middle East European corridor, which will go from Mumbai to Dubai to Riyadh to Jordan, and from there to Haifa and from there to Greece and Italy. Wow. This will create this kind of Israeli, Saudi economic integration before even we go into the proper normalization. What a wonderful time to live in. Hooray for peace. And then I said something. I said, are we allowed to say that peace is finally, you know, reigning in the Middle East? Are we, I mean, allowed to be optimistic or somehow. Somehow someone across the water? And I was pointing, you know, from Dubai across the water, like I meant Iran will sabotage all of this, you know, And I remember one of the member of the audience asking, like, how do you think the sabotage will happen? I said, I don't know, maybe the Houthis firing more drones, you know, on Saudi oil facilities, you know, you know, but I don't think this will happen. It could be, you know, the classic way of another Gaza war. Just like 2009, 2014 and 2021 skirmishes. Like, you know, it could be a small scale. That's what I said. It will be a small scale. Little did I know in order to just disrupt that kind of normalization process that was taking place and the speed at which it was going on. Because as I was being told by Saudi friends from the diplomatic service and even the intelligence service that the Saudis were working hard to bring back some sort of working relationship between Hamas and Fatah in order to dissolve the problems between them. Because the government in Jerusalem was telling the Saudis, if you want us to have a peace between us and the Palestinians, how about there should be a peace between the Palestinians and the Palestinians? You know, these two, they need to agree first. They have to have that unified vision in order for us to have a credible partner for peace, both of them. And that include Hamas, you know, abandoning its charter and the aim of destruction of Israel and all of that. Until October 1st. They were telling the Saudis they are on board and they are willing and open to talk about these points. And then of course, October 7th happened. Two hours, if you look at my timeline on X on Twitter, two hours into the attacks, I posted only one line and I was almost in tears. I said, iran is going to fight Israel until the last Palestinian. This is the only line I wrote that day. And it's there for everyone to see because I knew exactly who did it, because I thought it would happen just three weeks earlier. Because there is an almost unstoppable train for peace like in the region and someone is going to derail it. But I didn't think it was will be on that scale. It wasn't derailing. It was blowing up the bridge and the whole train went down into the abyss. And this is why I would say that the only peace, the only way this can happen and for the Abrahamic Accord to be put together is for Jordan, Saudi and the uae. And only these three, please, not Egypt, only these three. Saudi Arabia, UAE and Jordan. For them to take over Gaza as a protectorate and with US and European security involvement, dismantle, disarm and expel Hamas leaders from Gaza and start a program not only of rebuilding Gaza, but of de radicalizing and rehabilitating the people of Gaza and to create that working model for coexistence and peace that could take up to 10 years to build in the meantime, I'm one of those people who believe that I don't believe in the two state solution. I'm not basically one of the idiots who believe in this. It's a complete fallacy, complete idiocy. It's not going to work because there is no viable land for the Palestinians in the west bank anymore. And it will after October 7th. Which Israeli generation will ever abandon their strategic depth of defense and allow such pockets of potential enemy forces to fester and to multiply there? So I'm one of those people who believe that a primitive model of non representative democracy that could actually emerge where there is a one state solution involving only the West Bank. Gaza will be an Arab protectorate, separate completely, but the West Bank Palestinian population will become Israeli citizens and that 70% of the Knesset will be reserved for Jewish population in order to protect the Jewish identity of Israel. While you know, the other 30% will be represented by Arabs. So yes, it's a little bit of a, you know, 1/3. Yes, it's like Lebanon, the Christians are only 30% but they have 50% of the parliament by constitution in order to maintain that cultural and you know, heritage of Christian cultural heritage of Lebanon. So this is the only viable solution in my estimates. You know, as you know, as an amateur student of history, looking forward, that's the only way that can go forward. Gaza is separate, you know, become a GCC Jordan monarchical protectorate like you know, basically and their citizens, you know, given some sort of like, you know, basically a Saudi or you know, Saudi protected passports like in basically in order to become separate entity while at the same time the west bank and the population, the Arab population in the west bank become Israeli citizens. But their voting power will not alter at all the Jewish identity of Israel. I think that's the only way. I can't think of any other way like it is viable.

Aviv (125:14)

There are so, you know, the Israelis themselves people progressives desperate to find a solution are falling over themselves struggling to find one. And really nobody has any. But there are, there is talk about imagining for example George, Jordan stepping in, taking over the Palestinian cities. They get Jordanian citizenship, they have that opening to Jordan Jordanian International Airport. They then have a lot of land strategic depth, maybe even Israel and Jordan split the west bank in some way. Something like that would not be something that you would.

Ayman Dean (125:47)

It could be, it could be but then that would extremely be opposed by a bigger, you know, a big minority within Israel. Like in a saying that still territories are being ceded. You know, at the end of the day it's Not.

Aviv (126:07)

I haven't heard anyone with a serious solution.

Ayman Dean (126:11)

However, the only way is just absorbing the land and the population while putting constitutional guarantees. Some people say yes, but as a time bomb, you know, for the future, it is the other way, like, you know, around this is, as you said, like, I mean, the potential for enclaves, Jordanian royal enclaves within the West Bank. So it's an annexation of the west bank with enclaves of Arab Jordanian citizens living there, you know, and that could be because we have the same here between Oman and the uae. Oman and the UAE have a very funny border where I enter, you know, sometime I could basically cross the border several times because I'm going from one enclave to an exclave to an enclave, you know, unlike that between the two countries, because tribes chose to go with one country or the other. It's not, you know, unheard of in this region.

Aviv (127:08)

But it's basically the Alon plan of Igal alone, where he had these maps, where the west bank is carved out, where populations are fit with their sort of ethnicity, their government. Okay, so you are as confused as the rest of us, but you are optimistic, but you're nevertheless optimistic on normalization. That is something that is in the future.

Ayman Dean (127:30)

But one thing I must say, the.

Aviv (127:32)

Monarchy is being willing to rebuild Gaza as well.

Ayman Dean (127:34)

Yeah, Israel need to do a lot to become economically integrated with the rest of the region. It is absolutely surprising. 78 years and still Israel is not properly economically integrated with the region and especially with the gcc. That need to happen possibly even before the Abrahamic Accords, in order for the Abrahamic Accords to become a political reality, because only through economic integration that peace can happen. Because at the end of the day, I remember I, you know, I was, you know, giving a talk in the bank I used to work for. I worked for a bank after I left the service of MI5 and MI6. And I pulled a. It was in the UK, so I pulled a 20 pound note and I said, it's amazing that this could be both an instrument of peace or war. But actually, you know, this is an instrument of peace because nations that depend on each other so much, you know, rarely, you know, go to war with each other. And so I think an Israeli economic integration with the rest of the Middle east is something that need to happen and need to happen as soon as possible, possible.

Aviv (128:41)

I'm undine. The goal of this podcast is to fight against the Western cartoonization of the Middle east because it's big and it's complex and we're real people and we have three dimensional understandings of the world. And you have just helped me do that and I hope you have helped our listeners and viewers do that. Thank you so very much for joining me.

Ayman Dean (129:01)

You're kind.

Aviv (129:02)

I really appreciate it.

Ayman Dean (129:04)

Thank you so much for having me sa.