Bitter Rivals: Iran and Saudi Arabia | show | 2018 | Official Teaser - video Dailymotion

Bitter Rivals illuminates the essential history - and profound ripple effect - of Iran and Saudi Arabia's power struggle | dHNfUXhBaXc2enIyY28

Transcript

00:00From the start, Iran backed Assad.

00:09Syria has really been Iran's only continuous ally since the 1979 revolution.

00:17And when the uprisings began, the Iranian regime was determined to do all in their power,

00:24both financially and militarily, to prevent the Assad regime from collapsing.

00:35Back in 2011, inspired by the Arab Spring, protests began against the Assad regime.

00:44The first six to ten months of the uprising, this was truly a civil uprising.

00:51It was motivated by the rest of the Arab uprising, the need for political participation, asking

01:00for freedom, reining in the security services of the Syrian regime.

01:09It was led by a fairly non-violent civil movement of students, laborers, villagers.

01:20Then I think what happened is a decision was made by the Assad regime that we are not going

01:27to negotiate.

01:50Once the violence began, Iran sent in money, weapons and military advisers from the IRGC

01:56to help Assad crush the protests.

02:04The official line, both here and in Iran, is that the uprising in 2011 was really a

02:09foreign plot.

02:12Was there never a popular revolution prior, in the first month or weeks of the uprising?

02:18In fact, it has never been there.

02:21I'm living here.

02:23I know what happened.

02:25It was a prepared, prefabricated scenario of what will happen.

02:31Since the beginning, we have said that this is a war against Muslim fanatics.

02:39In fact, armed opposition to Assad grew gradually, and was made up of many different groups backed

02:46by many countries.

02:48You had Saudi Arabia, who was an important patron, and Qatar, who was an important patron.

02:54UAE, to a lesser extent, was a patron.

02:56You had Turkey, who was a patron.

02:58You had the United States, who was a patron.

03:00You had the EU, who was a patron.

03:04Everybody is giving money to different people.

03:06Everybody is giving different types of weapons to different groups.

03:14The Saudi Arabian government supported two hardline Sunni Islamist groups.

03:20You paid millions of dollars into groups like Ahrar al-Sham and Jaysh al-Islami.

03:24And who are Ahrar al-Sham and who is Jaysh al-Islami?

03:27They're Syrians.

03:28They're Syrians being killed by whom?

03:30They're being killed by Iranians.

03:32So we're giving them the means to defend themselves.

03:38We support the Syrian people.

03:43Iranians are killing the Syrian people.

03:45That's the difference between us.

03:50For more UN videos visit www.un.org