Rafic Hariri

and more or less blurry, but I remember key moments like not feeling safe and not having security because my parents didn't really discuss what was going on outside and I was fairly late, really, really young.

So the first major memory that I have of something bad happening, it was in 2005. with the assassination of our former prime minister, Rafiq Hariri.

At that moment, I remember that the house shook and everyone around was panicking.

The neighbors were screaming.

was 2005.

Yes.

Right after the assassination of, uh, Rafiq Hariri, um, And that move was also more or less difficult because I had to leave my school.

I had to leave my friends, the environment I'm used to and adapt to something completely new.

All of which, as far as they're concerned, Iran and therefore Hezbollah has kind of broken and stopped.

And, you know, they got rid of the Hariri project.

They've attracted sanctions.

They've stopped, you know, they're kind of shutting up borders all over the place.

It's not just that it's not recent.

It's an old kind of...

So there is a connection and there is a connection politically in the 90s with the Hariri project that came in in the 1990s and a lot of Gulf investment into the country.

So, you know, there is that kind of projection in which...

But there are other lessons here, and we're going to come to them because Andrew's done us all the favor of assembling a Russian success and a Russian failure extremely applicable to where we are right now, which is why I've concentrated.

The book also takes the Hezbollah example from the assassination of Hariri, the former prime minister in Beirut in 19-- in 2005, uh, mentioning Chechnya, mentioning The ice-- rise of ISIS, other examples, but we're gonna stay with lessons learned, chiefly from the Russians, because they are so prominent in the imaginations of our European allies right now.

The book is War Without Footprints.

I'm John Batchelor.

There is no one that actually really goes to jail.

And that also applies to the assassination of many Lebanese, including our very own former Prime Minister Rafiq Hariri, who was also assassinated on the orders of Iran and Syria.

And there was a trial in The Hague, but there was no one in the dock.

Did any of this bring the family much closure?

And like Karim, I remember, you know, I saw, for example, the prime minister of Lebanon, Nawaf Salah, of course, putting his, sending out his best wishes to the Saudi monarchy.

And all I could think about was how Saudi Arabia has treated Lebanon over the past few years, right? From the kidnapping of Rafiq Hariri.

Fantastic.

Saad Hariri, I'm sorry, to the blockade that they imposed on Lebanon after a minister criticized the war on Yemen.

And what was your job?

So I was originally employed as, uh, badged as an investigator, but working on the investigation into, uh, the assassination of their former prime minister, Rafic Hariri, who was blown up in a very large car bomb, and then following that, there were a series of other political assassinations with car bombs that were also part of our remit.

And you're investigating or you're doing the legal part of it.

To whom are you reporting?

And while I don't follow his internal politics from close up, I don't follow that sort of thing very often.

But obviously, he's been the prime minister for a very long period of time and longer than anyone else.

And So that desperation and these extremist policies have worked well for him.

But I don't think they've worked well for the Israeli regime.

It's very difficult to make sense of anything that comes from the White House or from Riyadh.

We have to keep in mind, in my opinion, That Mohammed bin Salman has not shown wisdom during his reign.

We remember how he kidnapped the Lebanese prime minister and beat him up.

The then Lebanese prime minister, Mr. Hariri.