domestic extremists killed at least 50 people in the last year. that does not count what happened in el paso. and a lot of people are making the point, you hear it a lot, right, if there were isis, if there were isis, we would view it as an existential threat. right? i mean, after al qaeda terrorists killed 3,000 americans, we made complete changes into the nature of the american state and how we live our lives. 18 years after a guy tried to light his shoe on fire, right? we still take our shoes off at the airport, unless you re smart enough to get that tsa. but the comparison to jihadi terrorism makes sense. it s weird for this reason. you don t actually have to look abroad to some foreign analog, some terrorist entity like isis for the threat of american white
potentially congress when they come back into session will look at sanctions against china if they act more aggressively, but trump is on a different page. he s never been a champion for democracy. including here at home. and we know that he is focused on ad concessions from china. you mentioned sanctions. the trump administration hasn t been afraid to sanction iran. gibr gibralar, what s going on there? this is a swiss cheese syndro syndrome. eu-level sanctions don t mirror u.s. domestic law. the ship was detained for violating e-level sanctions with respect to selling oil to syria. the ship gave assurances they would not transport that oil to syria then the u.s. department of justice said, well, the ship is violating u.s. law based on our designation of the irgc as a terrorist entity. the problem is eu law doesn t have the same applicability. the irgc is not listed as a foreign terrorist organization.
labeling u.s. central command a terrorist entity. so you can see how quickly these things escalate. everybody knew there was some sense if that happened, they would do so and this is how this would turn out. i want to put that map back up and give us a quick explanation, bill, about iran and saudi arabia being rivals in the region for the hearts and minds of muslims. we think of them as adversaries, one of them as sunni and shia, but it s more complicated than that. both of them would like to be the spiritual and psychological home for the world s muslims. and the dominant power in the region. iran has wanted that for 5,000 years. it wants to be the dominant power over saudi arabia but also of course over israel and over turkey. how is it doing that?
militias nominally answer to iraq s prime minister but actually answer to iran. iranian officials have been meeting with u.s. officials to try to clarify what this intelligence is that s been driving this and trying to deescalate tensions. and there is the possibility iraqi officials say that this could be faulty intelligence and you only have to remember back to 2003 to see where faulty u.s. intelligence gets iran. and to that end, the wall street journal is reporting that the two sides may simply have misread one another. iran believed the u.s. was about to attack it, and took measures to prepare for an attack, hence a lot of these wild statements. where did that come from? it came from president trump designating an arm of the iranian state as a terrorist entity and iran countering by
and most of them are shia, some of them directly funded and armed by iran. it s reported that a couple of weeks ago, the leader of iran s al qods force briefed those militias to be ready for anything, to prepare for any kind of conflict. but this was after the u.s. designated that revolutionary guard a terrorist entity and after iran designated the u.s. central command a terrorist entity. so we ve got both sides issuing threats and therefore, both sides on alert and in the middle, you ve got iraqi officials here who are are desperately trying to be intermediaries if you like warning those militias not to do anything to provoke u.s. forces. they re also meeting u.s. and british officials trying to tamp this whole thing down. but look, there are plenty of trip wires in this country. as i said, there are 5.5,000