Here we are in Beirut, overlooking the construction of the new United States Embassy complex here in Beirut. And what you're seeing there, that massive range of buildings. that's only a part of it. That's about a quarter of the new complex. It's being built here.
That is the second largest embassy in the world, of any country anywhere in the world. The second largest embassy in the world is being constructed here in Beirut by the United States. And we can't find out officially from the State Department, but we understand that the complex is built to hire, to house 5,000 staff.
I used to be an ambassador. I know what an embassy does. The basic functions of an embassy, it can run political relations with the country, it issues visas, it can do press and public relations, it can administer aid.
can do defence cooperation and most embassies have an intelligence section. But that is not an embassy. That is something 50 times the size of what an embassy would be.
It sounds like every time you press the test, it just says goodbye. So I've just printed off the diplomatic list for the United States of America. These are always public information. They're public under the Vienna Convention. And they list these diplomats.
staff of every embassy in the country. So you can, for example, look at the embassy of Lebanon in the United States and see how many staff it's got. And it has seven diplomatic staff. and it also lists their spouses.
It's a list of everybody with diplomatic immunity. That's why it's published under the Vienna Convention. The embassy of the United Kingdom to the United States of America is one of the world's larger embassies.
It's an embassy between two of the wealthiest countries in the world, two of the top eight economies. And as you'd expect, there are a lot of diplomats there handling relations. and it runs to, I think, 120 names, many of whom have spouses.
And that's about the size of a very large embassy. You'll have 120 diplomatic staff in a very large embassy. I could show you also here the Russian embassy to the United States. States, giving you an idea of, if you like, a hostile or opposed designated enemy mission. And that's slightly smaller.
That's about 90 members of diplomatic staff. Then you have other staff who are not diplomats, who are support staff, who are clerical, who are cleaners, who are guards, whatever, who don't appear on the diplomatic list. And normally you would expect the ratio of non-diplomatics to be very high. staff to diplomatic staff of an embassy to be somewhere between one and two to one. So you have slightly more non-diplomatic staff than you have diplomatic staff.
So the total staff numbers... say, of the British embassy in Washington would be about 300 people, including everybody, including the guards and cleaners, typists, everyone. And the total number in the Russian embassy in Washington would be about 270 people. The total number in the Jordanian or the Lebanese embassy to the United States is probably 20 people, something along those lines.
None of those comes anywhere near 5,000 people, which is the amount of people the new massive, massive so-called embassy. I am genuinely stumped. I just do not know why the United States is building this massive, ultra-expensive complex.
Why is the United States building this here? Let me come on to this question of the... the American embassy that's being built here, because we've been and looked at it as close as you can, as you're allowed to get to it. It's probably not an embassy, whatever it is.
This is plainly something else. What is it? Why is it so big?
And how much do you know about it? Oof. How much do I know about it?
How much do all of the Lebanese know about it? It's like the biggest... known secret over here.
They started building it a few years back and the mass scale of it is scary. It's the second largest U.S. embassy in the world after the one that they have in Iraq. So to have the largest embassies in the world stationed in the Middle East that tells you how important the Middle East is for them.
Now, when it comes to Iraq, it's for military purposes, because it joins the three countries that they want to control or attack. So you have basically Iraq, you have Syria, and then you have Iran. Those are at close proximity.
And then you have Jordan, which is an allied state to them. In Lebanon, it's a different case scenario. They need it for logistics, for torture, for interrogation, to support their espionage missions across the region.
And this is the only case scenario. country, not only in the Middle East, but in the world, where they can do their bidding, and the politicians will allow them to do so. What kind of an embassy is that that's built on thousands of acres of land?
It has underground dungeons that include detention cells. It has basically what you call pathways underground that lead to the sea, because that's where they have the other escape route. They do have their own helicopter pads, and basically they can fly to Cyprus in and out, and it's as if you're going into a fortified... CIA barracks.
That's it. This embassy is not there to cater to Lebanese American citizens. It's not there to cater for good, friendly relations. It's there to cater to the project of hegemony and controlling Lebanon, spying on it, and basically creating further upheaval inside the country. They're not looking for stability over here.
The United States very obviously has an enormous influence in Lebanon. It has absolute authority over the Egyptian banking sector in Lebanon. It has the ability to influence legislative institutions, judicial institutions, executive institutions.
It has the ability to influence media in Lebanon. It needs an embassy to protect this evil influence that exists in Lebanon. To preserve this evil influence.
Lebanon is a country of people who have been oppressed by the evil influence. Lebanon is historically a hub for all intelligence, espionage and conspiracy activities in the region. This center of conspiracy needs to be a great burden for the United States.
During the war on Syria, the United States contributed to the transformation of the United States into a new world. Lebanon to support the jihadist organizations in Syria, including Al-Qaeda and later ISIS. And also to support them even when they occupied the Lebanese territories.
The United States of America contributed to protecting this terrorist presence in Lebanon. The United States of America, as it was announced more than once by former officials in the Lebanese Ministry of Defense and the Lebanese government, has been able to protect the Lebanese people The United States prevented the Lebanese army from a war to liberate the Lebanese territory that the terrorist organizations occupied between 2011 and 2017. The US decided that the Lebanese army was forbidden from taking this war because the control of the terrorist organizations on part of the Lebanese territory served the project of overthrowing the regime in Syria. Yes, they do want to obviously use it to expand their regional influence.
Yes, it will be a base for operating into other states. But I think a lot of it is a shadow Lebanese government, or if you like, the real Lebanese government. That's the substantive government of Lebanon, which is going to be running this country. But the so-called Lebanese ministries are the shadow.
They're the fake. They're pretending to be running the country. the most The most important asset that the UK brings to the Five Eyes spying network is its listing post on Mount Trudos in Cyprus.
It's an interesting thing about technology in this modern day and age, strangely enough, it's still actually quite important to be able to have land-based line of sight. access to communications. I think it's to do with microwave links.
It's also useful for things like pager signals. But Mount Trudos in Cyprus, a very high mountain, from Mount Trudos you have clear lines all over the Middle East, all the way around from Egypt to Israel, Lebanon, Syria and Turkey. And the Americans regard that as the jewel in the picture. ground.
That's, for the Americans, the main reason they keep the NSA-GCHQ agreement going, is that it gives them access to the signals from Mount Trudos. And I used to be responsible for it among my many foreign office jobs. I was head of the Cyprus section of the foreign office, so I know it well.
And that signal station will be running now. It will have line of sight to the new American embassy in Beirut here. And they'll be running now with 30 staff.
There'll be 30 staff on shift from the Signals Regiment and a couple from GCHQ because that's the kind of thing it takes to keep that Signals operation going. Now I want to emphasise too just how big that building and just how big the site is. You're only seeing this side of the hill. It carries on over the brow of the hill. In fact, that new embassy covers 43 acres.
43 acres. I've been on much smaller farms than that. And there's a whole range of other buildings behind the huge construction of buildings you can see there. And you might like to say that Lebanon is an important country with vital American strategic interests, and that's of course true.
I was British ambassador in Uzbekistan. Uzbekistan was a vital strategic interest to the United States. It neighbours Afghanistan, it has a border with Afghanistan, and the Americans were fighting a war inside Afghanistan.
And Uzbekistan provided a huge air base, a huge military base at Kashi Khanabad, which was vital to the logistic supply of the war in Afghanistan. And which had up to 20,000 American service personnel inside it. America also had a massive CIA station in Uzbekistan, and it was a centre for the extraordinary rendition of the war.
They were bringing people into Uzbekistan in order for them to be tortured. Uzbekistan is a country of 26 million people. Lebanon is a country of 5 million people.
Uzbekistan has a GDP of $90 billion a year, whereas Lebanon has a GDP of 19. billion dollars a year. So Uzbekistan, much bigger place, bigger U.S. interests. There's even a bigger aid program in Uzbekistan than there is in Lebanon. And what was the diplomatic staff of the U.S.
Embassy in Uzbekistan? About 70 people. What was the total staff of the U.S.
Embassy in Uzbekistan? It was about 130 people. And we're talking here, in ostensibly a smaller operation, of a massive range of buildings, containing up to 5,000 people.
And I just can't tell you what it is. I can't tell you what it is. I can't tell you what they're doing.
But what I can tell you is this. I've run embassies, I've worked in embassies, I've been inside countless embassies all over the world from all kinds of different nations, and I tell you this for certain. That building is not an embassy.
Thank you.