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Radio War Nerd #298 — The 1979 Grand Mosque Seizure (Patreon)

Published:
2021-09-30 19:44:36
Imported:
2026-06
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Guest: Aamer

Recorded: September 28, 2021

As we've said since the beginning of RWN time, 1979 was a big year in our ancient lives, the  year of the Big Reaction. One of the most important events that year, so little understood at the time, was the seizure of the Grand Mosque in Mecca by Wahhabi militants who, paradoxically, believed in the official Saudi ideology a little too much. Previous RWN guest Aamer joins us to describe the bloody events.

*Grand Mosque layout, 1979

Previous RWN episodes with Aamer:  The Arab Conquests series: (EP #246, #249, #251, #255); Bahrain (EP #268); Inglorious Qatari Bustards (EP #279). Follow Aamer on Twitter. 

See also: RWN EP #51: "The Spike" & Reagan's "Russian Disinformation" Scare

Check out the Radio War Nerd Merch store here!

Total time: 1:58:33

Direct link to this episode's mp3 here 

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Comments

malefujoshi

I’ve been waiting for an episode on this for years let’s goooooooo

Ger Dempsey

Two in two days?! You're spoiling us.

Eli Cash

Just when I was listening to old Aamer episodes. One of my favorite guests you guys have had. Among many great guests of course.

cstenzy

A surprise to be sure, but a welcome one

Anders Olsson

Aamer is so great. Genuine thanks for bringing him on the show.

G W

I agree with everyone else. One of my favorite guests.

Abiel Beluts

Woah what a pleasant surprise!!!

Ander Pierce

The caliber of guests on Radio War Nerd is so high, and Aamer's Arab Conquest series utterly fantastic! Thrilled to hear him on the show again

MoldyTolge

The gang is all here to talk about that year when everything happened, 1979.

MoldyTolge

Our prayers have been answered

Lo

Love salvo-fired eps

Steven F

We love Aamer!

mt

Regarding the killing of leftists around the world but fundamendalists were left to bloom, I am convinced that leftists wanted a better world for everybody and independence whereas fundamentalists can be counted on for comprador/vassalhood for oil etc. since they are mostly interested in power and therefore easy to bribe, not societal development for their people. If fundamentalists take power it doesn't really change the structure just which fools fill the positions.

Haemu

Anyone else not seeing this in RSS feed?

Dorst Savijeski

Sadly the old city got destroyed, btw the big dipper pointed rougly towards Mecca recently. But I don't feel like marriage

Cd

Really appreciating the schedule!

David Andrews

Islam seems to have a lot of dumb rules. No booze. No movies. No driving for women. Women wearing tents and veils in 40 degree heat. Or is that the Saudi interpretation of Islam?

Jason Thompson

The women’s clothes (and Saudi men also traditionally wear something like robes, just no veils) are reasonable for the heat…light fabric… not firm-fitting or tight… lots of air circulation

radiowarnerd

RSS feed updated. Had to call in French commandos to fix it.

Lionel Boyd Johnson

From my understanding, it's very much an export of the Saudi/ Gulf state, and the extension of their influence via oil money sponsored schools, mosques, and state sponsored missionary type outreach in other countries has spread their particularly literalist, narrow, harsh understanding far and wide. I haven't listened to the episode yet, but my understanding is that even within Saudi society, this was cultivated at least in part fairly recently, and at least in part by British colonial not inherent to Islam,petro-colonial interests, and what we see as standard organic locally sourced Saudi fundamentalism is in large part just blow back from colonialist projects 100 years ago.

online Leftist Archive Project (LARP)

What Lionel said. This kind of fundamentalism has taken on such a dominant role within Islam only recently. Most Muslims were pretty chill, especially compared to Christian Europe, until the past 100 years if not even more recent.

Michael S. Judge

I've never met anyone else who remembers this, but I distinctly recall TV news claiming (briefly) that the PLO was responsible for 9/11. Even that late, they decided to whip it out once more for nostalgia's sake.

Paul M

Same. I can't wait to listen.

Jason Thompson

My big question is: how did this dude expect his revolution to spread? They were immediately surrounded once they took over the mosque and (unless you just didn’t mention it in the podcast) he had no ‘propaganda’, no one broadcasting on the radio, TV etc (assuming he was willing to use those methods). And as you pointed out the Saudis were very good at internally censoring their news. Did he have no plan for spreading his “rise up against the Sauds” message beyond the initial seizure? 🤔

Karl

Dudes I grew up in Riyadh and the official line was definitely Iranians took it over. I had this discussion with a Persian American the other day and she set me straight.

Karl

Control of 30% of educational hours for Saudi schools was handed over to a bunch of dudes from the Muslim Brotherhood after this event. We were playing PacMan at video arcades in Riyadh until about 1982, when they all got shut down due to this shift toward fundamentalism. We were on swim team at SANG in 1977, having coed softball games in the vacant lot next to our house with Saudi locals. What a waste this shift in policy was for Saudi Arabia's cultural and economic development.

ChapliKababHat

He was genuinely relying on divine intervention.

Kevin Walsh

Growing up in Ireland long after the event I am convinced that to the extent that I heard about it, which was very little, it was that it was Iranians who did it.

Eric George

Fantastic episode with so many interesting details.

Neil Manich

Aamer is so good at this

Robert Rowe

"Compared to Christian Europe" has not been a very "chill" standard for religious tolerance and inter sect violence at times!

Sstep

Second this: excellent, juicy episode, probably in the top 5 of the whole show. If I would need to recommend the show to someone and have to select one episode, this Grand Mosque Seizure could be the one or Australian wars or Taiping rebellion.

Dorst Savijeski

👎10 more of you guys than the fridge is full I need a war, btw really had that situation, help coming someone told their NATO mom, they asked for a tail I sink??. He has the churches..(ills)...

MoistVonLipwig

Hey, amazing episode guys! I'd just like to chime in with some pharmacology knowledge here if you don't mind. In the Grand Mosque attack it was claimed that "CB" gas was used. I believe this is a bit of naming confusion. Typically in North America you'll hear it called CS gas. This is strange because the chemical name is 2-chlorobenzalmalononitrile which really SHOULD be CB but they went with CS for some reason. Either way, it's a very noxious substance as I'm sure you know, producing effects from lacrimation to full on vomiting, and often causing the effected person to collapse completely as their lungs rapidly fill with mucous, preventing proper breathing. It can also cause permanent corneal damage and a host of other long term issues, as well as outright death if someone collapses and aspirates. It's mechanism of action is somewhat unique compared to say, most nerve gases like Sarin etc (which works by creating a buildup of acetylcholine at the nerve junction, which essentially means once a nerve fires, it can't stop firing until the entire nervous system is locked into an "on" state, causing death). CB/CS on the other hand, is very specifically targeted to the TRPA1 receptor which governs sensations of pain, cold and itchiness. It's "affectionately" known as the Wasabi receptor due to the chemicals in horseradish being particularly fond of activating it. So if you've ever want to know what getting tear gassed is like, imagine getting aerosolized Wasabi sprayed in your face. Finally, the reason I actually made this post was to discuss the Chechen theatre hostage crisis. There's been a lot of debate about what drugs were used but I can say with fairly high certainty I know it was a combination of Carfentinel and a long acting benzodiazepine like Phenezepam. Carfentinel is about 10,000× as strong as morphine or 100× as strong as regular fentanyl. Because of this is usually reserved for elephants and large bears. The benefit of using it is that you only need someone to encounter an extremely small dosage (a milligram or less) to be effected. Notably it can also be combined with an α2-agonist to prevent the persons heart and breathing from stopping. Because of the small doses it's easily aerosolized. Secondly, Phenezepam is a Russian invented EXTREMELY long acting benzodiazepine. It's dosages are also very small, in the milligram range. It can last for several days from a single dose. Phenezepam is also insoluble in water but VERY soluble in propylene glycol and glycerin, which happens to be the mixture used in fog machines to create massive clouds of smoke. The combination of an opioid like Carfentinel and a benzodiazepine like Phenezepam produce a literal state of general anasthesia, there's no consciousness whatsoever and anyone unattended to within several minutes will likely suffer some kind of hypoxic brain damage. Thankfully Naloxone works just fine on Carfentinel but we have reports of paramedics being confused by patients being treated, seeming to be okay for a couple hours and then collapsing back into a coma. That's the Phenezepam at play. With a half life of 6-18 hours it takes at least 3 days to leave your system, and often more than a week, even from a small dose. This post is already too long but if anyone wants citations or has questions just hit me up.

Mark Ames

This is great, thanks. But it also makes me wonder then, why *only* ~100 of the 900 hostages died if none of them were being properly treated with the antidote.

radiowarnerd

Thanks for this post. It's really illuminating. About the Nord Ost gas, why couldn't they just have used the aerosolized diazepam? Wouldn't that have prevented people from stopping breathing?

MoistVonLipwig

Diazepam on its own doesn't cause complete loss of consciousness except at extremely high doses, anywhere from 500-2000mg depending on a variety of factors including the person's preexisting tolerance to benzodiazepines, liver function and a whole host of other factors. It also has a fairly slow onset, usually at least 40 minutes. The logistics of filling a theatre with a vapor dense enough to administer 1000mg of diazepam per person are extremely difficult, if not impossible, and at doses that would produce the desired level of sedation it will start to cause respiratory depression as well. On top of that, diazepam has several active metabolites with EXTREMELY long half lives, approaching 200 hours, so you'd likely need to monitor people for up to two weeks afterwards potentially. Also the antidote for a benzo is Flumazenil, which works well, but if the person you're treating has an existing alcohol or benzo problem, it can put them into extremely dangerous precipitated withdrawal (essentially medically induced Delirium Tremens). The combination of a benzodiazepine and an opioid means you can sedate mildly with the benzodiazepine and then cause unconscious with the opioid, which can then be quickly reversed by naloxone. Basically the two drugs they chose have active doses in the 1-5mg range. It's very difficult to get anyone to inhale more than that. For example, a cigarette smoker will inhale approximately 2-6mg of nicotine per cigarette and that's with it being pulled right into their lungs. Trying to get >1000mg of a medication into someone in a large space would require an amount of visible vapour that would be thicker than any smoke machine you've ever seen (and it would look like a smoke machine, benzos aren't water soluble so they have to be dissolved in propylene glycol to be vaporized, which is what smoke machine liquid is made of). You can be much, much sneakier with more potent substances. I would think part of the reason so many people died is that both drugs are HEAVILY bodyweight dependant, basically linearly so. Smaller or elderly people would likely receive dosages that are just too high and if they've already been unconscious for several minutes it's probably just not possible to revive them.