Syriana

Whiskey, whiskey.

- You want some whiskey? - No, champagne.

- Champagne? Yeah. - Bob.

Liquid MDMA? No.

Tehran is the world capital.

- Oh, yeah? - Oh, yeah.

You've got a... friend there.

How's the kid?

He's fine.

He's...

He's fine.

Arash, when you wanna do this?

After prayer.

Okay.

- You said they were both for you. - What do you care?

Okay.

Mr. Whiting, I'm Bennett Holiday.

A very big company, Connex, our client...

loses a huge natural-gas contract in the Persian Gulf...

to the Chinese. At the same time...

a smaller company, Killen, somehow gets the rights to Kazakhstan...

one of the largest untapped oil fields in the world.

The big company, our client, merges with Killen...

Justice wants to know how Killen got those rights.

You've been scrutinizing exactly these types of deals...

so if there's something to find...

I expect you to get it before they do.

And come straight to me.

Bennett.

Sir?

At my firm, I have a flock of sheep...

who think they're lions.

Maybe you're a lion everyone thinks is a sheep.

No, I wanna talk about the Gulf, and how a goddamn emir...

- What is an emir anyway? - King, it's a king.

A king. Well, how some Podunk king tossed you out on your ass.

Every company in the world wanted into Kazakhstan...

into the Tengiz, but Killen got it.

And then Connex wanted Killen, and here we are.

I made investments.

Investments that'll bear fruit for this company.

Hell, Tommy, we've all got the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act...

committed to memory.

I got a little copy of it taped to the wall of my head. Right here.

Thanks, Jimmy. We appreciate hearing your point of view.

However, a U.S. Attorney...

is looking into your relationships in Kazakhstan...

and the U.S. government is holding off on approval of our merger.

So Mr. Janus and I have brought...

Connex's Washington counsel, Sydney Hewitt...

down here to talk about our strategy for the next 30 days.

Sydney?

In a way, I feel like Switzerland.

I'd like to remind everybody in this room they've signed confidentiality agreements.

Allow me to introduce my associate, Bennett Holiday...

who will be... How shall I put it?

Building consensus day-to-day.

Good morning.

You've just visited what someday soon...

could be the most profitable corporation in America.

Provided the government approves the merger.

Provided we don't start running automobiles on water.

And provided there's still chaos in the Middle East.

Now the job is, find the problem, fix the problem.

And if you do not find a problem, then there is no problem.

And when the government approves this merger...

it's gonna buy a lot of houses in the Vineyard.

Maybe even yours.

Cheerios again?

- Max! - Max!

- Hey, man. - Let's not read at the table, okay?

- Put this hand here. Block me. - Sweetie, sweetie.

- Mommy? I want bacon. - Yeah?

- You have bacon. - I want real bacon.

You have real bacon, only it's made from soy beans.

I want pig bacon.

I want pig bacon too.

- Don't say it. - I'll try it if you try it.

- I don't know if I can bite this. - It's crunchy.

- How'd you do that? - It's kind of hard to cut.

- It's pretty bad. - You be quiet.

A merger between two U.S. oil companies is taking place in Houston.

The new company, Connex-Killen Corporation...

will become the fifth largest oil and gas company in the world.

The move affects 37,000 workers in 160 countries...

and, with revenues larger than the gross domestic product of Pakistan or Denmark...

will create the world's 23rd largest economy.

Mr. Leland Janus, chairman of Connex, spoke today of synergy...

and a desire to pass on savings to the consumer.

The merged operations will create economies of scale...

to deliver the best products to the consumer at the lowest possible prices.

It's a merger of necessity for Connex, Rebecca...

who wants Killen's fields in Kazakhstan, after gas blocks they pursued in the Gulf...

were awarded to a Chinese consortium.

Producer nations continue to look toward developing markets in Asia...

which is having a powerful effect on crude prices.

There's at least 10 to 12 dollars of instability premium.

You have protests in Iran, the threat of more strikes in Venezuela...

and the Turks still making noise about Russian crude through the Bosphorus.

All right, thanks for having me, Rebecca.

I'm playing. That's my job, playing.

Yeah, well, that's a very, very good job for you to have.

- Tell Daddy you love him. - I love you, Daddy.

Hey.

The emir's summer party, Marbella, this weekend.

Any interest?

Well, I can't. I got, you know...

Guy could be huge for the company, Bryan.

It's Maxie's birthday this weekend, so... So we have Saturday...

Hey, Bryan, I just need your help on this... The emir's party. I'll take that.

Through finagling, we have an audience with the emir.

He wrote the strategy, and he's not slick.

I didn't say I could go.

Come on. Take the children with you. The beach, summer, Marbella. Max'll love it.

- Can I do that? - Sure you can.

Besides, they love children.

John D. Rockefeller. Founded the University of Chicago.

Come on.

That's fine. You're a good song leader, Mr. Rockefeller.

Bob's freaking out about this other missile.

"Where's the missile? Who has it?" He wrote a memo.

I just finished convincing Brit and French intel...

we had nothing to do with the Amiri job.

What do we say to them now? "Well, something's missing."

He's gotta stop this. He's gotta stop with the memos.

Okay. Here's something. You put him up for promotion.

He's due. He's a good man. He saved our ass in Beirut in '85.

That's great. Terry likes him. We'll get him an audition downtown.

You get him an audition downtown.

They're going crazy about Iran now. Bob's an expert.

Speaks Farsi, for chrissake.

Bob has never had a desk job.

He's never done 9 to 5, never been on committee.

He's gotta show up to work every day. He's gotta stay on message.

Absolutely.

I'll prep him.

In fact, we just pulled one of our officers out.

I took the initiative to ask him to come down here.

He infiltrated Hezbollah in Beirut in the '80s, won himself some nice medals.

We're thinking about giving him a station.

Beirut in the '80s, is that a résumé-builder?

Don't chomp down on any bait.

We're fine.

Iran is fine.

Fine.

And our analysis seems to be on the mark. We're getting good satellite coverage.

We're reprogramming resources into Iran...

Thank you for coming. Welcome back and forgive me if I wade in...

but forgetting for a second your bureaucratic checklist...

I'm trying to get undigested information.

- Well, to the best of our ability... - India is now our ally. Russia is our ally.

Even China will be an ally.

Everybody between Morocco and Pakistan is the problem.

Failed states and failed economies, but Iran is a natural cultural ally of the U.S.

Persians do not want to roll back the clock to the eighth century.

I see students marching in the streets. I hear Khatami making the right sounds.

And what I'd like to know is, if we keep embargoing them on energy...

then someday soon, are we gonna have a nice, secular...

pro-Western, pro-business government?

It's possible. It's complicated.

Of course it is. Thank you for your time.

They let young people march in the street. Next day, they shut down 50 newspapers.

Put a few satellite dishes up on the roofs, let them have My Two Dads.

That doesn't mean the ayatollahs...

are surrendering one iota of control over that nation.

Mr. Barnes, the reform movement in Iran...

is one of the president's great hopes for the region...

and crucial to the petroleum security of the United States.

These gentlemen are with the CLI.

The Committee for the Liberation of Iran, Mr. Barnes.

Maybe you'll get made ambassador to somewhere cool.

Like France or Italy or Ghana.

It's not beyond the realm of possibility, is it?

How's your mom?

Great. She's great.

So I know it's still a year away...

but I'll have to have a car, a decent car.

Nothing too fancy, but it has to run so that I can get into Boston and New York.

They have a great crew. That's what they told me.

I said, "Crew of what?" And they said, "Rowing."

- So if I wanna row, it'd be kind of fun. - Thank you.

Robby, listen.

I live in Maryland...

which means that you have residency in Maryland.

For the University of Maryland.

I'm sorry, can I steal this from you? Thank you so much.

I just want a normal senior year, Dad.

I want a normal house.

I want Cinemax and prom.

You know what prom is like in Pakistan? Prom sucks in Pakistan.

It's complicated, you know.

I may have really screwed up at work.

How?

I was supposed to keep my mouth shut and I didn't.

What does Mom do, again, that we have to live in Islamabad?

- She's a secretary. - Secretary.

Robby.

Both of my parents are professional liars.

Hey.

Did you guys just get a party?