Special Report: The odd-couple relationship between Saudi Arabia and Israel may have been sealed with more than a mutual desire to kiss-off Iran. According to an intelligence source, there was a dowry involved, too, with the Saudis reportedly giving Israel some $16 billion, writes Robert Parry.
By Robert Parry
For more than half a century, Saudi Arabia has tried to use its vast oil wealth to build a lobby in the United States that could rival the imposing Israel Lobby. At top dollar, the Saudis hired law firms and PR specialists and exploited personal connections to powerful families like the Bushes but the Saudis never could build the kind of grassroots political organization that has given Israel and its American backers such extraordinary clout.
Indeed, Americans who did take Saudi money including academic institutions and non-governmental organizations were often pilloried as tools of the Arabs, with the Israel Lobby and its propagandists raising the political cost of accepting Saudi largesse so high that many people and institutions shied away.
President Obama and King Salman Arabia stand at attention during the U.S. national anthem as the First Lady stands in the background with other officials on Jan. 27, 2015, at the start of Obama’s State Visit to Saudi Arabia. (Official White House Photo by Pete Souza). (Official White House Photo by Pete Souza)
But Saudi Arabia may have found another way to buy influence inside the United States by giving money to Israel and currying favor with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. Over the past several years, as both Saudi Arabia and Israel have identified Iran and the so-called “Shiite crescent” as their principal enemies, this once-unthinkable alliance has become possible and the Saudis, as they are wont to do, may have thrown lots of money into the deal.
According to a source briefed by U.S. intelligence analysts, the Saudis have given Israel at least $16 billion over the past 2 ½ years, funneling the money through a third-country Arab state and into an Israeli “development” account in Europe to help finance infrastructure inside Israel. The source first called the account “a Netanyahu slush fund,” but later refined that characterization, saying the money was used for public projects such as building settlements in the West Bank.
In other words, according to this information, the Saudis concluded that if you can’t beat the Israel Lobby, try buying it. And, if that is the case, the Saudis have found their behind-the-scenes collaboration with Israel extremely valuable. Netanyahu has played a key role in lining up the U.S. Congress to fight an international agreement to resolve a long-running dispute over Iran’s nuclear program.
Urged on by Netanyahu, the Republican majority and many Democrats have committed themselves to destroying the framework agreement hammered out on April 2 by Iran and six world powers, including the United States. The deal would impose strict inspections and other limits to guarantee that Iran’s nuclear program remains peaceful.
By crashing the deal, Israel and Saudi Arabia would open the door to more punitive sanctions on Iran and possibly clear the way for Israeli airstrikes, with Saudi Arabia granting over-flight permission to Israeli warplanes. The Saudi-Israeli tandem also might hope to pull in the U.S. military to inflict even more devastation on Iranian targets.
Neither the Israeli nor Saudi governments responded to requests for comment on Saudi payments into an Israeli account.
Congressional Acclaim
The reported Saudi-to-Israel money transfers put Netanyahu’s March 3 speech to a cheering joint session of the U.S. Congress in a different light, too. The Prime Minister’s bitter denunciations of Iran before hundreds of transfixed American lawmakers could be viewed as him demonstrating his value to the Saudi royals who could never dream of getting that kind of reaction themselves.
Indeed, as Congress now moves to sabotage the Iranian nuclear agreement, the Saudis could be finding that whatever money they invested in Israel is money well spent. The Saudis seem especially alarmed that the nuclear agreement would prompt the world community to lift sanctions on Iran, thus allowing its economy and its influence to grow.
To prevent that, the Saudis desperately want to draw the United States in on the Sunni side of the historic Sunni-Shiite conflict, with Netanyahu serving as a crucial middleman by defying President Barack Obama on the Iran deal and bringing the full force of the Israel Lobby to bear on Congress and on the opinion circles of Official Washington.
If Netanyahu and the Saudis succeed in collapsing the Iran nuclear framework agreement, they will have made great strides toward enlisting the United States as the primary military force on the Sunni side of the Sunni-Shiite sectarian divide, a dispute that dates back to the succession struggle after Prophet Muhammad’s death in 632.
This ancient feud has become a Saudi obsession over the past several decades, at least since Iran’s Shiite revolution overthrew the Shah of Iran in 1979 and brought to power the Islamic government of Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini.
Upset with the ouster of a fellow monarch, the Shah, and fearing the spread of Khomeini’s ascetic form of Shiite Islamic governance, the Saudi royals summoned Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein, a fellow Sunni, to Riyadh on Aug. 5, 1980, to encourage him to invade Iran.
According to top secret “Talking Points” that Secretary of State Alexander Haig prepared for a briefing of President Ronald Reagan after Haig’s April 1981 trip to the Middle East, Haig wrote that Saudi Prince Fahd said he told the Iraqis that an invasion of Iran would have U.S. support.
“It was interesting to confirm that President [Jimmy] Carter gave the Iraqis a green light to launch the war against Iran through Fahd,” Haig wrote, in the document that I discovered in U.S. congressional files in 1994. Though Carter has denied encouraging the Iraqi invasion, which came as Iran was holding 52 U.S. diplomats hostage, Haig’s “Talking Points” suggest that the Saudis at least led Hussein to believe that the war had U.S. blessings.
Haig also noted that even after the overthrow of the Shah and the establishment of the Islamic state under Khomeini, Israel sought to maintain its clandestine relations with Iran by serving as an arms supplier. Haig reported that “Both [Egypt’s Anwar] Sadat and [Saudi Prince] Fahd [explained that] Iran is receiving military spares for U.S. equipment from Israel.”
Those Israeli weapons sales continued through the eight bloody years of the Iran-Iraq War with some estimates of the value reaching into the scores of billions of dollar. The Israelis even helped bring the Reagan administration into the deals in the mid-1980s with the so-called Iran-Contra arms shipments that involved secret off-the-books bank accounts in Europe and led to the worst scandal of Reagan’s presidency.
Rise of the Neocons
In the 1990s with the Iran-Iraq war over and Iran’s treasury depleted Israeli attitudes cooled toward its erstwhile trading partner. Meanwhile, American neocons juiced by the demonstration of U.S. military supremacy against Iraq during the Persian Gulf War in 1991 and the collapse of the Soviet Union leaving the U.S. as “the sole superpower” began advising Netanyahu on employing “regime change” to alter the Mideast dynamic.
During Netanyahu’s 1996 campaign, prominent neocons including Richard Perle and Douglas Feith outlined the plan in a policy paper entitled “A Clean Break: A New Strategy for Securing the Realm.” The document argued that “Israel can shape its strategic environment by weakening, containing, and even rolling back Syria. This effort can focus on removing Saddam Hussein from power in Iraq an important Israeli strategic objective in its own right, as a means of foiling Syria’s regional ambitions.” [See Consortiumnews.com’s “The Mysterious Why of the Iraq War.”]
The overriding point of this neocon strategy was that by imposing “regime change” in Muslim nations that were deemed hostile to Israel, new friendly governments could be put in place, thus leaving Israel’s close-in enemies Hamas in Palestine and Hezbollah in Lebanon without outside sponsors. Starved of money, these troublesome enemies would be forced to accept Israel’s terms. “The Realm” would be secured.
The neocons first target was Sunni-ruled Iraq, as their Project for the New American Century made clear in 1998, but Syria and Iran were next on the hit list. Syria is governed by the Assads who are Alawites, an offshoot of Shiite Islam, and Iran is governed by Shiites. The neocon plan was to use U.S. military force or other means of subversion to take out all three regimes.
However, when the neocons got their chance to invade Iraq in 2003, they inadvertently tipped the Mideast balance in favor of the Shiites, since Iraq’s Shiite majority gained control under the U.S. military occupation. Plus, the disastrous U.S. war precluded the neocons from completing their agenda of enforced “regime change” in Syria and Iran.
With the new Iraqi government suddenly friendly with Iran’s Shiite leaders, Saudi Arabia became increasingly alarmed. Israel was also coming to view the so-called “Shiite crescent” from Tehran through Baghdad and Damascus to Beirut as a strategic threat.
Saudi Arabia, working with Turkey, took aim at the center of that crescent in 2011 by supporting a Sunni-led opposition to the government of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad, a set of protests that quickly spiraled into bloody terrorist attacks and harsh military repression.
By 2013, it was clear that the principal fighters against Assad’s government were not the fictional “moderates” touted by the U.S. mainstream media but Al-Qaeda’s Nusra Front and a hyper-brutal Al-Qaeda spinoff that arose in resistance to the U.S. occupation of Iraq and evolved into the “Islamic State of Iraq and Syria” or simply the “Islamic State.”
Israeli Preference
To the surprise of some observers, Israel began voicing a preference for Al-Qaeda’s militants over the relatively secular Assad government, which was viewed as the protectors of Alawites, Shiites, Christians and other Syrian minorities terrified of the Saudi-backed Sunni extremists.
In September 2013, in one of the most explicit expressions of Israel’s views, Israeli Ambassador to the United States Michael Oren, then a close adviser to Netanyahu, told the Jerusalem Post that Israel favored the Sunni extremists over Assad.
“The greatest danger to Israel is by the strategic arc that extends from Tehran, to Damascus to Beirut. And we saw the Assad regime as the keystone in that arc,” Oren told the Jerusalem Post in an interview. “We always wanted Bashar Assad to go, we always preferred the bad guys who weren’t backed by Iran to the bad guys who were backed by Iran.” He said this was the case even if the “bad guys” were affiliated with Al-Qaeda.
Oren expanded on his position in June 2014 at an Aspen Institute conference. Then, speaking as a former ambassador, Oren said Israel would even prefer a victory by the Islamic State, which was massacring captured Iraqi soldiers and beheading Westerners, than the continuation of the Iranian-backed Assad in Syria.
“From Israel’s perspective, if there’s got to be an evil that’s got to prevail, let the Sunni evil prevail,” Oren said.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu speaking to the United Nations General Assembly on Oct. 1, 2013. (UN Photo by Evan Schneider)
On Oct. 1, 2013, Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu hinted at the new Israeli-Saudi relationship in his United Nations General Assembly speech, which was largely devoted to excoriating Iran over its nuclear program and threatening a unilateral Israeli military strike.
Amid the bellicosity, Netanyahu dropped in a largely missed clue about the evolving power relationships in the Middle East, saying: “The dangers of a nuclear-armed Iran and the emergence of other threats in our region have led many of our Arab neighbors to recognize, finally recognize, that Israel is not their enemy. And this affords us the opportunity to overcome the historic animosities and build new relationships, new friendships, new hopes.”
The next day, Israel’s Channel 2 TV news reported that senior Israeli security officials had met with a high-level Gulf state counterpart in Jerusalem, believed to be Prince Bandar bin Sultan, the former Saudi ambassador to the United States who was then head of Saudi intelligence.
The reality of this unlikely alliance has even reached the mainstream U.S. media. For instance, Time magazine correspondent Joe Klein described the new coziness in an article in the Jan. 19, 2015 issue: “On May 26, 2014, an unprecedented public conversation took place in Brussels. Two former high-ranking spymasters of Israel and Saudi Arabia Amos Yadlin and Prince Turki al-Faisal sat together for more than an hour, talking regional politics in a conversation moderated by the Washington Post’s David Ignatius.
“They disagreed on some things, like the exact nature of an Israel-Palestine peace settlement, and agreed on others: the severity of the Iranian nuclear threat, the need to support the new military government in Egypt, the demand for concerted international action in Syria. The most striking statement came from Prince Turki. He said the Arabs had ‘crossed the Rubicon’ and ‘don’t want to fight Israel anymore.’”
While the Saudis may still pay lip service to the plight of the Palestinians, that issue is no longer much of a priority. Indeed, the Saudi royals may view the Palestinians, many of whom are secular having seen first-hand the evils of Islamic extremism, as something of a regional threat to the Saudi monarchical governance which is based on an ultra-fundamentalist form of Islam known as Wahhabism. That some of the reported $16 billion Saudi payment to Israel was going to finance Israeli settlements on the Palestinian West Bank would further reflect this Saudi indifference.
In 2013, again collaborating with Israel, Saudi Arabia helped deal a devastating blow to the 1.8 million Palestinians locked in the Gaza Strip. They had received some relief when Egypt elected the Muslim Brotherhood government of President Mohamed Morsi, who relaxed the embargo on passage between Egyptian territory and Gaza.
But the Saudis saw the populist Muslim Brotherhood as a threat to monarchical rule and Israel was angry over Morsi’s apparent sympathy for Hamas, the party ruling Gaza. So, Saudi Arabia and Israel supported a military coup which removed Morsi from power. The two countries then showed off their complementary powers: the Saudis helped the government of General Abdel Fattah el-Sisi with money and oil, while Israel had its lobby work the corridors of power in Washington to prevent retaliation for the ouster of an elected government.
Back to Syria
Israel’s growing collaboration with Saudi Arabia and the two governments’ mutual hatred of the “Shiite crescent” have extended into a tacit alliance with Al-Qaeda’s Nusra Front in Syria, with which the Israelis have what amounts to a non-aggression pact, even caring for Nusra fighters in Israeli hospitals and mounting lethal air attacks against Lebanese and Iranian advisers to the Syrian military.
Israel’s preference for the Saudi-backed jihadists over Iranian allies in Syria was a little-noticed subtext of Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu’s address to Congress on March 3, urging the U.S. government to shift its focus from fighting Al-Qaeda and the Islamic State to fighting Iran. He trivialized the danger from the Islamic State with its “butcher knives, captured weapons and YouTube” compared to Iran, which he accused of “gobbling up the nations” of the Middle East.
To the applause of Congress, he claimed “Iran now dominates four Arab capitals, Baghdad, Damascus, Beirut and Sanaa. And if Iran’s aggression is left unchecked, more will surely follow.” His choice of capitals was peculiar, however, because Iran took none of those capitals by force and, indeed, was simply supporting the embattled government of Syria and was allied with Shiite elements of the government of Lebanon.
As for Iraq, Iran’s allies were installed not by Iran but by President George W. Bush via the U.S. invasion. And, in Yemen, a long-festering sectarian conflict has led to the capture of Sanaa by Houthi rebels who are Zaydi Shiites, an offshoot of Shia Islam that is actually closer to some Sunni sects.
The Houthis deny that they are agents of Iran, and Western intelligence services believe that Iranian support has consisted mostly of some funding. Former CIA official Graham E. Fuller has called the notion “that the Houthis represent the cutting edge of Iranian imperialism in Arabia as trumpeted by the Saudis” a “myth.” He added:
“The Zaydi Shia, including the Houthis, over history have never had a lot to do with Iran. But as internal struggles within Yemen have gone on, some of the Houthis have more recently been happy to take Iranian coin and perhaps some weapons, just as so many others, both Sunni and Shia, are on the Saudi payroll. The Houthis furthermore hate al-Qaeda and hate the Islamic State.”
Indeed, the Saudi airstrikes, which have reportedly killed hundreds of Yemeni civilians, have aided the Yemen-based “Al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula” by limiting Houthi attacks on the terrorists and enabling AQAP to overrun a prison and free scores of its militants.
But President Obama, recognizing the joint power of the Saudis and Israelis to destroy the Iran nuclear deal, authorized support for the Saudi airstrikes from U.S. intelligence while rushing military resupplies to the Saudis. In effect, Obama is trading U.S. support for Saudi aggression in a neighboring country for what he hopes might be some political space for the Iran-nuclear agreement.
New Terrorist Gains
Saudi Arabia and its Persian Gulf allies, along with Turkey, are also ramping up support in Syria for Al-Qaeda’s Nusra Front and the Islamic State. Flush with jihadist reinforcements, the two terrorist organizations have seized new territory in recent weeks, including the Islamic State creating a humanitarian crisis by attacking a Palestinian refugee camp south of Damascus.
All of these Saudi actions have drawn minimal criticism from mainstream U.S. media and political circles, in part, because the Saudis now have the protection of the Israel Lobby, which has kept American attention on the supposed threat from Iran, including allegedly controversial statements from Iranian leaders about their insistence that economic sanctions be lifted once the nuclear agreement is signed and/or implemented.
Neocon warmongers have even been granted space in major U.S. newspapers, including the Washington Post and the New York Times, to openly advocate for the bombing of Iran despite the risk that destroying Iran’s nuclear reactors could inflict both human and environmental devastation. That might serve the Saudi-Israeli interests by forcing Iran to focus exclusively on a domestic crisis but it would amount to a major war crime. [See Consortiumnews.com’s “NYT Publishes Call to Bomb Iran.”]
The strategic benefit for Israel and Saudi Arabia would be that with Iran unable to assist the Iraqis and the Syrians in their desperate struggles against Al-Qaeda and the Islamic State, the Sunni jihadists might well be hoisting the black flag of their dystopian philosophy over Damascus, if not Baghdad. [See Consortiumnews.com’s “The Secret Saudi Ties to Terrorism.”]
Beyond the slaughter of innocents that would follow and the likelihood of new terrorist attacks on the West such a victory would almost surely force whoever is the U.S. president to recommit hundreds of thousands of U.S. troops to remove Al-Qaeda or the Islamic State from power. It would be a war of vast expense in money and blood with little prospect of American success.
If Saudi Arabia’s petrodollars helped secure Israel’s assistance in creating such a potential hell on earth, the Saudi royals might consider it the best money they ever spent and the resulting orgy of military spending by the U.S. government might benefit some well-connected neocons, too but the many victims of this madness would certainly feel otherwise as might the vast majority of the American people.
Investigative reporter Robert Parry broke many of the Iran-Contra stories for The Associated Press and Newsweek in the 1980s. You can buy his latest book, America’s Stolen Narrative, either in print here or as an e-book (from Amazon and barnesandnoble.com). You also can order Robert Parry’s trilogy on the Bush Family and its connections to various right-wing operatives for only $34. The trilogy includes America’s Stolen Narrative. For details on this offer, click here.
“Palestinians, many of whom are secular having seen first-hand the evils of Islamic extremism, as something of a regional threat to the Saudi monarchical governance which is based on an ultra-fundamentalist form of Islam known as Wahhabism.”
Did Money Seal Israeli-Saudi Alliance? Robert Parry, April 15, 2015
https://consortiumnews.com/2015/04/15/did-money-seal-israeli-saudi-alliance/
“Palestinians, many of whom are secular having seen first-hand the evils of Islamic extremismâ€
This is a load of bollocks. Obviously Robert Parry, although very well informed on other subjects, doesn’t know his ass from a tea-kettle when it comes to Palestine.
As a matter of fact VERY FEW PALESTINIANS ARE SECULAR.
Pew Global Research says that 88% of Palestinian Moslems want sharia law, namely Islamic religious law, to be the law of the land in Palestine. To a great extent that already occurs, as shown by an article describing the vicious persecution of a mildly secular Palestinian youth who is one of Amnesty International’s prisoners of conscience [What It’s Like to Be an Atheist in Palestine – The Daily Beast].
If 88% of Palestinian Moslems want sharia law, that means that 88% of Palestinian Moslems want homosexuals, apostates, atheists, critics of Islam and assorted other heretics EXECUTED!
And the kicker is Parry’s clueless remark “having seen first-hand the evils of Islamic extremismâ€. As a matter of fact the Islamic State logo has been appearing on wedding invitations in Gaza for several months now. The worst “evils of Islamic extremism†have been committed by Hamas, which runs Gaza like a concentration camp. According to the Review of Palestinian Studies, Hamas used children to dig its war tunnels under Gaza and into Israel. In the course of the excavations, 162 Palestinian children died in cave-ins. Hamas has done its best to turn Gazan youth into fanatical killer robots in its hate-saturated delirium. And Hamas’s genocidal ideology is every bit as brutal as that of Saudi Arabia’s Wahhabite inhhabitants.
Criticize Israel and you are labeled anti-Semitic, criticize the so-called American healthcare industry and you are called a quack. The 10 so-called doctors that wrote the letter a really just gate keepers for the allopathic medical industry. Go Dr. Oz! Now if you’d just tell the truth that vaccines are not safe and not effective unless your goal is to kill and maim people which they are very effective at doing.
http://abcnews.go.com/International/wireStory/saudi-iran-rivalry-yemen-deepens-mideast-sectarianism-30368937
The clerics use Facebook and twitter with a mindset of 1000 BC
The deranged Saudi system only can produce this kind of Robotic monster
Having gone through some of your article, I am moved to say that they are a so informative.
However, there is a strong underlining anti-Israel bias.
For example…. nowhere in this article did you relate the constant message from Iran – a world without Jews.
Or you forgot the apocalyptic message their drives the Iranians expansionism.
I am not a Muslims but have Muslim friends and know first hand the passion and drive with which they hope and work for the days prophesied about.
That bias of seeing everything only in the light of what Israel does is why I would say that
Your article is correct but grossly incomplete.
“a world without Jews”
Nonsense, you believe the zionist propaganda. If Iran wanted a world without Jews they would start with the 10,000 Jews living in Iran and the 200 operating synagogues.
Yes, Iran has stated that they essentially would like regime change in Israel, something that Israel has proudly and loudly been saying about Iran for decades. The difference is that Iran has not attacked Israel while Israel has assasinated Iranians, bombed Iranian targets, using agents like MEK, and introduced destructive digital viruses like Stuxnet into Iranian nuclear facilities.
The Mid-East, with all three Abrahamic religions, was at relative peace for a couple of centuries before the Zionist migration began in the late 1800’s. With their claim to the land being a combination of religious and racial supremacy, with DNA testing blood lineage of European Zionists to the Mid-East has proven dubious at best. The fact remains, Zionists planned the violent expulsion of Palestinian Arabs for decades before actually achieving it to self-declare statehood on Palestinian lands in 1948. And while the West in general was after the oil, among other political concerns, imposing Israel on the Arabs was considered by some in the West as part of the overall strategy to serve that end. Regardless, it was in fact the West and Zionism that invaded the Middle East and not the other way around. It’s now impossible to know what the outcome of the Muslim feud would have been without Western intervention. Part of Zionist Israel’s more recent strategies included the PNAC plan, ‘A Clean Break: New Strategy for Securing the Realm’ in conjunction with the Yinon Plan to intentionally fuel turmoil among Israel’s neighbors for furthering Israel’s interests. Without considering any denials coming from Israel, to look at Israel’s actions and see how these plans were brought about, with results to date, leaves no doubt their involvement is no mere coincidence.
http://www.historycommons.org/context.jsp?item=complete_timeline_of_the_2003_invasion_of_iraq_74
https://passtheknowledge.wordpress.com/2014/08/13/the-yinon-plan-greater-israel-syria-iraq-and-isis/
Not to blame Zionism and the West in general for what is currently taking place in the Mid-East since 1900 is to deny the truth.
you sound to me to be a CHRISTIAN ZIONIST or if not that an AIPAC NEO-CON MEMBER.YOU EVIDENTLY ARE NOT EDUCATED ON MANY THINGS JUST A FEW THE ASSASSINATION OF J F K 9/11/boston bombing/ the uss liberty/the beruit marine killings in 82 etc.better get educated before you make these statements.
AS I WAS SAYING….
My basic response to the Senate Committee unanimous decision on a Iranian “deal”
is in a reply to Ray McGovern’s article of April 14. 2015. My reply was based on many decades of advocacy in other fields including Congressional testimony . the Rules Committee etc My reply is titled simply SENATE KILLS IRAN ‘ POTENTIAL FRAMWORK'” I have also indicated in these spaces the probable shape of these events. Robert Parry’s article above puts these thoughts in a more balanced perspective.
Netanyahu has won. He now controls US foreign policy (and would do so whichever
US political party takes over the Executive Branch of government in 2016).
(The definition of Iran as “the most dangerous terrorist organization and a threat to
the West” has become the basis for political decisions and actions despite its
falsehood. (I would myself say that Israel along with US support and working
together with the Saudis and terrorists would rank number one by far. I just don’t
recall the many bombings of territory Israel occupies, other nations, etc. by
Iran. )
As I have pointed out that,without clear and dependable reductions in sanctions, no deal
will be acceptable to Iran. Iran made that clear from the outset and repeats again and
abd again (See my reply referred to above).A deal which Iran can accept will not
include sanctions which the US and others can take away at their whim.
Israel has no parallel and binding agreements to eliminate ALL its capacity for making
nuclear bombs now or in the future .Or other Weapons of Mass Destruction (“WMD’s)
such as predator drones (Israel now produces 60% of all drones sold on the world market.)
It is a strange feeling living in a nation which is the source of so much evil in the
world today.
If ever the Israeli’s came to me for a word of wisdom (I charge), I would caution that
the US experience of funding terrorists has been a disaster in the past. Osama
bin Laden was once an employee of the US CIA to” fight the Russians”. He fought them
well and thereafter turned on his patron. There are many other examples. But obviously
Israel considers itself supreme and exempt by a High Authority and the US international
weapons industry. The US may purposefully choose to forget its history of turncoat
terrorists which includes many examples beside bin Laden.
—Peter Loeb, Boston, MA, USA
I see that articles like this really funds your bias – a world were everything is happening because of Israel and the US.
I charge you to take a while back and look beyond consortiumnews.
What the article is saying is through but incomplete in this respect…..
1. The battle between Sunnis and Shia was way before the US and will continue so.
2. Israel is doing a lot behind the seen to take which ever sides will support its existence. Before the Shah regime in Iran, Saudi was the big enemy friend of Nasser. After Egypt, then Iraq and now the same Iran.
3. The article totally lost the Iran fundamentalist narrative of the return of the Mahdi. The is the biggest drive of the Ayatollah. This is what Saudi Arabia fears. This is what Sunnis fear and more so it is what Israel doesn’t want to see. Because the return of the Mahdi according to Shia hadith, will see the total defeat of Israel.
This article leaves out these other narratives, so I expect many believers or subscribers to keep seeing Israel as the root of evil in the middle east.
Hello, would it be possible for someone to translate this article to arabic?
Go to Google type in – English to Arabic – then copy & paste English article – this will translate from English to Arabic for you.
Not good enough, would like it natively translated by an English/Arabic translator for my dad to read.
I understand.
Excellent article, some of which I knew a lot that I didn’t, however, i would add that israel and it’s people have a reputation for bleeding dry any pawn who is useful and this applies to SA at this time but when Iran is crushed they will turn their attention to SA with its oil and land and SA will find itself vilified by zionist dominated western media and it too will be taken out prior to the emergence of a new Israeli empire.
you got it almost correct alex .its called”” GREATER ISRAEL””they will do what is necessary to accomplish it.and the saudis are ancient members of the same tribe as the original hebrews not the ones in palestine now.they are eastern europeans.
Israel plays the role of Metternich/Austro-Hungary in the Grand Game that views democracy and constitutional rule as a threat.
Metternich’s scheme kept a conservative order by crushing democracy, instilling religion to the masses and keeping the monarchs in power
until it came crashing down in 1914.
We may not be able to control what the Saudi’s do with their money, but we should all complaint mightily on tax day as to how our American dollars are used. Quit right now giving money to Israel. Our 3.5 billion would do a great deal of good here at home in America, as opposed to what Netanyahu has planned for that hard earned U.S. money.
http://www.counterpunch.org/2015/04/15/footing-israels-bill/
All little hegemonic powers playing their games. Meantime, who collapses first: in the contentious frictions of the financial world we see a growing power in AIIB & its members. Which will dominate, US financial/military hegemony *or* the growing membership in China’s AIIB. Russia, BRICs and now some in the EU are beginning to pivot away from the US $$. Money always trumps in world affairs which is part of what Saudi Arabia/Israeli/US most worry about with regard to Iran.
Excellent article on important news. Who would have thought… (other than those paying attention).
There are two fronts to respond to this “dark alliance” of Israel and Saudi Arabia. First, the White House can somehow make available the names of Members of Congress who received the stolen intelligence from the Iran nuclear talks. Second, the White House should look for a connection between the Saudi funds and Members of Congress. That link, via AIPAC contributions, would be devastating.
Netanyahu is riding high now but he’s got to worry about an angry White House (which can be very tough – just ask Libya, Syria, and the people of Donbass) plus the array of retired Israeli intel and military leaders that are very vocal in their dislike of Netanyahu..
Interesting points; yes, just follow the money as always. Problem is Obama sold us (US) out, ala Clinton, as soon as he took office. And now the sucker voters, who never seem to learn, are salavating all over themselves at the chance of another Clinton or Bush! Is the world really round? Guess so if one of those two actually gets the vote. The citizen vote or that of the Court! Utterly sad state of affairs.
Religion is a very strange thing.
Exactly as Christopher Hitchens put it…”Religion Spoils Everything.”
Robert, your article cogently summarizes the Saudi-Israeli alliance and puts current developments in a very realistic light! To be honest, this is one of the most informed–and informative–pieces I have read in a long time on this relationship.
Few journalists or writers are daring to venture too far on this subject, I believe, not out of fear but for lack of good information.
I think the subtext of your article is that international actors use each other and the terrorists they sponsor. Everything is planned according to a blueprint, unless we are shown otherwise. When one looks back their actions tend to give the appearance of diabolically successful “conspirators” in a macabre dance of the devil.
A devil’s game it is, but the persons behind all that terrorism and mayhem–in Syria, for example–need not themselves be blood-swilling “fanatics,” anymore than a drug pusher need himself be an addict. They are the people we elect. They are the clean-cut pen-pushers. They are seen with ties and bureaucrats’ suits. They are corporate executives. They are people glued to computer screens, or they speak to reporters and travel on ambassadorial missions.
I am reminded of an old but important book by Richard J. Barnet, “The Roots of War: The Men and Institutions Behind U.S. Foreign Policy” (1973). He analysed the personality types of those who carried out the massive bloodletting in Vietnam. War criminals they may have been, by any measure, but they were the cream of America’s educated and enlightened.
We keep wondering how otherwise level-headed, highly intelligent sane men and women could perpetrate humanity’s worst crimes. This is not the blind march of conspirators. Crimes are being committed with full consciousness. Which makes it all the more disturbing. This is the true nature of the imperial game. The “ringleaders” are opportunists above all. and always bad conspirators, because conspirators live in an illusion.
I sense a powerful public thirst for information. People are confused and starting to get panicky.
Thankfully, your piece clears the air, and avoids the harmful distraction caused by the nonsense mongers. To the ever-popular “conspiracy theorists” on the Internet every rumor counts as a “possible fact,” which is an oxymoron. Juicy rumors alone could never offer an alternative to the mainstream media drivel. It’s also called journalistic laziness. Thanks again!
Your words are some of the most sane and balanced I’ve read in weeks. There’s WAY too much flag-waving [true & false!] and stridency about, and the actor-perps are –as you say– hidden behind their very ‘normality’.
This is exactly how we get Hannah Arendt’s ‘banality of evil’ as the end result, and as we used to say in Vietnam, “There it is!”
Robert Parry, again a great analysis of the dirty political games that are played around the world over the heads of MSM propaganda poised public.
Indeed the $ 16 billion may encourage Netanyahu to play an even more aggressive game in the Middle East. On top Netanyahu may feel independent from USA and find encouragement in its aggression against Iran. However, let’s not forget that Saudi Arabia also finances Egypt!
In general I believe that the Saudi’s are a dangerous bunch of war criminals who like USA use their money to destabilize many nations with supporting Muslim extremism like they did in US 9/11 attack, support and finance al-Qaeda, building mosques worldwide as centres for Muslim extremism and all nicely undercover.
I was in Sarajevo shortly after the Balkan War and one of the first building finished was a giant Mosque financed by Saudi Arabia. Even most of the 9/11 attackers were from Saudi Arabia and NOT from Iraq as Bush claimed in his his ‘Fight against Terror’. The Americans are naive in their handling of the Middle East problems, they should realize that by invading Iraq and supporting the opposition of Assad that they ‘opened a box of dynamite’ and not a can of worms. And NOW Netanyahu is using a weak and divided USA to continue their road of expansion in the Middle East in the hope they will remain the ONLY NUCLEAR POWER in the region.
Interesting article in The New York Times a few days ago regarding former Senator Graham continuing to pursue claims that Saudi Arabia financed the 9/11 attacks:
http://www.nytimes.com/2015/04/14/world/middleeast/florida-ex-senator-pursues-claims-of-saudi-ties-to-sept-11-attacks.html
If we could get the redacted 28 pages of the Congressional report on 9/11 released (which ostensibly deal with the Saudi connection to the financing of 9/11) that would go far in destroying Saudi Arabia and Israel’s cozy yet brutal relationship.
The whole 911 report smacks of something rotten to the core . It was an exercise in mass deception . The way it was done,it has no validity . Why doesn’t Graham ask an independent international investigation?
One wonders why this senile so focussed on 28 pages !
It is like trusting the claim of a cow that there is a diamond hidden in the cow dung .
“The fact that the BBC reported the collapse of WTC 7 twenty-three minutes before it actually fell indicates that the UK was aware of the attacks on 9/11 before they actually happened. The direct implication is that they were working with the “terroristsâ€, all arguments as to who the terrorists actually were aside.” http://www.globalresearch.ca/bbc-foreknowledge-of-911-collapse-of-wtc-building-seven-british-man-won-law-suit-against-bbc-for-911-cover-up/5438161
http://www.globalresearch.ca/the-911-joint-congressional-inquiry-and-the-28-missing-pages/5373628
shredding the wild belief of Graham .
“The Americans are naive in their handling of the Middle East problems”, you are naive, they know very well what they are doing. They obey to Saudi AND to Israël like small dog. They prefer the daech to socialism, communism or popular democracy. How many putsch have they handle in the south of America, to destroy nascent democracy ?
“The fact that the BBC reported the collapse of WTC 7 twenty-three minutes before it actually fell indicates that the UK was aware of the attacks on 9/11 before they actually happened. The direct implication is that they were working with the “terroristsâ€, all arguments as to who the terrorists actually were aside.” http://www.globalresearch.ca/bbc-foreknowledge-of-911-collapse-of-wtc-building-seven-british-man-won-law-suit-against-bbc-for-911-cover-up/5438161
your statements about the saudis and 9/11 are so far from being accurate!the israelis are the criminals who did 9/11 the saudis were the stooges .you need to get educated before you make these comments as being fact.even te dumbest americans are not buying the ziojew neo-con narrative of the m s m /u.s. government.
Several facts here need to further examined. The Muslim Brotherhood has been a terrorist organization since it was first created. The MB worked with the CIA in the overthrow of King Faud of Egypt. Later Nasser had the MB expelled from Egypt and the CIA helped the MB relocate to Saudi Arabia which has been their base of operations ever since. The CIA would use the MB as their own covert Muslim army in Afghanistan in the 1980s, in Bosnia in the 1990s, and against Libya and Syria. The MB uses many different names to keep the people confused like Al Qaeda, All Nusra, ISIS etc. but the Muslim Brotherhood is the source. All this is documented in “The Secret History of the New World Order”.