Tag: Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman

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Trump to Mohammed bin Salman: Focus on Iran

When Donald Trump meets with Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, the de facto ruler of Saudi Arabia, the president should have three clear and forceful messages for his reform-oriented guest: Focus your undivided attention to adopting a soft power approach to the Iranian regime, end the war in Yemen and lift your blockade of American ally Qatar.

These three interconnected messages that President Trump should deliver to MBS (as he is known) stem from a geopolitical reality that has been in existence for over 39 years: The Iranian regime continues to be the most serious threat to regional security in the Middle East and the major state-sponsor of terrorism. Concomitantly, the Iranian people continue to be the most serious threat to the Islamic regime and the only real hope for a fundamental change in Iran.

Mr. Trump and his national security team should make it clear to the crown prince that Saudi Arabia’s efforts to confront the Iranian regime by war through proxy in Yemen has not deterred the IRGC. Sadly, the conflict in Yemen is draining Saudi Arabia’s precious financial resources. According to some estimates, the Saudi effort to confront the Iranian regime in Yemen is costing the Kingdom around $1 billion per month.

After spending billions of dollars, Saudi Arabia is not close to thwarting the designs of Ayatollah Khamenei to build a beachhead on the Arabian Peninsula by supporting his Houthi allies. Spending a small portion of this $1 billion on a robust soft power approach toward the thugs ruling Iran would be a better investment by MBS.

The president should also ask that the Saudi crown prince lift the blockade of his smaller neighbor Qatar because this move has split the GCC and diverted the Security Pact’s attention from adopting a unified approach to confronting the threat posed by the Iranian regime. Qatar is home to America’s largest prepositioning based in the world and ExxonMobil is the largest investor in that country’s energy sector.

The Saudi crown prince may point to Doha’s ties with Tehran as one reason for the blockade. But for Saudi Arabia to criticize Qatar for its relations with Iran is unfair because Qatar shares a major natural gas field with Iran. If Qatar takes a hostile approach toward Iran Tehran will react negatively and jeopardize the flow of natural gas to world markets.

Just ask Azerbaijan, another American ally. In 2000, Iranian gunboats threatened work on a 10 billion barrel oil field in the Caspian Sea thus denying Azerbaijan the ability to monetize a major energy asset.

Mr. Trump should applaud the young ruler of Saudi Arabia for his boldness in wanting to confront the Iranian regime but he should also point out that If Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman adopts a robust, consistent and efficient soft power policy in his dealings with the Islamic regime, he will have the full support of the president and his entire national security team.

The United States government should make it loud and clear to MBS that by solving the “Iran Problem” through non-military means he will usher in a new geopolitical and economic dynamic within the broader Middle East.

While MBS and his father, King Salman, may be aware of the consequences a soft power approach toward the theocratic regime in Tehran, it may be worth Mr. Trump emphasizing to the crown prince the tectonic geopolitical ramifications of a new order in Iran:

No more funding for groups like Hamas (who are holding Palestinians hostage in the Gaza Strip) and Hezbollah (who are holding the people of Lebanon hostage to their dogma); an end to support for Houthi rebels in Yemen; liberating Bahrain (home to America’s Fifth Fleet) from the constant threat of IRGC adventurism; decoupling the butcher of Damascus (Bashar Assad) from his equally thuggish patrons; freeing Iraq of political intervention; demonstrating to the Muslim world the bankruptcy of Islamic ideology as a form of governance; and, removing an existential threat to Israel.

In addition to the aforementioned, Mr. Trump should strongly encourage MBS to adopt a soft power policy toward the regime in Tehran because a free and democratic Iran, at peace with itself and its neighbors will usher in a new economic renaissance for the entire region. The $2 trillion that are currently under the control of the region’s sovereign wealth funds can be invested inside Saudi Arabia, UAE, Bahrain, Qatar and Kuwait to boost human capital and create jobs.

Furthermore, these funds can also be put to productive use in rebuilding parts of Iraq, Yemen and Syria. And finally, Iran’s 80-plus million market can become a destination for investments by Saudi Arabia and its GCC allies.

Mr. Trump should encourage Mohammed bin Salman to adopt a course correction as it concerns Saudi Arabia’s policy toward the theocratic regime in Iran. The leader of the free world has a historic opportunity to point out to Mohammed bin Salman that by embracing a soft-power approach toward Iran he can go down in history as the leader who ushered in a renaissance for the people of his country and the region.

Originally Published in the Washington Times.

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PINING FOR FIG LEAVES

Obama partisans fret as Saudi Arabia, Israel and the US confront reality on Iran.

Friday, long-time US diplomats and Middle East experts Aaron David Miller and Richard Sokolsky published an article in Foreign Policy expressing “buyers’ remorse” over Saudi Arabia’s newfound willingness to take the lead in regional affairs.

Titled, “Donald Trump has unleashed the Saudi Arabia we always wanted – and feared,” Miller and Sokolsky note that for generations, US policymakers wanted the Saudis to take a lead in determining the future of the region.

In their words, “During decades of service at the State Department, we longed for the day when riskaverse Saudi leaders would take greater ownership in solving their domestic and regional security problems and reduce their dependence on the United States.”

But now, they argue, under the leadership of King Salman and his son, 32-year-old Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, the Saudis are going too far.

Domestically, Miller and Sokolsky accuse Salman and Mohammed of upsetting the traditional power sharing arrangements among the various princes in order to concentrate unprecedented power in Mohammed’s hands. This, they insist, harms the status of human rights in the kingdom, although they acknowledge that Mohammed has taken steps to liberalize the practice of Islam in the kingdom to the benefit of women and others.

While upset at the purge of princes, ministers and businessmen, Miller and Sokolsky are much more concerned about the foreign policy initiatives Mohammed and Salman have undertaken with everything related to countering Iran’s rise as a regional hegemon.

In their words, “Abroad, the Saudis are engaged in a cold war with an opportunistic Iran that’s exploiting their missteps in Yemen and Qatar.”

Miller and Sokolsky note that Mohammed’s campaign to defeat the Iranian-backed Houthi regime in Yemen has been bogged down. His effort – backed by US President Donald Trump – to force Qatar to abandon its policy of supporting the Muslim Brotherhood and Iran has similarly come up short.

They continue, “The latest Saudi gambit – pressuring the Sunni Lebanese Prime Minister Saad Hariri to resign in an effort to expose an Iranian- and Hezbollah- dominated Lebanon – is perhaps too clever by half. What are the Saudis going to do, given their Shiite adversaries’ advantages in Syria and Lebanon, when the Lebanese find themselves plunged into domestic crisis or a conflict between Israel and Hezbollah?” The veteran diplomats conclude their missive by urging Trump to implement his predecessor Barack Obama’s Saudi policy. In their words, Trump needs to place heavy pressure “on the king and his son to de-escalate this conflict and restore equilibrium to America’s relations with Saudi Arabia and Iran.”

“Because make no mistake,” they warn, “Saudi independence is illusory. Riyadh desperately wants us to back them – and bail them out when they get in over their heads with Iran. If Washington is not careful, the Saudis will sandbag America into standing up to Tehran while the Saudis hide behind its skirt.”

As if synchronized, Robert Malley, Obama’s former Middle East adviser, makes a similar argument in an article in The Atlantic. Malley took a lead role in expanding the US’s ties with the Muslim Brotherhood, Hamas, Iran and Hezbollah during the Obama years.

There are several problems with these policymakers’ claims. The first is that in criticizing the Saudis they deliberately ignore the Obama administration’s central role in engendering the current situation in which the Saudi regime feels compelled to take the actions it is taking.

To be clear, noting the role of the previous administration in causing the rapidly escalating instability of the Middle East is not an exercise in deflecting criticism away from the current administration. The simple fact is that it is impossible for the US to chart a rational course for dealing with the present dangers and opportunities without understanding how they arose in the first place.

For eight years, the Obama administration deliberately alienated and willingly endangered Saudi Arabia and Israel by implementing a policy of appeasing Iran. Despite repeated warnings, the US refused to recognize that as far as Iran is concerned, it cannot have its cake and eat it too.

Iran is at war with Saudi Arabia and its Sunni allies and with Israel.

Consequently, Miller and Sokolsky’s claim that there can be an “equilibrium to America’s relations with Saudi Arabia and Iran” which doesn’t involve the US siding with one side against the other is an illusion. On the ground in the Middle East, as events in Syria, Lebanon, Qatar, Yemen, Bahrain, Iraq, Gaza and Egypt have made clear, Obama’s strategy of appeasing Iran weakened America’s traditional regional allies and strengthened Iran and its proxies.

The change in the balance of forces that the Obama administration’s policy caused forced the US’s spurned allies to reassess their strategic dependence on the US. Contrary to Miller and Sokolsky’s claims, the Saudis didn’t abandon their past passivity because Mohammed is brash, young and inexperienced.

Mohammed was appointed because Salman needed a successor willing and able to fight for the survival of the kingdom after Obama placed it in jeopardy through his appeasement of Iran. Mohammed is the flipside of the nuclear deal.

Malley noted blandly that like the Saudis, Israel has also been sounding alarms at an ever escalating rate.

It isn’t hard to understand why. In 2009, Israel’s borders and territory were far more secure than they are today. Sunday night three former senior missile developers at Rafael Advanced Defense Systems – Israel’s premier missile and missile defense developer – went on television to warn that Haifa’s oil refineries and plans to use surrounding areas as a fuel depot will force the evacuation not only of the population of Haifa, but of all the surrounding satellite cities when war breaks out next with Hezbollah.

Hezbollah, they warned, now has the precision missile capability to destroy these vital national infrastructures and render the Gulf of Haifa uninhabitable.

Then there is Syria.

Israel has repeatedly insisted that Iran and its proxies must not be permitted to develop a permanent presence in Syria. Russia and the US ignored Israel’s warnings not only during the Obama years, but, in a sign of the continued power of Obama partisans in the US foreign policy community, during the past year of the Trump administration as well. Over the summer the US and Russia concluded a cease-fire deal for Syria that permitted Iran and its proxies to operate in Syria.

Last week, the BBC reported that Iran is now building a military base 50 kilometers from the border with Israel. On Saturday, the IDF shot down a Russian- made intelligence drone launched against it by forces controlled by Iran’s chief Syrian proxy, Syrian President Bashar Assad.

Sunday, following threats from Iranian-controlled Islamic Jihad terrorist forces in Gaza, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu reiterated that Israel will not accept assaults against it across any of its borders.

Netanyahu said that he holds the Iranian-supported Hamas regime in Gaza responsible for any attacks against Israel emanating from its territory.

Netanyahu’s statement was notable since just last week Hamas and Fatah began implementing their power sharing arrangement in Gaza. Fatah forces, controlled by Palestinian Authority Chairman Mahmoud Abbas, supposedly took responsibility for border crossings between Gaza and Israel.

By insisting that Hamas is responsible rather than Fatah, despite the agreement, Netanyahu signaled that as far as Israel is concerned, through its power- sharing deal with Fatah Hamas has succeeded in becoming the Palestinian version of Hezbollah. Just as Hezbollah pretends to be a faction in Lebanese politics, when in fact it controls all aspects of the Lebanese state, so Hamas remains in charge of all aspects of governance in Gaza while using the PA as a fig leaf.

This brings us back to Miller, Sokolsky and Malley and their pining for a reset button.

It is hard to view their positions as the basis for forging constructive US policies for the region, transformed by eight years of US appeasement of Iran at the expense of its allies and interests.

Insisting that Mohammed abandon the steps he has taken to expand the prospects of Saudi survival in favor of a policy of pretending that a stable equilibrium can be struck between Iran and Saudi Arabia (and Israel) is not a policy for restoring equilibrium.

Putting Hariri back in office in Beirut so he can continue to serve as a fig leaf for Hezbollah and Iran is not a policy for restoring equilibrium. They are both means for pretending reality away while enabling Iran to wage a continuous war against America’s allies with ever greater power and capacity.

It makes sense that Obama partisans are unhappy with King Salman and Crown Prince Mohammed. It makes sense that they are unhappy with Netanyahu and with Trump. All four of these leaders are impudently insisting on basing their policies on recognizing the reality Obama spent his two terms ignoring: Iran is not appeasable.

Originally published by the Jerusalem Post.
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Arab States Are Taking Trump Very Seriously

As an Arab and a Muslim, I could authoritatively confirm Arab states are now taking the US very seriously. This was not the case at all under Obama’s administration. Nonetheless, some in the media think otherwise, an example of that was a recent article by an Israeli-American journalist, who claims America was now “the laughing stock” of Arab and Muslim states, suggesting President Trump was just following Obama’s policies.

Let’s examine facts on the ground, as they speak louder than journalists watching from afar.  

What could be the most pressing issue for Trump’s foreign policy, is the Palestinian-Israeli conflict. I reported months ago the administration had warned Hamas, PLO and their political partner, Jordan’s king, not to launch a third Intifada.  All three had been planning one.  It took a quick “warning” visit by the CIA’s director to the Palestinian Authority and Jordan, instantly, both stopped their calls for a third Intifada.

Further, a so-called reconciliation deal between the Palestinian Authority and Hamas was recently negotiated under Egyptian patronage, and American pressure. Some, claimed the Hamas terror group was receiving US endorsement and legitimization.  Little do they know that Hamas really handed Gaza to Egypt. 

That means America’s strong ally, President Sisi, is now Gaza’s caretaker. With him in position, Hamas can no longer conduct terror raids on Israel. In other words, the so-called reconciliation was a mere façade for this change for a de facto Egyptian takeover.

So, why did Hamas give in to Sisi? Our inside sources confirm the US Administration has authorized him to handle Hamas and even issued a threat: If Hamas begins another war with Israel; the US won’t stop Israel from going after Hamas to the end.

This is important; in 2014, Israel came close to annihilating Hamas but Obama stopped it. Trump won’t do that, to the contrary, he would bless Israel’s efforts. Hamas knows this, and many vocal journalists don’t.

If Hamas decides to rebel against Sisi, Israel would finish it off this time and the US won’t save Hamas.

Another allegation against President Trump is that he “had failed to protect the Kurds against the pro-Iran Iraqi government”. This could not be further from the truth.

The administration has been very supportive of the Kurds, and enabled their troops to establish themselves in huge areas in both Syria and Iraq which the US itself had liberated from ISIS. The US is wisely looking at gradual, de facto, Kurdish self-determination, through intelligence, military, and political commitments.

The US is against a premature Kurdish declaration of independence because it would be too risky to the Kurds themselves at the time, nonetheless, the US remains fully supportive of all the de facto mechanisms Kurdistan is executing. The sticking point appears to be in the “declaration” and not the right to self-determination, because a premature declaration destabilizes US plans that benefits the Kurds.  As the Iraqi state keeps failing – and this is not the US fault by any chance- it is only natural that a fully-functioning Kurdistan could become independent. Kurdistan is not there yet, but once it is, the US will be the most supportive.

Further, our intelligence sources confirm the US has already warned the Iraqi government against an attack on the Kurdish areas beyond Kirkuk.  And even pressured Iraq to use an unprecedented term: “the disputed areas with the Kurds”, now only Kirkuk is a “disputed area”, before that, Iraq’s government considered all of Kurdistan as a mere Iraqi governorate.  

A US Congressman, Duncan Hunter, is making a fuss about Iraqi troops using US tanks while waving Hezbollah flags. What he fails to understand is this: Iraq’s dependence on American arms puts the Iraqi military under the mercy of the US. The US could just stop spare parts supply to Iraq at any moment and those tanks would become junk.  This is why the US has just recently delivered more F16s to Iraq. Should Iraq bomb the Kurds with them, the US could stop spare parts supplies. An Iraqi source has confirmed to me: “Our spare parts supply is enough for our F16s operations for no more than two weeks, the Americans are very cheap with spare parts, they give us drop by drop”.  

In fact, the pro-Iran Iraqi government was so helpless that it had to “criminalize the waving of Israeli flags”. Meanwhile, the Kurds are still waving both the Israeli and Kurdish flags on their soil, more evidence Iraq has no power over Kurdistan. Nor has Iran.

On the other hand, Congressman Hunter began pushing for sales of lethal drones to Jordan’s king just weeks after a Jordanian airman executed three US Green Berets, and Jordan’s regime was officially and publicly defending the killer and blaming the American victims. Why is Hunter so two-faced? 

Meanwhile, many seem to swiftly overlook Trump’s biggest accomplishment: ISIS is almost gone! The very ISIS that had thrived under Obama’s nose

Without publicity and drama, and in his first month in the White House, President Trump deployed US special forces in cooperation with Egyptian and Kurdish troops to attack ISIS in Syria. ISIS has lost 90 percent of its area and thousands of fighters.

Also, Trump has deployed America’s military might to secure a ceasefire in Syria. Bloodshed has dropped to very low rates. No more epic massacres from either side. And while Russia is claiming victory, the US boots on the grounds are calling the shots, and the US has full control of Syria’s airspace.

Additionally, safe zones have been created and Syrian refugees are returning home, while the flow of those into Europe has dropped.

Why is this so avidly overlooked by the liberal and leftist media?

Trump’s war on ISIS did not stop with the military. The President took a trip to Saudi Arabia to meet Arab leaders and pressed Sunni states to cut all kinds of support to Islamist terror. Most of them welcomed the call, while others chose to keep supporting Islamists and are now paying for that.  For example, Qatar, is now under economic and political siege by most Arab countries, while Jordan’s king is isolated and shunned by most Arab states.

This could have never happened if Trump was not in office.

Even more, Trump has offered full support and cooperation to Saudi Arabia’s modernizing crown prince, Mohammed Bin Salman, who has allowed women to drive, as well as locked up all terror-inciters and radical preachers. Bin Salman is now advocating a 2030 vision for Saudi, where moderation and peace become the norm, with a window open for a just and lasting peace with Israel. As a result, most Arab states are now seeking regional peace with Israel. This is what the president’s peace envoy, Jason Greenblatt, has been silently and tirelessly working on, without the show off and noise.

Arab states are taking America very seriously now, they know there is a new, tough, decisive and strong sheriff in town. This is good for America, Israel and us, the Arab people too.

In the MidEast, America is great again!

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SAUDI PURGES AND DUTY TO ACT

What the recent political shakeup in Saudi Arabia means for global terrorism funding.

For 70 years, Saudi Arabia served as the largest and most significant incubator of Sunni jihad. Its Wahhabist Islamic establishment funded radical mosques throughout the world. Saudi princes have supported radical Islamic clerics who have indoctrinated their followers to pursue jihad against the non-Islamic world. Saudi money stands behind most of the radical Islamic groups in the non-Islamic world that have in turn financed terrorist groups like Hamas and al-Qaida and have insulated radical Islam from scrutiny by Western governments and academics. Indeed, Saudi money stands behind the silence of critics of jihadist Islam in universities throughout the Western world.

As Mitchell Bard documented in his 2011 book, The Arab Lobby, any power pro-Israel forces in Washington, DC, have developed pales in comparison to the power of Arab forces, led by the Saudi government. Saudi government spending on lobbyists in Washington far outstrips that of any other nation. According to Justice Department disclosures from earlier this year, since 2015, Saudi Arabia vastly increased its spending on influence peddling. According to a report by The Intercept, “Since 2015, the Kingdom has expanded the number of foreign agents on retainer to 145, up from 25 registered agents during the previous two-year period.”

Saudi lobbyists shielded the kingdom from serious criticism after 15 of the 19 September 11 hijackers were shown to be Saudi nationals. They blocked a reconsideration of the US’s strategic alliance with Saudi Arabia after the attacks and in subsequent years, even as it was revealed that Princess Haifa, wife of Prince Bandar, the Saudi ambassador to Washington at the time the September 11 attacks occurred, had financially supported two of the hijackers in the months that preceded the attacks.
The US position on Saudi Arabia cooled demonstrably during the Obama administration. This cooling was not due to a newfound concern over Saudi financial support for radical Islam in the US. To the contrary, the Obama administration was friendlier to Islamists than any previous administration. Consider the Obama administration’s placement of Muslim Brotherhood supporters in key positions in the federal government. For instance, in 2010, then secretary for Homeland Security Janet Napolitano appointed Mohamed Elibiary to the department’s Homeland Security Advisory Board. Elibiary had a long, open record of support both for the Muslim Brotherhood and for the Iranian regime. In his position he was instrumental in purging discussion of Islam and Jihad from instruction materials used by the US military, law enforcement and intelligence agencies. The Obama administration’s cold relations with the Saudi regime owed to its pronounced desire to ditch the US’s traditional alliance with the Saudis, the Egyptians and the US’s other traditional Sunni allies in favor of an alliance with the Iranian regime.

During the same period, the Muslim Brotherhood’s close ties to the Iranian regime became increasingly obvious. Among other indicators, Egypt’s Muslim Brotherhood-affiliated president Mohamed Morsi hosted Iranian leaders in Cairo and was poised to renew Egypt’s diplomatic ties with Iran before he was overthrown by the military in July 2013. Morsi permitted Iranian warships to traverse the Suez Canal for the first time in decades.

Saudi Arabia joined Egypt and the United Arab Emirates in designating the Muslim Brotherhood a terrorist group in 2014.

It was also during this period that the Saudis began warming their attitude toward Israel. Through Egyptian President Abdel Fattah el-Sisi, and due to Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s leading role in opposing Iran’s nuclear program and its rising power in the Middle East, the Saudis began changing their positions on Israel.

Netanyahu’s long-time foreign policy adviser, Jerusalem Center for Public Affairs president Dr. Dore Gold, who authored the 2003 bestseller Hatred’s Kingdom: How Saudi Arabia Supports the New Global Terrorism which exposed Saudi Arabia’s role in promoting jihadist Islam, spearheaded a process of developing Israel’s security and diplomatic ties with Riyadh. Those ties, which are based on shared opposition to Iran’s regional empowerment, led to the surprising emergence of a working alliance between Saudi Arabia, Egypt and the UAE with Israel during Israel’s 2014 war with Hamas – the Palestinian branch of the Muslim Brotherhood.

It is in the context of Saudi Arabia’s reassessment of its interests and realignment of strategic posture in recent years that the dramatic events of the past few days in the kingdom must be seen.

Saturday’s sudden announcement that a new anti-corruption panel headed by Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, and the near simultaneous announcement of the arrest of more than two dozen royal family members, cabinet ministers and prominent businessmen is predominantly being presented as a power seizure by the crown prince. Amid widespread rumors that King Salman will soon abdicate the throne to his son, it is reasonable for the 32-year-old crown prince to work to neutralize all power centers that could threaten his ascension to the throne.

But there is clearly also something strategically more significant going on. While many of the officials arrested over the weekend threaten Mohammed’s power, they aren’t the only ones that he has purged. In September Mohammed arrested some 30 senior Wahhabist clerics and intellectuals. And Saturday’s arrest of the princes, cabinet ministers and business leaders was followed up by further arrests of senior Wahhabist clerics.

At the same time, Mohammed has been promoting clerics who espouse tolerance for other religions, including Judaism and Christianity. He has removed the Saudi religious police’s power to conduct arrests and he has taken seemingly credible steps to finally lift the kingdom-wide prohibition on women driving.

At the same time, Mohammed has escalated the kingdom’s operations against Iran’s proxies in Yemen.

And of course, on Saturday, he staged the resignation of Lebanese Prime Minister Saad Hariri amid Hariri’s allegations that Hezbollah and Iran were plotting his murder, much as they stood behind the 2005 assassination of his father, prime minister Rafiq Hariri.

There can be little doubt that there was coordination between the Saudi regime and the Trump administration regarding Saturday’s actions. The timing of the administration’s release last week of most of the files US special forces seized during their 2011 raid of al-Qaida leader Osama bin Laden’s compound in Abbottabad, Pakistan was likely not a coincidence.

The files, which the Obama administration refused to release, make clear that Obama’s two chief pretensions – that al-Qaida was a spent force by the time US forces killed bin Laden, and that Iran was interested in moderating its behavior were both untrue. The documents showed that al-Qaida’s operations remained a significant worldwide threat to US interests.

And perhaps more significantly, they showed that Iran was al-Qaida’s chief state sponsor. Much of al-Qaida’s leadership, including bin Laden’s sons, operated from Iran. The notion – touted by Obama and his administration – that Shi’ite Iranians and Sunni terrorists from al-Qaida and other groups were incapable of cooperating was demonstrated to be an utter fiction by the documents.

Their publication now, as Saudi Arabia takes more determined steps to slash its support for radical Islamists, and separate itself from Wahhabist Islam, draws a clear distinction between Saudi Arabia and Iran.

Given Saudi Arabia’s record, and the kingdom’s 70-year alliance with Wahhabist clerics, it is hard to know whether Mohammed’s move signals an irrevocable breach between the House of Saud and the Wahhabists.

But the direction is clear. With Hariri’s removal from Lebanon, the lines between the forces of jihad and terrorism led by Iran, and the forces that oppose them are clearer than ever before. And the necessity of acting against the former and helping the latter has similarly never been more obvious.

Originally published by the Jerusalem Post. 
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Civil War in the House of Saud?

Reports are flying from Riyadh that as King Salman nears abdication, there is a potential coup set to go in effect in order to deprive his son Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman from taking over.

In response to the Crown Prince’s fears Saudi Arabia arrested between 16-30 people in a broad crackdown across the Kingdom. The arrestees though were all members of the regime, yet loyalists of the ousted former Crown Prince Muhammad bin Nayef.

Why would the monarchy, which prides itself on collective unity in the face of ensuring its own survival feel the need to go after one another.

 Andrew Korybko of the Oriental Review gives the following intriguing possibility:

Iran and Qatar are close with Russia and China, and the latter two Great Powers are actually enjoying a renaissance of relations with Saudi Arabia right now. While one might expect this to make Tehran and Doha jealous, the opposite is true – Moscow and Beijing’s developing high-level strategic partnerships with Riyadh are designed to bring balance to the Mideast by weaning the Kingdom away from Washington and slowly but surely integrating it into the emerging Multipolar World Order, which will never be perfect or without friction, but is still a step in the right direction. In order to appreciate what’s happening, one needs to be reminded of a few things that have happened this past year when it comes to Saudi Arabia’s relations with Russia and China.

Concerning Moscow, Riyadh agreed to an historic OPEC output deal with Russia last year and renewed it a few months ago after it expired. The Saudis are also cooperating with the Russians in encouraging Syria’s so-called “opposition” to merge into a unified entity for facilitating peace talks with Damascus. Foreign Minister Lavrov was just in the Kingdom last week, and King Salman is expected to visit Moscow sometime next month. As for China, Beijing signed a total of over $110 billion of deals with Saudi Arabia in the past six months alone in an effort to assist the Crown Prince’s ambitious Vision 2030 program of economic modernization. It’s that initiative more so than anything else which holds the danger of inadvertently destabilizing the country’s internal affairs because of the opposition that it’s come under from some of Saudi Arabia’s many radical clerics who are against the social consequences of its reforms.

Bearing all of this in mind, it’s worthwhile to revisit the question of who has an interest in destabilizing Saudi Arabia right at the moment that it’s turning away from the US and towards Russia and China, timing their subversive efforts to coincide with a prolonged leadership change and an economic transition. By all indicators, those aren’t the hallmarks of an Iranian or Qatari operation, but the red flag for an American one.

US, Russian, and Chinese Neo-Colonialism in the Middle East

The fast changing word is in a great transition between a post Cold War uni-polarism to a 21st Century multi-polar chaos of various competing interests circling around energy control and market influence. Both the Russians and Chinese are thriving off of a Middle East in chaos and have learned like the US did that the Arab rulers have no loyalty to their countries.

These rulers, when given protection and money have the loyalty to the world powers providing them the money and arms to control their local “peasants.” The Russians and Chinese have figured out that the key to US dominance in the Middle East and therefore oil profits is the defense pacts Washington has used with the Saudis and Gulf States to ensure the dollar is constantly inflated due to its use as the sole oil currency.  This is now changing. Even more so, the Russians and Chinese as pointed out in the Oriental Review have gone out of their way to lure the Saudis away from America.

By creating balance between Saudi Arabia and Iran, the Russians and Chinese are in the process of playing both sides to ensure continued control of the region.  The American security establishment used the same policy in both encouraging Iran to push ahead across the Middle East, while using that threat to encourage the Saudis to stay within the American orbit.

The Saudis are trying to figure out how to work with both, but unlike Israel, the House of Saud has no real value to it other than a colonial apparatus to rented out to the highest bidder.

Where Does this Leave Israel?

With the Saudi family in the midst of an internal implosion, Israel has little room to maneuver.  The prevailing assumption has been that the blocs would remain the same and actually consolidate in opposition to the Iranian threat.  The insertion of Russia and China as the new power brokers has scrambled this assumption.

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Why Israel Should be Concerned about Saudi Arabia’s Internal Politics

Reports from Saudi Arabia are saying that the Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman is fast consolidating his power ahead of becoming King either after his father dies or abdicates.

“Over the last week, 16 people were held, their friends, relatives and associates said in interviews. They include prominent Islamic clerics, academics, a poet, an economist, the head of a youth organization, at least two women and one prince, a son of a former king,” reports the Times of India.

This move to push away dissent from within the regime, is a short term play to ensure the transition to kingship is without protest, but the more the future king consolidates power, the more the protests grow. If a fissure should occur within the kingdom, it could have cataclysmic results for Saudi Arabia.

At a time when oil is dropping and Iran is banging on their door steps, the Saudi royal family can ill afford to have a serious push against it from within.  Iran could easily exploit a serious dispute in the Kingdom by stoking revolt among the Shiites in the oil rich areas in the Southern area of the Kingdom.

Israel Needs to be Careful in Placing Trust in Mohammed bin Salman

It is clear Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman has a real interest in building a serious relationship with Israel.  Yet, Israel cannot rely on him.  Any open softening of the Kingdom’s stance towards Israel will weakken the monarchy in the eyes of the street. If there is a real attempted pusch against the potential king, then Bin Salman will be forced to go negative against Israel to ensure his reputation with the Saudi street.

As Mohammed bin Salman moves to take over the Kingdom, there will be more an more resistance. His challenge is balancing his reaction in such a way that it does not spark an actual uprising. The stabity if the entire kingdom depends on it.