07-16-2017, 01:40 PM
BIN SALMAN’s RISE (AND ANTICIPATED FALL !)
https://crescent.icit-digital.org/articl...pated-fall
King Salman’s appointment of his son Mohammed bin Salman to replace Mohammed bin Nayef as crown prince on June 21 was widely expected. What was a de facto situation was given official cover. The king’s favorite son has been the public face of Saudi Arabia since Salman’s accession as king in January 2015. Not surprisingly, the sycophantic Saudi media went into a frenzy proclaiming the non-existent virtues of the young prince. Had the king appointed a camel as crown prince, the Saudi media would have found merit in that as well.
Extremely arrogant, Bin Salman is likely to cause more disasters to the Kingdom, which is already reeling from several (of his) policy failures. The war on Syria since 2011 is going nowhere; the Yemeni war launched by Bin Salman as defence minster was meant to bolster his credentials. Instead, it has exposed his incompetence as well as that of the Saudi armed forces despite massive superiority in weapons. If causing mass starvation and destruction of the poorest country in the Muslim East are the hallmarks of “success,” then Bin Salman can be considered to be extremely “successful.” This, however, is barbarism of the worst kind. And the father-son duo has compounded their woes by taking on tiny Qatar, almost blowing up the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC).
With such a record of failures, Bin Salman should have been fired. He wears his failures as a badge of honor. Besides, his father had already set his mind on making him the future king. There is speculation that Salman would abdicate in his son’s favor thereby ensuring a “smooth transition.” The Kingdom’s internal dynamics may not be so amenable.
The big question is: why now? Bin Salman’s numerous failures notwithstanding, the reason for his elevation can be found in US President Donald Trump’s visit to Saudi Arabia (May 20–22, 2017). This was projected as the crowning achievement of the Kingdom, more specifically of Bin Salman who has cultivated close links with Trump as well as his Jewish-Zionist son-in-law Jared Kushner. That such friendship has come at a huge price — $350 billion to be forked out to the Americans over a 10-year period — is considered a small price.
Even the Israelis are elated at Bin Salman’s appointment. On June 22, Intelligence Minister Yisrael Katz publicly called for inviting Bin Salman to Tel Aviv and sending Benjamin Netanyahu to Riyadh to establish diplomatic relations. This possibility cannot be discounted since the two regimes have already announced plans to establish economic relations. It would be a small step for full diplomatic ties.
These external props may not be sufficient to weather the internal storm that is bound to erupt once Salman is dead. Members of the Saudi clan are ruthlessly ambitious. Hitherto, they have deferred to the decisions of the elders — sons of ‘Abd al-‘Aziz — but this may not hold true for the next generation. In the official announcement, the royal decree said 31 out of 34 members of the Allegiance Council had endorsed Bin Salman’s appointment without explaining why Bin Nayef was removed as crown prince and interior minister. How can we be sure the Allegiance Council’s vote is accurately reflected? Besides, the army of Saudi royals would demand their share in the Kingdom’s spoils. Their fathers had played an equal if not greater role in propping up the Kingdom by maintaining clan solidarity.
Bin Salman’s uncles and thousands of cousins would raise the issue of his policy failures. If hitherto Bani Saud have maintained clan solidarity, it was precisely out of fear that everyone would lose if things fell apart. This argument cuts both ways. If Bin Salman’s policies pile up more disasters — and there is no reason to believe they will not given his failures so far — the other clan members will not remain silent. They will demand his removal before he destroys everything.
A possible scenario would be to push Bin Salman out as king but the question of succession will loom large. Given the stakes, everyone would maintain that he is most qualified to take over. Clan warfare is bound to erupt and it is safe to assume it would be a messy and ugly affair. Once the bloodletting and throat slitting ends, there may not be much left of the Bani-Saud clan. We can’t wait for that day!
BEDOUINS AT WAR !
https://crescent.icit-digital.org/articl...ins-at-war
The Saudi-Qatari spat is neither about Qatar supporting terrorism, nor about its support of the Muslim Brotherhood, or even its non-hostile relations with Iran. True, crude Bedouin mentality has a lot to do with the nasty brawl between Bani Saud and al-Thanis in Qatar, but a much bigger game is being played out. At the root lies Bani Saud’s demand that all regimes in the region submit to their diktat. Those falling out of line will face the Najdi Bedouins’ wrath.
The Najdi Bedouins may be living in air-conditioned palaces with marble-tiled floors and extravagant drapes today but at heart they remain Bedouins. Crudity is in their genes. After all, would a pig become a beautiful woman even if it were dressed in fancy clothes with massive amounts of lipstick splashed on it? It remains a pig: filthy and smelly.
Led by the brash Defence Minister Muhammad bin Salman, Bani Saud have declared war on tiny Qatar to bring it into line. Saudi client regimes — the United Arab Emirates (UAE), Bahrain, Egypt, Maldives (the archipelago of sinking islands!), Mauritania, and the joke government of Libya — were also forced to follow suit. When cash-strapped Tunisia demurred, Bani Saud threatened to cut off their bakhshish.
The Najdi Bedouins accuse the Qataris of supporting terrorism! It is like the prostitutes of Paris accusing the English Collective of Prostitutes of indulging in immorality. True, Qatar has been supporting and financing terrorists in Syria and Iraq but Bani Saud are no better; they are guilty of much bigger crimes.
All terrorist activities worldwide can be traced directly to Saudi Arabia. The Najdi Bedouins provide ideological support, funding, and weapons to the terrorists. The Saudis also fund madrasahs in such places as Pakistan, India, Bangladesh, Malaysia, and Indonesia churning out terrorists by the thousands.
It is not terrorism per se that Bani Saud object to; after all Saudi Arabia is a terror factory. Qatar’s real sin is that it has been supporting the Muslim Brotherhood, which the Saudis, Egyptians, and Emiratis have targeted. While the Najdi Bedouins consider all non-Wahhabis as “heretics” — the overwhelming majority of Sunnis have returned the compliment by declaring that the Wahhabis are not part of Ahl al-Sunnah wa-al-Jama‘ah (see the declaration of some 200 Sunni ‘ulama’ at the Islamic Conference in Grozny, Chechnya on August 25–27, 2016) — the Qataris are more tolerant of non-Wahhabis.
Further, Qatar refused to abide by the nonsensical “Riyadh Declaration” that the Saudis claimed Muslim rulers had “debated and agreed to” in Riyadh on May 22 during Donald Trump’s visit. No such debate ever took place, much less any of the assembled rulers agreeing to it. This so-called declaration was an act of war against Islamic Iran. Many rulers were surprised to learn about it from the media!
The Qataris see the Saudi move as an attempt at regime change. Saudi and UAE lobbyists are involved in a massive disinformation campaign against Qatar. Political commentator Pepe Escobar, writing in Sputnik (his article was reproduced in Information Clearing House on June 7, 2017) pointed out, a trail of evidence points to a concerted strategy elaborated by the Israeli lobby (via the Foundation for Defense of Democracies, founded, among others, by nefarious casino schemer Sheldon Adelson, and very close to… Net-anyahu); US neocon/Ziocon/ neoliberalcon elements; and the UAE ambassador in Washington, Yousef al-Otaiba.
Leaked emails have shown how Otaiba — widely idolized in the Beltway because of his “largesse” — and the neocon Foundation for Defense of Democracies have discussed means of teaching Qatar a lesson for its support of Hamas, and overall non-confrontational policies towards Iran. Otaiba also happens to be close to Jared Kushner — which would explain Trump’s reaction to the anti-Qatar blitzkrieg.”
Immediately after the Saudis’ anti-Qatar announcement, Trump resorted to his customary tweets saying his Riyadh policy was yielding results. He later tried to soften the message by inviting the various parties for a meeting at the White House to resolve the dispute. The Qatari ruler, Tamim bin Hamad al-Thani saw this as a trap and refused to leave Doha fearing he would not be able to return. A Saudi puppet would instead be installed to replace him with the help of 10,000 US troops stationed at al-Udeid air base in Qatar.
File photograph of Qatar’s ruler, Shaykh Tamim ibn Hamad Al Thani, meeting with Turkey’s President Erdogan, right, in Doha. In the diplomatic doublespeak that normally attends the goings-on of heads of state belonging to the realpolitik school of international relations, analysts are saying that Turkey’s (Erdogan’s) decision to support Qatar with troops and food shipments is more pro-Qatari than anti-Saudi. Turkey set up a military base in Qatar, its first such installation in the Muslim East, as part of an agreement signed in 2014. The base, which has a capacity to accommodate up to 5,000 troops, was already hosting 200 Turkish soldiers when the falling-out between the erstwhile GCC members took place. Two days after Saudi Arabia, Egypt, the UAE, and Bahrain severed diplomatic relations with Qatar for its alleged support of “terrorist organizations,” Turkey’s parliament ratified military deals allowing its troops to be deployed to its base there.
In the immediate aftermath of Saudi announcement on June 5 — an unfortunate choice of date since it coincided with the Zionist war of aggression exactly 50 years ago against Egypt, Syria, and Jordan in June 1967 — the Qataris worried about more than mere diplomatic isolation. Since Qatar receives most of its food shipments via Saudi Arabia, these were blocked. In a deft move, Turkey and Iran both announced that they were willing to help Qatar with its food and water imports. Both have sent plane-loads as well as ships delivering much needed food and water, The Qataris have also been seeking help from Russia. While initially remaining neutral, Turkey’s President Recep Tayyip Erdogan later made a crucial decision to side with Qatar. On June 7, the Turkish parliament passed a bill allowing deployment of up to 20,000 troops in Qatar. Two days later, Erdogan signed the bill into law. Turkey already has 600 troops stationed in Qatar. Whatever the size of the new deployment, it places Ankara squarely on the side of Doha and against Bani Saud.
Qatar’s shift toward the Russia-Iran-Turkey axis is what has aroused great anger in Riyadh. While the three — Russia, Iran, and Turkey — are not on the same page on all issues, there is convergence of thought on some matters. For instance, Russia and Iran are on one side of the Syria crisis while Turkey and Qatar are on the opposite side, but Qatar and Iran also share a common gas field in the Persian Gulf. One of the reasons for the war on Syria was related to the location of the gas pipeline to Europe going via Syria. The US, Turkey, Saudi Arabia, and Qatar, however, wanted to install a puppet regime in Damascus first. The aim was, together with the Saudi-led drop in oil prices, to undermine Russia. The result has been immense bloodletting in Syria without the conspirators succeeding in their nefarious design.
Qatar is the world’s leading exporter of liquefied natural gas (LNG). Given its tiny population (200,000 natives) and another two million expatriates, Qatar has amassed enormous wealth. This has enabled Doha to punch way above its weight in international affairs, much to the consternation of Bani Saud. Qatar’s refusal to join the US-Zionist-Saudi led anti-Iran crusade has further riled up Bani Saud.
When the Saudis first declared war on Qatar, there was panic in Doha. Qatari Foreign Minister Mohammed bin Abdulrahman al-Thani announced that his government wanted to resolve the crisis through dialogue but Bani Saud wanted surrender, not talks. Saudi Deputy Crown Prince Muhammad bin Salman issued a laundry list of demands including shutting down al-Jazeera, immediate end to support not only of the Muslim Brotherhood but also of Hamas, which the Saudis now consider a “terrorist” organization because it opposes Saudi ally Zionist Israel (Hamas leaders, please note!). Most importantly, the Saudis want the Qataris to terminate all relations with Tehran.
The panic in Doha eased somewhat when a number of countries among them Turkey, Iran, and Russia offered to help. On a visit to Paris on June 12, Qatari Foreign Minister Shaykh Mohammed bin Abdulrahman al-Thani told reporters, “Whatever relates to our foreign affairs… no one has the right to discuss.” While calling for “dialog based on clear foundations” over the anti-Qatar accusations, he expressed surprise at the move against his country. “It’s not about Iran or al-Jazeera,” he said. “We have no clue about the real reasons.”
Saudi Arabia and its short list of satellites decided to sever ties with Qatar and suspend air, sea, and land transport of all supplies, including food, which the tiny Gulf state almost wholly imports, in of all months, Rama?œn, when Muslims, especially those who are loudly trumpeting the Shari‘ah, are supposed to be in a giving spirit. Iran and Turkey offered to relieve the Qatari population of any shortages; Reza Nourani, head of the National Union of Iran’s Agricultural Products, indicated that it is possible for Iran to satisfy the country’s demand for agricultural products. By 6-12-2017, Iran had already exported up to 400 tons and over 50 containers of food per day, either by sea freight or air cargo.
Pakistan, a staunch Saudi ally — the country’s Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif flew to Jeddah on June 12 for talks with Saudi King Salman — did not cut relations with Qatar nor did it stop importation of LNG from the tiny gas-rich country. In a sensible move, the Pakistani parliament called for strict neutrality in the intra-Arab dispute. Instead, it urged the government to use its good offices to mediate between the warring parties. Pakistani Finance Minister Ishaq Dar, Foreign Policy Advisor Sartaj Aziz, and Chief of Army Staff General Qamar Javed Bajwa also accompanied Sharif on his Saudi sojourn. What was the purpose? There is speculation that the Pakistani premier, already close to the Saudis, was looking for some more bakhshish. Whether the amount would be enough to “convince” him to ditch his Qatari friend Shaykh Tamim is debatable. Nawaz Sharif is not very articulate, or bright, so his role as a mediator is a non-starter.
Far from succeeding in their bullying tactics against adversaries, the Saudis may have shot themselves in the second foot as well. There appeared to be some backtracking on the artificial crisis when Saudi Foreign Minister Adel al-Jubeir said in London on June 16 that his country did not want to harm the Qatari people and called Qatar an “ally.”
What brought about this change in tone even if not in policy? Several factors seem to have contributed to this. After the initial panic in Doha, the situation stabilized somewhat with support from a number of other countries. The US, too, on whose support Bani Saud are relying, went ahead on June 12 to announce a $12 billion sale of F-15 aircraft to Qatar. Further, the two countries’ navies also concluded joint naval drills in the Persian Gulf. Far from isolating Qatar, the Saudis had isolated themselves.
Their ill-conceived policy in Yemen while inflicting enormous suffering on the people there, is getting nowhere. And there is speculation that General Raheel Sharif, Pakistan’s former army chief who is heading the so-called Arab-Islamic NATO force, may resign. That would be the end of Bin Salman’s half-baked idea.
Whatever the end result of the Bani-Saud spat with Qatar, it is now almost certain that the Gulf Cooperation Council is dead. This is the direct result of Trump’s embrace of Bani Saud even if the latter paid him a huge sum of $110 billion (to go up to $350 billion in 10 years) as protection money. Bani Saud are digging far too many holes for themselves. They are about to fall into one of them and disappear forever. Many people, especially Muslims, would welcome such a development.
WHEN TWO QUARREL BOTH ARE IN THE WRONG
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In the past few weeks barrels of ink, tons of paper, high decibel rhetoric, and striking pictorial expositions have circulated and spread about the Qatar versus Saudi-Emirati-Bahraini-Egyptian shouting match. Calm down, will you! The Arabian rulers, true to their pre-Islamic pedigrees are displaying their verbal and theatrical skills on orders from their conductors. The Saudi performers began their big-brother posturing immediately after their chief, Donald Trump, boarded Air Force One in a direct flight, the first of its kind, from Riyadh to Tel Aviv.
So far their rhetoric toward their erstwhile neighbor Qatar has switched from placing conditions on Doha, to issuing orders, and now all that has morphed into complaints. Always the slaves of imperial lords, not ‘ibadullah, these glib officials with gallabiyahs (desert negligees) inform us via their high-profile fixer in Washington (the ball-headed, brown-noser heir to Bandar, Yousef al-Otaiba), that all these stipulations and pressures placed by the Saudi cohorts on Qatar will be presented to Washington, “O lord Donald! Sami‘na wa ata‘na: We heard you and we obey.” Subsequently, as if on cue,the Qatari government brought out of retirement its previous foreign minister to pay homage to the imperialist god in Washington.
The Zionist Arabian officials ganged up on Qatar and initially demanded that Qatar abide by ten requests before even sitting at the negotiation table. These requests or demands were not made public. Then the baby-faced Saudi Foreign Minister Adel al-Jubair showed up in London to listen to his British counterpart Boris Johnson, the waswas (whisperer), after which al-Jubair said preparations are under way to make known those demands.
From press reports this is what the Saudi lineup wants from Qatar:
1. Qatar should officially apologize in the person of its amir Shaykh Tamim ibn Óamad Al Thani to all the Gulf Cooperation Council members for the vilification aired by al-Jazeera TV. And then al-Jazeera should be taken off the air permanently and without delay.
2. Qatar has to sever all relations and stop all funding of the Egyptian al-Ikhwan al-Muslimin (the Muslim Brotherhood). All members of that organization residing in Qatar would have to leave. All direct and indirect financial assistance given by Qatar to that organization and its political and media apparatus would have to cease; especially those who are located in Istanbul and London.
3. Qatar has to shut down all networks, sites, and newspapers that it founded under numerous shells having company titles or names of persons operating outside the scope of Qatari officialdom. Included in this are some TV stations, and a list of other media operations.
4. Qatar has to break off political relations with Islamic Iran. Qatar has to require and orient its media setups to deal with the Islamic Republic as a state sponsor of terrorism in line with other Gulf-state “news” outlets, especially al-‘Arabiya (a Saudi mouthpiece) and Sky News (an Emirate newsmonger).
5. Qatar has to sever all ties to Hizbullah and Hamas as both are “terrorist organizations.” It seems, since then, there may have been some backpedaling concerning Hamas due to “the Egyptian national interest.”
6. Qatar is not allowed to harbor any dissidents from other Gulf states or to grant them Qatari citizenship. And if any enter Qatar they should be expelled back to their countries of origin. To appease the Saudis, the Qataris indeed extradited the Saudi dissident Muhammad al-‘Utaybi and his family back to Saudi Arabia a day before the Saudis opened their big guns on Qatar. Doha is also reported to have deported dissident Bahrainis back to Manama some time ago.
7. Qatar has to close down certain Doha-based research centers and institutions that it sponsors. The same applies to other centers and institutions located outside of Qatar.
8. Qatar must pledge not to follow policies that conflict with other Gulf regimes or may result in harm to those regimes.
9. Qatar has to refrain from any political alliances or military agreements with regional powers that are at odds with the strategic interests of the Gulf regimes. An obvious reference to both Turkey and Iran.
10. Qatar has to normalize rela-tions with the Egyptian authorities and terminate all media operations against Egypt.
As it appears from these sovereignty infringements Qatar either succumbs or resists. There doesn’t appear to be another way out of this quandary.
All of this brings us to the larger picture of Arabian drifting drudges who are at the beck and call of their imperialist god and American lord. This god/lord with its Zionist spirit is working on two fronts. Let us call them the northern front and the southern front. On the northern front the war is on to kill as many Muslims as possible. Hence, the war grinds on in Iraq and Syria — though that war is not winding down the way it was planned by the imperialist intellectuals and the Israeli elites. The active war in that northern theater is a bonanza for the military-industrial-banking complex.
Now the southern front in its pre-war phase is to become an economic boost for the US and Israel; along with some other minor hangers on. The filthy rich Arabian buffoons have to be stirred into animosity to open their bank accounts for the businessman administration in Washington. And the first sting is what is unfolding before our very eyes in this spat between a trillion dollar Qatar on one side and multi-trillion dollar Arabian tent-states on the other. Quite good for beginners if you happen to be on the profit-making side of this issue. The Saudi pubescent princes cannot see it, but they have failed miserably in putting together their grand alliance against terrorism, which they have been working on for a couple of years now in obeisance to their chauvinistic commanders in Washington and their Talmudic partitions in Tel Aviv. They are huffing and puffing against Qatar and the only other countries to have severed relations with Qatar are Mauritania, Eritrea, the Comoros Islands, and the Yemeni posse of officials who claim to be the “legitimate rulers of Yemen,” now living in Saudi Arabia. Other regimes, such as Jordan and Djibouti, due to their beggar relationship with the flush royals in Arabia, downgraded their relations with Qatar.
This intra-Arabian tragi-comedy is still developing at a nerve-racking rapidity and roller-coaster velocity. This developing story one day, and deteriorating story another day is reminiscent of Arabians in their jahiliyah: chieftains, tribes, revenge, raids, and then settling a score. It is suggestive of the inability to speak to each other; to understand each other and to accommodate each other. An anecdote comes to mind: an Arabian goes to a shop to buy poison bait for a rat infestation at home. He is given poison bait made domestically. He objects and says he wants the best quality and the best must be imported from a foreign country. The clerk at the store tells him, “But when it comes to poison the locals are the most venomous and they make the most toxic bait you will ever find in any market!”
How noxious and toxic are these Saudis? They went to war with the poorest country in the Arabian Peninsula (Yemen) over two years ago with rockets and bombs, artillery fire and air, sea, and ground operations until we have today a Yemen that is ringing the alarm bells in humanitarian quarters because of Saudi war crimes and crimes against humanity.
And at present the same Saudis are threatening the richest country in the Arabian Peninsula (per capita); what do they want to do? Will they be satisfied with a siege, a blockade, a boycott, an embargo, and imposed sanctions? As if these desert beasts cannot be satisfied unless they see starving babies, broken families, refugee populations, blood on hospital floors, in wedding halls, and in funeral ceremonies! The sky belongs to God, but the Saudi coalition wants to close down the skies over and around any country that seeks freedom, independence, and self-determination. If only a small portion of this Saudi vengeance and retribution was directed against the Zionist colonialists and racist imperialists, Israel would not have lasted this long. Qatar Airways cannot fly over practically all the countries around it! The only air space it has is over the Islamic Republic of Iran; while El-Al, the Israeli airline, flies without restrictions over Egypt and Jordan and other undisclosed Muslim countries. Any ventures, business enterprises, or institutions related to Qatar are axed in the Saudi gang of states while Israel has its chambers of commerce, its security contingents, and its intelligence operatives roaming freely throughout this Saudi sphere of influence: Dubai and Abu Dhabi stand out as prime and obvious examples. Bahrain has housed the Israelis for decades now. Israeli products, disguised as Jordanian, Moroccan, etc. are bought and sold everywhere the Saudi sphere of control happens to be.
In this bizarre Saudi realm of command it is kosher for Israelized Muslims to wage war against themselves. It is halal for Israelized Muslims to hate each other. It becomes permissible for Israelized Muslims to take possession of Makkah and Madinah and impose a quota on the Ummah to constrict the Hajj and constrain the ‘Umrah. In this Israelized Islam of Bani Saud a Palestinian who resists Zionism and defends his rights is called a terrorist. And the Israeli Zionists who steal a country and kill a population, in the vocabulary of Saudi Wahhabism, are “Ahl al-Kitab.”
Qatar is not an angel; it is not above suspicion. Qatar is as shamefaced as its counterparts in the GCC. Was it not Qatar that was one of the first Arabian nation-states to receive official Israelis years ago? Was it not Qatar’s ex-foreign minister who said that Hamas has given up on armed resistance? Was it not Qatar that drew the map of Palestine to include only the West Bank and Ghazzah? Didn’t the now extinct Shimon Peres visit Qatar? Didn’t Tzipi Livni visit Qatar also? Isn’t Qatar responsible for arming, financing, and offering logistical help to the organ-chewing and head decapitating mercenaries in Syria?
But no one should lose sight of the Saudi regime of high crimes and misdemeanors. We have to keep our eyes on the moving picture. Don’t get distracted by the branches. We have to pull out this problem from its roots. Those roots are Wahhabia Saudia and the Yahudi Saudi, “The Arabian Nomads are more severe in their kufr and in their nifaq…” (9:97).
https://crescent.icit-digital.org/articl...pated-fall
King Salman’s appointment of his son Mohammed bin Salman to replace Mohammed bin Nayef as crown prince on June 21 was widely expected. What was a de facto situation was given official cover. The king’s favorite son has been the public face of Saudi Arabia since Salman’s accession as king in January 2015. Not surprisingly, the sycophantic Saudi media went into a frenzy proclaiming the non-existent virtues of the young prince. Had the king appointed a camel as crown prince, the Saudi media would have found merit in that as well.
Extremely arrogant, Bin Salman is likely to cause more disasters to the Kingdom, which is already reeling from several (of his) policy failures. The war on Syria since 2011 is going nowhere; the Yemeni war launched by Bin Salman as defence minster was meant to bolster his credentials. Instead, it has exposed his incompetence as well as that of the Saudi armed forces despite massive superiority in weapons. If causing mass starvation and destruction of the poorest country in the Muslim East are the hallmarks of “success,” then Bin Salman can be considered to be extremely “successful.” This, however, is barbarism of the worst kind. And the father-son duo has compounded their woes by taking on tiny Qatar, almost blowing up the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC).
With such a record of failures, Bin Salman should have been fired. He wears his failures as a badge of honor. Besides, his father had already set his mind on making him the future king. There is speculation that Salman would abdicate in his son’s favor thereby ensuring a “smooth transition.” The Kingdom’s internal dynamics may not be so amenable.
The big question is: why now? Bin Salman’s numerous failures notwithstanding, the reason for his elevation can be found in US President Donald Trump’s visit to Saudi Arabia (May 20–22, 2017). This was projected as the crowning achievement of the Kingdom, more specifically of Bin Salman who has cultivated close links with Trump as well as his Jewish-Zionist son-in-law Jared Kushner. That such friendship has come at a huge price — $350 billion to be forked out to the Americans over a 10-year period — is considered a small price.
Even the Israelis are elated at Bin Salman’s appointment. On June 22, Intelligence Minister Yisrael Katz publicly called for inviting Bin Salman to Tel Aviv and sending Benjamin Netanyahu to Riyadh to establish diplomatic relations. This possibility cannot be discounted since the two regimes have already announced plans to establish economic relations. It would be a small step for full diplomatic ties.
These external props may not be sufficient to weather the internal storm that is bound to erupt once Salman is dead. Members of the Saudi clan are ruthlessly ambitious. Hitherto, they have deferred to the decisions of the elders — sons of ‘Abd al-‘Aziz — but this may not hold true for the next generation. In the official announcement, the royal decree said 31 out of 34 members of the Allegiance Council had endorsed Bin Salman’s appointment without explaining why Bin Nayef was removed as crown prince and interior minister. How can we be sure the Allegiance Council’s vote is accurately reflected? Besides, the army of Saudi royals would demand their share in the Kingdom’s spoils. Their fathers had played an equal if not greater role in propping up the Kingdom by maintaining clan solidarity.
Bin Salman’s uncles and thousands of cousins would raise the issue of his policy failures. If hitherto Bani Saud have maintained clan solidarity, it was precisely out of fear that everyone would lose if things fell apart. This argument cuts both ways. If Bin Salman’s policies pile up more disasters — and there is no reason to believe they will not given his failures so far — the other clan members will not remain silent. They will demand his removal before he destroys everything.
A possible scenario would be to push Bin Salman out as king but the question of succession will loom large. Given the stakes, everyone would maintain that he is most qualified to take over. Clan warfare is bound to erupt and it is safe to assume it would be a messy and ugly affair. Once the bloodletting and throat slitting ends, there may not be much left of the Bani-Saud clan. We can’t wait for that day!
BEDOUINS AT WAR !
https://crescent.icit-digital.org/articl...ins-at-war
The Saudi-Qatari spat is neither about Qatar supporting terrorism, nor about its support of the Muslim Brotherhood, or even its non-hostile relations with Iran. True, crude Bedouin mentality has a lot to do with the nasty brawl between Bani Saud and al-Thanis in Qatar, but a much bigger game is being played out. At the root lies Bani Saud’s demand that all regimes in the region submit to their diktat. Those falling out of line will face the Najdi Bedouins’ wrath.
The Najdi Bedouins may be living in air-conditioned palaces with marble-tiled floors and extravagant drapes today but at heart they remain Bedouins. Crudity is in their genes. After all, would a pig become a beautiful woman even if it were dressed in fancy clothes with massive amounts of lipstick splashed on it? It remains a pig: filthy and smelly.
Led by the brash Defence Minister Muhammad bin Salman, Bani Saud have declared war on tiny Qatar to bring it into line. Saudi client regimes — the United Arab Emirates (UAE), Bahrain, Egypt, Maldives (the archipelago of sinking islands!), Mauritania, and the joke government of Libya — were also forced to follow suit. When cash-strapped Tunisia demurred, Bani Saud threatened to cut off their bakhshish.
The Najdi Bedouins accuse the Qataris of supporting terrorism! It is like the prostitutes of Paris accusing the English Collective of Prostitutes of indulging in immorality. True, Qatar has been supporting and financing terrorists in Syria and Iraq but Bani Saud are no better; they are guilty of much bigger crimes.
All terrorist activities worldwide can be traced directly to Saudi Arabia. The Najdi Bedouins provide ideological support, funding, and weapons to the terrorists. The Saudis also fund madrasahs in such places as Pakistan, India, Bangladesh, Malaysia, and Indonesia churning out terrorists by the thousands.
It is not terrorism per se that Bani Saud object to; after all Saudi Arabia is a terror factory. Qatar’s real sin is that it has been supporting the Muslim Brotherhood, which the Saudis, Egyptians, and Emiratis have targeted. While the Najdi Bedouins consider all non-Wahhabis as “heretics” — the overwhelming majority of Sunnis have returned the compliment by declaring that the Wahhabis are not part of Ahl al-Sunnah wa-al-Jama‘ah (see the declaration of some 200 Sunni ‘ulama’ at the Islamic Conference in Grozny, Chechnya on August 25–27, 2016) — the Qataris are more tolerant of non-Wahhabis.
Further, Qatar refused to abide by the nonsensical “Riyadh Declaration” that the Saudis claimed Muslim rulers had “debated and agreed to” in Riyadh on May 22 during Donald Trump’s visit. No such debate ever took place, much less any of the assembled rulers agreeing to it. This so-called declaration was an act of war against Islamic Iran. Many rulers were surprised to learn about it from the media!
The Qataris see the Saudi move as an attempt at regime change. Saudi and UAE lobbyists are involved in a massive disinformation campaign against Qatar. Political commentator Pepe Escobar, writing in Sputnik (his article was reproduced in Information Clearing House on June 7, 2017) pointed out, a trail of evidence points to a concerted strategy elaborated by the Israeli lobby (via the Foundation for Defense of Democracies, founded, among others, by nefarious casino schemer Sheldon Adelson, and very close to… Net-anyahu); US neocon/Ziocon/ neoliberalcon elements; and the UAE ambassador in Washington, Yousef al-Otaiba.
Leaked emails have shown how Otaiba — widely idolized in the Beltway because of his “largesse” — and the neocon Foundation for Defense of Democracies have discussed means of teaching Qatar a lesson for its support of Hamas, and overall non-confrontational policies towards Iran. Otaiba also happens to be close to Jared Kushner — which would explain Trump’s reaction to the anti-Qatar blitzkrieg.”
Immediately after the Saudis’ anti-Qatar announcement, Trump resorted to his customary tweets saying his Riyadh policy was yielding results. He later tried to soften the message by inviting the various parties for a meeting at the White House to resolve the dispute. The Qatari ruler, Tamim bin Hamad al-Thani saw this as a trap and refused to leave Doha fearing he would not be able to return. A Saudi puppet would instead be installed to replace him with the help of 10,000 US troops stationed at al-Udeid air base in Qatar.
File photograph of Qatar’s ruler, Shaykh Tamim ibn Hamad Al Thani, meeting with Turkey’s President Erdogan, right, in Doha. In the diplomatic doublespeak that normally attends the goings-on of heads of state belonging to the realpolitik school of international relations, analysts are saying that Turkey’s (Erdogan’s) decision to support Qatar with troops and food shipments is more pro-Qatari than anti-Saudi. Turkey set up a military base in Qatar, its first such installation in the Muslim East, as part of an agreement signed in 2014. The base, which has a capacity to accommodate up to 5,000 troops, was already hosting 200 Turkish soldiers when the falling-out between the erstwhile GCC members took place. Two days after Saudi Arabia, Egypt, the UAE, and Bahrain severed diplomatic relations with Qatar for its alleged support of “terrorist organizations,” Turkey’s parliament ratified military deals allowing its troops to be deployed to its base there.
In the immediate aftermath of Saudi announcement on June 5 — an unfortunate choice of date since it coincided with the Zionist war of aggression exactly 50 years ago against Egypt, Syria, and Jordan in June 1967 — the Qataris worried about more than mere diplomatic isolation. Since Qatar receives most of its food shipments via Saudi Arabia, these were blocked. In a deft move, Turkey and Iran both announced that they were willing to help Qatar with its food and water imports. Both have sent plane-loads as well as ships delivering much needed food and water, The Qataris have also been seeking help from Russia. While initially remaining neutral, Turkey’s President Recep Tayyip Erdogan later made a crucial decision to side with Qatar. On June 7, the Turkish parliament passed a bill allowing deployment of up to 20,000 troops in Qatar. Two days later, Erdogan signed the bill into law. Turkey already has 600 troops stationed in Qatar. Whatever the size of the new deployment, it places Ankara squarely on the side of Doha and against Bani Saud.
Qatar’s shift toward the Russia-Iran-Turkey axis is what has aroused great anger in Riyadh. While the three — Russia, Iran, and Turkey — are not on the same page on all issues, there is convergence of thought on some matters. For instance, Russia and Iran are on one side of the Syria crisis while Turkey and Qatar are on the opposite side, but Qatar and Iran also share a common gas field in the Persian Gulf. One of the reasons for the war on Syria was related to the location of the gas pipeline to Europe going via Syria. The US, Turkey, Saudi Arabia, and Qatar, however, wanted to install a puppet regime in Damascus first. The aim was, together with the Saudi-led drop in oil prices, to undermine Russia. The result has been immense bloodletting in Syria without the conspirators succeeding in their nefarious design.
Qatar is the world’s leading exporter of liquefied natural gas (LNG). Given its tiny population (200,000 natives) and another two million expatriates, Qatar has amassed enormous wealth. This has enabled Doha to punch way above its weight in international affairs, much to the consternation of Bani Saud. Qatar’s refusal to join the US-Zionist-Saudi led anti-Iran crusade has further riled up Bani Saud.
When the Saudis first declared war on Qatar, there was panic in Doha. Qatari Foreign Minister Mohammed bin Abdulrahman al-Thani announced that his government wanted to resolve the crisis through dialogue but Bani Saud wanted surrender, not talks. Saudi Deputy Crown Prince Muhammad bin Salman issued a laundry list of demands including shutting down al-Jazeera, immediate end to support not only of the Muslim Brotherhood but also of Hamas, which the Saudis now consider a “terrorist” organization because it opposes Saudi ally Zionist Israel (Hamas leaders, please note!). Most importantly, the Saudis want the Qataris to terminate all relations with Tehran.
The panic in Doha eased somewhat when a number of countries among them Turkey, Iran, and Russia offered to help. On a visit to Paris on June 12, Qatari Foreign Minister Shaykh Mohammed bin Abdulrahman al-Thani told reporters, “Whatever relates to our foreign affairs… no one has the right to discuss.” While calling for “dialog based on clear foundations” over the anti-Qatar accusations, he expressed surprise at the move against his country. “It’s not about Iran or al-Jazeera,” he said. “We have no clue about the real reasons.”
Saudi Arabia and its short list of satellites decided to sever ties with Qatar and suspend air, sea, and land transport of all supplies, including food, which the tiny Gulf state almost wholly imports, in of all months, Rama?œn, when Muslims, especially those who are loudly trumpeting the Shari‘ah, are supposed to be in a giving spirit. Iran and Turkey offered to relieve the Qatari population of any shortages; Reza Nourani, head of the National Union of Iran’s Agricultural Products, indicated that it is possible for Iran to satisfy the country’s demand for agricultural products. By 6-12-2017, Iran had already exported up to 400 tons and over 50 containers of food per day, either by sea freight or air cargo.
Pakistan, a staunch Saudi ally — the country’s Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif flew to Jeddah on June 12 for talks with Saudi King Salman — did not cut relations with Qatar nor did it stop importation of LNG from the tiny gas-rich country. In a sensible move, the Pakistani parliament called for strict neutrality in the intra-Arab dispute. Instead, it urged the government to use its good offices to mediate between the warring parties. Pakistani Finance Minister Ishaq Dar, Foreign Policy Advisor Sartaj Aziz, and Chief of Army Staff General Qamar Javed Bajwa also accompanied Sharif on his Saudi sojourn. What was the purpose? There is speculation that the Pakistani premier, already close to the Saudis, was looking for some more bakhshish. Whether the amount would be enough to “convince” him to ditch his Qatari friend Shaykh Tamim is debatable. Nawaz Sharif is not very articulate, or bright, so his role as a mediator is a non-starter.
Far from succeeding in their bullying tactics against adversaries, the Saudis may have shot themselves in the second foot as well. There appeared to be some backtracking on the artificial crisis when Saudi Foreign Minister Adel al-Jubeir said in London on June 16 that his country did not want to harm the Qatari people and called Qatar an “ally.”
What brought about this change in tone even if not in policy? Several factors seem to have contributed to this. After the initial panic in Doha, the situation stabilized somewhat with support from a number of other countries. The US, too, on whose support Bani Saud are relying, went ahead on June 12 to announce a $12 billion sale of F-15 aircraft to Qatar. Further, the two countries’ navies also concluded joint naval drills in the Persian Gulf. Far from isolating Qatar, the Saudis had isolated themselves.
Their ill-conceived policy in Yemen while inflicting enormous suffering on the people there, is getting nowhere. And there is speculation that General Raheel Sharif, Pakistan’s former army chief who is heading the so-called Arab-Islamic NATO force, may resign. That would be the end of Bin Salman’s half-baked idea.
Whatever the end result of the Bani-Saud spat with Qatar, it is now almost certain that the Gulf Cooperation Council is dead. This is the direct result of Trump’s embrace of Bani Saud even if the latter paid him a huge sum of $110 billion (to go up to $350 billion in 10 years) as protection money. Bani Saud are digging far too many holes for themselves. They are about to fall into one of them and disappear forever. Many people, especially Muslims, would welcome such a development.
WHEN TWO QUARREL BOTH ARE IN THE WRONG
https://crescent.icit-digital.org/articl...-the-wrong
In the past few weeks barrels of ink, tons of paper, high decibel rhetoric, and striking pictorial expositions have circulated and spread about the Qatar versus Saudi-Emirati-Bahraini-Egyptian shouting match. Calm down, will you! The Arabian rulers, true to their pre-Islamic pedigrees are displaying their verbal and theatrical skills on orders from their conductors. The Saudi performers began their big-brother posturing immediately after their chief, Donald Trump, boarded Air Force One in a direct flight, the first of its kind, from Riyadh to Tel Aviv.
So far their rhetoric toward their erstwhile neighbor Qatar has switched from placing conditions on Doha, to issuing orders, and now all that has morphed into complaints. Always the slaves of imperial lords, not ‘ibadullah, these glib officials with gallabiyahs (desert negligees) inform us via their high-profile fixer in Washington (the ball-headed, brown-noser heir to Bandar, Yousef al-Otaiba), that all these stipulations and pressures placed by the Saudi cohorts on Qatar will be presented to Washington, “O lord Donald! Sami‘na wa ata‘na: We heard you and we obey.” Subsequently, as if on cue,the Qatari government brought out of retirement its previous foreign minister to pay homage to the imperialist god in Washington.
The Zionist Arabian officials ganged up on Qatar and initially demanded that Qatar abide by ten requests before even sitting at the negotiation table. These requests or demands were not made public. Then the baby-faced Saudi Foreign Minister Adel al-Jubair showed up in London to listen to his British counterpart Boris Johnson, the waswas (whisperer), after which al-Jubair said preparations are under way to make known those demands.
From press reports this is what the Saudi lineup wants from Qatar:
1. Qatar should officially apologize in the person of its amir Shaykh Tamim ibn Óamad Al Thani to all the Gulf Cooperation Council members for the vilification aired by al-Jazeera TV. And then al-Jazeera should be taken off the air permanently and without delay.
2. Qatar has to sever all relations and stop all funding of the Egyptian al-Ikhwan al-Muslimin (the Muslim Brotherhood). All members of that organization residing in Qatar would have to leave. All direct and indirect financial assistance given by Qatar to that organization and its political and media apparatus would have to cease; especially those who are located in Istanbul and London.
3. Qatar has to shut down all networks, sites, and newspapers that it founded under numerous shells having company titles or names of persons operating outside the scope of Qatari officialdom. Included in this are some TV stations, and a list of other media operations.
4. Qatar has to break off political relations with Islamic Iran. Qatar has to require and orient its media setups to deal with the Islamic Republic as a state sponsor of terrorism in line with other Gulf-state “news” outlets, especially al-‘Arabiya (a Saudi mouthpiece) and Sky News (an Emirate newsmonger).
5. Qatar has to sever all ties to Hizbullah and Hamas as both are “terrorist organizations.” It seems, since then, there may have been some backpedaling concerning Hamas due to “the Egyptian national interest.”
6. Qatar is not allowed to harbor any dissidents from other Gulf states or to grant them Qatari citizenship. And if any enter Qatar they should be expelled back to their countries of origin. To appease the Saudis, the Qataris indeed extradited the Saudi dissident Muhammad al-‘Utaybi and his family back to Saudi Arabia a day before the Saudis opened their big guns on Qatar. Doha is also reported to have deported dissident Bahrainis back to Manama some time ago.
7. Qatar has to close down certain Doha-based research centers and institutions that it sponsors. The same applies to other centers and institutions located outside of Qatar.
8. Qatar must pledge not to follow policies that conflict with other Gulf regimes or may result in harm to those regimes.
9. Qatar has to refrain from any political alliances or military agreements with regional powers that are at odds with the strategic interests of the Gulf regimes. An obvious reference to both Turkey and Iran.
10. Qatar has to normalize rela-tions with the Egyptian authorities and terminate all media operations against Egypt.
As it appears from these sovereignty infringements Qatar either succumbs or resists. There doesn’t appear to be another way out of this quandary.
All of this brings us to the larger picture of Arabian drifting drudges who are at the beck and call of their imperialist god and American lord. This god/lord with its Zionist spirit is working on two fronts. Let us call them the northern front and the southern front. On the northern front the war is on to kill as many Muslims as possible. Hence, the war grinds on in Iraq and Syria — though that war is not winding down the way it was planned by the imperialist intellectuals and the Israeli elites. The active war in that northern theater is a bonanza for the military-industrial-banking complex.
Now the southern front in its pre-war phase is to become an economic boost for the US and Israel; along with some other minor hangers on. The filthy rich Arabian buffoons have to be stirred into animosity to open their bank accounts for the businessman administration in Washington. And the first sting is what is unfolding before our very eyes in this spat between a trillion dollar Qatar on one side and multi-trillion dollar Arabian tent-states on the other. Quite good for beginners if you happen to be on the profit-making side of this issue. The Saudi pubescent princes cannot see it, but they have failed miserably in putting together their grand alliance against terrorism, which they have been working on for a couple of years now in obeisance to their chauvinistic commanders in Washington and their Talmudic partitions in Tel Aviv. They are huffing and puffing against Qatar and the only other countries to have severed relations with Qatar are Mauritania, Eritrea, the Comoros Islands, and the Yemeni posse of officials who claim to be the “legitimate rulers of Yemen,” now living in Saudi Arabia. Other regimes, such as Jordan and Djibouti, due to their beggar relationship with the flush royals in Arabia, downgraded their relations with Qatar.
This intra-Arabian tragi-comedy is still developing at a nerve-racking rapidity and roller-coaster velocity. This developing story one day, and deteriorating story another day is reminiscent of Arabians in their jahiliyah: chieftains, tribes, revenge, raids, and then settling a score. It is suggestive of the inability to speak to each other; to understand each other and to accommodate each other. An anecdote comes to mind: an Arabian goes to a shop to buy poison bait for a rat infestation at home. He is given poison bait made domestically. He objects and says he wants the best quality and the best must be imported from a foreign country. The clerk at the store tells him, “But when it comes to poison the locals are the most venomous and they make the most toxic bait you will ever find in any market!”
How noxious and toxic are these Saudis? They went to war with the poorest country in the Arabian Peninsula (Yemen) over two years ago with rockets and bombs, artillery fire and air, sea, and ground operations until we have today a Yemen that is ringing the alarm bells in humanitarian quarters because of Saudi war crimes and crimes against humanity.
And at present the same Saudis are threatening the richest country in the Arabian Peninsula (per capita); what do they want to do? Will they be satisfied with a siege, a blockade, a boycott, an embargo, and imposed sanctions? As if these desert beasts cannot be satisfied unless they see starving babies, broken families, refugee populations, blood on hospital floors, in wedding halls, and in funeral ceremonies! The sky belongs to God, but the Saudi coalition wants to close down the skies over and around any country that seeks freedom, independence, and self-determination. If only a small portion of this Saudi vengeance and retribution was directed against the Zionist colonialists and racist imperialists, Israel would not have lasted this long. Qatar Airways cannot fly over practically all the countries around it! The only air space it has is over the Islamic Republic of Iran; while El-Al, the Israeli airline, flies without restrictions over Egypt and Jordan and other undisclosed Muslim countries. Any ventures, business enterprises, or institutions related to Qatar are axed in the Saudi gang of states while Israel has its chambers of commerce, its security contingents, and its intelligence operatives roaming freely throughout this Saudi sphere of influence: Dubai and Abu Dhabi stand out as prime and obvious examples. Bahrain has housed the Israelis for decades now. Israeli products, disguised as Jordanian, Moroccan, etc. are bought and sold everywhere the Saudi sphere of control happens to be.
In this bizarre Saudi realm of command it is kosher for Israelized Muslims to wage war against themselves. It is halal for Israelized Muslims to hate each other. It becomes permissible for Israelized Muslims to take possession of Makkah and Madinah and impose a quota on the Ummah to constrict the Hajj and constrain the ‘Umrah. In this Israelized Islam of Bani Saud a Palestinian who resists Zionism and defends his rights is called a terrorist. And the Israeli Zionists who steal a country and kill a population, in the vocabulary of Saudi Wahhabism, are “Ahl al-Kitab.”
Qatar is not an angel; it is not above suspicion. Qatar is as shamefaced as its counterparts in the GCC. Was it not Qatar that was one of the first Arabian nation-states to receive official Israelis years ago? Was it not Qatar’s ex-foreign minister who said that Hamas has given up on armed resistance? Was it not Qatar that drew the map of Palestine to include only the West Bank and Ghazzah? Didn’t the now extinct Shimon Peres visit Qatar? Didn’t Tzipi Livni visit Qatar also? Isn’t Qatar responsible for arming, financing, and offering logistical help to the organ-chewing and head decapitating mercenaries in Syria?
But no one should lose sight of the Saudi regime of high crimes and misdemeanors. We have to keep our eyes on the moving picture. Don’t get distracted by the branches. We have to pull out this problem from its roots. Those roots are Wahhabia Saudia and the Yahudi Saudi, “The Arabian Nomads are more severe in their kufr and in their nifaq…” (9:97).