Trump And Saudi Arabia Agree To Take “Good And Evil” Fight To Iran
Kurt
Nimmo
21
May, 2017
Following
a landmark arms deal, President Trump told the Saudis they must
confront Iran. He accused the Iranians of fomenting “destruction
and chaos” in the Middle East and providing “safe harbor,
financial backing and the social standing needed for recruitment.”
US President Donald Trump deplores Iran as a "destabilising force" http://bbc.in/2r5YeTZ
Saudi
King Salman bin Abdulaziz Al Saud agreed. He said “the Iranian
regime has been the spearhead of global terrorism.”
In
fact, King Salman, Saudi Arabia and Qatar, are the spearhead of
global terrorism.
Salman
“oversaw the collection of private funds to support the Afghan
mujahideen in the 1980s… In the early years of the war—before the
US and the Kingdom ramped up their secret financial support for the
anti-Soviet insurgency—this private Saudi funding was critical to
the war effort. At its peak, Salman was providing $25 million a month
to the mujahedeen,” writes former CIA official Bruce
Riedel.
The mujahideen would later splinter into al-Qaeda and the Taliban.
In
1992, Salman was appointed by King Fahd to found and head the Saudi
High Commission for Aid to Bosnia (SHC), which by 2002 had delivered
over $600 million in aid, writes Nafeez
Ahmed.
But a raid by NATO forces on SHC’s Sarajevo office shortly after 9/11 found a range of terrorist materials, including photographs and detailed maps marking government buildings in Washington, before-and-after photos of terrorist attacks on the World Trade Center, and hand-written notes of meetings with Osama bin Laden. An estimated $41 million of the SHC’s operating funds was missing.
Yet throughout this period, US intelligence was fully aware of Saudi sponsorship of al-Qaeda affiliated militants, but did nothing about it.
NSA intercepts caught the Saudis transferring money to radical Islamic terrorists. Investigative journalist Seymour Hersh wrote that “the intercepts show that the Saudi government, working through Prince Salman [bin Abdul Aziz], contributed millions to charities that, in turn, relayed the money to fundamentalists. ‘We knew that Salman was supporting all of the causes.’”
The NSA intercepts proved, according to the New Yorker, that senior Saudi royals were “channelling hundreds of millions of dollars in what amounts to protection money to fundamentalist groups that wish to overthrow it.” By 1996, the US intelligence community had amassed clear evidence that “Saudi money was supporting Osama bin Laden’s al-Qaeda and other extremist groups in Afghanistan, Lebanon, Yemen, and Central Asia, and throughout the Persian Gulf region.”
Indeed, that year an extensive CIA report on the use of NGOs as fronts for terrorist financing concluded: “We continue to have evidence that even high ranking members of the collecting or monitoring agencies in Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, and Pakistan—such as the Saudi High Commission [run by then Prince Salman]—are involved in illicit activities, including support for terrorists.”
In
early 2015, al-Qaeda operative Zacarias Moussaoui claimed in
testimony “that members of the Saudi royal family provided
extensive funding to al-Qaeda throughout the 1990s, including Prince
Turki al-Faisal and Prince Bandar. Moussaoui also described ‘meeting
in Saudi Arabia with Salman, then the crown prince, and other Saudi
royals while delivering them letters from Osama bin Laden.’”
During
Trump’s speech, Salman called on Gulf Cooperation Council leaders
to “reject extremism, work on fighting all forms of terrorism, stop
its financing and its propagation, dry up its sources, and stand firm
in confronting this scourge that poses a danger to all of humanity.”
He
promised to prosecute terrorists and terror financing, to “eradicate”
the ISIS terror army “and other terrorist organizations regardless
of their religious, sect or ideology.”
Trump headed to #MiddleEast to push "Arab NATO" against #Iran. Meanwhile, Iran reelects a President known for negotiations. Who is a threat?
Left
unmentioned is the fact virtually all terror groups in the Middle
East—including the Islamic State, al-Qaeda, and al-Nusra (now
Jabhat Fatah al-Sham)—subscribe to the Wahhabi version of Sunni
Islam and would not exist without the assistance and encouragement of
the Gulf Emirates.
Donald Trump has launched a fierce attack on Iran, just one day after the country re-elected its moderate president on a platform of re-engagement with the outside world.
Speaking to an audience of Muslim leaders in Saudi Arabia, the US president singled out Tehran for fuelling “the fires of sectarian conflict and terror” as he called on Gulf nations to “drive out terrorists and extremists”.
Mr Trump’s stance contrasts starkly with his predecessor Barack Obama, who two years ago struck a landmark nuclear deal with Iran and whose administration had a strained relationship with Tehran’s Sunni rivals in the Gulf.
He
said the fight against Iran is a “battle between good and vil.”
The
Financial Times did not clarify how Obama’s “strained
relationship” with Saudi Arabia resulted in a $115 billion weapons
sale. It was a record that beat the Jared Kushner negotiated $110
billion arms deal.
Kurt
Nimmo is the editor of Another
Day in the Empire, where this article first
appeared. He is the former lead editor and writer of
Infowars.com. Donate
to ADE Here.
Roger
Stone: Trump Receiving Award Used As Propaganda In Arab World
Trump’s
Speech in Riyadh Signals US Alignment with Global Terrorism and
Extremism
22
May, 2017
Bill
Van Auken
Riddled
with hypocrisy, clichés and absurdities, President Donald Trump’s
speech Sunday before an assembly of monarchs and despots in Saudi
Arabia spelled out an agenda of escalating US militarism throughout
the Middle East and a buildup in particular toward war with Iran.
Hailed
by a fawning American media as “presidential”–supposedly
eclipsing for the moment the crises and factional struggles engulfing
the administration–the speech was reportedly drafted by Stephen
Miller, the extreme right-wing ideologue credited with being the
chief architect of Trump’s abortive executive order banning people
from seven predominantly Muslim nations from entering the US.
Much
in Trump’s half-hour address echoed the speech delivered by Barack
Obama in Cairo eight years earlier. Both presidents declared their
desire to reset US relations with the Middle East, while absurdly
posturing as leaders of a pacifist nation seeking only good for the
region and offering to head up a united struggle against “violent
extremism.”
In
what was meant as a rhetorical invocation to action against
terrorism, Trump told his audience,
“Drive
them out. Drive them out of your places of worship. Drive them out of
your communities. Drive them out of your holy land. And drive them
out of this earth.”
Like
Obama before him, Trump had no interest in dealing with who brought
Al Qaeda and similar forces in, as the historical trail leads
directly to the CIA in Afghanistan and US imperialism’s
longstanding support for right-wing Islamist organizations and
terrorist groups as a counterweight to left nationalist and socialist
influence in the Arab and Islamic world. Jointly, the US and Saudi
Arabia continue to fund and arm such forces in their drive for
regime-change in Syria.
Both
speeches were laced with flowery tributes to Islamic culture. Trump
noted in particular how impressed he was with the “splendor” of
Saudi Arabia and the “grandeur” of the palace in which the
so-called Arab Islamic American Summit had been convened.
What
separated the two addresses were the different shifts in strategy by
Washington. While Obama sought to repair the damage done by the Bush
administration’s criminal war in Iraq by offering a new face for US
imperialism, Trump traveled to Saudi Arabia to make clear his
administration’s break with his predecessor’s policy of seeking a
rapprochement with Iran based on the 2015 nuclear deal. He adopted an
openly confrontational stance toward Tehran.
“Above
all, America seeks peace–not war,” Trump
proclaimed, in what stood out as the most blatant of the many lies in
his brief address. The reality is that US wars in the region have
killed millions over the past decade-and-a-half. And the thrust of
the US president’s visit to Saudi Arabia, his first stop in a
nine-day foreign tour, is the preparation for new and even bloodier
conflicts.
This
was made plain by the principal agreements forged between Trump and
the Saudi monarchy, which included a $110 billion arms deal that
incorporates the option to purchase $350 billion worth of weapons
over the next 10 years.
The
arms agreement “supports
the long-term security of Saudi Arabia and the entire Gulf region,”
Secretary of State Rex Tillerson, the former ExxonMobil CEO, told
reporters in Riyadh, “in
particular in the face of the malign Iranian influence and
Iranian-related threats which exist on Saudi Arabia’s borders on
all sides.”
In
his speech, Trump painted Iran as the principal state sponsor of
terrorism, accusing Tehran of providing terrorists with “safe
harbor, financial backing, and the social standing needed for
recruitment,”
and fueling “the
fires of sectarian conflict and terror,”
all charges that could be leveled, with justification, against his
Saudi hosts.
He
portrayed the US cruise missile attack on Syria last month–followed
just last week by the US bombing of a pro-government militia in the
southeastern part of the country–as part of a wider struggle
against Iranian influence. He went on to call upon “all
nations of conscience”
to “isolate
Iran, deny it funding for terrorism and pray for the day when the
Iranian people have the just and righteous government they deserve.”
That
he was speaking in Saudi Arabia, a brutally repressive absolute
monarchy, just two days after more than 70 percent of Iranian voters
participated in a sharply contested election, did nothing to blunt
Trump’s call for regime-change.
He
specifically praised Saudi Arabia and its allies for having “taken
strong action against Houthi militants in Yemen.”
The near-genocidal Saudi war has killed some 12,000 Yemenis, while
destroying basic infrastructure in the Arab world’s poorest
country, leaving over 7 million people on the brink of starvation and
unleashing a cholera epidemic that threatens a massive death toll.
In
March, US Defense Secretary James “Mad Dog” Mattis issued a memo
calling for stepped-up US support for this criminal war, in which the
Pentagon is already supplying intelligence and logistical backing to
the Saudi bombing campaign.
Part
of the weapons deal signed by Trump involves the shipment of
precision-guided munitions that had been cut off in a highly limited
gesture of disapproval of Saudi tactics in Yemen by the Obama
administration, which itself concluded over $100 billion worth of
weapons deals with Riyadh. Also included in the new deal are tanks,
artillery, helicopters and other weaponry that can be directly
funneled into the slaughter in Yemen.
In
addition to his speech and the signing of arms and investment deals,
Trump participated in a meeting of the Gulf Cooperation Council, the
Saudi-led coalition of Gulf oil sheikdoms. Trump administration
officials have raised the objective of using the GCC as the
foundation of a Sunni Arab version of NATO directed at military
confrontation with Iran.
Beyond
the drive to militarily confront Iran, a principal regional rival of
US imperialism in the Middle East, and the huge profits that Saudi
arms purchases reap for the US military industrial complex, there are
broader strategic considerations in the US turn toward a closer
alliance with Riyadh.
Some
of these issues were outlined on the eve of Trump’s trip in a piece
published by the influential Washington think tank the Center for
Strategic and International Studies and authored by Anthony
Cordesman, a longtime Pentagon adviser. First among them is,
according to Cordesman, “the continued level of US dependence on
Saudi help in securing the stable flow of Gulf oil.”
While
US imports from the Gulf have fallen sharply over the past
quarter-century, Cordesman cites “indirect dependence” in terms
of the impact a disruption in oil exports would have on global energy
prices and the world capitalist economy. In particular, he points to
the dependence of Asian economies on Gulf petroleum exports.
If
the United States failed in “providing power projection forces and
arms” to the region, he writes, its principal global rival, China,
might fill the void. “China
may not yet be ready to try to assume the role, but the entire South
China Sea crisis would pale to near insignificance if China became
the de facto guarantor of Gulf stability.”
Cordesman
continues:
“The
real-world nature of US influence and power in the Pacific would be
cut massively, China’s leverage over other major Asian economies
like Japan and South Korea would be sharply increased, and the
potential rise in tension between China and India–and cut in
India’s relative position–would have a massive impact on the
balance of power in South Asia and the Indian Ocean.”
In
other words, the turn toward closer relations with Saudi Arabia and
the related Gulf oil sheikdoms is bound up with US imperialism’s
mounting conflict with China, which it has identified as the
principal challenge to the drive for American global hegemony.
Washington is determined to dominate Asia, including China, by
maintaining the military power to choke off the region’s energy
imports.
The
fact that the sclerotic House of Saud, one of the world’s last
absolute monarchies, has become a lynchpin of Washington’s
imperialist strategy, not only in the Middle East but globally, is a
measure of the crisis of American and world capitalism.
Oil
revenues, which account for fully 90 percent of the kingdom’s
export earnings, have been cut nearly in half since 2014. Last month,
the government was forced to reverse itself on austerity measures
that hit the military and public employees over fear that declining
living standards and rising unemployment are creating the conditions
for social revolt.
In
the predominantly Shia Eastern Province, the center of the kingdom’s
oil production, security forces laid siege to the town of Awamiyah, a
center of resistance to the regime, during the week preceding Trump’s
visit. Combined with the failure of the Saudi bid to topple the Assad
regime in Syria by supporting Al Qaeda-linked militias and the
regime’s inability to retake Yemen from the Houthi rebels, the
deepening domestic crisis is creating the conditions for
revolutionary upheavals against Washington’s principal ally in the
Arab world.
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