ISIS advances on Baghdad, faces little resistance
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ISIS advances on Baghdad, faces little resistance
Israel’s status as a regional superpower is unusual for its lacking a reliable set of local allies. Even where security ties with Egypt, Jordan and Saudi Arabia might be strong, the country is forced to keep those ties in the background. Regardless, it exerts a degree of influence just by its own strategic value. While ties are not public, they are also not available for public scrutiny, perhaps enhancing the relationship opportunities with the above mentioned countries as well as other Arab states.
“Rather than a charm offensive,” asserts Robert Kappel of the German Institute of Global and Area Studies, “Israel needs an assertive regional foreign policy" in order to gain more allies.
But is that really true?
“I don't think that it's either-or,” says Professor Eytan Gilboa of Bar Ilan University. “I think Israel has a regional policy. We don’t see it but it collaborates with Arab countries and the Persian Gulf, especially on Iran and much more on counter-terrorism. It has a regional policy but it's undercover.”
Solving the Israeli-Palestinian Conflict is not a Condition for an Alliance
Turning back specifically to Kappel, Gilboa states “I think he means to use it to deal with the Palestinian issue; then comes the Arab Peace Initiative. The assumption is the PA is unable, unable, to reach an agreement with Israel.”
Gilboa sees an Arab desire to expand relations with Israel in spite of the conflict with the Palestinians. Thus, the Arab Peace Initiative might be evidence the Arab countries are eager to reach out with a public offer that would allow them to open the door for Jerusalem without necessarily having to seal a deal on the conflict.
“I reject one claim: that resolution of the Israeli-Palestinian issue is a condition for a regional alliance. The reason for this is simple - all these countries couldn't care less about the Palestinians. They have an interest in blocking Iran and extremist Islamic organizations. They made all kinds of statements to the contrary but that is not the issue. I don't think there's a linkage here.”
Pressing his point, Gilboa says “There's much less opportunity for regional pressure on the Palestinians than most people think. ‘Collaboration’ is a euphemism for security cooperation on ‘negative interests.’"
Those negative interests are opposition to common regional security challenges like the above mentioned Iran and Islamist terrorist organizations. But to create an alliance, you need much more than common enemies, says Gilboa - you need common interests.
“Turkey ambivalent to ISIS – they share an ideology but still see it as a competitor. Erdogan would like to revive the Ottoman Empire where a non-Arab country leads the Arab world. Where you see this kind of geopolitics, there are a lot of opportunities for collaboration with these countries.”
And actually, “there's criticism of Israel for not exploiting the situation,” says Gilboa.
New Countries?
When Arutz Sheva asked if Israel’s chances for regional alliances might actually increase if Syria were to collapse into several smaller states or the Iraqi Kurdish Regional Government (KRG) were to become a full-fledged independent state, Gilboa sees the idea as having validity.
“I think this is a valid point. I am only hearing that Israel is collaborating with the Kurds there and you can do a little bit more, but it is a lot more than it used to be. The alliance with Turkey had prohibited close collaboration with the Kurds. But now that the relationship is bad, this condition is nonexistent. I think indeed they could do more.”
Focusing on the much more developed autonomy, infrastructure and ambitions of the Iraqi Kurds than other groups that could emerge in Syria, Gilboa says Kurdistan could definitely become a game-changer in the region’s mixture of waxing and waning alliances. Most significantly, it could be something that does not necessarily replace Arab states as a reliable ally, but actually enhances the chances of a strong alliance between those Arab countries and Israel.
“I also think there is room for a strategic alliance between Israel and pro-US Arab states. Not just potential between Israel and the non-Arab groups, but collaboration with Israel, non-Arab states and those emerging new political entities in the Middle East. It could be done on a bilateral basis first – perhaps between Israel and Kurdistan – or multilateral. Once you gain influence with a group like the Kurds, you could translate that into the other (multilateral) type of alliance.”
Israel and Kurdistan have a long history of both covert and overt relations, especially on security. Kurdistan might then be an example of an emerging country where Israel could carry more influence than the Saudis (assuming Kurdistan is able to gain more autonomy or full sovereignty). Saudi Arabia’s diplomatic and military clout is still behind that of Israel, according to Gilboa.
“Saudi Arabia’s power is limited to its ability to manipulate oil markets, but their strength is precarious as major importers like the United States become self-sufficient in that realm. Even their military strength might turn out to be limited as its operation in Yemen is one of the largest it has ever undertaken. The assumption the Saudis might have strong influence over Pakistan and could persuade Islamabad to sell Riyadh a nuclear bomb to pull ahead of the Iranians has been thrown into doubt by Pakistan’s decision not to join the military operation against the Houthis.”
Ultimately, it might be Israel’s power that the Saudis need more.
Anything but a Saudi win (in Yemen) would not be good for Saudi Arabia,” emphasizes Gilboa. On the other hand, “Israel is much stronger diplomatically, militarily and its society is much more vibrant.”
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As if the Mideast weren't troubled enough, we now learn from Rupert Murdoch's Sunday Times that Saudi Arabia has apparently "taken the 'strategic decision' to acquire 'off-the-shelf' atomic weapons from Pakistan."
This and many recent similar stories blame the emergence of Saudi Arabia's alleged nuclear ambitions on President Barack Obama's perceived failure to check Iran. "Saudi Arabia is so angry at the emerging nuclear agreement between Iran and the major powers that it is threatening to develop its own nuclear capability -- one more indication of the deep differences between the United States and the Persian Gulf Arab states over the deal," commented The New York Times in an editorial on May 15.
Saudi Arabia has been playing the nuclear card for years, however. In 2003, the Saudis leaked a "strategic review" that included the option of acquiring a "nuclear capability" as a deterrent. The Guardian, which broke the story, called it a "worrying development" that reflected "Riyadh's estrangement from Washington" and "worries about an Iranian nuclear programme."
In 2006, Saudi Arabia announced its interest in developing a nuclear energy program with other members of the Gulf Cooperation Council. As journalists reported at the time, "Few observers doubt that promoting the idea of a joint atomic energy program between the predominantly Sunni Arab states is a way for Saudi Arabia to send a message to the United States that the Arab state will match Tehran's nuclear power if it needs to."
Years have passed without the Saudis making good on these threats. And, there are strong reasons to question the veracity of leaks about Riyadh's nuclear intentions now. Many experts seriously doubt whether the Saudis really intend to break their treaty obligations and risk international sanctions by trying to acquire nuclear weapons, particularly when they have lived with a nuclear-armed Israel for years.
Saudi Arabia would require many years to build nuclear weapons from scratch; the country has only a very modest atomic energy research program, not a single nuclear power reactor, and no known enrichment facilities. Thus Riyadh's nuclear ambitions only make sense if Saudi Arabia has, as often claimed, arranged with Islamabad to obtain fully armed nuclear weapons in exchange for financing Pakistan's nuclear program.
Such claims, while not totally implausible, remain "speculation," according to the Nuclear Threat Initiative, a leading NGO devoted to proliferation issues. Stories about the Pakistan connection originated with a former Saudi diplomat who defected to the United States in the 1990s. He also claimed that Saudi Arabia provided almost $5 billion to Saddam Hussein to finance an Iraqi nuclear weapons program.
"Riyadh has denied the veracity of Khilewi's statements, and most experts dismiss their credibility," according to NTI. "Most analysts believe it highly unlikely Pakistan would ever follow through with such an agreement, were it to even exist, given a host of disincentives."
The story has been kept alive over the years by Israeli intelligence leaks. As BBC news reported in 2013, "it is Israeli information - that Saudi Arabia is now ready to take delivery of finished warheads for its long-range missiles - that informs some recent US and NATO intelligence reporting. Israel of course shares Saudi Arabia's motive in wanting to worry the US into containing Iran."
Pakistan called the claim of a nuclear deal with Saudi Arabia "speculative, mischievous and baseless." Of course, Islamabad would say that even if the deal were real. But Pakistan would face "huge disincentives" against transferring nuclear weapons, including the threat of international sanctions and the loss of military aid from Washington, notes Philipp Bleek, a proliferation expert at the Monterey Institute of International Studies.
"Moreover," Bleek writes, "Pakistan is locked in an arms race with archrival India, and New Delhi's long-term nuclear weapon production capabilities significantly exceed those of Islamabad, so the latter can ill-afford to spare a meaningful number of nuclear weapons." Pakistan's recent refusal to send troops to support Saudi Arabia's attacks on Yemen is further evidence that it is no puppet of Riyadh.
Bleek observes that the very frequency of leaks about Saudi Arabia's nuclear intentions weighs against the seriousness of that threat:
"History suggests that while some states have trumpeted their potential desire for nuclear weapons -- think Germany in the early years of the Cold War, or Japan more recently -- they tend not to be those that later went on to actually acquire them. And for good reason: calling attention to proliferation intentions is counterproductive if one is intent on actually proliferating. Instead, states tend to draw attention to their potential proliferation in the service of another goal: rallying others to address the security concerns that are motivating potential proliferation, and especially securing protection from powerful allies."
Saudi Arabia's latest nuclear leaks may be having their intended effect of bolstering the Arab monarchy's bargaining leverage with Washington. Although President Obama stopped short of promising a formal military alliance at the recent summit with members of the Gulf Cooperation Council, he reaffirmed America's "ironclad commitment to the security of our gulf partners," and promised more wide-ranging military aid, including creation of "an early-warning capability for a regional missile defense system."
The Obama administration should stop making such concessions in the face of dubious Saudi proliferation warnings. It should simply stick to its course of seeking a comprehensive nuclear agreement with Iran. Such an agreement remains the best guarantee of Saudi Arabia's long-term security. And in the short term, the Saudis have no legitimate reason to fear Iran's nuclear program, which is one of the most closely inspected on Earth.
Iran has no known nuclear weapons capability and has enriched uranium only to levels useful for medical or peaceful atomic energy applications. The International Atomic Energy Agency has uncovered no substantiated evidence of Iran attempting to break out of the Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT), to which Saudi Arabia is also a signatory.
If the Saudis ignore such evidence and really do seek nuclear weapons from Pakistan, the White House should take a hard line and follow the example set by the Ford administration in 1976, which warned South Korea that it would "review the entire spectrum of its relations" if Seoul moved to develop nuclear weapons.
Ideally, the United States should also begin exploring a more productive strategy for reassuring both Saudi Arabia and Iran without making concessions to either one. Instead of selling more arms, reaching new defense pacts, or cracking down further on Iran, why not get behind Saudi Arabia's longstanding support for a nuclear weapon free zone in the Middle East?
That goal was endorsed by the UN General Assembly in 2012. It may be a political non-starter for now in Washington, but the surest way to reduce the risk of proliferation in the Middle East would be to inspect, control, and eventually eliminate the region's one existing nuclear arsenal -- in Israel.
This essay first appeared in <a href="http://ConsortiumNews.com" rel="nofollow">ConsortiumNews.com</a>.
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His opponents can be happy about one thing at least: he is evidently much younger than he himself believes. For the Iranian media, the new Saudi defence minister, Mohammad Salman, is only 30 years old and not 34, as stated on his official website. The news agency Fars, which has close links to the Revolutionary Guards Corps, even claims that the Saudi prince is the youngest defence minister of all time. If the story concerns Mohammad Salman and the Saudi war in Yemen, the adjective "young" would appear to be obligatory for Iranian media.
The most powerful man in Iran, Ali Khamenei, recently issued an uncharacteristically harsh criticism of Saudi Arabia, describing the aerial bombardment of Yemen as genocide and equating the conflict with the Israeli war in Gaza. Iran, he admitted, has always had its issues with Saudi Arabia, but up to now, the Saudis had maintained past form. But ever since the "inexperienced boys in Riyadh have been at the helm", the barbarism has been revealed in its entirety, Khamenei told an audience of selected guests. Strangely, of all these verbal attacks, only the attribute "the boys" is being repeated like a refrain in the media.
For example, the website "Iran Diplomacy", a key foreign policy mouthpiece for moderate Iranian President Hassan Rouhani, writes that the young prince may be trying to demonstrate energy, freshness and drive, but he is in actual fact behaving like an inexperienced and ill-mannered upstart.
Regardless of Mohammad Salman's actual age, the prince is currently leading an unorthodox military coalition of 10 Sunni states, from large and powerful ones such as Pakistan and Egypt through to smaller failed states such as Bahrain and Sudan.
In his weekly media briefing, the coalition's spokesman, Saudi General Ahmad Assiri, said fighter jets were carrying out an average 30 air attacks on neighbouring Yemen every day. His pilots were sparing civilians and primarily targeting the army bases and arsenals of Yemen's ex-President Ali Abdullah Saleh, claimed the general, who also repeatedly dictated the nebulous and unrealistic objectives of the campaign: the Houthi fighters must lay down their weapons, withdraw from the capital Sanaa and finally accept the fugitive ex-President Abd Rabbu Mansour Hadi as head of state.
A Saudi airstrike on Houthi positions in Yemen. According to Saudi General Ahmad Assiri, fighter jets are carrying out an average 30 air attacks a day on neighbouring Yemen. For weeks now, Shia Houthi rebels and army units allied with them have been involved in serious fighting with troops and militias loyal to President Abd Rabbu Mansour Hadi. Saudi Arabia is heading up a military coalition of 10 Sunni states that has been conducting airstrikes against the Houthis since the end of March
Has the prince miscalculated?
But even the general himself cannot possibly believe that these objectives can be reached with airstrikes. He must be aware that ground troops are needed to properly tackle the well-armed Houthi rebels, who have experience of guerrilla combat and who operate across the entire country. He needs an experienced, resolute and confident special force committed to a long, hard war, but troops of this calibre are not currently available.
Pakistan and Egypt, who were initially under discussion, have in the meantime categorically rejected the idea of deploying ground troops. So the bombardments continue for the time being, without any indication that the rebel advance has been impeded to any great extent. But at the same time, the nightly attacks are destroying the infrastructure of the very same security apparatus that was thus far utilised to fight al-Qaida.
In other words, there's chaos wherever you look. After about three weeks of airstrikes and the dropping of around one thousand bombs, the young prince's inexperience was quickly becoming evident. This is a minister who has neither had a military education nor done military service, but who is instead a graduate of Islamic law.
His powerbase is nevertheless secure; as a minister and leader of his gravely-ill father's cabinet, he speaks as the de facto King. In addition, not only is he the Supreme Commander of the Armed Forces, he is also Finance Minister. This is because he heads a commission that monitors oil revenue and expenditure. His opponents may accuse him of being corrupt, greedy and arrogant, but he himself is confident that he is on a path to greater things: Salman is seen as a likely heir to the throne.
But the prince appears to have miscalculated not only militarily, but also politically. Both the Sunni and the Western worlds are meant to believe that his campaign in Yemen is in truth a war against the power-hungry mullahs in Tehran who, after Iraq, Syria and Lebanon now unashamedly want to take control of Yemen. But Tehran is conspicuously holding back and persistently calling for peace. Besides, no concrete military evidence has so far emerged of any Iranian involvement in Yemen, although there are plenty of other mutual provocations occurring on the sidelines of this conflict.
Egyptian President Abdul Fattah al-Sisi (right) visiting Salman, King of Saudi Arabia. Strategic partnership between Saudi Arabia and Egypt: Egypt is part of the Saudi-led alliance carrying out bombing raids on Houthi rebels in Yemen. However, like Pakistan, Egypt has categorically rejected the idea of sending in ground troops
Sexual attacks and the propaganda war dilemma
The latest and most unsavoury incident among these is the sexual harassment of two 14 and 15-year-old Iranian pilgrims by Saudi border guards at Jeddah airport. It is unclear what the police officers did with the two teenagers, whom they separated at the departures gate and led into a room. But once the teenagers had arrived back in Tehran, family members and parliamentary deputies claimed they had been raped and demanded a robust response. The newspapers and media agencies then cautiously took up the story.
But then, a number of websites and social networks quickly jumped in, publishing insults and gutter humour within just a few hours. These were shared several million times. Saudi Arabia was both the target and the cause. Before long, the wave of digital indignation went beyond Saudi Arabia; suddenly anything Arab became the target of caustic, mocking and sometimes racist comments.
Three days later, a demonstration was held in front of the Saudi embassy in Tehran. In terms of both its outward appearance and content, this demonstration was different from all the usual state-organised rallies held to date. Well-dressed residents of northern Tehran stood outside the Saudi representation and shouted slogans that were not at all Islamic in nature, but nationalistic: "Why make the pilgrimage to Mecca?!", their placards read.
Iran's official propaganda machine suddenly faced a dilemma: angry voices against Saudi Arabia may be welcome, but they should not mutate into manifestations of Persian nostalgia or become an expression of anti-Arab or even anti-Islamic feeling. The government in Tehran stuck to its official version of events: it was not rape, but sexual harassment; Saudi Arabia must nevertheless apologise and arrest the police officers responsible.
"The most powerful man in Iran, Ali Khamenei, recently issued an uncharacteristically harsh criticism of Saudi Arabia, describing the aerial bombardment of Yemen as genocide and equating the conflict with the Israeli war in Gaza," writes Ali Sadrzadeh
Pilgrimages to Mecca suspended
Despite such attempts to bring some moderation to the situation, the atmosphere remains tense, and the Iranian government is under pressure to act. Ali Jannati, Minister of Culture and Islamic Guidance, announced on state television that until the two Saudi officials have been arrested and punished, there will be no more pilgrimages to Mecca outside of the official hajj season.
While Saudi Arabia is officially ignoring the incident and saying nothing about it, the propaganda mill in Tehran continues to turn. "The rape and humiliation of pilgrims is systematic," declared Iran's judicial authority, which is controlled by hardliners. This means the statement is a kind of legal-religious opinion — and that has far-reaching consequences because it is questioning Saudi Arabia's credentials as guardian of Islam's holiest shrines for all Muslims.
But there is no mention of all this Iranian agitation and outrage in the Saudi media. Saudi–Iranian relations have clearly reached a low point similar to the one 29 years ago, when the founder of the Iranian Republic Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini declared: "I will probably forgive Saddam Hussein one day, but never Al-Saud."
But such comparisons are always problematic. Iraq, the enemy at that time, has long advanced to the status of ally, and it is Saudi Arabia that is now involved a war without attainable goals.
Dangerous rivalry, uncertain future
The flames of the military and propaganda fires are blazing, and they have huge potential to grow and spread. They could develop into a huge conflagration, a blaze that transgresses borders and affects several countries. Or they will become an unending smouldering fire with an uncertain outcome. Whatever happens, the flames will not die down that quickly.
Where the military adventure in Yemen will eventually lead also depends on the words and deeds of the leaders in Tehran. Senior figures within the Islamic Republic are still trying to keep a cool head, after all, Iran is neither willing nor able to enter into a military adventure – particularly in view of the fact that it is currently entering the world of diplomacy through its nuclear negotiations.
While Foreign Minister Javad Zarif recently presented a four-point peace plan for Yemen in the Spanish capital Madrid – which Saudi Arabia naturally rejected out of hand – the West has strangely thrown its entire weight behind Saudi Arabia. The UN Security Council imposed a weapons embargo on the Houthi rebels and called on them to withdraw from occupied territories. Hours later, the Houthi-controlled Yemeni news agency said the resolution directly supported the enemy and that this act of hostility would be punished by the people.
Ali Sadrzadeh
© Iran Journal/Qantara.de 2015
Translated from the German by Nina Coon
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The Saudi-Israeli alliance and U.S. neocons have pressured President Obama into continuing U.S. hostility toward the secular Syrian government despite major military gains by the Islamic State and Al-Qaeda’s Nusra Front, leading to an emerging catastrophe in the Mideast.
By Daniel Lazare
President Barack Obama and his foreign policy staff are not having a very merry month of May. The Islamic State’s takeover of Ramadi, Iraq, on May 15 was one of the greatest U.S. military embarrassments since Vietnam, but the fall of Palmyra, Syria, just five days later made it even worse. This is an administration that, until recently, claimed to have turned the corner on Islamic State.
In March, Gen. Lloyd Austin, head of U.S. Central Command, assured the House Armed Services Committee that the Islamic State (also known as ISIS or ISIL or Daesh) was in a “defensive crouch” and unable to conduct major operations, while Vice President Joe Biden declared in early April that “ISIL’s momentum in Iraq has halted, and in many places, has been flat-out reversed.”
A couple of weeks later, the President proved equally upbeat following a meeting with Iraqi leader Haider al-Abadi: “We are making serious progress in pushing back ISIL out of Iraqi territory. About a quarter of the territory fallen under Daesh control has been recovered. Thousands of strikes have not only taken ISIL fighters off the war theater, but their infrastructure has been deteriorated and decayed. And under Prime Minister Abadi’s leadership, the Iraqi security forces have been rebuilt and are getting re-equipped, retrained, and strategically deployed across the country.”
But that was so last month. Post-Ramadi, conservatives like Washington Post columnist Charles Krauthammer, former U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations John Bolton, and Sen. Lindsey Graham, R-South Carolina, have lost no time in labeling such views out of touch and “delusional.” And, indeed, Obama sounded strangely detached on Tuesday when he told The Atlantic that ISIS’s advance was not a defeat.
“No, I don’t think we’re losing,” he said, adding: “There’s no doubt there was a tactical setback, although Ramadi had been vulnerable for a very long time, primarily because these are not Iraqi security forces that we have trained or reinforced.” It was rather like the captain of the Titanic telling passengers that the gash below the waterline was a minor opening that would soon be repaired.
Not that the rightwing view is any less hallucinatory. Sen. John McCain, R-Arizona, faults Obama for not doing more to topple the Assad regime in Damascus, as if removing the one effective force against ISIS would be greeted with anything less than glee by Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi and his hordes.
“We don’t have a strategy,” House Speaker John Boehner complained on Tuesday. “For over two years now, I’ve been calling on the President to develop an overarching strategy to deal with this growing terrorist threat. We don’t have one, and the fact is that the threat is growing than what we and our allies can do to stop it.” But when asked what a winning strategy might be, the House Speaker could only reply, “It’s the President’s responsibility.” In other words, Boehner is as clueless as anyone else.
In fact, the entire foreign-policy establishment is clueless, just as it was in 2003 when it all but unanimously backed President George W. Bush’s disastrous invasion of Iraq. Both Republicans and Democrats are caught in a disastrous feedback loop in which journalists and aides tell them what they want to hear and resolutely screen out everything to the contrary. But facts have a way of asserting themselves whether Washington wants them to or not.
The Whys of Failure
With that in mind, here are the real reasons why the U.S. is doing so badly and ISIS is seemingly going from strength to strength.
Reason #1: Obama can’t decide who the real enemy is – ISIS or President Bashar al-Assad.
Even though the White House says it wants to smash the Islamic State, U.S. policy is in fact torn. Obama wants to defeat ISIS in Iraq. But he is unsure what to do on the other side of the border, where he seems to regard it as a potentially useful asset against the Assad regime in Damascus.
This is one of those policy assumptions that no “responsible” journalist dares question. Thus, TheWall Street Journal reported in January that “U.S. strategy is … constrained by a reluctance to tip the balance of power toward Syrian President Bashar al-Assad,” while The New York Times added on Wednesday that the U.S. has purposely bombed ISIS targets in “areas far outside government control to avoid the perception of aiding a leader whose ouster President Obama has called for.”
As long as ISIS limits itself to battling Assad, in other words, the U.S. will hold off. It is only when it sets its sights on other targets that it sees fit to intervene. But there are any number of things wrong with this strategy. One is that it is breathtakingly cynical. Hundreds of thousands of deaths don’t seem to count as the U.S. sets about toppling a regime that has somehow come within its crosshairs.
But another is that it is militarily self-defeating. Allowing ISIS free reign in portions of Syria means allowing it to take root and grow. Harassing the Assad with trumped-up charges about weapons of mass destruction encourages ISIS to expand all the more. As a result, Syria is now “a place where it’s easier for them [i.e. Islamic State] to organize, plan and seek shelter than it is in Iraq,” as an unnamed senior defense official told the Journal.
Perhaps, but the result is that ISIS is able to rest and regroup and prepare for fresh assaults on the other side of the border. Not unlike Afghanistan in the 1980s, the U.S. thinks it can manipulate and control fundamentalist jihadis at will. But as 9/11 demonstrated, it couldn’t be more mistaken.
“In the Middle East the conventional wisdom remains that Islamic State will not be defeated until Assad is,” The Guardian declared on Thursday. Why such conventional wisdom should be accorded more respect than any of the other nonsense that Washington regularly dishes out is not explained. If Assad goes, the likeliest upshot is that ISIS will march into Damascus, its black flags flying. Why this is any sense a positive development is also not explained.
Saudi Double-Dealing
Reason #2: The anti-ISIS coalition is a fraud.
The allies that Obama has recruited in the struggle against ISIS couldn’t be more unreliable. Joe Biden let the cat out of the bag when he told an audience at Harvard’s Kennedy School last October: “our allies in the region were our largest problem in Syria … the Saudis, the emirates, etc., what were they doing? They were so determined to take down Assad and essentially have a proxy Sunni-Shia war, what did they do? They poured hundreds of millions of dollars and tens of thousands of tons of military weapons into anyone who would fight against Assad, except the people who were being supplied were Al Nusra and Al Qaeda and the extremist elements of jihadis coming from other parts of the world.” [Quote at 53:20 of clip.]
The Saudis and the other Arab gulf states thus financed ISIS, armed it, and then cheered it on as it launched itself into a genocidal campaign against Shi‘ites and other minorities. Although Washington claims that the gulf states are allies in the fight against Al-Qaeda, Biden’s statement reveals that they are in fact playing both sides of the net, battling ISIS at times but also funding it when it suits their interests.
To be sure, the gulf states had a change of heart when al-Baghdadi began threatening the House of Saud. As Biden put it: “Now all of a sudden, I don’t want to be too facetious, but they have seen the lord. … Saudi Arabia has stopped funding. Saudi Arabia is allowing training on its soil … the Qataris have cut off their support for the most extreme elements of terrorist organizations, and the Turks … [are] trying to seal their border.”
But if the Saudis have cut off funding for ISIS, they have upped their support for the Al Nusra Front, the so-called “good” Al-Qaeda that has hawks like Walter Russell Mead of The American Interest andLina Khatib of the Carnegie Middle East Center in Beirut burbling with excitement.
But the distinction that conservatives draw between Al Nusra and ISIS is much exaggerated. While the two groups are currently on the outs, that is a comparatively recent development. Just a few months ago, they were friendly enough to launch a joint push into Lebanon and then to team up for an assault on the Yarmouk refugee camp in the southern outskirts of Damascus.
In a few months, they will undoubtedly make up and conduct fresh new assaults as well. The Salafists who have flooded into Syria since 2011 are a fissiparous lot, forever combining, splitting up, and combining again, which is why there are currently more factions than types of coffee at Starbucks.
Moreover, it is far from clear that the Saudis have entirely cut off aid. Financial controls in Saudi Arabia are lax, while corruption, according to former Wall Street Journal editor Karen Elliott House, “is rampant, entrapping almost every Saudi in a web of favors and bribes large and small.”
One scholar estimated that as much as 30 to 40 percent of oil revenue disappears into private hands. [See As’ad Abukhalil, The Battle for Saudi Arabia: Royalty, Fundamentalism, and Global Power (New York: Seven Stories, 2004), p. 88]
Moreover, Saudi religious organizations like the International Islamic Relief Organization, the Muslim World League, and the World Assembly of Muslim Youth are a law unto themselves. Although the Saudis have repeatedly promised to rein in terrorist funding by such outfits, Hillary Clinton complained in a secret State Department memo that they had still not done so as of late 2009 – and it is unlikely that they have taken action since.
So promises that the money flow has stopped are less than reassuring. Indeed, the Saudis have a long history of hedging their bets. They turned against Osama bin Laden after Al-Qaeda began bombing Saudi targets in 2003. But they most likely continued to maintain back-channel communications while leading members of the royal family, according to testimony by Zacarias Moussaoui, the so-called “twentieth hijacker,” funneled money to the group in the years leading up to the attack on the World Trade Center. If Saudi money reached Al-Qaeda then, it is likely that it is still reaching ISIS now, despite Saudi claims to the contrary.
Ignoring Sectarian War
Reason #3: The real problem is a growing sectarian war that the U.S. has done nothing to constrain.
ISIS is merely the forward striking arm of a growing Sunni offensive that is causing turmoil throughout the Middle East. Saudis used to talk about a “Shi‘ite crescent” stretching from Damascus to Baghdad and Tehran. But since Shi‘ite Houthis began taking up arms in Yemen, they have been raging about “a full Shia moon” encompassing Sana’a as well.
As its paranoia shoots through the roof, Saudi Arabia has responded by pounding Yemen with nightly air assaults, funding Sunni terrorists in Syria, sending troops into Bahrain to crush a democratic revolt – Bahrain is approximately 70 percent Shi’ite, but the royal family is Sunni – and engaging in a dangerous war of words with Iran
Saudi Arabia has also stepped up pressure on its own 15 percent Shi‘ite minority, largely concentrated in the kingdom’s vast Eastern Province, home to the bulk of its oil industry. On Friday, ISIS claimed credit for a suicide bombing that killed at least 21 people at a Shi‘ite mosque in Qatif governate, located just a few miles from the Bahrain causeway. But hundreds of Wahhabist websites calling for the total elimination of Shi‘ism undoubtedly egged the bombers on. [Click here, see page 152]
The result is a growing sectarian rift that makes secularism all but impossible. While the U.S. pushes Baghdad for even-handed treatment of Shi‘ites and Sunnis, its long-term alliance with the war party in Riyadh suggests the opposite, i.e. that such pleas are a smokescreen for policies that are frankly and openly pro-Sunni.
Given Biden’s statement at the Kennedy School that Saudi Arabia and its gulf allies were “determined to take down Assad and essentially have a proxy Sunni-Shia war,” one might think that the U.S. would step back and refuse to have anything to do with a war of extermination against Syria’s religious minorities. Instead, it went along.
But now, Biden went on, Obama has succeeded in persuading the Saudis to cease funding ISIS and undertake the task of toppling Assad themselves. He has “put together a coalition of our Sunni neighbors,” the vice president went on, “because America can’t once again go into a Muslim nation and be aggressive. It has to be led by Sunnis.”
Only Sunnis have the moral authority, evidently, to launch a war of aggression against a Shi‘ite-led government.
Rather than tamping down religious conflict, America’s grossly lop-sided policies have thus done everything to encourage it. The results are a godsend for ISIS and Al-Nusra and equal and opposite Shi‘ite militias as well. No matter how many bombs the U.S. and its allies drop, ISIS can only grow stronger the more the political climate deteriorates.
The Oil Card
Reason #4: Oil.
Saudi Arabia is a growing political liability. Its policies have become so toxic that even old allies are abandoning it. Pakistan has refused to supply troops for the kingdom’s insane assault on Yemen despite being a long-term recipient of Saudi aid while Egypt has also balked at sending in forces.
Given a regime that is increasingly isolated and suspicious of the outside world, the obvious solution for the U.S. would be to loosen its ties with Riyadh, refuse to have anything to do with a religious war against Assad, and try to reach an accommodation with Damascus just as it is doing with Tehran.
But the U.S. can’t. Saudi Arabia is not just any country, but America’s oldest partner in the Middle East. It sits on top of one-fifth of the world’s proven oil reserves and is the dominant partner in the six-nation Gulf Cooperation Council, which accounts for another 20 percent of global oil reserves and 23 percent of the world’s proven gas reserves.
The kingdom has nearly $700 billion in foreign-currency reserves and is also the world’s biggest importer of military hardware, overwhelmingly from the U.S. It is thus a country that Washington feels it cannot do without, which is why, in a classic case of the tail wagging the dog, the U.S. these days is increasingly following the Saudi Arabia lead in Syria, Yemen, Bahrain, and elsewhere as well.
The consequences have been all too predictable. Indeed, the Defense Intelligence Agency warned nearly three years ago that Salafists, the Muslim Brotherhood, and Al-Qaeda were the dominant force in the anti-Assad movement and that their backers in Saudi Arabia and the other gulf states were seeking to establish a Salafist stronghold in eastern Syria.
In an August 2012 report, the DIA observed that the implications for Iraq were ominous., noting Al-Qaeda’s growing strength in Syria “creates the ideal atmosphere for AQI [Al Qaeda in Iraq] to return to its old pockets in Mosul and Ramadi and will provide a renewed momentum under the presumption of unifying the jihad among Sunni Iraq and Syria and the rest of the Sunnis in the Arab world against what it considers one enemy, the dissenters [i.e. the Shi‘ites].
“ISI [Islamic State of Iraq, forerunner of ISIS] could also declare an Islamic state through its union with other terrorist organizations in Iraq and Syria, which will create grave danger in regards to unifying Iraq and the protection of its territory.”
Military intelligence, it seems, is not always an oxymoron. Nonetheless, the White House pressed ahead. Overstretched, beleaguered, and increasingly dependent on its Saudi allies, the American empire felt it had no alternative but to follow Riyadh down the rabbit hole, hoping against hope that the consequences would not prove too dire. It was wrong.
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© 2015 Consortium News
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Prominent militia leader Mozgovoi was assassinated on Saturday evening after the vehicle he was traveling in ran into an ambush.
- WARNING GRAPHIC CONTENT
- ISIS video shows how captured city now lies in ruins after fierce fighting
- They cruelly show off ID cards supposedly belonging to dead Iraqi troops
- They took city on May 17 after murdering over 500, displacing thousands
- Iraqi forces and militia groups have retaken nearby town from ISIS control
Published: 15:36 EST, 23 May 2015 | Updated: 17:55 EST, 23 May 2015
A new video reveals the ferocity of battling inside Ramadi as Iraq's military desperately try to recapture the city from the clutches of ISIS.
The footage appears to show Islamic State fighters attacking government troops with automatic weapons and rocket launchers - and cruelly showing off identity cards of their slaughtered enemies.
It comes amid a small military victory for Iraq's forces who reclaimed a small town from ISIS just east of Ramadi.
A coalition of government soldiers and Iranian-backed militia groups, who have amassed in the nearby Euphrates Valley, seized back Husaybah which lies four miles away.
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Insurgency: A violent new video which appears to be from inside Ramadi shows ISIS militants battling with Iraqi forces
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Battle: The violent footage shows Islamic State fighters setting off explosives (pictured) and attacking their enemies with automatic weapons and rocket launchers
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War-torn: It reveals the staggering extent of destruction inside Ramadi, which was conquered by ISIS last week, where buildings are destroyed and vehicles ablaze
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Fierce: The militants fire indiscriminately at their enemies inside the city, where they slaughtered over 500 to seize control
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Aftermath: The bodies of dead soldiers (pictured) litter the streets of Ramadi where violent clashes have been taking place for weeks
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Surrounded: Islamic State could make a move on Iraq's capital Baghdad after seizing control of Ramadi and Fallujah just to its west
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But the battle-ravaged city of Ramadi remains overwhelmingly under Islamic State control after the terror group captured it on May 17 - murdering over 500 and displacing tens of thousands in the process.
A police colonel on the front lines said 'Husaybah area is now under full control and the forces are now advancing' to liberate neighbouring towns as they progress west towards Ramadi.
Retaking Ramadi will be much more challenging because ISIS has reportedly laid booby traps around it.
Its buildings have are in rubble after weeks of savage fighting and dead bodies of fallen soldiers litter the city streets, the newly released video shows.
It also shows a massive cache of weapons including rocket launchers, grenades, automatic weapons and sniper rifles, which suggests Islamic State are prepared for a long battle.
The depraved militants triumphantly hold up a collection of ID cards which seemingly belong to Iraqi soldiers they have killed.
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Seized: Iraqi troops reclaimed a small town east of Ramadi today but the battle-ravaged city remains overwhelmingly under Islamic State control
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Cruel: In the video released on ISIS social media channels, the militants cruelly show of the ID cards of their slaughtered enemies
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Enemy: One Islamic State fighter holds up a uniform belonging to a slain member of Iraq's Emergency Response Brigade
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Violence: The 13-minute video shows ISIS fighters shooting at their enemies and laying down covering fire (pictured) for their allies
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Triumphant: Amid the violent clashes, ISIS militants walk openly through the streets of the war-torn city
Iraq's soldiers were heavily criticised for fleeing during the battle of Ramadi, whose fall was Islamic State's greatest military victory in over a year.
As was the strategy of the United States-led coalition whose airstrikes on the city failed to prevent an overwhelming defeat.
Taking Ramadi will... make the Shia militia in Baghdad even more radicalised and more dangerous... And this is what ISIS wants, it wants it to come out and have sectarian scrap which forces all the Sunni's to go towards ISIS
Professor Gareth Stansfield, RUSI
It forced the country's Prime Minister Haider Al-Abadi to deploy Shi'ite militia groups, who occupy the capital Baghdad, to take on ISIS in Ramadi.
Experts warned the move played into Islamic State's grand plan to plunge the region into an 'all-out sectarian war'.
'We're in for a very long summer of fighting in Iraq,' the Middle East director of counter-terrorism think-tank RUSI told MailOnline.
Professor Gareth Stansfield said: 'Taking Ramadi will... make the Shia militia in Baghdad even more radicalised and more dangerous.
'And this is what ISIS wants, it wants it to come out and have sectarian scrap which forces all the Sunni's to go towards ISIS.'
Washington has tried to remain upbeat after the loss of Ramadi and this historic Syrian city of Palmyra by playing them down as tactical setbacks.
The extremist group reportedly controls half of Syria - even though much of this territory is uninhabited.
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War: An ISIS militant throws a grenade at an unseen enemy in the city of Ramadi, whose buildings lie in rubble after weeks of fighting
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Onslaught: ISIS fire automatic weapons, rocket propelled grenades and huge mortar shells (pictured) towards their enemy
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Ammunition: The huge cache of weapons which ISIS seized after taking Ramadi suggests the terror group is prepared for a long battle
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Weaponry: The militants seem to have seized huge amounts of weapons and munitions from the Iraqi soldiers who fled Ramadi
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Dangerous: Amid the swathes of rockets and machine guns, the militants seem to possess a huge sniper rifle
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Power: A counter-terrorism expert has claimed ISIS now also controls around half of Syria although most of this territory is believed to be uninhabited
Counter-terrorism expert Fabrice Balanche claims it 'now dominates central Syria, a crossroads of primary importance' that allows it to advance towards the capital Damascus and its third city Homs.
The jihadists, who now control roughly half of Syria, reinforced their self-declared transfrontier 'caliphate' by seizing Syria's Al-Tanaf crossing on the Damascus-Baghdad highway late Thursday.
Fabrice Balanche, a French expert on Syria, said 'IS now dominates central Syria, a crossroads of primary importance' that could allow it to advance towards the capital and third city Homs.
Islamic State's advances in both countries have forced tens of thousands of innocent civilians from their homes - sparking a serious humanitarian crisis.
At least 40,000 are now homeless after fleeing Ramadi and being forced entry into the capital Baghdad where authorities are concerned there could be terrorists hiding among them.
An Iraqi politician has echoed calls from relief organisations for the authorities to open a bridge where thousands of displaced people have been waiting to reach safer provinces such as Baghdad.
Saleh Mutlaq said: 'The constitution does not allow anyone to forbid a citizen from entering any province.'
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The Islamic State continued its push toward Baghdad and on other fronts. Saturday, the group took the Iraq-Syrian town of Husaybah on the Tigris, rounding off its control of the border and the river and gaining an easy and rapid route for transferring reinforcements between the two countries.
The Islamists closed the distance to the big Iraqi base of Habbaniyah, taking Khalidiya on the way.DEBKAfile: Claims in Baghdad that Iraqi forces are preparing to recapture Ramadi have no substance in fact. The only place the ISIS is facing resistance is at the eastern exit of Khalidiya, where pro-Iranian Shiite militias are attempting to bar their progress towards Habbaniyah whic would bring them to within 12 km from Baghdad.
Former head of the British army, Lord Dannatt, said Sunday that since the coalition air force campaign had failed to stop the ISIS advance, it was time to “think the previously unthinkable” and send 5,000 ground troops to fight the Islamists in Syria and Iraq. In an interview with Sjky TV, he said the situation in Syria was different from Iraq. “There, he said, t[the West] had confused objectives” unable to decide who was worst – Bashar Assad or ISIS. In Lord Dannatt's view, Assad must be supported for the higher priority which was getting ISIS stopped.
Arabic-language newspaper Rai al-Youm reported on Saturday that Israel has offered Saudi Arabia to use its Iron Dome anti-rocket technology.
The offer was made to the Kingdom to defend its border with Yemen that has come under numerous rocket attacks.
According to the report, the offer was made last week during meetings in Amman between the Saudis and the US ambassador to Jordan. A spokesman for the Jordanian government said that he was not aware of a meeting between the Saudis and the Israelis in Amman, the news outlet reported.
Saudi Arabia reportedly rejected the offer, according to the London based newspaper.
On Thursday and Friday cross border rocket attacks launched from inside Yemen killed two people in southern Saudi Arabia, Saudi Arabia's state news agency SPA reported on Friday.
SPA quoted a Civil Defense official in the southwestern province of Jizan as saying that a child was killed and three other children were wounded on Friday in the al-Tawal region.
A rocket attack on Thursday killed one citizen and wounded two others in al Hosn village, the agency reported earlier.
On Friday, Saudi-led coalition warplanes pounded Houthi-held military outposts on the hills overlooking the Yemeni capital Sanaa, as the eight-week military offensive aimed at ousting the rebels intensified over the weekend.
The airstrikes came as two Shi'ite mosques, one in the eastern province of Saudi Arabia and the other in Sanaa, were targeted by explosive devices and suicide bombers during Friday prayers.
Coalition fighter jets also targeted the presidential compound in the capital on Friday, where the Shi'ite rebels seized control in September.
The Saudi-led coalition of Sunni Arab nations intervened in Yemen's civil war on March 26 with an all out air assault to force the Iran-allied Houthis to retreat from territories they have seized since last year, and restore the power of exiled Yemeni President Abd-Rabbu Mansour Hadi.
Friday's violence followed overnight airstrikes that targeted Houthi controlled military outposts of the notorious Republican Guard troops in the capital.
At least four missiles hit one of the Guard's training camps in Sanaa late Thursday (May 21) night.
The latest spike in violence comes ahead of UN sponsored Yemen peace talks to be held in Geneva on May 28.
The offer was made to the Kingdom to defend its border with Yemen that has come under numerous rocket attacks.
According to the report, the offer was made last week during meetings in Amman between the Saudis and the US ambassador to Jordan. A spokesman for the Jordanian government said that he was not aware of a meeting between the Saudis and the Israelis in Amman, the news outlet reported.
Saudi Arabia reportedly rejected the offer, according to the London based newspaper.
On Thursday and Friday cross border rocket attacks launched from inside Yemen killed two people in southern Saudi Arabia, Saudi Arabia's state news agency SPA reported on Friday.
SPA quoted a Civil Defense official in the southwestern province of Jizan as saying that a child was killed and three other children were wounded on Friday in the al-Tawal region.
A rocket attack on Thursday killed one citizen and wounded two others in al Hosn village, the agency reported earlier.
On Friday, Saudi-led coalition warplanes pounded Houthi-held military outposts on the hills overlooking the Yemeni capital Sanaa, as the eight-week military offensive aimed at ousting the rebels intensified over the weekend.
The airstrikes came as two Shi'ite mosques, one in the eastern province of Saudi Arabia and the other in Sanaa, were targeted by explosive devices and suicide bombers during Friday prayers.
Coalition fighter jets also targeted the presidential compound in the capital on Friday, where the Shi'ite rebels seized control in September.
The Saudi-led coalition of Sunni Arab nations intervened in Yemen's civil war on March 26 with an all out air assault to force the Iran-allied Houthis to retreat from territories they have seized since last year, and restore the power of exiled Yemeni President Abd-Rabbu Mansour Hadi.
Friday's violence followed overnight airstrikes that targeted Houthi controlled military outposts of the notorious Republican Guard troops in the capital.
At least four missiles hit one of the Guard's training camps in Sanaa late Thursday (May 21) night.
The latest spike in violence comes ahead of UN sponsored Yemen peace talks to be held in Geneva on May 28.
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