{"id":226605,"date":"2016-02-20T21:39:52","date_gmt":"2016-02-20T21:39:52","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/?p=226605"},"modified":"2016-11-30T01:38:55","modified_gmt":"2016-11-30T00:38:55","slug":"saudi-arabias-dictator-demands-regime-change-in-syria-otherwise-ww-iii","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/editorials\/saudi-arabias-dictator-demands-regime-change-in-syria-otherwise-ww-iii\/","title":{"rendered":"Saudi Arabia\u2019s Dictator Demands Regime-Change in Syria \u2014 Otherwise WW III"},"content":{"rendered":"

Eric Zuesse<\/span><\/p>\n

As has been\u00a0recently reported,<\/span><\/a>\u00a0many experts on international relations are saying that the danger of a nuclear war between NATO and Russia is greater now than it was during the Cuban Missile Crisis in 1962 \u2014 in other words: greater than ever before in history. But it has just ratcheted a bit higher still:<\/span><\/p>\n

The owner of Saudi Arabia, King Salman al-Saud, speaking through his spokesperson and chosen Foreign Minister, in\u00a0an interview that was published on February 19th in Germany\u2019s magazine Spiegel<\/i>,<\/span><\/a>\u00a0says that he demands the resignation or else the overthrow of Syria\u2019s President Bashar al-Assad, who is allied with both Iran and Russia.\u00a0Polls of the Syrian public, by Western polling firms<\/span><\/a>, consistently show Assad to be overwhelmingly approved by the Syrian people to be the leader of Syria, and show that Syrians blame the United States for causing ISIS, which is disapproved by 76% of Syrians. The other named jihadist groups, such as al-Nusra which is Al Qaeda in Syria, received similarly low approval-ratings from the Syrian public. In stark contrast, a poll of Saudi Arabians shows that 92% of them approve of ISIS<\/span><\/a>. But the United States is allied with the fundamentalist-Islamic dictatorship Saudi Arabia, against the separation-of-church-and-state democracy of Russia. So too is America\u2019s fellow-NATO-member Turkey allied with the fundamentalist Muslims, and they\u2019re publicly threatening to invade Syria (another nation that has strict separation of church-and-state<\/span><\/a>) with ground troops. They\u2019re backed by planes that were supplied to the Sauds by the United States.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Robert Parry reported on February 18th,<\/a><\/span>\u00a0“A source close to Russian President Vladimir Putin told me that the\u00a0Russians have warned Turkish President Recep\u00a0Tayyip Erdogan that Moscow\u00a0is prepared to use tactical nuclear weapons if necessary to save their\u00a0troops in the face\u00a0of a Turkish-Saudi onslaught. Since Turkey is a\u00a0member of NATO, any such conflict could quickly escalate into a\u00a0full-scale nuclear confrontation.”<\/span><\/p>\n

The Saudi Foreign Minister also says that his country is waiting for U.S. President Barack Obama to take the lead in forcing Assad to resign, because, he says, otherwise Assad will necessarily be overthrown in a war, and there is a possibility that World War III could result, though he also says, “I don’t think World War III is going to happen in Syria.\u201d He even says that to talk about \u201cthe danger of World War III \u2026 is an over-dramatization,\u201d because he expects America to lead in the overthrow of Assad. He\u2019s waiting for Obama\u2019s decison.<\/span><\/p>\n

Spiegel\u2019s<\/i>\u00a0 interviewer asked some challenging follow-up questions, such as, “Is Saudi Arabia not financing extremist groups?\u00a0Zarif speaks of attacks by al-Qaida.\u201d To that one, he answered, \u201cYes, but that\u2019s not us. We don\u2019t tolerate terrorism.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

In the UAE, the TV network of Dubai telecast on 22 January 2016 an interview with the former Imam of the Grand Mosque in Mecca Saudi Arabia, a high authority on the Sauds\u2019 faith, which is likewise the faith of the six royal families of UAE, and this interview was telecast in Arabic, so the expectation was naturally to be speaking to the locals instead of to foreigners. However, a youtube on January 27th included subscripts in English, and is headlined \u201cFormer Imam of the Grand Mosque in Mecca, Adel Kalbani: Daesh ISIS have the same beliefs as we do.\u201d<\/span><\/a> He states there that the only difference between ISIS and their faith is that (1:55-) \u201cWe follow the same thought but apply it in a refined way,\u201d because Saudis believe that (1:12-) \u201cif we execute them [people] in a way that does not show us in a bad way, then that\u2019s fine,\u201d whereas ISIS\u2019s way is so (1:09-) \u201cbrutal that it ruins our image in front of the world.\u201d But that\u2019s just the Saudi faith as it\u2019s represented by the \u2018holy men.\u2019 What about the royals themselves? <\/span><\/p>\n

Here is the evidence on this matter,<\/a><\/span>\u00a0which Spiegel\u2019s<\/i> interviewer failed even to bring up: The individual who had been the bookkeeper, accountant, and bagman for Al Qaeda, and who personally collected (in cash) each one of the million-dollar-plus donations to Al Qaeda, from which donations the \u201csalaries\u201d (as he referred to them) of each one of the terrorists and terrorists-in-training were being paid, testified under oath in an American court case, saying that almost all of that money came from Saudi Arabia\u2019s royal family, from their Princes, including from the one \u2014 Prince Bandar bin Sultan al-Saud \u2014 who was, at the very time of 9\/11, serving in the United States, as the Saudi Ambassador. Bandar subsequently became the chief of Saudi intelligence. The Saudi King appointed a man like that \u2014 a big donor to Al Qaeda \u2014 to be his Kingdom\u2019s chief of intelligence. The current King of Saudi Arabia, King Fahd al-Saud, was mentioned by that bagman as having been among the people to whom Osama bin Laden had him deliver letters to at the time when the Saud family were planning whom to select to become the next King; Al Qaeda’s bagman said that he had delivered Osama\u2019s letters to “Abdullah<\/span><\/a>, Fahd<\/span><\/a>, okay, Salman<\/span><\/a>, Waleed bin Talal<\/span><\/a>, <\/span>Bandar<\/span>, Turki<\/span><\/a> of course,\u00a0and Shaykh \u2014 Shaykh Bin Baz, Shaykh Uthaimeen, Shaykh Shehri, and\u00a0Shaykh Hammoud al-Uqlaa, but Shaykh Osama told me that the \u2014 the letter for\u00a0the \u2014 for \u2014 for the ulema [the religious leaders] I could give it \u2014 give it to Turki.\u201d\u00a0(I.e.: Turki was the contact-man with the religious scholars.)<\/span><\/p>\n

Here was a follow-up question from the transcript, and the bagman\u2019s answer to it:<\/span><\/p>\n

Q Do you have any understanding why in that context Osama bin Laden\u00a0would have been sending letters to both members of the royal family and\u00a0the senior ulema [the scholars]?<\/i><\/span><\/p>\n

A: My understanding from talking with people like Abu Basir al-Wahishi\u00a0who become the \u2014 the head of al-Qaeda in the Arabian peninsula, who I\u00a0used to be close to, okay, or Halad or <\/i>Shaykh Abu Hasan<\/i><\/span><\/a> [but is that the same person?], Shayk\u00a0Mujahideen, Shaykh Aman, and Shaykh Abul Sef \u2014 my understanding\u00a0that they \u2014\u00a0they want to know who they should support.<\/i><\/span><\/p>\n

The counsel or advice from Osama bin Laden was respected by the members of the Saudi royal family, in order to help them to determine which one of them should become the next King. Presumably, Osama\u2019s advice was necessary in order for them to learn which ones of themselves could become appointed to lead as King without sparking attacks by Al Qaeda and by the clergy (whose faith they spread) against the Saud family, and which ones would be unacceptable to Al Qaeda and to the clergy. Al Qaeda were, in a sense, the clergy\u2019s enforcers, and they could do this at home in Saudi Arabia. This was the implicit threat: that they had to appoint someone who was in-synch with the jihadist goals, spreading the faith, the goal of the Wahhabist (which is the Saudi branch of Salafism) clerics. (Salafism\/Wahhabism is jihadist by its very founding, and is above all dedicated to exterminating Shiites in order to unify global Islam behind the jihadist cause, religious conquest for purified Sunni faith, the Caliphate.<\/span><\/a>)<\/span><\/p>\n

Furthermore: When Hillary Clinton was the U.S. Secretary of State, one of the first things she did was to send, to her Ambassadors in Saudi Arabia, Qatar, UAE, and Kuwait, instructions for them to tell their royals to make sure that they would no longer allow those donations to continue; and she even said:\u00a0“Donors in Saudi Arabia constitute the most significant source of funding to Sunni terrorist groups worldwide.\u201d<\/span><\/a>\u00a0She didn\u2019t name names, but they already knew the names. That was eight years after 9\/11, in 2009, and there\u2019s no reason to think that the situation has changed since, just as there indeed had been<\/i> no change after the 9\/11 attacks and the donations instead continued into at least 2009.<\/span><\/p>\n

A truthful answer from the Saudi Foreign Minister, to the question, “Is Saudi Arabia not financing extremist groups?\u00a0Zarif speaks of attacks by al-Qaida,\u201d would have been<\/span><\/a>: \u201cWe don\u2019t support jihad that threatens our own regime, like ISIS does by saying that we Sauds aren\u2019t descended from the Prophet [Mohammed] and that their leader al-Baghdadi<\/span><\/a> is and so he should rule the world and we shouldn\u2019t, and that we therefore aren\u2019t qualified even to run Saudi Arabia, and to serve as custodians over Mecca and Medina, on that basis.\u201d But, he didn\u2019t give that honest answer.<\/span><\/p>\n

The Saudi Foreign Minister went on to tell Spiegel<\/i>, “We believe that introducing surface-to-air missiles in Syria [which the United States supplies to the Sauds] is going to change the balance of power on the\u00a0ground.\u201d He believes this because it will enable the overthrow-Assad forces on the ground to shoot down Russian jets. He supports jihadist groups, but only the ones that acknowledge the Sauds\u2019 authority<\/i>.<\/span><\/p>\n

On February 20th, Almasdar News headlined\u00a0“Turkey says Obama shares Syria concerns with Erdogan, affirms support,\u201d<\/span><\/a>\u00a0and reported that, “Turkey\u2019s presidency said U.S. President Barack Obama had shared his concerns over the\u00a0Syrian conflict and promised his support on Friday, hours after a tense exchange\u00a0between the two NATO allies over the role of Kurdish militants. In a phone conversation\u00a0that lasted one hour and 20 minutes, Ankara said Obama had told his counterpart\u00a0President Tayyip Erdogan that Turkey had a right to self-defense.\u201d These \u201ctensions\u201d resulted from Obama\u2019s urging Turkey to \u201cshow reciprocal restraint.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

In other words: Turkey is a member of NATO and it will therefore be backed by fellow-NATO-member U.S. in any war against Russia, but Turkey should use \u201crestraint.\u201d The issue there was the use by U.S.-backed Kurds in Syria, of U.S. weapons which those Kurds were firing against the jihadists who are trying to take over Syria. The pro-jihadist Erdogan wants to send his ground-forces into Syria to kill those Kurds, but those Kurds are allied now with both the United States and Russia, and so Erdogan has been holding off. The possibility exists that if the Syrian conflict can be ended without having sparked a nuclear war, then Syria will become a federal republic, and the Kurdish region in its easternmost corner will become a largely autonomous state within the Syrian federal union. That outcome is unacceptable to Erdogan, but U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry has tentatively agreed with Russia that it needs to be and remain open.<\/span><\/p>\n

The Saudi Foreign Minister told Spiegel<\/i>, “It is important that Bashar leaves in the beginning, not at the end of the process.\u201d In other words, King Saud agrees with Hillary Clinton that Assad must be forced out of power while, and not after, the battles to defeat ISIS are going on. They demand their own victory, before any political process can begin in Syria. (As the Sauds see Assad, he\u2019s not only a secularist, but he\u2019s a Shiite, and therefore should die and be replaced by a fundamentalist Sunni like themselves.)<\/span><\/p>\n

Whether or not to continue America\u2019s war against Russia, which has continued even after the Warsaw Pact ended in 1991 with a ceaseless expansion of NATO right up to Russia\u2019s borders, is the biggest issue in the U.S. Presidential campaign, with Hillary Clinton and the Establishment Republicans demanding its continuation, and with Bernie Sanders and Donald Trump saying that there\u2019s no sound reason for continuing it.<\/span><\/p>\n

On February 18th, Stephen Kinzer had an op-ed in the Boston Globe<\/em> titled,\u00a0\u201cThe media are misleading the public on Syria,\u201d<\/span><\/a> and he wrote:<\/span><\/p>\n

Washington-based reporters tell us that one potent force in Syria, al-Nusra, is made up of \u201crebels\u201d or \u201cmoderates,\u201d not that it is the local al-Qaeda franchise.\u00a0Saudi Arabia is portrayed as aiding freedom fighters when in fact it is a prime sponsor of ISIS. Turkey has for years been running a \u201crat line\u201d for foreign\u00a0fighters wanting to join terror groups in Syria, but … we hear little about it.<\/i><\/span><\/p>\n

The first reader-comment to it was:\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Ozark02\/18\/16 02:08 PM<\/i><\/span><\/p>\n

When did you join the payroll of the Kremlin and Teheran, Mr. Kinzer?<\/i><\/span><\/p>\n

The first reply to that was:<\/span><\/p>\n

tsynchronous02\/18\/16 02:13 PM<\/i><\/span><\/p>\n

Sadly he is on the payroll of a foundation funded by IBM \u2014 even though he thinks capitalism and the USA is evil.<\/i><\/span><\/p>\n

A subsequent response to it was:<\/span><\/p>\n

Miker602\/19\/16 05:19 AM<\/i><\/span><\/p>\n

And notice that Stephen Kinzer completely leaves out Barack Obama’s famous “RED LINE” proclamation for Bashir Assad, and why did\u00a0he completely back out of it?<\/i><\/span><\/p>\n

That alone is enough to Stephen Kinzer to be the one who is misleading the public on Syria.<\/i><\/span><\/p>\n

Actually, the comment by Miker602 was further evidence that Kinzer\u2019s op-ed is true. In fact,\u00a0that sarin gas attack was carried out by al-Nusra, which had been supplied the sarin from the Benghazi Libya U.S. Consulate, which was actually a CIA operation and worked with the Sauds who own Saudi Arabia, plus the Thanis who own Qatar, plus Erdogan who aims to re-establish the Ottoman Empire, and it was definitely not done by the forces of Bashar al-Assad. In other words: Obama was behind it, but Assad was not, and Obama (and \u2018our\u2019 \u2018allies\u2019) were doing it in order to blame it on Assad so as to have an excuse for invading.<\/span><\/a>\u00a0But how much is this fact being reported in the U.S., or in the \u2018news\u2019 media of its allies?<\/span><\/p>\n

Or, how much is the fact being reported that, other than the United States leadership, many if not most of the other Western countries are saying that in the event of an invasion of Syria by Turkey, it will not have their backing: According to Russia\u2019s Sputnik News on February 20th<\/span><\/a>, Luxembourg and Germany have already said no to participating in any such invasion. It seems that U.S. President Obama is trying to get other allies to support and participate in invading Syria, but hasn\u2019t yet had any takers, except for the terrorist-supporting nations, only one of which (Turkey) is even in NATO at all. (Perhaps if he can get other NATO members to join, then he\u2019ll call a halt to John Kerry\u2019s negotiations with Russia. War would presumably commence shortly afterward.)<\/span><\/p>\n

The big problem \u2014 which virtually no one in the West\u2019s \u2019news\u2019 media talks about \u2014 is that\u00a0NATO didn\u2019t end when the Warsaw Pact did,<\/span><\/a>\u00a0but instead became\u00a0a U.S.-run military club against the post-Soviet, non-communist, democratic nation of Russia.<\/span><\/a><\/span><\/p>\n

Ending the corruption that\u2019s behind all this will take forever. But something else is behind it that can and should be done more immediately.<\/span><\/p>\n

End NATO Now. It has become urgent.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u2014\u2014\u2014\u2014\u2014<\/span><\/p>\n

Investigative historian Eric Zuesse is the author, most recently, of\u00a0 They\u2019re Not Even Close: The Democratic vs. Republican Economic Records, 1910-2010<\/i><\/span><\/a>,<\/i> and of \u00a0<\/i>CHRIST\u2019S VENTRILOQUISTS: The Event that Created Christianity<\/i><\/span><\/a>.<\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Eric Zuesse As has been\u00a0recently reported,\u00a0many experts on international relations are saying that the danger of a nuclear war between NATO and Russia is greater now than it was during the Cuban Missile Crisis in 1962 \u2014 in other words: greater than ever before in history. But it has just ratcheted a bit higher still: […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1254,"featured_media":238008,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[487,461,1622],"tags":[115,30,1036,535,698,1023,522,753,524,981,754,92,1261,40,1024],"class_list":{"0":"post-226605","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-breaking-news","8":"category-editorials","9":"category-featured","10":"tag-barack-obama","11":"tag-big-brother","12":"tag-breaking-news","13":"tag-global-news","14":"tag-hillary-clinton","15":"tag-nuclear","16":"tag-obama","17":"tag-police-state","18":"tag-russia","19":"tag-saudi","20":"tag-syria","21":"tag-terrorism","22":"tag-turkey","23":"tag-white-house","24":"tag-ww3"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/226605","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1254"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=226605"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/226605\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/238008"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=226605"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=226605"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=226605"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}