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KoKo

(84,711 posts)
Sat Oct 4, 2014, 08:11 PM Oct 2014

TRNN: "Is the Islamic State a Tool of the Saudis?" (An Interesting Question)

Is the Islamic State a Tool of the Saudis?

Ali Al-Ahmed says IS is a key part of Saudi Arabia's strategy in the Middle East - October 3, 14

Al-Ahmed is a Saudi scholar and expert on Saudi political affairs including: terrorism, Islamic movements, Wahhabi Islam, Saudi political history, Saudi-American relations, and the al-Saud family history. He is a writer, and public speaker on Saudi political issues.

He has been invited to speak by Princeton University, Amnesty International, the Hudson Institute and Meridian International Center.

As journalist he exposed major news stories such as the Pentagon's botched translation of the 9-11 Bin Laden tape, and the video of Daniel Pearl's murder. He has authored reports on Saudi Arabia regarding religious freedom, torture, press freedom, and religious curriculum.

A frequent consultant to major world media outlets including CBS News, CNN, PBS, Fox News, Washington Post, and Associated Press. Al-Ahmed has been quoted in the Washington Post, the Wall Street Journal, USA Today, the Boston Globe and other newspapers in several languages. He graduated with a B.A. in Journalism and Science and a M.A. in International Finance from Saint Thomas University in Saint Paul, Minnesota.

TRANSCRIPT FOLLOWS (for those with Low Bandwidth) AFTER THE VIDEO...WITH LINK TO MORE at:

http://therealnews.com/t2/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=31&Itemid=74&jumival=12461
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PARTIAL TRANSCRIPT...MORE AT LINK BELOW:

PAUL JAY, SENIOR EDITOR, TRNN: Welcome to The Real News Network. I'm Paul Jay. President Obama's war against the Islamic State--he says it's to degrade and destroy it--has a rather strange set of alliances, and perhaps one of the strangest of all these alliances is the alliance between Saudi Arabia and said the United States. This is a country which, according to Senator Bob Graham, was actually involved in the attacks of 9/11. We'll get more into that in the course of this interview. But it's also a country that is fairly well acknowledged to have playing on both sides of this terrorism question. So just what is the role of Saudi Arabia? What's its relationship with the Islamic State? And just why are they so intent on overthrowing Assad in Syria? Now joining us is Ali Al-Ahmed. He's the director of the Institute of Gulf Affairs in Washington, D.C. He's a Saudi scholar, an expert on Saudi politics and the politics of the Gulf region, and on terrorism.

Thanks very much for joining us, Ali.ALI AL-AHMED, DIRECTOR, INSTITUTE FOR GULF AFFAIRS:

Thank you so much for having me.

JAY: So this is a very complicated time in the Middle East, particularly the war in Syria, the emergence of IS in Iraq. One thing which I can't understand--I know President Obama says American intelligence underestimated IS, and it's kind of weird because some people have called the success of IS militarily one of the greatest routs of an army in modern history--that's the rout of the Iraqi army. How on earth could the American intelligence not know this is what--IS had this kind of power? But even more to the point, the Saudis must have known. Don't they tell the Americans this sort of thing?

AL-AHMED: Well, the Americans, I think there is a strategic problem here, that the American security apparatus and the American government has relied on unreliable allies, such as Jordan, Saudi Arabia, and others, who have basically been misleading and giving misinformation to the United States. The Iraqi government is no better. The Iraqi government, because due to pressure from Iran, chose not to have an integral relationship with United States in terms of security arrangements. So the United States really didn't have those reliable allies. In terms of Saudi Arabia, Saudi Arabia is interested in misleading the Americans [crosstalk]

JAY: Why?

AL-AHMED: --ISIS and its power, because Saudi Arabia is the godfather of ISIS and other terror groups in Syria and in Iraq. So absolutely they are doing this to deceive. And that's their game from 1930s. They are very good at it.JAY: Now, when it comes to Syria, my understanding of the situation from other people I've interviewed is that the Saudis thought they could bring in these kinds of extreme Islamist jihadists into the Syrian battle and kind of control them, use them to overthrow Assad, and then, when Assad's gone, they would then be able to contain these forces. First of all, do you think that was there thinking? Had they lost control, then, of forces like IS? Or is what IS doing still part of the Saudi agenda?

AL-AHMED: It is very much part of the Saudi agenda. If you look at what ISIS has been doing, it is really--it is in correlation to the Saudi foreign policy in Iraq and in Syria. The Saudi government want either to dislodge or to weaken the Iraqi and Syrian governments. So ISIS is doing that for them. I don't know if they have lost control of them. There is no evidence of that yet. But the Saudi and Qatar's goals in Syria was not to remove Assad and replace it with a democratic regime. They wanted to make sure that if Assad is gone, there is not a Democratic, pluralistic, representative government in Syria that gives a model for the region, for the people in the Gulf, that you can have a government that is run by Sunnis and Allawis and Shia and Christians that can work in terms of representation. The Gulf countries, the golf absolute monarchies, they fear a model where people within a society can work with together, elect their government. And that model really is the most dangerous thing to these absolute monarchies who are based on DNA, not based on people's representation.

JAY:
Right. Now, one thing I also find a little peculiar at this moment: I see the Saudis seem to be willing to work with the Iranians to fight IS. There's a--I've seen there's this organization called INEGMA, which is sort of a military think tank that has influence with the Saudis and other military leaders. And I think they often represent a lot of Saudi opinion. And they're far more interested in overthrowing Assad. And they actually--one of the things I was reading said, you know, we can work with the Iranians, but only if they give up support for Assad. But I thought the whole point of the Saudis overthrowing Assad was a way to get at Iran.

AL-AHMED: Absolutely. I think that's part of their game is Iran has a friendly relationship with the Iraqi government and the Syrian government. In fact, it's propping [up] the Syrian government in many ways. So the Saudis' part of the fact preventing an emergence of a model in the Levant, in Syria and Iraq, they want to make sure that the Iranian power is contained, Iranian influence is contained. And they are very obsessed about this. So, yes. But they are very pragmatic as well. They did this in the '30s when a very similar group as ISIS was led by the Saudis, and they were attacked by the British at the time; a group very much like ISIS attacked Syria and Iraq. And it was Saudi force, purely Saudi force, known as the /χwɑːn/. And they were later destroyed by the Saudi government itself. And they're very pragmatic. They are driven by one thing, the survival of the monarchy. And anything that it takes to do that, they will do it, including killing their own offsprings and cutting their own tentacles in Syria and Iraq.

JAY: You mean now joining the bombing of IS in Iraq and Syria. I mean, this is this parallel policy: you act like an American ally over here; on the other hand, you helped finance and organize the extremists you're supposedly fighting.

AL-AHMED:
Absolutely. Look, everybody knows there is a similar example in Afghanistan, where Pakistan, U.S. ally, receives billions of dollars in U.S. support. In fact, Pakistan has a nuclear bomb that the U.S. didn't really make a fuss about like they are making about the Iranian supposed nuclear program. So the Taliban is supported mainly by Pakistani government, by the Pakistani ISI, which is the security, military security apparatus there. Yet that did not stop Pakistan. The support of the United States to the Pakistani government did not stop the Pakistani government from supporting Taliban in killing American soldiers and other Western and, of course, Afghani people. So this is a situation where the U.S. government has really--have not been successful in terms of its choices of allies. The Saudis, their best position, in their eyes, is to be in their coalition so they are not seen as openly against the United States and supporting ISIS. They might be a target themselves if they were not part of the coalition. So they made the rational, pragmatic choice.

JAY:
Now, they IS, at least the rhetoric of IS, is also targeting the Saudi regime. They think of them, they call them blasphemers, and working with the Americans is in theory one of the highest crimes one could commit in the eyes of an IS. You're suggesting that's more rhetoric than it is any real intent to try to foment some kind of uprising within Saudi Arabia.

MUCH MORE TRANSCRIPT to CONTINUE READ AT:

http://therealnews.com/t2/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=31&Itemid=74&jumival=12461

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TRNN: "Is the Islamic State a Tool of the Saudis?" (An Interesting Question) (Original Post) KoKo Oct 2014 OP
Thanks for posting this. onwardsand upwards Oct 2014 #1
 

onwardsand upwards

(276 posts)
1. Thanks for posting this.
Sun Oct 5, 2014, 08:59 AM
Oct 2014

It provides the first coherent analysis of ISIS that I've seen, so far:

The Saudi monarchy has mountains of money but no legitimacy.

It fears anything that looks like a democratic, open, society in the Arab world, because this is a potential model for the overthrow of the Saudi regime.

Both Iraq and Syria are in danger of becoming democratic (and they have friendly ties with Iran -- an enemy of the Saudis).

So the Saudi monarchy (covertly) funds ISIS which disrupts this process and punishes Iraq and Syria for their links to Iran.

The US is forced to challenge ISIS and the Saudis cover their tracks by "supporting" the coalition against ISIS.

US intelligence agencies can see all of this, but officials are paid handsomely to look the other way, and repeat the talking points given to them from above.

The winners: the Saudi monarchy (it survives and thrives), the US government (the arms industry, and the officials, make a killing).

The losers: everyone else.

In a nutshell: money talks!

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