{"id":53442,"date":"2015-02-09T12:00:32","date_gmt":"2015-02-09T12:00:32","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/?p=53442"},"modified":"2015-05-05T21:26:08","modified_gmt":"2015-05-05T20:26:08","slug":"al-qaeda-saudi-arabia-and-israel","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/2015\/02\/al-qaeda-saudi-arabia-and-israel\/","title":{"rendered":"Al-Qaeda, Saudi Arabia and Israel"},"content":{"rendered":"

4 Feb 2015 – Saudi Arabia is under a new\u00a0cloud\u00a0after a jailed al-Qaeda operative implicated senior Saudi officials as collaborators with the terror group \u2013 and the shadow could even darken the political future of\u00a0Israeli Prime Netanyahu because of\u00a0his odd-couple alliance with Riyadh.<\/em><\/p>\n

The disclosure that convicted al-Qaeda operative Zacarias Moussaoui has identified leading members of the Saudi government as financers of the terrorist network potentially reshapes how Americans will perceive events in the Middle East and\u00a0creates a risk for Israel\u2019s Likud government which has forged an unlikely alliance\u00a0with some of these same Saudis.<\/p>\n

According to a\u00a0story<\/a> in the New York Times on Wednesday [4 Feb 2015], Moussaoui said in a prison deposition that he was directed in 1998 or 1999 by Qaeda leaders in Afghanistan to create a digital database of the group\u2019s donors and that the list included Prince Turki al-Faisal, then Saudi intelligence chief; Prince Bandar bin Sultan, longtime Saudi ambassador to the United States; Prince al-Waleed bin Talal, a prominent billionaire investor; and many leading clerics.<\/p>\n

\u201cSheikh Osama wanted to keep a record who give money,\u201d Moussaoui said in imperfect English \u2014 \u201cwho is to be listened to or who contributed to the jihad.\u201d<\/p>\n

Although Moussaoui\u2019s credibility came under immediate attack from the Saudi kingdom, his assertions mesh with accounts from members of the U.S. Congress who have seen a secret portion of the 9\/11 report that addresses alleged Saudi support for al-Qaeda.<\/p>\n

Further complicating the predicament for Saudi Arabia is that, more recently, Saudi and other Persian Gulf oil sheikdoms have been identified as backers of Sunni militants fighting in Syria to overthrow the largely secular regime of President Bashar al-Assad. The major rebel force benefiting from this support is al-Nusra Front, al-Qaeda\u2019s affiliate in Syria.<\/p>\n

In other words, the Saudis appear to have continued\u00a0a covert relationship with al-Qaeda-connected jihadists to the present day.<\/p>\n

The Israeli Exposure<\/strong><\/p>\n

And, like the Saudis, the Israelis have\u00a0sided with the Sunni militants in Syria because the Israelis share the Saudi view that Iran and the so-called \u201cShiite crescent\u201d \u2013 reaching from Tehran and Baghdad to Damascus and Beirut \u2013 is the greatest threat to their interests in the Middle East.<\/p>\n

That shared concern has pushed Israel and Saudi Arabia into a de facto alliance, though the collaboration between Jerusalem and Riyadh has been mostly kept out of\u00a0the public eye. Still, it has occasionally peeked out from under the covers as the two governments deploy their complementary assets \u2013 Saudi oil and money and Israeli political and media clout \u2013 in areas where they have mutual interests.<\/p>\n

In recent years, these historic enemies have cooperated in their joint disdain for the Muslim Brotherhood government in Egypt (which was overthrown in 2013), in seeking the ouster of the Assad regime in Syria, and in pressing for a more hostile U.S. posture toward Iran.<\/p>\n

Israel and Saudi Arabia also have collaborated in efforts to put the squeeze on Russia\u2019s President Vladimir Putin, who is deemed a key supporter of both Iran and Syria. The Saudis have used their power over oil production to drive down prices and hurt Russia\u2019s economy, while U.S. neoconservatives \u2013 who share Israel\u2019s geopolitical world view \u2013 were\u00a0at the forefront of the coup that ousted Ukraine\u2019s pro-Russian President Viktor Yanukovych in 2014.<\/p>\n

The behind-the-scenes Israeli-Saudi alliance has put the two governments \u2013 uncomfortably at times \u2013 on the side of Sunni jihadists battling Shiite influence in Syria, Lebanon and even Iraq. On Jan. 18, 2015, for instance, Israel attacked\u00a0Lebanese-Iranian advisers\u00a0assisting Assad\u2019s government in Syria, killing several members of Hezbollah and an Iranian general. These military advisors were engaged in operations against al-Qaeda\u2019s Nusra Front.<\/p>\n

Meanwhile, Israel has refrained from attacking Nusra Front militants who have seized Syrian territory near the Israeli-occupied Golan Heights. One source familiar with U.S. intelligence information on Syria told me that Israel has\u00a0a \u201cnon-aggression pact\u201d with these Nusra forces.<\/p>\n

An Odd Alliance<\/strong><\/p>\n

Israel\u2019s odd-couple alliances with Sunni interests\u00a0have evolved over the past several years, as Israel and Saudi Arabia emerged as strange bedfellows in the geopolitical struggle against Shiite-ruled Iran and its allies in Iraq, Syria and southern Lebanon. In Syria, for instance, senior Israelis have made clear\u00a0they would prefer Sunni extremists to prevail in the civil war rather than Assad, who is an Alawite, a branch of Shiite Islam..<\/p>\n

In September 2013, Israel\u2019s\u00a0Ambassador to the United States Michael Oren, then a close adviser to Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, told the Jerusalem Post that Israel favored\u00a0the Sunni\u00a0extremists\u00a0over Assad.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe greatest danger to Israel is by the strategic arc that extends from Tehran, to Damascus to Beirut. And we saw the Assad regime as the keystone in that arc,\u201d Oren told the Jerusalem Post in an interview<\/a>. \u201cWe always wanted Bashar Assad to go, we always preferred the bad guys who weren\u2019t backed by Iran to the bad guys who were backed by Iran.\u201d\u00a0He said this was the case even if the \u201cbad guys\u201d were affiliated with al-Qaeda.<\/p>\n

And, in June 2014, speaking as a former ambassador at an Aspen Institute conference, Oren expanded on his position, saying<\/a> Israel would even prefer a victory\u00a0by the brutal Islamic State over continuation of the Iranian-backed Assad in Syria. \u201cFrom Israel\u2019s perspective, if there\u2019s got to be an evil that\u2019s got to prevail, let the Sunni evil prevail,\u201d Oren said.<\/p>\n

Skepticism and Doubt<\/strong><\/p>\n

In August 2013, when I first reported on the growing relationship between Israel and Saudi Arabia in an article entitled \u201cThe Saudi-Israeli Superpower<\/a>,\u201d the story was met with much skepticism. But, increasingly, this secret alliance has\u00a0gone public.<\/p>\n

On Oct. 1, 2013, Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu hinted at it in his United Nations General Assembly speech, which was largely devoted to excoriating Iran over its nuclear program and threatening a unilateral Israeli military strike.<\/p>\n

Amid the bellicosity, Netanyahu dropped in a largely missed clue about the evolving power relationships in the Middle East, saying: \u201cThe dangers of a nuclear-armed Iran and the emergence of other threats in our region have led many of our Arab neighbors to recognize, finally recognize, that Israel is not their enemy. And this affords us the opportunity to overcome the historic animosities and build new relationships, new friendships, new hopes.\u201d<\/p>\n

The next day, Israel\u2019s Channel 2 TV news reported<\/a> that senior Israeli security officials had met with a high-level Gulf state counterpart in Jerusalem, believed to be Prince Bandar, the former Saudi ambassador to the United States who was then head of Saudi intelligence.<\/p>\n

The reality of this unlikely alliance has now even reached the mainstream U.S. media. For instance, Time magazine correspondent Joe Klein described<\/a> the new coziness in an article in the Jan. 19, 2015 issue.<\/p>\n

He wrote: \u201cOn May 26, 2014, an unprecedented public conversation took place in Brussels. Two former high-ranking spymasters of Israel and Saudi Arabia \u2013 Amos Yadlin and Prince Turki al-Faisal \u2013 sat together for more than an hour, talking regional politics in a conversation moderated by the Washington Post\u2019s David Ignatius.<\/p>\n

\u201cThey disagreed on some things, like the exact nature of an Israel-Palestine peace settlement, and agreed on others: the severity of the Iranian nuclear threat, the need to support the new military government in Egypt, the demand for concerted international action in Syria. The most striking statement came from Prince Turki. He said the Arabs had \u2018crossed the Rubicon\u2019 and \u2018don\u2019t want to fight Israel anymore.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n

Though Klein detected only the bright side of this d\u00e9tente, there was a\u00a0dark side as well, as referenced in Moussaoui\u2019s deposition, which identified Prince Turki as one of al-Qaeda\u2019s backers. Perhaps even more unsettling was his listing of Prince Bandar, who had long presented himself as a U.S. friend, so close to the Bush Family that he was nicknamed \u201cBandar Bush.\u201d<\/p>\n

Moussaoui claimed that he discussed a plan to shoot down Air Force One with a Stinger missile with a staff member at the Saudi Embassy in Washington, at a time when Bandar was the ambassador to the United States.<\/p>\n

According to the New York Times article by Scott Shane, Moussaoui said he was assigned to \u201cfind a location where it may be suitable to launch a Stinger attack and then, after, be able to escape,\u201d but that he was arrested on Aug. 16, 2001, before he could carry out the reconnaissance mission.<\/p>\n

The thought of anyone in the Saudi embassy, then under the control of \u201cBandar Bush,\u201d scheming with al-Qaeda to shoot down George W. Bush\u2019s Air Force One is shocking, if true. The notion would have been considered unthinkable even after the 9\/11 attacks, which involved 15 Saudis among the 19 hijackers.<\/p>\n

After those terror attacks which killed nearly 3,000 Americans, Bandar went to the White House and persuaded\u00a0Bush to arrange for the rapid extraction of bin Laden\u2019s family members and other Saudis in the United States. Bush agreed\u00a0to help get those Saudi nationals out on the first flights allowed back into the air.<\/p>\n

Bandar\u2019s intervention undercut the FBI\u2019s chance to learn more about the ties between Osama bin Laden and the 9\/11 perpetrators by giving FBI agents only time for cursory interviews with the departing Saudis.<\/p>\n

Bandar himself was close to the bin Laden family and acknowledged having met Osama bin Laden in the context of bin Laden thanking Bandar for his help financing the jihad project in Afghanistan during the 1980s. \u201cI was not impressed, to be honest with you,\u201d Bandar told<\/a> CNN\u2019s Larry King about bin Laden. \u201cI thought he was simple and very quiet guy.\u201d<\/p>\n

The Saudi government claimed to have broken ties with bin Laden in the early 1990s when he began targeting the United States because\u00a0President George H.W. Bush had stationed U.S. troops in Saudi Arabia, but \u2013 if Moussaoui is telling the truth \u2013 al-Qaeda would have still counted Bandar among its supporters in the late 1990s.<\/p>\n

Bandar and Putin<\/strong><\/p>\n

Bandar\u2019s possible links to Sunni terrorism also emerged in 2013 during a confrontation between Bandar and Putin over what Putin viewed as Bandar\u2019s crude threat to unleash Chechen terrorists against the Sochi Winter Olympics if Putin did not reduce his support for the Syrian government.<\/p>\n

According to a leaked diplomatic account<\/a> of a July 31, 2013 meeting in Moscow, Bandar informed Putin that Saudi Arabia had strong influence over Chechen extremists who had carried out numerous terrorist attacks against Russian targets and who had since\u00a0deployed to join the fight against the Assad regime in Syria.<\/p>\n

As Bandar called for a Russian shift toward\u00a0the Saudi position on Syria, he reportedly offered guarantees of protection from Chechen terror attacks on the Olympics. \u201cI can give you a guarantee to protect the Winter Olympics in the city of Sochi on the Black Sea next year,\u201d Bandar reportedly said. \u201cThe Chechen groups that threaten the security of the games are controlled by us.\u201d<\/p>\n

Putin responded, \u201cWe know that you have supported the Chechen terrorist groups for a decade. And that support, which you have frankly talked about just now, is completely incompatible with the common objectives of fighting global terrorism.\u201d<\/p>\n

Bandar\u2019s Mafia-like threat toward the Sochi games \u2013 a version of \u201cnice Olympics you got here, it\u2019d be a shame if something terrible happened to it\u201d \u2013 failed to intimidate Putin, who continued to support Assad.<\/p>\n

Less than a month later, an incident in Syria almost forced President Barack Obama\u2019s hand in launching U.S. air strikes against Assad\u2019s military, which would have possibly opened the path for the Nusra Front or the Islamic State to capture Damascus and take control of Syria. On Aug. 21, 2013, a mysterious sarin attack outside Damascus killed hundreds and, in the U.S. media, the incident was immediately blamed on the Assad regime.<\/p>\n

American neocons and their allied \u201cliberal interventionists\u201d demanded that Obama launch retaliatory air strikes even though some U.S. intelligence analysts doubted that Assad\u2019s forces were responsible and suspected that the attack was carried out by extremist rebels trying to pull the U.S. military into the civil war on their side.<\/p>\n

Yet, pushed by the neocons and liberal war hawks, Obama nearly ordered a bombing campaign designed to \u201cdegrade\u201d the Syrian military but called it off at the last minute. He then accepted Putin\u2019s help in reaching a diplomatic solution in which Assad agreed to surrender his entire chemical weapons arsenal, while still denying any role in the sarin\u00a0attack.<\/p>\n

Later, the Assad-did-it case crumbled\u00a0amid new evidence that Sunni extremists, supported by Saudi Arabia and Turkey, were the more likely perpetrators of the attack, a scenario that became increasingly persuasive as Americans learned more about the cruelty and ruthlessness of many Sunni jihadists fighting in Syria. [See Consortiumnews.com\u2019s \u201cThe Mistaken Guns of Last August.<\/a>\u201d]<\/p>\n

Targeting Putin<\/strong><\/p>\n

Putin\u2019s cooperation with Obama to head off a U.S. military strike in Syria made the Russian president more of a target for the American neocons who thought they finally had reached\u00a0the cusp of their long-desired \u201cregime change\u201d in Syria only to be blocked by Putin. By late September 2013, a leading neocon, National Endowment for Democracy President Carl Gershman, announced the goal of challenging Putin and recognizing his sore point in Ukraine.<\/p>\n

Taking to the Washington Post\u2019s op-ed page on Sept. 26, 2013, Gershman called<\/a> Ukraine \u201cthe biggest prize\u201d and an important step toward ultimately ousting Putin. Gershman wrote, \u201cUkraine\u2019s choice to join Europe will accelerate the demise of the ideology of Russian imperialism that Putin represents. \u00a0\u2026 Russians, too, face a choice, and Putin may find himself on the losing end not just in the near abroad but within Russia itself.\u201d [See Consortiumnews.com\u2019s \u201cNeocons\u2019 Ukraine-Syria-Iran Gambit.<\/a>\u201c[<\/p>\n

However, in early 2014, Putin was obsessed with Bandar\u2019s implicit threat of terrorism striking the Sochi Olympics, thus distracting him from the \u201cregime change\u201d \u2013 being pushed by NED and neocon Assistant Secretary of State for European Affairs Victoria Nuland \u2013 next door in Ukraine.<\/p>\n

On Feb. 22, 2014, putschists, spearheaded by well-organized neo-Nazi militias, drove elected President Viktor Yanukovych and his government from power. Putin was caught off-guard and, in the resulting political chaos, agreed to requests from Crimean officials and voters to accept Crimea back into Russia, thus exploding his cooperative relationship with Obama.<\/p>\n

With Putin the new pariah in Official Washington, the neocon hand also was strengthened in the Middle East where renewed pressure could be put on the \u201cShiite crescent\u201d in Syria and Iran. However, in summer 2014, the Islamic State, which had splintered off from al-Qaeda and its Nusra Front, went on a rampage, invading Iraq where captured soldiers were beheaded. The Islamic State then engaged in gruesome videotaped decapitations of Western hostages inside Syria.<\/p>\n

The Islamic State\u2019s brutality and the threat it posed to the U.S.-backed, Shiite-dominated government of Iraq changed the political calculus. Obama felt compelled to launch airstrikes against Islamic State targets in both Iraq and Syria. American neocons tried\u00a0to convince Obama to expand the Syrian strikes to hit Assad\u2019s forces, too, but Obama realized such a plan would only benefit the Islamic State and al-Qaeda\u2019s Nusra Front.<\/p>\n

In effect, the neocons were showing their hand \u2013 much as Israeli Ambassador Oren had done \u2013 favoring the Sunni extremists allied with al-Qaeda over Assad\u2019s secular regime because it was allied with Iran. Now, with Moussaoui\u2019s deposition identifying senior Saudi officials as patrons of al-Qaeda, another veil seems to have\u00a0dropped.<\/p>\n

Complicating matters further, Moussaoui also claimed that he passed letters between Osama bin Laden and then Crown Prince Salman, who recently became king upon the death of his brother King Abdullah.<\/p>\n

But Moussaoui\u2019s disclosure perhaps cast the most unflattering light on Bandar, the erstwhile confidant of the Bush Family who \u2014 if Moussaoui is right \u2014 may have been playing a\u00a0sinister double game.<\/p>\n

Also facing potentially embarrassing questions is\u00a0Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu, especially if he goes\u00a0through with his planned speech before a joint session of Congress next month, attacking Obama for being soft on Iran.<\/p>\n

And,\u00a0America\u2019s neocons\u00a0might have some explaining to do about\u00a0why they have carried water not just for the Israelis but for Israel\u2019s de facto allies in Saudi Arabia.<\/p>\n

________________________________<\/p>\n

Investigative reporter Robert Parry broke many of the Iran-Contra stories for <\/em>The Associated Press and <\/em>Newsweek in the 1980s. <\/em><\/p>\n

Go to Original \u2013 consortiumnews.com<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

4 Feb 2015 – Saudi Arabia is under a new cloud after a jailed al-Qaeda operative implicated senior Saudi officials as collaborators with the terror group \u2013 and the shadow could even darken the political future of Israeli Prime Netanyahu because of his odd-couple alliance with Riyadh.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[66],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-53442","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-middle-east-north-africa"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/53442","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=53442"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/53442\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=53442"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=53442"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=53442"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}