Canada-Saudi Row: The Pot and the Kettle Calling Each other Black

By: Kayhan Int’l

The diplomatic row between Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s Canada – currently estranged from the US – and Washington’s pet poodle Saudi Arabia, which is trying to act like a bulldog after having tasted blood in neighbouring Yemen, seems to have spiraled out of control, with the two exchanging the choicest barbs.

It appears like a repeat of Riyadh’s last year’s feud with Doha, and the vain bid to undermine the economy of the emirate of Qatar.

Following the Canadian government’s criticism of the arrest of jailed Saudi activist, Raif Badawi’s sister, Samar Badawi, earlier this month, the Wahhabi regime responded with a severe backlash that saw expulsion of the Canadian ambassador, suspension of flights to Canada, recalling of thousands of Saudi students from high schools and universities in Canada, and freezing of trade and investment in Canada.

Although Canada cannot be exonerated in view of its dirty habit of hitherto acting like a servant of the US and poking its nose in the affairs of other nations, especially Muslim states, this time because of Donald Trump’s snobbish attitude toward Trudeau and his lust for the billions of petro-dollars of Saudi Arabia, the government of Canada finds itself at the receiving end.

Ottawa stands to lose financially from the Saudi measures, which is a clear indication from Riyadh that other countries should close their eyes to its crimes against humanity, whether the repression of people living under its rule or the bloodbath in Yemen, where almost on a daily basis the warplanes of the Arab coalition grind the people into dust.

Of course, Canada is no angel either with its shabby human rights record and its hypocrisy in turning a blind eye to the massacre in Yemen, coupled with its total indifference to the plight of the Shi’a Muslim majority of the Arabian Peninsula’s eastern oil-rich region.

Ottawa’s criticism of Riyadh for the arrest of a few women activists, whose relations, including Badawi’s wife Ensaf Haidar, are based in Canada, was definitely not a purely human rights measure, but a politically motivated one. 

According to analysts, underlying Riyadh’s unusually very hostile reaction to Ottawa to liquidate its Canadian equities, bonds and cash holdings to the tune of around $100 billion, could be instructions from Trump to punish Trudeau. 

Another possible reason is the rivalry between the two countries for having the maximum share of the US oil market, in view of the fact the US is the world’s second largest importer of crude oil while the US military is the world’s largest oil consumer.

The Saudis have not forgotten that despite their close ties to the US they were displaced by the Canadians in the late 1990s as the top exporter of crude oil to the US. Since then the chasm has widened between Riyadh and Ottawa mainly because of the rapid growth of Canadian oil imports — which now account for more than half of all US crude imports, while US imports of Saudi crude have dropped to 8.5 percent.

This explains why the Saudis have targeted the Canadian economy at this juncture. It seems that Riyadh backed by Trump, wants nothing more than the political capitulation of Canada, after having miserably failed in the war in Yemen, and earlier on the battlefields of Syria and Iraq – because of the Islamic Republic of Iran’s timely help to the said two countries in defeating US-Zionist-Saudi backed terrorism.
Canada’s total exports to Saudi Arabia, now under threat, total on average $1.45 billion annually.

Interestingly, it is not the first time that Saudi diplomatic attacks have been motivated by fossil-fuel markets. As a matter of fact, Riyadh’s ongoing dispute with Doha was caused by Qatar’s lifting of a moratorium on developing the world’s largest natural gas field it shares in the Persian Gulf with Iran and its normalization of diplomatic ties with the Islamic Republic in light of their shared interests in the gas field.

Furthermore, Saudi Arabia has a history of using bizarre means to damage the economies of its rivals Now, with Saudi foreign cash reserves still very low and warnings that the regime, which is involved in an unwinnable war in Yemen, could face bankruptcy in less than two years, even small fluctuations in the oil market — along with growing domestic dissent — threaten to derail the regime or loosen the grip of the ruling Najdi family.

Canada has possibly reminded Saudi Arabia of its weaknesses, both economic or political, at a time when the spurious entity that was created in 1932 by Britain for the desert brigand of Najd, Abdul-Aziz Aal-e Saud, finds itself facing an uncomfortable and perhaps unforgiving future.