Hypocrisy of U.S. and its Mideast allies

By: Mudasir Sheikh

There is no denying the fact that the U.S. is using Saudi oil card to damage the oil-based economies of Russia, Iran, and Venezuela as they are unfailingly challenging Washington’s hegemony.

But, it's pertinent to note that the International Monetary Fund has warned that most Middle-Eastern nations, including Saudi Arabia, would run out of cash within five years if oil prices stand at $50 a barrel.

Amid the draconian U.S. sanctions against Iran, Trump ordered the de-facto leader of OPEC Saudi Arabia to increase its oil production, because of which production from Saudi regime touched 11.3 million barrels per day in November 2018 despite the devastating effects of lower oil prices on every oil economy.

In return, Trump eased the diplomatic pressure on the Saudi regime and the young crown prince got away with the brutal murder of Saudi journalist Jamal Khashoggi.

Corrupting free market operations by artificially lowering the oil prices and other prominent fronts like crushing dissent explain the hypocrisy of the U.S. and its allies Saudi Arabia and Israel.

Saudi monarchy has always been intolerant to any form of dissent. The recent example is the murder of journalist “Turki Bin Abdul Aziz Al-Jasser” just days after the killing of Khashoggi for operating the Twitter account “Kashkool” that highlighted the human rights violations by Saudi regime.

Since 2015, three Saudi princes Sultan bin Turki bin Abdul-Aziz, Saud bin Saif al-Nasr, and Turki bin Bandar have disappeared.

According to a BBC documentary, all three of them were abducted by the Saudi regime on foreign land to crush dissent.

Not only have the dissidents been eliminated but any form of protest from the country’s Shia minority has been crushed brutally.

The Arab spring sent shockwaves in the Saudi fiefdom as protestors demanded an end to decades of discrimination against country’s Shia minority. So Saudi regime resorted to violent crackdown on protesters and detained scores of them.

The world's so-called 'superpower' has turned blind eye to the brutalities of Saudi regime against religious minorities and backed the rulers in their wrongdoings.

In Yemen, instead of denouncing Saudis for committing horrendous war crimes, the U.S. has been supplying arms to them. In Syria, U.S. has played a key role in stoking the flames of war by blaming Assad government for killing his people, which is far from the truth.

The U.S. and its Middle Eastern allies like Saudi Arabia and the illegitimate regime of Israel funded and armed ISIS and Al-Nusra terrorists to overthrow the Assad government but as we know, they have miserably failed to achieve their goals.

The defeat of the U.S. and its proxies is so embarrassing for them that Israel tried to divert the Syrian war to another front that may have unleashed a nuclear catastrophe.

The downing of Russian IL-20 military aircraft in September 2018 could have become a new “Pearl Harbor” if Putin announced a military response against the coward act of Israel.

According to Russian Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova, the tragedy was a result of “erroneous, unprofessional and cowardly" acts from Israel. It is clear that any military action from Russia against Israel could have definitely dragged the U.S. into the war and such a military confrontation could have had dangerous ramifications.

But still no one in the West seems to blame Israel for such dangerous provocation but they keep blaming Iran’s nuclear program.

Israel enjoys the nuclear immunity despite the fact that it is the only country in the Middle East that has nuclear weapons and has even threatened to use them.

Iranian Foreign Minister Javaid Zarif responded to the nuclear threat from Israel saying: 'Iran, a country without nuclear weapons, is threatened with atomic annihilation by a warmonger standing next to an actual nuclear weapons factory. Beyond shameless in the gall.” 

But the West led by the U.S. is paying no heed to Israel's warmongering. It is busy watching propaganda of Netanyahu at UN to defame the Islamic Republic of Iran.

Not only is Israel threatening Iran but the warmongers in Washington are also in favor of military offensive against the Islamic republic.

Recently “Brian Hook”, the US State Department's director of policy planning and head of Iran Action Group, stated that Trump administration is considering war against Iran if sanctions failed to curb Tehran’s influence and so-called threats against Washington.

The statement came just a day after Tehran asserted that it did not seek a war with any other nation. As American political analyst and author Stephen Lendman puts it, the U.S. would pay a huge price if it goes to war with Iran.

The humanitarian catastrophes in Yemen are the handiwork of the U.S. and its ally Saudi Arabia. Till now the conflict has cost more than 57,000 lives of Yemenis in addition to the destruction of schools, hospitals, and other infrastructure.

The famine in Yemen is worst in its history where 8.4 million Yemenis are in extreme hunger and another 22.2 million are facing food shortages.

Still, the Saudi-led coalition with the help of U.S. is intentionally ignoring the proposed four-point peace plan from Iran which includes an immediate ceasefire, humanitarian assistance, resumption of broad national dialogue and establishment of a stable and friendly government.

The regime in Riyadh that wanted to crush the Yemeni resistance is now on the brink of defeat but still, they are reluctant to agree on any peace plan.

The question remains: how long the world is going to tolerate the hypocrisy of the U.S. and its allies in the Middle East.

The author is a Kashmir based writer and researcher.