How Saudis Plotted With Zionists in U.S. Against Iran

By: Betsy Woodruff, Erin Banco

Gen. Ahmed al-Assiri, the Saudi intelligence chief taking the fall for the murder of journalist Jamal Khashoggi, hobnobbed in New York with Michael Flynn and other members of the transition team shortly before Trump’s inauguration. The topic of their discussion: regime change in Iran.

Muhammad bin Salman, the powerful Saudi crown prince, dispatched Assiri from Riyadh for the meetings, which took place over the course of two days in early January 2017, according to communications reviewed by The Daily Beast. The January meetings have come under scrutiny by special counsel Robert Mueller’s office as part of his probe into foreign governments’ attempts to gain influence in the Trump campaign and in the White House, an individual familiar with the investigation told The Daily Beast. A spokesperson for Mueller declined to comment.

The New York meetings were attended and brokered by George Nader, a Lebanese-American with close ties to leaders in the United Arab Emirates who is currently cooperating with Mueller’s team. Also present at the meetings was Israeli social media strategist Joel Zamel, who has been questioned by Mueller for his role in pitching top campaign officials on an influence operation to help Trump win the election—overtures that could have broken federal election laws.

Steve Bannon was involved as well in conversations on Iran regime change during those two days in January, according to the communications.

The communications show that participants in the meetings discussed a multi-pronged strategy for eroding, and eventually ending, the current Iranian government — including economic, information, and military tactics for weakening the Tehran government. Earlier this year The New York Times reported Nader was promoting a plan to carry out economic sabotage against Iran and pitched the plan in the Spring of 2017 to Saudi, UAE, and American officials. It’s unclear if that plan ever moved forward or if it was part of the larger project for regime change discussed in these January 2017 meetings.

Either way, former CIA acting director John McLaughlin told The Daily Beast, the get-togethers as described were very unusual.

"It’s concerning to me as a former intelligence official because of the fact that it smacks of covert action planning, which is the most sensitive thing the U.S. government does and is so uniquely the province of the sitting president,” he said.

The meetings in New York, which have not yet been reported, show the depth of efforts by foreign officials and power brokers to influence the nascent Trump administration on the most sensitive foreign policy decisions. The discussions in New York came at a time when the Trump team was developing its Iran strategy and looking for input from individuals who were working on plans to counter Tehran’s influence. Saudi Arabia and the UAE, whose leaders made overtures to the campaign throughout the 2016 election, were at the time developing campaigns to thwart its regional adversaries, including Iran.
"It makes complete sense that Assiri would have been meeting with the Trump team during this time,” one former Pentagon official with close ties to the intelligence community told The Daily Beast. "The team was meeting with a lot of foreign influencers and Saudi was a country that wanted in on all anti-Iran projects.”

The meetings in New York not only reveal details of one of the Trump team’s first encounters with officials from Saudi Arabia—a country that is embroiled in one of the year’s most scandalous and consequential geopolitical incidents—but also sheds more light on Trumpworld’s relationship to Zamel, a self-styled Mark Zuckerberg of the national-security world with deep ties to Israeli intelligence.

Trump’s team drew in Zamel, a young strategist and entrepreneur, during the campaign. Zamel had pitched a plan in August 2016 to Donald Trump Jr. to help Trump win the presidential election, according to The New York Times. It’s unclear if that plan was ever put into action. Trump’s lawyer has previously stated that the candidate heard Zamel’s plan but did not move forward with it.

Zamel’s lawyer has also previously denied his client’s involvement in U.S. election or campaign efforts and told The Daily Beast that he is "not a target” of the Mueller investigation.

But it appears Zamel remained close to the Trump team throughout the election and into the transition. Part of the reason? He had an easy in. He had been introduced to Nader, closely connected with the Trump campaign, years earlier by John Hannah, a former aide to Dick Cheney now working as a senior counselor at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies, a right-leaning think tank known for its anti-Iran work. Hannah is listed as a member of the advisory council of Wikistrat, one of Zamel’s companies, on the firm’s website. (Other members of that board, including former CIA chief Michael Hayden, say their involvement with Wikistrat is informal and at arm’s length.)

Hussein Ibish, senior resident scholar at the Persian Gulf States Institute in Washington, told The Daily Beast that Wikistrat doesn’t bill itself as a typical consulting firm.
"Wikistrat presents themselves as a kind of private intelligence service,” Ibish said. "If you look at the work they’ve done in Yemen, they’ve been a work for hire. It’s sort of like an intelligence-for-hire kind of thing.”

"If you have a very rudimentary conversation discussing the possibility of raising the question of regime change, then it’s not surprising to bring in a set of stakeholders including Wikistrat,” he added.

Details of the January 2017 meeting reviewed by The Daily Beast show how Zamel—already a familiar face in Trumpworld for his audacious plan to use social media influence campaigns to help beat Hillary Clinton—had ambitions beyond Trump’s election. According to communications reviewed by The Daily Beast, Zamel flew to New York to help pitch the Iran idea to Assiri and Trump's team, delivering a bound presentation full of tactics to undercut the country’s government.

"The communications show that participants discussed a multi-pronged strategy for eroding, and eventually ending, the current Iranian government — including economic, information, and military tactics for weakening the Tehran government.”

The Trump team offered a new way forward for Saudi Arabia, the UAE, and Israel, who had all grown frustrated by the Obama administration for its stance toward Iran and its brokering of the nuclear deal. Trump had campaigned, in part, on the promise that he would renegotiate the deal and take major steps against the Iranian government during his first days in office. In his first public address after taking office, Flynn said the U.S. was "officially putting Iran on notice” after it carried out a missile test and attack on a Saudi warship by Houthi fighters in Yemen. Since then, the Trump administration has pulled out of the nuclear deal and levied snapback sanctions on the country.

The meetings in New York were part of a flurry of visits from influential foreigners to Trump Tower. Weeks before, Emirati Crown Prince Muhammad bin Zayed reportedly discussed Iran policy at Trump Tower with Bannon, Flynn, and Jared Kushner. The meetings appear to be part of Saudi and Emirati efforts to lobby the incoming Trump administration against Qatar and Iran, their top regional competitors. The New York Times reported earlier this year that Nader worked with Republican fundraiser Elliott Broidy to urge the White House to take an aggressive stance against the two countries. (Nader also helped orchestrate the meeting between Blackwater founder and Trump ally Erik Prince and Moscow moneyman Kirill Dmitriev.)

Muhammad bin Salman—known by his initials, MBS— leaned on General Assiri to help carry out conversations with Western officials about Iran and the Saudi-led war in Yemen, according to two senior officials in the intelligence community. Assiri was previously the spokesperson for Saudi’s military offensive in Yemen. That effort, in concert with the UAE and backed by the United States and European countries, has drawn enormous outcry from human rights activists and members of Congress. The UN has called it the globe’s worst humanitarian crisis, and UN air chief Mark Lowcock said earlier this week that the war puts 14 million Yemeni people at risk of starvation.
-Courtesy: Daily Beast

For US Money Is More Important Than Murder of Saudi Journalist

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TEHRAN (FNA)- A top priority for the US administration, as with many recent administrations, is the selling of massive amounts of US arms to Saudi Arabia. That says why President Donald Trump will never get to the bottom of the murder of Saudi journalist Jamal Khashoggi in the Saudi consulate in Istanbul.

He first claimed he is determined to tackle this matter at the “highest levels.” Now Trump is walking back the issue, insisting that it isn’t worth it for the US to imperil $110 billion in arms sales to Saudi Arabia over a single journalist. Trump says it wouldn’t be acceptable to lose the $110 billion deal, adding that the journalist’s disappearance took place in Turkey, and he’s not a United States citizen.

Trump, as with many recent presidents, has prioritized the relationship between Saudi Arabia and the United States over that of the journalist’s death. He has even specifically warned against upsetting Saudi leaders as it could hurt the US monetarily. “I don’t like stopping massive amounts of money that’s being poured into our country,” Trump said, according to a tweet this week. He added, “they are spending $110b on military equipment and on things that create jobs for this country.”

This is not something of a surprise:

- The arms deal is simply too important to US arms companies, and any serious attempt to punish the Saudis for the killing of Khashoggi is going to boil down to a fight over the arms deal. After all, this is the same autocratic regime that has been murdering thousands of Yemeni people since 2015 and the US government has done nothing to stop the conflict, much less stop its arms supply or refuelling Saudi aircraft mid-air.

- Saudi Arabia is no different than the other authoritarian, violent, and despotic regimes that have dominated the region since the dissolution of the Ottoman Empire. Saudi Arabia is a harsh place, where politically-motivated assassinations and unsavoury governing practices are as commonplace as the oil flowing underneath its sands. To view Saudi Arabia as above the region’s other Arab states is not matched by the facts.

- The relationship between the US and Saudi Arabia is not rooted in common beliefs, shared values and ethics. It is rooted in identical foreign policy interests to dominate the region and protect Israel. Such ties are the reason why Yemen and Syria are in turmoil. They are also the reason why ISIL and Al-Qaeda, the US-Saudi foot soldiers, are still present throughout the region.

- Saudi Arabia is not the answer to the region’s many problems, as Trump would like to suggest. It is in fact the root cause of all regional problems. The despotic regime has taken maximum advantage of America’s appetite for controlling crude market and a desire for a long-term regional partner in crime in order to press its own Takfiri-Wahhabi agenda in the region. This agenda is centred on the regime’s rivalry with Iran and its absolutist quest for hegemony. The United States, having interest in the sectarian fault-lines of the Middle East, has frequently chosen to wade into Arab conflicts on Saudi Arabia’s side.

- Saudi Arabia’s indiscriminate bombing campaign in Yemen, its embargo of Qatar and its export of Wahhabi ideology are not exactly helpful in assuring US security. Many of those who carried out terror attacks in the US were from Saudi Arabia. Riyadh’s war on Yemen, and Washington’s logistical assistance to the Saudi Air Force in particular, has been especially devastating to the people of that destitute country and America’s reputation among the Yemeni population — all the while providing more operating space for the very transnational terrorist groups the US and Saudi Arabia claim to combat in the Peninsula.

- Khashoggi's story now displays pretty well that the Saudi regime is not concerned about women’s rights, press freedom, due process, political pluralism, and individual freedom, but focused on perpetuating its control and subjugating its smaller Persian Gulf neighbours into vassal states. Saudi Arabia has never been a helpful partner in ensuring regional security and peace. Saudi and Persian Gulf Arab money have been absolutely essential in creating and arming ISIL and Al-Qaeda.

In the prevailing environment, it is silly to assume that Trump will ever upend the terms of the decades-long alliance between the United States and Saudi Arabia. US politicians, media figures and foreign policy elites - even those who have fawned over the authoritarian Saudi Crown Prince Mohammad bin Salman – will never criticize the continuation of US-Saudi alliance. Quite the opposite, the US will continue to give the Saudis a blank check, politically and militarily, for nearly as long as it can last.

In between, in Washington who cares if the Saudis kidnapped, tortured and assassinated Khashoggi inside their consulate in Istanbul? After all, Saudi Ambassador Khalid Bin Salman has told the US that the consulate cannot provide video footage of the consulate because they only have livestreaming, not recorded video! Again, who cares if this is the only consulate in the world that doesn’t tape - and didn’t tape its own nefarious activity.

Therefore, don’t expect the White House to rush to judgment. Because all of this and more have already passed the smell test in Washington. This particular murder case will never call the relationship between Saudi Arabia and the United States into fundamental question because Trump says jobs would be at risk if arms sales to the country were halted.