A Crumbling Saudi-Emirati Alliance In Yemen May Change U.S. Gulf Policy

Saudi Crown Prince Mohammad bin Salman (left) and Abu Dhabi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Zayed

by Charles W. Dunne

As recently as last June, the de facto alliance between Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates, and Egypt appeared to be in the driver’s seat of US policy on the Middle East, influencing Trump Administration thinking on issues such as the boycott of Qatar, political turmoil in Sudan, and civil war in Libya. Despite mounting congressional and public opposition to the devastating Saudi and Emirati military campaign in Yemen, now in its fifth year, the administration vetoed attempts to suspend arms sales to Saudi Arabia and the UAE and continued to support them politically in their fight against Yemen’s Iran-backed Houthi rebels. Prominent foreign policy analysts in Washington argued that the surest way to bring the bloody conflict to an end was for the United States to double down on its support for the Saudi intervention.

But since then, small cracks in the Saudi-Emirati alliance have become larger fractures that have called into question the bonds of solidarity between Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates, two of the Arabian Peninsula’s political and military heavyweights. Most prominently, the UAE’s backing of a southern separatist movement against the government of Yemeni President Abdrabbuh Mansour Hadi––whose authority the Emiratis had been trying to restore in partnership with the Saudis since his overthrow by the Houthis in 2015––has dealt a serious blow to the Saudi-led campaign. The current mess has increased the confusion in Washington’s Gulf strategy, complicating its Iran policy. In addition to forcing changes in the Trump Administration’s approach to Yemen, it may also affect the standing of both Saudi Arabia and the UAE in the American capital.

Khashoggi and Yemen Taking a Toll on Gulf Unity

Linkages between Saudi Arabia and the UAE have been under some stress for several reasons at least since October of 2018, when the US-based Saudi journalist Jamal Khashoggi was murdered in the Saudi consulate in Istanbul, Turkey. While publicly backing Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman (MbS), who is widely thought to have ordered the murder, UAE leaders appear to have developed second thoughts concerning the wisdom of their close association with his leadership and policies. Once content to ride Saudi coattails to influence in Washington, leveraging the close relationship between MbS and Abu Dhabi Crown Prince and UAE de facto ruler Mohammed bin Zayed (MbZ), UAE leaders began to worry that their own reputation could be dragged through the mud as Saudi stock fell in Washington. Consequently, they have quietly begun to distance themselves from MbS and his regime.

The Yemen war, however, proved to be a more significant stressor of the relationship. Despite Abu Dhabi’s movement in apparent lockstep with Riyadh militarily and diplomatically, after the Saudi-led intervention began in 2015 on behalf of the internationally recognized Hadi government, it has become apparent over the last 18 months or so that, in reality, Saudi and Emirati interests in Yemen were never identical.

Saudi Arabia has always viewed the conflict through the prism of its struggle with Iran for regional supremacy, seeing Tehran’s backing for the Houthi rebels as a major security threat and as part of a strategy to establish a zone of influence and hostile intent along its southern border. As a result, the Saudis prosecuted the war as another front in the perceived existential struggle between the two countries, applying scorched-earth tactics in Yemen that took a heavy toll on the civilian population and infrastructure, producing a massive humanitarian crisis and possibly implicating the United States and other arms suppliers in war crimes, according to a UN experts report issued September 3.

The Emiratis, however, saw things rather differently. Inclined by economic realities and geopolitical proximity to take a more practical line toward Tehran, the UAE proved less interested in imposing a defeat on Iran and its Houthi allies than in achieving certain limited gains. Specifically, Abu Dhabi wanted to prevent the southern port of Aden from falling under the sway of Houthi forces and thereby imperiling shipping lanes through Bab al-Mandab, upon which Emirati interests depended heavily.

The disconnect simmered largely out of sight until the second week of August, when forces loyal to the UAE-backed Southern Transitional Council (STC), a political movement that advocates southern independence from the central government in Sanaa, moved to seize the port city of Aden, the capital-in-exile of the Hadi government. The move set off a fresh round of political and military chaos that posed a sharp new threat to the viability of the Yemeni state, prompting the Hadi government to call for the UAE’s expulsion from the coalition.

The seizure of Aden was all the more painful for the Saudi leadership in light of the fact that the UAE had ordered an abrupt drawdown of its forces from Yemen in July in favor of a more “diplomatic” approach. This perhaps reflected the growing sense in Abu Dhabi that the aim of restoring the Hadi government was not only increasingly unrealistic but also unimportant, if the UAE’s maritime interests could be secured through the agency of the STC. Word of the drawdown caused consternation in Riyadh  and dealt a heavy blow to the coalition’s ability to prosecute the campaign against the Houthis.

Events took a much more serious turn on August 29 when the Hadi government blamed the UAE for bombing its forces in Aden and Zinjibar, a coastal city 34 miles to the northeast, and called on Saudi Arabia to “stop this illegal and unjustified military escalation.” (The UAE admitted the attacks but claimedit was targeting “terrorists,” not government troops.) Together, these developments highlighted the sense of a serious—and perhaps irreparable—split between the two allies on the ground.

US Changing Course on Yemen, with Iran on Its Mind

These events prompted Washington to take a fresh look at its policies and its friends in the Gulf, and some changes with regard to both seem to be in store.

In response to developments in Aden, the State Department issued a statement noting that it was “deeply concerned” by the violence and calling for “dialogue” to resolve differences among the warring parties. But little else in the nature of high-level US diplomacy to patch up Saudi-UAE differences has been in evidence. In fact, reports recently emerged that the Trump Administration, which has up to now fully backed the Saudis and their Yemen campaign, has decided to open direct talks with the Houthis in Oman and is urging Riyadh to come to the table as well.

The reason for this startling shift is most likely the administration’s concern about how the deteriorating situation in Yemen might affect its policy toward Iran—a far more important consideration for the White House than anything taking place in Yemen itself.

Washington’s strategy of “maximum pressure” on Tehran, coupled with the recent deployment of additional military assets to the Gulf and high-stakes rhetorical volleys levied at Iran’s leaders, have raised the possibility of a military clash, which could be unpredictable in scope and consequences. Recent sub-rosa Israeli military strikes against Iran-allied forces in Lebanon, Syria, and Iraq have increased the risk that US forces in the region could be the target of retaliatory attacks. Under these circumstances, the administration appears concerned that the worsening military situation and the collapse of Saudi-UAE unity on the ground in Yemen presents the prospect of an increasingly unwinnable war that, at the very least, would prove to be a damaging distraction in the event of a confrontation among the United States, the Gulf states, and Iran. Indeed, the increasing pace and scopeof Houthi drone and missile attacks against Saudi oil and other economic infrastructure, despite having caused little serious damage so far, highlight the kingdom’s vulnerabilities in the event of increased tensions. This factor has probably influenced the administration’s change of course and may have helped persuade the White House to try to convince, or compel, the Saudis to join the talks with the Houthis.

The administration’s new tack on Yemen may prove to be well timed. With the apparent collapse of the Saudi-UAE alliance in Yemen, the White House will find it harder than ever to fend off pressure from congressional opponents of American military support for the Saudi campaign in Yemen, and new legislative efforts to curb American support for the war are already underway. Congressional focus on Saudi Arabia is intensifying; Senate Foreign Relations Committee Chairman James E. Risch (R-Idaho) has introduced the Saudi Arabia Diplomatic Review Act of 2019, which would mandate a comprehensive review of US policy toward Saudi Arabia as well as its actions in Yemen and record on human rights. Risch told The Washington Post that he believes President Donald Trump might be amenable to the legislation.

Wider Concerns: MESA, Counterterrorism

The fallout from Yemen could affect broader US regional strategy as well.  For one thing, plans for a new Middle East Strategic Alliance (MESA) to counter regional threats (mainly Iran) are likely to be jeopardized further. Announced in May 2017, construction of the new security architecture depends to a great extent on the preservation of political-military unity among the Gulf Arab states, who would contribute basing and funding and bring their most modern weapons systems to the effort. Current Saudi-Emirati tensions—combined with Egypt’s pullout from the proposed alliance in April, the ongoing Saudi-led boycott of Qatar, and preexisting Gulf reluctance to increased military integration—make such unity more tenuous than ever. While grand plans for standing up regional military alliances and/or enhanced multinational security cooperation have come and gone over the years, MESA was to have been the cornerstone of the administration’s regional security policy.

The disputes among allies in the Yemen war may threaten other important US interests as well, particularly the fight to eliminate al-Qaeda elements in Yemen. The United States became militarily involved in the country during the Bush administration’s Global War on Terror; under Obama and then Trump, the long-term battle against al-Qaeda in Yemen became an important factor in determining US support for Saudi Arabia and the UAE. Despite some significant tactical successes against the terrorist group, diversions of US arms to al-Qaeda elements by Riyadh and Abu Dhabi undermined American goals; the rupture between the allies now seems likely to degrade the anti-terrorism campaign further, providing new political and geographical space for AQ and other terrorist groups to operate.

Finally, Trump Administration strategy in the Middle East has been predicated to an unusual degree on the president’s personal relationships with key autocrats of the Gulf and Egypt––in addition to Israel—to deliver a unified front on Iran, counterterrorism, combatting political extremism, and providing support for presidential son-in-law Jared Kushner’s long-delayed Palestinian-Israeli peace plan. With the rift among Gulf powers widening, the president may find it significantly harder to deliver success on any of these fronts as next year’s presidential election looms.

Alienation of Affection

Where could this lead next? It is possible, though not immediately likely, that the recent developments in Yemen will effect a shift in the administration’s Gulf policy, or at least the way President Trump regards his current princely allies. If the president came to view the latest Yemen fiasco as a sign that Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman can no longer deliver or even keep his own coalition partners in line, thus negatively impacting his own top priorities in the Gulf, the president might decide that it is time to reevaluate his relationship with MbS. The close relationship with the Emiratis could be up for readjustment as well; having caused some heartburn in Washington by apparently backing away from the administration’s hard-line Iran policy, and complicating matters with its behavior in Yemen, the UAE—and its standing—and the Abu Dhabi crown prince might take a hit with President Trump.

Alternatively, if the president were to reverse course suddenly and engineer a diplomatic opening with Tehran, something both he and the Iranians appear to be open to, but the Saudis and Emiratis are, emphatically, not—that could also strain relations with Riyadh and Abu Dhabi.

Either outcome is possible, given the volatility of the situation in the Gulf (of which the Yemen debacle is the most recent illustration) and the mercurial nature of President Trump. And if either of those things happens—though there is no sign just now that they will—foreign relations in the Gulf could be in for a drastic shakeup indeed.

Charles Dunne is a Non-resident Fellow at Arab Center Washington DC. To learn more about him and read his previous publications click here. Republished, with permission, from the Arab Center.

Saudi Coalition in Yemen on Brink of Collapse

Amid Infighting Between UAE, Saudi Militants:

CAIRO -Kayhan Intl. - A Saudi-led military coalition fighting in Yemen targeted its own allies with airstrikes Sunday, a day after southern separatists seized control of the strategic port city of Aden, threatening to fracture the Saudi alliance and open a new front in the five-year conflict.

Even before the damage from those strikes had been assessed, the United Nations on Sunday said that as many as 40 people have been killed and 260 injured in the previous four days of clashes in Aden that erupted on the eve of one of Islam’s holiest periods, Eid al-Adha. Tens of thousands of civilians in the Red Sea city nestled on the tip of the Arabian Peninsula have fled their homes, while many others remain trapped without basic necessities, UN officials and aid workers said.

"It is heartbreaking that during Eid al-Adha families are mourning the death of their loved ones instead of celebrating together in peace,” Lise Grande, the top UN humanitarian official Yemen, said in a statement. "Our main concern right now is to dispatch medical teams to rescue the injured. We are also very worried by reports that civilians trapped in their homes are running out of food and water.”

Yemen, the Middle East’s poorest nation, was already in the grips of what the United Nations has described as the world’s worst humanitarian crisis.

The seizure of Aden has exposed divisions within a coalition led by Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates that intervened in the conflict in March 2015. Together, they have been battling to restore a former regime which resigned and then fled to Saudi Arabia in 2015. 

"This weakens the coalition by exposing undeniable cracks beneath the surface,” said Elisabeth Kendall, a Yemen scholar at Oxford University’s Pembroke College. "It is becoming increasingly obvious that the UAE and Saudi Arabia do not share the same end goals in Yemen.”

Rifts have emerged over the past 18 months between the southern separatists, backed by the UAE, and forces aligned with former president Abd Rabbuh Mansour Hadi, backed by Saudi Arabia. 

The separatists, who want to split Yemen’s south from its north, have long been suspicious of the former Yemeni government, ruled for decades by northerners. The separatists, and the UAE, also disapprove of Hadi’s alliance with Islah party. While the Saudis consider Islah vital for its role in Yemen, the UAE is opposed to any significant role for Islah because of its ties to the Muslim Brotherhood.

Clashes engulfed Aden’s streets after a missile attack on a military parade killed dozens of separatists fighters and a prominent commander last week.  

The violence was a major blow to Saudi Arabia and its ambition of restoring Hadi’s government. Aden had served as the government’s headquarters for several years, while Sanaa, Yemen’s capital, has been under the control of the Houthis.

Al-Qaeda and Daesh appear to be taking advantage of the security vacuum in Yemen’s south, said Kendall, who monitors both groups. In the first week of August, Al-Qaeda undertook seven operations in as many days targeting UAE-backed forces, a significant uptick in attacks. And Daesh launched two attacks in Aden, the first time it has targeted the city in more than a year.

Despite the calls for a ceasefire, the Saudi-led coalition opted to send a warning to the separatists with airstrikes late Saturday and early Sunday. The coalition did not specify where the attacks occurred, but separatist officials and aid workers said areas in the Dar Saad and Khormaksar districts, as well as around the presidential palace, were hit.

"This is only the first operation and will be followed by others .?.?. the Southern Transitional Council still has a chance to withdraw,” Saudi state TV quoted the coalition as saying, according to Reuters.

Hadi’s self-proclaimed information minister, Muammar Al Iryani, called the seizure of Aden a "coup against constitutional legitimacy”.

S. Arabia, UAE Throw Stones into Neighboring Yemen Equipped with Ballistic Missiles, Explosive Drones

Shaker Amin

TEHRAN (FNA)- Shaker Amin, Yemeni journalist and activist, says Riyadh is dependent upon oil and Hajj income, and the UAE “is a mason empire of capitalism that depends on the attraction of foreign investments”, making them increasingly concerned about their fragile security which easily severely undermined by Yemeni missiles or drones strike.

Speaking in an exclusive interview with FNA, Shaker Amin Shaker said “from the rubbles of our houses struck by the coalition's jet fighters we could have stood up again on our feet with a faithful will to defeat the enemy and take a revenge for the shattered bodies of our women, children and elderly people.”

Commenting on importance of the drone strikes, he noted “That is the correct definition of effectiveness when you turn to be able to strike deep inside the enemy's own territories after they announced full destruction of your military capabilities.”

Shaker Amin is a Yemeni journalist and commentator. He has been reporting from Sana’a, exposing the Saudi-led coalition atrocities in the impoverished Arab country.

Below is the full text of the interview.

Q: The bank of targets of Yemeni drone strikes is widening day by day. How effective do you find the Yemeni drone strikes?

A: They are enormously effective to the extent that the Saudi king called for the session of three summits, [Persian] Gulf, Arabs and Islamic. What they just saw is just the beginning, and there is a lot more to come. We say that with confidence because we trust our leaders who have surprised their own Yemeni people before the enemy and the whole world; by producing such high tech devices from the scratch not to mention being under total blockade. From the rubbles of our houses struck by the coalition's jet fighters we could have stood up again on our feet with a faithful will to defeat the enemy and take a revenge for the shattered bodies of our women, children and elderly people. That is the correct definition of effectiveness when you turn to be able to strike deep inside the enemy's own territories after they announced full destruction of your military capabilities and infrastructures. Another reason why the drone strikes are extremely effective is that we are fed up with fighting our own people "the mercenaries" in an endless battle that is exhausting our capabilities; human and materialistic. It has been always time from the beginning to make the enemy suffer, feel pain and get burnt by the fire it started in the first place; otherwise, the war’s ending could not be even imagined.

Q: Yemen said the capital of Saudi Arabia and the UAE are within the range. Do you think such drone and missile strikes change the game rules in this war?

A: The drones and missiles resemble an electric shock to the closed-minded closed-eyed hypocritical international community, and send a clear message that their efforts to make the Yemeni war look like a civil war is not acceptable any longer. The free Yemeni people, leaders and army will not tolerate watching the blood-shedding and souls-taking of Yemeni innocent people while the Saudi and Emirati warmongers live in peace. Moreover, our leaders and army will not bear up with the fact that they steal our petroleum resources and other tax and customs incomes while dozens of Yemeni people die of starvation and diseases on daily basis, not to mention victims of air raids and artillery shelling. I think the regional puppets and their super power masters have understood by now that our war is ascending and our capabilities are developing day after another, and that Yemen is not an easy digestible bite, and that the long centuries of Yemeni civilization cannot be erased or stolen by reckless clumsy monarchies.

Q: Why do Saudi Arabia and the UAE deny important places targeted by Yemeni armed drones?

A: Because they want to maintain their image of power before the oppressed people of Najd and Alhijaz. The fake power that allows al-Saud continue stealing petroleum resources and Hajj incomes to support Israel. That's the absent reality not many people know. As for the UAE, it is a mason empire of capitalism that depends on the attraction of foreign investments. It is a fragile superficial structure of glass that requires ultimate security and stability. So, you can imagine the impact of a missile or drone strikes. This is not a prediction but rather a warning. Do not throw stones on your neighbor’s house if your house is made of glass and your neighbor has ballistic missiles and explosive drones. Saudi Arabia and the UAE deny Yemeni Strikes because they are weaker than spiders' web, exactly as their cousins in Israel.

Human Rights: Time for US to Walk the Talk

TEHRAN (FNA)- There is an explanation as to why the United States continues to support 

Saudi Arabia’s war and says the Saudis and their coalition partners don’t have to answer to 

the suffering they inflict on the besieged people of Yemen.

The Trump administration's record of human rights violations is poor and the State Department has just announced that it won’t cooperate with United Nations investigators regarding their complaints about such issues in the US.

This is while the UN special rapporteur on extreme poverty and human rights has issued a 

report on "devastating inequality" in the US and the Trump White House has left unanswered at least 13 official requests from UN special rapporteurs on human rights since last May. The deliberate failure to respond began a month before Philip Alston, special rapporteur on extreme poverty, issued a scathing report detailing "devastating inequality" in the US, made worse by the anti-Muslim and anti-immigrant policies of President Donald Trump and Republican lawmakers.

According to Alston, Washington’s refusal to answer questions and cooperate not only leaves issues including inequality and the rights of immigrants and asylum seekers unaddressed in the US, but also sends a harmful message to other human rights abusers leading countries around the world. In his words, "This sends a message that you can opt out of routine scrutiny if you don't like what is being 

said about your record on human rights.”

Obviously, the dismissive Trump administration officials see domestic human rights violations as an internal matter - the same officials that draft resolution after resolution against other nations at the UN regarding similar issues. They even call the UN study "patently ridiculous" and claim no human rights violations exist in the US, which is ridiculous. There is well documented evidence of growing income inequality, the police brutality against people of color, the Muslim travel ban and anti-immigrant policies, the use of solitary confinement in prisons, and the Department of Homeland Security's forcible separation of thousands of children from their parents.

Such attitude demonstrates a rather inappropriate arrogance, at a time when human rights not just in the US but also in neighboring Canada are far from perfect, where three quarters of a century after the UN Charter, human rights are similarly and manifestly far from being realized (enjoyed) by far too many people. Despite some progress, the gap between declaration and real experience remains wide and, for some, stark, and the persistence of that shortfall brings into doubt the sincerity of their commitment and even their values.

On the other hand, the US has already withdrawn from the UN Human Rights Council, for being “preoccupied with Israel”. But why is the Council preoccupied with Washington’s surrogate? For a start, Israel has committed serious human rights abuses that are worthy of the Council’s condemnation. 

It is absurd for Washington to claim that Israel has “committed no offence”. The recent killings of Palestinian protesters, targeted killings, illegal settlements, forced evictions, war crimes, the Gaza blockade and, most fundamentally, an ongoing occupation of Palestine that has lasted for more than 50 years, will cause critics to proliferate.

Nevertheless, that does not explain the Trump administration’s dismissive attitude toward the UN, rejecting even legitimate condemnation by the Council, and deliberate refusal to walk the talk and end scale of human rights abuses within its borders. Regardless of its causes, it is fair to expect that US human rights violations not be dismissed outright.

Long story short, the US, the only country in the world that has failed to ratify the Convention on the Rights of the Child, cannot play a leadership role in human rights. It has withdrawn from the Human Rights Council and refuses to cooperate with United Nations investigators regarding their complaints about human rights violations in the US, which are too numerous to mention, but which include torture and the highest proportion of incarceration in the world.

After The Khashoggi Murder, It is Up To Israel To Repair The Crack In The Axis of Evil

by Andrew Levine

On the domestic scene, there is Ted Cruz and Mitch McConnell and many others of a similar caliber, but among world leaders could there by anyone more loathsome than Donald Trump?

Because he has so many serious competitors, each of whom is loathsome in different ways, the question is impossible to answer.  But Trump is “special” — thanks to the hand that the Electoral College, building on the work of Democratic Party losers and Hillary Clinton, dealt him.

MBS, Mohammad bin Salman, Crown Prince of Saudi Arabia, is special too.

Compared to those two, Benjamin Netanyahu looks almost like what he plainly is not, a decent human being.

But as the leader of a country that, along with Saudi Arabia and the United States, comprises an axis of evil in the Greater Middle East, his power is magnified, and therefore so is the harm he can do.  He could, for example, bring America into a war with Iran.  This would almost certainly take a catastrophic turn.

That prospect is less likely, however, the more fractured the axis becomes.  This may turn out to be the silver lining in the savage murder of Jamal Khashoggi inside the Saudi consulate in Istanbul.

***

His murder was horrifying, but so is much else that the Saudis do to those who fall out of favor with the monarchy’s rulers; and so, of course, is the Saudi war in Yemen.  However, only this one gruesome murder seems to have struck a nerve.  Perhaps this is because the victim was well known to Western politicians and journalists.

His murder was unsettling enough to cause even the likes of Lindsey Graham and Marco Rubio to distance themselves, ever so delicately, from the sway of the conman to whom they, along with nearly all other Republican office-seekers and influence peddlers these days, pay homage.  It was ghastly enough even to get the conman himself to send out words and tweets of regret.

Future historians will have no trouble explaining the outrage; its causes are obvious to anyone with normal human sensibilities.

This assumes, of course, that the world will survive Trump well enough for there to be future historians. It also assumes that, despite the enthusiasms of the crowds at Trump rallies, and despite the propagandizing and dumbing down that Fox News and other rightwing media do, that the moral and intellectual capacities of normal human beings will remain generally unimpaired.

So far, the country has gotten through nearly two years of Trump and is still, for the most part, not too seriously damaged.  But there are at least two more years to go, and even if fortune smiles upon us and that longed for “blue wave” materializes, it won’t help much.

If our luck nevertheless holds, future historians will wonder why the Khashoggi murder, but not, say, the more outrageous and far more lethal war that the Saudis are waging, with American help, in Yemen, or the many other greater and lesser assaults on international law and basic human morality that have always been the stock and trade of the Saudi royal family, get a pass.

It is not as if the information isn’t available or that nobody outside the Middle East cares.  The problem is that American public opinion is indifferent.  The Khashoggi murder could change this.   Or not.

With American and other Western capitalists salivating at the prospect of the Saudis throwing money their way, and with the large Trump base becoming increasingly unhinged and vicious, a turn towards sanity is no slam-dunk.

After all, one of the very few things that Trump is good at is stirring up those “darker angels of our nature” that MSNBC and CNN pundits keep talking about.  He is even better at that than he is at tax evasion and fraudulent dealings with workers and investors.

About the only thing that Democrats are good at, besides quashing radical initiatives and stifling progressive impulses, is racking up huge leads in polls and then losing to the more odious duopoly party.

Even so, it is still more likely than not that “the Desert Kingdom” – a theocracy ruled by some of the most retrograde and morally debased miscreants alive today – will, thanks to this latest atrocity, be so damaged in the eyes of right-thinking people the world over that not all the oil money in the world will ever make it right.

Time will tell.  For now, it is still possible to believe that when the barbarism is severe enough and persists long enough, public opinion will eventually catch on, no matter how much money the rich and heinous throw around.

Future historians, if any, will also marvel at how liberals fell into line behind the Saudis before the Khashoggi murder.  Could it be that they really are dumb enough to fall for the nonsense put out by the likes of Tom Friedman?

Those historians will also know more about the Trump Organization’s business arrangements with MBS and other Gulf potentates than we now do.  This is likely to make those who fell for the MBS charm offensive look even dumber.

But now that Trump is in the White House, and Middle East policy is in the hands of Jared Kushner, his joined at the hip to Netanyahu son-in-law, the problem is worse than ever.

That the United States is in league with Saudi Arabia is not exactly news; America has been throwing its weight around in ways detrimental to the historically Muslim world since the end of the Second World War.  But now that Trump is in the White House, and Middle East policy is in the hands of Jared Kushner, his joined at the hip to Netanyahu son-in-law, the problem is worse than ever.

If the Trump Party loses ignominiously in the upcoming midterm elections, perhaps not all will be lost. Lately, though, prophets of doom – or are they just Democratic National Committee fear mongers? — have taken to telling the world that the Trump Party might hold onto power even in the House. They say that Trump’s misogyny, racism and overall vileness has aroused the enthusiasm of his base enough to overwhelm the enthusiasm of the anti-Trump “resistance.”

They may be right.  It does look like formerly quiescent, morbidly desperate people who used to be only privately mean-spirited now think that body slamming reporters and sending pipe bombs to “liberal” news organizations and Democrats is cool.  Those purported “populists” even think, on Trump’s word, that Brett Kavanaugh, late of Georgetown Prep and Yale, is God’s gift to the workingman.

We will know soon enough how well Trump’s strategy of riling up his base, all others be damned, will work.

We will know too how much, if at all, it matters that, in our so-called “democracy,” the majority of Americans, like the majority of people the world over, understand full well that Trump’s cult-like followers are mostly deluded thugs and that Trump himself is a laughing stock.

We will know to what extent ours has become a minority rule political culture, a veritable kakistocracy.

***

Like the others, the third member of the Middle East’s axis of evil, Israel, gets away with murder, both figuratively and literally, too.

But because Israel is a state with no territorial ambitions outside Palestine and no prospect of becoming a regional economic power, and because it is still a democracy of a sort, a Herrenvolk democracy, despite years of rightwing rule, its atrocities are confined, for the most part, to its own sliver of the world.

Nevertheless, its effect on world affairs is extensive and profound.

Israel and Saudi Arabia used to be mortal enemies.  Though hardly close friends now, they have become de facto allies.

To make their mark on the world, they are both utterly dependent on the United States.  The United States depends on Saudi Arabia for its oil, for the financial clout its oil makes possible, and for keeping the global oil market on track in ways that accord with America’s global interests. Israel has nothing comparable to offer the United States – it is no longer even useful as an off-shore military base — but the political clout of the Israel lobby, both Jewish and Evangelical Christian, more than makes up for the deficit.

I believe that these lobbies, the Jewish one especially, are paper tigers and that this will become apparent to everyone if and when they are boldly defied.

I believe that these lobbies, the Jewish one especially, are paper tigers and that this will become apparent to everyone if and when they are boldly defied.  But the American political class thinks differently, and that is all that matters.

In any case, their relations with the United States are not what is holding them together.  Their animosity towards Iran is the reason for that.

The United States has it in for Iran in large part because its foreign policy establishment l holds a grudge for the humiliation America suffered during the hostage crisis four decades ago.

To be sure, the United States is, for the most part, just what as Gore Vidal famously said it was, the United States of Amnesia.  The bromance now flourishing between two of our most loathsome domestic political figures, Trump and Ted Cruz, attests to that.

But, like everything else in the Middle East, the situation is complicated.  At the same time, that, on most matters, the past might as well never have happened, the hegemon’s memory is long when its global dominance is challenged.

Therefore, whenever it is convenient to vilify Iran, American politicians generally will do precisely that. Even thoughtful ones, like Barack Obama, after trying meekly to chart a new course in American-Iranian relations, beat a hasty retreat at the first signs of trouble.

The Saudis have it in for Iran – and Turkey too, to a lesser extent – because, despite the retrograde nature of their regime, they want to become the regional hegemon for the entire Middle East, not just the Arabian Peninsula.

But great power politics is not the whole story.  Saudi Arabia and Iran are rival theocracies; their animosities therefore transcend the bounds of Reason, passing over, as religious conflicts often do, into a realm where irrational fervor sometimes overwhelms calculations of economic and national interest.

Israel’s problem with Iran is different.  It has no hegemonic aspirations; it is happy for the United States to monopolize that. And although secularism is in retreat in Israel, the country is still far from becoming a theocracy.

It is relevant too that in Jewish lore, Persia (Iran) has always been held in high regard.  The thinking of the European Jews who colonized Palestine was, of course, affected by  Orientalist attitudes, but, like other Europeans, European Jews generally held Persians in higher regard than the Arabic speaking peoples under Ottoman – and later British and French – rule.

In short, Israel and Iran are neither natural nor historical enemies.

But to flourish and perhaps even to survive, Israel needs enemies; it always has and as long as it purports to be a Jewish state, it always will.  With anti-Semitism on the wane, despite what Zionists would like the world to think, it therefore needs to concoct credible “existential threats.”  Iran is its best, perhaps its only, chance for that.

There is a reasonable debate to be had about whether anti-Semitism made or still makes Zionism necessary.  There is no doubt, however, that it made it possible.

By “anti-Semitism,” I mean hatred of Jews.  The term is unfortunate because “Semite” is a linguistic, not an ethnic, category, and because most of today’s purported anti-Semites are “Semites” themselves.  But the word is in common use, and there is no getting around it.

Anti-Semitism and anti-Judaism are not the same.   Anti-Judaism has existed at least since Roman times, and is a mainstay of the other two “Abrahamic” religions, Christianity and Islam.  It could hardly be otherwise, inasmuch as each of them understands itself to be the legitimate and unique successor of the religion of ancient Israel.

Since theological animosities sometimes shade over into animosities towards theological opponents, anti-Semitism, in the largest sense, has also been around since ancient times. But the anti-Semitism that made Zionism possible, and perhaps also necessary, the kind that is based on eighteenth, nineteenth and early twentieth century notions of “race,” is a European concoction and a creature of the modern world.

Jews fared better under Islam than they did in Christendom, and modern anti-Semitism owes a great deal to Christian anti-Judaism.  Muslim anti-Judaism, such as it is, has had almost nothing to do with the rise of modern anti-Semitism or with its nature.

Apologists for Israel nowadays struggle to conflate occasional expressions of anti-Zionist outrage in suburban quarters of European cities with the anti-Semitism that led to the Final Solution.  There are a lot of susceptible people in the world these days begging to be fooled, but, in the end, theirs is a fool’s errand.

It should go without saying that anti-Semitism and anti-Zionism are historically and conceptually distinct.

The original Zionist idea was that anti-Semitism would always be with us and that, if only for the sake of self-defense, the Jewish people need a state of their own.   The idea that this state had to be in Palestine came later, as did the idea that support for a Jewish state in Palestine is an expression of Jewish identity.

Indeed, it was once a widely accepted tenet of the Jewish religion that, until the Messiah comes, Palestine was to be a holy land, not a homeland.  This is still the view of many extreme orthodox Jews today.

It was a holy land too for Old Testament besotted Anglo-Protestants and Lutherans in Germany and the Scandinavian countries.

Indeed, Anglo-Protestant “dispensationalist” theologians in the nineteenth century were the first to give the “return” of the Jews to Palestine an expressly political inflection; they were political Zionists a good half century before the idea gained a foothold in Jewish circles.

Their theology had a profoundly anti-Semitic cast, however; before Christ could come a second time, they argued, Jews would have to accept Christ or else face an eternity in Hell. There is little doubt that most of them were rooting for the latter option.  It took a while, but Jewish Zionists, always on the lookout for allies who could help them sway the U.S. government their way, decided not to mind.

To be sure, what started out as a reaction to European anti-Semitism did, in the course of time, take on different colorations.   By now, Zionism is mainly a form of Jewish identity politics, with the nation serving as a substitute for God.

But nations are not part of the furniture of the world; they are socially and politically constructed. This is especially true of the Jewish nation, formed from peoples who share a common religion, but not a common language, except liturgical Hebrew and Aramaic, a shared history or a shared land. Jewish nationalism is a slender reed upon which to base Zionist theory and practice.

Why even bother trying unless circumstances make the construction of a Jewish national identity morally imperative?

This is why, some hundred and twenty years after Theodor Herzl published Der Judenstaat, Israel’s first reason for being remains its best – anti-Semitism.

But although anti-Zionism, like anti-Judaism, can and sometimes does slide over into anti-Semitism, and although Zionists have worked hard to keep the fear of anti-Semitism alive, there just isn’t enough of the genuine article around anymore to justify all the harm that the state of Israel does.

But existential threats will do instead, and if they don’t exist, it will therefore be necessary to create them.

Real threats to the ethnocratic character of the Jewish state — voluntary emigration, for example, or population drift due to low Jewish birthrates, especially among the Ashkenazi (European) Jews who founded the state — don’t cut it.  They are no more “threatening” than intermarriage between Gentiles and Jews in the United States and other Western countries.

Palestinians under occupation and in exile used to serve the purpose, but, by now, they are too politically divided, too abandoned by the world, and too militarily feeble to fool anybody who is not begging to be fooled.

And, of course, the Saudis and the Arab regimes they control are of no use either; they have become Israel’s friend – not officially, but in ways too obvious to hide.

Jordan is and always has been useless, and after the Bush-Cheney war of choice in Iraq, Iraq now is too. Then came the utter and complete mess that the Obama administration, led on by the always inept Hillary Clinton and the liberal imperialists she and Obama empowered, made of Libya and Egypt, and, worst of all, Syria.

And so, Iran is all that is left.

Netanyahu is obsessed with Iran, and therefore so is Trump.  He may aspire to be the Absolute Leader of the Universe but, in fact, he dares not displease Sheldon Adelson and the Israel lobby leads him around by the nose.

Adelson, by the way, is living proof that classical anti-Semitism is finished in the United States.  The man is a character right out of the pages of The Protocols of the Elders of Zion, and yet nobody, even in so-called “alt-right” (quasi or bona fide fascist) circles seems to care.

Netanyahu has the bomb and he has the Israel lobby, but he doesn’t have anything like the Saudis’ money; and, in capitalist America, money talks.

But after the Khashoggi murder it may not talk loud enough.

Therefore, if Netanyahu is to succeed in getting America to go to war with Iran, he may have to do the heavy lifting himself.  Is he up to the task?  Don’t count on it.

Let’s hope instead that Israel’s inherent weakness and Netanyahu’s own ineptitude does him in along with his even more odious axis of evil partners, and ultimately the axis itself.

International Hypocrisy

by Dr Elias Akleh

By now all international media resources; newspapers, magazines, TV channels, and internet social media, are busy reporting the gruesome murder of Jamal Khashoggi; a Saudi reporter, who was loyal to the regime until he turned against Muhamad bin Salman (MBS) and his suppressive policies.

Once MBS was announced crowned prince in 2015 and started his war against Yemen, critic Khashoggi found it safer for himself to leave Saudi Arabia. He moved first to UK and later to USA. In his writings Khashoggi harshly criticized the policies of the young prince. Eventually he was lured to the Saudi consulate in Turkey, where he was reported murdered and butchered into small pieces that were buried in different parts of Turkey’s wilderness.

Understanding Saudi culture and the practices of the Saudi royal family, one will come to the logical conclusion, supported by the events and evidences, that MBS has ordered the murder of Khashoggi. The Saudi royal family is notorious in assassination and sentencing to death all alleged criminals and political activists, who dare to criticize their policies. The streets of capital Riyadh have been the witness of so many public gruesome beheadings; 158 in 2015, 154 in 2016, 146 in 2017 and 73 in 2018 as of July 17.

Although the royal family denied any involvement or knowledge of Khashoggi’s murder and had promised to conduct an investigation in the murder, in investigation led by the prime suspect; MBS himself, the Saudi Kingdom was met with harsh condemnations and calls for punishment. Saudi Arabia started to feel the repercussions of such calls when international banks, corporations, investors, major media outlets and world leaders started to pull out of the Saudi Future Investment Initiative (FII); a massive economic conference colloquially known as “Davos in the Desert”, hosted by MBS himself on October 23-25. The initiative is part of MBS’ ambitious “2030 Programme” to make the Saudi kingdom less reliant on oil.

Jim Yong-kim of World Bank, Christine Lagarde of International Monetary fund, Stacey Cunningham president of New York Stock Exchange, John Flint CEO of HSBC, as well as Credit Suisse, and Standard Chartered decided not to attend at Davos. Investment companies such as Uber, Mastercard, Virgin Group, JPMorgan Chase, Ford Motor Comp., Viacom Inc, and private equity firms such as Blackstone, BlackRock and Bain Capital are pulling out of Davos. Media outlets such as Bloomberg, CNN, New York Times, CNBC, The Economist, Financial Times and Los Angeles Times among others decided not to attend. Antonio Guterres; Secretary General of the UN, and Audrey Azoulay of UNESCO expressed their deep concern about the murder and called for investigation and punishment of the perpetrators. Many world leaders condemned Khashoggi’s murder and called for reprimanding the kingdom. Many European politicians and American senators called for halting the sale of weapons to the kingdom.

A lot of “hooplas” for the murder of one person, yet dead silence for the murder of millions others, including women and children, in the seventy years old Zionist occupied Palestine, in the eight years old American/Israeli/Gulf states war against Syria and in three years old Saudi/Emirati war against Yemen.

Zionist Jewish terrorist groups and militias, similar to al-Qaeda and ISIS, had occupied Palestine in 1948, perpetrated numerous massacres against civilian Palestinians, razed to the grounds hundreds of Palestinian towns, ethnically cleansed almost 800 thousand Palestinians, and established a colonial state of Israel. In 1967 those Zionist Israeli Jews again perpetrated more war crimes and occupied the rest of Palestine, destroyed more towns, massacred more Palestinians and built more illegal colonies. Although these Israelis entered into peace treaty with the Palestinians they are still ethnically cleansing and murdering in cold blood Palestinians, usurping their land, and expanding and building more colonies in violation of all peace treaties and in violation of UNSC resolutions. Israeli crimes against Palestinians, as well as other Arab states such as Egypt, Jordan, Lebanon and Syria, have never stopped, but rather are increasing in number, in intensity and in ferocity.

Due to their narcissist elitist racist religious belief that they, alone and no other nation, are god’s chosen people, Israeli Jews act as if they enjoy a divine impunity that allows them to perpetrate genocidal crimes against Palestinians and against other nations in violation of all human norms and beyond all international laws and conventions. Nurturing this Jewish narcissistic belief are the encouragement, unconditional support, and the immunity and protection Israel enjoys from some western states, specifically the USA and UK, who brag about being champions of human rights, beacon of freedom and democracy, and holding the torch of justice for all.

The US had used its Veto power to protect Israel from at least 44 UNSC resolutions. On top of those Israel has violated 300 other resolutions regarding its occupation of Palestine. To make matters worse the US leads other western countries in describing the Israeli genocidal crimes against Palestinians as “self-defense” and every Palestinian defensive and peaceful reaction as terrorist attacks.

Israel is encouraged to continue its ethnic cleansing and massacre of Palestinians. The latest Israeli erasure of Palestinian villages is going on now in Khan El-Ahmar village. The villagers are the Bedouin Jahalin tribe, who became homeless refugees after being forcefully expelled from their original village in the Negev in 1952 by the Israeli army. They rebuilt new homes and a local children school in Khan El-Ahmar under the Jordanian rule. At the present, Israel is in the process of demolishing the whole village in order to gain more land to expand its illegal Maale Adumim colony a short distance away. Palestinians are conducting daily sit-ins to prevent the demolition of the village and to prevent a second Nakba to its inhabitants.

Israeli genocidal crime of Palestinian civilians is still an ongoing process. Israeli Jews consider Palestinians as the descendants of Amalekites; the worst enemy of ancient Israel. Jewish god ordered the Jews to wipe off Amalekites off the earth. This order is still ingrained in the Jewish psyche, who keep reminding their off springs of this order. On the walls of the holocaust memorial in the Hague hangs a plaque with a text in Dutch and Hebrew from Deuteronomy 25: 17-19 stating“Remember what Amalek has done to you … blot out the remembrance of Amalek from under heaven. You shall not forget.”

Present Israeli Jews are still in the process of “plotting out the remembrance of Amalek(Palestinians) from under heaven” as can bee seen recently in the Gaza Strip. Israel has turned Gaza Strip into the largest ever concentrated prison camp (worst than Nazi concentration camps) for its two million inhabitants; mostly refugees who were ethnically cleansed from Palestine during the 1948 Nakba. For the last twelve years these Palestinians have been starved into sickness, their water been poisoned, their electricity was cut, their fishing marine space has been extremely limited, their towns, their homes and their fields were severely bombed with the devastating bombs including the illegal white phosphorous bombs in Israel’s wars of aggression in 2008-2009 and again in 2014,  and their women and children are being shot dead daily.

After seventy years passage of UNSC resolution 194 stating that these Palestinian refugees have the legitimate right to return to their towns and homes they were kicked out of, but none of the international legal organization nor any other country helped them implement this resolution, these Palestinian refugees decided to peacefully march back to their towns in what was dubbed “The Great Return March”. This march started on Friday 30th of last March and has been going on every Friday since then; so far, a total of 30 march attempts. Unfortunately, Israeli army snipers stood in their way, and have murdered in cold blood 212 Palestinians including teen agers, women, paramedics and reporters, and had injured a total of 22,000 others causing a lot of limb amputations due to their use of the explosive hollow pointed bullets, poisonous gas and stun grenades. Yet, despite the obvious fact that Israel is the number one rogue state in the world, Nikki (Nimrata) Haley; the American ambassador to the UN, had the audacity to describe this Israeli army killing fields against civilians in Gaza as the most restrained army in the whole world.  “No country in this chamber would act with more restraint than Israel has.” She stated.

Yet, none of the self-proclaimed peace-loving justice-calling world leaders, media outlets, banking systems, investors and corporations, who boycotted Saudi Davos in the Desert initiative as a reprimand to Saudi murder of one person; Jamal Khashoggi, have lifted a finger, uttered a word or boycotted Israel for the latest murder of hundred Palestinians nor for the razing of any Palestinian village. Are the lives of these hundreds of Palestinians, and the lives of hundreds of thousands who were murdered since 1948, not worth one life of a Saudi reporter?

There is no puzzle in this picture. International humanity is dead while hypocrisy is thriving and the ultimate goal and justification is money. The Saudi royal family is a filthy rich oppressive theocratic dictatorship, who had been protected in the past by the British and in the present by the American administration. For such protection the Saudi family has to pay and they pay dearly in different forms as in military weapons deals and economic privileges to foreign investing corporations. Trump expressed this situation openly and eloquently when he described Saudi Arabia as “a milk cow which would be slaughtered when its milk runs out.”

All these political and economic pressure exerted by world leaders, bankers, investors and media outlets are merely more attempts to milk Saudi Arabia as much as possible in more weapons deals and more economic privileges. Saudi Arabia has a lot of milk; money, unlike the Israeli case where the USA is Israel’s milking cow.

What goes for the case of Palestinian victims goes also for the Syrian and Yemeni victims. The world leaders and corporations who are milking Saudi Arabia are the same perpetrators committing, though covertly, war crimes against Syria and Yemen.

When comparing the international reactions to the murder of one person; Khashoggi in this case, with the reactions to the heinous war crimes against millions of innocent people in Palestine, Syria, Yemen or in any other place around the globe for that matter, one cannot help but question the validity of the famous proverb that “justice will always prevail”. Are we cheating ourselves and our children when we assert the fallacy that evil will be defeated and justice will always prevail at the end? Studying the history of Mankind, one discovers that those, who had the military power to assert their rights and their own form of justice even if they contradict the rights and justice of others had always prevailed, and those, who lacked military power had no chance to assert their own rights and had always perished. This proves that the rule of law, even the laws approved on internationally, is irrelevant, and that might is right still prevails in this world.

Dr. Elias Akleh is an Arab American from a Palestinian descent. His family was evicted from Haifa, Palestine, after the 1948 Nakba when the Zionists stole his family’s property. Then the family was evicted again from the West Bank during the 1967 Naksah, after the Zionist, again, occupied the rest of Palestine

The last breath of Al-Saud in Yemen

By Mohammad Ghaderi 

Today, many global media spoke of Saudi defeat in Yemen. This issue comes as Saudi Arabia continues to kill the Yemeni people. The killing of the Yemeni people is not only not condemned by the United States and its European allies (especially Britain and France), but we are witnessing the continuation of this trend.

 Undoubtedly, one of the main losers of the Yemeni war was the United Nations. At present, the crimes of Saudi and Emirati authorities in Yemen are rising day by day. Despite the brutal killing of tens of thousands of Yemeni people by Riyadh, the United Nations still refuses to condemn the Saudis.

 It even refuses to introduce these crimes as a war crime (which deserve punishment). The world public opinion, and especially people of the region, are angry about the continuation of this war, strongly against the reverse role played by the United Nations in the Yemeni war, and the direct support of the permanent members of the Security Council (U.S., Britain and France). Since the start of the Yemeni war, people have been tens of thousands have been killed or injured.

 According to UN data in Yemen, about 8.4 million people are at risk of hunger, and there have been many victims of cholera in the country. But Saudi Arabia and its allies continue their bloodshed, and bombard the country's defenseless people. The main question, however, is that despite knowing the terrible conditions of the Yemeni people, why does the UN avoid confronting Saudi Arabia's crimes?!

Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates, as the two countries that invaded the Yemeni people, have a bad time! Riyadh and Abu Dhabi have both failed in the Yemeni war and in the future they will also become big detainees.

 Analysts at international affairs acknowledge that the Al Saud family and its entourage have no chance of winning Yemen, and they must formally declare their defeat in this war soon and officially.

The UK-based newspaper, The Times, had published an article written by Michael Burleigh arguing that the Saudi controversial Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman has only few days left in power.

Burleigh started his article saying: “Hopes that the Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman would be a reformer who could heal the region have come to nothing.”

In the article, the writer went to highlight how western media had widely-reported the prince’s world tour last March drawing a picture of him as the Saudi strongman who is working for political and economic reforms.

 However, several doubts have been raised as a result of recent decisions taken by his father, King Salman. Meanwhile, the Crown Prince’s war on Yemen and the huge amount of money it is draining, in addition to the cold war he launched against Qatar, show clear signs of failure. The article created massive reactions in the Arab world. Many Saudis rushed into defending their 32-year-old Crown Prince.

The failure of Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates in Yemen is when the United States supported the war for Riyadh and Abu Dhabi. On the other hand, some European countries, such as Britain, Germany and France, were silenced by Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates for killing the Yemeni people, and even supported Saudi Arabia by sending weapons.

 The United Nations, too, with its silence against the brutal killings of the Yemeni people, once again revealed its lack of credibility to the world's public opinion. It has been three years now that the defenseless people of Yemen are living under the aggression of al Saud and its allies.

 These three years of Saudi aggression led to Riyadh's heavy defeat, the death of a large number of aggressive forces and, most importantly, the survival of the Yemeni revolution. Sanaa and Aden and Ma'rib have become the symbols of the defeat of Al Saud in Yemen.

Saudi Arabia has even lost the power to regulate its relations with its allies in Yemen. The controversy that has formed between Riyadh and the United Arab Emirates in Yemen can be analyzed in the same vein. These conflicts are the result of the erosion of the Yemeni war and the joint defeat of Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates.