Thursday, March 5, 2015

Saudi, Arab Pundits Praise Netanyahu - Elliot Friedland



by Elliot Friedland

Prominent Saudi columnists and diplomatic leaks suggest that Saudi Arabia is aligned with Israel against Iran.

A new Iranian nuclear facility discovered last month.
A new Iranian nuclear facility discovered last month.

State owned media outlets in Saudi Arabia do not normally praise Israeli Prime Ministers. Yet the Editor in Chief of Al-Arabiya wrote an op-ed on Tuesday doing just that. Entitled “President Obama: Listen to Netanyahu on Iran, Faisal J. Abbas’s piece argued “one must admit, Bibi did get it right, at least when it came to dealing with Iran.”

Abbas argued in support of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s highly controversial address to Congress, saying “the real Iranian threat is not JUST the regime’s nuclear ambitions, but its expansionist approach and state-sponsored terrorism activities which are still ongoing.”

This is not to overlook Saudi Arabia’s own history of supporting terrorism. Only this week King Salman gave a top award, the King Faisal international prize to a radical hate preacher who in the past has said “every Muslim should be a terrorist.” Dr. Zakir Naik made the remarks in a speech praising Osama bin Laden.

Yet Iran’s sponsorship of terrorism is undeniable and threatens the security of many other states in the region.

As Netanyahu stated in the speech “In the Middle East, Iran now dominates four Arab capitals, Baghdad, Damascus, Beirut and Sanaa. And if Iran’s aggression is left unchecked, more will surely follow.”

The possibility of a [sic] nuclear weapons being added to the existing threat is presumably what motivated Saudi columnist and pundit Dr. Ahmad Al-Faraj to write “I believe that Netanyahu’s conduct will serve our interests, the people of the Gulf, much more than the foolish behavior of one of the worst American presidents.”

Nor is this support confined to the editorial pages. Netanyahu assured his audience that Israel can and will act to defend itself. Diplomatic sources have indicated that should Israel decide to carry out a military strike on Iran, Saudi Arabia would allow Israeli bombers to use Saudi airspace to carry out the attack.

Netanyahu also argued that the deal with Iran would trigger a nuclear arms race in the region, as Arab countries who do not trust American assurances that Iran’s nuclear program will be kept peaceful scramble to obtain nuclear reactors of their own.

Such fears seem to be on their way to realization already. Saudi Arabia agreed to purchase two nuclear reactors from South Korea on Tuesday. Egypt concluded a deal to purchase a nuclear reactor from Russia in February. 

The message seems clear. Saudi Arabia and other Arab countries will not rely on a nuclear deal to deter Iran from nuclear war. They will instead look to their own defences and support anyone, even the Israeli Prime Minister, willing to state their case in Washington.


Elliot Friedland is a research fellow with the Clarion Project.

Source: http://www.clarionproject.org/analysis/saudi-arabia-seems-netanyahu-iran-speech

Copyright - Original materials copyright (c) by the authors.

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