Saudis’ unprecedented break with Washington over Egypt.HT:
RussiaToday.
The Saudi move is unprecedented in its open defiance of the White House's
declared backing for the Muslim Brotherhood. The implications of the split are
huge.
Twilight in the desert?
Since 1945 when on his return from the fateful Yalta Conference, US President
Roosevelt met Saudi King Ibn Saud and won exclusive rights for the
Rockefeller-group of oil companies to Saudi Arabia’s vast oil wealth, the
relationship between Saudi and US foreign policy has been one of almost satrapy
status for the Saudis. Following the Kissinger orchestrated 1973
“oil
shock” in which OPEC raised its price by some 400%, Washington extracted a
pledge from the Saudis that they would insure that OPEC sold its oil only in
dollars, thereby ensuring the continued dominance of the US dollar as a world
reserve currency. In return, Washington agreed to sell US arms including
training the Saudi Air Force.
And in 2010 just as Washington launched its Arab Spring
“democracy”
offensive in Tunisia, Egypt and across the Islamic arc of crisis, the Obama
Administration announced the largest arms deal in US history. The US agreed to
sell the Saudis 84 F-15s new and upgrade another 70 as part of a €46 billion
deal, the biggest arms deal in US history, as it prepared to
isolate Iran.
As we reported in an earlier article, before the Egyptian military coup, the
Saudis had given secret assurance to Defense Minister and Chief of the Army,
General Abdul Fattah al-Sisi, that the Saudis along with other conservative Gulf
oil states including Kuwait and UAE would guarantee financial support should the
Obama Administration cut the €1 billion annual aid to Egypt’s military in retaliation for ousting their man, Morsi.
On July 17, the newly-sworn-in Egyptian transitional government confirmed
that it has received €6 billion in grants, loans and fuel from Saudi Arabia and
the UAE.
Saudi Arabia approved €4 billion in aid to Egypt and the UAE has offered €2
billion in desperately needed support for the economy. The Saudi funds comprise
a €1.5 billion central bank deposit, €1.5 billion in energy products, and €750
million in cash, Saudi Finance Minister Ibrahim Al-Assaf said. The UAE will make
a €750 million grant to Egypt and a €1.5 billion loan in the form of an
interest-free deposit with
Egypt's central bank.
The news is a double slap-in-the-face to Washington who had insisted that
Morsi’s government buckle under too harsh IMF conditions as a precondition for
financial help.
Qatar reacts dramatically
Conspicuously, one Gulf energy-rich state absent from the aid is Qatar whose
Emir Hamad bin Khalifa al-Thani had poured more than €6 billion in Egypt since
the revolution two-and-a-half years ago and perhaps another €7 billion to
bankroll Islamists in Libya, Syria and Gaza, the Palestinian enclave run by
Hamas, an offshoot of the Muslim Brotherhood.
Qatar is home to the US Central
Command’s Forward Headquarters and the Combined Air Operations Center. And, most
notably, until the Saudi and UAE-backed military coup against Brotherhood rule
in Egypt on July 3,
Qatar was home to leading members of the Muslim Brotherhood
and one of its major financial backers in Syria, Egypt, Libya, and across the Islamic world.
Within minutes of the Saudi and UAE backed Egyptian coup, the Emir of Qatar
took note of the implications and announced his abdication in favor of his son,
Tamim. Hamad bin Jassem al-Thani, who had shaped Qatar’s pro-Muslim Brotherhood
foreign policy, has been silenced, replaced by a military man who had been
serving as deputy interior minister.
The new Qatar leadership is now using words
like “reassessment”, “recalibration” and “corrections” to
discuss their foreign policy. In brief, they dare not risk total isolation
within the Saudi-dominated Gulf Arab states.
The Saudi decision to take bold action to stop what it saw as a disastrous US
Islamic strategy of backing Brotherhood revolutions across the Islamic world has
dealt a blow to the mad US strategy of believing it can use the Brotherhood as a
political force to control the Islamic world more tightly and use it to
destabilize China, Russia and the Islamic parts of Central Asia.
The Saudi monarchy began to fear that the secretive Brotherhood would one day
rise against their rule as well. They never forgave George W. Bush and
Washington for toppling the Baath Party secular dictatorship of Saddam Hussein
in Iraq that brought a majority Shi’ite to power there, nor the US decision to
topple close Saudi ally Mubarak in Egypt. America’s dutiful
“vassal
state” in the Middle East, Saudi Arabia, revolted on July 3 by backing and
supporting the military coup in Egypt.
Aside from loudly protesting the Egyptian generals’ coup against their
Brotherhood allies, Washington so far has been able to do little, an indication
of the declining US global power.
The Pentagon has sent two amphibious assault
ships carrying 2,600 Marines to the southern Egyptian Red Sea coast. The huge
USS Kearsarge with 1,800 Marines and the USS San Antonio with 800 Marines,
“moved up into the Red Sea and parked off Egypt, because we don’t know what’s
going to happen,” stated General James Amos, commandant of the Marine Corps.
Washington is suddenly in a major foreign policy disarray as the new Egyptian
interim government is sworn in. To be continued…
