Posted on 01/29/2002 11:17:27 AM PST by monkeyshine
Exclusive Analysis
Methinks it will remain an “exclusive” to Debka for a long, long time.
27 January: Saudi Crown Prince Abdullah and intelligence director Prince Nawwaf are trying to extricate Yasser Arafat from Israeli confinement in Ramallah. The Saudi Press Agency quotes the crown prince as remarking: “Imprisoning a leader is a very strange situation.” As to President Bush’s harsh criticism of the beleaguered Palestinian leader, Abdullah advised the US President ominously “to pursue the interests of America and this would be sufficient for us.”
DEBKAfile’s political analysts note that, given the unhappy state of US-Saudi relations since September 11, Saudi intervention on Arafat’s behalf has a very slim chance of softening the Bush administration’s determination to punish him.
Bush’s punitive actions are addressed not only to the Palestinian leader but also to Riyadh. In its latest issue (January 25) DEBKA-Net-Weekly’s intelligence sourcesreveal for the first time that, in early December 2001, when America was deeply preoccupied in the Afghan War, Crown Prince Abdullah, Saudi Arabia’s de facto monarch, quietly negotiated secret mutual defense and trade agreements with the anti-American regimes of Iran and Iraq. Those pacts gave birth to a new Riyadh-Baghdad-Tehran bloc for the Gulf and Middle East regions. Abdullah believed this reorientation reflected the aspirations common to many younger members of the royal family, some of his army chiefs, a majority of tribal leaders and almost the entire religious establishment. The view they hold in common is that the time has come, after half a century of close inter-dependence, for Saudi Arabia and the United States to go their separate ways. Abdullah’s takes this further, holding that the time has come for Riyadh – not Washington – to be the number one power in the Middle East-Gulf region.
Aware that a reconciliation process was underway, the United States was yet taken aback by the speed at which the three heads of state, Saudi Crown Prince Abdullah, Iraq’s Saddam Hussein and Iranian President Mohammed Khatami, found mutual understanding.
The trio also agreed to invite Syrian president Bashar Assad to join the new alliance and incorporate the secret Iraqi-Syrian cooperation agreements signed last year in the new mutual defense documents.
The new allies, to spread the spirit of détente, are implementing their understandings in rapid steps, the three capitals synchronizing their policy-making with regard to Afghanistan, al Qaeda, the Palestinian issue, Syria and Lebanon and their oil strategies.
These developments, as outlined by DEBKA-Net-Weekly’s sources, go a long way towards explaining Saudi Arabia’s apparently aberrant policies. Most Saudi experts find it hard to credit that Riyadh is fast approaching a formal demand for the withdrawal of American forces from the oil kingdom. The Saudi authorities are laying out a welcome mat for al Qaeda fighters returning from Afghanistan, and earmarked Saudi funds to pay for the flow of smuggled weapons from Iran to the Middle East, as discovered when Israel intercepted the Karine-A arms ship on January 3. (On January 18, DEBKA-Net-Weekly revealed that Saudi Arabia had paid for the Karine-A arms cargo ordered from Iran by Arafat.)
Sunday, January 27, the Israeli prime minister’s office announced that Arafat would not be allowed to travel to the European Union’s foreign ministers meeting in Brussels, “until he lives up to his commitments”.
Personally, I'd give the abandonment of the "Islamist alliance" a 60% chance of being true, while the support for the offensive against the PLO at 25%.
If Arafat has been planning to destabilize Egypt, in conjunction with his old friend Saddam Hussein (they both were mentored by Arafat's uncle Mufti Hajj Al-Husseini), you can count on Mubarak to exact some revenge.
What is strange is the Iraq-Saudi alliance.
Egypt also want us to sell them Harpoon-II missiles, which we've put on hold until things settle down.
King Abdullah said some discouraging words earlier, blaming Israel for the Palestinian problem. These words were probably for public consumption in the Arab world, though, since the Jordanian government unofficially views Palestinians as a pest, and Israel as the solution.
The question of broader concern is what happens when the dung finally hits the fan. Cairo and Amman don't want to fight Israel (They realize that doing so would be very bad if they want to trade with the US). Saudi Arabia, Syria, and Iraq could care less what the US thinks, and take an oppurtunity to exterminate Israel if it comes.
MM
I'm sure Mubarak is well aware of that but I figure George W. explained the new facts of life to him. He could side with Arafat and knowingly or unknowingly support his terrrorist agenda, or back out of it and be on our side. He's also probably not all that fond of Iraq and Sodom Insaine and getting involved with that Saudi, Iran, Iraq triad will end up being a bad proposition.
I also figure George has known of this for some time, and is one of the reasons why he's been pushing for renewed energy production closer to home. Cause sooner or later the Middle East is going to explode and a lot of that oil will be a) unaccessable, b) in the hands of people (really) unfriendly to us and/or c) so expensive it will send our economy into the toilet.
Or d) All of the Above
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