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Government must clarify whether UK personnel are under Saudi orders

Reprieve | January 15, 2016

UK personnel are working in a Saudi Arabian “control centre” assisting with targeting as part of a bombing campaign in Yemen, which has been accused of attacks which “may amount to a war crime” by the UN Secretary General.

Saudi Arabia’s foreign minister told journalists today that “British officers were working alongside Saudi and other coalition colleagues in the campaign’s operations rooms,” according to media reports. The campaign has reportedly hit several Medicins Sans Frontieres (MSF) facilities, as well as a centre for the blind and a wedding hall.

The Saudi minister’s revelations go further than previous British Government statements, which have said that nearly 100 UK personnel are embedded in ‘Coalition HQs’ but have failed to specify which coalitions those are. It now appears that the Written Statement published by the Defence Secretary in December last year may have been referring to UK personnel embedded with the Saudi coalition, but did not make this clear at the time.

Whether or not the British personnel in the Saudi centre are ‘embedded’ is significant because the UK Government has previously stated that such personnel fall under the control of the ‘host nation’ – in this case, the Saudis. In a July 2015 statement to Parliament, Michael Fallon said that “Embedded UK personnel operate as if they were the host nation’s personnel, under that nation’s chain of command, but remain subject to UK domestic, international and Host Nation law.” Therefore, there are concerns that the UK personnel in the centre could be under the command of the Saudi authorities.

Commenting, Jennifer Gibson, staff attorney at international human rights organization Reprieve said:

“The Saudi bombing campaign in Yemen has killed thousands of civilians, hitting Medicins Sans Frontieres clinics, a school for the blind and a wedding hall.’

“It is shocking to discover that our Government has embroiled British personnel in the targeting process that is creating this mayhem. More disturbingly, we’re learning about the UK’s involvement not from the our Government, but from the Saudi authorities who now appear to be more transparent than their British counterparts.

“Crucial questions remain unanswered: whose command are British personnel in the Saudi operations centre under – British or Saudi? Are they ‘embedded’ personnel referred to in the Defence Secretary’s vague December statement, which stated that 94 British personnel were embedded in ‘Coalition HQs?’ And what part have ministers played in signing off their activities? The British public has a right to know.”

January 15, 2016 Posted by | War Crimes | , , | Leave a comment

What Accounts for the Saudi Regime’s Hysterical Belligerence? The Agony of Death

By Ismael Hossein-Zadeh | CounterPunch | January 15, 2016

The purpose of this essay is to explain, not describe, the frantically belligerent behavior of the Saudi regime. The goal is not to delve into what the regime and its imperialist enablers have done, or are doing; that unsavory record of atrocities, both at home and abroad, is abundantly exposed by other writers/commentators [1]. It is, rather, to focus on why they have done or are doing what they do.

In the Throes of the Agony of Death

The Saudi rulers find themselves in a losing race against time, or history. Although in denial, they cannot but realize the historical reality that the days of ruling by birthright are long past, and that the House of Saud as the ruler of the kingdom by inheritance is obsolete.

This is the main reason for the Saudi’s frantically belligerent behavior. The hysteria is tantamount to the frenzy of the proverbial agony of a prolonged death. It explains why they react so harshly to any social or geopolitical development at home or in the region that they perceive as a threat to their rule.

It explains why, for example, they have been so intensely hostile to the Iranian revolution that terminated the rule of their dictatorial counterpart, the Shah of Iran, in that country. In the demise of the Shah they saw their own downfall.

It also explains their hostility to the Arab Spring uprisings in Egypt and Tunisia that ended the perpetual rule of Hosni Mubarak in Cairo and that of

Ben Ali in Tunis. Panicked by the specter of the spread of those revolutionary upheavals to other countries in the region, especially the kingdoms and sheikhdoms in the Persian Gulf area, the Saudi rules and their well-known patrons abroad promptly embarked on “damage control.” (The not-so-secret patrons of the House of Saud include mainly the military-industrial-security-intelligence complex, Neocon forces and the Israel lobby.)

The ensuing agenda of containment, derailment and preemption of similar revolutionary upheavals has been comprehensive and multi-prong. Among other schemes, the agenda has included the following:

(1) brutally cracking down on peaceful opposition at home, including summary executions and ferocious beheadings;

(2) pursuing destabilizing policies in places such as Syria, Iran, Lebanon, Iraq, and Yemen by funding and/or arming rabidly violent Wahhabi/Salafi jihadists and other mercenaries;

(3) trying to sabotage genuine international efforts to reduce tensions and bloodshed in Syria, Yemen and other places;

(4) trying to sabotage the nuclear agreement and other tension-reducing efforts between Iran and Western powers;

(5) pursuing policies that would promote tensions and divisions along ethnic, nationalist and religious lines in the region, such as the provocative beheading of the prominent and peaceful Shi’a critic Sheikh Nimr al-Nimr ; and

(6) seeking “chaos to cover terror tracks,” as the well-known expert in international affairs Finian Cunningham put it [2].

To the dismay of the Saudi regime, while these depraved policies have succeeded in causing enormous amounts of death and destruction in the region, they have failed in achieving their objectives: stability in the Saudi kingdom and security for its regime. On the contrary, the reckless policies of trying to eliminate its perceived opponents have backfired: the regime is now more vulnerable than four or five years ago when it embarked (in the immediate aftermath of the 2011 Arab Spring revolutions) on the vainly aggressive policy of trying to eliminate the supposed dangers to its rule.

The illegal war on Yemen, carried out with the support of the United States, has turned from what was supposed to be a cakewalk into a stalemate. Not only has it solidified and emboldened the sovereignty-aspiring Houthis resistance to the Saudi-led aggression, it has also considerably benefited al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula (AQAP). Likewise, the War on Syria, largely funded by the Saudi regime, has fallen way short of its goal of unseating President Assad. Here too the aggression has handsomely benefited a motley array of mercenary and jihadi groups, especially those affiliated with Jabhat al-Nusra, known as al-Qaeda in Syria, and the so-called Islamic State.

In both of these countries the power and influence of the Saudi regime and its partners in crime is in decline while the resistance is gradually gaining the upper hand, especially in Syria—thanks largely to the support from Russia and Iran.

Perhaps more tragically for the Saudi regime, has been the failure of its “oil war” against Russia and Iran. Recklessly saturating global markets with unlimited supply of oil in the face of dwindling demand and increased production in the U.S. has reduced the price of oil by more than 60 percent. This has led to an officially-declared budget deficit of $98 billion for the current fiscal year, which has forced the regime to curb social spending and/or economic safety net programs. There are indications that the unprecedented belt-tightening economic policies are creating public discontent, which is bound to make the regime even more vulnerable.

A bigger blowback from the regime’s “oil war,” however, goes beyond economic problems at home. More importantly, it has led to an unintended consequence that tends to make the regime les secure by reducing its economic and geopolitical worth to its imperialist benefactors. Cheap and abundant energy in global markets is bound to undermine the indispensability of the House of Saud to its imperial patrons. In using oil as a weapon against their rivals, the spoiled big babies of Western powers in the Arabian Peninsula may have pushed their luck too far.

Combined, these blowbacks and ominous consequences of the Saudi regime’s belligerent policies have made the regime and its allies in the region more vulnerable while giving strength and credibility to the resisting forces in Syria, Iraq, Yemen, and Lebanon, supported by Iran and Russia. These unintended consequences of the Saudi rulers’ aggressions explain why they are panic-stricken and behave hysterically.

References

[1] See, for example, Finian Cunningham, “Saudis Seek Chaos to Cover Terror Tracks”; Jim Lobe, “Neocons Defend Saudi Arabia”; and Pepe Escobar, “Fear And Loathing in the House of Saud.”

[2] Ibid.

Ismael Hossein-zadeh is Professor Emeritus of Economics (Drake University). He is the author of Beyond Mainstream Explanations of the Financial Crisis (Routledge 2014), The Political Economy of U.S. Militarism (Palgrave–Macmillan 2007), and the Soviet Non-capitalist Development: The Case of Nasser’s Egypt (Praeger Publishers 1989). He is also a contributor to Hopeless: Barack Obama and the Politics of Illusion.

January 15, 2016 Posted by | Timeless or most popular, War Crimes | , , | Leave a comment

Yemen: A very British war

By Dan Glazebrook | RT | January 11, 2016

Britain is at the heart of a humanitarian disaster of epic proportions unfolding in the Yemen.

At least 10,000 people have been killed since the Saudi bombing campaign against Yemen began in March 2015, including over 630 children. There has been a massive escalation in human rights violations to a level of around 43 per day and up to ten children per day are being killed, according to UNICEF. Seventy-three percent of child casualties are the direct result of airstrikes, say the UN.

Civilian targets have been hit again and again. Within days of the commencement of airstrikes, a refugee camp was bombed, killing 40 and maiming over 200, and in October a Medicins San Frontier [Doctors Without Borders] hospital was hit. Schools, markets, grain warehouses, ports and a ceramics factory have all been hit. Needless to say, all of these are war crimes under international law – as is the entire bombing campaign, lacking, as it does, any UN mandate.

Beyond their immediate victims, the airstrikes and accompanying blockade – a horrendous crime against a population which imports 90 percent of its basic needs – are creating a tragedy of epic proportions. In August 2015, Oxfam warned that around 13 million people were struggling to find enough to eat, the highest number of people living in hunger it had ever recorded. “Yemen after five months looks like Syria after five years,” the head of the International Red Cross commented in October. The following month, the UN reported that 14 million now lacked access to healthcare and 80 percent of the country’s 21 million population are dependent on humanitarian aid. “We estimate that over 19 million people lack access to safe water and sanitation; over 14 million people are food insecure, including 7.6 million who are severely food insecure; and nearly 320,000 children are acutely malnourished,” the UN’s Humanitarian Coordinator told reporters in November. He estimated that around 2.5 million have been made refugees by the war. In December, the UN warned that the country was on the brink of famine, with millions at risk of starvation.

Statements from British government ministers are crafted to give the impression of sympathy for the victims of this war, and opprobrium for those responsible. “We should be clear” said Foreign Secretary Philip Hammond in September 2014, “the use of violence to make political gains, and the pointless loss of life it entails, are completely unacceptable. Not only does the recent violence damage Yemen’s political transition process, it could fuel new tensions and strengthen the hand of al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula – threatening the security of all of us…Those who threaten the peace, security or stability of Yemen, or violate human rights, need to pay the price for their actions.”

Indeed. So presumably, one might have thought, when the Saudis began their massive escalation of the war six months after Hammond made this statement, the British government must have been outraged?

Not quite. The day after the Saudis began ‘Operation Decisive Storm’, David Cameron phoned the Saudi king personally to emphasize “the UK’s firm political support for the Saudi action in Yemen.”

Over the months that followed, Britain, a long-term arms dealer to the Saudi monarchy, stepped up its delivery of war materiel to achieve the dubious honor of beating the US to become its number one weapons supplier. Over a hundred new arms export licenses have been granted by the British government since the bombing began, and over the first six months of 2015 alone, Britain sold more than £1.75 billion worth of weapons to the Saudis – more than triple Cameron’s usual, already obscene, bi-annual average. The vast majority of this equipment seems to be for combat aircraft and air-delivered missiles, including more than 1000 bombs, and British-made jets now make up over half the Saudi air force. As the Independent has noted, “British supplied planes and British made missiles have been part of near-daily raids in Yemen carried out by [the] nine-country, Saudi Arabian led coalition.”

Charities and campaign groups are unanimous in their view that, without a shadow of a doubt, British patronage has greatly facilitated the carnage in the Yemen. “The [British] government is fuelling the conflict that is causing unbearable human suffering. It is time the government stopped supporting this war,” said chief executive of Oxfam GB, Mark Goldring. The director of Amnesty International UK, Kate Allen, said: “The UK has fuelled this appalling conflict through reckless arms sales which break its own laws and the global arms trade treaty it once championed…. legal opinion confirms our long-held view that the continued sale of arms from the UK to Saudi Arabia is illegal, immoral and indefensible.”

For Edward Santiago, Save the Children’s country director in Yemen, the UK’s “reluctance to publicly condemn the human cost of conflict in Yemen gives the impression that diplomatic relations and arms sales trump the lives of Yemen’s children,” whilst Andrew Smith from Campaign Against the Arms Trade, has written that “UK fighter jets and UK bombs have been central to the humanitarian catastrophe that is being unleashed on the people of Yemen.” Leading lawyers including Philippe Sands have argued that Britain is in clear breach of international law for selling weapons which it knows are being used to commit war crimes.

Now it has emerged that it is not only British weapons being used in this war, but British personnel as well. According to Sky News, six British military advisors are embedded with the Saudi air force to help with targeting. In addition, there are 94 members of the UK armed forces serving abroad “carrying out duties for unknown forces, believed to be the Saudi led coalition,” according to The Week – although the government refuses to state exactly where they are.

Indeed, even British airstrikes in Syria may have been motivated in part by a desire to prop up the flagging war effort in Yemen. Questioning of Philip Hammond in parliament recently led him to admit that there had been a “decrease in air sorties by Arab allies” in Syria since Britain’s entry into the air campaign there due to the “challenges” of the Yemen conflict.

For Scottish Nationalist MP Stephen Gethins this suggests that, by stepping up bombing in Syria, Western countries were effectively “cutting them [Arab states] a bit of slack to allow them to focus on the Yemen conflict,” especially needed given that support for the Yemen campaign has been flagging from states such as Jordan, Morocco and Egypt. It is particularly ironic that British MPs’ supposed commitment to destroying ISIS in Syria is actually facilitating a war in Yemen in which ISIS is the direct beneficiary.

Finally, it is worth considering British support for the Saudi bid for membership of the UN Human Rights Council. The Council’s reports can be highly influential; indeed, it was this Council’s damning (and, we now know, fraudulent) condemnation of Gaddafi that provided the ‘humanitarian’ pretext for the 2011 NATO war against the Libyan Jamahiriya. And the Yemeni government’s recent expulsion of the UN Human Rights envoy shows just how sensitive the prosecutors of the Yemeni war are to criticism. It would, therefore, be particularly useful for those unleashing hell on Yemen to have the UN Council stacked with supporters in order to dampen any criticism from this quarter.

Britain, then, is the major external force facilitating the Saudi-fronted war against the people of Yemen. Britain, like the Saudis, is keen to isolate Iran and sees destroying the Houthis as a key means of achieving this. At the same time, Britain seems perfectly happy to see Al-Qaeda and ISIS take over from the Houthi rebels they are bombing – presumably regarding a new base for terrorist destabilization operations across the region as an outcome serving British interests.

Dan Glazebrook is a freelance political writer. His first book “Divide and Ruin: The West’s Imperial Strategy in an Age of Crisis” was published by Liberation Media in October 2013. It featured a collection of articles written from 2009 onward examining the links between economic collapse, the rise of the BRICS, war on Libya and Syria and ‘austerity’. He is currently researching a book on US-British use of sectarian death squads against independent states and movements from Northern Ireland and Central America in the 1970s and 80s to the Middle East and Africa today.

January 13, 2016 Posted by | War Crimes | , , , , | Leave a comment

Nobel Peace Prize-Winner Obama Dropped 23,144 Bombs in 2015

Sputnik – January 11, 2016

10_5The United States in the past year dropped more than 20,000 bombs on Muslim-majority countries Iraq, Syria, Afghanistan, Pakistan, Yemen and Somalia, according to a study by the Council on Foreign Relations (CFR).

In an article published January 7, Micah Zenko, a senior fellow at CFR, states that since January 1, 2015, the United States has dropped an estimated 23,144 bombs in those six countries: 22,110 in Iraq and Syria; 947 in Afghanistan; 58 in Yemen; 18 in Somalia; and 11 in Pakistan.

“This estimate is based on the fact that the United States has conducted 77 percent of all airstrikes in Iraq and Syria, while there were 28,714 US-led coalition munitions dropped in 2015. This overall estimate is probably slightly low, because it also assumes one bomb dropped in each drone strike in Pakistan, Yemen, and Somalia, which is not always the case,” Zenko writes.

Despite dropping tens of thousands of bombs over the past 17 months, Washington’s strategy has failed to defeat Daesh and other Islamic militant groups, Zenko observed.

In Afghanistan, the Taliban control more territory than at any point since the 2001 US invasion, according to a recent analysis in Foreign Policy magazine.

Zenko notes that the primary focus of Washington’s counter-terrorism strategy is to kill extremists, and that far less attention is paid to prevent a moderate individual from becoming radicalized.

As a result, “the size of [Daesh] has remained wholly unchanged,” Zenko writes.

In 2014, the Central Intelligence Agency estimated the size of Daesh to be between 20,000-31,000 members. On Wednesday, Colonel Steve Warren, a spokesman for the US-led coalition, estimated the group at 30,000 members, despite Pentagon claims that 25,000 Daesh members have been killed in US air strikes.

At the same time, the Pentagon claims that only six civilians have “likely” been killed in the course of the bombing campaign.

January 11, 2016 Posted by | Militarism, Progressive Hypocrite, War Crimes | , , , , , , , , , | Leave a comment

US behind Yemen war continuation: Ansarullah

Press TV – January 11, 2016

The Houthi Ansarullah movement in Yemen says the United States is the real force behind the continuation of Saudi Arabia’s war on Yemen, as Riyadh has no discretion of its own over the matter.

Spokesman for the Ansarullah Movement, Mohammed Abdulsalam, said on Sunday that it is Washington that prevents Riyadh from stopping its military aggression against Yemen.

He said the ambassador to the US of the former Yemeni government – Ahmed Awad bin Mubarak – and a US envoy were behind the failure of recent talks in Switzerland that were aimed at ending the conflict in Yemen.

On December 15, an Ansarullah delegation and Hadi’s representatives began UN-brokered peace talks in Switzerland with the aim of reaching a solution to the country’s conflict.

A truce came into force in Yemen as the six-day talks opened but it was repeatedly violated by the Saudi side and Hadi loyalists.

Abdulsalam further said world nations believe that peace is possible in Yemen only if Saudi Arabia halts its aggression on the country. The kingdom began the war on Yemen in late March 2015 in a bid to undermine the Ansarullah movement and bring Hadi back to power.

More than 7,500 people have been killed and over 14,000 others injured so far. The Saudi war has also taken a heavy toll on the impoverished country’s facilities and infrastructure.

The United Nations (UN)’s special envoy for Yemen Ismail Ould Cheikh Ahmed has said peace talks are due to restart this month in a bid to end the conflict. He suggested Geneva as a location for the talks.

January 11, 2016 Posted by | Militarism, War Crimes | , , | Leave a comment

Britain’s sale of arms to Saudi Arabia violates international law – lawyers

RT – January 11, 2016

The British government has been accused of violating international law by enabling the export of British-made arms to Saudi Arabia, which may have been used to kill civilians.

In the face of mounting evidence that Saudi forces are breaching international law in Yemen, law firm Leigh Day has challenged the government’s export of missiles and other arms to the Gulf state.

A letter issued by the firm to the government on Sunday highlights global organizations that have branded Saudi airstrikes in Yemen illegal. Among these are the European Parliament (EP) and an array of prominent human rights groups that have been monitoring Saudi Arabia’s attacks on Yemen.

Leigh Day’s 19-page letter, which was sent to the government on behalf of Campaign Against the Arms Trade (CAAT), condemns the targeting of civilians and non-combatants in Yemen, as well as the targeting of facilities vital for sustaining basic humanitarian needs. It also criticizes the disproportionate number of civilian casualties in Yemen and an overall failure to ensure unnecessary harm to civilians is avoided.

The letter says Saudi Arabia’s airstrikes have destroyed culturally significant property in Yemen, and condemns a Saudi naval blockade, which is halting the flow of essential food and medicine into the crisis-ridden state.

Despite the gravity of these allegations, the British government has refused to suspend military licenses governing arms’ exports to the Gulf state. It has also failed to call for an inquiry into whether Saudi Arabia has violated international law.

Leigh Day called on the government to confirm whether or not it accepts there is concrete evidence that Saudi Arabia’s conduct in Yemen has breached international law. It also urged the government to verify if Secretary of State for Business, Innovation & Skills (BIS) Sajid Javid will suspend Britain’s sale of arms to Saudi Arabia until a full review of their legality is carried out.

Leigh Day also urged Javid not to authorize further export licenses for Saudi Arabia until the inquiry is completed.

The law firm asked for a full response to its letter within two weeks. Failure to do this would spark legal proceedings against the government, forcing it to explain in the high court what steps it has undertaken to ensure British arms are not being used in violation of international law.

A BIS spokesperson confirmed the department’s receipt of the letter, but told the Guardian it would not comment on the matter because of “ongoing legal action.”

Leigh Day human rights lawyer Rosa Curling said the government has a legal duty to ensure arms and technological equipment exported from Britain are used in accordance with international law.

“Given the widespread and credible evidence that the Saudi authorities are breaching their international obligations in Yemen, we can see no credible basis upon which the UK government can lawfully continue to export arms to them,” she said.

“We hope our client’s letter will cause the government to reconsider its position and suspend all licenses with immediate effect pending a proper investigation into the issue.”

Andrew Smith of Campaign Against the Arms Trade (CAAT) warns that British weapons are central to the military campaign that has “killed thousands of people, destroyed vital infrastructure and inflamed tensions in the region.”

“The UK has been complicit in the destruction by continuing to support airstrikes and provide arms, despite strong and increasing evidence that war crimes are being committed,” he said.

“These arms sales should never have been approved in the first place. The Saudi regime has an appalling human rights record and always has done.”

Leigh Day’s legal maneuver highlights Britain’s lucrative arms trade with Saudi Arabia. Almost £6 billion worth of British arms have been licensed to the Gulf state since Prime Minister David Cameron took office in 2010.

There was pressure to suspend the UK’s military exports to Saudi Arabia in July 2015, but the government flatly refused. Foreign Office minister Tobias Ellwood told parliament at the time the government had seen no credible evidence indicating the Saudi-led coalition had acted illegally.

By contrast, Amnesty International warned of the coalition’s disgraceful disregard for civilian lives. The UN also expressed similar concern.

January 11, 2016 Posted by | War Crimes | , , , , | Leave a comment

Saudi Arabia’s policies adopted under Israel’s influence: Iran official

Press TV – January 11, 2016

The policies adopted by Riyadh are under the influence of Israel, which seeks to see tension between Saudi Arabia and Iran, a senior Iranian military official says, amid strained relations between the two Muslim countries.

“Al Saud policies are influenced by the Zionist regime (Israel); and this regime is more inclined than the United States toward dragging the region to insecurity, unrest and chaos,” Major General Yahya Rahim Safavi, a top military adviser to Leader of the Islamic Revolution Ayatollah Seyyed Ali Khamenei, said on Monday.

He said that Tel Aviv’s impact on Saudi policies should be examined, adding that Riyadh’s actions have led to the massacre of the people in Yemen, Syria, and Iraq, describing the killings as the “Zionists’ policy.”

The regime in Riyadh began its military aggression against Yemen in late March 2015. The campaign was meant to undermine the Houthi Ansarullah movement and restore power to Yemen’s fugitive former President Abd Rabbuh Mansur Hadi. More than 7,500 people have been killed and over 14,000 injured since the beginning of the Saudi strikes.

Al Saudi is also widely believed to be one of the main sponsors of Takfiri terrorist groups operating in Syria and Iraq.

Elsewhere in his remarks, the Iranian general expressed hope that Muslims in regional countries would be “alert,” since “Israel is seeking to create tension” between Iran and Saudi Arabia and benefits from insecurity in the region.

Relations between Iran and Saudi Arabia have been strained in recent days following the Saudi execution of top opposition cleric Sheikh Nimr al-Nimr, which was announced on January 2.

Nimr’s execution was widely censured by Muslims and human rights activists around the globe as well as different governments.

Saudi Arabia severed diplomatic relations with Iran on January 3 following demonstrations held in front of the Saudi embassy in Tehran and its consulate in the northeastern city of Mashhad by angry protesters censuring the killing of Nimr. Some people mounted the walls of the consulate in Mashhad while incendiary devices were hurled at the embassy in Tehran. Almost 60 people were detained over the transgression.

January 11, 2016 Posted by | Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, Timeless or most popular, War Crimes, Wars for Israel | , , , , , | Leave a comment

Yemen: A US-Orchestrated Holocaust

By Stephen Lendman | Peoples Voice | January 9, 2016

Millions of lives are at risk from violence, starvation, lack of vital medical care, and overall deprivation.

A new UN Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights (UNHCR) report downplayed the ongoing catastrophe, shamelessly undercounting civilian casualties since conflict began last March.

It’s likely in the tens of thousands from Saudi terror-bombing heavily populated areas and absence of vital essentials to life.

Claiming it’s only 2,800, another 5,200 wounded mocks the unbearable suffering of millions of Yemenis, victims of US imperialism.

The world community remains largely indifferent, ignoring an entire population at risk. Millions may perish before conflict ends. Nothing is being done to prevent it.

Fighting shows no signs of abating. Obama’s orchestrated war complicit with Riyadh is another high crime on his rap sheet, major media scoundrels giving it short shrift.

Famine stalks Yemen, around 20 million at risk, children, the ill and elderly most vulnerable. War without mercy continues.

Secure sources of food, potable water, fuel, electricity and medical care are absent or in too short supply in most of the country – impossible conditions to survive for many.

Malnutrition is rampant, near-starvation commonplace. So are preventable diseases claiming unknown numbers of lives for lack of treatment. Body counts exclude nonviolent deaths.

A phantom mid-December ceasefire ended in the new year. Saudis escalated terror-bombing US selected targets, including densely populated residential areas, hospitals, refugee camps, vital infrastructure and other non-military sites.

A blockade remains in force, preventing vital to life essentials from getting to people in need in amounts enough to matter.

Washington and Riyadh want war, not peace. Ceasefire was more illusion than reality – Houthis irresponsibly blamed for imperial crimes. Yemenis continue suffering horrifically.

Their country is being systematically ravaged and destroyed – increasingly looking like Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya and Syria.

US imperialism bears full responsibility, destroying life on earth one country at a time, making things unbearable for survivors.

Last September, a largely Saudi-drafted (US/UK supported) UN Human Rights Council resolution on Yemen excluded an independent international war crimes investigation, whitewashing imperial high crimes.

It authorized only UN provided technical assistance to a Yemeni inquiry headed by illegitimate president Abd Rabbuh Mansur Hadi – US-installed in a 2012 election with no opposing candidates.

Yemen remains a black hole of endless violence and instability, no relief in sight for its suffering millions.

-###-

Stephen Lendman lives in Chicago and can be reached at lendmanstephen@sbcglobal.net.

His new book as editor and contributor is titled “Flashpoint in Ukraine: How the US Drive for Hegemony Risks World War III“.

http://www.claritypress.com/LendmanIII.html

Visit his blog site at sjlendman.blogspot.com.

January 9, 2016 Posted by | Militarism, Progressive Hypocrite, War Crimes | , , , | Leave a comment

Iran censures ‘deliberate’ Saudi raid on mission in Sana’a

Press TV – January 7, 2016

Iran has roundly condemned a “deliberate” air raid by Saudi warplanes on its embassy in the Yemeni capital, Sana’a, which injured a number of security forces guarding the diplomatic mission.

Iranian Foreign Ministry spokesman Hossein Jaberi Ansari said Thursday the Saudi attack on Tehran’s embassy is a “violation of all conventions and international regulations” in protecting diplomatic missions under all circumstances.

Late on Wednesday, Saudi fighter jets, which have been engaged in a bombing campaign against Yemen since March 2015, targeted Iran’s embassy in Sana’a, damaging the mission’s building and wounding the security forces guarding the place.

The Saudi military has said it will launch an investigation into the issue.

Jaberi Ansari further said the Islamic Republic holds the Saudi regime responsible for the damage caused by the airstrike, emphasizing, “It is clear that Tehran reserves the right to follow up on this issue.”

This is not the first time that Saudi warplanes target the Iranian mission in the Yemeni capital.

Last June, Iran sent a letter to the UN Security Council to inform the 15-nation body that Riyadh’s air forces had pounded areas near Tehran’s embassy in the Yemeni capital twice during a period of two months.

The Iranian diplomatic mission’s compound suffered severe damage during the bombings on May 25, 2015, which was followed a similar attack on April 20 the same year.

The latest developments come as tensions have been running high between Tehran and Riyadh after Saudi Arabia decided to break off diplomatic relations with Iran, which strongly criticized the kingdom’s execution on January 2 of prominent opposition cleric Sheikh Nimr al-Nimr.

Sheikh Nimr’s killing came despite international calls on Riyadh to revoke the death sentence handed down in 2014 to the prominent religious figure, sparking angry anti-Saudi protest rallies in several countries around the world, including Iran.

When the news of Sheikh Nimr’s death broke out, angry Iranian protesters held demonstrations in front of the Saudi embassy in Tehran and its consulate in the northeastern city of Mashhad on January 2, censuring the Al Saud regime for the crime.

During the demonstrations, some people mounted the walls of the consulate in Mashhad, while incendiary devices were hurled at the embassy in Tehran.

Some 50 people were detained over the transgression, with senior Iranian officials, including President Hassan Rouhani, criticizing the violence and vowing a firm response to any violations of law.

However, Riyadh severed diplomatic relations with Tehran after the incident.

President Rouhani has said Riyadh’s move to cut diplomatic relations with Tehran was aimed at covering up the failure of its regional policies and undermining peace in the region.

January 7, 2016 Posted by | War Crimes | , , | Leave a comment

Saudi Game-Changing Head-Chopping

By Robert Parry | Consortium News | January 5, 2016

For generations, U.S. officials have averted their eyes from Saudi Arabia’s grotesque monarchy – which oppresses women, spreads jihadism and slaughters dissidents – in a crude trade-off of Saudi oil for American weapons and U.S. security guarantees. It is a deal with the devil that may finally be coming due.

The increasingly undeniable reality is that the Saudis along with other oil sheikhs are the biggest backers of Al Qaeda and various terrorist groups – helping these killers as long as they spread their mayhem in other countries and not bother the spoiled playboys of the Persian Gulf.

President George W. Bush – and then President Barack Obama – may have suppressed the 28 pages of the congressional 9/11 report describing Saudi support for Al Qaeda and its hijackers but the cat is thoroughly out of the bag. Mealy-mouthed comments from the State Department spokesmen can no longer hide the grim truth that U.S. “allies” are really civilization’s enemies.

The big question that remains, however, is: Will Official Washington’s dominant neocon/liberal-interventionist claque continue to protect the Saudis who have built a regional alliance of convenience with Israel over their shared hatred of Iran?

Inside Official Washington’s bubble – where the neocons and liberal hawks hold sway – there is a determination to make the “designated villains,” the Iranians, the Syrian government, Lebanon’s Hezbollah and the Russians. This list of “villains” matches up quite well with Israeli and Saudi interests and thus endless demonization of these “villains” remains the order of the day.

But the Saudis – and indeed the Israelis – are showing what they’re really made of. Israel has removed its humanistic mask as it ruthlessly suppresses Palestinians and mounts periodic “grass mowing” operations, using high-tech munitions to slaughter thousands of nearly defenseless people in Gaza and the West Bank while no longer even pretending to want a peaceful resolution of the long-simmering conflict. Israel’s choice now seems to be apartheid or genocide.

Meanwhile, the Saudis – though long-hailed in Official Washington as “moderates” – are showing what a farcical description that has always been as the royals now supply U.S.-made TOW missiles and other sophisticated weapons to Sunni jihadists in Syria, fighting alongside Al Qaeda’s Nusra Front.

Using advanced U.S.-supplied warplanes, the Saudis also have been pulverizing poverty-stricken Yemen after exaggerating the level of Iranian support to the Houthis, who have been fighting both a Saudi-backed regime and Al Qaeda’s Yemeni affiliate. Amid the Saudi-inflicted humanitarian crisis, Al Qaeda’s forces have expanded their territory.

And, at the start of the New Year, the Saudi monarchy butchered 47 prisoners, including prominent Shiite cleric Nimr al-Nimr for his offense of criticizing the royals, or as the Saudis like to say – without a touch of irony – supporting “terrorism.” By chopping off Nimr’s head – as well as shooting and decapitating the others – the Saudis demonstrated that there is very little qualitative difference between them and the head-choppers of the Islamic State.

The Usual Suspects

Yes, the usual suspects in Official Washington have sought to muddle the blood-soaked picture by condemning angry Iranian protesters for ransacking the Saudi embassy in Tehran before the government security forces intervened. And there will surely be an escalation of condemnations of anyone who suggests normalizing relations with Iran.

But the issue for the neocons and their liberal-interventionist sidekicks is whether they can continue to spin obviously false narratives about the nobility of these Middle East “allies,” including Israel. Is there a limit to what they can put over on the American people? At some point, will they risk losing whatever shreds of credibility that they still have? Or perhaps the calculation will be that public credibility is irrelevant, power and control are everything.

A similar choice must be made by politicians, including those running for the White House.

Some Republican candidates, most notably Sen. Marco Rubio, have gone all-in with the neocons, hoping to secure largesse from casino tycoon Sheldon Adelson and other staunch supporters of Israel’s right-wing Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. On the other hand, real-estate magnate Donald Trump has distanced himself from neocon orthodoxy, even welcoming Russia’s entry into the Syrian conflict to fight the Islamic State, heresy in Official Washington.

On the Democratic side, former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton is the most closely associated with the neocons and the liberal hawks – and she has dug in on the issue of their beloved “regime change” strategy, which she insists must be applied to Syria.

She appears to have learned nothing from her misguided support for the Iraq War, nor from her participation in overthrowing Muammar Gaddafi’s secular regime in Libya, both of which created vacuums that the Islamic State and other extremists filled. (British special forces are being deployed to Libya as part of an offensive to reclaim Libyan oil fields from the Islamic State.)

A Sanders Opportunity

The Saudi decision to chop off Sheikh Nimr’s head and slaughter 46 other people in one mass execution also puts Sen. Bernie Sanders on the spot over his glib call for the Saudis “to get their hands dirty” and intervene militarily across the region.

That may have been a clever talking point, calling on the rich Saudis to put some skin in the game, but it missed the point that – even before the Nimr execution – the Saudis’ hands were very dirty, indeed covered in blood.

For Sanders to see the Saudis as part of the solution to the Mideast chaos ignores the reality that they are a big part of the problem. Not only has Saudi Arabia funded the extreme, fundamentalist Wahhabi version of Sunni Islam – building mosques and schools around the Muslim world – but Al Qaeda and many other jihadist groups are, in essence, Saudi paramilitary forces dispatched to undermine governments on Riyadh’s hit list.

That has been the case since the 1980s when the Saudis – along with the Reagan administration – invested billions of dollars in support of the brutal mujahedeen in Afghanistan with the goal of overthrowing a secular, Soviet-backed government in Kabul.

Though the “regime change” worked – the secular leader Najibullah was castrated and his body hung from a light pole in Kabul – the eventual outcome was the emergence of the Taliban and Al Qaeda, led by a Saudi scion, Osama bin Laden.

Though Sanders has resisted articulating a detailed foreign policy – instead seeking to turn questions back to his preferred topic of income inequality – the latest Saudi barbarism gives him a new chance to distinguish himself from front-runner Clinton. He could show courage and call for a realignment based on reality, not propaganda.

President Obama, too, has a final chance to refashion the outdated and counter-productive U.S. alliances in the Middle East. At least he could rebalance them to allow a pragmatic relationship with Iran and Russia to stabilize Syria and neutralize the Saudi-backed jihadists.

Standing Up, Not Bowing Down

Instead of being supplicants to Saudi riches and oil, the West could apply stern measures against the Saudi royals to compel their acquiescence to a real anti-terrorist coalition. If they don’t comply immediately, their assets could be frozen and seized; they could be barred from foreign travel; they could be isolated until they agreed to behave in a civilized manner, including setting aside ancient animosities between Sunni and Shiite Islam.

It seems the European public is beginning to move in this direction, in part, because the Saudi-led destabilization of Syria has dumped millions of desperate refugees on the European Union’s doorstep. If a new course isn’t taken, the E.U. itself might split apart.

But the power of the neocon/liberal-hawk establishment in Official Washington remains strong and has prevented the American people from achieving anything close to a full understanding of what is going on in the Middle East.

The ultimate barrier to an informed U.S. public may also be the enormous power of the Israel Lobby, which operates what amounts to a blacklist against anyone who dares criticize Israeli behavior and harbors hopes of ever holding a confirmable government position or – for that matter – a prominent job in the mainstream media.

It would be a test of true political courage and patriotism for some major politician or prominent pundit to finally take on these intimidating forces. That likely won’t happen, but Saudi Arabia’s latest head-choppings have created the possibility, finally, for a game-changing realignment.

Investigative reporter Robert Parry broke many of the Iran-Contra stories for The Associated Press and Newsweek in the 1980s. You can buy his latest book, America’s Stolen Narrative, either in print here or as an e-book (from Amazon and barnesandnoble.com).

January 6, 2016 Posted by | Corruption, Economics, Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, Militarism, Timeless or most popular, Wars for Israel | , , , , , , , , , | Leave a comment

How Obama Enables Atrocities

By Robert Parry | Consortium News | January 4, 2016

As the New Year dawns, the neocons and their liberal interventionist sidekicks remain firmly in control of Official Washington’s storylines – on Syria, Russia and elsewhere – even as their policies continue to wreak havoc across the Mideast and threaten the stability of Europe and indeed the future of civilization.

The latest proof of this dangerous reality came when Saudi Arabia’s repressive Sunni monarchy executed prominent Shiite political leader Sheikh Nimr al-Nimr for criticizing the nation’s kings and princes. Before the killing, the Obama administration held its tongue in public so as not to antagonize the Saudi royals. (Nimr’s nephew awaits Saudi “crucifixion” for his role as a teenager in Arab Spring protests.)

After the Nimr execution, the State Department issued a mild protest toward the Saudis while blurring the guilt by twinning it with criticism of Iran where outraged protesters damaged the Saudi embassy, which led to Saudi Arabia’s retaliatory breaking of relations with Iran.

“We believe that diplomatic engagement and direct conversations remain essential in working through differences,” State Department spokesman John Kirby said meekly on Sunday, while some senior U.S. officials reportedly seethed in private over the latest Saudi provocation.

“This is a dangerous game they are playing,” one official told The Washington Post’s Karen DeYoung while insisting on anonymity to discuss U.S.-Saudi relations.

But the fact that the Obama administration could not voice its revulsion over the Saudi mass head-chopping (along with some firing squads) for 47 men, including Nimr, over the weekend speaks volumes. President Barack Obama and other insiders continue to tip-toe around the unsavory U.S. “alliances” in the Mideast.

Over the past several years, Saudi Arabia sealed its impervious protection from U.S. government criticism by forming an undeclared alliance with Israel around their mutual hatred of Shiite-ruled Iran and its Shiite allies, a cause picked up by American neocons and shared by the career-oriented liberal interventionists.

Some more “realist-oriented” U.S. officials, reportedly including Obama and some national security aides, recognize the havoc that neocon/liberal-hawk strategies continue to wreak across the region and now spreading into Europe, but they act powerless to do anything bold to stop it.

With Israel’s lobby siding with the Sunni states in their bloody rivalry with Shiite states, most U.S. politicians and pundits have scrambled to defend each recurring outrage by the Saudis, Qataris and Turks by trying to flip the script and somehow put the blame on Iran, Syria and Russia.

Getting a Pass

Thus, the Saudis, Qataris and Turks get mostly a pass for arming and enabling radical jihadists, including Al Qaeda and the Islamic State. Israel also provides assistance to Al Qaeda’s Nusra Front along the Golan Heights and bombs allies of the Syrian government and, of course, faces no official U.S. criticism.

In 2014, when Vice President Joe Biden blurted out the truth about Saudi support for Islamic terrorism inside Syria, he was the one who had to apologize. [Quote at 53:20 of clip.] In 2015, when Saudi Arabia invaded and bombed Yemen after hyping Iran’s support for Houthi rebels, the Obama administration sided with the Saudis even as their wanton attacks on poverty-stricken Yemen killed thousands of civilians and created a humanitarian crisis.

For more than a year after President Obama announced his air war against the Islamic State in summer 2014, Turkey continued to let the terror group run an industrial-style oil smuggling operation from Syria and Iraq through Turkey. Only when Russia entered the conflict last fall was the U.S. government shamed into joining in bombing raids to destroy the truck convoys. Yet, Obama still defended Turkey and bought its promises about finally trying to seal a 100-kilometer gap in its border.

Then, when Turkey retaliated against the Russian anti-terrorist bombing raids inside Syria by willfully shooting down a Russian Su-24 plane whose pilot was murdered after bailing out, Obama again sided with the Turks even though their claim that the Russian plane had violated Turkish air space was dubious at best. By their account, the plane had intruded over a sliver of Turkish territory for 17 seconds.

In other words, whatever these U.S. “allies” do – no matter how brutal and reckless – the Obama administration at least publicly rushes to their defense. Otherwise, the neocon/liberal-hawk “group think” would be offended – and many angry editorials and columns would follow.

While this strange reality may make sense inside Official Washington – where careerism is intense and offending the Israel Lobby is a sure career killer – this pusillanimous approach to these grave problems is endangering U.S. national interests as well as the world’s future.

Not only has the neocon/liberal-interventionist obsession with “regime change” turned the Middle East into a vast killing field but it has now spread instability into Europe, where the fabric of the European Union is being shredded by dissension over how to handle millions of Syrian refugees.

The United Kingdom may vote to leave the E.U., removing one of the original anchors of the European project which — for all its faults — has deservedly gotten credit for replacing a history of European blood-soaked conflicts with peaceful cooperation.

The spreading disorder has had political repercussions in the United States, too, where panic over terrorism is reshaping the presidential race.

Yet, instead of practical solutions such as pressuring all rational sides in the Syrian conflict to engage in peace talks and hold free elections that give the Syrian people the power to decide who their future leaders will be, Official Washington instead generates “talking points,” such as calling Syrian President Bashar al-Assad a “magnet for terrorism” who “must go” – although his forces have done the most to stop an outright victory by Al Qaeda and Islamic State.

If one buys this “magnet” theory, then you’d also have to seek “regime change” in every country that’s been attacked by terrorists, including the United States, France, United Kingdom, Spain, etc. In the case of Syria, what’s remarkable is that the sponsorship of terrorism by U.S. “allies” and indeed by the U.S. government itself has been so blatant. [See Consortiumnews.com’s “Climbing into Bed with Al Qaeda.”]

However, as far as Official Washington is concerned, it doesn’t really matter what Assad has or hasn’t done. What’s important is that “regime change” in Syria has been on the neocons’ to-do list since at least the mid-1990s – along with the brilliant idea of “regime change” in Iraq. [See Consortiumnews.com’s “How Israel Out-Foxed US Presidents.”].

The Infallible Neocons

And since the neocons are infallible – as far as they’re concerned – the goal can’t be changed. The only option is to escalate the “regime change” planning to include other countries that get in the way, including Iran and now nuclear-armed Russia.

Yes, that’s the ultimate neocon idea – make the Russian economy scream, overthrow the calculating Vladimir Putin and risk having him replaced by some extreme and unstable nationalist with his or her hand on the nuclear button. That may be how life on the planet ends – but there will be evermore “group thinks” and “talking points” right up to the moment of Armageddon. The neocons can never stop generating false narratives.

Meanwhile, the “liberal interventionists” can boast of their own “regime change” – in Libya, a policy promoted by then-Secretary of State Hillary Clinton who delighted at the gruesome torture-murder of Muammar Gaddafi – “we came, we saw, he died,” she laughed – after having ignored his warnings that the overthrow of his secular government would open the oil-rich country to chaos from radical jihadists, a prediction that has been fulfilled.

Yet, despite this record of spreading chaos and death around the world, the grip that the neocons and liberal hawks have on Official Washington remains almost absolute. They control most of the think tanks – from the Brookings Institution to the American Enterprise Institute – as well as the editorial pages of The Washington Post and The New York Times and pretty much the rest of the mainstream media.

In case you haven’t noticed, the Times’ “news” coverage of the Middle East and Russia has been consistently slanted to favor neocon/liberal-hawk positions. Just as the Times eagerly joined President George W. Bush’s bogus case for invading Iraq in 2003, “the newspaper of record” has peddled false and misleading articles about the crises in Syria and Ukraine as well as promoting anti-Russian propaganda.

In this climate of manufactured “reality,” any old-fashioned foreign policy “realist” – especially one who has criticized Israel – cannot expect to win Senate confirmation to any senior position, establishing what amounts to a blacklist against “realists,” such as happened to ex-U.S. Ambassador Chas Freeman whose intelligence appointment was dropped by Obama in his early days out of fear of offending the Israel Lobby and its many neocon backers.

As the rise of those neocons has played out since their emergence during the Reagan administration, the “realists” who were known for cold-hearted foreign policy calculations to protect American interests have aged, died out or otherwise disappeared. They have been largely replaced by ideologues, either neocons with their intense devotion to right-wing Israeli interests or liberal interventionists who almost invariably side with the neocons but cite “humanitarian” concerns to justify “regime change” wars.

Blocking Obama

No matter how foolhardy and deadly these policy prescriptions have been, there is almost no way to dislodge the neocons and liberal hawks inside Official Washington, since they monopolize almost all levers of political and media power.

Even when President Obama tried to collaborate under the table with President Putin to reduce tensions in Syria and Iran in 2013, Obama was quickly outmaneuvered by neocons and liberal hawks inside the State Department who pushed for the putsch in Ukraine in 2014 that effectively destroyed the Obama-Putin cooperation. [See Consortiumnews.com’s “What Neocons Want from Ukraine Crisis.”]

I have long argued that the only way to begin to challenge the neocon/liberal-hawk “group thinks” is to release facts about pivotal events, such as the 2013 Syria-sarin case, the 2014 sniper attacks at Kiev’s Maidan square, and the 2014 shoot-down of Malaysia Airlines Flight 17 over Ukraine. The neocons/liberal hawks currently control all those narratives, using them as clubs to advance ideological agendas just as they did with the false claims about Iraq’s WMD. [See Consortiumnews.com’s “The Power of False Narrative.”]

But other evidence suggests very different scenarios. Obama and his national security team could either release evidence to confirm the accuracy of the “group thinks” or puncture that self-certainty. Instead Obama has chosen to withhold what the U.S. intelligence community knows about these events, all the better to protect the dominant propaganda narratives.

So, the Obama administration continues down a road of tolerating or condoning outrages by its Mideast “allies” as the President and his timid intelligence bureaucrats do nothing to empower the American people with the truth. It is a recipe for worldwide catastrophe.

Investigative reporter Robert Parry broke many of the Iran-Contra stories for The Associated Press and Newsweek in the 1980s. You can buy his latest book, America’s Stolen Narrative, either in print here or as an e-book (from Amazon and barnesandnoble.com).

January 5, 2016 Posted by | Mainstream Media, Warmongering, Progressive Hypocrite, Timeless or most popular, Wars for Israel | , , , , , , , , , , , , | Leave a comment

Saudi execution aimed at provoking regional bloodbath

By Finian Cunningham | RT | January 4, 2016

The furious reaction across the Middle East to the Saudi execution of a prominent Shiite cleric strongly suggests that the killing is a deliberate provocation by the ruling House of Saud.

That provocation would appear to be aimed at inflaming sectarian tensions and fomenting conflict in various regional countries – already near flashpoint – in order to further Saudi geopolitical interests. Central to those interests is, as always, the bitter rivalry with the region’s Shiite powerhouse, Iran.

Following the announcement at the weekend by the Saudi Interior Ministry that Shiite cleric Sheikh Nimr al-Nimr had been executed, along with 46 other prisoners, there was predictable outrage from across the region, especially among countries where there is a large Shiite following, such as Iran, Iraq, Lebanon and Bahrain. Iran denounced the radical Sunni Saudi rulers as “criminal” and accused them of carrying out an act that is “the depth of imprudence and irresponsibility.”

Iran’s Supreme Leader, Ayatollah Khamenei, compared the House of Saud with Daesh, the extremist terror group (also known as Islamic State, and previously ISIS/ISIL). Of note is the way that the kingdom executes opponents by beheading according to a similar stringent interpretation of Islamic Sharia law known as Wahhabism – shared by both the Saudi regime and the cadres of Daesh.

Former Iraqi Prime Minster Nouri al-Maliki said that the imposition of capital punishment would lead to the downfall of the Saudi rulers, with other Iraqi politicians saying that it would “open the gates of hell” across the volatile and religiously fraught region.

The United States and European Union also responded with alarm at the execution of al-Nimr, both warning of deepening sectarian tensions being exacerbated by the Saudi death penalty.

Sheikh al-Nimr was executed on Saturday, along with 46 other prisoners in what is believed to have been the biggest mass execution in Saudi Arabia for over three decades. The death sentences were carried out in 12 prison locations by decapitation or firing squad, according to reports. Most of those sentenced were alleged members of the Al-Qaeda terror group, who had been accused of carrying out deadly attacks against Western interests in Saudi Arabia between 2003 and 2006.

Nimr al-Nimr was among four Shiite activists who were executed at the weekend. They were convicted on several charges of subversion and terrorism in trials that were dismissed by international rights groups as a travesty of judicial process. Sheikh al-Nimr was arrested in 2012 and accused of inciting violent protests, but supporters point out that the respected cleric always publicly endorsed peaceful protest. One of his best-known statements was: “The power of the word is mightier than the roar of bullets.”

In October, al-Nimr lost a judicial appeal against his death sentence. There then followed several international appeals for clemency. The Iranian government in particular issued several statements calling for the cleric’s life to be spared.

The widely seen miscarriage of justice against al-Nimr and the chilling determination to carry out his execution in spite of appeals for clemency is what makes the case so incendiary.

Lebanese Shiite resistance movement Hezbollah condemned Saudi Arabia’s conduct as “an assassination,” while Iran’s Revolutionary Guards Corps vowed that the Saudi rulers would meet with “harsh vengeance.”

In Yemen, where Saudi Arabia and a coalition of other Sunni Arab states have been carrying out airstrikes for the past nine months, the mainly Shiite Houthi rebels also condemned the execution of al-Nimr and promised retribution for his death. At the weekend, it was reported that 24 Saudi troops were killed in a Houthi rocket attack on the Saudi border province of Jizan. It is not clear if the attack preceded the announced execution of al-Nimr.

The Saudi regime has previously accused Iran and Hezbollah of fueling the Houthi rebellion in Yemen. Tehran has rejected claims of militarily supporting the insurgents. But it would be a fair assumption that Iran and Hezbollah will henceforth step up military intervention in Yemen as a way of striking back at the Saudis.

The same response is envisaged for Iranian and Hezbollah involvement in Syria, where the Saudis have bankrolled and armed various anti-government militia, primarily so-called radical Islamist groups with a shared Wahhabi fundamentalist ideology. These groups include Jaish al Islam (Army of Islam), whose leader Zahran Alloush was killed in a Syrian airstrike near Damascus on December 25. The Saudi regime publicly rebuked the killing of Alloush, saying that it jeopardized the forthcoming UN-sponsored peace talks in Geneva on Syria.

The House of Saud, led by King Salman, is known to be not in favor of the Geneva talks, which Washington and Moscow have both endorsed. The Saudis are dismayed by the seeming compromise made by Washington towards the Russian position, which is that the political future of Syria must be decided by the Syrian people through elections. The erstwhile demand by Washington that Syria’s President Bashar Assad must stand down as a precondition for peace talks has been abandoned – leaving the Saudis, Turkey and the extremist militia groups in Syria as the only parties persisting with the call for Assad to go.

It is perhaps significant that Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan held a “strategic summit” with Saudi King Salman in Riyadh only days before the execution of Nimr al-Nimr.

Russia’s military intervention in Syria, from the end of September, has been a resounding success in terms of stabilizing the Syrian government of Bashar Assad. Even the Obama administration has recently acknowledged the strategic success for Russian President Vladimir Putin in Syria.

That military success can also be attributed to Iran and Hezbollah, as well as to Iraq, which have all contributed to the gains made by the Syrian Arab Army on the ground.

The biggest loser is the axis for covert regime change in Syria, led by Washington, London and Paris, together with their regional allies in Saudi Arabia, Qatar and Turkey. While Washington and the other Western powers have the nous to switch tactics from backing a covert insurgency to belatedly trying a political process for eventual regime change in Syria, it would appear that the Saudis and Turks are still committed to the covert war agenda.

In that way, the Russian-backed military alliance in Syria is a particularly damaging broadside to Saudi Arabia and Turkey.

From the Saudi point of view, one way of trying to salvage their losses in Syria and ongoing setbacks in Yemen would be to blow up the region with an explosion in sectarian conflicts. For many people, of course, such a gambit is insane. But if the House of Saud can provoke a firestorm between Sunnis and Shiites, that would in turn polarize relations between Washington and Moscow, leading to a wider war across the region.

Having lost in their Machiavellian schemes for regime change in Syria, the House of Saud seems to want to inflict a plague of chaos and bloodshed on everyone else’s house.

The execution of renowned Shia cleric Nimr al-Nimr is such a gratuitous barbaric killing, one is left with the conclusion: the unadulterated madness of the slaying betrays an altogether pathological calculation aimed at inciting mayhem in the region.

Saudi Arabia is on such a losing streak over Syria, Yemen, Iraq, Lebanon and elsewhere that its autocratic rulers probably figure that they don’t have much else to lose by going for broke – and thus provoking a regional bloodbath.

January 4, 2016 Posted by | War Crimes | , , , , , , , , , | Leave a comment

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