THE THREATS II: RECOGNIZE ISRAEL OR WE’LL PARTNER WITH IRAN.

stillreallysecondrughdrapht

THE LAST POST

In the last foray, I discussed the public revelations made to a NYTImes.com reporter by senior U.S. officials criticizing the role Saudi Arabia was playing in Iraq. Saudi suicide bombers, and Saudi funding of politicians and insurgent groups in Iraq, were two of the more specific accusations made against the Kingdom. More generally, in the NYTimes.com article, the institutional architects of our defeat/fiasco in Iraq showed heightened irritation with the Saudis for refusing to back the Maliki government.

THE THREAT–THE FIRST TAKE

In the latter part of the last post (“Recognize Israel or Else!”), I wrote that the public anti-Saudi revelations in essence were a threat. This threat, I assessed, was meant to scare the Saudis-- to force them to tow the line in Iraq, or risk a public campaign against them in the United States. I drew a parallel between the recent public revelations about the role of Saudi Arabia in Iraq to the ceaseless public revelations about Iran’s role in that country. Just as the harmful idiots point to Iran for responsibility for the death of a specific number of U.S. troops in Iraq , they're now an inch away from pointing to Saudi Arabia for doing the same.

THE THREAT: THE SECOND TAKE

A NYTimes.com news story on July 29, 2007-- that the Administration will be seeking congressional approval for a $20 bn arms sale to Saudi Arabia and other Gulf countries-- confirms this blog’s interpretation that the earlier public criticism of Saudi Arabia’s role in Iraq was in fact a threat. The threat, as I had interpreted it in the last post, would've been to invoke the ire of the American public against the Kingdom. But the arms sale revelation adds yet another element to the threat, more concrete: The senior officials’ statements to the NYTimes.com communicated to the Saudis that their failure to tow the line in Iraq should endanger congressional approval of the arms sales package.

I'm not finished: it's more than that. Already one pro-Israel voice in Congress has threatened to block the arms sale proposed deal. And the NYTimes.com article makes it clear that the pro-Israel U.S. Congress may not be too approving of the export of high-tech weaponry to Saudi Arabia. The threat, therefore, isn't only about towing the line in Iraq. It's about the Saudis realizing that keeping up the historic protection by this country of Saudi Arabia and its system of government entails a rapprochement between it and Israel--recognition and normalization. It entails Israeli apporval of the Kingdom. To put it bluntly: it entails that the Saudis go through Israel to reach the U.S. Congress. And how would they reach Congress without hugging Israel and kissing its ass?

This fits into the general scheme of the harmful idiots, sophomoric at best, to consolidate an anti-Iran Arab-Israeli front. It portrays an Administration that's misjudging yet again: that the Arabs and their governments see Iran as such a huge threat that they would be willing to partner with Israel against it. It assumes idiocy by Iran, overreaching as the harmful idiots had when they invaded Iraq. Persian chauvinism could lead to overreaching. But I doubt the Iranian government will allow for that to happen. Perhaps the Iraqi Sunni share in the anti-Iran perspective; but you're not going to find them calling for Israeli participation in a mostly Arab front against Iran. Besides, the Iraqis can't trust the harmful idiots nor evven the saudis who had stabbed them in the back. (Being weak is no excuse. It's a choice.)


In other words, the Iraqi Sunni can be anti-Iranian, possibly even in their entirety. But it's too late for that. To be anti-Iranian is to have a base of operation and allies who can be trusted. The Iraqi Sunni can't trust the harmful idiots. How could they? These have only recently devastated them and their country and lynched their leaders. These have executed the wishes of the American Jewish Right which hates Arabs and Muslims and forever wages anti-Arab and anti-Muslim campaigns to keep Israel on top. As to the Arab Street, good luck. The Street knows who screwed and continues to screw the Arabs, including the Sunni.

You can feed the Street for a while, as Tony Blair wants to do on the West Bank, to screw Hamas. The Street will eat the food then turn around and do what it has to do. I have serious doubts that the Street, including the Palestinian, even well-fed on the West Bank, will turn against Hamas. I think the Street will give Mahmoud Abbas a chance to obtain cargo. Then it'll get rid of him. To the Street, he's but another Anwar al-Sadat, a dopehead, one of the biggest traitors in Arab history.

Hey, you might scream, what’s the big deal? The Saudis, after all, don’t have a track record of fighting wars, and therefore the denial of congressional approval of the arms deal shouldn't be that significant. (See below: A NOTE–TO REGRESS.) True, I would answer. But I would add that the Saudis would be worried not so much about the arms deal itself but, as importantly, about its symbolic significance.

The arms deal would represent to the Saudis the commitment, historic, by the United States to protect Kingdom and royal system of government. We pay you for weapons we don’t use, you protect us; we keep the oil relatively cheap, you protect us. A failed arms deal would mean that the commitment to protect Kingdom and political system is being withdrawn, little by little. The Bush Administration , aware of this Saudi fear, is playing on the same to force the Kingdom to recognize Israel and normalize relations with it–without the apple of the eye meeting such elemental conditions as withdrawing its nearly half-a-million colonial settlers from the narrow West Bank and the thousands of other colonial settlers from the Arab Joulan.

A NOTE–TO REGRESS.

It should be noted that, historically, arms sales to the Kingdom are hardly about fighting wars or deterring Iran. Arms sales to the kingdom represent the following:

–They’re protection money that the Kingdom pays to its chosen allies. This secures not only protection for the Kingdom but, too, protection for the royal government itself. (What Tony Blair, our oh-so-ambitious-I-need-to-orphan-Arab-children-to-get-an-erection-asset, had called “regime” when the Saudis were re-thinking the up-to-$80 billion arms sales deal with his country, only to have his foreign secretary describe the same government as a “democracy” soon after the Saudis caved in to British blackmail and approved of the continuation of the gargantuan arms contract. Refer to earlier post, “Of British Blackmail and Saudi Manhood.” )

(Can you fathom how much this Saudi government caves in to all threats and blackmail? They're running scared all the time--and are apologetic even about elemental patriotism.)

–The arms sales historically have been yet another means for the princes to pocket commissions. The more means (e.g., construction projects, intelligence slush funds), the merrier.

–The weapons to be shipped to Saudi Arabia and the other Gulf countries will be shipped there anyway, congressional approval or not. The Pentagon will need these weapons in any confrontation with the Iranians. The only genuine difference is about who will foot the bill: the Pentagon or the rich Gulf Arabs.


--These weapons will likely rust in the desert, as most such weapons before it.

And herein lies a most idiotic and hilarious fact: Wars in the Middle East should no longer be of the pure conventional variety, or the silly counter-insurgency. These could happen more because the Israelis and the harmful idiots for their own reasons (military-industrial jobs in both) don’t want to appreciate (hence, “idiots”) that the conflicts now are more about politics and not about conventional weapons. Grant it, no one should doubt that the harmful idiots can order the troops to hurt the Iranians with these weapons; but, thinking long-term, hurting the Iranians is bound to create yet more chaos, not less, and such chaos could spread like wildfire across the region. The harmful idiots, it should be noted, don’t have the troops to contain that chaos.


THE REAL THREAT: THE KINGDOM BETTER RECOGNIZE ISRAEL OR ELSE FACE AN AMERICAN-IRANIAN PARTNERSHIP IN THE GULF.

And so, as I was driving, it occurred to me. Yes, Virginia, the harmful idiots may have issued another threat (three in total) to Saudi Arabia–a new and improved kind of threat:

If you don’t recognize Israel, and normalize relations with it, we will coordinate with the Iranians.

What? Yes. Absolutely.

What do we care if the Iranians have primacy in the Gulf? They already do, anyway. It’ll only mean that you’ll need us even more, and we will be able to call the shots inside your very countries. No more stubbornness. Total subjugation. We would’ve lost in Iraq, but won big in Saudi Arabia–the biggest win of them all-- and the other Gulf countries. We will own you as never before. We can force discount oil contracts in exchange for protection. We can partner with the Iranians so long as these stay away from the apple of our eye. What do we care? And they’d be glad to keep away from the apple of our eye so long as they can sit on top of you in the Gulf. Along with us, that is.

Does this threat make sense? Can the U.S. really partner with Iran? I think it can; I think it will, de facto, of course. And would normalizing relations between Saudi Arabia and Israel prevent the United States from partnering with Iran? Doubtful. Very. Why should it? The harmful idiots will do what serves their interests, not the Saudi. They will do what will allow them to stay in the Gulf. Partnering with the Iranians, de facto, might just fit the bill to allow a stay, though not directly in Iraq, but by proxy, which would be fine. But in Kuwait (with Iran's permission), Qatar, the U.A.E., Bahrain (with Iran’s permission); and even the Kingdom. The quid pro quo with the Iranians would be struck in such places as Syria (returning the Joulan, while Syria eases up in Lebanon), Palestine (Hamas as a silent not so vocal partner, and accepting of Israel), and Iraq (the harmful idiots’ puppets allowed a significant role)–not in the Gulf itself. In the Gulf, the harmful idiots should accept some level of Iranian influence, including among the Shia Arabs. It’ll be a partnership of continued negotiations and coordination: You’ve stepped over my foot here; you withdraw your foot there. But a partnership notwithstanding.

Saudi Arabia recognizing Israel would have no impact whatsoever on the evolving U.S.-Iranian partnership. If the Iranians play their cards well (i.e., balance the economic draining of the U.S. in Iraq with steps that tame the self-styled terrific strategists I call the harmful idiots), the partnership could evolve into positive coordination. An opportunity of a lifetime for the Iranians.

THE WEAKNESS OF SAUDI ARABIA

The problem for the Saudis: They have partnered with the harmful idiots in finishing those Arabs who can fight, and are partnering with them to finish those Arabs who still are standing on their feet. Along with the harmful idiots, the Saudis have used such methods as fueling an intra-Sunni Arab civil war (Iraq–with Jordan’s help), a Sunni-Shia Arab civil war (Lebanon), and have tried for an intra-Shia Arab civil war (Lebanon). In Palestine, though they were not partners with the harmful idiots in igniting what could become an intra-Sunni Arab civil war, they nonetheless seem to be packpedaling on the Mecca Accord. As I've said earlier, they're running scared--of the harmful idiots, of the American Jewish Right, and of Israel because of the latter's infulence in Congress.

With yet another and newer American threat hanging over their head (the first was the Jewish Right’s Defense Policy Board threat to break up the kingdom into smaller states) some of the Saudis probably are asking themselves: Should domestic forces, especially in the U.S., dictate a change in alliances in the region (I will not explain), who would be the ones defending the Arab World, the Kingdom included? These Saudis unavoidably are asking : Is weakening those Arabs who can fight, those who are still standing on their feet, not a prescription to hurting the Kingdom and in the end our always threatening friends, the harmful idiots? The harmful idiots cannot see–by definition–beyond their nose. But should we share in their short-sightedness and cave in to yet another threat? Should we not lose in the long run by having all turn into useless Arabs who are unable to fight, as Egypt?

(The Saudis and Egyptians have formed a permanent entity to coordinate politically. Watch out Iran! Not. Expect the Islamists to intensify their infiltration of Egyptian troops. No one knows when these will be shipped to Bahrain, to Saudi Arabia, to Yemen--not again, oh no! Not Yemen. Not another Nasser-like fiasco.)

In the long run–not the immediate tit-for-tat harmful idiots time–maybe the real government in Saudi Arabia (the intelligence service) should assess what Arabs can defend the Arab World, the Kingdom included– not what Israelis or harmful idiots.