What’s Really Going On at the Top Concerning Syria?

Have you ever asked yourselves why the Western powers, especially the US and the UK, are so against Bashar Al-Assad? The real reason is not that he is such a bad guy (though he isn't an angel, that's true); rather it is because he is Saudi Arabia's arch-enemy. And anyone that Saudis hate is our enemy by default. Think oil and armaments contracts. We must please the Saudis. Oh yes! There are no tin-pot dictators in that neck of the woods. Only democrats and constitutional monarchs, I suppose.

The fact is that Bashar Al-Assad is an Alawite, which is a branch of Shia Islam. In other words, in the eyes of the Sunni Muslim King of Saudi Arabia, he is a heretic.

Added to this, he is an ally of Iran – another of Saudi's arch-enemies. The Shia population of the Middle East is growing in strength, which only adds to the reason why Bashar Al-Assad is the bête noire of the Saudi régime.

Factor in the fact that Saudi Arabia is a Sunni dynasty which has colossal oil wealth. Unfortunately for the Saudis, most of that oil wealth comes from the Eastern Province, which is predominantly Shi'ite. Being Shi'ite, it comes under the burgeoning power and influence of that population in that part of the world. In addition, we have a restive Shi'ite population in Bahrain, a small but influential island off the east coast of Saudi Arabia, next to the Eastern Province. Hence the Saudi's paranoia about Syria and Bashar Al-Assad.

The Saudi king therefore wants Bashar Al-Assad toppled. He wants to turn Syria into a country which comes under the influence of the Sunnis. So Bashar's real crime is that he is not a Sunni. We have no hard proof yet that it was he who used those chemical weapons on his people. But our leaders do not want to let a few minor details come in their way of rushing to judgment. After all, they are hell-bent on doing the Saudis' bidding.

Saudi Arabia possesses a huge amount of armaments and war-planes; but Saudis want those for reasons of prestige. Saudis don't like the dirty business of fighting their own battles and wars; so they employ the West, especially the US (and the UK), to fight their dirty wars for them. In other words, this war, if it takes place, will be a proxy war. The US will do the fighting; the Saudis will supply oil to the West at relatively reasonable prices and throw military contracts aplenty the West's way. So, boiled down, this means that the US military are nothing but mercenaries. So how much honour is there in that?

One cannot help but remember that hideous bow which Obama made when visiting the King of Saudi Arabia early on in his first term of office. That bow showed up Obama for what he truly is: The Servant of the King of Saudi Arabia. To put it into Arabic, one could call him Abd ul-Malik. This is one of the true reasons why Obama is keen to get the US into this war. And make no mistake: a war it will be. The notion that it will be limited to a few days of hard-hitting strikes is the stuff of fantasy. This will turn out into a long, drawn-out, protracted war, and one with unpredictable consequences. Our only hope now is that Congress will have the good sense to turn down in no uncertain terms Obama's call for support. Better Obama be crushed than the West be drawn into yet another worthless military campaign; and worthless it will be, for it will achieve nothing.

© Mark Alexander

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Iran and Saudi Arabia Allegedly Funding Proxy War in Yemen
AL MONITOR: The intense clashes between Salafists and Houthis in the northern Yemen province of Saada, near the Saudi border, indicate a possible sectarian war. It seems that this scenario reached a point of no return when Yemen’s northern tribes, which are loyal to Riyadh, joined the Salafist militants as part of a "Coalition for Sunni Victory." Today, this coalition is spearheading the ongoing sectarian conflict in northern Yemen, where the majority of the population embraces the Zaidi sect, a branch of Shia Islam.

he seeds of a Sunni-Shiite conflict are being sown in the region in the absence of the Yemeni government. In fact, the government is instead concerned with the war against Al-Qaeda and the obstacles faced by the struggling Gulf Cooperation Council settlement agreement that led to the ouster of Ali Abdallah Saleh. The government also accuses Riyadh of managing the conflict through the use of loyal tribes — who are now in a coalition with the Salafists — against Houthi militants. The Houthis and their military wing Ansar Allah have themselves been accused of receiving support from Tehran and of implementing Tehran’s plans in the region. » | Abu Bakr Abdullah | Thursday, June 07, 2012

Hamas Wages Iran’s Proxy War on Israel
THE SUNDAY TIMES: A Hamas leader admits hundreds of his fighters have travelled to Tehran

The Hamas commander was in a hurry. Hunched forward in a navy-blue parka, with the wind-chapped skin and drawn eyes of someone who had been outdoors all night, he had just returned from the front line with Israel. The whine of drones overhead signalled that his enemy was hunting for blood.

For someone who had survived the fiercest fighting between Israelis and Palestinians since 2000 and the deaths of scores of his fellow fighters, the commander, already a senior figure in his late twenties, appeared remarkably composed.

He is in the vanguard of the Izzedine al-Qassam Brigades, the military wing of Hamas which is growing into a disciplined army, trained to fight for victory rather than be consigned to the “martyr’s death” of the suicide bomber.

Israel has long insisted that Iran is behind this training. Last week Yuval Diskin, the head of the Israeli internal security service Shin Bet, said as much when he claimed that Hamas had “started to dispatch people to Iran, tens and a promise of hundreds”. He provided no evidence.

The Hamas commander, however, confirmed for the first time that the Iranian Revolutionary Guard has been training its men in Tehran for more than two years and is currently honing the skills of 150 fighters.

The details he gave suggested that, if anything, Shin Bet has underestimated the extent of Iran’s influence on Hamas’s increasingly sophisticated tactics and weaponry. Hamas wages Iran’s proxy war on Israel >>> By Marie Colvin in Gaza City

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