Saudi Arabia targeting missiles at Iran and Middle East

Saudi Arabia throws down a gauntlet by targeting missiles at Iran and Israel
The disengagement of President Barack Obama’s America from the Middle East has forced the kingdom to square up to Iran and Israel

The Saudis have come to the reluctant conclusion that, so far as their own security is concerned, they must be more self-sufficient in protecting their interests Photo: Getty Images
By Con Coughlin
8:07PM BST 11 Jul 2013
156 Comments
There was a time, not so long ago, when any missiles directed at Iran from Saudi Arabian soil would most likely have carried the insignia of the United States. But that was before al-Qaeda’s murderous campaign against American influence in the kingdom resulted in Washington relocating its military operations in the Gulf.

So we should not be surprised that the latest images of Saudi ballistic missiles directed at Iran and Israel bear the Saudis’ distinctive green emblem of two swords beneath a palm tree. These days, rather than looking to Uncle Sam to protect their interests, the Saudis realise they are very much on their own. As the Obama administration’s inept handling of last week’s removal of Egypt’s first democratically elected government has demonstrated, not even a military coup in one of its most important regional allies will evoke much of a response from the White House.

Indeed, with President Barack Obama determined not to allow the US to be drawn into any of the region’s poisonous disputes, whether Syria’s brutal civil war or the continuing controversy over Iran’s nuclear programme, former staunch American allies such as the Saudis have come to the reluctant conclusion that, so far as their own security is concerned, they must be more self-sufficient in protecting their interests.

This certainly explains the revelations by IHS Jane’s Intelligence Review that recent satellite intelligence photographs show the Saudis have built a new missile base deep in the desert, stocked with powerful Chinese-made DF3 surface-to-surface missiles with a range of 1,500 to 2,000 miles, which are targeted at Israel and Iran.

The fact that the Saudis find it necessary to point missiles at Israel is itself an alarming indictment of the Obama administration’s decision to turn its back on an erstwhile ally. If America were fully engaged in taking care of its allies, then there would be no need for the Saudis to target Israel. After all, as the recent WikiLeaks disclosures revealed, the Saudis share the same strategic objective as Israel: persuading the US to launch military action to destroy Iran’s nuclear programme – or, as one Saudi diplomat elegantly put it, to “cut off the head of the snake”. But with the Obama administration absent, the Saudis believe they have no option but to defend themselves against potential Israeli aggression.

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That missiles are also directed towards military targets in Iran should not come as a major surprise. The Saudis are rightly concerned about the obsession Iran’s ayatollahs have with arming themselves with nuclear weapons. Just having the capability to produce nuclear weapons would give Tehran a distinct advantage in its long-standing ambition to become the dominant regional power.

It is for this reason that, were the ayatollahs to press ahead with making nuclear weapons, the Saudis would respond immediately by buying an off-the-shelf device from Pakistan, whose nuclear arsenal has in the past received Saudi funding. The Middle East would then be plunged into a nuclear arms race.

With the Iranians engaged in a dangerous game of cat-and-mouse with the West over its nuclear intentions, the rivalry between the Gulf’s two predominant powers is confined to a proxy and ugly war being fought between rival militias throughout the region.

In Iraq and Syria, Iran can be found backing murderous Shi’ite Muslim militias such as Hizbollah in its efforts to support, respectively, the governments of Shi’ite Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki in Baghdad and the Assad regime in Damascus, Iran’s closest regional ally.

The Saudis, on the other hand, are committed to supporting Sunni Muslim opposition groups in both countries although, unlike neighbouring Gulf states such as Qatar, their support falls well short of sponsoring al-Qaeda-linked Islamist groups, such as the Syrian rebel group Jabhat al-Nusra. One of Osama bin Laden’s original objectives, after all, was to secure the overthrow of the Saudi royal family.

The principal reason the Saudis feel obliged to involve themselves so deeply in Syria’s sectarian conflict is that, without America’s protection, they believe they must reshape the regional landscape in a way that better protects their interests.

This trend can be traced back directly to Mr Obama’s decision to back the overthrow of Egypt’s President Hosni Mubarak during the start of the Arab uprisings in 2011. Just like the Saudi royal family, Mr Mubarak had been a staunch ally of the United States for many decades, and the US administration’s decision to abandon him in his hour of need sent as many shock waves through the royal palaces of Riyadh as it did through the souks of downtown Cairo.

From that moment the Saudis, in common with many other conservative Gulf states, concluded that Washington could no longer be trusted as a reliable ally, with the predictable result that the Saudis are embarked on a course of taking every possible action to protect themselves from the dangerous revolutionary currents sweeping the region.

The irony of Washington’s decision to distance itself from Riyadh is that it comes when the Saudis are undergoing important changes. After years of the country being controlled by an ageing and deeply conservative elite, a new generation of dynamic and US-educated princes has emerged, determined to modernise the way the kingdom does business.

Members of a British parliamentary delegation that visited Saudi Arabia this year reported finding a much more positive attitude among the younger princes, who expressed their determination to tackle long-standing structural problems in the economy, such as the kingdom’s bloated public sector that has given the Saudis little incentive to branch out into business.

And with the country’s 89-year-old monarch King Abdullah in poor health, there is every possibility that a new generation of rulers will soon take power, with a mandate to tackle some of the country’s more glaring anachronisms, such as the ban on women driving cars.

“There is certainly a whiff of change in the air,” commented an MP who joined the delegation. “The new generation of Saudi royals are clever and motivated, and seem determined to make some important changes to the way the country does business.”

But for the moment the fate of the country rests with the old guard, and in their efforts to defend the kingdom from external threats they have taken an increasingly hard line against their opponents. Prince Muqrin bin Abdul Aziz, the second in line to the throne, was responsible for the government’s harsh treatment of Shia anti-government activists who, encouraged by Iran, staged a number of protests in the Eastern Province during the start of the Arab uprisings two years ago. Indeed, the governing principle of Saudi Arabia’s approach to defending its interests is to target any faction that enjoys Iran’s backing.

The fact that Syrian President Bashar al-Assad is a close ally of Iran’s ayatollahs has been sufficient to persuade the Saudis to give their whole-hearted backing to more moderate elements within the Syrian opposition, which includes supplying them with a small number of shoulder-fired anti-aircraft weapons.

Nor is there any reason to dismiss suggestions that the Saudis were deeply involved in last week’s military overthrow of Egypt’s President Mohammed Morsi. Having opposed the removal of Mubarak in the first place, the Saudis had little interest in supporting his replacement by the Muslim Brotherhood.

The turning point was when Mr Morsi launched Egypt on a course of rapprochement with Iran, which culminated in former Iranian president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad’s visit to Cairo this year.

For decades under Mubarak, Egypt shunned Iran to the extent that Iranian warships were denied access to the Suez Canal, which severely limited Tehran’s ability to meddle in the Mediterranean. Within weeks of Mr Mubarak’s departure, Iranian frigates were once more making their way past Port Said.

The prospect of Iran and Egypt striking up a strategic partnership that effectively encircled Saudi Arabia was too much to bear. Rather than waiting for the Americans to wake up to the dire consequences of their disengagement policy in the Middle East, the new-look, assertive Saudis took matters into their own hands to make sure Mr Morsi and his Islamist followers no longer posed a threat to their security and stability.

April 2009 Obama bowing to the Saudi king.



That is certainly what it looks like, and it's a mistake not just because it violate protocol but because of the symbolism it sends. No US president is supposed to bow down to a foreign head of state because it indicates submission, and the American president does not submit to anyone.


http://wizbangblog.com/content/2009/04/02/did-obama-bow-down-to-saudi-king.php

TENSIONS BETWEEN SAUDI ARABIA AND IRAN HAVE BEEN IGNITED AFTER A SHIA LEADER WAS EXECUTED FOR SUPPORTING TERRORISM SUPPOSEDLY.
SAUDI EMBASSY BURNED DOWN IN TEHRAN.
ANOTHER POTENTIAL TROUBLE SPOT.