Mouood Mouood English Edition
The Saudi monarch was referring to the terror organization known as the so-called Islamic State of Iraq and Levant (ISIL), which has gained notoriety for its barbaric campaign of violence in Syria and Iraq, including videoed beheadings of victims and mass shootings of prisoners.
King Abdullah warned that unless Western countries take dramatic action against ISIL and other related extremist groups then the United States and Europe “would be next” on the terror hit list.
“If we ignore them, I am sure they will reach Europe in a month and America in another month,” said the Saudi ruler in a public statement at the weekend. “Terrorism knows no border and its danger could affect several countries outside the Middle East,” he added.
Many informed observers quickly lampooned the Saudi king’s terror warning, pointing out with ample evidence how the House of Saud has in actual fact been a long-time sponsor of extremist groups such as ISIL, Al Nusra Front and Al Qaeda. Not only Saudi Arabia; but the other
Persian Gulf oil sheikhdoms of Qatar and the United Arab Emirates, with their fundamentalist Wahhabi ideology, are also major sponsors of these terror organizations, using them as surrogates to achieve covert geopolitical goals, such as regime change in neighboring countries.
The irony of King Abdullah’s terror warning to the US and Europe is doubly rich because it is also well established that American and British military intelligence are heavily invested in operating these same terror networks as covert assets for shared geopolitical objectives.
To informed observers, therefore, the Saudi ruler’s remarks appear rather crass. Some commentators have even dismissed King Abdullah’s warnings as the unfortunate ranting of a person suffering from dementia. The Saudi king is approaching 90 years old and his state of
health has previously invited much suspicion.
But the aging Saudi monarch may in fact be pitching a wily agenda to the many people who are benighted by the Western corporate media. To this mass audience, the link between Western governments, the House of Saud and Al Qaeda-type terrorism is less well known, or even non-existent.
On face value, the Saudi ruler appears to be acting as a friendly counsel to the Western countries, benignly putting them on terror alert. Abdullah’s warning of “you are next” chimes with many recent reports carried in Western mainstream media about hundreds of Americans, Britons, French and Australians, among other Western citizens, who have been recruited to fight for ISIL in Syria and Iraq.
A recent video allegedly showing a British militant beheading a kidnapped American journalist underscores the growing public fear of such depraved violence returning home at some future stage.
And, of course, Western politicians like Britain’s David Cameron and Australia’s Tony Abbot have been cynically heightening these public fears. We say “cynically” because Western governments have been fuelling the terror campaign of ISIL and other groups in Syria for over three years in their criminal attempt at topping the government of President Bashar Al Assad.
So, what is the Saudi king’s ulterior purpose of issuing such a grim forecast to the US and Europe about imminent terrorism arriving on their shores?
It would seem that the House of Saud is – once again – trying to talk up an existential terror threat in order to lend a political cover for a full-on Western military intervention in Iraq and particularly Syria.
Recall that senior members of the House of Saud, including the terror master Prince Bandar, the foreign minister Prince Faisal and former US ambassador Prince Turki, were absolutely livid after US President Barack Obama baulked at a military intervention in Syria in 2013, over an alleged chemical weapons attack. The latter mass murder incident near Damascus in August 2013 was most likely a false flag engineered by Saudi and Western intelligence. Subsequently, the Saudis went into a major political huff over Washington’s perceived retreat from air strikes in the face of huge Western public outcry against military action, amid sound suspicions of a false flag.
It appears now, however, that the Saudis are yet again trying to goad the US and Europe into taking military action – by talking up the threat of blowback terrorism arising out of Syria and Iraq. The flurry of video horrors from the region seems to be aiding that purpose.
It is notable, too, that hawkish politicians and pundits in the US are exhorting Obama to take more militarist action against ISIL beyond his belated policy of launching air strikes against militant bases in northwestern Iraq. Senior Democrat Senator Diane Feinstein and her Republican counterparts John McCain and Lyndsey Graham have come out in recent days haranguing Obama for “not having a strategy” on how to deal with ISIL.
The Washington hawks are clearly agitating for US intervention in Syria, just as they have been calling for in the past, in tune with the Saudis.
“Continuing to confront [ISIL] in Iraq, but not in Syria, would be fighting with one hand tied behind our back,” wrote McCain and Graham in a newspaper column.
This is where the Saudi king plays a complementary role – with his latest “scare story” about ghoulish beheadings coming soon to an American or European town near you.
King Abdullah is trying to whip up Western public sentiment that would pave the way for Western military intervention in the region. Not to defeat terrorism, to be sure, which is actually sponsored by Saudi Arabia and its Western allies, but rather to expedite their failing objective of regime change in Syria and Iraq from the deployment of Western forces there.
We can be sure that Western military forces, if deployed, would do nothing to curb ISIL, a Western intelligence asset, but rather would seek to undermine Syrian and Iraqi army operations, and indeed facilitate ISIL and other extremist groups just as they have been doing covertly and assiduously up to now from secret bases in Jordan and Turkey.
The Saudi ruler reportedly went on to tell assembled ambassadors: “You see how they [ISIL] carry out beheadings and make children show the severed heads in the street… It is no secret to you what they have done and what they have yet to do. I ask you to transmit this message to your [Western] leaders: ‘fight terrorism with force, reason and speed.'”
Nice try Abdullah. But you missed your career in directing horror B movies.
Finian Cunningham (born 1963) has written extensively on international affairs, with articles published in several languages. He is a Master’s graduate in Agricultural Chemistry and worked as a scientific editor for the Royal Society of Chemistry, Cambridge, England, before pursuing a career in journalism. He is also a musician and songwriter. For nearly 20 years, he worked as an editor and writer in major news media organisations, including The Mirror, Irish Times and Independent. Originally from Belfast, Ireland, he is now located in East Africa as a freelance journalist, where he is writing a book on Bahrain and the Arab Spring, based on eyewitness experience working in the Persian Gulf as an editor of a business magazine and subsequently as a freelance news correspondent. The author was deported from Bahrain in June 2011 because of his critical journalism in which he highlighted systematic human rights violations by regime forces. He is now a columnist on international politics for Press TV and the Strategic Culture Foundation.
