MEMRI
The Middle East Media Research Institute
Yousuf Al-Kuwailit, who writes the editorials of the Saudi government daily Al-Rai, opined in a December 7, 2014 editorial that, despite the tension that has ostensibly prevailed between the U.S. and Iran ever since the Islamic Revolution, in practice there is secret cooperation between them. As part of this cooperation, he said, Iraq has become nothing but an arena for assuring the interests of these two countries, and Iran has been granted freedom of action in Syria and Lebanon.
Referring to the U.S.-Iran nuclear talks, he said they were a farce that would end in contracts and deals, and perhaps even an alliance, between the two countries. He therefore called on the Arabs not to regard the U.S. as a reliable ally, and warned that the U.S. may force the Gulf states to reconcile with Iran, to the detriment of their interests.
The following are excerpts from the article: [1]
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Yousuf Al-Kuwailit
“The U.S. appointed the Shah as policeman of the Arab Gulf, turned Iran into a base for conflict with the USSR, and provided Iran with up-to-date weaponry and a nuclear reactor. [Iran, for its part] attempted to take advantage of this situation, as it saw itself as a superpower. [Only] the strength of the USSR… prevented Iran from undertaking military adventures outside its own borders. With [the rise to power of Ayatollah Ruhollah] Khomeini, despite everything that happened at the U.S. Embassy [in Tehran in 1980], when dozens of its staffers were taken hostage and [then-U.S. president Jimmy] Carter carried out a reckless and unsuccessful operation [in attempt to free them]… [despite all this] nothing spoiled the U.S.’s relationship with this country, which it considers one of its strategic and economic outposts by virtue of its location and its history. So the farce… about Iran’s nuclear reactors and non-conventional weapons has taken a clear and final direction, in the form of several deals [between the two countries]…
“Cyrus [the Great],[2] who attacked and destroyed the Arabs, is the spiritual father of the Nazi trend that has characterized Iran’s governments, whether secular or religious. Racial supremacism vis-à-vis the Arabs is a popular [Iranian] obsession. It exists and it is eternal, and even if the mullahs don black turbans [indicating that they are] descendants of the Prophet and have Arab roots, they do not really recognize these roots, but do this only in order to market their national policy to us, prior to marketing their religious school of thought [i.e. the Shi’a]. Anyone who thinks that diplomatic arrangements are aimed at anchoring coexistence between the Arabs and the Iranian ‘Aryans’ is disregarding the nature of the historical reasons [for the tension between the two sides] and its deep roots in the [Iranian] public mentality.
“In order to better understand the unfolding of events, [we need to realize that] the U.S. and its allies set out the initial plan to divide the Arab [regions] a long time ago, and that the Sikes-Picot agreement is only the first outcome [of that plan]. [We must also realize] that handing over Iraq [to Iran], and annexing Syria and later Lebanon to it, and the [silent] agreement [between the two countries] that Iran would have a free hand in these countries – all these are only a prelude to more dangerous activity.
“[Accordingly], relying on the U.S. or thinking it a reliable ally without properly understanding the strategic changes and aims, place us in a situation [of self-delusion], because all the historic elements of power see how positions and policies change but interests remain. This principle will be ultimately applied to all the countries that have a relationship with the U.S., whether economic or strategic, because the Arabs are part of a geographic area whose borders are changing, including through the disappearance of the centrally[-ruled] state in favor of states [based on] sect or nationality.
“One simple event in recent days is the Iranian Air Force’s incursion into Iraq to attack ISIS positions, which the U.S. confirmed but Iran denied. At the same time, the U.S. also ignores the incursion of [Iranian] ground troops under the command of [IRGC Qods Forces commander] Qassem Soleymani into Iraq, [which has been taking place] ever since the U.S. first started managing [Iraq’s] affairs… [In fact,] U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry stated that any Iranian military attack on ISIS was positive. This exposes the significant coordination between the two countries, and belies the statements of U.S. military circles denying any cooperation or coordination [with Iran] in the war on ISIS…
“In the era of [former Iraqi prime minister Nouri] Al-Maliki, Iraq become nothing but an arena for assuring the interests of two players: Iran and the U.S. This came about as part of an agreement that began with [head of the occupational authority of Iraq after the 2003 invasion Paul] Bremer, and no Iraqi government will put an end to it, unless the Iraqis [dare to] oppose their homeland’s dependence on another country – something that is difficult and complicated to do.
“Ultimately, even if the talk about the American-Iranian hostility is true, everything points towards new contracts between the two which are likely to turn into alliance. We could possibly see catastrophic days if the U.S. forces the Gulf states to reconcile with Iran, which will end in a way that will not serve our interests. This is an outcome that should not surprise us, if the reality of [U.S.-Gulf] friendship evolves into [U.S.] dictates [to the Gulf states].”
Endnotes:
[1] Al-Riyadh (Saudi Arabia), December 7, 2014.
[2] Cyrus the Great founded the Achaemenid Empire, circa 600 BCE.
@ bernard ross:
Once malicious intent is displayed, the appropriate response is VIGILANCE, not prejudice.
If you ask any judge, he will tell you what he would tell any JUROR:
— past behavior is no index to present guilt or innocence.
A prior conviction (esp in a similar matter) may WELL be something which he, the Judge, will take into account when passing sentence AFTER a guilty verdict — but he will very carefully admonish the Jury to disregard any such considerations when DETERMINING guilt or innocence (assuming he even allows the info wrt prior convictions into the trial record).
@ bernard ross:
“Creating nations” did not enter into the discussions specifically over the Franco-British Boundary Agreement. The kinds of matters that come up, again & again in that regard, pertain to pipelines, railways & oilfields.
That was addressed at San Remo. The Boundary discussions focused heaviy on geographical & geological considerations.
Memos do not remain off-limits forever; they are constantly surfacing or being released. Heretofore closed archives containing classified material are opened regularly. The Balfour/Lloyd-George exchange I mentioned above is just one example of such. A lot of previously classified Great-War stuff was released from the Kew Gardens archives only in the 1990’s.
Nor does it follow from the fact that a policy is pursued in one instance that it is necessarily followed in all instances. To ASSUME that it does follow is sheer prejudicial bigotry of a sort that Jews have faced time-&-again in history — and consequently know better than to stoop to themselves.
Any examination of the boundary discussions will readily show the sincerity of Lloyd-George & Balfour (and even, later, Curzon), as well as Clemenceau & Berthelot, in re the then-projected Jewish National Home.
I suggest you look into those deliberations before you make too great a fool of yourself.
Wrong, right out of the box: I don’t have ‘oblique’ ways. There is NOTHING ‘oblique’ about me.
QTC, obliqueness is the speciality of the smear artist — and in that department, you are king of the hill.
I’m never oblique — but unlike some, I’m not afraid to recognize that life rarely presents itself to us in solid colors — more often it’s textured & nuanced, and calls for comparable responses (smears not constituting one of them).
I whitewash NOBODY.
But I have no tolerance for bigotry of ANY stripe — Leftist, Muslim, Secularist, Jewish OR Christian..
And I’ve had a bellyful of yours.
dweller Said:
once malicious intent is displayed it is foolish to ignore it but when the malicious intent is repeated it becomes absurd to give the performer ANY credibility. Ask any judge, imcluding in civil cases which involve preponderance of evidence. A serial swindler, libeler, torturer and murder would have difficulty “marketing” his narratives among anyone but the brainwashed. The capacity for malicious intent was already evident in the christian culture of the anglo french who created the conflict borders. DUH????? Dreyfuss, Breaker Morant, etc?
However, perhaps you will find the cigar somewhere in that 2000 years if you keep persistently searching for that grail. Certainly those you whitewash were persistent in their malicious intent.
dweller Said:
dweller Said:
you may suggest this as your opinion in the same way I suggest mine. When one makes a project of creating nations it is aburd to belive that the distributioon of ethnicities should not be major factor in that creation. As the division of ethnicities occurred quite obviously, I’ll go with intentional as opposed to incompetence or error.
dweller Said:
LOL,letters available to the public which admit to intentionally creating conflict borders would likely not be available as such nefarious schemes are rarely admitted. the reason is as I stated and the fact that you are unable to see the reason means nothing. If competent parties create nations without considering the distribution of ethnicities as a major factor there exists reasonable grounds for suspicion of their motives. We are aware that such covert diplomacy occur, that divide and conquer was a known and commonly applied principle. If looks like a duck, walks like a duck and quacks like a duck it is unlikely to be a monkey.
dweller Said:
Especially when one does not wish to acknowledge truth. what was their basis for the lines they drew since it is obvious that ethnicity was NOT their basis, unless they sought conflict, in Syria, Iraq, kurdistan and lebanon. “intelligence” pieces together the available facts into a meaningful pattern in order to arrive at the most likely scenario.
dweller Said:
This statement appears to be your oblique way of whitewashing christianity in the argument we were pursuing on chit chat. The character, demonstrated agendas, serial historical behavior of collectives and individuals must be taken into account when assigning credibility to their opinions, assertions of fact, forgery, fabrications, etc. The same is true of british and anglo geopolitical behavior of the times and prior. Malicious intent is as often as not an integral component of geopolitics and diplomacy. We can see how the British swindled the Jews in the Palestine mandate so this is a good station point from which to take ones perspective. We can see how christianity swindled, libeled, tortured and slaughtered the Jews over the 2000 years of their existence…we also have the added perspective of seeing how the vatican and the BDS churches operate today wrt the Jews and Israel. It would be foolish in any serious assessment to ignore such serial behavior.
@ bernard ross:
Well, of course it doesn’t negate the outcome; TGWS.
But what it DOES do is suggest that sometimes a deal may be just a horsetrade between rival traders, not necessarily a nefarious, divide-&-conquer scheme. Unless you or somebody can produce documentary evidence, like a collection of letters or memos pointing to or intimating such motives — letters on the order of the exchange to which I alluded at the end post #14 above — I see no reason to ascribe the deal to the deliberate creating of “conflict borders.”
Not everything nasty that occurs is the result of malicious intent, even on the part of those who have actually displayed it in the past. Sometimes myopia & insensitivity are more prominent; sometimes shit just happens — and sometimes a cigar is just a cigar.
LOL, send jihadis there and if they aren’t happily killed battling each other they can be executed. Win win for their nations of origin. A great way to get rid of them… set up faux recruiting stations and ship them out… 😛
@ dweller:
bernard ross Said:
dweller Said:
Although the swap is true it does not negate the outcome as stated which I believe to be intentional so as to preserve a need for the presence of those creating the borders in the area. In Iraq, Syria and Lebanon the ongoing problems are the conflicts between the ethniicities. Boundaries could have been drawn to more closely resemble the ethnicities but that would produce less conflict, less instability and less need to recall the colonials:
bernard ross Said:
Sunnis, shias, Kurds are devolving back to their own areas
Israel lost an opportunity to create a christian buffer state in south lebanon where todays christians could have fled.
Don’t think so; not in this instance.
As I’ve noted [above, in a presently-moderated post], the Golan Heights WERE originally slated for inclusion in the Palestine Mandate, and were NOT part of the “conflict borders” policy — and their eventual removal from that Mandate was more a victim of old-fashioned horse-trading.
I’m sure that Salomon, if he’s reading this, can provide better (& clearer) detail than I — or maybe Wallace (“Salubrius”) too, if he’s on-board these days
— but what I do recall of it without consulting notes, is that HMG wanted the oil-rich Mosul area which had been originally designated for the Syrian [viz., French] Mandate.
So a deal was proposed in which the Golan would be swapped to the French Mandate in return for Mosul becoming part of the Mesopotamian [i.e., Brit] Mandate. And the Quai d’Orsay (for reasons which escape me) was apparently amenable to the proposal, so the exchange was made.
@ Justin:
There was talk about it from time to time, but I always suspected that this was more for the benefit of the great-power observers than for the Syrian govt.
“More land” as in real estate? Dunno HOW you can have gotten the impression from my comment [above] that it was a “desire for more land”!
Ramat haGolan has probably ALWAYS been 60-70 percent about security, and 30-40 percent about water — though the two issues tend to play off of each other:
In fact, it was precisely BECAUSE the Golan & its control over the waters running south of it was viewed as more a part of the Palestine area than of Syria proper that Balfour & Lloyd-George envisioned it (and originally designated it) for the Mandate for Palestine, and not for the Mandate for Syria. Their exchange of memoranda during the summer before the 1919 Paris Peace Conference is quite revealing in this regard.
Justin Said:
a futile dream as the US increased their own nazification by absorbing and controlling not only the nazi scientists but their politicians and intelligence assets. The US made sure to put those nazis into influential positions in European politics after WWII. The same bush family who invested in nazi germany today continues to greatly influence the US and the CIA. Look into the mirror.
Justin Said:
HUH??? Hamas is reigned in now by the GCC, weaned from Iran, and on their leash. Israel is its own security and no one can better guarantee that security as proven after and during EVERY prior conflict. The golan is part of the guarantee of security so why give it up? Furthermore the Golan was I beleive orignally part of the original “Palestine” dept of the Turkish caliphate prior to sykes picot and the anglo french intentional creation of conflict borders. Instead of borders which reflect the ethnic composition they made sure to be always needed to prevent the conflicts arising from their making sure to create borders that contain the warring ethnicities within nations while dividing one ethnicity from itself straddling borders. HMMMMM? It appears to have worked as intended. perhaps the current war is redrawing those sykes picot conflict borders?
Justin Said:
It is the gulf monarchical sunni block which has been weakening Hamas, Hezbullah and Assads Syria since before the Pillar of defense war. It is my view that this is why BB behaved in odd ways:
-not invading Gaza at POD but instead accepting a Qatar(GCC) brokered cease fire which held well until last summer, Israel target assasinated primarily Iranian controlled elements in hamas and gaza at the time which I beleive was a cooperative effort with the sunni block…
-releasing the terrorists for the faux “9 mos peace talks” which coincided with the sunni syria attack and Iran negotiations in order to keep the pal issue out of the limelight so that the GCC could enlist their jihadis to fight Irans proxies as opposed to fighting Israel….
-not invading gaza but rather working with the GCC proxy egypt to keep hamas under leash…….
However, these relations are covert and unstable and likely done on a quid pro quo and case by case basis.
Iran was Israels ally in the past under the shah but in any case it is the leadership which determines and not the people in the muslim nations
Felix Quigley Said:
Agree, and I think the most evil lasting legacy of the Nazi criminals is their effect on Arab politics. Arabs were always anti-Semites but the Nazis took it to a whole new level of perceived legitimacy and rhetorical justification. I wish the US would have de-Nazified the Arab world as it did Germany following WWII when it had the chance.
@ dweller:
@ dweller:
No, the proper analogy vis a vis the Catholic Church would be its support for European Christiandom in its opposition to Turkish membership in the EU. Most EU countries are not officially Catholic, and there is a history of violence between Protestants and Catholics in Europe that spans centuries. It’s not all ancient history – just look at Northern Ireland!
Yet, the Catholic Church sees the obvious rationale for supporting virulently Protestant European nations because they are a more natural partner for Catholic Europe than the Islamists who are taking over Turkey.
The same can be said for the Shia bloc in their support for Assad. Everyone knows that Assad has committed some truly awful atrocities, but the Shia bloc (and I would argue Israel and the US as well) understands that the atrocities were committed in response to violent and fundamentalist reaction from the Sunnis and their cohorts.
Thus the Shia clergy has been able to hold its nose and support the “lesser” of two evils.
I understand that there’s a big difference between Shia support of Assad and Shia support of Israel, but there’s no way in hell that the Sunni population of the Sunni bloc could ever reconcile with Israel thanks to the system of hate education set up by the Saudis all over the region.
@ dweller:
Well, I totally get where you are coming from, and I’m obviously being an optimist as it is my nature. But I’m also being somewhat of a realist.
It doesn’t take a genius to look at the current situation and see that there is somewhat of a dynamic of US realignment in the Middle East. The US is now able to produce its own energy (in a worst-case scenario). The Iraq War had the effect of swinging Iraq into the Iranian orbit, a reality that was certainly known to even the most hawkish Bush administration officials. The Shia bloc is gaining legitimacy within at least the Obama administration and sectarianism is rampant when compared to 1999 or 1979.
Whether you think the Iranian shift is due to feckless or reckless Obama administration policy or whether you think it is a necessary reaction to the facts on the ground, it is happening. The Saudis are pissed because they know it is happening. The Sunni world is pissed that the Americans haven’t overthrown Assad but has attacked Sunni rebels in Syria. The Iranians have more of a representative government than almost every Sunni country, and have a more liberal society than almost every Sunni country. There is an ancient tradition of Persian Jews. There is recent (pre-1979) precedent of Israeli-Iranian cooperation. There is more daylight today, however small, than there was in recent memory.
Israel is obviously unpopular in the region on spurious grounds, but even since Islamism took over the region, Israel has sided with the Sunni bloc behind closed doors. I’m not saying Israel is an ally of the Sunni bloc but I am saying that they have been closer to Saudi Arabia than Lebanon or Iran. Yet Judaism is illegal in Saudi Arabia and the UAE and openly practiced in Syria, Lebanon, and Iran. The rhetoric from Iran has cooled as of late and the population in Iran conscientiously chose the “moderate” over the clerically-aligned candidate. I’m just saying that there is some reason for guarded optimism.
Now, as for the Golan Heights, I guess I am totally misinformed as to Israeli policy. It was my understanding that Israel would theoretically be willing to cede some of the Golan Heights in exchange for a real peace deal in the manner of Sinai and that their presence in the Heights has more to do with military logistics (a northern buffer) than a desire for more land. So I guess I have the wrong impression.
@ Justin:
That’s like saying that because the Catholic Church has lightened up on Fish-on-Fridays & the All-Latin Mass that they’re also amenable to scrapping (or putting on “hold”) the doctrines of the ‘Incarnation’ and the ‘Perpetual Virginity of Mary.’ Aint gonna happen, Justin. It’s apples & oranges. There are issues of identity in play.
They hate JEWS on the surface.
Maybe they don’t hate them ‘categorically’ in the sense that they might tolerate them as permanent dhimmis. But what’s THAT worth? Obviously a Jewish state would be out of the question. THINK: ‘I got no problems with black people — just so long as they know their place.’
(The Pact of Omar — which created the Dhimma — made Jim Crow look like a garden party. Its only saving ‘grace’ was the unevenness and occasional, tho unpredictable, laxity with which it was enforced.)
No way Israel can yield a square centimeter of the Golan.
Before Israel acquired the Golan in 1967, the Galilean part of a whole generation of Israeli children grew up never being able to play outside in the fresh air, because at any time Syrian gun emplacements on the heights would fire on movement in the valley below, sometimes with gut-wrenching consequences. . . . That will never happen again.
Israel would give the Gazans full autonomy over every part of their existence (aside from matters international, armies, diplomacy, etc) — even WITHOUT any deals being necessary — if they’d just, friggin’, behave themselves.
What kind of “security guarantees” can Iran give Israel?
What would guarantee the ‘guarantees’?
How? — Tehran cut off Hamas’ subsidy in 2012 when Hamas walked out on Assad. So the reins are a lot less solid than they used to be.
Hamas gets funding from Ankara & Doha. (Erdogan thinks to compete w/ the mullahs for leadership of the Mideast Islamic world, so he promptly took up the slack when Iran gave Hamas the back of its hand.) A lot of the Iranian trouble-maker money in Gaza now goes to Palestinian Islamic Jihad, but I doubt they would dare pass gas in their own bathroom — with the door closed & the fan on — w/o permission from Hamas.
The Hamasniks do still get armament from Iran but last summer they paid big bucks — up front — to the No Koreans for missiles & communications stuff, and have had an ongoing arrangement w/ the Nokes for more than 5 years.
Anyway what I’m saying is, I doubt that Iran has nearly as much control over Hamas as it used to have.
Sorry to sound like a wet blanket here, but some realities simply cannot be ignored. I’m glad you’ve begun thinking about this stuff though, and I encourage you to continue exploring it. Nothing wrong with hope per se.
Sometimes, however, one has to dispel false hope to make room for the real article. . . .
@ Justin:
And I’d prefer that rainwater was Napoleon Brandy.
But am I holding my breath in rapt expectation of that prospect’s fulfillment?
— uh, no. (Reality, alas. . . . bites.)
Any deal with Iran that lets the mullahs get anywhere near acquiring The BIG One is a bad deal
— at least until such time as Israel develops (on her own) the wherewithal to reliably send 100 out of 100 Iranian ICBM’s w/ their payloads intact right back to where they came from (regardless of what they’re armed with)
— & w/o having to increase the proportion of GDP going to military spending — beyond its current, whopping six percent of output (USA: 3.8, TURKEY: 2.3) — to do that.
GOI has to budget nearly 20% of all spending for military expenses! An Iran deal that forces GOI to spend more than 20% of the budget even to reliably toss every single missile back in Tehran’s teeth still isn’t worth the increased pressure on Israeli life — loss of breathing space — that such a military budget increase would portend.
Why would they do that?
Hezbollah & (till 2011) Syria are Tehran’s catspaws for promoting & ultimately enforcing her hegemony in the region (and beyond). Israel is not only a geopolitical rival but also Iran’s eschatological adversary and a direct & ‘essential’ foil for the Islamic Republic’s bid for leadership of the Muslim world.
@ dweller:
Meh… I don’t think the average Iranian understand the details of Persian history beyond a degree of hubris in its ancient accomplishments.
Before 1979, the Iranians were reliable friends of Israel and the US. It is my opinion that the Iranian elite have no problem with Israel and that the Iranian clergy could swallow a detente with Israel under the right pretext. Right now, they hate the Sunni at a more visceral level.
An Iranian-Israel rapprochement would only be possible under either regime change or an Iranian impression of victory over the Israelis combined with substantial reinforcement of such from the clergy. The Assad situation proves that the clergy can find a way to accommodate political interests in theological teachings. If Iran can support Assad while the Arab world hates his guts, it can surely find a way to approach reconciliation with Israel. Iran happens to be one of the few countries in that region that does not categorically hate Judaism on the surface and could take credit for some sort of Palestinian diplomatic victory independently of the Arabs. They’ve always wanted to show they were the “real” opposition to Israel, and they would welcome the prestige that might come from any lasting peace deal. I can think of a few plausible scenarios – for instance, an Iranian truce with Israel in which Israel pledges to cede some of the Golan Heights and give Gazans more autonomy in exchange for Iranian security guarantees, trade considerations, and reigning in Hamas. It could be largely under-the-table, but even an outright agreement would gain Iran some prestige in the world of Arab opinion.
I’d prefer the US gets a good Iranian deal and that Israel and the Iranian-Russian bloc make up. The world has been at the brink too long and Russia needs to do its part to make a deal happen. Despite the supreme leader’s rhetoric I still think Iran is a more natural partner with Israel in the long run and strategic sense, especially since Iran can neutralize Hezbollah and Syria and because the Iranians are substantially less intolerant than the Sunni bloc. It is shameful that the US even recognizes the legitimacy of the tyrants in the gulf. Israel and Iran were once friends and I hope they may be friends again. I love the idea, if not the image, of King Abdullah crapping his pants.
D you are right and also fascism is a modern phenomenon
So the Neo-Chaldean Babylonians whom Cyrus conquered were ‘ARABS’???
— don’t think so.
Racial superiority may well be an Iranian obsession — but to suggest that it began as far back as Cyrus is a real stretch.
This guy is paranoid.
He’s correct about DC cooperating w/ the Mullahs. However, USA had nothing to do with Sykes-Picot.
— That was strictly a Limey-Frog project from Day One.
Is the Shia genocidal fanaticism different from the Sunnis genocidal fanaticism? From here it does not look like!