Arab Turnaround: Saudi Crown Prince Tilts At
Windmills, Assad Secure
Saeed Naqvi
The ghoulish
murder of Saudi dissident Jamal Khashoggi has set into motion a new dynamic in
the Syrian, Yemeni, Palestinian and other incipient conflicts in West Asia.
Popular perception globally has traced the macabre plot to Crown Prince
Mohammad bin Salman, even though the Saudi propaganda machine is deflecting
guilt.
That the
embattled Israeli Prime Minister, Benjamin Netanyahu has come out quite
unambiguously in favour of MBS (as the Crown Prince is popularly known) without
making any pretense to cover up his guilt, shows the tight embrace in which Tel
Aviv and Riyadh arc. The jam in which MBS found himself he could only turn to
his closest friends – President Trump’s son-in-law Jared Kushner and Netanyahu.
At this point Kushner is a much diminished figure after the White House
Security Clearance review slammed on him by Chief of Staff John Kelly. He has
been working on an interim clearance so far and after recent alleged
misdemeanours is not expected to be granted full clearance.
Time was when
MBS, Kushner and Netanyahu were the world’s most formidable trio. Alongside Kushner,
Netanyahu too has his financial deals under scrutiny. And post Khashoggi, the
third figure in the trio, MBS, is tilting at the windmills. The media is loathe
to dwell on such truths, but Bashar al Assad, by comparison is looking secure
and composed.
There is no
reason why David Hearst, The Guardian’s former specialist on West Asia should
not be given credence. In his new investigative forum, the Middle East Eye, he concludes
that to deflect an avalanche of allegations linking MBS to the Khashoggi
murder, the Crown Prince implored the Israeli Prime Minister “to go to war in
Gaza”. This would deflect attention. The diversionary move is the brainchild of
a new Emergency Task Force set up by the Royal Palace in Riyadh to counter
facts that President Erdogan’s office is leaking drip by drip.
Netanyahu’s
public utterances also betray a high level of nervous anxiety. Mistakes may
have been made, he says, but Saudi Arabia must remain stable for the stability
of the region and the world. With these words he hurtled headlong into lethal
airstrikes against Gaza.
Gaza, Palestine,
West Bank, these were concerns Jamal Khashoggi was most passionate about when I
interviewed him in Jeddah a few months after 9/11. In this he was not different
from Prince Turki al Faisal, former Saudi ambassador to London, Washington and
the country’s intelligence Chief until a few days before 9/11. I mention Prince
Turki in the same sequence because Khashoggi was a spokesman for Turki.
Hamas controlling
Gaza was always under the spell of the Muslim Brotherhood. Khashoggi was not a
card carrying member of the Brotherhood but like many educated Saudis, he was
disheartened (privately) by the regime’s growing dalliance with Israel.
The late Saudi
King Abdullah, even when he was Crown Prince had joined the Israeli chorus that
Shia-Sunni, not Israel-Palestine, was West Asia’s defining faultline. But he
had preserved some of the style of old world diplomacy. MBS has made brashness and
a crude assertion of money power his style. Little wonder his statement before
an American Jewish audience stunned the more reasonable Arabs. “For the past 40
years the Palestinian leadership has rejected all the offers it was given. It
is about time that the Palestinians accept the offers …….or they should shut
up.”
In February
2011, King Abdullah, came out of convalescence in Europe and rubbed his eyes in
disbelief. He found an altered West Asia, his friends Hosni Mubarak, Zine El Abidin
Ben Ali toppled in Cairo and Tunis by the Arab Spring. He swore that no
monarchies or friendly dictatorships would now be allowed to fall. US, UK,
France, Israel, Qatar, Turkey, responding to the Saudi initiative, fell upon
Syria. Each one of the participants listed above have faced reversals.
MBS then
dragged the US into a brutal war against the poorest Arab country, Yemen. Other
than killing thousands of civilians including children and displacing millions,
the four year old war has achieved nothing except inflating finances of
American and British war industry. The Saudis had boasted that the Yemeni port
of Hodeidah would be in their control. This would be a direct threat to Iranian
ships seeking passage through the Red Sea. Iranian supported Houthis have
doggedly held on to the port. And now MBS is on notice from the Americans to
end the Yemen operations in weeks. Meanwhile the much touted “Deal of the Century”
for Palestine remains something of a pipe dream. It created a scare in Amman
because there is a subterranean Israeli dream to incorporate Jordan in a two
state solution.
After the
recent Merkel, Macron, Erdogan, Putin summit in Istanbul, MBS, Trump and Europe
have cause for worry. Basically the two European leaders implored Erdogan not
to allow European militants, holed up in Idlib, to be able to return via
Turkish territory. Remember $4 billion were transferred into Turkish coffers in
the past to compensate Ankara for keeping 3.5 million Syrian refugees. This
time Erdogan is bargaining differently. He would seek autonomy of action on how
he handles the Idlib militants provided he has a free run of the Kurdish
enclave adjacent to Idlib and the Turkish border. This is anathema to the
Saudis and Trump. The Kurds in this enclave are US and Saudi assets, a pressure
on Bashar al Assad. But Erdogan holds the aces at this point: if he does not
get the deal he wants he can open the sluice gates for European militant to
return home. A Europe in convulsions on the immigration issue, would be in
frightful frenzy if Erdogan carries out his threat.
As someone who
has visited the region several times, I cannot help but wonder at the turn of
events. It is astonishing that Assad in Damascus, Hassan Rouhani in Tehran and
Hassan Nasrallah of the Hezbollah in Southern Lebanon, even Erdogan have
emerged from the seven year long mayhem with curable bruises. It almost seems
that all those who stood by MBS when he was the shining new star in the West
Asian firmament are distancing themselves from him, his incomparable oil wealth
notwithstanding. Today, he is certainly not on the winning side.
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