Faisal
The Fox
By Soraya Sepahpour-Ulrich
02 November, 2007
Countercurrents.org
It
is hard to image the foreign minister of a third world country more
capable of hypocrisy than Mr. Bush - but, without a doubt, Prince Saud
al-Faisal takes the prize for being the more obnoxious of the two. Such
insincerity and double-standards must surely make Mr. Bush feel inclined
to ask himself if he got short-changed by having Rove as his ‘brain’
– or perhaps Mr. Bush has a prince as the new ‘brain’.
Reports have it that Saudi
Arabia has called on Iran to respond to an Arab proposal for a joint
uranium enrichment plant outside the Middle East which would ‘satisfy
Tehran’s demands for nuclear technology and diffuse tensions’
. Perhaps the Saudis can propose this because their own plans have never
been leaked.
According to documents released
from the British National Archives under the 30 year rule (dated December
12, 1973 and marked 'UK Eyes Alpha', it was revealed that after the
1973 war “ [that] British intelligence believed the United States
was ready to take military action," i.e. invade, Saudi Arabia and
Kuwait in 1973 "to prevent further disruption to oil supplies"
and "to secure control of their oil fields." (http://www.abc.net.au/news/newsitems/s1018971.htm).
The jittery Saudis offered
to pay for the reconstruction of Iraq’s Osirak-reactor destructed
by Israel in 1981 (funds that helped Saddam in the Iraq-Iran war, no
doubt). As late as 1985 Iraqi and Saudi military and nuclear experts
were co-operating closely, this included sending Saudi nuclear scientists
to Baghdad for months of training.
Between 1985 and 1990, up
to the time Saddam invaded Kuwait, the payments were made on condition
that some of the bombs be transferred to the Saudi arsenal. Muhammad
Khilewi, the second-in-command of the Saudi mission to the United Nations
Khilewi, provide a cache which included transcripts of a secret desert
meeting between Saudi and Iraqi military teams a year before the invasion
of Kuwait. The transcripts depict the Saudis funding the nuclear program
and handing over specialized equipment that Iraq could not have obtained
elsewhere.
What Khilewi did not know
was that the Fahd-Saddam nuclear project was also a closely held secret
in Washington. According to a former high-ranking American diplomat,
the CIA was fully apprised. The funding stopped only at the outbreak
of the Gulf War in 1991. The defector's documents also showed that Riyadh
had paid for Pakistan's bomb project and signed a pact that if Saudi
Arabia were attacked with nuclear weapons, Pakistan would respond against
the aggressor with its own nuclear arsenal.
The fact that the CIA was
aware of this could explain why Khilewi was not granted federal protection
when he abandoned his UN post and became an opponent in late June 1994
even though he had brought with him more than 10,000 documents he obtained
from the Saudi Arabian Embassy. Nor does it explain why the United States
did not push for investigation of these activities, although it does
explain why the Saudis are so eager to use Iran’s legal civilian
program as a diversionary tactic and in spite of their own track record,
would want Iran to renounce its legal rights.
It is also important to be
reminded that Saudi Arabia played an important role in encouraging war
in the region. Bob Woodard (State of Denial) explains the Saudi role
during his interview on ‘60 minutes’. “Bandar, who's
skeptical because he knows in the first Gulf War we didn't get Saddam
out, so he says to Cheney and Rumsfeld, ‘So Saddam this time is
gonna be out, period?’ And Cheney - who has said nothing - says
the following: ‘Prince Bandar, once we start, Saddam is toast.’"
“Bandar understood that economic conditions were key before a
presidential election: “They’re [oil prices] high. And they
could go down very quickly. That's the Saudi pledge. Certainly over
the summer, or as we get closer to the election, they could increase
production several million barrels a day and the price would drop significantly.”
Indeed, after having paid
for nuclear bombs and arming Sunni insurgents to the teeth in Iraq to
kill Americans and underdmine the legitimate Shiite government, is it
plausible that the Saudis now want to turn over a new leaf and be the
business of ‘peace-making’ instead of the lucrative business
of say – Carlyle and the like? After all, G.W. Bush has armed
them to the teeth – not to forget the arms purchased from Britain
at the cost of ‘shared values’ – that is for Britain
to expel Saudi progressive thinkers who were pro-democracy. However,
before giving up the rights of other sovereign nations, it would be
worthwhile recalling a few things that Iran has had to endure while
defending her rights.
While the Saudis were secretly
working to acquire a bomb, Iran was openly exercising her right under
the NPT to have nuclear energy. Each time, the United States used its
economic domination and stopped Iran from restarting its civilian nuclear
project. In 1982, the president of Iran at the time, approached Kraftwerk
Union who had left their contract with Iran incomplete after the 1979
revolution and asked them to complete the Bushehr power plant project.
Under US pressure, they refused and would not even deliver the reactor
component to Iran. Citing a 1982 International Commerce Commission (ICC)
ruling a lawsuit was filed which remains unsettled . This pattern has
been repeated until Iran started its cooperation with Russia. However,
given the decades of hardship, sanctions, and investment Iran has put
into its civilian nuclear program, it would seem rather generous on
the part of the Saudis to take it away from Iran and give it to all
Arab States in Switzerland.
Perhaps one thing that has
escaped Prince Saud al-Faisal, is that Iranian are defending their right
and their integrity. It is possible that a few in the Muslim world will
see this as good will gesture, but what is more important to Iran and
any nation that values sovereignty, is the reality that in order to
escape colonialism, a nation-state must be self-sufficient. Iran has
reached that stage – it has shed the shackles of colonialism and
is free. A country that has been isolated for so almost three decades
has taken 5th place in the ‘British Invention Show’ . This
fact speaks not only to the talent of the nation, but what it can achieve.
Does the Prince suggest that Iran should capitulate and allow others
to fish for it when it can fish so very well for itself?
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