Massive EU Weapons Sales to Saudi Arabia Contribute to Fuelling International Aggression and Terrorism in the Middle East

Julie Lévesque
Global Research

According to the German magazine Der Spiegel, the European Union is the most important weapons exporter to Saudi Arabia. Of all EU member states, France comes first with Euro2168.6 million of exports in 2010. Italy is in second place with Euro435.3 million, before Great Britain, with Euro328.8 million.

Source: Der Spiegel

By arming the Saudi kingdom, the member states of the European Union are breaking prevailing EU rules regulating the exports of weapons, notes Der Spiegel. The magazine quotes the relevant section of the legislation on Non-Proliferation and Disarmament titled Security-related export controls II – Military equipment, which states:

[...] Member States have once again shown their determination to prevent the export of military technology and equipment which might be used for undesirable purposes such as internal repression or international aggression or contribute to regional instability.

It is worth noting, in this regard, that a large quantity of the weapons sold to Saudi Arabia by EU member states has ended up in the hands of Libyan and Syrian “rebels” including terrorists, thus largely contributing to fuelling international aggression and regional instability. According to Finian Cunningham: “Saudi Arabia and Qatar in particular were also instrumental in driving events in Syria and Libya, providing financial support, weapons, covert fighters and strident diplomatic backing for the self-styled “transitional councils”.

Jeffrey Goldberg: Iran Will Not Target U.S. Warships If Attacked

Kurt Nimmo
PrisonPlanet.com

Iran wouldn’t dare take out U.S. warships… or would they?

In an article posted on the Bloomberg website, the neocon propagandist, Jeffrey Goldberg, tells us an attack on Iran is “historically inevitable” and will not result in World War Three.

“Some Israeli security officials also believe that Iran won’t target American ships or installations in the Middle East in retaliation for a strike, as many American officials fear, because the leadership in Tehran understands that American retaliation for an Iranian attack could be so severe as to threaten the regime itself,” Goldberg writes.

Goldberg faithfully follows the Israeli propaganda narrative: the attack on Iran will be limited to striking nuclear targets that supposedly represent an “existential threat” to not only the Jewish state, but the entire world.

In an earlier article, Goldberg created hypothetical diplomatic conversations between Israel and the United States and wrote that “the Israelis will tell their American counterparts that they are taking this drastic step because a nuclear Iran poses the gravest threat since Hitler to the physical survival of the Jewish people. The Israelis will also state that they believe they have a reasonable chance of delaying the Iranian nuclear program for at least three to five years. They will tell their American colleagues that Israel was left with no choice. They will not be asking for permission, because it will be too late to ask for permission.”

Engdahl: Arab spring a Pentagon strategy

Engdahl says that the arab spring is an pentagon movement for “re-create” the Arab’s world, a tactic to control the oil and the important groups of people in this zone.

Russia Today

The UN-Arab League envoy Kofi Annan has urged the UN Security Council to break the political deadlock on Syria. He said ‘unity over the crisis will help his peace mission’ – comments he made during his briefing to the body about his findings following his recent visit to Damascus. William F. Engdahl, researcher and author of “Full Spectrum Dominance: Totalitarian Democracy in the New World Order”

 

Polls Indicate No Israeli or U.S. Consensus Favoring Military Attack on Iran

Richard Silverstein
Tikun Olam

As Bibi Netanyahu heads to Washington for yet another in an endless series of consultations of dubious utility with Barack Obama, followed by yet another appeal to the worshipful multitudes at Aipac’s national conference, it’s important to note that opinion polls both in the U.S. and Israel confirm there is no consensus within either country supporting war against Iran.

In the NY Times report on Bibi’s coming visit, Zalman Shoval falsely claims:

“Public opinion polls in America are about 50-50 on whether America should take a role in an eventual military operation against Iran. This is not the main element in a decision, but it will have some influence on the candidate, who happens to be president.”

Here are some recent U.S. poll findings on the subject.  A February 2012 CNN poll finds that only 17% of Americans favor a U.S. attack now, while 60% favor sanctions with no military attack now.  22% favor taking no action at all.  In a February Pew survey, 64% of Americans said that sanctions will not work.  58% said they would favor military action if it was the only way to prevent Iran from getting a bomb.  30% said they opposed a strike even if meant Iran got a nuclear weapon.

A 2010 CNN survey found only 36% favored a military attack if sanctions did not work, while 39% favored no military action.  71% of those polled believe (falsely) that Iran already has nuclear weapons.

A Pew poll in January 2011 said that 50% of Americans favored taking a “firm stand” against Iran, while 40% favored avoiding a military conflict.  A November CBS survey found that only 15% of Americans favored military action against Iran now, while 55% believed that Iran could be contained by diplomacy, rather than force.

Now for Israeli public opinion: Shibley Telhami’s latest University of Maryland poll of Israeli public opinion finds that only 19% favor an attack that is against the will of the U.S.  42% would favor an attack with U.S. support.  34% oppose a strike regardless of whether there is U.S. support.

22% believe that if Israel did attack it would delay the Iranian nuclear program by more than five years.  Even the most hawkish Israeli generals and politicians claim it will delay the program by a year or possibly two.  11% believe it would accelerate the Iranian WMD program, which is what a number of analysts suspect will happen.

27% of Israelis believe that if Israel did attack against the U.S.’ wishes, the latter would join the war against Iran nonetheless, while 39% believe the U.S. would support Israel diplomatically but not militarily.

29% of Israelis believe, against the explicit guarantee of hawks like Ehud Barak and Moshe Yaalon, that a war would take “months.”  22% believe it would last “years,” a particularly grim finding.

44% of Israelis believe an attack by their country would strengthen the Iranian regime.

While Israelis are evenly split in their preference between Obama and Romney as future president, they favor Obama by 33% to 18% over Rick Santorum.  They even favor Obama over Newt Gingrich (32% to 25%), which is surprising considering that Sheldon Adelson’s Yisrael HaYom, Israel’s most popular daily, is shilling for Gingrich virtually every day in its pages.

US spooks say no Iranian nukes

RT

Iran’s alleged nuclear ambition may be high in the headlines. The US intelligence community, whose job is to assess the threat, is skeptical about it. Same as it has been for five years. The latest report accusing Iran of trying to make a nuclear weapon came Friday from the UN’s nuclear watchdog IAEA, which reported that Iran has significantly ramped up its uranium enrichment program.

However the consensus among US spy agencies remains that Iran had stopped nuclear weapons research years ago, as evidenced by latest statements, reports The New York Times. The agencies believe that Tehran may militarize its nuclear program, but it has not done it. James Clapper Jr., the director of national intelligence and David Petraeus, the CIA director, testified so before Senate on January 31.

Other senior US officials, including Defense Secretary Leon Panetta and Gen. Martin Dempsey, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, have made similar statements in recent television appearances. US intelligence agencies believed that Iran pursuit nuclear capability up to 2005, but in 2007 they made a u-turn on the issue. That year’s National Intelligence Estimate said that Iran had stopped nuclear weapons research in 2003.

The change of heart came as shock to the Bush administration and drew criticism from Israel and some European capitals. Some critics said the CIA and colleagues are too conservative about Iran fearing an embracement similar to that if faced with Iraq. Intelligence reports on Baghdad’s alleged weapons of mass destruction was the key argument for the US invasion of the country, but eventually proved false. In 2006 US spy agencies introduced stricter procedures on analyzing and interpreting intelligence reports to avoid such botches. Critics believe the agencies may have become overly cautious.

“It’s true the evidence hasn’t changed very much” since 2007, he added. “But that reflects a lack of access and a lack of intelligence as much as anything.”

The surge of tension over Iranian nuclear program started last November, when an IAEA report said circumstantial evidence pointed to Iran’s developing nuclear weapon. The report was criticized for using old facts and presenting them in a way to make case for the allegation rather than providing any new evidence.

­Middle East consultant, Peter Eyre, believes that Iran has no intention to go down the road of creating nuclear weapons.

“This stand-off with Syria, Iran, and all the rest of the Middle Eastern concerns is basically a geopolitical plan for regime change,” Eyre told RT.

 

 

 

Jihadists, weapons ‘moving from Iraq to Syria’

Times Colonist
Agence France-Presse

Iraqi Deputy Interior Minister Adnan al-Assadi, speaks during an interview with the AFP at his offices in Baghdad on February 11, 2012. Assadi says Jihadists are moving from Iraq to Syria, as are weapons being sent to opponents of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad's regime. Photograph by: Sabah Arar, AFP/Getty Images

“We have intelligence information that a number of Iraqi jihadists went to Syria,” Assadi said, adding that “weapons smuggling is still ongoing” from Iraq into Syria.

Since March last year, Assad’s regime has carried out a bloody crackdown on an uprising in which more than 6,000 people have been killed.

While there are still regular civilian protests that turn deadly in Syria, the focus has now also shifted to armed conflict with regime forces.

“The weapons are transported from Baghdad to Nineveh (province), and the prices of weapons in Mosul (the province’s capital) are higher now because they are being sent to the opposition in Syria,” Assadi said.

He said that the price of a Kalashnikov assault rifle has risen from between $100 and $200 to between $1,000 and $1,500.

“The weapons are being smuggled from Mosul through the Rabia crossing to Syria, as members of the same families live on both sides of the border,” he said. And “there is some smuggling through a crossing near Abu Kamal,” Assadi said, referring to a Syrian city.

Hundreds of slaughtered civilians isn’t a ‘huge number’ for Obama

RT

United States, Washington: US President Barack Obama participates in an interview with YouTube and Google from the Roosevelt Room of the White House in Washington, DC, January 30, 2012. (AFP Photo / Saul Loeb)

On Monday afternoon, Barack Obama became the first president to host a virtual town hall live on the Internet.

While that might be a feat worthy of the record books, President Obama did something else during his address that America has become accustomed to: he lied to the world.

Speaking Monday during a live web-chat hosted by Google, the president took on a series of issues submitted by the American people. Over the span of 45 minutes, President Obama addressed the Stop Online Piracy Act while refusing to side with either end of the argument, admitted to the world that he isn’t all that swell of a dancer and took a query from a professional puppeteer.

In between ignoring the real issues or offering any sort of solid solution to the nation’s biggest problems, the president did put something rather important out for the world to ponder: America’s ongoing drone missions aren’t really all that bad.

If you ask anyone outside of the Oval Office — or especially America — they might tell you otherwise.

Tackling a question posed on drone strikes, President Obama defended the ongoing missions on Monday, saying they were necessary to target terrorists in a most effective manner.“For us to be able to get them in another way would involve probably a lot more intrusive military action than the ones we’re already engaging in,  the president said on the topic of drones. While an argument could easily be made that operating drone missions in lieu of putting boots on the ground is best for the US Armed Forces, the president put a lot on the line Monday when he downplayed the result of the strikes.

Saudi Arabia: House of Saud Integral to U.S. Mideast Policy

Richard Walker
American Free Press

While the Middle East has suffered through a momentous year of turmoil and change, Saudi Arabia has largely remained insulated from any uprising. This is primarily due to the country’s vast wealth and power, which it has used to buy allegiance from its own people, quash dissent and build the second most powerful military in the region after Israel.

At the insistence of Washington, the Saudis have promised countries like China and India they will increase oil production to make up for any global shortfall should hostilities against Iran stop that country’s oil from flowing. Such a move is designed to encourage countries that do business with Iran to support sanctions and possible war.

All of this speaks to the way Saudi Arabia’s autocratic rulers have plotted and used their enormous wealth to keep themselves insulated from the vast movements demanding change throughout the region. Internally, they have kept dissent at a minimum, using a carrot and stick approach. The carrot takes the form of free housing for newly married couples and increased wages in the public sector. The House of Saud announced in 2011 it planned to spend tens of billions of dollars to modernize housing, education and sports facilities and create enough jobs for all its citizens.

In contrast, the stick is the internal security apparatus. It has sophisticated surveillance capabilities allowing it to maintain extensive files on every individual in the country. It also possesses absolute power to arrest, detain and torture anyone the country’s leaders deem a threat.

But you will not hear about this in the Western press, as the Saudis have also endeared themselves to Israel by muting criticism of the country as well as by doing business with Israeli arms suppliers and hi-tech companies.

The outcome of all of this is that a regime, which gave the world one of the most extreme forms of Islamic teaching, namely Wahhabism, has behaved as it pleases. It has tortured prisoners in its secret jails and denied women basic rights. Now it is being applauded for being a partner in Israel’s plot to bring down the Iranian regime.

“Divide et Impera”

Laura Stuart
deLiberation

Chief Collaborator - Salam Fayyad

It appears that the policy of “Divide and Rule” that has served the super-powers of the day so well since the times of Caesar and the Roman Empire, is again being put to use in the Middle East. Setting Muslim against Muslim is becoming a real possibility. Perhaps the realisation that it was fighting protracted and unwinnable wars in Muslim lands, has led the United States/Israel to consider ways of stirring up Shia against Sunni. This surely would maximise the shedding of Muslim blood with the minimum of investment and effort and, as ever, provide rich pickings for the weapons industry.

Reading an article in “The Jewish Chronicle” entitled “P.A. Share Israel’s Nuclear Iran Fears”, two issues spring to mind. The first is that the Palestinian Authority is the worst of collaborators, and wholly unfit to represent the brave Palestinian people. This much was made clear on the release of the Palestine Papers last year.

“The Prime Minister of the Palestinian Authority, Salam Fayyad, has attacked the behaviour of Iranian President, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad and said that he shares Western – and Israeli – concerns with the Iranians’ nuclear project”.