STEVE PIECZENIK TALKS

US Contains Saudi, Qatari and Lebanese Gun Runner, Okab Saqr, From Inciting Further Syrian Violence. 

In an unusual display of multiagency coordination,  the Obama administration has effectively placed the brakes on an escalating sectarian war waged in Syria. Through both exemplary covert, overt, military and diplomatic efforts, the Obama White House has forced the Saudis, Qataris and Okab Saqr, a Lebanese surrogate for the Saudi family from shipping more lethal weapons to the so-called ‘freedom fighters’ from Homs and Hama from turning the civil war in Syria into a regional conflagration that could precipitate a Third World War.

  At present, Saudi Arabia , UAE, Qatar, Turkey, Al Qaeda, Salafists,  CIA , mercenaries from many other countries are attempting to overthrow the minority Alawite- dominated Syrian Government of Bashar Assad supported vigorously by Russia, Iran and Hezbollah.  Whether one considers this conflict religious in nature or geopolitical, the basic reality is that if it is not contained , one way or another by the US, it will turn into a wildfire that would spread to the very nations that instigated the war—Saudi Arabia, Qatar, UAE , and war-tested radical islamists from Afghanistan and Iraq.

In other words, if the US were to allow the Syrian rebels access to more lethal weapons as their supporters requested then the world would watch a ‘blow back’ phenomena the likes of which we have never seen before. What do I mean? 

Let me be more explicit.  The failing, dysfunctional government of Saudi Arabia,  ruled by a council of self-anointed ersatz ‘kings’ and  ‘princes’ of questionable hereditary lineage  and political legitimacy have in effect called for a ‘jihad’ or ‘Holy War’ against the ruling Alawites of Syria- ostensibly  in support of their ‘Sunni brothers’.   Of course, nothing could be further from the truth. The Saudi family,  a compilation of self–indulgent, hypocritical, poorly educated Wahhabis [second class quality of Koran studies] has spent countless billions of dollars over decades to sustain their fragile , corrupt governments by paying off every ‘terrorist’ group that might threaten their power directly .  In essence, think of the Saudi rulers as spoiled, infantile, narcissistic,  self-indulgent,  lazy,  entitled tribesmen fearful of their own people, and even more fearful of the Wahhabi Clerics [ a second class of educated Koran ‘interpreters’ created by the British Imperial Government some one hundred years ago —not equal to the true Koran experts found in Iraq, Egypt, Lebanon or even in Qum, Iran]---who have funded any young man wanting to fight against any power in either Iraq, Afghanistan and now Syria.  Saudi Arabia is the quarter master,  financier and gun runner for the so-called Sunni Liberation Wars --- a false narrative created for the sole purpose of ridding the fragile kingdom of any potential military or political threat to their viability.  For decades the British protected this farce of incestuous clanship in order to extract oil from the eastern part [near Bahrain] of Saudi Arabia.  Then the Americans in the guise first of the CIA , then the Oil Companies—Anglo-American [Aramco ] Oil Company,  then in 1991 in the First Persian Gulf War arrived to keep this teetering eggshell of a government from falling down just like “Humpy Dumpty’. 

  Despite these aforementioned attempts by the US and other allies [including Israel] to keep the Saudis in power,  they still insisted on precipitating  an unnecessary war against Bashar Assad who was no more or less a dictator than the despotic rulers of Saudi Arabia with their whip-lashing clerics who enforced ‘Wahhabism’  against their own women and other non-believers. The real cause of their support of Okab Saqr,  a nefarious Lebanese gunner run, and the newly anointed surrogate for the former corrupt Prime Minister of Lebanon Hariri [whom I knew] is the Saudi desire to neutralize the Shi’ite influence of Iran that is spreading throughout the Middle East.  But in this conflict of Sunni versus Shi’ite, the Saudi Kingdom is in a much more precarious condition than Iran, a country that has been around for not one century but a millennia. 

From my thirty year experience in the Middle East, the outcome is self-evident.  Saudi Arabia will fall from it’s own weight of inertia,  self-indulgence,  flagrant spending, internal debauchery and secondary treatment of the it’s female and male citizenry.  It will fall from the weight of it’s own ineptitude. That is evident to the US and Turkey as well as Iran. So the Saudis should behoove the advice of the temperate professionals of the US government, the cunning maneuvers of Putin, the absence of Chinese support and Turkeys’ constant shifting positions.
  In summary, this blog is the announcement of what I believe, is the beginning of the end of the failing Saudi Kingdom and the inevitable rise of Turkish and Iranian power in the Middle East.

This blog is also a salute to the temperance shown by the Obama Administration in the impressive covert machinations of the White House ;  the titrated  CIA support of the ‘rebels’;  as well as the tireless efforts of diplomats  and the US military personnel working beneath the penumbra of strategic foresight and tactical expediency. Our government has handled this flammable situation in Syria and Turkey with adroit professionalism and impressive soto voce. 

Congratulations to our professionals who work selflessly overseas without bravado or unnecessary political spotlight.  In contrast, the ‘princelings’ of the oil drenched, parched deserts of Saudi Arabia and the UAE best be prepared for an exodus precipitated by their own greed, fear, and out-sourcing of reckless murder. The Hariri’s of the world can be ‘neutralized’ at ‘will’ with ‘plausible deniability’ from Marbella, Spain to Bozeman, Montana.

Believe me, no leader is indispensable to a country.