The American Spectator

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Saudi Arabia Fears Iraq

By John Batchelor on 2.24.06 @ 1:45AM

A fresh intelligence source identifies the paradoxical motives of Saudi Arabia with regard the turmoil in Iraq.

On one hand, the Saudi princes gain by having an American coalition stabilize Iraq and create a buffer of a unified, resolute, commercially sturdy nation of Sunnis and Shia to block the cunning advances of Tehran’s totalitarianism. The oil-soaked eastern side of Saudi Arabia is dominated by Shia Arabs just like the oil-soaked part of southern Iraq, and constructing a self-satisfied, aggrandized, Shia-dominated state in Iraq would seem to be the best answer to Persian (non-Arab) Iranian aggression.

On the other hand, Saudi Arabian imams are bloody-minded Wahhabists who are committed to the destruction of the Shia as heretics. Therefore a Shia-dominated, stable democratic, oil-rich state in Iraq is a threat to the imams’ worldview.

It is shocking to report that a popular tome now under distribution in Sunni-based Arabia is THE PROTOCOLS OF THE ELDERS OF SHIA. This document asserts that the Shia were infiltrated by Jews and other infidels one thousand years ago or more, and they are heretics who must be exterminated. Therefore, the fact that the Shia of Iraq are prospering thanks to American bayonets is seen as proof that the Shia are a threat to true believers.

What Saudi Arabia wants is thus a paradox. A stable Iraq protects the Kingdom but at the same time provides competing oilfields and the unwelcome model of a democracy. An unstable Iraq punishes the Shia for their sins and corruption, but it provides the Iranians with a route to destabilize the Arab Shia of Saudi Arabia.

The American military is tied down between two hostile, conflicted, self-destructive, toxic states with limitless wealth and fanaticism.

topics:
Military, Iraq, Iran, Oil