| With
its latest purchases from Washington, the Saudi
Air Force will have more US fighter-bombers of more
advanced models than the Israeli Air Force as well
as a substantial influx of sophisticated Eurofighter
Typhoons. Deep concern over this was recently relayed
by Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu and Defense
Minister Ehud Barak to President Barack Obama, Secretary
of State Hillary Clinton and Defense Secretary of
Defense Leon Panetta. Israel acted on the quiet
in view of Gulf anxiety over Iranian threats.
Washington and military sources that Israel made
its concern known with the utmost discretion so
as not to be seen as hampering the expansion of
the Saudi Royal Air Force as Riyadh gets set to
tackle Tehran should Saudi oil exports be sabotaged
by Iranian attacks on its oil production or the
closure of the Strait of Hormuz, its primary export
outlet.
Last month, the US agreed to sell Saudi Arabia 84
advanced F-15SA fighter-bombers worth $29.4 billion.
First deliveries are due in 2015. The package included
the upgrading of 70 F-15 planes of the Saudi air
fleet. Riyadhis also buying 72 advanced Eurofighter
Typhoon fighter bombers. All in all, the oil kingdom
will have the largest and most sophisticated fighter-bomber
fleet in the Middle East.
Israel leaders reminded the Obama administration
of its standing pledge to maintain Israel’s
qualitative military edge in the region. The aircraft
supplied to the Saudis will place that edge in doubt.
They voiced two additional causes for concern:
1. One fine day, Saudi Arabia, which has never agreed
to peace relations with Israel, may be moved to
attack the Jewish state from an air base very close
to Israel’s shores. That proximity and the
size and quality of its air force will allow dozens
of warplanes to penetrate Israel’s air defenses
and drop bombs on southern and central Israel.
2. Israel also fears that four or five Saudi pilots
or hired Islamist fliers may one day form an al
Qaeda cell inside the Saudi Air Force and conspire
to carry out a suicide attack on Israeli cities
on the model of al Qaeda’s 9/11 attacks on
New York and Washington, most of whose participants
were Saudis.
Israeli intelligence officials in close touch with
American counterparts asked them if Washington had
asked for Saudi assurances about the reliability
of the air crews who will man the new F-15SA planes.
They were told that no such guarantees had been
requested.
For now, Israel has brought its concerns to the
notice of the Obama administration without making
specific requests to hold up delivery. Israel is
conscious that the Gulf region is on tenterhooks
over its security and the Saudis are deep in military
preparations to beat back potentially aggressive
Iranian moves in the wake of the oil embargo approved
by the US and the European Union against Tehran’s
nuclear program.
Jerusalem also takes into consideration the importance
to the flagging American economy of the huge warplane
transaction with the Saudis which will support 50,000
jobs in the US air industry and 600 American contractors
of aircraft parts.
Obama will certainly not be approachable on this
issue while running for re-election.
But none of these considerations allays the deep
anxiety prevailing in the top echelons of Israel’s
high military and air command over the radical upgrade
awarded Saudi air power providing it with the capacity
to outclass and outgun Israel.
Scientists believe
that we can only see about 5% of the matter in the
Universe. The rest is made up of invisible matter
(called Dark Matter) and a mysterious form of energy
known as Dark Energy.
Israel is said to have been stunned by the U.S.
decision to export advanced weapons to Egypt.
Officials said the Israeli military and Defense
Ministry have been closely monitoring a spate of
recent U.S. arms sales to Egypt.
Officials said Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu
and Defense Minister Ehud Barak have raised the
issue repeatedly with U.S. leaders. They said Egypt
failed to use U.S. military aid to stabilize the
Sinai Peninsula, which has turned into a staging
ground for attacks against the Jewish state.
“U.S. financial support to Egypt, following
the peace with Israel, could be terminated if the
peace treaty is canceled,” Netanyahu told
the Knesset Foreign Affairs and Defense Committee
on Jan. 16. “It is clear to us that all we
knew in Egypt under Mubarak’s regime is not
what will be in the future, and there will be wide
security implications.”
Israeli officials said the U.S. weapons exports
would significantly bolster Egypt’s army and
navy as the military regime becomes allied with
the Muslim Brotherhood, which rejects the peace
treaty with Israel.
“Washington is pretending that [President
Hosni] Mubarak is still in power and can keep the
military on a pro-Western course,” an official
said.
In late 2011, the Defense Department granted contracts
for he export of the U.S.-origin Harpoon advanced
anti-ship missile and theM1A1 main battle tank.
Officials said the administration of President Barack
Obama has ignored appeals by Israel to adopt a cautious
approach toward post-Mubarak Egypt.
Officials said the administration has determined
that the new military regime in Cairo would continue
a pro-U.S. policy as well as honor the peace treaty
with Israel. But they said many in Congress disagree
with the White House assessment and warned that
the Brotherhood has become the new political power
in the aftermath of parliamentary elections.
A key concern by Israel was that the administration
would accede to anEgyptian demand to accelerate
procurement of 20 F-16 Block 52+ fighter-jets from
Lockheed Martin. Officials said the administration,
despite Israel’s urging, has pledged to Cairo
to proceed with the F-16 project and begin deliveries
over the next 18 months.
“Egypt today faces no threat from its neighbors,
but wants to engage in an arms race with us,”
another official said. “This is dangerous.”
According to the Bible, Jews
and Arabs are related [Genesis 25]. Jews descended
from Abraham’s son Isaac, and Arabs descended
from Abraham’s son Ishmael. So not only are
both groups Semitic, but they’re also family.
Military tensions in the Persian Gulf shot up again
Thursday, Jan. 26, after Dubai police commander
Gen. Dhahi Khalfan said on Al Arabiya television
that an imminent Gulf war cannot be ruled out and
first signs are already apparent. “The world
will not let Iran block Hormuz but Tehran can narrow
the strait to the maximum,” he said.
He echoed predictions that Iran will not shut down
the Strait of Hormuz completely, but gradually cut
down tanker traffic which carries 17 million barrels,
or one-fifth of the world’s daily consumption,
through the waterway. Our Iranian sources report
that the rule of thumb Tehran has devised for confront
sanctions is to respond to the tightening of an
oil embargo by having the Revolutionary Guards gradually
narrow the tankers’ shipping lanes through
the strategic strait. This will progressively cut
down the amount of oil reaching the markets.
Tehran will not go all the way and shut the channel
down completely for fear of provoking a military
showdown with the United States. But each time Washington
manages to stop Iran supplying a given country,
the IRGC will shut down another section of the strait.
General Martin Dempsey, Chairman of the US Joint
Chiefs of Staff admitted on Jan. 8 that Iran has
the capacity to block the Strait of Hormuz temporarily
but the US would get it reopened within a short
time.
Saudi Arabia and Dubai are skeptical about the ability
of the American navy and Gulf forces to keep the
Strait of Hormuz open at all times in the face of
continuous Iranian attacks.
The prevailing view in Gulf capitals is that for
the six months from February through July 1, when
the European embargo on Iranian oil and the Iranian
national bank freeze kick in, a war of attrition
will unfold as Iran carries out sporadic strait
closures, either by mining the waterway or firing
missiles at tankers from unmarked speedboats.
These operations will push up the price of oil and
so drum home to oil-dependent Asian and European
governments the high cost to them of the alternate
opening and closing of the Strait of Hormuz.
A Saudi official said Wednesday, Jan. 1, that Tehran’s
threats to punish Riyadh for offering to make up
the shortfall incurred from the oil embargo against
Iran “could be seen by Saudi Arabia as an
act of war.”
The Iranian threats followed the pledge made this
week by Saudi Oil Minister Ali al-Naimi to raise
daily production by up to 2.7 million barrels per
day to supply the countries caught short of supplies
from Iran.
However, the Saudi minister could not say how the
oil would make its way out of the Persian Gulf to
destination if the Strait of Hormuz were to be shuttered
partially or fully.
Military and Gulf sources report that Persian Gulf
capitals are talking less these days about an outbreak
of armed hostilities over Iran’s nuclear program
and more about the coming war over the oil shipping
routes out to market.
The Dubai general’s remarks Thursday about
an imminent conflict referred not only to the flow
of American reinforcements to the Gulf region but
also to the new deployments of the armies of Gulf
Cooperation Council states. They are moving into
position in expectation of a military confrontation
with Iran.
The rift between the Shia
and Sunni started right after Muhammad’s death
and originally reduced to a power struggle regarding
who was going to become the authoritative group
for continuing the faith.
The Shia believed Muhammad’s second cousin
Ali should have taken over (the family/cleric model).
The Sunni believed that the best
person for the job should be chosen by the followers
(the merit model) and that’s how the first
Caliph, Abu Bakr, was appointed.
Although the conflict began
as a political struggle it now mostly considered
a religious and class conflict, with political conflict
emanating from those rifts.
Three weeks after Tehran
threatened action against any US aircraft carrier
entering the Strait of Hormuz, Washington made two
moves: US Defense Secretary Leon Panetta disclosed
Sunday, Jan. 22, that the USS Enterprise Carrier
Strike Group would steam through the strait in March;
carrier through the strategic strait without incident,
accompanied by British and French warships.
Defusing the Hormuz crisis set the scene for resumed
nuclear negotiations leading up to which several
messages were exchanged through back channels between
the Obama administration and Tehran in recent weeks
- amid Israeli preparations to strike Iran’s
nuclear facilities.
These developments deepened the breach between the
US and Israel. Two days earlier, on Friday, Jan.
20, Gen. Martin Dempsey, Chairman of the Joint US
Chiefs of Staff, visited Israel and with Israeli
leaders emphasized the cooperation between Washington
and Jerusalem on the Iranian threat. The Netanyahu
government complained that action against Iran had
been postponed for years on one pretext on another,
and the same thing was happening to effective sanctions
against Iran’s oil exports and central bank.
Israel was therefore compelled to exercise its military
option against the mortal peril of a nuclear Iran,
said the Israeli prime minister, before it was too
late.
Then Sunday, Jan. 22, Defense Secretary Panetta
stood in a hangar of the Enterprise clad in the
uniform of a ship’s crewman and told an audience
of 1,700 personnel that the carrier would be sent
to Hormuz in March. His statement was a red herring.
A few hours later, the Abraham Lincoln was already
through.
But what he said on the Enterprise was this: “That’s
what this carrier is all about. That’s the
reason we maintain a presence in the Middle East…
We want them to know that we are fully prepared
to deal with any contingency and it’s better
for them to try to deal with us through diplomacy.”
Washington sources note that Panetta was the first
high-ranking administration official to give Tehran
an ultimatum: Accept the American offer to negotiate
terms for halting your nuclear weapon program, or
face up to America’s mighty fleet of American
aircraft carriers. ”Our view is that the carriers,
because of their presence, because of the power
they represent, are a very important part of our
ability to maintain power projection both in the
Pacific and in the Middle East,” said the
defense secretary.
However, behind this show of strength, Washington
was actively preparing to sit down and talk.
Saturday, Jan. 21, the Washington Post disclosed
that Obama had sent a special emissary to Tehran
with an oral message proposing that Iran join the
United States for resumed nuclear negotiations.
The emissary was not named - although there was
some speculation that Turkish Foreign Minister was
chosen for the mission - nor was Iran’s reply
revealed.
According to the WP, its content was as follows:
The United States and the international community
have a strong interest in the free flow of commerce
and freedom of navigation in all international waterways…
Since taking office, the president has made it clear
that he is willing to engage constructively and
seriously with Iran about its nuclear program.
Also on Saturday, Iran’s Revolutionary Guards
stated it considered the likely return of US warships
to the Gulf part of its routine activity. They were
not climbing down from their original threat. The
statement came only after Tehran saw the USS Stennis,
the object of threat, exiting the Gulf Friday, Jan.
20, and decided it was the Americans who had backed
down.
Panetta’s comments Sunday aimed at correcting
that impression and making it very clear to Tehran
that although the Stennis was gone, the Abraham
Lincoln was there and the Enterprise was coming
“fully prepared to deal with any contingency.”
Cosmic Latte
is the color of the universe, according to a team
of astronomers from Johns Hopkins University. In
2001, Karl Glazebrook and Ivan Baldry determined
that the color of the universe was a greenish white,
but they soon corrected their analysis in “The
2dF Galaxy Redshift Survey: constraints on cosmic
star-formation history from the cosmic spectrum“.
The Islamist opposition, fresh from an overwhelming
victory in parliament, was preparing to confront
the military regime in Egypt.
The Muslim Brotherhood intends to conduct a review
of the military once it takes over parliament and
the next Egyptian government.
The Brotherhood said the military, including its
huge unreported economy, would be overseen by civilians.
“We respect and appreciate the Army, but the
military council must be held accountable for any
mistakes,” Brotherhood leader Mohammed Badie
said.
The proposed policy was announced as the Brotherhood
won 47.1 percent of Egypt’s parliament in
elections that took place in late 2011 and early
2012.
The Brotherhood’s leading ally, the Salafist
movement, was said to have won nearly 25 percent
of the vote, giving any coalition a commanding majority
of the National Assembly, scheduled to begin its
session on Jan. 23.
In a television appearance on Jan. 20, Badie said
the new parliament would demand an examination of
the military’s budget. The U.S.-origin military
was said to control the defense, energy and housing
industry that comprised up to a third of Egypt’s
economy.
“No one is above accountability,” Badie
said.
Over the last three months, the Brotherhood sought
to negotiate an agreement with the military for
the transfer of power. But Islamic sources said
the Supreme Council of the Armed Forces refused
to submit to parliamentary scrutiny, and talks broke
down in early January.
“Stability is the first goal,” Maj.
Gen. Ismail Othman, a military regime member, said.
“If there is tension between the people and
the armed forces, it must be removed.”
A former senior Gulf Cooperation Council security
official said Iran was directing insurgency attacks
in at least two Gulf Arab states as well as neighboring
Yemen.
Former Bahraini State Security chief, Col. Adel
Flaifil, cited Manama and neighboring Saudi Arabia
as two key targets of the Teheran regime.
“The outrage of the Houthis [Shi'ite fighters]
in [Yemen's] Sa’ada and saboteurs in Bahrain
and Qatif came on orders from Iran, particularly
from hardline general and presidential candidate
Dr. Qassim Suleimani, who is backed by supreme leader
Ayatollah Ali Khamenei,” Flaifil said.
In a briefing on Jan. 16, Flaifil said Saudi Arabia
reached agreement with Iran to end Shi’ite
unrest in the kingdom’s Eastern Province.
He said Iran’s intelligence chief held meetings
in Riyad in November in which the Saudis pledged
to delay their demand for a UN Security Council
resolution that would condemn an alleged plot by
Teheran to kill the Saudi ambassador to the United
States, Adel Al Jubeir.
But Iran did not keep its promise,” Flaifil
said. “I also have information that the Iranian
intelligence director is visiting Riyad to plead
with our Saudi brothers to activate what had been
reached earlier.”
Bahrain has blamed Iran for Shi’ite unrest
that paralyzed the Sunni kingdom in the spring of
2011. The massive Shi’ite protests were quelled
when several GCC states, particularly Saudi Arabia,
sent more than 5,000 troops to Manama.
In January, unrest was renewed in both Bahrain and
Saudi Arabia’s Eastern Province. Flaifil said
Iran was behind the attacks on the GCC regimes as
part of Teheran’s effort to foil Western sanctions
and the deployment of U.S. Navy warships in the
Strait of Hormuz.
”In my view, there is only 20 percent possibility
of war in the Gulf,” Flaifil said. “To
my knowledge, there are U.S.-European assurances
to protect GCC countries from any Iranian attack.
The assurances also include not encouraging or standing
by the Shi’ites and terrorist organizations.”
Flaifil, in remarks reported by the state-controlled
Bahraini media, said the United States was recruiting
GCC and NATO members to expand operations to protect
Gulf shipping. He said military commanders from
Saudi Arabia, Turkey and the United States would
meet at the end of January 2012.
”Iran will have to listen to reason,”
Flaifil said.
Flaifil said GCC and other Sunni Muslim states were
forming a powerful coalition to confront Iran. He
said the coalition was helping the revolt against
Syrian President Bashar Assad as well as the Sunni
minority in northern and western Iraq.
“Iran has no alternative but to give in to
the Arabs, because it is not capable of confrontation,”
Flaifil said. “If [Iraqi prime minister] Mr.
Al Maliki’s intransigence continues along
with the marginalization of the Sunnis, it is expected
that Sunni tribes in
Anbar and Salah Eddin could opt for an autonomous
province. The Arabs will help them militarily and
politically.”
February 1865 is the only
month in recorded history not to have a full moon.
Like many leftists, President Obama has deep contempt
for Christianity and democracy. This is why his
administration has declared war on the Catholic
Church and religious liberty.
Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius
recently went ahead and approved last year’s
decision to mandate that many religious organizations
provide health insurance plans to their employees
that include contraception, abortion-inducing drugs
and sterilization coverage - and this must be done
without charging a co-pay.
In other words, Mr. Obama has done something that
is ominous and unprecedented: compelling religious
groups to embrace and subsidize free birth control.
Catholic universities, hospitals and charities must
either betray their fundamental social teachings
or drop insurance coverage for their employees,
thereby triggering massive financial penalties under
Obamacare. The choice is simple: Abandon Catholic
doctrine or go out of business.
The ruling will not simply devastate the Catholic
heath care system and elaborate social network,
which includes soup kitchens, adoption centers,
immigrant services and parochial schools. It directly
assaults and violates the conscience rights of Catholics.
The church teaches that contraception is a sin,
an immoral attempt to obstruct God’s will
of when and whether human life should be created.
It is the ultimate embodiment of pride: man trying
to act as God. That is why opposition to birth control
is at the heart of the Catholic faith.
The church teaches that the primary purpose of sexual
activity within the sacred bonds of marriage is
procreation - to perpetuate humanity from one generation
to the next. For nearly 1,500 years, such thinking
underpinned the Christian West. That was then; this
is now. Since the 1960s, modern society is obsessed
with contraception, abortion and sexual hedonism.
The results have been declining birth rates and
shrinking native populations. Literally, the West
is dying.
As the late Pope John Paul II put it, we are in
the grips of “a culture of death.” Birth
control is a key pillar. It is a seminal aspect
of the socialist drive to establish a secular utopia
- smash the traditional family by relentlessly advancing
the sexual revolution. The pill and the condom are
the hammer and sickle of cultural Marxism. Decades
ago, the Vatican warned that birth control eventually
would lead to the West’s demise. A civilization
unable - and unwilling - to reproduce itself is
doomed.
Yet even if one does not care a scintilla about
the church’s stance on contraception, the
ruling should frighten everybody - Christian and
non-Christian.
America was founded upon one key principle: religious
freedom. The Pilgrims fled religious persecution.
Our Founding Fathers deliberately created a republic
banning an established church, such as England’s
Anglican Church, and championed a nation where different
religious denominations could exist - and flourish
- without government harassment. Religious liberty
lies at the core of American freedom. In fact, the
Founders considered it so important that it comes
before all other rights enshrined in the First Amendment.
James Madison, the primary author of the Constitution,
said, “Conscience is the most sacred of all
property.” The Obama administration is telling
Catholics that their conscience rights can be trampled
with impunity. The state has the power to coerce
people to support and pay for practices they find
morally repugnant and contravene their fundamental
religious beliefs. This is tyranny.
Mr. Obama is the most radical president in our history.
He is spearheading a liberal social revolution,
not just an economic one. He supported partial-birth
abortion - the heinous procedure of killing babies
just before they are to be delivered. His administration
refuses to uphold the Defense of Marriage Act. He
has enabled homosexuals to serve openly in the military,
transforming the armed forces into a vast laboratory
for social engineering. His signature legislation,
Obamacare, allows for the federal funding of abortion.
Hence, Christians will be forced to have their tax
dollars subsidize the mass murder of unborn children
- a direct attack on their most basic religious
tenets. He is making Christians complicit in infanticide.
To commemorate the 39th anniversary of Roe v. Wade,
Mr. Obama made a remarkable and revealing statement.
He said legalized abortion is indispensable “to
ensure that our daughters have the same rights,
freedoms and opportunities as our sons to fulfill
their dreams.” In other words, being pregnant
is a burden - an obstacle - to be overcome. That
a human life is destroyed is irrelevant to him and
the feminist left. Murder, it appears, is sometimes
necessary to achieve liberalism’s much-vaunted
goal of personal liberation.
“Religion is the opiate of the masses,”
Karl Marx said. This is why Marxists and their fellow
travelers have sought to eradicate religious faith
- especially Christianity. Tens of millions of Christians
were slaughtered by Vladimir Lenin, Josef Stalin
and Mao Zedong. At its core, communism is based
on anti-Christian bigotry (just as national socialism
is infused with anti-Semitism).
Mr. Obama is a militant secularist. His aim is to
purge religion from the public square, forcing it
to retreat into the private sphere - making it nothing
more than a personal lifestyle choice. He wants
us to leave our faith at the door when engaging
in civic life. Yet religion is natural to human
beings. The only way radical progressives can forge
a secular social order is through a repressive state.
The Obama administration is eroding the First Amendment,
assaulting the conscience rights and religious liberties
of Catholics and waging a relentless campaign to
destroy America’s Judeo-Christian values.
Catholics must engage in civil disobedience. Otherwise,
Mr. Obama will succeed in dismantling our republic.
Today, he is coming for us. Tomorrow, it will be
you.
A golden razor removed from
Tutankhamen’s tomb over 3000 years after his
death was still sharp enough for use.
A prominent analyst has predicted that North Korea
will not survive the next 20 years as democratic
and external market forces threaten Pyongyang’s
rigid, isolated system.
Alexander Dynkin, director of Russia’s state-run
think tank, the Institute of World Economy and International
Relations, also said the unfavorable conditions
would force the North’s new ruler Kim Jong-Un
to feel a need for change, despite fear that doing
so could spell the collapse his regime.
“This regime will not survive (the) next 20
years,” Dynkin told reporters on the sidelines
of a Seoul forum. He pointed out that situations
within China and Russia, traditional patrons of
North Korea’s, have significantly changed
since 1994.
The conditions facing Kim Jong-Un today are much
worse than in 1994, when his father Kim Jong-Il
inherited power from national founder Kim Il-Sung.
“In 1994, China was just in the starting process
of their market reforms, Russia was in a total mess
after 1991, South Korea just started going out of
the … totalitarian regime to democratic society,
which we see now,” he said.
“Currently, this [North Korea] regime is surrounded
by more or less market oriented and pro-democratic
forces, maybe except in China … and [the]
regime has to react somehow,” Dynkin said.
The death of Kim Jong-Il has also brought the two
Koreas closer to reunification, the Russian expert
said, raising doubt about Kim Jong-Un’s capacity
to keep the hermit kingdom afloat.
Kim Jong-Un, thought to have been born on Jan. 8,
1983, is considered unskilled and inexperienced,
and did not have enough time to build his own power
base due to his father’s sudden death.
“I guess it will happen in the mid-[20]20s,
something like that,” Dynkin said. “I
guess that the young guy has some different experiences
in comparison with his grandfather and father. I
guess he uses the Internet … He has access
to foreign countries, foreign information.”
Institute Vice President Vasily Mikheev also said
in a Seoul forum that North Korea “is historically
doomed,” and called Kim Jong-Un a “temporary
figure.”
”The elite circles will be preoccupied with
a struggle for power,” he said, adding an
invisible struggle “will be increasing in
the nest months to come.”
The U. S, Navy’s first
battle flag was a yellow flag with a black snake
above the words. The purpose of the Navy at this
time was to harass British shipping and capture
its cargo. The fleet then consisted of former merchant
vessels converted into warships.
Saudi Arabia has been
leading a Gulf Arab effort to conduct an independent
security policy that was not dependent on the United
States.
Diplomats and analysts said one option has been
to strengthen relations with China, a
nuclear power that has been searching for additional
energy supplies.
On Jan. 15, China and Iran signed a nuclear cooperation
agreement that envisioned Beijing’s assistance
for a nuclear energy program in the GCC kingdom.
The agreement came in wake of Saudi threats to match
Iran’s nuclear weapons program.
“The Gulf states had long looked to Washington
to be their protector,” Kuwait Center for
Strategic Studies president Sami Al Faraj said.
“They still have the United States, but the
Gulf is increasingly looking around and saying:
‘We need to take care of ourselves, too.’
”
The sources said Saudi King Abdullah and Crown Prince
Nayef were working with a range of foreign countries
in a policy that would leverage the Gulf Cooperation
Council’s huge energy production to counter
neighboring Iran.
”Any threat to our interests or security will
force us to use all available options to defend
our interests, and national and regional security,”
former Saudi intelligence chief Prince Turki Al
Faisal said.
Addressing a security conference in Bahrain on Jan.
17, Turki, also a former mbassador to Britain and
the United States, raised the prospect of a war
with Iran. Turki, believed to be speaking for the
Saudi leadership, cited Iranian threats to block
the Strait of Hormuz, the passage for 40 percent
of global crude oil shipments.
“The mounting escalation and persistent tensions
might end up in an adventure with unpredictable
consequences or in an unwanted military confrontation,”
Turki said.
Analysts and diplomats assert that the Saudi royal
family has been frustrated by the U.S. hesitation
to stop Iran. They cited the refusal by the administration
of President Barack Obama to sign tough sanctions
legislation that targeted Iran’s energy sector.
“The Gulf states are definitely taking a stronger
stance against Iran and are using their considerable
influence to try to convince others of their Iranian
fears,” Theodore Karasik, an analyst at the
Institute for Near
East and Gulf Military Analysis in the United Arab
Emirates, said.Currently, the GCC, led by the Saudis,
were engaged in a massive military buildup. Riyad
has ordered about $30 billion worth of fighter-jets
and munitions from the United States while the UAE
was expected to purchase another $20 billion from
Washington.
At the same time, the GCC was moving to replace
Iran as the energy supplier to key countries, including
China, Japan and South Korea. The GCC effort, again
led by Riyad, has prompted Iranian threats.”These
acts will not be considered friendly,” Iran’s
envoy to OPEC, Mohammed Ali Khatibi, said.
|