Saudi and UAE troops go into Bahrain, Kuwaitis on the way
DEBKAfile Exclusive Report March 14, 2011, 3:40 PM (GMT+02:00)
Saudi and United Arab Emirates troops crossed into Bahrain Monday, March 14 to support the king against escalating anti-throne demonstrations and Kuwait soldiers are on the way. A Saudi official said the units come from a special force within the six-nation Gulf Cooperation Council. debkafile reports that the Saudis also sent tanks.
By this action, both Arab kingdoms flouted US President Obama’s policy of boosting popular movements against autocratic Arab regimes. Saturday, US Defense Secretary Robert Gates visited Bahrain to hold the ruler’s hand against using force to suppress the uprising against him.
The Shiite opposition leading the demonstrations in Bahrain denounced the entry of any foreign troops into the country as an “occupation” and “conspiracy” against unarmed civilians and appealed to the United Nations to take action.
Saudi Arabia and the UA are the second and third Arab regimes to intervene militarily in the uprisings sweeping the Arab world after Syria sent military assistance to Muammar Qaddafi, as debkafile revealed Sunday, March 13.
Rulers regarded as US Middle East allies have turned against President Obama, encouraged by the upper hand Qaddafi has gained against Libya’s rebels and Washington’s constraints from stepping in militarily to support them.
In Riyadh and Manama, Saudi King Abdullah and Bahrain’s King Hamad bin Isa Al Khalifa have joined forces to put down any popular uprising against their regimes and are no longer listening to advice from Washington to offer their opponents more concessions. The Saudis have stamped down hard not only on minority Shiite disturbances in the oil regions of the east, but in their capital and other cities too. King Abdullah blames Obama’s policy for unseating Hosni Mubarak in Egypt and has no intention of following the American line.
The Bahraini King Hamad believes that the unrest in his kingdom was aggravated by the Gates visit Saturday. Although the American visitor was shown Bahraini-Saudi intelligence attesting to Iran’s meddling hand stirring up the unrest in order to replace their regimes with Revolutionary Islamic Republics, Gates kept in insisting that they must promise more reforms to the protesters and allow them a role in governance.
The Obama administration has made known to the US media its concern about the prospect of Saudi and other Gulf nations buttressing the Bahraini throne – not just with a grant of at least $10 billion, but military contingents, lest it start a fire across the entire region.
Our military sources report that these reports have been overtaken by events. Saudi tanks have been in Manama for almost two weeks guarding King Hamad’s palace. More Saudi tanks and special forces were kept in a state of preparedness at the Saudi end of the King Fahd Causeway, the 25-kilometer bridge that links the two kingdoms by a 40-minute drive.
These forces, joined by UAR units, rolled into Bahrain Monday after protesters blockaded the financial center.
In Sanaa, Yemeni soldiers still loyal to President Abdullah Ali Saleh are battling protesters turned insurgents. In Amman, too, Jordanian King Abdullah II is casting about for a protector against insurrectionists after finding the American shield full of holes. According to rumors circulating in the Jordanian capital, the king paid a secret visit to Tehran. debkafile’s sources have not confirmed this rumor but believe he is desperate enough to seek protection in Tehran and/or Israel.
Damascus made it clear where Bashar Assad stood in relation to the Obama administration by becoming Muammar Qaddafi’s foremost armorer.
Cairo remains the only Arab capital still keeping faith with Washington.
Field Marshal Mohammed Tantawi and the rest of his military junta have excellent relations with Washington and are closely coordinating their actions with the Obama administration. How long this will go on is anyone’s guess. If they accede to an American request to intervene military in Libya against Qaddafi, for instance, or if internal security declines further, the protesters are poised ready to go back to the streets of Egypt’s cities.
debkafile’s sources report that from the outside Egypt looks stable since Hosni Mubarak’s departure, but it must be taken into account that the world’s TV cameras are gone from Tahrir Square to hotter stories in other places and both the police and soldiers are scared to show their faces for maintaining law and order. The army is therefore crumbling from within. In these circumstances, the military’s affinity with Washington is loosening its control of the Egyptian street, a growing gap that cannot be sustained much longer.
Syria sends Qaddafi arms. Exodus begins from Benghazi
DEBKAfile Exclusive Report March 13, 2011,
Bashar Assad helps Muammar Qaddafi defy West
As Washington commended the Arab League for approving a proposed no-fly zone over Libya and European powers drew up plans for saving the anti-Qaddafi movement from defeat, Syria began sending Muammar Qaddafi supplies of arms, ammunition and weapons spare parts to sustain his effort to crush the uprising. [..]
The Libyan-Syrian arms transaction is a landmark in the sense that it is the first time since the Arab revolts erupted in January that one Arab regime has stepped in to help another suppress an uprising.
Damascus is also in violation of last month’s Security Council Resolution 1970 whichincluded an arms embargo against the Qaddafi regime and by supplying Libya weapons by sea Assad undermines the Western-Arab effort to introduce a no fly zone to curtail Qaddafi’s aerial might.
By this action, Bashar Assad shows contempt for the US President Barack Obama’s policy in support of the popular unrest against authoritarian Arab regimes and scorns the indulgence shown him by the US president.
In the last six months, Washington has gone to extreme lengths to establish friendly relations with Damascus – not only restoring the US ambassador after five years, but quietly accepting fresh Syrian meddling in Lebanon.
The Obama administration had hoped that Assad would respond by being helpful on the Palestinian issue and start distancing himself from Tehran. Instead, he has strengthened his military ties with Tehran, granting Iran its first permanent base on the Mediterranean at Tartous.
Now, by replenishing the regime’s stocks of arms and ordnance, the Syrian ruler has gone directly against US policy of support for the Libyan opposition and spurred Qaddafi on for his final major offensive to crush the uprising without having to stop and wait for fresh supplies of war materiel. [..]
Greetings from PRChina. Barry Obama is out to lunch, and the Middle East is in deep doo doo. Israel is married to the Egyptians, whoever is in power, and I wish them the best. I’m waiting to see if the Nile dries up, as per Isa 19. Meanwhile, the Hashemite Dynasty sweems to be in trouble; and I deon’t think it’s in Israel’s interest to help them (Does Israel want an even bigger “Pal” problem?) — unless it’s part of a deal that makes sense… Nah, Israelis don’t know how to make good deals. Maybe the king will let them help him, if they give him all of Jerusalem. That sounds almost irresistable, huh? In a perverse sort of way, it all looks like more of the same in the ME. Meanwhile, back at the budget hearings, I wonder how things are in Washington. Much the same as well, I imagine. Everyone prepare for war. Shalom shalom 🙂
This is the one thing which Israel can learn from the arabs. Being willing to defy Washington’s demands for more concessions.
Anyway, we should be grateful anytime muslims are going at each other. If Israel was smart, it would instigate a civil war between hamas and fatah.
Modern Chess is an Iranian invention: Obama and Hillary probably never heard of Chess at least not as a weapon of strategy in International relations. America is already in Check and a move or two from a mate against them.
Bahrain: the most important place in the world
1. Shiite arabs live on top of most of the Persian Gulf oil: western Iran, southern Iraq, northeast Saudi Arabia. But they only control the oil in Iraq (now that the sunnis there have been overthrown). The (Indo-european) persians control the iranian arabs. However, they are both fiercely shiite, and work together. The fiercely sunni Saudi arabs, on the other hand, control and suppress the arabian shiites.
2. Bahrain is a small Gulf island close to the shiite part of Arabia, connected to Saudi Arabia by a bridge. It has little oil. However, two thirds of its people are shiite arabs. They are ruled by a tyranny formed by the sunni minority. The US Navy has a large naval base there.
3. By the “rules” of democracy, the shiites should be in charge. They would then make an alliance with Iran, eject the US Navy, and give control of both sides of the Persian Gulf to Iran. Iran would then use Bahrain as a springboard to induce the secession of the shiite arabs from Saudi Arabia, giving control of their oil to Iran.
4. That’s an obvious game changer. If Obama and Hillary support democracy at all costs, then Iran gets all the Persian Gulf oil, and America’s economy crashes.
Prediction: Obama and Hillary will stop talking about arab regime change. They will probably try to distract the world’s attention by shifting towards emphasizing imaginary “atrocities” by the “evil” Israeli Jews against “innocent, sweet” palestinian muslims.