the attempt to shift the whole balance around and to give the Sunni world primacy has been part of American policy from 1996 onwards.
https://x.com/kennardmatt/status/1869680560701903032
Alastair Crooke, former MI6 officer and security adviser to the EU special envoy to Middle East (1997-2003), tells Chris Hedges that after the 2006 war in Lebanon a meeting took place between US vice-president Dick Cheney and Prince Bandar, head of Saudi intelligence, in which Cheney was moaning about how the invasion of Iraq was meant to weaken Iran - but now Hezbollah had emerged victorious from the war in Lebanon.
Bandar interrupted and said the Saudi King believed 'we’ve got to take out Syria, which is the weak link in this whole process'. Cheney asked 'what do you have in mind?' Bandar said 'the solution is Islamic revolutionaries, they can work for you'. Cheney backed off and said ‘well, the US can’t do too much about that’. Bandar replied ‘no problem we will do it all for you, it will be done, you don’t have to intervene.’
Crooke says Saudi Arabia was proposing to invert the whole paradigm of the Middle East. In the 19th century and beyond it was Iran, the Shah, which was this big powerful country and the leader in the Middle East. What Bandar was saying was let’s invert it: let’s isolate Iran and make the Sunnis paramount in the Middle East, give them the primacy.
Crooke says the attempt to shift the whole balance around and to give the Sunni world primacy has been part of American policy from 1996 onwards. 1996 was when this idea of working with the monarchs and emirs of the Gulf states against Baathist regimes first - but then against Iran - began.
Interview here:
posted by Satish Sharma at
14:57
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