Saudi Monarchy is ‘Legit’ Because They Provide International Aid

Earlier this week, journalist Sam Husseini questioned the Saudi Prince Turki al-Faisal al-Sa’ud over the legitimacy of the Saudi regime at a news conference held at the National Press Club. Later on the same day, the National Press Club suspended Husseini’s membership for two weeks due to his conduct at the conference.

The video of the exchange between Husseini and Prince Turki, which has been floating around the Internet, gives a few different interesting insights relating to the Saudi regime and the idea of free journalism.

Prince Turki’s answer in defense of the authoritarian regime provoke even more questions about how Saudi Arabia view democracy. He starts off by saying that “I don’t need to justify my country’s legitimacy. We’re participants in all of the international organizations and we contribute to the welfare of people through aid program not just directly from Saudi Arabia but through all the international agencies that are working throughout the world to provide help and support for people”. This comment seems to insinuate that participation in international organizations and providing aid automatically qualifies any regime to be legitimate. By that logic, regimes do not require the consensus and support of their own people to remain in power as long as the government is able to provide international aid. Legitimacy can be bought.

Prince Turki’s next comment about the fact that women did not get the right to vote in America until about 1910 is even more troubling. The underlying assumption seems to be that the Arabs are not ready for democracy yet. Such an argument asumes that development is a linear trajectory that countries must follow in order to move from a state of underdevelopment and backwardness to socially and politically developed nations. Therefore, Saudi Arabia will always be playing catch up with the Western countries in in terms of social and political development, and will be a democracy much like the United States in almost a 100 years.

In September 2011, King Abdullah announced that Saudi women will be allowed to vote for the next municipal elections in 2015, however the women still do not have the right to drive and depend on a male guardian for all decisions relating to travel, work, health care, education, and business affairs. Therefore, it is unclear exactly how empowering this right to vote will be for the Saudi women.

The most important issue that comes out of this incident is Husseini’s suspension over posing a very confrontational question to an important political figure. It is hard to determine whether The National Press Club reprimanded Husseini for his aggressive tone or because he challenged the Saudi Prince. While I believe that Husseini was right in questioning the Saudi prince, those are not the only questions that need to be asked. Another important facet of this issue is the American government’s support of the Saudi autocracy. One of the reasons why authoritarian regimes have survived in the Middle East (although many of them are now being challenged by their people) is that they are often supported by the United States, and the Saudi relationship with the United States is an area that could use some critical analysis.

Has the Iranian Elite Force Lost the Plot?

An Iranian car salesman fromTexas, a cousin working for the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) , the Saudi ambassador to Washington, a Mexican drug cartel, questionable transfer for a large sum of money and a bungled assassination plot. As the news is only a couple of days old and murky details are in the process of emerging, it makes you wonder, have the allegedly diabolical elite Quds Force lost the plot?

The Quds Force accused of planning the assassination of the Saudi Ambassador is the elite overseas operations unit of the Iranian Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps is thought to be linked to militant groups such as Hezbollah in Lebanon, Hamas in Gaza and to insurgent attacks in South America, Syria, Iraq and Afghanistan.

What’s interesting is that less than a day after U.S. allegations, mainstream media is filled with doubt about Irani government’s involvement in this plot, and are being critical of the lack of substantial evidence produced by the U.S. government. Would an entity that has managed to remain so secretive and is believed to be the best at what they are doing really outsource such a critical task to the Mexican drug cartel? In an interview to NPR, Afshon Ostovar, a senior analyst at the Center for Naval Analyses, and writing a book about Iran’s Revolutionary Guards said that, “to simply have a commander’s cousin that happens to live in Texas and ask him to put these things together just doesn’t fit.”

While experts are generally skeptical of the Quds Force’s involvement in the assassination plot, not many people seem to be questioning how much the elite force is really capable of. Writing for the New York Times, Neil MacFarquhar claims, “the force, an elite international operations unit within Iran’s Revolutionary Guards Corps, has traditionally stuck closely to its main concern, the Middle East, and has almost always worked through proxies, making its own fingerprints difficult to trace. Some of its more infamous proxies include Hezbollah in Lebanon, the Palestinian group Hamas, the Mahdi Army in Iraq and some elements of the Taliban in Afghanistan. Any Iranian dealings with Al Qaeda would have been done through the Quds Force.”

If their fingerprints are difficult to trace, what is the evidence that the Quds Force is connected to these groups? For MacFarquhar the proof seems to be in making the name connection, “the Quds Force — its name is the Arabic word for Jerusalem”. A quick search on the Internet would have revealed to MacFarquhar that in Arabic it’s not just the name of Jerusalem, it means “holy”.

From the U.S. point of view, Iran already is a national security threat and this event has mobilized top government officials to push for even stronger economic sanctions on Iran to isolate the country further and deter it from pursuing its nuclear path. “One provocative theory that American officials are considering is that the assassination was intended as retaliation for the killing of several Iranian nuclear scientists during the past two years. Those deaths are widely believed to have been the work of Israel, with tacit American approval, to slow Iran’s progress toward a nuclear weapon,” writes the New York Times. So, Iran, allegedly, attempts to assassinate the Saudi ambassador to United States and the U.S. asks the UN to take action, and yet there is no talk of accountability when the U.S. and Israel kill Iranian nuclear scientists.

The Iranian government and the Revolutionary Guard Corps are not unaware of the animosity the United States and Saudi Arabia have towards them, it doesn’t make much sense for Iran to conceive of such a clumsy assassination attempt. Given how the Western world and some Islamic nations feel about Iran as well as the current situation of power changes in the Middle East, why would Iran provoke the Americans and the Saudis? Moreover, President Obama has himself admitted that the Iranian economy is in a difficult state, therefore it doesn’t make much logical sense for Iran to provoke an unnecessary war, especially in light of recent history, i.e. Iraq.

Finally, the most important question remains, how much do we really know about this super secretive Quds Force? And what are they really capable of? And did the elite force said to be “highly trained in tradecraft and military tactics” really make a huge mistake from the perspective of a broader political strategy for the country?