Thread: Saudis Urge Action on Syria

• MIDDLE EAST NEWS
• Updated September 1, 2013, 6:29 p.m. ET

Saudis Urge Action on Syria

Saudi Arabia struggled Sunday to assemble an Arab coalition that would give the U.S. and other Western countries vital political backing for airstrikes on the Syrian regime.

• By
• ELLEN KNICKMEYERin Riyadh, Saudi Arabia,
• MATT BRADLEYin Cairo, and
• NOUR MALASin Istanbul

Saudi Arabia, long the most passionate advocate of tough international action against Syrian President Bashar al-Assad, struggled Sunday to assemble an Arab coalition that would give the U.S. and other Western countries vital political backing for airstrikes on the Syrian regime.

Even beyond the Syria crisis, Arab analysts and diplomats said Sunday, Arab states were re-examining fundamental security strategies in the wake of President Barack Obama's unexpected decision on Saturday to put on hold proposed U.S.-led attacks on Syrian military targets pending a U.S. congressional vote on such an operation later this month.

Saudi Foreign Minister Saud al Faisal indirectly acknowledged Sunday that the Arab world remained reliant on the U.S. as the region's policeman of last resort against transgressions by fellow Arab states, as well as the Arab world's top tier of protection against Iran.

"There is no capacity in the Arab world to respond to this kind of crisis," Prince Saud said, speaking of Syria. He bitterly faulted the deadlocked United Nations Security Council for failing to approve international military action, two years into a Syrian conflict that the U.N. says has killed more than 100,000 people.

Prince Saud spoke to reporters before joining other Arab foreign ministers in a meeting in Cairo on Sunday about the Syrian crisis. The night ended with an Arab League statement that appeared substantively no different from past statements by the 22-nation Arab group on the topic of international intervention for Syria. Ministers called for international action under the United Nations and in accord with international law to stop Mr. Assad's forces from killing Syrian civilians.

An Arab diplomat, speaking on condition he not be identified further, disagreed with a reporter who characterized the Arab League statement as meaningless. It was "basically a call to action" on Syria, he said, for the international community.
Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates were the states pushing hardest for explicit Arab League endorsement of a U.S.-led strike on Syria, the diplomat said.

Ahmad Jarba, the Syrian Opposition Coalition's president, interrupted a schedule of meetings in European capitals to travel to Cairo to press the Arab diplomats to endorse a Western-led attack.

The Arab ministers' closed-door debate became heated at one point. "Are you Lebanon's foreign minister, or Bashar al-Assad's?" the Emirati foreign minister demanded at one point of the representative of Lebanon, the Arab diplomat said.
Iraq—itself governed now by a Shiite-led administration that came to power following the 2003 U.S. military invasion—opposed endorsing a U.S.-led airstrike on the Syrian regime, as did Algeria, according to analysts and the diplomat. Egypt abstained.

In the end, the strongest Arab statement of support yet for a U.S. military strike on Mr. Assad's security forces came from Saudi Arabia, independently.

"We call upon the international community with all its powers to stop this aggression against the Syrian people," Prince Saud told reporters before Sunday night's meeting.

It was up to Syrians to decide whether they wanted U.S.-led military strikes, the Saudi foreign minister said. He noted that the Arab League already had recognized the Syrian opposition, which on Sunday reiterated support for Western-led military strikes, as the representative of Syria.

The Syrian people "know their interests, so whatever they accept, we accept, and whatever they refuse, we refuse," the Saudi diplomat said.

Saudi Arabia's call still stopped short of explicitly and unequivocally endorsing a U.S.-led military campaign.

Mr. Obama has courted such a public endorsement by Arab leaders since Aug. 21, when an alleged chemical attack by the Syrian government killed hundreds of people in a Damascus suburb. The attack heightened calls for armed international intervention against Mr. Assad's regime, with the Middle East and Europe looking to the U.S., as the world's military heavyweight, to lead the way.

Saudi Arabia's royal family and many ordinary Saudis have tribal ties with Syrians. Saudi Arabia has sought to contain the regional ambitions of Mr. Assad and his closest allies, Iran and Lebanon's Hezbollah.

It was unclear Sunday whether Saudi Arabia's belated and still-partial public endorsement would have much of an impact internationally.

Support from the Arab League would provide important political cover for the Obama administration not just in the region, analysts said, but also within the U.S. domestic debate on Syria.

"What you have is the Americans are looking at the Arabs and the Arab League, and the Arabs and the League will look right back at the Americans," said Salman Shaikh, director of the Brookings Doha Center, a Qatar-based affiliate of the Washington, D.C.-based Brookings Institution think tank.

Saudi Arabia and Qatar, while saying publicly that any military action should be under the U.N. Security Council, since the alleged August chemical attack increasingly have pushed the Obama administration behind the scenes for military intervention, Arab and U.S. officials have said.

Saudi Arabia and Qatar are helping to arm and fund Syria's rebels, U.S. and Gulf officials say.

Turkey had been the sole Muslim country in the Middle East to publicly volunteer for a military coalition against Mr. Assad's regime. Arab states—bound in part by reluctance to attack a fellow Arab government—stayed quiet in public.

The refusal of Britain's Parliament late last week to support a British role in attacks left France and Turkey as the only major partners in a U.S.-led offensive, and provided an early sign that the whole operation was in trouble.

"It's no secret that the statement President Obama made [Saturday] actually caught everyone by surprise, including those that called for action," the Arab diplomat said.

That surprise echoed through the Arab world on Sunday. Much of state-controlled news media in Saudi Arabia—which continued to emphasize any campaign in Syria as American-orchestrated, rather than something Gulf leaders were encouraging—stressed that Congress would take up the Syria issue by Sept. 9. In conversations and in social media, however, Arabs on Sunday bluntly called U.S. officials "weak" and even "cowards."

"This is the dilemma for the region, between an impulsive president like George W. Bush or a no-action president, a paralyzed president," said Khalid Dekhayel, a political writer and columnist in Riyadh, the Saudi capital.

Many Arabs now worry that the Syrian regime and its allies—Iran, the Lebanese Hezbollah and Russia—will perceive the U.S. as weak, and will step up both attacks on the opposition in Syria and efforts to gain influence in the Middle East, Mr. Dekhayel said. Another fear: Absent action by Western states, foreign, Sunni-Muslim fighters are likely to continue streaming into Syria to battle Mr. Assad's minority Allawite regime.

Gulf states, fearing what was growing assertiveness by Shiite Muslim Iran after the U.S. toppled the Sunni Muslim government of Iraq, have spent hundreds of billions of dollars on arms purchases since the U.S. Iraq invasion changed the region's balance of power. The Gulf governments have continued to rely on the U.S. military, whose presence here safeguards allies Saudi Arabia and Israel as well as global oil supplies, for defense.

As a political writer in Saudi Arabia, Mr. Dekhayel said, he had long warned that it was a mistake for Saudi Arabia to rely too much on any foreign power for its protection. "And I think President Obama proved my point," he said.

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424127887323932604579048910595598686.html

I would bet they are.
http://www.alipac.us/f9/dont-show-ob...ttacks-286649/

http://www.alipac.us/f9/ap-reporter-...attack-286705/

Saudis support the Al Qaeda rebels. This article gives a rundown of all the players and their reasons. Short and VERY informative.

http://www.alipac.us/f9/who-benefits...-syria-286650/