- The world-renowned Times newspaper of London published
a report in its July 5th edition titled, "Saudis give nod to Israeli
raid on Iran." The story, were it true, would imply a dramatic change
in Saudi foreign and military policy whose consequences potentially could
lead to a World War III. A more serious investigation reveals that there
are nasty elements of what military psychologists and intelligence specialists
term "disinformation" at work trying to foster discord across
the Muslim oil-producing world. The question is Qui Bono? Who ultimately
benefits from such disinformation?
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- According to the London Times, the flagship paper of
the giant media group owned by naturalized American citizen, Australian
medga mogul, Rupert Murdoch, "The head of Mossad, Israel's overseas
intelligence service, has assured Benjamin Netanyahu, its prime minister,
that Saudi Arabia would turn a blind eye to Israeli jets flying over the
kingdom during any future raid on Iran's nuclear sites."
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- The London paper went on to report to allege that Meir
Dagan, the head of Israeli's Mossad intelligence service, had held secret
meetings early this year with leading Saudi officials and that as well
former Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert had held such secret talks. Citing
an unnamed "diplomatic source" from an unnamed country, the Times
went on to quote, "The Saudis have tacitly agreed to the Israeli air
force flying through their airspace on a mission which is supposed to be
in the common interests of both Israel and Saudi Arabia."
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- Were that report accurate, it would be, excuse the expression,
a bombshell of a nuclear dimension. The story suggests that war preparations
against Iran are very advanced in the wake of the tumultuous elections
in Iran last month in which the conservative
- Mahmud Ahmedinejad. Ahmedinejad was declared the victor
against massive opposition protests, protests fanned actively from outside
at a certain point by US Government-linked NGOs and by the US State Department.
-
- A recent statement by Obama's Vice President, Joe Biden
with ABC's George Stephanoupolos, where he said in answer to a question:
"Look, Israel can determine for itself - it's a sovereign nation -
what's in their interest and what they decide to do relative to Iran and
anyone else." Whether we agree or not? The interviewer asked. "Whether
we agree or not," said the vice president." That suggested that
the Obama Administration had changed its earlier reported "veto"
over potential Israeli military strike in Iran. It was the first time a
senior Obama administration official left Israeli the military option against
Iran's nuclear sites.
- British intelligence disinfo?
-
- Because the Times story was so important and because
the implications of a "Saudi nod" to Israeli military over-flight
en route to bomb Teheran or Iranian targets could potentially unleash a
Holy War within the one-billion strong Muslim world, I decided to probe
more deeply. What emerged was quite different from the Times account.
-
- I contacted very reliable sources with extensive involvement
in Saudi Arabia and who have been reliable in the past, to ask whether
the Times story of a secret agreement with Israel over bombing Iran was
accurate. The answer I got back was revealing.
-
- The Times itself cited a denial statement from the Saudi
Government, but in a way to leave the impression it was not serious, merely
covering up the truth of the Times story of collusion between Israeli intelligence
and the Saudi Kingdom.
-
- According to this Saudi inside confidential source, however,
"not only have we denied it, it would be absolute political suicide
to even contemplate letting the Israelis cross our airspace!"
-
- That corresponded with my knowledge of years of quiet
diplomatic dialogue between, yes, even Ahmedinejad and the Saudi Royal
family. Indeed, it was reportedly largely due to agreement between Iran's
Ahmedinejad and the Saudi King Abdullah, during a personal meeting in Riyadh
in March 2007, that agreement was reached to try to create lessening of
tensions between Sunni and Shiite muslim groups in Iraq. Those talks had
more to do, according to on-the-ground reports, with the dramatic falloff
in killings in Iraq than General Petraeus' infamous "surge" strategy.
-
- Who is behind the Times?
-
- The Times of London is one of the world's best known
newspapers. In its better times, during the First and even Second World
Wars, it was the newspaper of record of Britain, comparable to what the
New York Times also once was in the United States. The Times in those days
was one of the most influential propaganda instruments of a little-known
and extremely influential elite group that called itself the Round Table,
as in King Arthur's legendary Knights of the Round Table. The Round Table
group, initially created out of the will of British mining magnate and
inciter of the 1899 Boer War, Sir Cecil Rhodes, played a key role in manipulating
British pubic opinion into going to war in 1914 against the German "Hun,"
in a fruitless attempt to save the "English way of life" as they
saw it, to save the declining British Empire.
-
- Since the newspaper came into financial difficulties
in the early 1980's, its then-owners, the Astor family, sold it and Australian
media czar Rupert Murdoch bought it, placing it under his News Corporation
International which also owns the New York Post, the San Antonio Star,
the Hollywood 20th Century Fox studios, the right-wing neo-conservative
Fox News TV network and until recently the flagship of US neo-conservative
William Kristol, the Weekly Standard. In 2007 Murdoch added the prestigious
Wall Street Journal to his stable.
- The Board of Directors of Murdoch's News Corp. holding
company, owners of the Times of London, is also interesting. It includes,
in addition to Murdoch as Chairman and CEO, also former Spanish Prime Minister
Jose Maria Aznar, the very conservative and very controversial friend of
Britain's Tony Blair, who split EU opposition to the 2003 Iraq War by backing
Blair and Bush. Murdoch's board also includes Andrew Knight of J. Rothschild
Capital Management, the financial holding of Jacob Lord Rothschild, the
head of the British branch of the legendary financial family. It also includes
Viet D. Dinh who served as an Assistant Attorney General of the United
States from 2001 to 2003, under George W. Bush, and who was the chief architect
of the USA PATRIOT Act.
-
-
-
-
- Former Bush war ally, Tony Blair owed his
job to the Times' Rupert Murdoch
-
-
- To put it mildly, Murdoch's News Corp. has a distinct
political or geopolitical profile. It is clearly in the neo-conservative
war hawk camp. It clearly backed Tony Blair, who according to London sources,
owed his job to the backing of Murdoch's Sun tabloid newspaper in the UK,
a paper better known for its skimpily clad beauties and sensational stories
than for serious analysis. That puts the "impartiality" of Blair
today as official "Envoy of the Quartet" on the Middle East,
the Quarter being the motley combination of the United Nations, the European
Union, the United States, and Russia.
-
- The Controversial John Bolton
-
- It is also notable that in its story of the "Saudi
nod to Israel," Murdoch's Times chose to cite the infamous former
Bush UN "acting" Ambassador, neo-conservative John Bolton, who
told the Times that it was "entirely logical" for the Israelis
to use Saudi airspace. The Times wrote, "Bolton, who has talked to
several Arab leaders, added: 'None of them would say anything about it
publicly but they would certainly acquiesce in an over-flight if the Israelis
didn't trumpet it as a big success.' Arab states would condemn a raid when
they spoke at the UN but would be privately relieved to see the threat
of an Iranian bomb removed, he said."
- John Bolton was one of the founding members of the pro-war
Project for the New American Century think-tank along with Dick Cheney,
Paul Wolfowitz, Don Rumsfeld and most of the prominent neo-conservative
hawks of the Bush Administration. As well, Bolton is alleged to be a member
of the ultra-secretive Council for National Policy which brings the Rev.
Moon cult, the Church of Scientology and the ultra-religious Christian
Right under one neat political umbrella, the heart of the George W. Bush
right-wing political machine. As Bush Administration State Department official,
Bolton was accused by his associates of helping fake intelligence on Niger
yellowcake uranium sales to Saddam Hussein's Iraq, a faked intelligence
report, aided by Tony Blair's good offices, that was falsely cited by Secretary
of State Colin Powell as justification for the March 2003 US invasion of
Iraq.
- This time it seems that the same Bolton and Rupert Murdoch's
Times of London are again in bed together, this time in an effort to drive
a wedge of distrust across the Muslim oil-producing world by planting disinformation
about an agreement between Saudi Arabia and Israeli military intelligence
that never existed
-
- Cui Bono? By planting a false story that Saudi Arabia's
worst opponent, Israel, is now its closest friend, allied with the Netanyahu
government against Iran, the false story spreads and sows distrust that
functions along the classic lines of Roman military strategy: divide and
conquer. Whatever internal disagreement in foreign policy between the regime
of Iran's Shiite President, Ahmedinejad and the Sunni Saudi Kingdom, more
likely the case is that the Saudis no matter how much they disapproved
of Iran-would always side with a fellow Muslim before they would side with
Israel or the US. The Iranian leaders come to Saudi Arabia often; they
don't hate each other according to well-informed reports from the region.
- There appears to be a split within the Obama Administration
over Iran policy. However if Biden represents the hawk faction that finds
an Israeli military strike an "option" the US Chairman of the
Joint Chiefs of Staff, Admiral Mike Mullen has just warned on national
TV, notably on Murdoch's Fox News TV that any attack against Iran would
be "very destabilizing." Mullen was quoted by AFP as saying,
"I've been one who has been concerned about a strike on Iran for some
time, because it could be very destabilizing, and it is the unintended
consequences of that which aren't predictable."
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