The Secret Awfulness of Saudi Arabia
Douglas Murray/Gatestone Institute/October 20/15
http://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/6722/saudi-awfulness
Ali Mohammed Al-Nimr, arrested in Saudi Arabia at the age of seventeen, has been sentenced to beheading and crucifixion.
Last week, two Saudi human rights activists were sentenced to jail for illegally establishing a human rights organization, questioning the credibility and objectivity of the judiciary, interfering with the Saudi Human Rights Commission (one can imagine what that is like), and describing Saudi Arabia as a police state.
Karl Andree, a 74-year-old British grandfather and a UK citizen who has been imprisoned in Saudi Arabia for the last year, is due to receive 350 lashes for unpardonable crime of being caught with some homemade wine.
British Justice Minister Michael Gove has now reportedly insisted that the UK could not possibly enter into a contract to train Saudi prison guards.
The naïve Western leaders are those who expect our countries to carry on with “business as usual” with a regime that sentences our citizens to flogging, and that beheads and crucifies political dissidents.
The naïve politicians are those who think the publics of the West do not know what a human rights sewer Saudi Arabia is, or think that we will put up with it. If that were ever the case, that time is over.
Is international opinion on Saudi Arabia finally shifting? For years, one of the great embarrassments and contradictions of Western diplomacy has been the intimacy of the West’s relationship with the House of Saud. Of course, both Britain and America have some responsibility for installing and then maintaining the Saudi royal family in their position. Were it not for this circumstance, in addition to the world’s largest oil reserves, the people we now call the Saudi royal family would be neither richer nor any more famous than any other group of goat-herders in the region.
For decades now, the Saudi royal family has been a continuing embarrassment for the civilized world. Their brand of extreme Wahhabi Islam is not only — against some very stiff competition — one of the worst interpretations of the Islamic faith. It is the basis of a religious and judicial system that they have not been content to keep within their borders, but rather regard as such a success that they have sponsored it around the world, while promoting violence abroad to keep it from exploding at home.
From the mosques of North Africa to the schools of Europe, these abusive and retrograde Wahhabi teachings can be found everywhere. Ten years ago, the Saudi-sponsored King Fahad Academy in West London was found to be using Saudi Ministry of Education textbooks that, among much else, taught their young students that Christians and Jews are apes and monkeys. But even while such teachings have been pushed into our countries, they have been swallowed by Western leaders. The possibility that whatever regime follows the House of Saud in Arabia could be even worse could have been one reason for this, at least in recent years. Another reason, probably much more likely, was the simple desire for a slice of the desert kingdom’s cash. So, even while Saudi Arabia practices and exports a brand of Islam essentially indistinguishable from that of ISIS, the alliance has gone on. Until now.
In March of this year, Sweden’s Foreign Minister, Margot Wallstrom, spoke out against Saudi Arabia’s brutalizing repression of 50% of its population: women. She also objected to the Saudi regime’s sentencing of blogger Raif Badawi to a thousand lashes for the crime of writing a mild blog regarding the wish for a bit more speech. The sentence was, said Wallstrom, “medieval” and a “cruel attempt to silence modern forms of expression.”
The Saudi propaganda regime promptly attacked the Swedish minister for “unacceptable interference in the internal affairs of Saudi Arabia.” The Saudi propaganda machine has had to issue similar statements quite a lot as of late, most recently when worldwide attention finally focussed in the past few weeks on the case of Ali Mohammed Al-Nimr, arrested at the age of seventeen, who has been sentenced to beheading and crucifixion. The international uproar that this unspeakable sentence has finally triggered suggests that the House of Saud may — in the media Information Age — not only have overstretched itself, but come to the end of a road.
This past week, another two Saudi human rights activists — Abdelrahman Al-Hamid and Abdelaziz Al-Sinedi — were sentenced to jail for, among other similar charges, illegally establishing a human rights organization, questioning the credibility and objectivity of the judiciary, interfering with the Saudi Human Rights Commission (one can imagine what that is like), and describing Saudi Arabia as a police state.
These cases are, finally, being noticed in a significant way, and being picked up in mainstream newspapers and media outlets. Now, there is a British case that has caught international attention. In recent days, Karl Andree, a 74-year-old grandfather and British citizen, who has been imprisoned in Saudi Arabia for the last year, is due to receive 350 lashes after being found guilty of the unpardonable crime of being caught with some homemade wine.
As his family back home in Britain have said in an appeal to Prime Minister David Cameron, it is likely that this sentence will kill Mr. Andree, who has already been weakened by cancer.
British citizen Karl Andree, a 74-year-old grandfather and cancer survivor, has been in a Saudi Arabian prison for the last year and is due to receive 350 lashes — all for the crime of possessing homemade wine.
It is significant that cases such as this, of routine Saudi barbarism, are finally causing a reaction. The UK and Saudi Arabia had agreed on a contract worth £5.9 million (USD $9.1 million) for the UK to train Saudi prison guards, but in recent days the UK government withdrew from this contract. The cause was a cabinet discussion in which the new British Justice Minister, Michael Gove, reportedly insisted that the UK could not possibly have such an agreement with Saudi Arabia. The two specific cases he is said to have highlighted were the case of Mr Andree and the case of Ali Mohammed Al-Nimr.
The Foreign Secretary is alleged to have disagreed with Mr. Gove, describing his views as “naïve.” But the Justice Minister, appropriately enough, prevailed. It is not Michael Gove, of course, who is naïve. The naïve Western leaders are those who expect our countries to carry on with “business as usual” with a regime that sentences our citizens — or anyone — to flogging, and that beheads and crucifies political dissidents.
The days of the secret awfulness of Saudi Arabia are long over. Now the routine abuses and atrocities of Saudi Arabia are rapidly moving from the blogosphere to the newspapers to the tables of cabinet with an unstoppable momentum. The naïve politicians are the ones who think the publics of the West do not know what a human rights sewer Saudi Arabia is, or think that, while knowing this, we in the West will all sit back and put up with it. If there were ever a time when this was the case, that time is over.
http://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/6722/saudi-awfulness.
Europe seen as wild card as Iran nuclear deal goes into effect
Julian Pecquet/Al-Monitor/October 20/15
Critics of the nuclear deal with Iran want the Obama administration to quickly set firm limits on sanctions relief to prevent the international coalition that brought Tehran to the table from unraveling.
With the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA) having gone into effect Oct. 18, skeptics worry that a trickle of European companies entering the Iranian market will soon turn into a flood. They say that could neuter the non-nuclear sanctions that are supposed to stay in place under the deal, while making it harder for Europe and the United States to collaborate on snapping back nuclear sanctions if Iran violates its terms.
The future of the sanctions regime “really depends on how assertive will US authorities be early on in the game, because it will set the precedent and the tone for the Europeans,” said Emanuele Ottolenghi, a senior fellow at the hawkish Foundation for the Defense of Democracies who has advised Congress as well as several European foreign ministries on Iranian issues. He told Al-Monitor, “If the Europeans see that there are little consequences and there is little action against them, they’ll push the boundaries, no doubt.”
US Congress has similar concerns.
“I strongly believe that the strength and unity of our transatlantic coalition will continue to play a positive role in the long-term success of this deal,” Sen. Jeanne Shaheen, D-N.H., the top Democrat on the Senate Foreign Relations panel on European affairs, wrote to the French, British and German ambassadors last month. “The JCPOA contains strong incentives for Iran to meet its nuclear commitments, but a unified response to any Iranian violation is the best way to ensure the long-term success of this agreement.”
Under the terms of the deal, both Europe and the United States are set to suspend their nuclear sanctions once Iran has taken the agreed-upon steps to dismantle its nuclear program, which should take six months or so. The United States, however, will indefinitely retain a broad range of sanctions that aim to punish Iran for its support for terrorism, human rights violations and ballistic missile research.
For the most part, European and other countries outside the United States will be allowed to resume foreign trade with Iran on everything from oil and gas to financial services, transportation and related sectors — about 95% of Iran’s external economic activity, according to former State Department sanctions official Richard Nephew. The United States, however, will retain the ability to crack down on a number of foreign transactions with Iran, fueling the current debate over how far to turn the screws.
Because the US list of entities sanctioned for non-nuclear activities is longer than Europe’s, the Treasury Department has some flexibility in how difficult it wants to make life for European firms that opt to do business with redlined Iranian firms. In addition, Congress is all but certain to try to slap new sanctions on Iran for its support for its terrorist proxies, notably in Syria.
“The administration has asserted that it is committed to even making additional designations under some of the executive orders, as far as terrorism and proliferation,” said Kenneth Katzman, a sanctions expert with the Congressional Research Service. He told Al-Monitor, “Some of the entities on the EU list that may be delisted by the European Union will still be listed by the United States, and therefore secondary sanctions would still apply. It’s going to make it very difficult to have transactions with those entities.”
US government agencies are also expected to play a major role in interpreting the laws that prevent foreign entities from using the US financial system to do business with Iran. With Iran opening up to foreign investment in the coming months and years and the JCPOA allowing foreign banks to transact with Iran using US dollars, potential investors will have to pay close attention to the pending rules.
“What I’ve told clients is, there’s two things they should be waiting for,” Erich Ferrari, an attorney who handles transactions with Iran, told Al-Monitor. He said, “No. 1 is wait for further guidance to come out from OFAC [the Treasury Department’s Office of Foreign Assets Control] to determine how they’re going to deal with the implementation of US sanctions relief. [And] also be aware of any US person who may be involved either directly or indirectly in transactions for which they would want to re-enter Iran or in activities that may provide back-office support to the company.”
President Barack Obama himself has sought to assuage any fears on Capitol Hill that Europe and the United States will have a rift over Iran sanctions.
“I am confident that we can impose consequences for Iranian violations without having to do so alone,” Obama wrote in a Sept. 7 letter to Sen. Ron Wyden, D-Ore. “Our European allies have made clear that they would join us in re-imposing unilateral sanctions and have conveyed to us that they stand ready to re-impose European Union sanctions in a calibrated manner as appropriate in the event Iran violates the JCPOA incrementally, ensuring that we can deter such non-compliance as well.”
Wyden announced his support for the deal a day later.
Critics of the deal aren’t so sure. They see Britain reopening its embassy in Tehran and France sending business delegations and worry that those warming ties could foreshadow a trans-Atlantic clash in the future.
“It’s going to be a challenge for the administration to persuade the Europeans that it’s appropriate to keep all those sanctions for terrorism and other reasons,” said Patrick Clawson, the director of research at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy. He told Al-Monitor, “Certainly the way in which European businesses are acting, and the way European governments are acting about their businesses’ involvement in Iran, suggests that they think their companies are going to be able to carry on financial transactions with Iran without a whole lot of impediments. And that’s kind of hard to square with a continued application of these secondary sanctions.”
If history is any guide, Clawson and others argue, the United States may well end up caving in to European pressure just as what happened in the mid-1990s with the passage of the Iran and Libya Sanctions Act. After European nations rebelled against the US effort to stop them from doing business with who they want, President Bill Clinton and his successors gave them a broad exemption that infuriated Congress.
“Soon after the bill was signed into law, the Europeans complained about it and the Clinton administration gave them a carve-out, which was not called for in the bill at all,” said a former aide to former Sen. Al D’Amato, R-N.Y., the bill’s author. “They got a carve-out waiver for everything. Right there is your explanation for what can happen.”
Defenders of the deal argue that’s why Republicans are deluded if they think they can rip up the deal and hope to get Europe on board with sanctions again. But they also downplay the risks of such a rift happening in the first place if the United States abides by the deal.
“I think other countries are going for the most part to ignore attempts by the United States to twist their arms not to implement the deal if Iran continues to comply with the agreement,” said Daryl Kimball, executive director of the Arms Control Association. He told Al-Monitor, “But at the same time, if Iran violates its commitments, the Europeans are going to be there right alongside us to snap back sanctions and take other necessary actions. They’re the ones who have been taking on the economic sacrifices over the past decade, not the United States.”
As a result, even some critics of the deal are advising Republicans and other foes of the deal in Congress to work in tandem with the Europeans if they have any hope of success.
“If the message is, ‘We’re still fighting the deal,’ then Europeans are going to shrug, because the deal is done,” said Ottolenghi. He added, “But if the message is, ‘We’re not fighting the deal, but what we’re doing is to ensure that the business community is diligent about who they’re doing business with’ … then I think you will have a different response because the argument will not be, ‘Don’t do business with Iran,’ the argument will be, ‘Do business with that part of Iran that is not tainted by connections with the proliferation-industrial complex, with terrorism, with the IRGC [Iran Revolutionary Guard Corps], and so on.’”
http://www.al-monitor.com/pulse/originals/2015/10/europe-iran-nuclear-deal-implementation-wild-card.html?utm_source=Al-Monitor+Newsletter+[English]&utm_campaign=802ffd552e-October_20_2015&utm_medium=email&utm_term=0_28264b27a0-802ffd552e-102494681
