Saudi nuclear weapons ‘on order’ from Pakistan

Following the publication of my blog post entitled In Bed With the Devil: David Cameron and Saudi Arabia https://seagullnic.wordpress.com/2016/01/22/in-bed-with-the-devil-david-cameron-and-saudi-arabia a couple of readers have questioned my assertion that Saudi Arabia is acquiring nuclear weapons capability.

This fact has been corroborated from a number of sources, including Reuters and Associated Press (AP).

I attach an excellent piece published on 6 November 2013 by BBC Newsnight correspondent Mark Urban. Further supportive pieces are noted at the foot of his article:

 

SAUDI Arabia has invested in Pakistani nuclear weapons projects, and believes it could obtain atomic bombs at will, a variety of sources have told BBC Newsnight.

While the kingdom’s quest has often been set in the context of countering Iran’s atomic programme, it is now possible that the Saudis might be able to deploy such devices more quickly than the Islamic republic.

Earlier this year, a senior Nato decision maker told me that he had seen intelligence reporting that nuclear weapons made in Pakistan on behalf of Saudi Arabia are now sitting ready for delivery.

Last month Amos Yadlin, a former head of Israeli military intelligence, told a conference in Sweden that if Iran got the bomb, “the Saudis will not wait one month. They already paid for the bomb, they will go to Pakistan and bring what they need to bring.”

Since 2009, when King Abdullah of Saudi Arabia warned visiting US special envoy to the Middle East Dennis Ross that if Iran crossed the threshold, “we will get nuclear weapons”, the kingdom has sent the Americans numerous signals of its intentions.

Gary Samore, until March 2013 President Barack Obama’s counter-proliferation adviser, has told Newsnight: “I do think that the Saudis believe that they have some understanding with Pakistan that, in extremis, they would have claim to acquire nuclear weapons from Pakistan.”

The story of Saudi Arabia’s project – including the acquisition of missiles capable of delivering nuclear warheads over long ranges – goes back decades.

In the late 1980s they secretly bought dozens of CSS-2 ballistic missiles from China.

These rockets, considered by many experts too inaccurate for use as conventional weapons, were deployed 20 years ago.

This summer experts at defence publishers IHS Jane’s reported the completion of a new Saudi CSS-2 base with missile launch rails aligned with Israel and Iran.

It has also been clear for many years that Saudi Arabia has given generous financial assistance to Pakistan’s defence sector, including, western experts allege, to its missile and nuclear labs.

Visits by the then Saudi defence minister Prince Sultan bin Abdulaziz al Saud to the Pakistani nuclear research centre in 1999 and 2002 underlined the closeness of the defence relationship.

In its quest for a strategic deterrent against India, Pakistan co-operated closely with China which sold them missiles and provided the design for a nuclear warhead.

The Pakistani scientist Abdul Qadeer Khan was accused by western intelligence agencies of selling atomic know-how and uranium enrichment centrifuges to Libya and North Korea.

AQ Khan is also believed to have passed the Chinese nuclear weapon design to those countries. This blueprint was for a device engineered to fit on the CSS-2 missile, i.e the same type sold to Saudi Arabia.

Because of this circumstantial evidence, allegations of a Saudi-Pakistani nuclear deal started to circulate even in the 1990s, but were denied by Saudi officials.

They noted that their country had signed the Non-Proliferation Treaty, and called for a nuclear-free Middle East, pointing to Israel’s possession of such weapons.

The fact that handing over atom bombs to a foreign government could create huge political difficulties for Pakistan, not least with the World Bank and other donors, added to scepticism about those early claims.

In Eating the Grass, his semi-official history of the Pakistani nuclear program, Major General Feroz Hassan Khan wrote that Prince Sultan’s visits to Pakistan’s atomic labs were not proof of an agreement between the two countries. But he acknowledged, “Saudi Arabia provided generous financial support to Pakistan that enabled the nuclear program to continue.”

Whatever understandings did or did not exist between the two countries in the 1990s, it was around 2003 that the kingdom started serious strategic thinking about its changing security environment and the prospect of nuclear proliferation.

A paper leaked that year by senior Saudi officials mapped out three possible responses – to acquire their own nuclear weapons, to enter into an arrangement with another nuclear power to protect the kingdom, or to rely on the establishment of a nuclear-free zone in the Middle East.

It was around the same time, following the US invasion of Iraq, that serious strains in the US/Saudi relationship began to show themselves, says Gary Samore.

The Saudis resented the removal of Saddam Hussein, had long been unhappy about US policy on Israel, and were growing increasingly concerned about the Iranian nuclear program.

In the years that followed, diplomatic chatter about Saudi-Pakistani nuclear cooperation began to increase.

In 2007, the US mission in Riyadh noted they were being asked questions by Pakistani diplomats about US knowledge of “Saudi-Pakistani nuclear cooperation”.

The unnamed Pakistanis opined that “it is logical for the Saudis to step in as the physical ‘protector'” of the Arab world by seeking nuclear weapons, according to one of the State Department cables posted by Wikileaks.

By the end of that decade Saudi princes and officials were giving explicit warnings of their intention to acquire nuclear weapons if Iran did.

Having warned the Americans in private for years, last year Saudi officials in Riyadh escalated it to a public warning, telling a journalist from the Times “it would be completely unacceptable to have Iran with a nuclear capability and not the kingdom”.

But were these statements bluster, aimed at forcing a stronger US line on Iran, or were they evidence of a deliberate, long-term plan for a Saudi bomb? Both, is the answer I have received from former key officials.

One senior Pakistani, speaking on background terms, confirmed the broad nature of the deal – probably unwritten – his country had reached with the kingdom and asked rhetorically “what did we think the Saudis were giving us all that money for? It wasn’t charity.”

Another, a one-time intelligence officer from the same country, said he believed “the Pakistanis certainly maintain a certain number of warheads on the basis that if the Saudis were to ask for them at any given time they would immediately be transferred.”

As for the seriousness of the Saudi threat to make good on the deal, Simon Henderson, Director of the Global Gulf and Energy Policy Program at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy, told BBC Newsnight “the Saudis speak about Iran and nuclear matters very seriously. They don’t bluff on this issue.”

Talking to many serving and former officials about this over the past few months, the only real debate I have found is about how exactly the Saudi Arabians would redeem the bargain with Pakistan.

Some think it is a cash-and-carry deal for warheads, the first of those options sketched out by the Saudis back in 2003; others that it is the second, an arrangement under which Pakistani nuclear forces could be deployed in the kingdom.

Gary Samore, considering these questions at the centre of the US intelligence and policy web, at the White House until earlier this year, thinks that what he calls, “the Nato model”, is more likely.

However ,”I think just giving Saudi Arabia a handful of nuclear weapons would be a very provocative action”, says Gary Samore.

He adds: “I’ve always thought it was much more likely – the most likely option if Pakistan were to honour any agreement would be for be for Pakistan to send its own forces, its own troops armed with nuclear weapons and with delivery systems to be deployed in Saudi Arabia”.

This would give a big political advantage to Pakistan since it would allow them to deny that they had simply handed over the weapons, but implies a dual key system in which they would need to agree in order for ‘Saudi Arabian’ “nukes” to be launched.

Others I have spoken to think this is not credible, since Saudi Arabia, which regards itself as the leader of the broader Sunni Islamic ‘ummah’ or community, would want complete control of its nuclear deterrent, particularly at this time of worsening sectarian confrontation with Shia Iran.

And it is Israeli information – that Saudi Arabia is now ready to take delivery of finished warheads for its long-range missiles – that informs some recent US and Nato intelligence reporting. Israel of course shares Saudi Arabia’s motive in wanting to worry the US into containing Iran.

Amos Yadlin declined to be interviewed for our BBC Newsnight report, but told me by email that “unlike other potential regional threats, the Saudi one is very credible and imminent.”

Even if this view is accurate there are many good reasons for Saudi Arabia to leave its nuclear warheads in Pakistan for the time being.

Doing so allows the kingdom to deny there are any on its soil. It avoids challenging Iran to cross the nuclear threshold in response, and it insulates Pakistan from the international opprobrium of being seen to operate an atomic cash-and-carry.

These assumptions though may not be safe for much longer. The US diplomatic thaw with Iran has touched deep insecurities in Riyadh, which fears that any deal to constrain the Islamic republic’s nuclear program would be ineffective.

Earlier this month the Saudi intelligence chief and former ambassador to Washington Prince Bandar announced that the kingdom would be distancing itself more from the US.

While investigating this, I have heard rumours on the diplomatic grapevine, that Pakistan has recently actually delivered Shaheen mobile ballistic missiles to Saudi Arabia, minus warheads.

These reports, still unconfirmed, would suggest an ability to deploy nuclear weapons in the kingdom, and mount them on an effective, modern, missile system more quickly than some analysts had previously imagined.

In Egypt, Saudi Arabia showed itself ready to step in with large-scale backing following the military overthrow of President Mohammed Morsi’s government.

There is a message here for Pakistan, of Riyadh being ready to replace US military assistance or World Bank loans, if standing with Saudi Arabia causes a country to lose them.

Newsnight contacted both the Pakistani and Saudi governments. The Pakistan Foreign Ministry has described our story as “speculative, mischievous and baseless”.

It adds: “Pakistan is a responsible nuclear weapon state with robust command and control structures and comprehensive export controls.”

The Saudi embassy in London has also issued a statement pointing out that the Kingdom is a signatory to the Non-Proliferation Treaty and has worked for a nuclear free Middle East.

But it also points out that the UN’s “failure to make the Middle East a nuclear free zone is one of the reasons the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia rejected the offer of a seat on the UN Security Council”.

It says the Saudi Foreign Minister has stressed that this lack of international action “has put the region under the threat of a time bomb that cannot easily be defused by manoeuvring around it”.

Further reading: http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/middleeast/saudiarabia/11658338/The-Saudis-are-ready-to-go-nuclear.html

http://nationalinterest.org/feature/the-ultimate-nightmare-north-korea-could-sell-saudi-arabia-13162

 

 

Roll On John

SO, the West has eliminated its Bete Noir at last!

Unlike recent targets, Osama Bin Laden, Saddam Hussein and Colonel Gaddafi, this man is much more ordinary: Mohammed Emwazi, or Jihadi John as our tabloid press insist on calling him.

The British and US military worked “hand in glove” to launch an airstrike against the “notorious” Islamic State (ISIS) extremist Mohammed Emwazi, the UK Government confirmed today, with sources adding that there was a “high degree of certainty” he was killed in the attack.

The Pentagon confirmed late on Thursday night that US forces carried out an airstrike in Syria targeting Emwazi, the British-born Isis terrorist known as “Jihadi John” after appearing in gruesome propaganda videos depicting the apparent beheadings of eight hostages.

Prime Minister David Cameron made a statement from Downing Street on Friday morning confirming the attack amid reports that US officials were “99% certain” that Emwazi had been killed in a drone strike.

He said Emwazi was a threat to innocent people around the world, adding: “This was an act of self-defence. It was the right thing to do.”

Emwazi, a British citizen, participated in videos seemingly showing the murders of US journalists Steven Sotloff and James Foley, American aid worker Abdul-Rahman [Peter] Kassig, British aid workers David Haines and Alan Henning, Japanese journalist Kenji Goto, and a number of other hostages.

Opposition leader Jeremy Corbyn said it would have been preferable for Mr Emwazi to have faced justice in a court of law. “It appears Mohammed Emwazi has been held to account for his callous and brutal crimes. However, it would have been far better for us all if he had been held to account in a court of law.

“These events only underline the necessity of accelerating international efforts, under the auspices of the UN, to bring an end to the Syrian conflict as part of a comprehensive regional settlement.”

Is “Jihadi John” dead! And did he ever really exist?

One thing is certain, the US and UK Governments needed Mr Emwazi dead.

For if he had been brought in front of the International Court of Justice a can of worms may have opened, which Cameron, Obama, Bush and Blair combined would have had difficulty closing.

Last month I published a piece called Jerusalem to Riyadh: an Axis of Evil which looked at some of the dirty tricks used by MI5, CIA, Mossad and Saudi Arabia to maintain organised instability in the Middle East for their own capitalist ends.

And between them create and sustain ISIS as a vehicle for that instability.

Israel and its unregulated Intelligence agency Mossad carries out the dirtiest of deeds, including many False Flag attacks: 7/7 in the UK, the Bulgarian bus bombing of 2014, and the Charlie Hebdo outrage in Paris.

From the very start after the formation of its own nation state Israel’s secret services ran rogue operations, stealing money from the Swiss accounts of Hitler’s victims, bombing a synagogue in Baghdad during prayers in 1951 to scare Jewish Iraqis into moving into tent villages in Israel, and bombing British and American offices in Cairo in 1954 (the Lavon affair) to discredit Egypt’s Nasser regime.

Using American funds provided for other purposes, Mossad bribed its way across Africa and Latin America. The late dictator of Romania, Nicolae Ceaucescu—who edged Sadat toward Jerusalem and Camp David—received about $30 million from the agency.

Elsewhere, Mossad spies threw in their lot with established power, however autocratic: Iran (where they trained the SAVAK secret police in interrogation methods), Zaire, Chad and other African countries, Singapore, Sri Lanka (where they helped the Sinhalese go after Tamils), South Korea, South Africa (where Israel aided the birth of nuclear weapons), and Argentina (supplying arms during the Falklands War).

They helped Morocco capture and kill an opposition leader, Mehdi Ben Barka, in Paris. While in Beirut, they murdered Palestinians and blew up MEA Caravelles at the airport.

During the 1967 war, they protected the disinformation communications which brought Jordan into the conflict by directing the attack on the US spy ship Liberty, an action in which 34 Americans were killed and 171 wounded.

Misinformation has always been a Mossad trademark.

Many theorists and experts now believe that a Mossad / Saudi axis was behind the 9/11 atrocity.

Saudis are active at every level of the terror chain: planners to financiers, cadres to foot soldiers, ideologists to cheerleaders.

The dictatorship of Saudi Arabia which systematically transmits its sick form of Islam across the globe, instigates and funds hatreds, while crushing human freedoms and aspiration.

Both Israel and Saudi Arabia are honoured by the West in a sickening open display of back slapping support as “our great allies”.

Even more seriously, the pernicious Saudi influence is spreading fast and freely. King Salman has offered to build 200 mosques in Germany for recently arrived refugees, many of whom are Muslims.

He offered no money for resettlement or basic needs, but Wahhabi mosques, the Trojan horses of the secret Saudi crusade. Several Islamic schools are also sites of Wahhabism, now a global brand. It makes hearts and minds small and suspicious, turns Muslim against Muslim, and undermines modernists.

The late Laurent Murawiec wrote in 2002: “The Saudis are active at every level of the terror chain, from planners to financiers, from cadres to foot soldiers, from ideologists to cheerleaders.”

Remember that most of the 9/11 killers were Saudi; so was the al-Qaeda hierarchy.

The deadly ongoing role of the US, Israel, Saudi Arabia and Britain in the Middle East is truly frightening.

These countries, along with France, Turkey, Qatar and the Gulf monarchies of the UAE have all in the recent past supported al Qaeda and/or the Islamic State (ISIS) with arms, money, and/or manpower.

The United States has already overthrown the secular governments of Afghanistan, Iraq, and Libya and now is trying to do the same with Syria, thus giving great impetus to the rise of ISIS.

More than a million refugees from these wars of US and British making are currently over-running Europe and North Africa.

The United States has bombed ISIS in Syria, but has used the same occasions to damage Syria’s infrastructure and oil-producing capacity.

The mainstream Western media never mentions the proposed Qatar natural-gas pipelines – whose path to Europe, Syria has stood in the way of for years – as a reason for much of the hostility toward Syria. The pipelines could dethrone Russia as Europe’s dominant source of energy.

US policy in Syria in the years leading up to the 2011 uprising against Syrian leader Bashar al-Assad, which began the whole current mess, was designed to promote sectarianism, which in turn led to civil war with the goal of regime change.

So why does the government of the United States hate Syrian president Bashar al-Assad with such passion?

Is it because, as we’re told, he’s a brutal dictator? But how can that be the reason for the hatred? It would be difficult indeed to name a brutal dictatorship of last 70 years that was not supported by the United States; not only supported, but often put into power and kept in power against the wishes of the population; at present the list would include Saudi Arabia, Honduras, Indonesia, Egypt, Colombia, Qatar, and Israel.

The United States is hostile to the Syrian government for the same reason it has been hostile to Cuba for more than half a century; and hostile to Venezuela for the past 15 years; and earlier to Vietnam, Laos and Cambodia; and to Dominican Republic, Uruguay, and Chile.

What these governments have had in common is independence from American foreign policy; the refusal to be a client state of Washington; the refusal to be continuously hostile to Washington’s Officially Designated Enemies; insufficient respect and zeal for the capitalist way of life.

So if countries of the Middle East don’t convert to democracy and capitalism, you can bet the USA will bomb them into conversion.

Since the end of World War 2 the USA has:

• Attempted to overthrow more than 50 foreign governments, most of which were democratically-elected.

• Dropped bombs on the people of more than 30 countries.

• Attempted to assassinate more than 50 foreign leaders.

• Attempted to suppress a populist or nationalist movement in 20 countries.

• Interfered in democratic elections in at least 30 countries.

During that time the USA has bombed: China 1945-46, Korea 1950-53, China 1950-53, Guatemala 1954, Indonesia 1958, Cuba 1959-60, Guatemala 1960, Belgian Congo 1964, Guatemala 1964, Dominican Republic 1965-66, Peru 1965, Laos 1964-73, Vietnam 1961-73, Cambodia 1969-70, Guatemala 1967-69, Lebanon 1982-84, Grenada 1983-84, Libya 1986, El Salvador 1981-92, Nicaragua 1981-90, Iran 1987-88, Libya 1989, Panama 1989-90, Iraq 1991, Kuwait 1991, Somalia 1992-94, Bosnia 1995, Iran 1998, Sudan 1998, Afghanistan 1998, Yugoslavia – Serbia 1999, Afghanistan 2001, Iraq 2003, Libya 2011 and Syria 2014.

All in the name of Apple Pie and Freedom!

So Jihadi John and ISIS are all part of the latest instalment.

Watch out it could be your country next!

Jerusalem to Riyadh: an Axis of Evil

TODAY it was revealed that UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon asked members of the United Nations Security Council (UNSC) not to take into account a report submitted by the UN Board of Inquiry that accused Israel of targeting UN buildings and killing scores of civilians in Gaza in December 2008 and January 2009.

Documents released by WikiLeaks reported: “Ban Ki-moon secretly worked with Israel to undermine a UN report into Gaza war crimes.”

“Ban wrote a letter to the UN Security Council asking its members not to take recommendations by the UN Board of Inquiry about Israeli bombings in Gaza into account,” the report says.

The UN Board of Inquiry had concluded that “Israeli Defense Force (IDF) targeted UN buildings in Gaza Strip in seven of the nine attacks.

According to WikiLeaks, White House National Security Advisor Susan Rice spoke four times with Ban Ki Moon “to discuss concerns over the Board of Inquiry’s report on incidents at UN sites in December 2008 and January 2009”.

“Rice urged Ban not to include the recommendations in the final report’s summary, which was supposed to be transmitted to the UN Security Council on May 5,” says WikiLeaks.

But the Secretary-General replied he was unable to alter the report and recommendations of the Board of Inquiry as it was independent.

Rice, in the second conversation, “urged the Secretary-General to make clear in his cover letter when he transmits the summary to the Security Council that those recommendations exceeded the scope of the terms of reference and no further action is needed”.

Ban told her that his “staff were working with an Israeli delegation on the text of the cover letter”.

The WikiLeaks revelation is a startling insight into the global conspiracy which exists to support and sustain an axis of evil between the USA, Israel and Saudi Arabia to maintain organised instability across the Middle East.

At home Israel has been allowed under this cloak to steal an entire country from Palestine, murder tens of thousands of innocent Palestinians and arm itself with nuclear weapons as the Middle East’s own neighbourhood bully.

Israel and its unregulated Intelligence agency Mossad carries out the dirtiest of deeds, including many False Flag attacks: 7/7 in the UK, the Bulgarian bus bombing of 2014, and the Charlie Hebdo outrage in Paris.

From the very start after the formation of its own nation state, Israel’s secret services ran rogue operations, stealing money from the Swiss accounts of Hitler’s victims, bombing a synagogue in Baghdad during prayers in 1951 to scare Jewish Iraqis into moving into tent villages in Israel, and bombing British and American offices in Cairo in 1954 (the Lavon affair) to discredit Egypt’s Nasser regime.

Using American funds provided for other purposes, Mossad bribed its way across Africa and Latin America. The late dictator of Romania, Nicolae Ceaucescu—who edged Sadat toward Jerusalem and Camp David—received about $30 million from the agency.

Elsewhere, Mossad spies threw in their lot with established power, however autocratic: Iran (where they trained the SAVAK secret police in interrogation methods), Zaire, Chad and other African countries, Singapore, Sri Lanka (where they helped the Sinhalese go after Tamils), South Korea, South Africa (where Israel aided the birth of nuclear weapons), and Argentina (supplying arms during the Falklands War).

They helped Morocco capture and kill an opposition leader, Mehdi Ben Barka, in Paris. While in Beirut, they murdered Palestinians and blew up MEA Caravelles at the airport.

During the 1967 war, they protected the disinformation communications which brought Jordan into the conflict by directing the attack on the US spy ship Liberty, an action in which 34 Americans were killed and 171 wounded.

Misinformation has always been a Mossad trademark.

Many theorists and experts now believe that a Mossad / Saudi axis was behind the 9/11 atrocity.

Saudis are active at every level of the terror chain: planners to financiers, cadres to foot soldiers, ideologists to cheerleaders.

The dictatorship of Saudi Arabia which systematically transmits its sick form of Islam across the globe, instigates and funds hatreds, while crushing human freedoms and aspiration.

Both Israel and Saudi Arabia are honoured by the West in a sickening open display of back slapping support as “our great allies”.

Last week Saudi Arabia was appointed chair of the UN Human Rights Council, a choice welcomed by Washington and Westminster.

The choice defies all common sense and human decency,

Saudi Arabia executes one person every two days. Ali Mohammed al-Nimr is soon to be beheaded then crucified for taking part in pro-democracy protests during the Arab Spring. He was a teenager then.

Last week, 769 faithful Muslim believers were killed in Mecca where they had gone on the Hajj. Initially, the rulers said it was “God’s will” and then they blamed the dead. Mecca was once a place of simplicity and spirituality.

Today the avaricious Saudis have bulldozed historical sites and turned it into the Las Vegas of Islam – with hotels, skyscrapers and malls to spend, spend, spend.

The poor can no longer afford to go there. Numbers should be controlled to ensure safety – but that would be ruinous for profits.

Even more seriously, the pernicious Saudi influence is spreading fast and freely. King Salman has offered to build 200 mosques in Germany for recently arrived refugees, many of whom are Muslims.

He offered no money for resettlement or basic needs, but Wahhabi mosques, the Trojan horses of the secret Saudi crusade. Several Islamic schools are also sites of Wahhabism, now a global brand. It makes hearts and minds small and suspicious, turns Muslim against Muslim, and undermines modernists.

The late Laurent Murawiec wrote in 2002: “The Saudis are active at every level of the terror chain, from planners to financiers, from cadres to foot soldiers, from ideologists to cheerleaders.”

Remember that most of the 9/11 killers were Saudi; so was the al-Qaeda hierarchy.

A second irony on this day of revelation is that the pro-Zionist Jerusalem Post has now led a call for Israel and Saudi Arabia to tie up diplomatic relations and publicly become allies.

The JP leader runs to over 2,000 words, but its statement is clear in scapegoating Palestine and Iran as the common enemy. The Jerusalem Post’s words are chilling in their purpose:

• Saudi Arabia regards Iran as its primary competition for leadership in the Muslim world, and it fears that the recent US-Iranian kinship could lead America to replace the Saudis with Tehran as its primary Persian Gulf ally.

• In the oil and gas market, the Saudis and UAE are quickly losing major ground to Iran amid reports that Saudi Arabia is taking huge hits and could face an existential financial crisis by the end of the decade as a result of other emerging markets as well as its own, risky, and largely-failed attempt to flood the market to drive out rivals.

• Iran’s energy sector, by contrast, is on the rise. Iran’s biggest oil-shipping company, which boasts the world’s largest fleet of supertankers, is already preparing to return to European and international markets in the wake of any agreement in Vienna. At the same time, clearly anticipating massive sanctions relief, Iranian companies last month signed a $2.3 billion agreement to construct 800 miles of pipelines, which Iran has identified as its most critical conduit for future gas exports to the West. The Iran Gas Trunkline-6 will transit Iraq and Turkey to ultimately deliver gas to Europe from the country’s massive South Pars field.

• In their desperation, the Saudis have increased their behind-the-scenes cooperation with Israel to unprecedented levels. This extends to major joint security cooperation in the event of an attack on Iran’s nuclear facilities, including Israeli technical aid to defend against a second wave of retaliation against Saudi targets.

• Israel and the Sunni axis are also united in a fight against the Islamic State and Salafi jihadist groups seeking to impose an extremist Sharia state on the entire region, while harbouring larger designs to conquer Europe and the United States.

• For the time being, Sunni Arabs can be instrumental in encouraging the replacement of the government of Mahmoud Abbas, with a Palestinian leadership interested in being on the right side of history. If he is willing, perhaps Mahmoud Dahlan can be brought back from the EAU to help clean things up in the Gaza Strip and West Bank.

If Saudi Arabia and Israel are going to ‘clean things up’, one thing is certain: it will be a dirty process.