“Saudi-Russian arms deal alive and kicking”

Putin and Abdullah in Riyadh in 2007 and the sort of Russian arms sought by the Saudis

Russian President Vladimir Putin’s phone call to Saudi King Abdullah on Sunday (after the crackup in U.S.-Saudi relations) has revived talk of the oil-rich kingdom offering to buy billions of dollars worth of arms from Moscow.

That’s the view of diplomatic sources quoted by Political Consultant/Analyst Nasr al-Majali, writing today for Elaph news portal.

Saudi businessman, journalist and author Othman al-Omeir, a former editor-in-chief of the Saudi newspaper of records Asharq Alawsat owns Elaph.

A statement by the Kremlin said the Russian President and Saudi monarch on Sunday discussed international issues over the phone.

During the conversation requested by the Russian side, the two leaders focused on the Syrian conflict and Iran’s nuclear ambitions, the statement said without elaborating.

Western countries suspect Iran of using its nuclear program to develop atomic weapons, a claim Iran has consistently denied. Tehran claims it needs atomic technology for producing electricity, although it has some of the world’s largest reserves of oil and gas.

Majali quotes diplomats and various Russian sources as saying the arms deal in the making would include such Russian military hardware for Saudi Arabia as:

• T-90 battle tanks
• Mi-17, Mi-26 and Mi-35 attack helicopters
• BMP-3 infantry fighting vehicles
• S-400 surface-to-air missiles
• Pantsir-S1, a short to medium range ground based air defense system, wheeled, tracked or stationary.

According to Simon Henderson, director of the Gulf and Energy Policy Program at The Washington Institute, if Riyadh concludes a major arms deal with Moscow in return for reduced Russian backing of Syria’s Assad regime, it will come at the expense of U.S. influence in the Middle East and possibly across the world.

Henderson wrote last August:

From the moment it was announced, the July 31 Moscow meeting between Russian President Vladimir Putin and Saudi intelligence chief Prince Bandar bin Sultan was clearly of political significance. The "long and serious" discussions between the two reportedly lasted four hours and left the Saudis "in a positive mood."

According to an August 7 Reuters report, Riyadh offered to buy $15 billion worth of weapons from Moscow and avoid threatening Russia's position as the main natural gas supplier to Europe, in return for Russia easing its strong support for the Assad regime and agreeing not to block any future UN Security Council resolution on Syria. According to unidentified diplomats quoted in the story, the Russian response has so far been inconclusive, though Moscow reportedly pressured Damascus to allow [the] visit by a UN mission investigating suspected chemical weapons use.

The Saudi diplomatic push shows Riyadh's determination to force the Assad regime's collapse, which the kingdom hopes will be a strategic defeat for Iran, its regional rival in both diplomatic and religious terms. It also reflects Riyadh's belief, shared by its Gulf Arab allies, that U.S. diplomacy on Syria lacks the necessary imagination, commitment, and energy to succeed…

Lebanon returns to the Saudi fold

The Salams, father and son

The Lebanese media is strangely of one mind: Saudi Arabia has supplanted Syria as kingmaker in Lebanon.

Beirut’s pro-Saudi lawmaker Tammam Salam -- eldest son of the late six-time Prime Minister Saeb Salam, who was Riyadh’s pointman in Lebanon throughout his decades-long political life – is set to head a new Lebanese government.

“Tammam Salam is premier-designate… by Saudi fiat” is how Ms Hiyam Qusaybati headlines her front-page lead for Beirut’s al-Akhbar daily, which speaks for Syrian President Bashar al-Assad and Hezbollah.

As-Safir, another Lebanese daily close to the Syrian regime and Hezbollah, echoes the perspective with a banner headline saying: “Saudi comeback… through Jumblatt’s candidate for the premiership.”

And according to the front-page lead of Lebanon’s leading independent daily al-Nahar, the expected nomination at the weekend of Tammam Salam as premier-designate marks a “Revival of the 2009 alliance and of Saudi auspices.”

Salam has already won endorsement of his nomination from the pro-Saudi March 14 alliance headed by former Premier Saad Hariri and from most members of the pro-Syrian and Hezbollah-led March 8 coalition.

President Michel Sleiman is thus expected to conclude his weekend consultations by asking him to form a new government.

Lebanon watchers agree the facilitator of Saudi Arabia’s comeback to center stage in Lebanon and of Tammam Salam’s nomination for prime minister is none other than Walid Jumblatt, the one and only eminence grise in Lebanese politics.

Today’s print and electronic media are replete with Junblatt’s disclosures -- about Salam’s nomination and Saudi Arabia’s role -- in his interview with LBC TV anchorman Marcel Ghanem overnight.

Jumblatt, who holds the balance of power in parliament through the seven seats of his Progressive Socialist Party (PSP), told Ghanem:

• I chose Mr. Tammam Salam, nominated him and contacted him. He hails from an historic, moderate family and I hope everyone will positively receive him.
• I don't want to say (March 14 leader) Saad Hariri was dismayed when I proposed Salam, but his response was lukewarm. Hezbollah had the same reaction when I contacted them. Hariri's choice for prime minister was former Internal Security Forces chief Maj. Gen. Ashraf Rifi. But I told Hariri that Rifi is a confrontational candidate (to the March 8 alliance). And when Hezbollah asked me if I had a candidate other than Salam, I said no -- because he hails from a moderate family and he never said a bad word about the Resistance.
• During (PSP legislator) Wael Abu-Faour's second visit to Saudi Arabia, we rejected several names that were proposed, including Ashraf Rifi. Yesterday, during my telephone conversation with Hariri, he insisted on Ashraf Rifi but I rejected the name. I rejected the nominee despite his absolute competence. Even Wael rejected Rifi during his talks with (Saudi Intelligence Chief) Prince Bandar because we want a consensual candidate.
• I'm still a centrist and when I allowed myself to name Tammam Salam, I named a historically centrist political dynasty. And I won’t endorse or participate in any one-sided government. I will only give my vote of confidence to a government inclusive of all parties. Members of a national unity cabinet, not me, will thus decide the ministerial Policy Statement.
• I call for managing our differences inside the cabinet until the end of the Syrian crisis. My words were clear during my meeting with Prince Bandar that whatever the outcome of the Syrian revolution let no one think of any negative move against Hezbollah. Dialogue with Hezbollah is inevitable. I won’t accept to condemn the party and I don't approve of Obama's description (of Hezbollah as a terrorist organization).
• In the heart of Saudi Arabia, I said we want dialogue with Hezbollah in Lebanon and I call on Hariri to engage in dialogue, organize the differences and implement the policy of “dissociating” from the Syria crisis. I hope Salam will follow suit.

Interestingly, my train of thought leads to note the following:

1. Saeb Salam, Tammam’s father, went into exile in Geneva in 1985 after surviving two assassination attempts. He had angered the Syrian regime of Hafez Assad with conciliatory stands he had taken at peace conferences held at Geneva and Lausanne the year before, and he did not feel safe to return to Lebanon until 1994. Five years earlier, he told my weekly magazine, Monday Morning, in an exclusive interview (see cover photo above) that his nominee for the Lebanese presidency was Raymond Edde. Edde was already living in self-exile in Paris after three Syrian attempts on his life in 1976.
2. Walid Jumblatt’s father, Kamal Jumblatt, was assassinated near a Syrian army checkpoint in March 1977.
3. Rafik Hariri, Saad’s father, was killed when a ton of TNT targeted his motorcade on Beirut’s shoreline. In its first two reports, the UN International Independent Investigation Commission (UNIIIC) indicated the Syrian government might be linked to the assassination.

Saudi monarch now at daggers drawn with Assad

Saudi Arabia is now throwing its full weight behind the drive to rid Syria of President Bashar al-Assad.

King Abdullah

King Abdullah yesterday called a two-day emergency summit of Muslim nations in three weeks time to address “the dangers of fragmentation and seditions” they are facing.

Assumptions the planned August 14-15 summit is also linked to the Syria crisis were enhanced by another announcement from the Saudi monarch. He ordered the launch today of a nationwide fundraising campaign to help “our brothers in Syria.”

This is reminiscent of the mid-1980s, when Saudi public fund-raisers generated financial support for liberating Afghanistan from the Soviets.

Political analyst Sarkis Naoum, in his column this morning for Beirut’s independent daily an-Nahar, says Gulf heavyweight Saudi Arabia has “assumed the captaincy of Arab players backing the Syrian revolution politically as well as with arms, training and cash to help it topple Assad and his regime.”

The Kingdom’s motive he writes, “is not only to safeguard the interests, rights and freedoms of the majority of Syrians, but to face up to the challenge Iran is posing” to Saud Arabia’s Gulf and Arab partners after Iran made serious inroads in the Arab world’s heartland.

Naoum says insiders got wind last week of Saudi Arabia’s resolve and commitment to push Assad out when King Abdullah appointed Prince Bandar Bin Sultan, the kingdom’s ambassador to the United States for 22 years, as the new chief of General Intelligence.

“And it is an open secret that Prince Bandar has been championing a face-off with Syria in Lebanon since at least 2005,” Naoum writes.

Saudi Arabia, in the eyes of Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov, is “the most hostile country to Special Envoy Kofi Annan and his Syria mission,” according to a report published this morning in Hezbollah and Syria’s Lebanese mouthpiece al-Akhbar.

The report penned for al-Akhbar by journalist Nasser Sharara appears simultaneously on Syria’s state-run Champress website.

According to Sharara:

The relationship between Lavrov and Annan “is close-knit.”  When Syrian Foreign Minister Walid al-Muallem once complained to Lavrov that Annan was not appreciating the Syrian regime’s goodwill initiatives, “Lavrov said: He (Annan) does nothing before consulting me first.”

Upholding the Annan mission is Lavrov’s brainchild. He believes the most hostile state to Annan and his Syria mission is Saudi Arabia. In many of his diplomatic contacts, Lavrov keeps asking: “Why doesn’t Riyadh receive Annan, albeit once?”

In his meetings with European Union ambassadors in Moscow, Lavrov cited three Syria-related Russian concerns: (1) Syria sliding to Muslim Brotherhood rule that would destabilize Central Asia (2) The empowerment of Muslim extremists and al-Qaeda members who are now threatening Algeria and the South African Development Community and (3) The safety of a 45,000-strong Russian community in Syria.

Ghassan Charbel, editor-in-chief of the pan-Arab daily al-Hayat, quotes one of Vladimir Putin’s recent interlocutors as saying, “The Russian president acts as if the West and Turkey fell into the Syria crisis trap. He says the West and Turkey posture but are unable to intervene militarily; they also fail to mobilize the UN Security Council to remove Assad.”

The interlocutor – who also heard Putin say Moscow can’t accept the massacre or ejection of Syria’s minorities -- left with the impression Russia is set on continuing to take advantage of the entrapment of its opponents.

Charbel says, “Putin’s Russia hates Western human rights and welfare organizations. It doesn’t want to see the disease spreading and infecting its Muslims. China has similar concerns in this respect. Russia could be reminding the United States of the need to redraw zones of influence and address such pending issues as ballistic missile defense systems.

“Developments on the ground in Syria foretell the derailment of Russia’s exploitation of what it deems to be its detractors’ snare.

“Clearly, the Syrian regime is still able to fight. But it is no longer able to exit the tunnel.

“Happenings in Damascus and Aleppo may change the scene. Russia was asking the West to pay for a solution. Developments could yet force Russia to pay for a doorway. Russia could still discover she walked into a trap herself after losing a bet in Syria and alienating the Arab, Islamic and Western worlds.

“Iran in turn will ultimately discover the magnitude of the trap in which she fell. Her stand on the Syria crisis adds to her Arab, Islamic and international isolation. It also exposes her to risks in a region full of surprises.

“Having previously reaped the benefits of America’s Iraq entrapment, Iran may now have to pay the price of her ambush in Syria. And so does Hezbollah…”