This is what colonialism looks like in 2010.
“The Saudis have given their permission for the Israelis to pass over and they will look the other way,” said a US defence source in the area. “They have already done tests to make sure their own jets aren’t scrambled and no one gets shot down. This has all been done with the agreement of the [US] State Department.”The Saudi regime is an absolute disgrace to humanity, to the Islamic religion and the Arab world.
Sources in Saudi Arabia say it is common knowledge within defence circles in the kingdom that an arrangement is in place if Israel decides to launch the raid. Despite the tension between the two governments, they share a mutual loathing of the regime in Tehran and a common fear of Iran’s nuclear ambitions. “We all know this. We will let them [the Israelis] through and see nothing,” said one.
What prevents a US/Israeli attack on Iran has never been Saudi opposition, but the reprisals Iran would be able to conduct in Afghanistan, Iraq, the Gulf and other places. Barack Obama's new emphasis on increasing hostility with Iran increases the necessity, for defensive purposes, that Iran strengthen its options for reprisal.
Iran spent many years ruled by the Shah on behalf of the United States. A lot of countries have been in colonial relationships like the one Saudi Arabia has with the United States, and if maintaining this relationship was not necessary for about five million Jewish people in Palestine to have a secure state, Saudi Arabia and Jordan would likely have become independent with most of the rest of the colonized world in the 1950s, 60s and 70s.
A democratic Arabia would certainly build its own capacity for nuclear power and would have no interest in maintaining Israel's regional monopoly. Saudi Arabia is not threatened by Iran having a modicum of nuclear weapons capability. However, what indirect colonial monarchs do is provide a local face and a knowledge of local symbolism and sensibilities. If Arabia was ruled by a US administrator it would be willing to participate directly in any attack, but the cost would be that the people of the country would be more likely to revolt. It would be more offensive to the people ruled.
The monarchy is a way to strike a balance between obeying US instructions while not inciting localist passions. The Saudi government, according to the Times, has practiced not shooting Israeli planes as they flew over Saudi territory, but does so unofficially, while maintaining symbolic and non-effective opposition to Israel.
The nearly 30 million people who live under this US-dependent monarch pay the price for there to be a Jewish majority state for five million Jews in Palestine just as the 1.5 million people under siege in Gaza, the over 60 million Egyptians who live under dictatorship and the over 70 million Iranians who are under economic attack by the West.
