Another look at the US colony of Saudi Arabia

I've written before about Saudi Arabia's bizarre political succession system - designed perfectly to guarantee permanent incompetent, even buffoonish leadership.

Following the recent death of Fahd ibn Abdel-Aziz ibn Saud, there are now at least 18 other sons of Abdel-Aziz-- or most likely, more-- who potentially could be in line to the throne, after Abdullah ibn Abdel-Aziz, the new king. Miqrin, the youngest of these awlad (children of) Abdel-Aziz, is indeed in his fifties, and has many uncles who are patrilineal grandsons of Abdel-Aziz who are older (and most probably wiser) than him.

I've written about retired CIA analyst of Arab affairs Ray Close's account of Saudi Arabia's pretending to participate in the war against Israel, while promising the United States that it would not participate.

Similarly, I recall when Prince Fahd bin Abdal Aziz called me to a meeting very late one evening in the early days of the 1973 war and asked me to send an urgent personal message from him to Richard Nixon informing the president that he had felt obliged to contribute a brigade of Saudi troops to the Golan front to support the Syrian offensive there, but that he had personally instructed the commander of the unit not to fire a single shot. That, Fahd told me with considerable emotion and obvious sincerity, was his solemn promise to his American friend. Again, prudence, wisdom, and desire to maintain a traditional and mutually valuable relationship — motives that were not, I regret to say, received in Washington with the respect and appreciation that they deserved.

I've never written about how during the era of open colonialism a joke emerged that Winston Churchill drew Saudi Arabia's border and hiccuped around the border of Jordan.

Winston's Hiccup or Churchill's Sneeze is the huge zigzag in Jordan's eastern border with Saudi Arabia, supposedly because Winston Churchill drew the boundary of Transjordan after a generous and lengthy lunch.

But I have written about how, when public relations services of both the United States and Saudi Arabia are claiming there is some tension or rivalry between the colonial patron and its subject, the US has actually committed to increase it commitment to the regime in the form of training a new 35,000 person force that can be used on the US and regime's behalf to prevent any Saudi Tahrir Square from developing.

Despite their deepening political divide, the United States and Saudi Arabia are quietly expanding defense ties on a vast scale, led by a little-known project to develop an elite force to protect the kingdom’s oil riches and future nuclear sites.

...

The special security force is expected to grow to at least 35,000 members, trained and equipped by U.S. personnel as part of a multiagency effort that includes staff from the Justice Department, Energy Department and Pentagon. It is overseen by the U.S. Central Command.

So it seems like a former official of Saudi Arabia claims that Iran becoming a threshold state the way Brazil has would cause Saudi Arabia to respond the way the Saudis have not responded to Israel amassing hundreds of nuclear weapons.

"We cannot live in a situation where Iran has nuclear weapons and we don't. It's as simple as that," the official said. "If Iran develops a nuclear weapon, that will be unacceptable to us and we will have to follow suit."

Officials in Riyadh said that Saudi Arabia would reluctantly push ahead with its own civilian nuclear programme.

Is anyone actually listening to these people? Saudi Arabia is probably the least respectable government on Earth. If the United States does not give Saudi Arabia permission to build nuclear weapons, which it will not, Saudi Arabia will not build nuclear weapons, nor will it acquire technology that would give it capabilities to eventually respond, even in theory, to an Israeli nuclear attack on its territory such as on the cities of Mecca, Medina or Riyadh.