From the Counterterrorism Blog:
Also, today’s London Observer reports that “Saudi Arabia officially warned Britain of an imminent terrorist attack on London just weeks ahead of the 7 July bombings after calls from one of al-Qaeda’s most wanted operatives were traced to an active cell in the United Kingdom.” Recall that last week, Italian authorities revealed that they traced a call from Hussain Osman, another 7/21 suspect now held in Rome, to Saudi Arabia. If the details of the new Saudi claim are true, it raises the possibility that the London attackers were closely allied with the Saudi-based al-Qaeda group, which is presumed to be funded from and protected by sympathetic Saudis.
The nightmare, of course, is ‘spontaneously generated’ terror cells that draw from the media-spread ideology and techniques that they create themselves or adopt from what they’ve read.
The evidence, however, keeps pointing to a network of recruiters, financiers, and bombmakers directed by another network managed from some central group or point.
The revolutionary fantasy of an avalanche of a spontaneous ‘movement’ triggered by a few vanguard pebbles keeps getting reduced – as demonstrated in Chang’s book – to a network founded, funded, and led by shadowy figures tied to mainstream geopolitics.
Hi,
I would like to subscribe to this site i i.e recive new posts on email. Is it possible to add this feature ?
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Thanks,
Shivani.
Right. But what does the fall of Saudi Arabia mean in this context? I cite Bob Baer because his article is the most recent I’ve seen to treat the matter, but really I think we can all read the leaves on this one. I started predicting it myself, for various reasons, about a year ago — for about six months to a year further out.
Yet, for now, all these roads tie back to Saudi money. It’s worth noting that both the chairman and the spokesman of the Moro Islamic Liberation Front made a point of conveying the organization’s sympathies when King Fahd died. That part of the Philippines is about as far away from Saudi Arabia as you can get, in terms of how long it takes to get there: there are further places in terms of distance, but in terms of travel time and difficulty, it’s quite a remove.
If the place tears itself apart in a whirlwind, what then? Obviously the West will have to secure the oilfields, but what does it do to these worldwide movements? Make them worse? Make them better? Better, I think, because it removes the necessary funding that (as you say) no radical organization can survive without; but only following a spike that is quite a bit worse.
I’d suggest that those Saudis continuing to fund Al-Qaeda (or related) groups don’t have to worry about the sky falling in in Riyadh. They’ve the bulk of their money outside the kingdom because if they were exposed their accounts would be seized. Most Saudi money–legitimate or not–is in foreign banks, principally because they’re safer than domestic banks.
A revolution/coup/invasion of the KSA won’t affect terrorist funding in any sort of positive way, but it could well anger enough to (re)start that funding.
I’d point out, too, that Saudi Arabia’s political opinions do matter to 1/6 of the world’s population. All Muslims do not necessarily agree in all regards with the Saudi take on religious matters, but they listen. Fahd’s death was recognized by all Muslims as a major event; it doesn’t mean the mourners are terrorists.
Shivani, check out “AsynchRSS”:http://www.asynchrss.com/ a service that lets you get RSS feeds by email of pretty much any blog.
A.L.
#3, If the Saudis funding al Q are all DEAD from some unfortunate attack upon them, their money in other banks won’t do them much good. If the calls can be traced one way, they can be traced the other. If the SA’s tell us where the next attack will be, such as England, Italy, US etc., then they should be able to tell us who, what, when and where, if they are on our side. They may be too 7th C. to handle the world’s energy supply and if so, then we the West should take it.
London Terrorists Strike Against Iran: The 51st Anniversary of a CIA Coup
Farhat Quam Maquami
Islamic Terrorists and assassins hired and prepared by London’s British Intelligence Service were tools of British Imperialism in the Middle East. Iran was no exception. British Ambassador on Instruction from London nurtured Muslim Brotherhood and Faddayian Islam as their insurance policy for hegemony. In Iran, Navab Safavi, Khomienie, and Rafsanjani are among the most famous figures. Now that everybody is discussing London Faked Terror attack, it is better to discuss the real terror against Iran by the London based Islamic terrorists who were trained, financed and designed to terrorize Iranians 51 years ago.
A half-century ago, the US and UK engineered a spectacular act of terror against Iran. Not only did Western intelligence agencies obliterated Iran’s budding democracy, but their actions also resulted in thousands of Iranian patriots being killed by firing squads in the bloodbath that followed this act of terror. Looking from this real historical perspective the recent outcry about the London terror attack look nothing but a staged terror attack by the intelligent services to shape public opinion against innocent Muslims or Middle Eastern, cover up Tony Blaire’s bankrupt policy, improve his public image and enhance his prestige.
On August 19, 1953, CIA agents, with the blessing of corrupt mullahs, shamelessly arranged a terrorist coup to overthrow the democratically elected, secular government, of Dr. Mohammed Mossadegh in Iran. Their actions directly subverted a blossoming civic society and changed it into a dictatorial regime. It seems that every generation thereafter that carried Iranian aspirations for justice, freedom and real social change would also be hijacked by the CIA and its paid agents.
Five years ago, James Risen of the New York Times penned an excellent account of the terror coup. Among the materials he used to write his article was a previously secret report written in 1954 by one of the coup’s plotters. As Risen wrote, this report shows “how United States and British officials plotted the military coup that returned the shah of Iran to power and toppled Iran’s elected prime minister, an ardent nationalist.”
You can read Risen’s article by visiting http://www.globalpolicy.org (http://www.globalpolicy.org/empire/history/2000/0416ciairan.htm).
The size and scale of the terror coup’s plotters remains breathtaking, even today. The UK/US coup planners recruited thousands of Iranians to work as spies and thugs in support of this strike against democracy.
Iranian nationalists will be interested by Risen’s report, as it details Shah Mohammad Reza Pahlavi’s surprising initial reluctance to collaborate with the coup plotters.
As with many Cold War-era adventures, the US and UK justified their restoration of the Shah as part of their war against Communism. Of course, the Western powers cared little for the damage the terror coup would inflict on Iran’s culture, Iran’s national interest or the Iranian psyche.
The coup had its roots in a British showdown with Iran and the prize was Iran‘s oil industries. In 1951, Iran’s Parliament voted to nationalize the oil industry, and legislators backing the law elected its leading advocate, Dr. Mossadegh, as prime minister. Britain responded with threats and sanctions.
Dr. Mossadegh, a European-educated lawyer refused to back down. In meetings in November and December 1952, British intelligence officials initiated a plan for a joint US/UK terrorist operation to oust the elected prime minister.
Risen’s superb article details the intricate nature of the US/UK plot. Rather than rehash it all again here, readers should examine it for themselves.
The tragedy of 1953 can be boiled down to the following observation — If Dr. Mossadegh had used his considerable political capital to rouse the people to stand up and defend the country, the Western terror coup would never have succeeded. This is the unmistakable lesson of the New York Times’s report.
Today, a second confrontation looms between Iran and the West. For Iranian nationalists, the stakes could not be higher. This time around, the West has a new weapon to use against Iran – the one million opportunistic so-called “Persian-Americans” living mostly in the state of California. Many of these people would gladly volunteer to play the role of puppet-ruler in Teheran that Iyad Allawi is playing for the West in Baghdad. These hyphenated Iranians are eager to subjugate Iran once again to the whims of the Western powers.
All true Iranian nationalists must dedicate themselves to the following: rooting out those elements in the country’s leadership, like the Rafsanjani clique, which are using their privileged position to loot Iran’s wealth and transfer it to banks in Western countries such as Canada.
In 1953, Dr Mossadegh and the Iranian nationalists failed to thwart the coup because of their own indecisiveness. As a result, the country plunged into a nightmare of autocratic and arbitrary rule — a nightmare compounded by the events of 1979. The so-called Islamic Revolution was led by a clerical faction pivotal to the success of the 1953 coup.
In 2005, a similar failure to act may have much more terrible consequences. By familiarizing themselves with the true events of 1953, Iranian nationalists can find the courage to steel themselves for the struggle to come. We have to look at Ahmadi Nejad actions to determine who is pulling his strings. His tough talk would be an empty rhetoric if is not followed by arresting and bringing to trial all Rafsanjani family as “Corrupt on Earth” and “Warriors Against God.” If his government does not confront the corrupt practices of the perverted British an American Islamists it would prove to be another subterfuge on Iranians by the London Terrorists.
Ahmadi Nejad can break with his British mentors and become an Iranian Nationalist or continue the wave of deceits and exploit Iranians as a puppet under the spell of British Imperialism using radical Islam as a cover. How long it would last depends on the Imperialist whim of British and its interplay with the CIA and its vast propaganda machine and foot soldiers.
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