We Arm The Saudis So They Can Arm Islamists In Syria
The official word is that the Saudis
are buying weapons from the Pentagon.
But
they couldn’t get these weapons if
our government did not approve of the
transaction. These weapons don’t seem
to have much use except to arm Islamists
in Syria.
From Foreign
Policy:
No one is expecting a
tank invasion
of Saudi Arabia anytime soon, but the
kingdom just put in a huge
order for
U.S.-made anti-tank missiles that has
Saudi-watchers scratching their
heads
and wondering whether the deal is
related to Riyadh’s support for the Syrian rebels.
The proposed weapons
deal, which the Pentagon notified Congress of in early December,
would provide Riyadh with more than 15,000 Raytheon anti-tank missiles at a
cost of over
$1 billion. According to the International Institute for Strategic
Studies’ Military Balance
report, Saudi Arabia’s total stockpile this year
amounted to slightly more than 4,000
anti-tank missiles. In the past decade,
the Pentagon has notified Congress of only one
other sale of anti-tank missiles
to Saudi
Arabia
— a 2009 deal that shipped roughly
5,000 missiles to the kingdom.
“It’s a very large
number of missiles, including the most advanced version of the TOWs
[tube-launched, optically tracked, wire-guided missiles],” said Jeffrey White,
a fellow at
the Washington Institute for Near East Policy and a former
intelligence analyst at the
Defense Intelligence Agency. “The problem is: What’s the threat?”
That’s a tough
question to answer. A military engagement with Iran, the most immediate
potential threat faced by Riyadh, would be largely a naval and air engagement over the
Persian Gulf. Saudi Arabia has fought a series of deadly skirmishes
with insurgents in
northern Yemen over the years, but those groups have no more
than a handful of
military vehicles. And Iraq, which posed a real threat during Saddam Hussein’s day, is
far too consumed by its internal demons and the fallout from the war in Syria to ponder
such foreign adventurism.
But one Saudi ally could desperately use anti-tank weapons — the Syrian rebels.
In the
past, Riyadh has been happy to oblige: It previously purchased
anti-tank weapons from
Croatia and funneled them to anti-Assad fighters, and it is now
training and arming
Syrian rebels in Jordan. Charles Lister, a London-based terrorism and insurgency
analyst, said that rebels have also received as many as 100 Chinese HJ-8
anti-tank
missiles from across the border with Jordan — and indeed, many videos
show Syrian
rebels using this weapon against Bashar al-Assad’s tanks.
It is officially illegal
for Saudi
Arabia to
give purchased weapons from the US to another group.
But in this case, the weapons are
fungible. The Sauds’ plan could be to give Syrian Jihadists all
their old
weapons and then replace them with US weapons systems for their own stockpiles.
The Administration’s
claim to only be financing and arming “moderate” Syrian rebels is not
credible.
It can’t really tell the difference. Since these groups mingle, arming the
“moderates”
also provides weapons for Jihadists. But this is even more
egregious. The Saudi Kingdom is
not going to be even trying to arm moderates. It will
be using the weapons to arm Sunni
extremists—the same ones who
massacre Christians and other religious minorities.
The fact that the White
House and the Pentagon are going along with this, makes the
pretense that they
are supporting “reform” in Syria even less credible, if that is possible.
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