In the past few days, new rumors circulated about the Saudi king having been pronounced clinically dead, but they were quickly denied by Riyadh which produced footage of Abdullah receiving guests as he headed to vacation in Morocco. These reports have come in the aftermath of a significant amendment to the function of the Saudi National Guard, headed by Mutaib, Abdullah’s son. The Guard was upgraded into a government ministry, and to many observers, the move is indicative of an imminent major development.

There are many signs suggesting a major development is afoot in the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia. However, the royal family, particularly King Abdullah’s wing, is trying to postpone disclosing this as much as possible, not to mention suppressing talk about its implications.

The king’s old age, largely believed to be over 90, and health condition mean that the rumors about his death are not all that surprising.The sudden changes introduced in the Saudi bureaucracy began surfacing more than a year ago. The moves often signal disputes among the various wings affiliated with senior members of the royal family. It appears that there are three main wings in Saudi at present: King Abdullah’s, that of Crown Prince Salman, and Nayef’s family wing. Meanwhile, the wings affiliated to the late King Fahd and the late Prince Sultan suffered a fatal blow that has effectively removed them from the line of succession to the throne.

Rumors about the state of Abdullah abound these days, in way that is reminiscent of what had happened at the end of 2011. Back then, there were also rumors that the king was in a state of clinical death, after doctors supposedly failed to restart his heart. Now, there is a similar climate in Saudi.

The king’s old age, largely believed to be over 90, and health condition mean that the rumors about his death are not all that surprising. Furthermore, six of Abdullah’s brothers have died in just two years, all of whom younger than him.

The most recent rumor about Abdullah’s death started on May 25, originating from sources claiming to be close to the royal palace. The rumor alleged that the king died on May 24, and that the decision not to announce his passing was made by Salman, the crown prince, who, the sources claimed, had his own reasons for delaying the news. The same sources attributed the reports about Abdullah’s death to a prince who is very close to the king, and another close to the palace.

Whatever the case may be, announcing the death or illness of senior Saudi royals has always proven to be controversial. Often, the official statement issued by the Royal Court about the king or senior princes travelling for treatment explained their trips by saying nothing more than that the royals were “undergoing medical examinations.” And when the time came for the royals to return home, the statements usually claimed they had completed their “convalescence.”

This usually unleashes speculations, until the Royal Court issues a statement confirming the death of the king or the prince in question.

One observer who closely follows the rivalry within the royal family said that the latest reports of the king’s death were chiefly motivated by the king’s decision to temporarily suspend his public activities because of his health issues.

But others familiar with royal affairs purport that the rumor was started by the king’s opponents, who fear that Abdullah may be taking steps to clear the way for his son Mutaib, the new Minister of the National Guard, to ascend to the throne.

Tradition made the interior minister the most likely candidate for the post of second deputy prime minister, and after that the post of crown prince.The talk about efforts to hand over power to the third generation of princes had quickly subsided following the appointment of Muqrin bin Abdul-Aziz as Second Deputy Prime Minister. This made it seem like power was being shared among the three main wings, especially the sons of Abdullah, Salman, and Nayef.

However, excluding the sons of Fahd and Sultan from the succession and turning the National Guard into a ministry entail dramatic transformations in the ruling configuration in Saudi, as the National Guard Ministry is now on par with the ministries of defense and the interior. This gives the king’s son, Mutaib bin Abdullah, a solid chance to take the throne through his new ministry.

In the past, tradition made the interior minister the most likely candidate for the post of second deputy prime minister, and after that the post of crown prince. But after upgrading the status of the National Guard, King Abdullah’s wing in the royal family is well-positioned to be a strong contender for the throne.

Turning the National Guard into a ministry headed by the son of the king may be the most daring of the decisions made recently by Abdullah, and could be a strong portent of the dramatic development expected to be announced in the coming few days.

In all cases, the struggle among the three royal wings is likely to take a sharper turn in the coming phase, in light of the large-scale efforts to exclude from the succession the other major wings and a large number of hopeful heirs from the next generation of Sauds.

Link

http://www.presstv.ir/detail/2013/05/26/305584/saudi-arabias-king-clinically-dead/Saudi Arabia’s King Abdullah clinically dead: Report says

Saudi Arabia’s King Abdullah bin Abdulaziz is reported to be clinically dead as the monarch is not recently seen in the public.

A Saudi journalist working for London-Based Asharq Alawsat says the Saudi monarch has been clinically dead since Wednesday.

He also quoted medical sources in Saudi Arabia as saying that the king’s vital organs, including his heart, kidneys and lungs, have stopped functioning.

Doctors are said to have used a defibrillator on him several times. He is also reported to be alive with the help of a ventilator.

The Royal Court has yet to comment on the report of King’s death. The aging Saudi monarch has not recently appeared in the public and the country’s crown prince is attending official meetings on behalf of him.

It is the second time in the past months that Asharq Alawsat reports the death of King Abdullah.

In November 2012, the daily reported that Saudi king has slipped into coma and was clinically dead nearly a week after he underwent a 14-hour-long back surgery in a hospital in the Saudi capital, Riyadh.

The report was later rejected by the Royal Court.

The 89-year-old king’s health has declined over the past few years, during which he has been hospitalized several times.

Failing health, old age as well as the death of the king’s half-brothers have raised concerns about the future of the oil-rich country in the face of anti-government demonstrations.

HM/PR

http://www.presstv.ir/detail/2013/05/26/305584/saudi-arabias-king-clinically-dead/Saudi Arabia’s King Abdullah clinically dead: Report says

Saudi Arabia’s King Abdullah bin Abdulaziz is reported to be clinically dead as the monarch is not recently seen in the public.

A Saudi journalist working for London-Based Asharq Alawsat says the Saudi monarch has been clinically dead since Wednesday.

He also quoted medical sources in Saudi Arabia as saying that the king’s vital organs, including his heart, kidneys and lungs, have stopped functioning.

Doctors are said to have used a defibrillator on him several times. He is also reported to be alive with the help of a ventilator.

The Royal Court has yet to comment on the report of King’s death. The aging Saudi monarch has not recently appeared in the public and the country’s crown prince is attending official meetings on behalf of him.

It is the second time in the past months that Asharq Alawsat reports the death of King Abdullah.

In November 2012, the daily reported that Saudi king has slipped into coma and was clinically dead nearly a week after he underwent a 14-hour-long back surgery in a hospital in the Saudi capital, Riyadh.

The report was later rejected by the Royal Court.

The 89-year-old king’s health has declined over the past few years, during which he has been hospitalized several times.

Failing health, old age as well as the death of the king’s half-brothers have raised concerns about the future of the oil-rich country in the face of anti-government demonstrations.

HM/PR

http://www.israelnationalnews.com/News/News.aspx/161407#.UaH-UNLWMc3
‘Saudi Arabia Funds Mossad Anti-Iran Operations’
An article posted by a former CBS News editor claims that none other than Saudi Arabia helps fund Israeli Mossad operations against Iran.
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By Tzvi Ben Gedalyahu
First Publish: 10/28/2012, 1:25 PM

Saudi Arabia’s King Abdullah
Kingdom of Saudi Arabia
An article posted by a former CBS News producer Barry Lando claims that none other than Saudi Arabia helps fund Israeli Mossad operations against Iran.

“A Strange Alliance: Are the Saudis Bankrolling Israel’s Mossad?” appears on his blog. Lando’s source is named only as “a friend, with good sources in the Israeli government.”

He wrote, “The head of Israel’s Mossad has made several trips to deal with his counterparts in Saudi Arabia-one of the results: an agreement that the Saudis would bankroll the series of assassinations of several of Iran’s top nuclear experts that have occurred over the past couple of years.

“The amount involved, my friend claims, was $ 1 billion dollars. A sum, he says, the Saudis considered cheap for the damage done to Iran’s nuclear program.”

Lando admitted that “the tale sounds preposterous” but added, “On the other hand. it makes eminent sense. The murky swamp of Middle East politics has nothing to do with the easy slogans and 30-second sound bites of presidential debates.”

Israel and Saudi Arabia have at least one thing in common: neither country wants to allow Ahmadinejad to obtain nuclear capability.

Lando noted that the claim of the strange alliance “also makes perfect sense, that, in retaliation for the cyber attacks on their centrifuges, the Iranians reportedly launched their own cyber attack on a Saudi state-owned target: Saudi Aramco, the world’s most valuable company.”

Aramco’s computer system suffered a massive cyber attack in August, and American intelligence officials have blamed Iran.

“A report earlier this year by Tel Aviv University cites Saudi Arabia as the last hope and defense line for Israel,” Lando wrote. “With most of Israel’s traditional allies in the region sent packing or undermined by the Arab Spring, the Saudis are the Jewish State’s last chance to protect its political interests in the Arab world.”

Lando has long experience on Iran. He recently wrote a book called “Web of Deceit: The History of Western Complicity in Iraq, from Churchill to Kennedy to George W. Bush.”

He charged on Counterpunch earlier this year that Israel, the United States and Iran do not understand each other’s motives while “their advisors are engaged in an incredibly dangerous three-way game of blind man’s bluff.”

He said he personally ran into American ignorance in 1980 when he was producing ’60 Minutes’.

“I was struck by the total inability of Americans—even at the highest level—to understand the emotions and history that drove the hatred of all things American that had exploded in Iran with the fall of the Shah,” Lando wrote.

“Just up West 57th street from CBS News, for instance, was a huge billboard with the diabolical image of Khomeini glowering down on New York. I suggested we do a report to give Americans a better idea of what was driving Iran’s revolutionaries and their violent feelings against the United States….

“I stitched together a tough report with Mike Wallace based on a series of interviews in New York and Washington.’ Former Secretary of State Henry Kissinger was charged by one interviewee “for turning a blind eye to the excesses of the Shah, and refusing to have any contact with the opposition groups.”

Lando also reported that classified U.S. documents exposed by Iran “showed that American diplomats based in Teheran had warned Washington months earlier of the threat of a possible hostage-taking – particularly if the U.S. allowed the despised Shah to come to America for medical treatment, as the U.S. ultimately did. Those warnings had been completely ignored by Washington.”

However, before the program was broadcast, President Jimmy Carter called the president of CBS News “to try to convince him not to broadcast the report. It would, he said, undermine U.S. negotiations with Iran at a very delicate time.”

CBS did not agree to back down but agreed to change the report’s title from “Should the U.S. Apologize?” to a more neutral “The Iran File.”

“It was difficult to understand how our report could upset the hostage negotiations,” wrote Lando. “We were not revealing any secrets to Iran. The Iranians already knew well the role of the U.S. in their own history. The people we were informing were 20 million Americans — who didn’t understand what was really roiling Iran.

“And still don’t.”

Syrian rebels fighting for control of the Syria’s biggest town, Aleppo, have obtained their first heavy weapons – 220-mm MLRS rocket launchers – through a large-scale supply operation run by Saudi intelligence chief Prince Bandar bin Sultan, according to debkafile’s exclusive intelligence sources.

His agents scoured the Balkans nations of Serbia, Bosnia, Croatia and Kosovo and for large wads of cash snapped up Russian-made MLRS (Smerch) and Hurricane 9K57 launchers capable of firing scores of 220-mm rockets to a distance of 70 kilometers.

The Saudis hope to expedite the rebel capture of the big Syrian Nairab air base attached to Aleppo’s international air port. The Saudi prince has personally taken the Nairab battle under his wing, convinced that it is the key to the conquest of Aleppo, once Syria’s national commercial and population center, after more than a year’s impasse in the battle for its control.

The fall of this air base would also substantially reduce the big Iranian and Russian airlifts to Assad’s army.

Russia brings down its cargo planes loaded with weapons and replacement parts for the Syrian army at Nairab after the air facilities around Damascus were targeted by rebel fire. Moscow has since warned the rebels that if they attack incoming or outgoing Russian planes at Nairab, Russian special forces will come in to wipe out their strength around the base and take over its protection themselves.

Of late, Russian and Iranian arms lifts to Nairab were doubled, after rebels seized many Alawite villages in the Aleppo and Idlib regions of northern Syria.

Members of Bashar Assad’s Alawite sect, their inhabitants, mainly women and children, have been fleeing en masse from their homes in fear of rebel retribution. They are making for the coastal towns of Tartus and Latakia which are still under regime control.

The question is for how long. In the third week of March, Russian warships stopped docking at the naval port of Tartus after finding its piers and facilities crowded with Alawite refugees who came up to the Russian seamen begging for food, water and medical aid.

From March 21, Russian warships on the Mediterranean were ordered to avoid Tartus and relocate their visits to Lebanon’s Beirut port.

The Saudi operation for shipping heavy rocket launchers from the Balkans to Aleppo is complicated.
The rockets are fixed to vehicles weighing 43.7 tons each. The rockets themselves are 7.6 meters long and weigh 800 kilograms.

To arrange the transfer of this heavy artillery to the rebels in Aleppo, Prince Bandar contacted Hakan Fidan, head of the MIT-Turkish National Intelligence Organization. They agreed to set up an overland route from the Balkans via Turkey and across the Syrian border to Aleppo, under the protection of the Turkish army.

Our sources report that Ankara’s initial refusal of cooperation was overcome with a sharp reminder by Prince Bandar of the scale of Turkish exports to Saudi Arabia and the damage to the Turkish economy of their potential suspension.

The news that Saudi Arabia was supplying Syrian rebels with heavy weapons stunned the Arab League summit taking place in Doha, Qatar this week, bringing it to a clamorous end, debkafile’s intelligence and Middle East sources reveal.

Saudi and Qatari delegates were heard hurling shrill abuse at one another and exchanging blows in private meeting rooms down the corridors of the assembly hall. The conference proceedings were abruptly halted as Arab delegation members pitched in to separate them. A total blackout was quickly drawn down on the summit as it broke up in disarray.

The Saudi royal rulers and Qatar’s Hamad bin Khalifa Al Thani have been at extreme loggerheads over the Syrian civil conflict. Riyadh – and Prince Bandar in particular – accuses the Qataris of conspiring to bring the Muslim Brotherhood to power in Damascus, including radical groups tied to Al Qaeda.

Qatari Prime Minister and Secret Service Chief Sheikh Hamad bin Jassem has shot back with the charge that Saudi Arabia is maneuvering for control of the Syrian rebel movement.

The Saudis condemn Turkish Prime Minister Erdogan’s close ties with Qatar’s ruling family which they say eggs on Doha’s schemes for Syria.

For this reason, too, Bandar insisted on Turkey taking active part in facilitating the Balkan heavy arms route to Aleppo.

link

A Department of Homeland Security program intended to give “trusted traveler” status to low-risk airline passengers soon will be extended to Saudi travelers, opening the program to criticism for accommodating the country that produced 15 of the 19 hijackers behind the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks.

Sources voiced concern about the decision to the Investigative Project on Terrorism, which issued a report Wednesday on the under-the-radar announcement — which was first made by Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano after meeting in January with her Saudi counterpart. According to the IPT, this would be the first time the Saudi government has been given such a direct role in fast-tracking people for entry into the United States.

“I think you have radical Wahhabism in certain elements in Saudi Arabia, and I think to be more lenient there than in other places would be a mistake,” Rep. Frank Wolf told the Investigative Project on Terrorism. “There were 15 [hijackers] from that country, and there is a lot taking place in that region.”

Only an exclusive handful of countries enjoy inclusion in the Global Entry program — Canada, Mexico, South Korea and the Netherlands. According to the IPT, some officials are questioning why Saudi Arabia gets to reap the benefits of the program, when key U.S. allies like Germany and France are not enrolled; Israel has reached a deal with the U.S., but that partnership has not yet been implemented.

Any Saudi travelers cleared through the program will be able to bypass the normal customs line after providing passports and fingerprints. The status lasts for five years.

The decision is a turnaround, the IPT notes, from when Saudi Arabia was briefly placed on a list of countries whose U.S.-bound travelers would face higher scrutiny, in the wake of the failed Christmas Day bombing attempt in 2009.

But Napolitano spoke highly of “the bond between the United States and the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia” when she announced the change in January.

“By enhancing collaboration with the government of Saudi Arabia, we reaffirm our commitment to more effectively secure our two countries against evolving threats while facilitating legitimate trade and travel,” Napolitano said.

The Global Entry program was launched in 2008 to expedite pre-approved passengers through the airport customs and security process when they arrive in the U.S. The program is designed to weed out low-risk passengers and enable authorities to zero in on those who may be more likely to pose a threat.

But the program has sparked controversy in the past. Critics objected in late 2010 when Mexican citizens were included in the program, raising concerns that drug cartels would quickly learn how to exploit loopholes in the plan. DHS officials, however, insisted at the time that people who attain trusted traveler status don’t get a free pass and are still subject to random searches.

The program allows travelers who have undergone a thorough vetting process — fingerprinting, background checks, interviews with customs agents, etc.– to attain a low-risk status that allows them to skip the line at customs and complete their entry process at an automatic kiosk.

Fox News

A Department of Homeland Security program intended to give “trusted traveler” status to low-risk airline passengers soon will be extended to Saudi travelers, opening the program to criticism for accommodating the country that produced 15 of the 19 hijackers behind the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks.

Sources voiced concern about the decision to the Investigative Project on Terrorism, which issued a report Wednesday on the under-the-radar announcement — which was first made by Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano after meeting in January with her Saudi counterpart. According to the IPT, this would be the first time the Saudi government has been given such a direct role in fast-tracking people for entry into the United States.

“I think you have radical Wahhabism in certain elements in Saudi Arabia, and I think to be more lenient there than in other places would be a mistake,” Rep. Frank Wolf told the Investigative Project on Terrorism. “There were 15 [hijackers] from that country, and there is a lot taking place in that region.”

Only an exclusive handful of countries enjoy inclusion in the Global Entry program — Canada, Mexico, South Korea and the Netherlands. According to the IPT, some officials are questioning why Saudi Arabia gets to reap the benefits of the program, when key U.S. allies like Germany and France are not enrolled; Israel has reached a deal with the U.S., but that partnership has not yet been implemented.

Any Saudi travelers cleared through the program will be able to bypass the normal customs line after providing passports and fingerprints. The status lasts for five years.

The decision is a turnaround, the IPT notes, from when Saudi Arabia was briefly placed on a list of countries whose U.S.-bound travelers would face higher scrutiny, in the wake of the failed Christmas Day bombing attempt in 2009.

But Napolitano spoke highly of “the bond between the United States and the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia” when she announced the change in January.

“By enhancing collaboration with the government of Saudi Arabia, we reaffirm our commitment to more effectively secure our two countries against evolving threats while facilitating legitimate trade and travel,” Napolitano said.

The Global Entry program was launched in 2008 to expedite pre-approved passengers through the airport customs and security process when they arrive in the U.S. The program is designed to weed out low-risk passengers and enable authorities to zero in on those who may be more likely to pose a threat.

But the program has sparked controversy in the past. Critics objected in late 2010 when Mexican citizens were included in the program, raising concerns that drug cartels would quickly learn how to exploit loopholes in the plan. DHS officials, however, insisted at the time that people who attain trusted traveler status don’t get a free pass and are still subject to random searches.

The program allows travelers who have undergone a thorough vetting process — fingerprinting, background checks, interviews with customs agents, etc.– to attain a low-risk status that allows them to skip the line at customs and complete their entry process at an automatic kiosk.

Fox News