The Recent Death Sentences In Saudi Arabia – Analysis

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By Giancarlo Elia Valori*

On January 3, 2016 Saudi Arabia sentenced to death, among others, Nimr al Nimr, aged 56, the Shi’ite Imam on its territory, and the Head of Al Qaeda, Faris Al Zahrani.

The condemnation of Nimr al Nimr had been confirmed by the Supreme Court last October for seeking “foreign meddling” in Saudi Arabia, “disobeying” its rulers and “taking up arms against the security forces”.

In 2011 Nimr, the spiritual leader of the two million Shi’ites living in Saudi Arabia’s Eastern province – very rich in oil – had asked for the secession of its province from the Wahhabi Kingdom of the Al Saud family and its merger with Bahrain when, at that time, the Emirate was witnessing the insurgency of the Shi’ite majority against the Al Khalifa’ Sunni family, who rules it with a small minority of officials linked to Saudi Arabia.

Most of the 47 convicts executed were members of the core group of Al Qaeda operating in the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia and were held accountable for acts of terrorism in Saudi Arabia from 2003 to 2006.

Among others, an Egyptian citizen and a citizen from Chad were executed.

Nimr Al Nimr’s brother launched an appeal for calm to the Shi’ites of the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia, in the Eastern provinces and in the other Shi’ite countries of the region.

Before being executed, Nimr had studied in Qom and was the leader of the many Shi’ite militants living in the city of Qatif, but he never condemned the Saudi royal family.

The Imam of the “Party of Ali” had been arrested in 2012 and his trial had been condemned as irregular by many NGOs and most international organizations for human rights.

Everyone expected that King Salman, who rose to power after the death of his half-brother Abdullah in January 2015, wanted to show clemency, but this did not happen. Upon Nimr’s death, Saudi Arabia decreed the end of the “ceasefire” in force since December 15, 2015 in Yemen.

This was obviously a strategic goal: to deprive of morale the Houthi Shi’ite guerrillas in the clash with the pro-Saudi Yemen, which is now the “Vietnam of Saudi Arabia” and, in the event of Shi’ites’ victory, will allow to control the primary strategic and economic area of the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia.

Everything becomes clear if we examine the strategic equation of the Wahhabi Kingdom.

Firstly, with this death sentence of the Shi’ite Imam, Saudi Arabia forces the United States to choose between a continuation of the P5 + 1 Agreement with Iran and the strategic and financial connection with the Saudi Kingdom.

The strategic factor is well-known, considering that the US-Saudi alliance is the axis of the American presence in the Middle East, along with the agreement between the United States and Israel.

The financial connection has been operating since the agreement reached after the Yom Kippur War between the US banks and Saudi Arabia for the confidential recycling of petrodollars.

When their amount decreases, as now happens with the fall in the oil barrel price, the Saudi-US agreement loses importance, while, in fact, the United States seem to create a system of balance between the Shi’ite Iran and the Sunni world linked to Saudi Arabia.

Saudi Arabia is weakening OPEC, for the excellent reason that now the Viennese agency is holding together the oil interests of two mortal enemies, namely the Shi’ites and the Sunnis. It is not unlikely for Saudi Arabia to soon revive the Sunni alliance, within OPEC, called OAPEC, the organization based in Kuwait, which was founded in 1968 by Saudi Arabia, Kuwait and, coincidentally, Libya, to avoid political embargos after the “Six-Day War”.

That is a good hypothesis to clarify the future evolution of the still de facto “double” government currently operating in Libya.

Another strategic equation is related to the different configuration of the Shi’ite-Sunni conflict in the Greater Middle East: the significant minorities of the “Party of Ali” are everywhere, but they are in power only in Iran, while in Turkey they account for 20% (and we will soon witness the anti-Shi’ite fight operating in Turkey). In Iran the Shi’ites are 87% of the population; in the Lebanon the Party of Ali accounts for 47% (and the Sunnis account for 24%) and in Syria the true Shiites are 15%, apart from the Alawites who came to power with the Assads that the Imam Mussa Sadr, the founder of the “Amal” Party in the Lebanon, declared to be “true Shi’ites”, before disappearing in Tripoli, Libya, on August 31, 1978.

In Egypt the Shi’ites account for 3%, in Yemen 44%, in Bahrain 73%, in Kuwait 21%, in Qatar 18% and in Oman, the Emirate less prone to follow Saudi orders, the Shi’ites account for 5%.

Aside from the rule of taqiyya, the official denial of one’s own faith in the Imam Ali, which is permitted by the Shi’ite religious rules, the Shi’ites total 121 million people, while Sunnis are 191 million people.

In all likelihood, however, Iran will operate for the autonomy of the Amazigh movement, the Berbers in Libya who operate, in the region of Benghazi, against the Islamists and the Lebanese Hezbollah, who already operate in favor of Assad’s forces in Syria.

After the lifting of sanctions, the “sale and spinning” to the naïve West of its ambiguous policies to reduce nuclear weapons, Iran has the opportunity and the political lucidity to mobilize – if not now, in the near future – the significant Shi’ite minorities in all Sunni-ruled nations.

For Iran, too, it is a goal of hegemony over crude oil which works well precisely when the oil barrel price goes down and the geopolitical choices become – for some countries – a matter of life and death.

A struggle for possible hegemony which regards the second strategic factor, namely the “taking” of oil wells of either party, in a war which, for the time being, is a war of attrition (the Houthis in Yemen) and later, if pacification in Syria is in favor of Assad and Russia, it will turn into an overt and “traditional” war.

Russia has a dual interest, which is to maintain its presence in the Mediterranean region and to conquer a global interdiction power in the area that the United States are abandoning, completely bitten by their shale oil bug. Restricting NATO southward, towards its “jugular vein” in the Middle East, and excluding the Atlantic Alliance from the land corridor stretching from Ukraine to Georgia up to Poland. Russia aims at the land and sea lines which seal the Mediterranean region and subject it to the Russian Federation’s command and rule.

The Russian Federation wants the whole Mediterranean region and, in fact, with some sort of dullness and hard-headedness, NATO supports Turkey also after the shooting down of the Russian Sukhoi 24 aircraft which, indeed, was a way to call all the Atlantic Alliance to the war against Russia.

A goal only partially reached, considering that SHAPE – despite all possible naivety – did not follow Turkey in all its options against Russia in favor of its “Turkmen” guerrillas, which are a project of hegemony over the region when the Sunnis, who are a majority in Syria, are free from the Assad family and, hence, when Turkey’s hegemony may encompass all the populations of Turkish origin up to the Xing Kiang.

Nevertheless it shall face China there, which will not allow the presence of a NATO country along its borders – that is precisely the reason why the United States support Turkey.

Israel is still the strategic big winner in the region: it has witnessed a considerable reduction of Syrian pressure on the Golan Heights and it also sees the crisis of the Islamic world. Currently almost all Lebanese Hezbollah are in Syria, some top secret contacts with Saudi Arabia are already operating against Iran, which will launch its first nuclear bomb against what Tehran calls “the Zionist entity”.

All local players are weakening, but I imagine that Israel is arming against whoever of the two will win, even though today it looks as if it is going to be a long and complex war.

About the author:
*Professor Giancarlo Elia Valori
is an eminent Italian economist and businessman. He holds prestigious academic distinctions and national orders. Mr Valori has lectured on international affairs and economics at the world’s leading universities such as Peking University, the Hebrew University of Jerusalem and the Yeshiva University in New York.

He currently chairs “La Centrale Finanziaria Generale Spa”, he is also the honorary president of Huawei Italy, economic adviser to the Chinese giant HNA Group and Khashoggi Holding’s advisor.

In 1992 he was appointed Officier de la Légion d’Honneur de la République Francaise, with this motivation: “A man who can see across borders to understand the world” and in 2002 he received the title of “Honorable” of the Académie des Sciences de l’Institut de France

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This article was published by Modern Diplomacy

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