Al Qaeda regional branch’s No. 2 killed in airstrike, officials say

• A frame grab from video posted on a militant-leaning Web site, shows Saeed al-Shihri, deputy leader of Al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula. Yemeni officials say a missile believed to have been fired by a U.S. operated drone in Yemen along with five others traveling with him in one car.

Security forces in Yemen have killed Said al-Shihri, described as the second-in-command of a regional branch of Al Qaeda, senior U.S. and Yemeni officials say. Al-Shihri’s death is a major blow to the militant group.

The U.S. officials said Saeed al-Shihri was killed, but could not confirm any U.S. involvement in the airstrike Monday that Yemeni leaders say killed the terrorist and five others.

Yemeni officials said the missile that killed al-Shihri was believed to have been fired by a U.S.-operated, unmanned drone aircraft. The U.S. doesn’t usually comment on such attacks although it has used drones in the past to go after Al Qaeda members in Yemen.

Al-Shihri is a former inmate of Guantánamo Bay who was released to Saudi Arabia in 2007 and put through a Saudi rehabilitation program for militants, according to the Guardian.

A Yemeni security source also told the Guardian that another Saudi and an Iraqi national were among the others killed.

The two U.S. officials spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to release the information to the news media.

Al Qaeda’s Yemen branch is seen as the world’s most active, planning and carrying out attacks against targets in and outside U.S. territory.

Al-Shihri’s death would amount to a major breakthrough for U.S. efforts to cripple the group in Yemen, which is considered a crucial battleground with the terror network. The impoverished nation on the southern tip of the Arabian Peninsula is on the doorstep of Saudi Arabia and fellow oil-producing nations of the Gulf and lies on strategic sea routes leading to the Suez Canal.

The group took advantage of the political vacuum during unrest inspired by the Arab Spring last year to take control of large swaths of land in the south. But the Yemeni military has launched a broad U.S.-backed offensive and driven the movement from several towns.

Al-Shihri would be the latest in a series of Al Qaeda figures killed in drone strikes, including U.S.-born Anwar al-Awlaki, who had been linked to the planning and execution of several attacks targeting U.S. and Western interests, including the attempt to down a Detroit-bound airliner in 2009 and the plot to bomb cargo planes in 2010.

Officials said the Al Qaeda in Yemen deputy was killed as he left a house in the southern Hadramawt province with his five companions.

Al-Shihri, who is believed to be in his late 30s, fought in Afghanistan and spent six years in the U.S. military prison at Guantanamo Bay, before being released and going through Saudi Arabia’s famous “rehabilitation” institutes, an indoctrination program that is designed to replace what authorities in Saudi Arabia see as militant ideology with religious moderation.

But he headed south to Yemen upon release and became deputy to Nasser al-Wahishi, the leader of Al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula, as the terror network’s Yemen branch is formally known. Al-Wahishi is a Yemeni who once served as Osama bin Laden’s personal aide in Afghanistan.

Al Qaeda in Yemen has been linked to several attempted attacks on U.S. targets, including the foiled Christmas Day 2009 bombing of an airliner over Detroit and explosives-laden parcels intercepted aboard cargo flights last year.

Unlike other Al Qaeda branches, the network’s militants in Yemen have gone beyond the concept of planting sleeper cells and actively sought to gain a territorial foothold in lawless areas, mainly in the south of Yemen, before they were pushed back by U.S.-backed government forces after months of intermittent battles.

The Yemen-based militants have struck at Western interests in the area twice in the past 12 years. In 2000, they bombed the USS Cole destroyer in Aden harbor, killing 17 sailors. Two years later, they struck a French oil tanker, also off Yemen.

U.S. drone strikes have intensified in Yemen in recent month, killing several key Al Qaeda operatives.

Samir Khan, an Al Qaeda propagandist, also was killed in a drone strike last year. Last October, al-Awlaki’s son was among nine killed in an airstrike. The nine also included Egyptian-born Ibrahim al-Banna, identified by Yemeni authorities as the media chief of the Yemeni branch of the Al Qaeda.

The Associated Press contributed to this report. 

Read more: http://www.foxnews.com/world/2012/09/10/yemen-officials-report-al-qaeda-no-2-killed-in-airstrike/?test=latestnews#ixzz26C519drO

Al Qaeda targets Riyadh, Jeddah and Sderot. Saudi cell had chemicals

DEBKAfile Exclusive Report August 26, 2012, 10:23 PM (GMT+02:00)

Found in possession of terror cells in Saudi Arabia

For the first time, a thread links the three rockets which hit the Israeli town of Sderot Sunday, Aug. 26, slightly injuring two workmen, and the two terrorist cells captured in Riyadh and Jeddah, Saudi Arabia on the same day,DEBKAfile’s counter-terror sources report. Both events were conceived by Al Qaeda of the Arabian Peninsula. AQAP has ordered its Sinai cells and Egyptian and Palestinian offshoots to step up their attacks from Sinai and the Gaza Strip.
By three happenings Sunday, AQAP broke new and menacing ground:

1. Three Qassam missiles fired at the industrial zone Sderot shares with Shear Hanegev ushered in a Gaza-based anti-Israel offensive launched by the “Shura Council in the Jerusalem Area” – the umbrella organization of all the Salafi groups operating in Sinai and the Gaza Strip.
This group’s 6,000-strong force of well-armed terrorists is commanded by an Egyptian by the name of Hisham Saydani. Al Qaeda has dubbed him Abu al-Walid al-Maqdisi. He and his lieutenants serve as liaison between the Sinai cells and AQAP headquarters in Yemen.

2.  Hamas held Saydani in a special security prison cell in the Gaza Strip until two weeks ago when, for some unknown reason, which US, Egyptian and Israeli counter-terror agencies are trying to discover, Hamas let him go. His first action was to set up the Shura Council’s attack near Rafah, in which 16 Egyptian troops were killed and the Kerem Shalom crossing barrier into Israel was rammed. The gunmen were liquidated before they reached their target: the IDF Bedouin Reconnaissance Battalion’s command base nearby.
This operation was designed at the highest AQAP command level.
Suspecting that at least three of the perpetrators had gone to ground in the Gaza Strip, Egypt demanded that Hamas hunt them down and arrest them. The Shura Council’s three-missile volley against Sderot was its way of warning Hamas to call off the hunt or else the missile fire would continue and bring Israeli retribution down on the Hamas-ruled enclave.
The same tactic was behind the firing of two Grad missiles against the southern Israeli resort and port town of Eilat Friday, Aug. 17. That too was an al Qaeda warning to Cairo to call off the Egyptian military’s pursuit of Salafi terrorists in Sinai or else more missiles would be loosed against southern Israel.
Two days later, Israel placed Eilat under the guard of an Iron Dome missile defense battery.

Following these two incidents, al Qaeda’s Shura Council announced that Israeli towns would be held hostage for the halting of Egyptian and Hamas military pursuit of its members in Sinai and the Gaza Strip, which must stop forthwith.
3. Sunday, too, the Saudi Interior Minister announced the busting of two al Qaeda cells in the capital Riyadh and the Saudi summer capital of Jeddah on the Red Sea, which were plotting attacks on Western targets, and local security forces and public places in the kingdom. There were eight arrests, two Saudis and six Yemenis.
Saudi sources disclosed that they were members of AQAP, operating under the orders of the organization’s headquarters in Yemen. Found in their possession were weapons and explosives and also chemical substances for loading into explosive charges.

This is the first evidence since 2002, when a bomb packed with poison chemicals was detonated by Palestinian suicide killer in Jerusalem, of the use of chemical weapons by Middle East terrorists. It is feared that those weapons may also have found their way to Sinai.

It Is Now Possible To Download An AR-15 Assault Rifle Using 3D Printing

Walter Hickey

Courtesy of Michael Guslick See Also A New Alliance Is Forming To Support The Missile Shield Against Iran The Saudis Warn Israel They Will Shoot Down Any Jets Using Its Airspace For A Strike On Iran This Graffiti Shows How A Lot Of Iranians Feel About Nuclear Energy

One of the major possibilities in the future of gun control — and manufacturing in general — is the potential of 3D printers to build items from scratch. 

That has led to at least one person designing and printing parts for an AR-15 rifle. He may be the first to test his work.

This morning Wired’s Danger Room had a post about engineer Michael Guslick’s effort to print an AR-15 from scratch. Using the schematics for the firearm, Guslick was able to digitally represent parts of the rifle and print them.

That data file is sent to the printer, which interprets it and “prints” a 3-D real world model of the file. The process is legitimately used in design when developing prototypes and models of engineering designs.

The gun is made of polymer plastic, but the technology behind 3D printing is progressing at a rate that could make inexpensive metal “ink” a possibility soon. Some companies already have prototype metal 3D printers.

The part of this story that nobody is covering is how Guslick’s work can be spread around the internet. Moreover, it — or an imitator’s work — already has.

 

ALoopingIcon / Wikimedia An original sculpture, a digital model of the sculpture, a 3D printout of the model.

There’s a very active “Physible” community that spreads designs that contributors wrote up in code. By spreading this around, different people with 3D printers can collaborate and expand on their work. A lot of people use bittorrent sites to spread these around. 

Bittorrent is a downloading system where a group of people who have a file each send a portion of the file to a downloader. This is coordinated by a downloadable .torrent file that links the group together. With standard downloading, the transaction is from one uploader to one downloader. With bittorrent, it’s teamwork.

Quick heads-up: Due to their dubious legality, Torrent download sites may be considered not safe for work. They have racy advertisements too. So use judgement when clicking these links.

Here, for instance, is a downloadable file for a 3D print of Mark Zuckerburg’s head. Innocent enough. Here’s a file to print a model aircraft. Here’s a videogame necklace.

Here is the data file to print an AR-15 rifle part. Here’s the data file for the receiver and magazine.

Now, we haven’t checked these files to make sure they’re the real deal. But if they are, they introduce a whole mess of legal questions.

When guns can be downloaded and manufactured reliably, that’s when gun control as it is currently understood goes completely out the window. It becomes obsolete.

In order to regulate, the government would have to contend with an assortment of free speech issues; would possession of the code for an illegal gun be a crime? Can writing that code be considered an expression of free speech? Can executing it?

Right now, the technology has not progressed to the point where an operational firearm can be printed and used. But it’s getting there, and the designs are already becoming free to share and download.

Once the tech catches up, though, prepare for one of the first controversies involving both the first and second amendment.

Read more: http://www.businessinsider.com/it-is-now-possible-to-download-and-3d-print-a-working-ar-15-assault-rifle-2012-8#ixzz23Nc4FdRb

The Mega Mosques Boom

http://frontpagemag.com

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Murfreesboro, a city in the heart of Tennessee, and, Marseille, France’s second-largest city and its largest city on the Mediterranean coast, have few things in common. The two cities are separated by nearly 5,000 miles, and by equally wide divisions of language and culture.

And yet Murfreesboro and Marseille are connected by a common challenge. Both cities have struggled against the creeping rise of the mega mosques.

The mega mosque in Marseille has been the subject of an extended legal fight going back a decade. The one in Murfreesboro had a briefer history of being on the wrong side of the law. But in both cases elected officials did their best to aid the mega mosques while ignoring local residents and the law.

The mega mosque business is booming around the world. The Marseille mega mosque has a proposed capacity of 7,000 seats which would make it the largest mosque in France, overshadowing the Ervy mosque which has a mere 5,000 seats.
Both of these French mega mosques would have been dwarfed by a proposed London mega mosque with 12,000 seats and usability targets as high as 40,000. If the London mosque is ever built, it will dominate the Mosque of Rome, currently the most mega of all the mega mosques of Western Europe.

The Ground Zero Mosque, located near the site of the most brutal Muslim atrocity inflicted on the West in centuries, had a more modest 2,000 seating capacity plan, but would be vertically taller than most of the mega-mosques with a proposed 100,000 square feet of space.

This would make it larger than the Marseille mega mosque, the Murfreesboro mega mosque and the London mega mosque. But despite their differences in size, all four mega mosque projects have followed the same pattern of lawsuits, public protests, exposures of shady mosque backers and public officials eager to look the other way.

The Cologne mega mosque in Germany has also followed the same pattern and is set to become the biggest mosque in Germany. But big is never big enough. The Stockholm mega mosque was finished in the year 2000 and has a capacity of 2,000, but a decade later there was already a proposal to replace it with an even larger mega mosque.

At its current size the Stockholm mega mosque had already managed to feature sermons in support of Islamic terrorism and serve as a recruitment center for Al-Qaeda. At several times the size the situation could only get worse.

In yet another common pattern of mega mosques, the Stockholm mega mosque was funded primarily by Sheikh Zayed, the ruler of the United Arab Emirates. The Cologne mega mosque was primarily funded by Turkey’s Islamist government. The Marseille mega mosque is being funded by a number of foreign Muslim governments.

Turkish Prime Minister Erdogan has said, “The mosques are our barracks, the domes our helmets, the minarets our bayonets and the faithful our soldiers.” The foreign funding of mega mosques has raised the question of whether Muslim governments aren’t constructing their own barracks and armies in the middle of European cities.

In some cases the militarization of the mega mosque is so overt that it might as well be a bayonet. One of the most blatant examples may be the Copenhagen mega mosque with a capacity of 3,000 which is being financed by Iran. Iran has already constructed another mega mosque in Helsinki and has similar plans all across Europe and the world.

The Copenhagen mega mosque’s Imam is Mohammed Mahdi Khademi who ran the ideology department of the Revolutionary Guard militia, an arm of the theocratic regime, which was designated a foreign terrorist organization by the United States.

It would be hard to imagine a more explicit example of mega mosque militarization than a regime that sponsors acts of worldwide terror funding a mega mosque headed by the former Islamist political commissar of its terrorist wing.

Not to be left out the Sunnis are getting their own Copenhagen mega mosque funded by Saudi Arabia. This will involve an architectural “mountain” across from the University of Copenhagen topped by two minarets, transforming the Sunni-Shiite rivalry into a competition to create the biggest Islamist eyesores in a city generally known for a quieter brand of architecture.

It’s not only in the West that the mega mosques are rising. In Moscow, Muslims have taken over entire streets to call for the construction of new mosques. And the Saudis have already offered to cover the cost.

In China, Saudi money has been transforming mosque designs from the Chinese pagoda to the dome and minaret favored by their new patrons. The more traditional Chinese look of the Great Mosque of Xi’an is making way for the Xiguan Mosque, a monstrous 3,000 capacity mega mosque which looks as if a chunk of Saudi Arabia had been dropped into the middle of Lanzhou.

In Argentina, a year after the bombing of the Jewish center by Muslim terrorists, President Carlos Menem, who has been accused of complicity in the attack, allotted 7.5 acres of public land to build the King Fahd Islamic Cultural Center, the largest mosque in Latin America. It overshadows the Caracas mega mosque in Venezuela which has a capacity of 3,500. Both mega mosques were built by the Saudi royal family.

For now the Islamic Center of America, located in sunny Dearborn, Michigan where Christians can expect to be stoned if they get too close, is the largest mega mosque in the United States. The Shiite mega mosque was already the target of a Sunni Islamic terrorist plot.

Nearby is the Sunni Dearborn Mosque which claims the same capacity in an extension of the Sunni-Shiite rivalry. But so long as there’s oil money fueling the projects then the mega mosques will keep on growing.

From Markham in Canada down to New York City, and from the West Midlands in the United Kingdom to Sydney, Australia; cities around the world are facing the same threats to their communities.

For Muslim states the mega mosque is a tool of power giving them the ability to centralize control of overseas Muslims with a single facility in a single city. For non-Muslim countries, the mega mosque is a center of subversion and terrorism.

As the mega mosque projects grow explosively across the country and the world, so does the resistance to the long shadows that they cast.

Saudi riot police fire live rounds on Shiite protesters in Qatif – reports (PHOTOS)

Published: RT
Edited: 28 July, 2012, 07:17

Several demonstrators have been wounded in Saudi Arabia’s eastern district of Qatif after security forces opened fire on protesters. Officers fired live rounds at demonstrators who carried posters of those injured and arrested earlier this month.

Spokesmen for the Saudi Interior Ministry said several people were burning tires during the protests, and several arrests were made.

Among those arrested today was Mohammed al-Shakhuri, who is on a list of the country’s 23 most-wanted people, Al-Manar News reported. Witnesses said Shakhuri was taken to a military hospital with bullet wounds in his back and neck.

“There were no casualties,” the Interior Ministry said in a statement.

Clashes between police and protesters have increased in recent days, following the deaths of two protesters earlier this month.

Protests began in Saudi Arabia last March, when a Shia uprising in neighbouring Bahrain was crushed by Gulf troops, led by Saudi Arabia.

Demonstrations escalated earlier this month, after a prominent Shia cleric was arrested for being what the interior ministry deemed an “instigator of sedition.”His detainment has been the source of widespread demonstrations demanding an end to sectarian discrimination in the region.

Shia Muslims have long complained of marginalization at the hands of Saudi Arabia’s Sunni ruling family. They were demanding greater rights and an end to what they believe is discrimination by the rulers.

Political analyst Dr. Mohsen Saleh explains that the protests are taking place in the country’s major oil-producing region, where, at the same time, the poorest people live.

“The eastern part in Saudi Arabia has been agonizing for a long time, for centuries…They have been deprived of their basic rights,” he told RT. “When the peaceful [protests] started in Bahrain, the Saudis thought [the same may happen in their country] – and they were right in thinking so, because they are discriminating against an essential part of their people in the east.

“And it’s an irony that all kinds of [carbohydrates – oil] and gas are produced there. [And still], these people are the poorest in their country. That’s why the [Saudi rulers] fear that the agony of these people might be a mark of a great revolution in Saudi Arabia. And that’s what the United States and the Saudis are really afraid of,” he concluded.

The latest events in Saudi Arabia follow the eight latest arrests that were made Thursday in the United Arab Emirates, where the government announced an investigation into groups plotting crimes against the state.

Similar crackdowns have earlier taken place in Bahrain.

Still from YouTube video

Still from YouTube video

Still from YouTube video

Terrorist ‘Served Time in Gitmo’

Bulgarian media says terrorist who murdered 7 is Global Jihadist who served 1 year in Guantanamo.

IsraelNationalNews 

By Gil Ronen

First Publish: 7/19/2012, 7:17 PM

Aftermath of bombing at Burgas

Reuters

Bulgarian media says the terroristwho murdered 7 people Wednesday at Burgas was Mehdi Mohammed Ghazali, who belonged to the Global Jihad.

According to these reports, which are unconfirmed, Ghazali was arrested in 2009 in southern Pakistan together with his wife and several other people, including seven Turkish nationals with false documents.

Ghazali is reportedly a Swedish citizen, with Algerian and Finnish origins, and had been held at the United States’ Guantanamo Bay detainment camp in Cuba from 2002 to 2004.

Previously, he reportedly studied at a Muslim religious school and mosque in Britain, and traveled to Saudi Arabia, Afghanistan, and Pakistan.

If the report is true, it may mean that Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu was too quick to blame Iran and Hizbullah for the attack, or that the connection between Iran and the attack is a hidden one. In any case, the attack appears to have been timed to coincide exactly with the 18th anniversary of the very deadly AMIA attack in Buenos Aires, which was perpetrated by Iran and Hizbullah.

UAE starts up pipeline to bypass Strait of Hormuz

Posted by Associated Press

Sunday, July 15, 2012

• Enlarge Photo

  The Nimitz-class aircraft carrier USS John C. Stennis transits the Straits of … more 

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• Decision on Strait of Hormuz lies with Iran’s top leader

DUBAI, United Arab Emirates (AP) — The United Arab Emirates on Sunday inaugurated a much-anticipated overland oil pipeline that bypasses the Strait of Hormuz, giving the OPEC member insurance against Iranian threats to block the strategic waterway.

The 236-mile Abu Dhabi Crude Oil Pipeline snakes across western desert dunes and over the craggy Hajar Mountains to the city of Fujairah on the UAE’s Indian Ocean coast, south of the strait.

Until now, all Emirati exports were loaded in the Gulf and then sailed out through Hormuz. Once it is running at full capacity, the pipeline could allow the country, OPEC’s third-biggest exporter, to ship as much as two-thirds of its peak production through the eastern port city.

It is designed to carry at least 1.5 million barrels a day of crude, though capacity is expected eventually to rise to 1.8 million barrels daily.

Efforts to bring the long-awaited export route online have gained increased urgency in recent months because of repeated threats by Iranian officials to close Hormuz if the country’s own exports are blocked.

The narrow strait is patrolled by Iranian warships as well as by the U.S. Navy and its allies. It is the export route for about 17 million barrels of oil a day, or a fifth of the world’s oil supply.

The chairman of Iran’s Joint Chiefs of Staff said Sunday that Tehran has a contingency plan to close the key route, though any decision to shut it rests with the country’s supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei.

Gen. Hasan Firouzabadi’s comments come two weeks after theEuropean Union enforced a total oil embargo against Iran. The move is part of a series of sanctions meant to force Tehran to halt its uranium enrichment program. The West suspects Iran is aiming to build nuclear weapons. Iran denies the charge.

Emirati officials quietly began filling the new pipeline with oil on June 30, according to the UAE Embassy in Washington. A statement from the embassy said the project underscores the U.S. ally’s “commitment to ensuring the reliable and safe delivery of crude oil … to global markets.”

Officials including the Emirates’ energy minister gathered in Fujairah for the formal inauguration of the pipeline, said Mohammed Saif al-Afkham, the director general of Fujairah municipality.

The International Petroleum Investment Co., the state-run company behind the project, confirmed that the pipeline became operational with the first commercial shipment being loaded onto a tanker for export.

The U.S. ambassador to the UAE attended the inauguration, underscoring the project’s strategic significance.

Ambassador Michael H. Corbin called the launch “a historic step in establishing multiple routes for the vital flow of oil from the Arabian Peninsula.”

Although several Gulf Arab oil and gas producers fear a shutdown of the strait could block exports, only the UAE and Oman have coastlines on the Indian Ocean side of the strait. Saudi Arabia also can avoid Hormuzby shipping its Gulf fields’ oil output through ports on the Red Sea, but it would have to significantly improve its transport infrastructure to get its full production out.

Saudi Arabian demonstrators defy crackdown

Posted by Tehran Times

Anti-regime demonstrators gather in the Qatif region of Saudi Arabia’s Eastern Province, July 8, 2012. Saudi Arabiansare continuing to stage anti-government demonstrations, despite a violent crackdown by the security forces. There have a number of demonstrations in several towns over the past few days, Press TV reported on Sunday. Demonstrators have condemned the brutal police crackdown and are demanding the release of Shia cleric Sheikh Nemr al-Nemr, who was attacked, injured and arrested on July 8. On July 13, Saudi security forces in the town of Awamiyah killed an 18-year-old protester during a demonstration held near a police station in support of Sheikh Nemr. Meanwhile, 10 female protesters were arrested in the city of Buraydah, about 380 kilometers northwest of the capital Riyadh, over the past couple of days. Since February 2011, protesters have held numerous demonstrations in Saudi Arabia, mainly in the Qatif region and Awamiyah in the Eastern Province, calling for the release of all political prisoners, freedom of expression and assembly, and an end to widespread discrimination. However, the demonstrations have turned into protests against the House of Saud, especially since November 2011, when Saudi security forces killed five protesters and injured many others in Eastern Province. Similar demonstrations have also been held in Riyadh and the holy city of Medina over the past few weeks. The Saudi Interior Ministry issued a statement on March 5, 2011, prohibiting “all forms of demonstrations, marches or protests, and calls for them.” According to Human Rights Watch, the Saudi regime “routinely represses expression critical of the government.”

Considering a Sunni Regime in Syria

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Stratfor

By Reva Bhalla and Kamran Bokhari

Last week’s publicized defection of the Tlass family marked a potential turning point for Syria‘s al Assad regime.

The Tlass family formed the main pillar of Sunni support for the minority Alawite regime. The patriarch of the family, former Defense Minister Mustafa Tlass, had a strategic, brotherly bond with late Syrian President Hafez al Assad. The two military men served as members of the ruling Baath Party in Cairo from 1958 to 1961 when Syria and Egypt existed under the Nasserite vision of the United Arab Republic. The failure of that project brought them back home, where together they helped bring the Baath Party to power in 1963 and sustained a violent period of coups, purges and countercoups through the 1960s.

With Tlass standing quietly by his side, Hafez mounted a bloodless coup and appointed Tlass as his defense minister in 1970. Since then, Tlass has been the symbol of Syria’s old guard regime. Without Tlass’ godfather-like backing, it is questionable whether Bashar al Assad, then a political novice, would have been able to consolidate his grip over the regime in 2000 when his father passed away. Through the Tlass family’s extensive military and business connections, the Sunni-Alawite bond endured for decades at the highest echelons of the regime.

But blood still runs thick in clan politics, and as Sunni blood was spilling into Syria’s streets in the current uprising, the Tlass family likely felt growing pressure to side with its fellow Sunnis. Perhaps more critical, the Tlass family assessed it was time to make a move before it paid a price for its allegiance to the regime. Whatever the primary motivation of the decision, the Tlass’ choice to break a decadeslong pact with the al Assad family has now increased pressure on other elite members of the military and business communities to pick a side.

As one astute observer of the Syrian conflict explained, the al Assad regime is like a melting block of ice. The Alawite core of the block is frozen intact because the minorities fear the consequences of losing power to a Sunni majority. We have not yet seen the mass defections and breakdown in command and control within the military that would suggest that large chunks of this block are breaking off. But the Sunni patronage networks around that core that keep the state machinery running are slowly starting to melt. The more this block melts, the more fragile it becomes and the more likely we are to see cracks form closer and closer to the center. At that point, the al Assad regime will become highly prone to a palace coup scenario.

Syria’s Eventual Return to Sunni Rule

The al Assad regime has not cracked yet, but this is a useful moment to step back and think seriously about the regional implications should Syria return to Sunni hands. In particular, we would like to examine what such a scenario would mean for Iran’s position in the region.

Let’s first recall why Syria is up for grabs. Human rights interests alone do not come close to explaining why this particular uprising has received a substantial amount of attention and foreign backing over the past year. The past decade enabled Iran to wrest Baghdad out of Sunni hands and bring Mesopotamia under Shiite control. There is little question now that Iraq, as fractured as it is, sits in the Iranian sphere of influence while Iraqi Sunnis have been pushed to the margins. Iran’s gains in Baghdad shifted the regional balance of power, creating a Shiite crescent stretching from western Afghanistan to the Mediterranean coast.

This disturbance in the regional balance of power has aggravated a number of regional stakeholders. With U.S. backing, Saudi Arabia, Turkey and Qatar have banded together to lead a countercoalition to Iran. Iraq may have been reluctantly conceded to Iran, but the uprising in Syria offered a new opportunity to undercut Iran’s Mediterranean outlet in the Levant. Saudi Arabia has been trying to manage simmering Shiite unrest on the Arabian Peninsula, while Turkey is looking to lay a Sunni foundation for its regional resurgence. As a result, increased amounts of money, supplies, weaponry, training and intelligence support have made their way to the Syrian rebels through covert channels. The hope was that a covert campaign would obviate the need for a costly foreign military intervention and lead to the collapse of the regime from within. In theory, the plan sounds reasonable. In practice, it’s a lot more complicated.

A Complicated Transition

A transition to Sunni rule in Syria is bound to be messy. Syria’s Alawites have become well established in Damascus and in other key urban centers across the country. The heterodox community has also dominated the most elite units of the military, security and intelligence apparatus and will be carrying those skills with it should it be sidelined from power. Even though the Alawites and fellow minorities are outnumbered, it is unlikely that they will be easily pushed back to the hilly coastal lands of their forefathers in the northwest.

Instead, the Alawites, with Iranian backing, could be expected to mount a militant resistance against Turkish- and Arab-backed Sunnis. The Alawites, who currently dominate Syria’s ruling Baath Party, observed the rapidity with which the (Sunni-dominated) Iraqi Baathist military crumbled after the fall of Saddam Hussein and the now marginalized status of Iraq’s former Baathists. The Alawites will be fighting an existential crisis to avoid a similar fate in the face of a proxy war, while Iran will be reinforcing the Alawites to try to maintain a foothold in the region. This conflict will inevitably spill over into Lebanon, a state whose existence has been defined by this broader sectarian struggle and that will continue to serve as a battleground for proxy interests.

Transnational jihadists would also play a large role in a post-al Assad Syria. The Syrian rebellion contains a growing assortment of Sunni Islamists, Salafist jihadists and transnational al Qaeda-style jihadists. Foreign fighters belonging to the latter two categories are believed to be making their way into Syria from Lebanon, Jordan and Iraq.

For many years, Syrian intelligence ran an elaborate jihadist supply chain, funneling militants into both Lebanon and Iraq to serve its foreign policy purposes. Saudi Arabia is now believed to be using those very same channels against Damascus to funnel militants into the Syrian theater. From past experience, Riyadh is wary of transnational jihadists’ gaining ground in Syria and causing more problems down the line. But Saudi Arabia’s concerns over Iran and its Shiite supporters appear to be outweighing those reservations. Indeed, Saudi Arabia has been promoting what it has defined as legitimate jihad against the Syrian regime and its Iranian and Shiite supporters.

The Saudis cannot wage their jihad and stem jihadism at the same time. Inserting religiously motivated fighters into a theater is the easy part; controlling them will be difficult, especially once common interests against Iran and the Shia dissolve into an ideologically driven agenda of transnational jihadism.

A Revival of the Mesopotamian Battleground?

It is safe to assume that Syria, between the fall of the Alawite regime and the turbulent emergence of a new, Sunni-empowered regime, would experience an interregnum defined by considerable chaos. Amid the sectarian disorder, a generation would remain of battle-hardened and ideologically driven militants belonging to Sunni nationalist and transnational jihadist camps who in the past decade have fought against regimes in Baghdad and Damascus. These jihadists harbor expectations that they will be able to aid their struggling allies in Iraq if they gain enough operating space in Syria. Under these circumstances, it is easy to imagine a revived militant flow into Iraq, and this time under much looser control.

Thus, the regional campaign against Iran is unlikely to end in Syria. Should Sunnis gain the upper hand in Syria, the Shiite-led bloc in Lebanon (led by Hezbollah and its allies) will likely lose its dominant status. Turkish, Saudi and Qatari backing for Sunnis in the Levant and the rise of Islamists in the Arab states will be focused on creating a more formidable bulwark against Iran and its Arab Shiite allies.

The most important battleground to watch in this regard will be Iraq. There are a number of regional stakeholders who are not satisfied with Baghdad’s Iranian-backed Shiite government. There also likely will be a healthy Sunni militant flow to draw from the Syrian crisis. These militants will not only need to be kept occupied so that they do not return home to cause trouble, but they can also serve a strategic purpose in reviving the campaign of marginalized Sunnis against Shiite domination. Iran may feel comfortable in Iraq now, but the domino effect from Syria could place Iran back on the defensive in Iraq, which has the potential to re-emerge as the main arena for the broader Arab Sunni versus Persian Shiite struggle for regional influence. These trends will take time to develop, and the pace of Sunni empowerment in Syria remains in question, especially as the Alawite core of the regime is so far enduring. That said, it doesn’t hurt to look ahead.

Read more: Considering a Sunni Regime in Syria | Stratfor

Saudi Arabia And China Team Up To Build A Gigantic New Oil Refinery – Is This The Beginning Of The End For The Petrodollar?

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The Economic Collapse

The largest oil exporter in the Middle East has teamed up with the second largest consumer of oil in the world (China) to build a gigantic new oil refinery and the mainstream media in the United States has barely even noticed it.  This mammoth new refinery is scheduled to be fully operational in the Red Sea port city of Yanbu by 2014.  Over the past several years, China has sought to aggressively expand trade with Saudi Arabia, and China now actually imports more oil from Saudi Arabia than the United States does.  In February, China imported 1.39 million barrels of oil per day from Saudi Arabia.  That was 39 percent higher than last February.  So why is this important?  Well, back in 1973 the United States and Saudi Arabia agreed that all oil sold by Saudi Arabia would be denominated in U.S. dollars.  This petrodollar system was adopted by almost the entire world and it has had great benefits for the U.S. economy.  But if China becomes Saudi Arabia’s most important trading partner, then why should Saudi Arabia continue to only sell oil in U.S. dollars?  And if the petrodollar system collapses, what is that going to mean for the U.S. economy?

Those are very important questions, and they will be addressed later on in this article.  First of all, let’s take a closer look at the agreement reached between Saudi Arabia and China recently.

The following is how the deal was described in a recent China Daily article….

In what Riyadh calls “the largest expansion by any oil company in the world”, Sinopec’s deal on Saturday with Saudi oil giant Aramco will allow a major oil refinery to become operational in the Red Sea port of Yanbu by 2014.

The $8.5 billion joint venture, which covers an area of about 5.2 million square meters, is already under construction. It will process 400,000 barrels of heavy crude oil per day. Aramco will hold a 62.5 percent stake in the plant while Sinopec will own the remaining 37.5 percent.

At a time when the U.S. is actually losing refining capacity, this is a stunning development.

Yet the U.S. press has been largely silent about this.

Very curious.

But China is not just doing deals with Saudi Arabia.  China has also been striking deals with several other important oil producing nations.  The following comes from a recent article by Gregg Laskoski….

China’s investment in oil infrastructure and refining capacity is unparalleled. And more importantly, it executes a consistent strategy of developing world-class refining facilities in partnership with OPEC suppliers. Such relationships mean economic leverage that could soon subordinate U.S. relations with the same countries.

Egypt is building its largest refinery ever with investment from China.

Shortly after the partnership with Egypt was announced, China signed a $23 billion agreement with Nigeria to construct three gasoline refineries and a fuel complex in Nigeria.

Essentially, China is running circles around the United States when it comes to locking up strategic oil supplies worldwide.

And all of these developments could have tremendous implications for the future of the petrodollar system.

If you are not familiar with the petrodollar system, it really is not that complicated.  Basically, almost all of the oil in the world is traded in U.S. dollars.  The origin of the petrodollar system was detailed in a recent article by Jerry Robinson….

In 1973, a deal was struck between Saudi Arabia and the United States in which every barrel of oil purchased from the Saudis would be denominated in U.S. dollars. Under this new arrangement, any country that sought to purchase oil from Saudi Arabia would be required to first exchange their own national currency for U.S. dollars. In exchange for Saudi Arabia’s willingness to denominate their oil sales exclusively in U.S. dollars, the United States offered weapons and protection of their oil fields from neighboring nations, including Israel.

By 1975, all of the OPEC nations had agreed to price their own oil supplies exclusively in U.S. dollars in exchange for weapons and military protection. 

This petrodollar system, or more simply known as an “oil for dollars” system, created an immediate artificial demand for U.S. dollars around the globe. And of course, as global oil demand increased, so did the demand for U.S. dollars.

Once you understand the petrodollar system, it becomes much easier to understand why our politicians treat Saudi leaders with kid gloves.  The U.S. government does not want to see anything happen that would jeopardize the status quo.

A recent article by Marin Katusa described some more of the benefits that the petrodollar system has had for the U.S. economy….

The “petrodollar” system was a brilliant political and economic move. It forced the world’s oil money to flow through the US Federal Reserve, creating ever-growing international demand for both US dollars and US debt, while essentially letting the US pretty much own the world’s oil for free, since oil’s value is denominated in a currency that America controls and prints. The petrodollar system spread beyond oil: the majority of international trade is done in US dollars. That means that from Russia to China, Brazil to South Korea, every country aims to maximize the US-dollar surplus garnered from its export trade to buy oil.

The US has reaped many rewards. As oil usage increased in the 1980s, demand for the US dollar rose with it, lifting the US economy to new heights. But even without economic success at home the US dollar would have soared, because the petrodollar system created consistent international demand for US dollars, which in turn gained in value. A strong US dollar allowed Americans to buy imported goods at a massive discount – the petrodollar system essentially creating a subsidy for US consumers at the expense of the rest of the world. Here, finally, the US hit on a downside: The availability of cheap imports hit the US manufacturing industry hard, and the disappearance of manufacturing jobs remains one of the biggest challenges in resurrecting the US economy today.

So what happens if the petrodollar system collapses?

Well, for one thing the value of the U.S. dollar would plummet big time.

U.S. consumers would suddenly find that all of those “cheap imported goods” would rise in price dramatically as would the price of gasoline.

If you think the price of gas is high now, you just wait until the petrodollar system collapses.

In addition, there would be much less of a demand for U.S. government debt since countries would not have so many excess U.S. dollars lying around.

So needless to say, the U.S. government really needs the petrodollar system to continue.

But in the end, it is Saudi Arabia that is holding the cards.

If Saudi Arabia chooses to sell oil in a currency other than the U.S. dollar, most of the rest of the oil producing countries in the Middle East would surely do the same rather quickly.

And we have already seen countries in other parts of the world start to move away from using the U.S. dollar in global trade.

For example, Russia and China have agreed to now use their own national currencies when trading with each other rather than the U.S. dollar.

That got virtually no attention in the U.S. media, but it really was a big deal when it was announced.

A recent article by Graham Summers summarized some of the other moves away from the U.S. dollar in international trade that we have seen recently….

Indeed, officials from China, India, Brazil, Russia, and South Africa (the latest addition to the BRIC acronym, now to be called BRICS) recently met in southern China to discuss expanding the use of their own currencies in foreign trade (yet another move away from the US Dollar).

To recap:

• China and Russia have removed the US Dollar from their trade
• China is rushing its trade agreement with Brazil
• China, Russia, Brazil, India, and now South Africa are moving to trade more in their own currencies (not the US Dollar)
• Saudi Arabia is moving to formalize trade with China and Russia
• Singapore is moving to trade yuan

The trend here is obvious. The US Dollar’s reign as the world’s reserve currency is ending. The process will take time to unfold. But the Dollar will be finished as reserve currency within the next five years.

Yes, the days of the U.S. dollar being the primary reserve currency of the world are definitely numbered.

It will not happen overnight, but as the U.S. economy continues to get weaker it is inevitable that the rest of the world will continue to question why the U.S. dollar should automatically have such a dominant position in international trade.

Over the next few years, keep a close eye on Saudi Arabia.

When Saudi Arabia announces a move away from the petrodollar system, that will be a major trigger event for the global financial system and it will be a really, really bad sign for the U.S. economy.

The level of prosperity that we are enjoying today would not be possible without the petrodollar system.  Once the petrodollar system collapses, a lot of our underlying economic vulnerabilities will be exposed and it will not be pretty.

Tough times are on the horizon.  It is imperative that we all get informed and that we all get prepared.

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