Journalist Pepe Escobar speculates on the death of Prince Bandar Bush in his article,
"Where is Prince Bandar?" He writes:
"There are also problems
with a Syrian death squad being able to strike
Riyadh's inner sanctum. But Iranian intelligence
could certainly pull this off. As for Debka's
assumption that Tehran may have hired al-Qaeda
jihadis for an inside job against the House of
Saud, that is rubbish.
The bottom line; no
one knows, because no one is talking.
What
is certain is that Bandar as head of Saudi
intelligence was part of King Abdullah's hardcore
response to the Arab Spring.
In Syria, the
House of Saud strategy boils down to regime change
- and a fragile, fragmented, Sunni government in
Damascus not aligned with Tehran.
Internally, the strategy is to viciously
smash any peaceful Shi'ite-majority protest in the
eastern provinces. Essentially, there's no Arab
Spring in Saudi Arabia because the House of Saud
either bribes or intimidates its subjects.
The overall strategy of choice is "blame
it on Iran"; as this logic goes, Saudi Shi'ites
are Iranian puppets as much as Bahraini Shi'ites.
The Obama administration blindly subscribes to
this fallacy - totally missing the point; the
House of Saud hates any semblance of Western
parliamentary democracy as much as it hates
Shi'ites - Iranian and otherwise.
So what
happened in Riyadh? A graphic Tehran message to
the House of Saud? A rogue suicide bomber? An
internal Saudi war? The House of Saud is not
talking. And Bandar is not moving."
