August 1, 2012

Journalist Pepe Escobar Weighs In On Prince Bandar Bush's Death


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."