John R. Bradley | The Spectator columnists & writers

Oil on troubled waters: the US-Saudi alliance is crumbling

Donald Trump said in October 2018 that the Saudi royal family ‘wouldn’t last two weeks’ without American military support. Last week, on the back of the collapse of the US fracking industry, he finally acted on his long-standing anti--Saudi instincts. He ordered the immediate withdrawal of two patriot air defence batteries, sent to defend the kingdom’s oil infrastructure in September after a missile attack blamed on the Iranians. He also recalled hundreds of US troops and said the US Navy presence in the Persian Gulf would be scaled back. Leaving with the ships were dozens of US fighter jets, which would have been crucial for defending against any full-scale Iranian assault. Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, Saudi Arabia’s de facto leader who is used to throwing his considerable weight around with impunity, is now facing potentially devastating consequences for a decision that was reckless even by his own unenviable standards.

Has Trump finally decided to dump Saudi?

In a dramatic move even by his own mercurial standards, Donald Trump has authorised the withdrawal of two Patriot missile systems guarding Saudi Arabia's oil facilities, accompanied by hundreds of American military troops operating them. They were deployed last September after a massive cruise missile and drone attack on the Saudi oil infrastructure – blamed on the Iranians but claimed by their allies the Houthi rebels in Yemen – that knocked about half of the kingdom's production capacity offline. Now Saudi Arabia has just two Patriot batteries, located at Prince Sultan Air Base in the middle of the Saudi desert. They are not there to protect the royal family and its economic resources, but rather the estimated 2,500 American soldiers stationed at the remote military hub.

Saudi may have won an oil truce – but a greater conflict now looms

For the first time in months, the coronavirus panic was briefly demoted as the main news story on Sunday when OPEC and oil-producing non-OPEC nations agreed a deal to cut oil production by 9.7 million barrels a day – initially to stabilise and then hopefully increase prices. It is the most dramatic production cut in history and of course not unrelated to the pandemic itself. Last month, demand collapsed as the global economy began to shut down but Russia shot down a Saudi opening proposal fearing it would give a boost to the American fracking industry. The kingdom's de facto leader Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman threw a characteristic hissy fit and immediately slashed prices to key markets while promising to pump oil at maximum capacity (an increase of about three million barrels a day).

Crude tactics: Russia and Saudi Arabia are at war over oil prices

It all started at what every-one thought would be a routine meeting between Opec and non-Opec nations in Vienna. There were the usual fake smiles and firm handshakes in front of the cameras from the dignitaries. Bored journalists roused themselves to prepare to write stories they expected never to be read, before they could at last head to the pub. And then, out of nowhere, came a bombshell. Downward pressure on oil prices from the coronavirus panic was posing an obvious risk to Saudi Arabia’s still heavily oil-dependent economy. And this is what a cartel like Opec is for: to agree to release less oil into the market, pushing the price back up. A Saudi-led motion proposed a cut of 1.5 million barrels per day. To everyone’s shock, Russia rejected this outright.

Ten years on, the Arab Spring has only benefited the Islamists

A decade after the Arab Spring, good news anywhere is hard to find. In contrast to Asia, Latin America and sub-Saharan Africa, extreme poverty has increased in the Arab region. Both internal economic growth and direct foreign investment have declined. Unemployment, especially among the young, has grown. Education standards are falling. There is less press freedom, less freedom of association. A BBC survey last year found that more than half of Arabs want to emigrate. In the countries where autocratic leaders were overthrown — Tunisia, Libya, Egypt and Yemen — there is nostalgia for the pre-revolutionary era. This week in Egypt, now the most brutally repressive Arab country since Saddam Hussein’s Iraq, any public mention of the anniversary of the 2011 Tahrir uprising is discouraged.

Donald Trump has just blown up his goal of isolating Iran

A blood red flag was raised over the Jamkaran mosque in the Iranian holy city of Qom last week, one normally reserved to commemorate the death of martyrs. This time, it was intended as a call to arms. ‘We have unfurled this flag so that all [Shia] believers in the world gather around it to avenge Qassem Soleimani’s blood unjustly shed,’ said the mosque’s leader. In Tehran, there were calls for bloody retribution for the air strike that killed Iranian general Soleimani — and everywhere, talk of all-out war. If it was also intended to strike the fear of Allah into the hearts of Iran’s Sunni Arab enemies, it certainly succeeded. In Riyadh, there was panic. The Saudi crown prince, Mohammed bin Salman, hastily sent an anti-war delegation to Washington and London.

The Soleimani assassination is Donald Trump’s biggest gamble yet

Ever since Donald Trump was elected president on a non-military interventionist platform, sceptics have questioned his commitment to withdrawing troops from the Middle Eastern quagmire and stopping the endless wars he claims to despise. Now he has authorised the assassination of Qasem Soleimani, the head of the powerful Iranian Quds Force, we can be in absolutely no doubt on whether he stands: he’s no different to the other US presidents. It’s a massive strategic gamble. Soleimani was the second most powerful figure in Iran, answering only to the Ayatollah himself. For more than a decade he has been the architect of Iran’s regional military strategy. He helped Iraq and Syria defeat Isis. Among the Iranian masses, he was a hero like no other.

The story behind Donald Trump’s fake withdrawal from Syria

That noise you can hear is Donald Trump flip--flopping in the sand. Last week, American troops and dozens of tanks and armoured vehicles moved to occupy oil fields in Syria. The escalation came just half an hour after Trump had tweeted that all US soldiers had left the country and would be coming home. As so often, the President says one thing, then orders the military to do the other. On Twitter, Trump is ending the endless wars. In the real world, he is perpetuating them. Trump’s focus is not really Syria, of course. It is the presidential election next year, and his precious voter base. But he can’t seem to decide if his supporters are peaceniks or bloodthirsty chauvinists. His problem is that they are both and neither.

Al-Baghdadi’s death comes at the perfect time for Donald Trump

When President Donald Trump speaks at a press conference later today we can be sure he will be milking, for all it is worth, the presumed killing of Isis leader Abu Bakr Al-Baghdadi during a raid on his compound in north-western Syria by US special forces. Trump is said to have authorised the operation last week, and multiple news outlets have confirmed that Al-Baghdadi is presumed dead. For the first time since Trump bombed Syria over President Bashar Al-Assad’s alleged use of chemical weapons against his own people, the US media, and political allies and foes alike, will be celebrating an obvious foreign policy triumph. For his detractors, it is only by bombing a foreign country or killing a major terrorist that Trump can look – as Fareed Zakaria famously said after the Syria cruise missile strikes – ‘presidential’.

The alliance between America and Saudi Arabia is over

The oil-for-security alliance between the US and Saudi Arabia, forged in 1945 when Franklin D. Roosevelt met King Abdul Aziz aboard a US Navy destroyer, is now over. Just look at the American reaction to the attack by Iran on Saudi oil facilities. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo duly called it an ‘act of war’; the Wall Street Journal told us the attack was ‘the big one’. But then nothing: President Donald Trump merely shrugged and declared the US energy independent. ‘We don’t need Middle Eastern Oil & Gas,’ he said. Industry experts warned that such an assessment was premature; but oil prices stabilised and the sound of war drums faded. We are witnessing the beginning of a new geopolitics in the Middle East. Trump has embraced his America First instincts, and it’s not difficult to see why.

Jamal Khashoggi is the right TIME Person of the Year – for all the wrong reasons

TIME magazine has lost relevance, in the United States and globally. The only thing it is now known for is its Person of the Year issue, the 2018 edition of which was out on Tuesday. Historically, its editors have chosen ‘the person or thing that had the greatest impact on the news, for good or ill – guidelines that leave them no choice but to select a newsworthy – not necessarily praiseworthy – cover subject.’ If only that ambiguous sentiment had determined this year’s choice: killed and imprisoned journalists. The magazine calls them ‘The Guardians’, who were chosen ‘for taking great risks in pursuit of greater truths, for the imperfect but essential quest for facts, for speaking up and for speaking out’. Leaving aside the question of what exactly is the difference between ‘speaking up’ and ‘speaking out’ – further proof if it were needed of the detrimental impact of a massive wave of editorial layoffs at the magazine – we can all agree that a number of the journalists highlighted on the four different covers of the latest issue fall into the ‘for good’ category.

Has Saudi Arabia just pivoted towards Russia?

For all but the most harried journalist motivated by a need to pay off the mortgage, the annual G20 summit – being held this weekend in Buenos Aires – is typically viewed as a perfect cure for insomnia. Who will stand next to whom in the family photo? Will the wording of a final statement be agreed by all leaders before the official deadline? Yawn yawn yawn. However, there is an exception to every rule. And yesterday’s opening ceremony proved to be just that. First, a hot mic picked up parts of a tense conversation between the French President and Saudi Crown Prince. While hardly a slanging match, it was the most undiplomatic spat between a Western and Saudi leader ever made public. That was followed by the equally unprecedented spectacle of a bro-five between the latter and Russia’s Vladimir Putin.

Hostages to fortune

It says something about the level of political discourse in America that Donald Trump decided to trumpet sanctions on Iran not with a speech, but a Twitter meme in reference to Game of Thrones. 'Sanctions are coming,' he says - in a picture that might be funny if it were not so serious. The White House is, in its head, playing out a drama where it imposes sanctions and brings the Ayatollahs to heel. In reality, things are working out very differently. When it comes to the goal of containing Iran, Trump is indeed living in a fantasy land. The date in Trump's tweet is 5 November, the day America ratchets up already devastating economic sanctions against Iran, following Washington’s unilateral withdrawal in May from the nuclear treaty brokered by Barack Obama.

Death of a dissident

As someone who spent three decades working closely with intelligence services in the Arab world and the West, the Saudi dissident and Washington Post columnist Jamal Khashoggi knew he was taking a huge risk in entering the Saudi consulate in Istanbul last week to try to obtain a document certifying he had divorced his ex-wife. A one-time regime insider turned critic of Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman — the de facto head of the Saudi kingdom which tolerates no criticism whatsoever — Khashoggi had been living in Washington for the previous year in self-imposed exile amid a crackdown on independent voices in his homeland. He had become the darling of western commentators on the Middle East. With almost two million Twitter followers, he was the most famous political pundit in the Arab world and a regular guest on the major TV news networks in Britain and the United States.

The rehabilitation of Assad

Amid the confusion and the almost deafening cries of treachery and collusion over Donald Trump’s relations with Russia, few noticed the most tangible outcome of this week’s Helsinki summit. In the lead-up to his face-to-face talk with Vladimir Putin, senior US and Russian diplomats — in close coordination with leaders from mutual ally Israel — brokered a deal among all the warring parties (bar the Islamist terrorists) finally to end the devastating seven-year Syrian civil war. As is often the case with Trump, the hype tends to drown out the message but it was there for anyone paying close enough attention. The US, Russians and Israelis have agreed on a solution to Syria. His name is Bashar al-Assad. The summit agreed on the need for a permanent ceasefire between Syria and Israel (the two countries have been in a state of war since 1948) and the Syrian government will offer guarantees regarding the Jewish state’s security.

... and of progress

In an interview this week, Mohammad bin Salman offered an extraordinarily frank assessment of how to combat terrorism. It means rooting out Islamist ideology, he said, as much as sharing intelligence. He presumably would take this blunt message to MI5 and MI6 in his meetings with those agencies, as well as to Theresa May’s National Security Council. This should provide plenty of food for thought to the cynics who argue against being taken in by his much-trumpeted embrace of a more moderate Islam. We have a Saudi crown prince who is being more frank about Wahhabi-inspired terrorism than the British. Just last year, the UK government saw fit to suppress a report that found a link between Saudi-funded mosques and Isis-inspired terrorist attacks.

Is Mohammad bin Salman a friend to the West?

Amid the avalanche of news coming from Saudi Arabia, the most important has been overlooked. A few weeks ago Riyadh ceded control of the Grand Mosque in Brussels, leased to the Saudis in 1969 and since then instrumental in promoting Islamic supremacy, anti-Christian and anti-Semitic hatred in the heart of Europe. The deal had given Saudi-funded imams control of the religious education received by the Muslim immigrant community in Belgium, in return for cheaper oil. It was a pact with the Wahhabi devil then typical of European governments. And we are still paying the price. When Islamic States called for Muslims to launch jihadist slaughter throughout the European continent, the most radicalised sections of the local Muslim populations were ready.

A new Iranian revolution should worry the West

Is Iran on the brink of a revolution? The mullahs' main political adversaries in Washington and Tel Aviv appear to think so, as does much of the western media. With the Wall Street Journal reporting that Iran's elite Revolutionary Guard Corps is taking charge of security in Tehran, it is equally clear that the regime is taking no chances. And perhaps wisely so. The last time the repressive Islamist theocracy witnessed such popular upheaval was in 2009. But then the mostly peaceful mass street demonstrations were orchestrated under the unifying banner of a maverick politician, Mir Hossein Mousavi, and what briefly blossomed into his Green Movement. Mousavi had failed to beat Mahmoud Ahmadinejad in presidential elections, and his supporters – as well as those of other defeated opposition candidates – smelled a rat.

Desert storm

Until last weekend, the Ritz-Carlton in Riyadh’s exclusive Diplomatic Quarter was colloquially known as the Princes’ Hotel. It was a luxurious retreat from the heat, where royals could engage in the kind of wheeling and dealing with the global business elite that had made them millionaires on the back of the 1970s oil boom. No deal could be brokered without paying a bribe to at least one prince. Last Saturday that era of boundless opportunity and total impunity came to a dramatic end. The VIP guests were booted out, the front doors were shuttered, and heavily armed security forces took up positions around the perimeter. A Saudi who lives nearby sent me a message about what he thought was an unfolding terrorist incident.

Arabian nights

Recall the media coverage at the height of the Jimmy Savile scandal, times it by about a thousand, and you get an idea of the hysteria currently surrounding gay men in Egypt. That’s not an arbitrary analogy. The social ramifications of coming out as a ‘gay man’ in most parts of the Middle East are the same as for some chap on a council estate in Barnsley declaring in a packed pub at closing time that he has a 12-year-old girlfriend. Two detained gay rights campaigners who waved the rainbow flag at a recent Cairo pop concert, and thus provoked the clampdown, are presently learning that the hard way. Their unprecedented public LGBT activism took place during a performance by a rock group called Mashrou’ Leila, whose Lebanese singer Hamed Sinno is one of those baffling individuals who feels compelled to tell the whole world that he is gay every time he opens his mouth.

Putin the peacemaker

When Russia entered the Syrian civil war in September 2015 the then US secretary of defense, Ash Carter, predicted catastrophe for the Kremlin. Vladimir Putin was ‘pouring gasoline on the fire’ of the conflict, he said, and his strategy of fighting Isis while backing the Assad regime was ‘doomed to failure’. Two years on, Putin has emerged triumphant and Bashar al-Assad’s future is secure. They will soon declare victory over Isis inside the country. The dismal failure turned out to be our cynical effort to install a Sunni regime in Damascus by adopting the Afghanistan playbook from the 1980s. We would train, fund and arm jihadis, foreign and domestic, in partnership with the Gulf Arab despots. This way we would rob Russia of its only warm-water naval base, Tartus, on Syria’s Mediterranean coast.

Forget our misguided friendship with Saudi Arabia: Iran is our natural ally

The Saudi town of Awamiya — like so many countless cities across Iraq, Syria and Yemen that are witnessing an unleashing of the ancient hatred of Sunni for Shia — now exists in name only. Last month, days before an assault on its Shia inhabitants by the Saudi regime, the UN designated it a place of unique cultural and religious significance. But under the guise of fighting Iran-backed terror cells, the Saudis then subjected Awamiya’s entire civilian population to the indiscriminate use of fighter jets, rocket-propelled grenades, snipers, heavy artillery, armoured assault vehicles and cold-blooded executions. More than a dozen Shia, including a three-year-old boy, were killed. Hundreds of young men were rounded up.

Iran is our natural ally

An unholy alliance

Israel’s Channel 2 news station improbably made history last week by airing a brief interview with an obscure policy wonk named Abed al-Hamid Hakim. The subject was the blockade of Qatar imposed by the Saudis and a couple of other despotic Sunni Arab rulers to punish the country for its ties to Iran, Hamas and the Muslim Brotherhood. It obviously wasn’t what Hakim had to say — religion should not be used to justify violence and extremism; we should all try to live in peace and harmony — that aroused interest. Rather, it was where he was sitting when he said it: Jeddah, the commercial capital of Saudi Arabia. For the first time ever, here was a Saudi national being interviewed live on Israeli TV, complete with Hebrew subtitles.

The Islamic State goes global

When the creation of a new caliphate was announced last year, who but the small band of his followers took seriously its leader’s prediction of imminent regional and eventual global dominance? It straddled the northern parts of Syria and Iraq, two countries already torn apart by civil war and sectarian hatreds. So the self-declared caliph, Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, appeared to be just another thug and opportunist ruling over a blighted no-man’s land, little known and still less revered in the wider Islamic world. He was surrounded by a rag-tag army of jihadis, whose imperial hubris seemed to reflect only a warped genocidal fanaticism. Surely they were far too otherworldly, with their obsession over the life lived by their prophet and his companions more than 1,400 years ago, to have much of an impact on the world in which we scuttle off to work each morning? After yesterday’s coordinated terrorist attacks in Paris, even the most hardened sceptic is having second thoughts.

The Islamic State says France is atop its target list - and declares a new war

The caliphate strikes back

[audioplayer src="http://rss.acast.com/viewfrom22/jeremyhunt-scatastrophicmistake/media.mp3" title="Douglas Murray discusses what Isis might do next" startat=1814] Listen [/audioplayer]When the creation of a new caliphate was announced last year, who but the small band of his followers took seriously its leader’s prediction of imminent regional and eventual global dominance? It straddled the northern parts of Syria and Iraq, two countries already torn apart by civil war and sectarian hatreds. So the self-declared caliph, Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, appeared to be just another thug and opportunist ruling over a blighted no-man’s land, little known and still less revered in the wider Islamic world. He was surrounded by a rag-tag army of jihadis, whose imperial hubris seemed to reflect only a warped genocidal fanaticism.

Russia’s dramatic new policy towards Assad is very revealing

Yesterday I argued that if it became clear that the Russian plane was brought down over Egypt by a bomb, Vladamir Putin may be forced to reassess his Syrian campaign – especially in light of a strong counterattack by Islamic State on the ground in Syria. Today, as the bomb theory became the only plausible explanation for the catastrophe, the Kremlin is strongly hinting that such a radical reassessment is already underway. Maria Zakharova, a Russian foreign ministry spokeswoman, has today said on a Russian radio station it is no longer 'crucial' that Syrian President Bashar al-Assad stay in power. 'Absolutely not, we've never said that,' she insisted when pressed, adding that Moscow only opposed 'regime change'. This is the first time that Russia has publicly acknowledged that Assad may have to go; and we can be quite certain that the spokeswoman was not speaking without prior approval from her superiors.

The Russian plane crash could undermine Putin’s Syria strategy

It now seems fairly likely that an explosion brought down the Russian passenger airline over Egypt's Sinai Peninsula over the weekend. One Metrojet official has already suggested that the 'only explainable cause is physical impact on the aircraft' and they have ruled out technical failure or human error. If the ongoing investigation proves that to be the case, it will obviously have an immediate and catastrophic impact on Egypt's already decimated tourism industry. A jihadist would have been able to infiltrate one of the country's supposedly most secure airports to plant a sizeable explosive device on a specific airline. PR disasters do not come much worse than that – and just one day before the country was due to launch a new global ad campaign promoting local tourism attractions with the slogan 'This is Egypt'.