As President Trump’s critics continue to wage domestic war against the White House, March is proving to be an important month in the president’s international war against expanding Iranian aggression.
Iran’s mullahs are undoubtedly nervous about recent developments. On March 20, Trump held a successful meeting with Prince Mohammed bin Salman of Saudi Arabia (usually referred to as “MBS”). Then, on March 22, the president announced Ambassador John Bolton would replace National Security Adviser H. R. McMaster. Unlike McMaster, Bolton understands the threat that radical Islam presents to global peace, particularly the toxic version practiced by Iran’s mullahs.
Trump critics will approve of Bolton more easily than they are willing to work with MBS. In fact, many opposed the March 20 meeting because they nurture a false belief that the Saudi government was complicit in Sept. 11. Others simply believe the Middle East is such a mess that we should simply steer clear of it.
Nevertheless, it is essential that we understand American and Saudi security interests today are more intricately linked than at any other time in our 75-year alliance – making a close relationship with MBS of paramount importance.
Though MBS has been painted as just another heavy-handed prince ruling a desert petro-kingdom, we must recognize that he is capable of becoming Saudi Arabia’s 21st-century version of Turkey’s 20th-century Kemal Ataturk. It was Ataturk who transformed his country from a defeated World War I Muslim empire into an economic powerhouse by casting off restrictive Islamic practices and by embracing democratic values.
In similar fashion, MBS has already implemented measures to contain serious internal and external threats to his kingdom – problems that we face, too.
It is important to examine some of those issues.
First, when the 9/11 investigative report on the 19 Saudi conspirators was released in 2004, the part relating to possible Saudi government involvement was not. Finally released in 2016, it raised questions about some wayward government officials, but it found no government involvement. It is eerily similar to the Trump-Russia investigation that shows some wayward FBI agents participated in unscrupulous acts. Likewise, the entire FBI cannot be condemned for the actions of a few.
Second, critics believing we should stay out of the Middle East fail to realize we cannot afford to do so because President Obama’s Iran deal has turned Iran into a nuclear Frankenstein. Promising Tehran would never have nukes, Obama cut a deal paving the way for Iran to build them. Saying Sunni Saudi Arabia should “share the neighborhood” with Shiite Iran, Obama then left Riyadh and Tehran to fight it out – after arming Iran with a nuclear sword. Ironically, after promising to try to rid the world of nuclear weapons, Obama not only opened the atomic door for Iran, he triggered a future nuclear arms race in the Middle East. MBS recently announced that if Iran builds nuclear weapons, Saudi Arabia will immediately follow. Riyadh’s long-standing secret agreement with Pakistan would quickly provide the needed technology.
Third, any responsible government must contain or eliminate foreign and domestic threats. In that regard, the existence of both Saudi Arabia and America is threatened by the same organization – the Muslim Brotherhood. Its mission to destroy the U.S. is documented in a secret strategic plan uncovered in 2004 that shows the Brotherhood intends to use permissive U.S. laws and front organizations to bring down America.
When Egypt, in 2013, declared the Muslim Brotherhood a terrorist organization, Saudi Arabia followed suit the next year. Those two nations recognize the Brotherhood as an existential threat. In contrast, fearing charges of “Islamophobia,” we have yet to eliminate the baleful domestic influence of the Brotherhood by declaring it to be a terrorist organization. Today, through dozens of those front organizations described in its grand strategy, it works to achieve its goal of toppling the American constitutional democracy.
Meanwhile, MBS recognizes the devastating influence Brotherhood ideology can have on young minds, and he is identifying and removing its members from teaching positions at all levels of Saudi education. This contrasts with Obama’s Department of Education partnering with the Brotherhood-linked Qatar Foundation to facilitate online programming with U.S. schools that have classrooms abroad. Additionally, because Brotherhood publishers sell schoolbooks cheaply, they have been injecting their ideology in them and printing them for schools across America. Like MBS, our Department of State and Department of Education must end the influence of radical Islam in our schools.
Fourth, MBS is also taking other steps that will not particularly endear him to Islamic extremists, like publicly meeting and being photographed with the Coptic Christians’ pope seated under a large picture of Jesus. MBS also asserts women are “absolutely” equal to men – contrary to teachings of Wahhabi clerics. However, even though he seeks to allow women to drive and not wear abayas, a more important reform would be allowing women to venture outside their homes unaccompanied by a male family guardian.
Finally, during the first week of MBS’ visit to America, a Senate bill was narrowly defeated that would have ended all U.S. military aid to the Saudi coalition fighting Iran-backed Houthi rebels in Yemen. The senators who proposed that bill refused to recognize that the Yemen war would end on the day Iran stops supporting the rebels and the internationally recognized government is returned to its capitol, Sana’a.
Like it or not, Americans must recognize that Iranian aggression in Yemen and the rest of the Middle East region must be confronted, and nuclear weapons must not fall into the hands of the mullahs. Non-involvement in the region is not an option. Our own national interest dictates that we must continue to support Saudi Arabia in its fight to contain Iran and in its efforts to reform Islam.
MBS may well prove to be our last “Great Arab Hope” for achieving both goals.
