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Category: News & PoliticsPublished on Sunday, 18 August 2013 02:03

Axis of Evil: Saudi Arabia, Israel, and thePentagon Are Backing Egypt's BloodyCrackdown

( AlterNet By M K Bhadrakumar) --

The Egyptian crisis is the latest battleground for regionaland global powers seeking to push their own agendas.

I have argued that what has just happened in Egypt is abloodbath that is not a bloodbath, conducted by a military

junta responsible for a coup that is not a coup, under theguise of an Egyptian "war on terror". Yet this newspeakgambit - which easily could have been written at the WhiteHouse - is just part of the picture.

Amid a thick fog of spin and competing agendas, astartling fact stands out. A poll only 10 days ago bythe Egyptian Center for Media Studies and PublicOpinion had already shown that 69% were against the July3 military coup orchestrated by the Pinochet-esque AbdelFattah al-Sisi.So the bloodbath that is not a bloodbath cannot possiblybe considered legitimate - unless for a privileged coterie of Mubarakists (the so-called fulool), a bunch of corruptoligarchs and the military-controlled Egyptian "deep state".The Muslim Brotherhood (MB) government led byMohamed Morsi may have been utterly incompetent - tryingto rewrite the Egyptian constitution; inciting hardcorefundamentalists; and bowing in debasement in front of theInternational Monetary Fund. But it should not be forgottenthis was coupled with permanent, all-out sabotage by the"deep state".It's true that Egypt was - and remains - on the brink of totaleconomic collapse; the bloodbath that is not a bloodbath

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only followed a change in the signature on the checks, fromQatar to Saudi Arabia (and the United Arab Emirates). AsSpengler has demonstrated on this site (see Islam's civilwar moves to Egypt, Asia Times Online, July 8, 2013),Egypt will remain a banana republic without the bananasand dependent on foreigners to eat any. The economicdisaster won't go away - not to mention the MB's cosmic

resentment.The winners, as i t stands, are the House of Saud/Israel/Pentagon axis. How did they pull it off?When in doubt, call Bandar In theory, Washington had been in (relative) control of boththe MB and Sisi's Army. So on the surface this is a win-winsituation. Essentially, Washington hawks are pro-Sisi's

Army, while "liberal imperialists" are pro-MB; the perfectcover, because the MB is Islamic, indigenous, populist,economically neoliberal, it wants to work with theInternational Monetary Fund, and has not threatened Israel.The MB was not exactly a problem for either Washingtonand Tel Aviv; after all ambitious ally Qatar was there as ago-between. Qatar's foreign policy, as everyone knows,boils down to cheerleading the MB everywhere.So Morsi must have crossed a pretty serious red line. Itcould have been his call for Sunni Egyptians to join a jihadagainst the Bashar al-Assad government in Syria (althoughthat's formally in tune with Barack Obama's "Assad mustgo" policy). Arguably, it was his push to install some sort of

jihadi paradise from the Sinai all the way to Gaza. TheSinai, for all practical purposes, is run by Israel. So thatpoints to a green light for the coup from both the Pentagonand Tel Aviv.Tel Aviv is totally at ease with Sisi's Army and the flushSaudi supporters of the military junta. The only thing thatmatters to Israel is that Sisi's Army will uphold the CampDavid agreements. The MB, on the other hand, mightentertain other ideas in the near future.For the House of Saud, though, this was never a win-winsituation. The MB in power in Egypt was anathema. In thisfateful triangle - Washington, Tel Aviv and Riyadh - whatremains to be established is who was been the mostcunning in the wag the dog department.That's where the Incredibly Disappearing Qatar act fits in.

The rise and (sudden) fall of Qatar from the foreign policylimelight is strictly linked to the current leadership vacuumin the heart of the Pentagon's self-defined "arc of instability". Qatar was, at best, an extra in a blockbuster -considering the yo-yo drifts of the Obama administrationand that Russia and China are just playing a waitinggame.Sheikh Hamad al-Thani, the emir who ended up deposinghimself, clearly overreached not only in Syria but also inIraq; he was financing not only MB outfits but also hardcore

jihadis across the desert. There's no conclusive proof because no one in either Doha or Washington is talking,

but the emir was certainly "invited" to depose himself. Andnot by accident the Syrian "rebel" racket was entirely takenover by the House of Saud, via the spectacularlyresurfaced Bandar Bush, aka Prince Bandar bin Sultan.So the winners once again were the Saudis - as theObama administration was calculating that both the MB

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and the al-Qaeda nebulae would then fade into oblivion inSyria. That remains to be seen; it's possible that Egyptfrom now on may attract a lot of jihadi s from Syria. Still,they would remain in MENA (Middle East-Northern Africa).

As for Sisi, he was clever enough to seize the "terror"theme and pre-emptively equate MB with al-Qaeda inEgypt, thus setting the scene for the bloodbath that is not a

bloodbath. The bottom line is that a case can be made thatthe Obama administration has in fact subcontracted mostof its Middle East policy to the House of Saud.

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