Home > Assassination attempt on a senior member of the House of Saud
Assassination attempt on a senior member of the House of Saud
by Open-Publishing - Tuesday 1 September 2009“Prince Muhammad bin Naif, assistant interior minister for security affairs, escaped an assassination attempt on Thursday night when a wanted terrorist blew himself up inside the prince’s house.”
He was treated at a hospital for minor injuries after the incident. “The prince, who is the son of interior minister Prince Naif, the third in line to the throne, was shown on Saudi television on Friday sitting with King Abdullah, who had gone to the hospital.”
“This is the first known assassination attempt against a member of the royal family since a group affiliated to al-Qaeda started a campaign to destabilise the house of Saud in 2001.”
It appears that there is a lot more to this story but since the news is coming from Saudi Arabia there is no way to distinguish between fact or fiction, so we’ll leave the speculations for another time.
What is important here is that high-ranking members of the House of Saud have now become legitimate targets in the eyes of their rivals.
This new revelation has far reaching ramifications, especially for the United States of America whose relationship with Saudi Arabia is not only older than its relationship with Israel, but also crucial to the survival of all three States. It is an interdependent relationship, codependent and dysfunctional many would argue, based on oil and the currency in which oil is traded, the Petrodollar.
The following previously posted articles should provide further information about the importance and relevance of the assassination attempt.
- History of Oil in the Middle East: The Implications of Iran’s Oil Bourse: The Final Nail in the Coffin for the American Empire
- Year 2000: Iraq dumps the US dollar and switches to the euro
- Year 2006: Iran moves from US dollars to the euro
- Do you want to know why Iran has a nuclear program? It’s called Peakoil, and it has global consequences
- The collapse of the United States is accelerating: Oil in Euros vs. US dollars
As for the House of Saud and their relationship with the ruling class in the United States, the following PBS Frontline documentary is a good, albeit an incomplete, introduction to the topic.
Please note that there are a few issues I have with this documentary, one of them is of course related to the events of 11 September 2001. Another is its failure to mention that the United States provided fake satellite photos to the House of Saud regarding the thread posed by Saddam Hussein in the build up to the First Gulf War. These photos convinced the Saudi Royal family to allow the United States to establish a 500,000 strong military base on their soil, which in turn galvanized Muslim communities around the world in opposition to Western intervention. You’ll know what this refers to in the second half of the documentary.
The film also fails to mention the importance of the decision made in the 1970’s by Saudi Arabia to price oil in only US dollars. There is also the issue with Fallujah, and a few other shortcomings in the documentary. However, as stated above, even with all its faults, the documentary is a good introduction to the inner workings of the Saudi family and how the country is ruled.