Saudi Arabia welcomes Iran nuclear deal, seeks region free of WMD: statement
Source: Reuters
(Reuters) - Saudi Arabia's cabinet said on Monday it welcomed an interim deal between Iran and world powers over Iran's disputed nuclear program and that it hoped a final deal would rid the region of weapons of mass destruction.
Iran and six world powers -- the United States, Britain, France, Germany, China and Russia -- reached a framework agreement on Thursday that would curb Tehran's nuclear research for at least a decade and gradually lift Western sanctions. That deal is contingent on reaching a final agreement in three months.
A conservative Sunni Muslim kingdom, Saudi Arabia regards revolutionary, Shi'ite Iran as its biggest regional rival. For 11 days, it has led fellow Sunni Gulf Arab in air strikes against Houthi militiamen allied to Tehran in neighboring Yemen, just one of the region's war zones where the two powers back opposing sides.
"The council of ministers expressed hope for attaining a binding and definitive agreement that would lead to the strengthening of security and stability in the region and the world," the statement carried by state news agency (SPA) said.
Read more: http://www.reuters.com/article/2015/04/06/us-iran-nuclear-saudi-idUSKBN0MX0PO20150406
Looks like Netanyahu and the GOPers are all on their own.
The world supports the agreement.
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Major Hogwash
(17,656 posts)Peace is so wicked awesome!!
oberliner
(58,724 posts)ISLAMABAD (Reuters) - Saudi Arabia has asked Pakistan for military aircraft, warships and soldiers, Pakistani Defence Minister Khawaja Asif said on Monday, at the start of a parliamentary debate on whether Pakistan should get involved in a Saudi-led campaign in Yemen.
Saudi Arabia, the Gulf's main Sunni Muslim power, has asked Sunni-majority Pakistan to join a Saudi-led military coalition that began conducting air strikes last month against largely Shi'ite Houthi forces in Yemen.
Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif has hedged his bets. He has repeatedly said he will defend any threat to Saudi Arabia's "territorial integrity" without defining what threat, or what action.
"Saudi Arabia has asked for combat planes, warships and soldiers," Asif said, without specifying where Saudi wanted them deployed.
http://news.yahoo.com/saudi-request-help-yemen-puts-pakistani-pm-bind-010125530.html
I don't think "peace" is what Saudi Arabia is up to right now.
Major Hogwash
(17,656 posts)They're not going after Iran, which is what the OP was about.
oberliner
(58,724 posts)The Saudis have killed about 500 people in 2 weeks with their most recent bombing campaigns.
Yemen: Saudi-led coalition airstrikes against Houthis continue - video report
The Saudi led campaign against the Iranian-backed Houthi rebels in Yemen reaches it twelfth day as the coalition tries to prevent the group from capturing the port city of Aden. As the bombing continues the humanitarian situation in the country deteriorates while the Red Cross is prevented from delivering its approved-aid due to logistical problems
http://www.theguardian.com/world/video/2015/apr/06/saudi-led-coalition-airstrikes-target-houthi-forces-in-yemen-video-report
Have you just not been following these events or what?
Cali_Democrat
(30,439 posts)It's a big fucking fail on your part.
If anything it proves that the deal is a good deal because even a country like Saudi Arabia, who's engaged in a proxy war in Yemen against Iran, thinks it's a good deal which will reign in Iran's program.
Comrade Grumpy
(13,184 posts)It's not a friggin' game, it's a discussion board.
Cali_Democrat
(30,439 posts)If you look at the context, Saudi Arabia is engaged in a proxy war with Iran in Yemen.
Yet the same Saudi government supports a this nuclear deal with Iran.
Saudi Arabia wouldn't support a deal that makes it easier for Iran to acquire a nuclear weapon. They would support a deal that they feel would prevent Iran from developing a nuclear weapon.
Like I said:
Big. Fucking. Fail.
Mosby
(16,320 posts)Riyadh: Saudi Arabia has publicly welcomed a framework nuclear deal with Tehran, but in private mistrust remains deep.
King Salman Bin Abdul Aziz told US President Barack Obama by phone on Thursday that he hoped a final settlement of the nuclear dispute would “strengthen the stability and security of the region and the world”.
However, many Saudis were concerned about the wider implications of the framework deal that Iran reached with six world powers on Thursday, intended to open the way for negotiating a final settlement by midyear.
“It’s about verification. If they don’t comply, the boycott will be reimposed. This is a reassuring result,” said a Gulf source close to official Saudi thinking, but added that Riyadh was still worried about Iran’s role in the region.
“Iran may think that as a result of this accord it is on the road to respectability,” he said.
The framework agreement reached in Lausanne curbs Iran’s nuclear programme for at least a decade and gradually lifts Western sanctions on the oil producer, but is contingent on reaching the final pact by June 30.
The conservative kingdom regards revolutionary Iran as its most dangerous foe. For over a week it has bombed Al Houthi militia which are allied to Tehran in Yemen, just one of the region’s trouble spot where the two back opposing sides.
http://gulfnews.com/news/gulf/saudi-arabia/saudi-arabia-welcomes-iran-nuclear-deal-but-unease-remains-1.1485119
Arabs Blast "Obama's Deal" with Iran
-snip-
"This is a dangerous agreement... [it] provides Iran with what it needs most to pursue its wars and expansionism against the Arabs: funds." — Salah al-Mukhtar, Ammon News.
"Iran has tried to intervene in Iraq, Lebanon and Syria and it is seeing that it's not paying any price... There is also a feeling in Tehran that the U.S. is avoiding a military confrontation with the Iranians." — Hassan al-Barari, Al-Sharq.
According to Hani al-Jamal, an Egyptian political and regional researcher, the deal means that the international community has accepted Iran as a nuclear power.
Al-Jamal advised the Arab countries to form a "Sunni NATO" that would guarantee Pakistan's status as a nuclear power and Arab ally in face of the "Iranian and Israeli threat."
Jihad Odeh, an Egyptian professor of political science, said that Obama's "achievements are designed to dismantle the Arab world. Obama wants to make historic achievements before the end of his term in office by destroying Al-Qaeda, seeking rapprochement with Cuba and reaching a nuclear agreement with Iran."
Although Saudi Arabia, which is currently waging war on Iranian-backed Houthi militiamen in Yemen, "welcomed" the nuclear agreement, it has privately expressed concern over the deal.
http://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/5493/arabs-blast-obama-deal-with-iran
Fred Sanders
(23,946 posts)Mosby
(16,320 posts)Major Hogwash
(17,656 posts)The OP is about Saudi Arabia being glad that Iran is agreeing to a nuclear arms limitation.
Fred Sanders
(23,946 posts)Major Hogwash
(17,656 posts). . . to the conversation and mentioning some other thing not even connected to the OP!!
It's really annoying.
Pakistan had nothing to do with this historic agreement!
Nothing whatsoever!
So why he even mentioned it, is beyond me.
Obama should get the lion's share of the credit for this agreement, but not here, not at DU!
It's enough to make me puke!
Fred Sanders
(23,946 posts)change of tone....what did Obama say to King Salman in the private phone call?
Of course this completely undermines the pathetic objections and blubbering's of Bibi and the neocons, doesn't it.
Obama is on a roll, rolling over the war mongers.
Notice Saudi wants the entire region rid of nuclear weapons, of which only Israel has any!
And the region could also be meant to include India and Pakistan.....Saudi has outted itself as a hater of nuclear weapons....interesting.
marble falls
(57,119 posts)Mosby
(16,320 posts)"This is a dangerous agreement... [it] provides Iran with what it needs most to pursue its wars and expansionism against the Arabs: funds." — Salah al-Mukhtar, Ammon News.
"Iran has tried to intervene in Iraq, Lebanon and Syria and it is seeing that it's not paying any price... There is also a feeling in Tehran that the U.S. is avoiding a military confrontation with the Iranians." — Hassan al-Barari, Al-Sharq.
According to Hani al-Jamal, an Egyptian political and regional researcher, the deal means that the international community has accepted Iran as a nuclear power.
Many Arabs have expressed deep concern over the nuclear deal that was reached this week between Iran and the world powers, including the US.
Arab leaders and heads of state were polite enough not to voice public criticism of the agreement when President Barack Obama phoned them to inform them about it. But this has not stopped Arab politicians, political analysts and columnists reflecting government thinking in the Arab world from lashing out at what they describe as "Obama's bad and dangerous deal with Iran."
The Arabs, especially those living in the Gulf, see the framework agreement as a sign of US "weakness" and a green light for Iran to pursue its "expansionist" scheme in the Arab world.
"Some Arab countries are opposed to the nuclear deal because it poses a threat to their interests," said the Egyptian daily Al-Wafd in an article entitled, "Politicians: Obama's deal with Iran threatens Arab world."
The newspaper quoted Hani al-Jamal, an Egyptian political and regional researcher, as saying that the deal means that the international community has accepted Iran as a nuclear power. He predicted that the framework agreement would put Iran and some Arab countries such as Saudi Arabia and Egypt on a collision course.
Al-Jamal advised the Arab countries to form a "Sunni NATO" that would guarantee Pakistan's status as a nuclear power and Arab ally in face of the "Iranian and Israeli threat."
Jihad Odeh, an Egyptian professor of political science, said that Obama's "achievements are designed to dismantle the Arab world. Obama wants to make historic achievements before the end of his term in office by destroying Al-Qaeda, seeking rapprochement with Cuba and reaching a nuclear agreement with Iran."
Although Saudi Arabia, which is currently waging war on Iranian-backed Houthi militiamen in Yemen, "welcomed" the nuclear agreement, it has privately expressed concern over the deal.
http://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/5493/arabs-blast-obama-deal-with-iran
muriel_volestrangler
(101,322 posts)...
The Institute for Policy Studies has noted that "[t]he institute was founded in 2011 by Nina Rosenwald, an heiress of the Sears Roebuck empire who has been a key philanthropic backer of anti-Muslim groups and individuals in the United States".[21] Sheila Musaji's The American Muslim includes it and Nina Rosenwald in a Who's Who of the Anti-Muslim/Anti-Arab/Islamophobia Industry,[22] Ali Gharib, of the blog Open Zion, describes it as "a spin-off of the Hudson Institute where right-wingers (along with Alan Dershowitz) champion hawkish, often "pro-Israel" policies and, not infrequently, rattle off Islamophobic blogposts."[23]
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gatestone_Institute
They want an excuse to bomb Iran. Anything will do them.
Mosby
(16,320 posts)muriel_volestrangler
(101,322 posts)You can pull together a few Republican quotes, not say who they are, and claim "Americans are freaking out" about Iran.
Given the people who write for or talk to the Gatestone Institute, you shouldn't believe a word they say.
...
Gatestone's senior fellows include Arab Israeli journalist Khaled Abu Toameh, European scholars Soeren Kern and Guy Millière, and former Pentagon official Harold Rode, among several others. Amhed Charai, Petra Heidt, Elie Weisel, and former chairman James Woolsey are listed as advisers.[24] At one point Gatestone also listed "Fjordman" as a distinguished scholar,[25] using the pseudonym for Peder Jensen, a far-right Norwegian blogger whose writings were featured in the manifesto of mass-murderer Anders Breivik.[26]
GateStone's website lists dozens of other contributing authors, including foreign policy hawks like Elliott Abrams, Anne Bayefsky, Kenneth Timmerman, MEMRI president Yigal Carmon, Alan Dershowitz, Steven Emerson, former Pentagon official Doug Feith, neoconservative firebrand David Horowitz, Hudson Institute president Herbert London, the right-wing NGO Monitor, Daniel Pipes, Emergency Committee for Israel spokesman Noah Pollak, former AIPAC director Steven Rosen, American Enterprise Institute fellow Michael Rubin, Natan Sharansky, Foundation for Defense of Democracies fellow Lee Smith, and anti-Islamic writer Robert Spencer.[27]
http://rightweb.irc-online.org/profile/gatestone_institute
James Fucking O'Keefe??? Robert Spencer? John Bolton??? Doug Feith? Daniel Pipes? These are some of the most dishonest people in the USA. And 'Fjordman' is a dishonest hatemonger in Europe.
Mosby
(16,320 posts)Saudi officials may have been masking their dismay over the framework nuclear agreement reached last week in Switzerland between world powers and Iran, but the kingdom’s official media outlets are expressing a sense of betrayal loud and clear.
“Gulf states — and especially Saudi Arabia, the Emirates, Qatar, Kuwait and Bahrain — have been experiencing the nightmare of an Iranian attack for decades,” the former editor-in-chief of Saudi-owned daily A-Sharq Al-Awsat, Abdul Rahman Rashed, wrote in an op-ed titled “Iran vs. Saudi Arabia” on Monday. “Now, after the nuclear agreement, there is no doubt that the danger has doubled. People are angry with the Obama administration for selling this region cheaply. He left it to its own devices to face an evil state.”
US President Barack Obama’s vague recent promise to defend Saudi Arabia’s borders from possible Iranian aggression requires better clarification, Rashed insisted.
“As long as the Americans don’t explicitly state their commitment to defend Saudi Arabia from Iran and Iraq, we will face large-scale regional anarchy as a result of the nuclear deal,” he asserted. “The Iranians are claiming that Obama is uninterested in the security of the Gulf and his American allies in the region. This Iranian thinking will lead to more regional wars.”
http://www.timesofisrael.com/saudi-media-indicates-obama-sold-us-out/
Mosby
(16,320 posts)President Barack Obama isn’t a particularly big fan of Camp David, the bucolic presidential retreat in Maryland’s Catoctin Mountains, but sometime in the next few weeks it will be the site of a crucial event in the selling of the nuclear agreement with Iran.
The big moment comes when the president hosts the leaders of the Gulf Cooperation Council, the six Arab kingdoms and sheikdoms that lie just across the Persian Gulf from Iran. They are somewhere between deeply nervous and highly suspicious that the nuclear deal will really contain the Iranian threat in their region.
The ensuing conversation—assuming the Gulf states all accept the president’s invitation—will require a fair amount of presidential salesmanship on the deal’s merits. But it also will be the occasion for something more substantive: a discussion of, first, what kind of security guarantees the U.S. is willing to offer these rich but frightened Gulf monarchies; and second, what kind of on-the-ground and in-the-air defense cooperation the U.S. is prepared to offer to guard against the Iranian threat.
Senior American officials have made clear that this is a conversation they now want to have to reassure the Gulf states, particularly the giant among them, Saudi Arabia. Therein lies one of the great ironies of the emerging Iranian nuclear deal: much as the Gulf states dislike the Iran deal, it could pull them further under the defense umbrella of the U.S. government that brokered it.
http://www.wsj.com/articles/winning-over-arab-monarchs-on-iran-deal-will-test-obamas-salesmanship-1428334418
Mosby
(16,320 posts)Before the framework of Thursday’s Iran nuclear deal was announced, NBC News correspondent Richard Engel speculated a pending “alliance” forming between Arab nations and Israel, who are taking the position that the proposed deal agreed to by the P5+1 nations could “reward” Iran.
“It is not very often in the Middle East where you have Israel and the Arab world singing off of the same song sheet, but this time when it comes to Iran, they most certainly are,” Engel said, adding they are “most concerned” that Iran will be allowed to further advance its nuclear ambitions without real oversight, and are supposedly being “rewarded” for supporting “proxy” Houthi rebels in Yemen.
“The Arab world sees this as a moment that Iran is trying to spread its influence and spread its power across the Middle East, and don’t want to see the U.S. make some sort of deal with Iran that allows it to have any kind of sanctions relief at this moment,” Engel continued, echoing previous analysis in which he said America’s policy toward Iran seems “convoluted” and “incoherent.”
In recent months, Engel has been notably critical of the Obama Administration’s foreign policy toward fighting ISIS, and he openly criticized the president for his characterization of the current state of global affairs in his State of the Union address.
http://www.mediaite.com/tv/richard-engel-israel-arab-nations-forming-alliance-against-u-s-rewarding-iran/
Mosby
(16,320 posts)Leading Arab opinion makers weighed in on the controversy surrounding Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s address to Congress on Tuesday and expressed strong support for his stance on the Iranian nuclear threat.
In an op-ed for the Saudi Arabian daily Al-Jazirah on Monday, columnist Dr. Ahmad Al-Faraj asserted that Netanyahu is justified in his campaign against the proposed nuclear deal with Iran, according to The Middle East Media Research Institute. Al-Faraj said Netanyahu’s effort to prevent the signing of the agreement is in the interests of the Gulf states, and that the prime minister “is right to insist on addressing Congress about the nuclear deal.”
“I am very glad of Netanyahu’s firm stance and [his decision] to speak against the nuclear agreement at the American Congress despite the Obama administration’s anger and fury,” Al-Faraj wrote. “I believe that Netanyahu’s conduct will serve our interests, the people of the Gulf, much more than the foolish behavior of one of the worst American presidents.”
The Editor-in-Chief of Al Arabiya English, Faisal J. Abbas, published a column on Tuesday in which he asked Obama to take notes from Netanyahu on the extent of the Iranian threat. In the piece, titled “President Obama, Listen to Netanyahu on Iran,” Abbas said, “one must admit, Bibi did get it right, at least when it came to dealing with Iran.”
http://www.algemeiner.com/2015/03/03/arab-commentators-strongly-back-netanyahu-on-congress-speech-iran-nuclear-threat/
Mosby
(16,320 posts)-snip-
A nuclear deal with Tehran, from the Saudi perspective, means two things: Iran will have the ability to improve its economic standing, and the capability to create a nuclear weapon - since the deal will only take effect for a relatively short period of time, 15 years, and will not destroy Iran's technical capabilities to maintain a nuclear programme. Both results would strengthen Iran and its allies in the region.
This context of an increasing Iranian influence that thrives on weak central governments and sectarian instability - as seen in Lebanon, Iraq and Yemen - is what ISIL capitalises on in its recruitment drive, according to the Saudi view.
The immediate Saudi reaction to the deal will likely include attempts to revive the dual structure of the regional order: Saudi versus Iran, which existed until the Arab uprisings in 2011 led to the formation of a third camp comprised of Turkey, Qatar and the Muslim Brotherhood. This camp and Saudi Arabia both exhausted their resources while competing for regional influence, ultimately benefiting Iran.
An indicator of the return to the old regional order is the Saudi-led coalition against the Houthi rebels in Yemen. This military campaign has two goals: neutralising non-state actors, which means strengthening the central government, and combating sectarian-inspired conflicts and regional instability.
Saudi's new rulers wish to transform the political equation from a balance between the state and non-state actors into a balance between a government and an opposition, both from within the state's framework. In such a situation, both Iran and ISIL would become much less effective.The Saudis believe that trimming Iran's regional influence would increase the chances of a better nuclear deal in the future, as there may always be modifications and alterations to the deal signed this week.
In the medium as well as the long run, Saudi officials have said their country would work to acquire deterrent capabilities, which means developing its own nuclear programme. There is a strong chance that Saudi Arabia will seek new alliances, given the decline of US influence and the unreliability of American assurances - and Saudi Arabia, instead of the Americans, would become the first line of defence against its enemies.
http://www.aljazeera.com/news/2015/04/saudi-arabia-israel-oppose-iran-nuclear-deal-150401061906177.html
Scootaloo
(25,699 posts)Why is that, I wonder?
Mosby
(16,320 posts)So I thought I would take a couple minutes informing DUERS.
Little Tich
(6,171 posts)
