01/29/15 – Giorgio Cafiero – The Scott Horton Show

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Alright you guys, welcome back to the show.
I'm Scott Horton.
This is my show, The Scott Horton Show.
Our next guest is Giorgio Caffiero.
He is the founder of Gulf State Analytics.
And writes for Foreign Policy in Focus, fpif.org.
John Pfeffer and the crew over there.
Welcome back to the show.
How are you doing Giorgio?
Hey Scott, I'm great.
Thanks for having me on your show.
How are you doing?
I'm doing real good.
Really appreciate you joining us today.
Very important article that you've written here and it's something that I've seen a couple of headlines go by.
But not too many.
It doesn't seem like people are paying much attention.
But the way you paint this story, it's incredibly important.
The article is called, The Death Sentence That Could Inflame Sectarian Tensions Across the Middle East.
And it's about Sheikh, well I'll let you say his whole name correctly and let you go from there.
Please tell us the story.
Sure.
Last October, a special court in Saudi Arabia sentenced a prominent Saudi Arabian Shiite cleric, Nimr al-Nimr, to death.
And he was sentenced to death because of his outspoken opposition to the ruling monarchy in Saudi Arabia.
It's a treatment of Shiite Muslims who constitute about 15% of the kingdom's population.
And Sheikh Nimr al-Nimr established himself as a very important leader in Saudi Arabia's Arab Spring that erupted in 2011.
When other anti-government movements came on the scene in Egypt, Tunisia, and other countries in the region.
The Shiite cleric was leading a peaceful, non-violent movement.
And the government wanted to demonstrate that it would not accept any forms of dissent among the kingdom's Shiite population.
And this death sentence is sending a very strong signal, not just to Shiites in Saudi Arabia about the kingdom's firm position.
But they're also sending a strong message to Iran and other Shiite actors in the region that the kingdom is not going to compromise at all in its very hardline sectarian position.
And now you're confident that this man absolutely is a peaceful protester type and that the charges against him are trumped up?
Yeah, that is definitely the understanding of many international human rights organizations, such as Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch.
A lot of the charges against him are very, very strange, such as waging war on God, insulting the late King Abdullah.
Very, very phony charges.
All right.
And now, so it's one of these quirks of history and the way things work out and just guarantees trouble for the long term, I guess, that all the Shiites of the Arabian Peninsula apparently all live right up there in, I guess, the whole thing is tilted towards the northwest.
But in what I guess you'd call the northeast of the country, that's where all the oil is and where all the Shiites are, even though they're ruled by the Sunni majority and have no property right over that oil respected by the kingdom, correct?
Yes.
The eastern province basically encompasses the entire eastern part of Saudi Arabia.
And virtually all of Saudi Arabia's oil is situated in that area, which is equivalent to about one fifth of the global supply of oil.
And pretty much all of Saudi Arabia's Shiites live there, too.
So it's a very, very tense standoff between the Shiite opposition and the government, which is very concerned about a revolt erupting in this very strategically vital area of the kingdom.
And politically speaking, they're just completely on the outs and have no power or influence within the royal family, etc.
That is certainly the case.
The Shiites are excluded from positions of power within the government.
They are also they for decades they have faced discrimination in other areas such as education.
It is a consensus among analysts that the Shiites of Saudi Arabia are indeed treated as second class citizens.
And we all saw what happened with the peaceful demonstrations or almost virtually entirely peaceful demonstrations in Bahrain at the Pearl Roundabout there in 2011, when the Saudis just came right across the bridge to put that peaceful protest down.
And then there's an entire record of the torture even of doctors who dared to treat the wounded protesters.
And I guess that clampdown continues.
I don't know if the Saudi forces are still in Bahrain to that degree.
I know the Americans are.
But as far as the Saudis helping them repress the people of Bahrain, they sure got that work done in 2011.
Yeah, there is an important connection between the situation in the eastern province and the situation in neighboring Bahrain, just connected to the eastern province by a 16 mile causeway.
Many of the Bahraini Shiites, as well as the Saudi Shiites, have expressed solidarity with one another.
And they both view their own groups as dealing with this very similar plight.
These are oppressed Shiites who are living under US-backed Sunni monarchies, who are unwilling to allow the Shiites any sort of power in the country.
And one of the main reasons why the Saudis were so quick to send their security forces into Bahrain back in 2011 is because they were concerned with the implications of a Shiite revolution in Bahrain for Saudi Arabia's own eastern province.
And I actually traveled to Bahrain in August last year.
And when I went to the island of Sitra, which is really the heart of this anti-government uprising in Bahrain, there were posters of Sheikh Nimre al-Nimre on walls and street corners.
And I think you say in the article, they're all painted over now, right?
And the government's trying to crack down on even signs of support for him.
Oh, absolutely.
There's been some graffiti calling for Sheikh Nimre al-Nimre to be freed.
And the Bahraini authorities indeed have painted over much of that graffiti all over the walls.
And now one thing that's really interesting that you talk about in here, Giorgio, is how partly this is just domestic politics in the kingdom.
The king and his ministers protecting their right flank from those who criticize them for stabbing ISIS in the back after helping to generate the rebellion in Syria.
And now America insists they leave them high and dry, and so they're backing off their support.
And so they have their right-wing critics, and so they kind of appease them by saying, OK, well, here we'll persecute this Shiite leader over here in our own country.
That's absolutely correct.
Last fall, Saudi Arabia and three other Gulf Sunni states joined the U.S.-led military campaign against ISIS in Syria.
Saudi Air Force bombed some of the ISIS and Jabhat al-Nusra targets over there.
And it's actually led many conservative Saudis to criticize their government because from their perspective, Saudi Arabia, by bombing a Sunni group in Syria while not attacking the Assad regime, is essentially, according to them, aligning Riyadh with Iran and Hezbollah.
And the government in Saudi Arabia is very worried about more conservative elements of Saudi society becoming increasingly angry with the government.
And you're absolutely right that the death sentence is sending a message to a domestic audience that while Saudi Arabia...
I'm sorry, George, we'll hold it right there.
We'll be right back, y'all.
All right, guys, welcome back to the show.
I'm Scott Horton.
It's my show, The Scott Horton Show, scotthorton.org for all the archives.
I'm talking with Giorgio Caffiero, founder of Gulf State Analytics, about his piece at, well, you can find it at Common Dreams, and at, I think we ran it as an original on antiwar.com as well, foreign policy and focus, fpif.org.
It's called, The Death Sentence That Could Inflame Sectarian Tensions Across the Middle East.
And it's about this Saudi Shiite sheik, Nimri.
And I'm sorry about the heartbreak and the bad time in there, Giorgio, but you were just finishing up talking about how the Saudi royal family, they have political forces on their right, and that they're partly appeasing them by persecuting this guy, because at the same time, in their eyes, the Saudis are ceding the Iraqi battlefield to the Iranians, at American insistence.
Absolutely.
I guess I should have said and or the Syrian battlefield as well there.
Right.
There's definitely a perception from some Wahhabi extremist circles in Saudi Arabia that the government has become, quote-unquote, soft on Shiism, and the government certainly does not want more Wahhabi Saudis to turn to ISIS or become increasingly sympathetic to ISIS.
So this death sentence certainly sends a message that the government remains committed to clamping down on Shiite dissent.
I think an important point to note, though, is that if the Saudi Arabian authorities were to go ahead and execute Sheikh Nimri al-Nimri, there would likely be a very dangerous backlash, not only within Saudi Arabia's eastern province, but also in other countries in the region where there are large Shiite populations that revere the Shiite cleric.
Who is now on death row.
I think you say in the article there's already been attacks in Bahrain attributed to backlash from just his sentencing, correct?
Yes.
Some reports have surfaced that some Shiite militias in Bahrain have waged certain attacks and have threatened to attack U.S. Marines.
Let's keep in mind that the U.S. Navy's 5th Fleet is based in Bahrain.
So you have many U.S. military personnel in the Persian Gulf Island Kingdom.
And some of these Shiite militias have also threatened Saudi nationals who they refer to as the occupiers of Bahrain.
And in Iraq, there are some Shiite militias, as well as in Yemen, who have stated that there will indeed be consequences for Saudi Arabia if they were to go ahead and execute the Shiite cleric.
Wow.
Hey, can you tell me how this guy ranks compared to, say, the Ayatollah Sistani, or somebody with a lower level credential like Muqtada al-Sadr?
The Iranian government, media, and religious establishment call Sheikh Nimr al-Nimr an Ayatollah, messenger of God.
And in Shiism, that is the highest rank for a religious authority.
So this would be like if they were to execute Sistani or to put a death sentence on Sistani.
It's that level of an offense to the Shiite population.
It's an incredibly sensitive issue.
You're absolutely right.
This would really enrage many Shiites all over the world.
And, you know, it's funny.
I was reminded of when I was reading your article of the WikiLeaks from the heroic Chelsea Manning, doing 35 years in the brig for us right now still, where the king says to George Bush, I don't understand.
It was always you, me, and Saddam against Iran to contain the Iranian revolution.
Now you're going to give Iraq to Iran on a golden platter, he said.
And so that's really...
I don't know why Bush thought that the Saudis would just...
I mean, obviously they had to accept the fact America was going to do the war, but they didn't necessarily have to accept the fact of the results.
They've been financing the Sunni-based insurgency ever since then, really.
And if they've backed off now, that would be the new news, I guess.
Yeah, it's certainly the case that the fall of Saddam was understood in Riyadh as a major loss to Iran.
And the Saudis really think that the Americans made a huge blunder.
You mean a boon to Iran, a loss to them.
Exactly.
And this partially explains why the Saudis were so aggressive to send their security forces into Bahrain.
Back in 2011, and Riyadh certainly did not seek a permission slip from Washington, D.C. before doing so.
In their opinion, the fall of the Sunni Khalifa family in Bahrain would constitute another country on Saudi Arabia's borders falling to supposedly pro-Iranian forces.
And right now in Yemen, the Saudis are very worried about the Houthis gaining power.
And from their perspective, recent developments in Yemen indicate that Iran is gaining even more influence in yet another country on Saudi Arabia's borders.
Yeah, that's what I was just going to ask you about, is the victory of the Houthis there.
And I guess politically, how that plays into the situation.
I guess, in other words, the domestic politics in Saudi Arabia seem to be determining that they keep making matters worse.
I don't know, what do you think of the chances they're actually going to carry out the beheading and crucifixion of this guy's corpse, as you say is the sentence here?
Many experts doubt that the Saudi Arabian authorities will actually execute the cleric.
Some people have said that the Saudis often like to show the sword without having to use it.
It's just a matter of speculation, but given all the security risks associated with the execution of this cleric, I think it's very possible that the Saudis are just trying to send a message.
And I would be surprised if they actually executed the cleric.
But these things are very difficult to predict.
Now, to what degree is Iran really behind the Houthis?
I mean, they must be sending some money and guns, but if you listen to Charles Kruthammer, this is the rise of the Iranian empire, and not because he lied us into war with Iraq, never mind that.
Yeah.
Listen, the Houthis practice a form of Shia Islam.
And like most Arab Shiites, they do have a connection with the Islamic Republic of Iran.
There are links between the Iranian regime and the Houthis.
Yet at the same time, it's important for your viewers to understand that Yemen is the poorest Arab country.
And a lot of the people fighting in Yemen will accept money from anyone.
And just because the Houthis have maybe taken some money, possibly some arms from Tehran, does not mean that they are a proxy of Iran.
The relationship between the Houthis and Iran, for example, is very different than the relationship between Lebanese Hezbollah and Iran.
And at the same time, given the fact that the Houthis are dealing with many legitimate local grievances, I don't believe that Iran is the reason why they waged a rebellion against the U.S.-backed government in Sana'a.
Even if the Islamic Republic of Iran had no relationship with the Houthis, there's still reason to believe that this uprising would have occurred.
Now, there are many neoconservatives who have their ulterior motives with Iran and have an interest in making people think that the Houthis are an agent of Iran.
And they would like people to think that Iran orchestrated a coup against a U.S.-backed government in Yemen to use this as further justification for ending the nuclear negotiations with Iran.
So, as I said, there are plenty of people in Washington, D.C. with ulterior motives who are inaccurately representing events in Yemen.
And, Giorgio, I'm sorry.
I just remembered that you're in a hurry and need to go.
So, I'll let you go right now.
Thank you so much for having me on the show.
I hope we can do this again sometime soon.
I really appreciate it.
It's been great.
Hey, thank you so much, Scott.
Giorgio Caffiera.
Find it at commondreamsatantiwar.com at fpif.org.
It's called the death sentence that could inflame sectarian tensions across the Middle East.
Hey, Al Scott Horton here.
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