Israel, KSA afraid of Iran becoming ME powerhouse: Analyst

Press TV has conducted an interview with Mark Glenn, Crescent and Cross Solidarity Movement, about the new alliance formed between Saudi Arabia and Israel in reaction to positive US overtures toward Iran.

The following is an approximate transcript of the interview.

Press TV: Our guest in London (Mr. Yossi Mekelberg, Middle East program, Chatham House, London) has said that Saudi Arabia and Israel have common bonds especially on this situation dealing with Iran’s – as he called it – the nuclear weapons program. Your take. What is that all about?

Glenn: First and foremost let’s be honest in saying there is no Iranian nuclear weapons program.

This is a red herring that has been debunked a thousand times over the last 30 years. It is just an excuse that is used to first of all rally the Sunni countries in the Middle East behind Israel and the United States and also as a precursor to what we saw take place against Iraq 20 years ago, which was the invasion and destruction of that country under the auspices first and foremost of repelling an invasion into Kuwait and then after 9/11 into preventing Iraq from developing nuclear weapons.

So this is a red herring. What Saudi Arabia and Israel are truly afraid of is that Iran is going to become the powerhouse of the Middle East and is going to be able to bring order to an otherwise chaotic situation.

Israel can only exist in a neighborhood where all of her neighbors are squabbling and disoriented and scurrying around unable to formulate their foreign policy objectives in a way that benefits their own national interests.

And with Iran and her history particularly of having true independence 30-plus years ago, this is a serious danger to continued Israeli hegemony in the region and maintaining control over these countries that have to be kept basically blind and in the dark so that they can be controlled.

Saudi Arabia of course being the headquarters of Islam so to speak – Saudi Arabia would like to see herself as the Islamic powerhouse of the region and I’m sure that this is exactly the promises that have been floated to the royal family there that as long as they continue to do Israeli and American bidding in the region that they will continue to occupy the kinds of positions that they do.

But let’s just be frank about this… the United States and Israel have made it clear to Saudi Arabia that if Saudi Arabia does not play ball according to Israeli interests then you will see Arab revolutions taking place in Saudi Arabia that we saw take place over the last three years in places such as Tunisia and Egypt.

Press TV: What is it about the Takfiris, Wahabis and the Zionists that there seems to be this common alliance?

Glenn: The basic commonality to it is religious extremism and the justification of using the most horrendous types and level of violence in achieving that type of religious fundamentalism in the political world.

All anyone needs to do is to look at what has happened in the Middle East since the Israelis moved in from Europe and have literally butchered tens if not hundreds of thousands of innocent people – something that Israeli leaders and other pundits have bragged about laughingly over the last 5 or 6 decades.

So in effect you do have this… there is an old saying in the West that ‘birds of a feather flock together’ and I think that that is what we’re seeing here with regard to the Wahhabists and the Zionists basically forming this marriage made in hell where Israel can utilize these strains of religious extremism in order to have these thugs and these murderers go out and effect Israel’s foreign policy objectives in the region without Israel actually having to get her hands dirty or to suffer the worldwide condemnation that would befall her if she were directly involved in it.

Press TV: I want to get your reaction to our guest’s language, he said that Israel perhaps should allow the United States to negotiate with Iran. I want to look at that perspective in general.

Is it Tel Aviv that is determining what Washington does in the Middle East and in other parts of the world when it comes especially if Israel feels that it is against their interests or pro their interests – Is it Tel Aviv that is basically telling Washington what to do and what not to do?

Glenn: Well, certainly Tel Aviv does tell Washington what to do and what not to do; however, in this case we see a very interesting development that has occurred, which is that Netanyahu has become so loud he has become so brash that the smarter elements within the pro-Israel Zionist community have gotten very nervous at his very loud and very gangster-ish behavior.

They are working to shut him up, to build a cage around him and to put a gag around his mouth so that he doesn’t make too much noise and really expose Zionism for the truly ugly racist and extremist ideology that it is.

So, in this case what you have with the administration of Barack Obama is that you have pro-Israel interests who are firmly in control of that administration; however, what they would like to see right now is a quieting of things – they would like to see things cool off because the entire world is waking up now to the problems associated with Jewish power and with Zionism in general.

And so just like any organized crime family where the heat is getting to be too much and the public is beginning to put pressure on the political class and on law enforcement to do something about these criminals… And so a smart organized crime family will say, Ok, let’s pull back our operations a little bit because the public is getting wise to our ways and we need them to go back to sleep if we’re going to continue on with our criminal behavior.

I think that that is what’s going on right now is that you have people, smarter elements in the pro-Israeli community who want to shut Benyamin Netanyahu up.

Press TV: Our guest in London talked about the very sensitive area of the Middle East and so many conflicts, but the roots of these conflicts would you say that the majority of these conflicts are rooted let’s say in similar entities that are behind the main problems? He talked about Iraq, he talked about Syria.

If we look at the roots of the problem – what would you say are the roots of the majority of the problems that exist in the Middle East?

Glenn: First and foremost what I would like to say is it as a common phrase earlier in the 20th century for mobsters and other organized crime figures when they were asked the question – what about the mafia; what about the mob – they would say there is no such thing as the mafia, there is no such thing as the mob. That’s just racism, that’s just bigotry.

That’s how I would equate the language that Mr. Mekelberg is using here in trying to deny the fact that yes there is this thing known as Zionism there is this thing known as Jewish power. And for him to try and deny that is the equivalent of gangsters in the past that there is anything related to the mafia or the mob.

As far as the other things that he listed: he talked about Iran, Iraq war, he talked about the destruction of Syria. Yes. the fulcrum around which all of this turns is Israel. We didn’t have this kind of problem until this virus in the Middle East sprung up about a century ago known as Israel…

Israel is the thorn in the Middle East as soon as it is removed there will be no Sunni Shia divide, there will be no terrorism, the Middle East will go back to being the cradle of civilization that it was a millennia ago and this whole entire episode will just be one bad memory in the minds of the human race.