Saudis, Qataris intend to break up Iraq

Press TV has conducted an interview with Zayd al-Isa, Middle East expert, about the fresh violence in Iraq. What follows is an approximate transcription of the interview.

Press TV: Zayd al-Isa, Prime minister Nouri al-Maliki has come out and said some parliament members were to blame exploiting sectarian passions as he said for their own political interest.

And the question is who is backing these parliament members in provoking and inciting these sectarian passions?

Al-Isa: Well the main culprits are basically talking about politicians who were originally from the Iraqi elites and those politicians are trying to revive their popularity, trying to revive their fortunes by jumping on the bandwagon and trying to give the impression to the people that they are actually supporting their demands.

Those politicians are very strongly and staunchest allies and empathically supported by Saudi Arabia and Qatar. They are the main backers for those politicians and there is a desperate need by Saudi Arabia at the moment to start a sectarian civil war in Iraq because the essential patently deceitful myth that Saudi Arabia has propagated that it is the guardian and defender of Sunni Islam has been exposed due to its empathic and unequivocal support to tyrannical regimes like Hosni Mubarak, Zein al-Abidine and Saleh in Yemen whom the Saudis offered their steadfast support to them which basically gave the Saudi people the impression that their government is simply trying to hold at bay any democratic reform and the Saudis need it to convince their people that they are engaged in an existential fight against an existential threat from the Shias and the Islamic Republic of Iran.

That’s why all the arming and the funding that went from Saudi Arabia and Qatar to Jabhat al-Nusra which turned out to be part and parcel, an integral part of the al-Qaeda went from Saudi Arabia to prop up and shore up the Jabhat al-Nusra which basically have moved.

Now we have reports that all the arming that went to Jabhat al-Nusra is going back into Iraq into the Anbar province which was the main sanctuary and safe haven and that’s why the Saudis and Qataris are determined to throw all the weight and support behind the protests which are being utilized and exploited by al-Qaeda in order to ensure that the violently secretion rhetoric being propagated by those protests are utilized for further radicalization and also to ramp up the recruitment for al-Qaeda and to reactivate the sanctuaries in Anbar.

All that basically is desperately needed to start off a sectarian war in Iraq in order to punish Iraq for being vehemently opposed and fiercely against the strategy adopted by Saudi Arabia and Qatar of arming, funding and also paying salaries to the foreign mercenaries that converged on Syria from all around the world.

The Saudis and Qataris also want to make sure that Iraq is pre-occupied and also brought down its internal differences and it is also a punishment for Iraq because the foreign mercenaries in Syria are on the back foot, the Syria army has managed to turn the tide against them and is now gaining crown.

So the Saudis and the Qataris want to now direct their attention also at destabilizing, discrediting and derailing the democratic system in Iraq and that is why they pushed those politicians to call for an autonomous regional government in those Sunni areas in order to break up.

The ultimate goal now is to break up Iraq because the Saudis and Qataris are convinced now they cannot topple the entire regime of Iraq because of the steadfast commitment and deeply entrenched support by the overwhelming majority who are the Shias for this system and that is why they are going to settle at the moment, for the time being they want to settle for an extremist Sunni government that they want to turn into a puppet government that will have its own army and will have its own foreign policy that is totally allied and receives its instructions from Riyadh and Doha.