{"id":1798,"date":"2017-11-19T06:18:35","date_gmt":"2017-11-19T07:18:35","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/madaresharghi.com\/uk-leaders-academics-raise-alarm-over-saudi-arabia-crisis\/"},"modified":"2017-11-19T06:18:35","modified_gmt":"2017-11-19T07:18:35","slug":"uk-leaders-academics-raise-alarm-over-saudi-arabia-crisis","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/madaresharghi.ir\/en\/uk-leaders-academics-raise-alarm-over-saudi-arabia-crisis\/","title":{"rendered":"UK: Leaders, academics raise alarm over Saudi Arabia 'crisis'"},"content":{"rendered":"

madaresharghi<\/a>
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Saudi Arabia is a country in crisis, from the kingdom’s contribution to more bloodshed in Yemen to its growing rivalry with Iran, as it attempts to convince the rest of the world that liberalism is expanding at home, delegates at a conference in the UK capital have heard.<\/h2>\n<\/p>\n
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\n\tAs the kingdom reels from a rapid succession of developments, politicians and academics gathered in London to speak on Saturday at the \u2018Crisis in Saudi Arabia: War, Succession and the Future\u2019 summit, attended by around 200 people and organized by the non-profit press monitoring organization Middle East Monitor, Al Jazeera reported.<\/p>\n

\n\tPaddy Ashdown, the former leader of Britain’s Liberal Democratic Party who once mediated in the Bosnian conflict, warned that it was crucial for countries such as the UK and the US not to take sides in a standoff unfolding between Saudi Arabia and Iran.<\/p>\n

\n\t“Now, we are in a really dangerous situation where if a war breaks out, you have the great powers supporting opposite sides,” he said, referring to Russian support of Iran and the West’s backing of Saudi-led initiatives, such as the coalition in Yemen.<\/p>\n

\n\t“I have long been warning that if we didn’t help to build bridges and the West simply supported the Sunnis, in this case, Saudi Arabia, that it would be inevitable that Russia would support the Shia,” he said.<\/p>\n

\n\tAshdown also described the sale of British arms to Riyadh for use in the war in Yemen and the UK’s \u2018tacit support\u2019 for the Saudis as \u2018shameful\u2019.<\/p>\n

\n\t“It is shameful that Britain is supplying weapons and indeed tacit support to Saudi Arabia when it is clearly in breach of international law in its indiscriminate attacks on civilians in Yemen.”<\/p>\n

\n\tTensions between Riyadh and Tehran, already heated over the Yemen war, have risen in recent weeks after the kingdom precipitated the sudden resignation of the Lebanese Prime Minister Saad Hariri, focusing attention on the potential for the escalation of a wider conflict with Iranian proxies such as Hezbollah.<\/p>\n

\n\tThe launch of a missile towards Riyadh, meanwhile, by Yemen’s Houthi rebels \u00a0was ultimately blamed by Saudi officials on Hezbollah and Tehran.<\/p>\n

\n\tThe audience heard keynote speakers and experts discuss growing fault-lines, contradictions and tensions in the kingdom.<\/p>\n

\n\tJack Straw, who has served as Britain’s foreign secretary as well as home secretary, said Saudi Arabia’s defense spending is the fourth highest in the world, outstripping that of its regional rival, Iran. However, he noted that the true scale of social inequality in the country was unknown because its \u2018absolutist\u2019 rulers have prevented scrutiny.<\/p>\n

\n\t“We have seen a very good example of that exercise of absolutist power with the detentions on November 4 of around 200 senior Saudis now incarcerated in the most luxurious prison in the world, the Ritz, and facing allegations of systematic corruption totaling $100 billion, equivalent to the whole of Saudi Arabia’s national debt,” said Straw.<\/p>\n

\n\tSaudi Arabia has reached a turning point in how it views its strategic role in the Middle East since Mohammed bin Salman, the son of King Salman, was named crown prince in June.<\/p>\n

\n\tThe ambitious 33-year-old Mohammed bin Salman is also the country’s defense minister. He has introduced a series of social and economic reforms as he consolidates his power.<\/p>\n

\n\tHis latest move \u2014 the arrest in a corruption crackdown of more than 30 senior figures, including members of the extended royal family \u2014 has been interpreted by critics as a political purge to defuse public disquiet over corruption at the highest levels, but also to neutralize potential rivals.<\/p>\n

\n\tBut Mohammed bin Salman’s efforts to assert the kingdom’s regional primacy through an assertive foreign policy have backfired in Yemen and Qatar, and are opening a new front in Saudi Arabia’s regional rivalry with Iran.<\/p>\n

\n\tEgypt and Saudi Arabia, along with the Persian Gulf neighbors Bahrain and the UAE launched a blockade against Qatar in June, accusing Doha of supporting \u2018terrorism\u2019 \u2014 a claim Qatar strongly denies.<\/p>\n

\n\tMadawi al-Rasheed, a visiting professor at the London School of Economics, said the rise of Mohammed bin Salman represented a concentration of power in a country once distinguished by multiple \u2018fiefdoms\u2019 in which power was shared between clans.<\/p>\n

\n\tShe dismissed the corruption crackdown spearheaded by the young Saudi as a public relations stunt.<\/p>\n

\n\t“Of course, this is a great PR initiative because all of us love to see those corrupt people behind bars, but these anti-corruption purges take place in an opaque kingdom with no freedom of expression and with no independent judiciary,” she said.<\/p>\n

\n\tAl-Rasheed warned liberals outside Saudi Arabia not to be \u2018taken in\u2019 by Mohammed bin Salman’s recent reforms concerning women, such as permitting them to drive.<\/p>\n

\n\t“These are media and PR exercises that want us to believe that the regime has actually changed,” she said.<\/p>\n

\n\t“Nothing has changed, all we have seen is a concentration of power in the hands of one man and a purge of the \u2026 regime to pave the way for the arrival of a new elite that will appropriate the resources and that is under no obligation to explain its budget or its corruption to anybody.”<\/p>\n

\n\tProfessor Ahmed al-Dubai, a Yemeni scholar, traced the historical role Saudi Arabia had played in his country, and interpreted the current conflict as an attempt to limit the progress of democratization in the wider region since the uprisings of 2011.<\/p>\n

\n\tHugh Miles, a journalist who exposed the Saudi government’s secret program to kidnap defectors and dissidents living in Europe, argued that the principal motive for the recent crackdown by Mohammed bin Salman, known colloquially as \u2018MBS\u2019 was personal rivalry.<\/p>\n

\n\t“The main reason for the purge is money: MBS needs to cover the deficit and he also wants to enrich himself,” said Miles.<\/p>\n

\n\t“He was not happy with the slow pace of enrichment through normal means like defense contracts, so he decided to speed it up by seizing his cousins’ money.”<\/p>\n

\n\tJournalist and analyst Bill Law agreed, suggesting that the recent crackdown represented a purge of commercial rivals. The conflict in Yemen was an effort by Mohammed bin Salman to burnish his reputation as a \u2018warrior prince\u2019, he said.<\/p>\n

\n\tThe Saudi-headed coalition has been at war with the Houthi rebels since March 2015.<\/p>\n

\n\tThe coalition has been repeatedly criticized for attacking civilians during the conflict.<\/p>\n

\n\tMore than 10,000 people have been killed and more than 40,000 injured since the outbreak of the conflict, according to the United Nations.<\/p>\n

\n\tA cholera outbreak has also claimed the lives of more than 1,800 people since April, with 400,000 suspected cases across the country, according to the UN and the International Committee of the Red Cross.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

madaresharghi Saudi Arabia is a country in crisis, from the kingdom’s contribution to more bloodshed in Yemen to its growing rivalry with Iran, as it attempts to convince the rest of the world that liberalism is expanding at home, delegates at a conference in the UK capital have heard. As the kingdom reels from a […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[8],"tags":[296,118,28,31,159,639,178,56,213,84,95,82,68,22,23,27],"yoast_head":"\nUK: Leaders, academics raise alarm over Saudi Arabia 'crisis' - madaresharghi | An Analytical Look at Middle Eastern Developments<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/madaresharghi.ir\/en\/uk-leaders-academics-raise-alarm-over-saudi-arabia-crisis\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"UK: Leaders, academics raise alarm over Saudi Arabia 'crisis' - madaresharghi | An Analytical Look at Middle Eastern Developments\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"madaresharghi Saudi Arabia is a country in crisis, from the kingdom’s contribution to more bloodshed in Yemen to its growing rivalry with Iran, as it attempts to convince the rest of the world that liberalism is expanding at home, delegates at a conference in the UK capital have heard. As the kingdom reels from a […]\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:url\" content=\"https:\/\/madaresharghi.ir\/en\/uk-leaders-academics-raise-alarm-over-saudi-arabia-crisis\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:site_name\" content=\"madaresharghi | An Analytical Look at Middle Eastern Developments\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:published_time\" content=\"2017-11-19T07:18:35+00:00\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:card\" content=\"summary\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:label1\" content=\"Est. reading time\">\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:data1\" content=\"5 minutes\">\n<script type=\"application\/ld+json\" class=\"yoast-schema-graph\">{\"@context\":\"https:\/\/schema.org\",\"@graph\":[{\"@type\":\"WebSite\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/madaresharghi.ir\/en\/#website\",\"url\":\"https:\/\/madaresharghi.ir\/en\/\",\"name\":\"madaresharghi | An Analytical Look at Middle Eastern Developments\",\"description\":\"madaresharghi | An Analytical Look at Middle Eastern Developments\",\"potentialAction\":[{\"@type\":\"SearchAction\",\"target\":\"https:\/\/madaresharghi.ir\/en\/?s={search_term_string}\",\"query-input\":\"required name=search_term_string\"}],\"inLanguage\":\"en-US\"},{\"@type\":\"WebPage\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/madaresharghi.ir\/en\/uk-leaders-academics-raise-alarm-over-saudi-arabia-crisis\/#webpage\",\"url\":\"https:\/\/madaresharghi.ir\/en\/uk-leaders-academics-raise-alarm-over-saudi-arabia-crisis\/\",\"name\":\"UK: Leaders, academics raise alarm over Saudi Arabia 'crisis' - madaresharghi | An Analytical Look at Middle Eastern Developments\",\"isPartOf\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/madaresharghi.ir\/en\/#website\"},\"datePublished\":\"2017-11-19T07:18:35+00:00\",\"dateModified\":\"2017-11-19T07:18:35+00:00\",\"author\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/madaresharghi.ir\/en\/#\/schema\/person\/c52e345120843d5f259215c4e809cdd2\"},\"inLanguage\":\"en-US\",\"potentialAction\":[{\"@type\":\"ReadAction\",\"target\":[\"https:\/\/madaresharghi.ir\/en\/uk-leaders-academics-raise-alarm-over-saudi-arabia-crisis\/\"]}]},{\"@type\":\"Person\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/madaresharghi.ir\/en\/#\/schema\/person\/c52e345120843d5f259215c4e809cdd2\",\"name\":\"administrator\",\"image\":{\"@type\":\"ImageObject\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/madaresharghi.ir\/en\/#personlogo\",\"inLanguage\":\"en-US\",\"url\":\"https:\/\/secure.gravatar.com\/avatar\/901309319175b0d219e688b01909d220?s=96&d=mm&r=g\",\"caption\":\"administrator\"}}]}<\/script>\n<!-- \/ Yoast SEO plugin. -->","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/madaresharghi.ir\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1798"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/madaresharghi.ir\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/madaresharghi.ir\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/madaresharghi.ir\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/madaresharghi.ir\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1798"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/madaresharghi.ir\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1798\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/madaresharghi.ir\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1798"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/madaresharghi.ir\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1798"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/madaresharghi.ir\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1798"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}