Arab states' massive arms deals tribute to US, Western firms: Anti-war activist

An American political commentator says Saudi Arabia and its regional allies enter into massive weapons deals with the United States and European countries in order to pay their tribute to American and other Western financial institutions and corporations.

In an interview with Press TV on Tuesday, Bill Dores, a writer for Struggle/La Lucha and longtime anti-war activist, said the US has long been trying to “keep that tribute flowing” through endless wars, covert operations as well as sanctions, since the 1953 coup d’état in Iran that overthrew the government of then prime minister Mohammad Mossadeq until the current humanitarian catastrophes in Yemen and Syria.

He said, “US policy in the so-called Middle East is basically a giant protection racket, the biggest, most lucrative and most violent one in history. It has been going since 1945, when President Roosevelt met Saud King Abdulaziz aboard the USS Quincy [heavy cruiser].

“FDR (Franklin Delano Roosevelt) made the King an offer he couldn’t refuse: 'We keep you on your throne, you pay us tribute.' The US in that case was the Rockefeller-controlled Standard Oil monopoly, which then owned the Kingdom’s oil,” he added.

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Dores went on to say that the approach expanded to include all oil-rich kingdoms of the Arabian Peninsula, and included Iran as well following the 1953 CIA coup that restored the monarchical rule of Mohammad Reza Pahlavi.

“The racist regime of Israel, created in 1948 on the stolen land of Palestine, is crucial to the functioning of the racket. That’s why it gets an endless stream of arm and dollars from the United States,” the American political analyst pointed out.

Dores added that Western corporations owned and exploited energy resources in the Middle East region from the end of World War II until the 1970s, and that half of all the overseas profits of US corporations came from Arab and Iranian oil in 1960.

Even though the deposed Shah of Iran was the US arms industry’s biggest paying customer after the Pentagon, he said, Iranian officials canceled arms deals worth billions of dollars following the victory of the 1979 Islamic Revolution and Washington has placed Tehran on its sanctions list ever since.

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“Countries which didn’t pay tribute – Iraq, Libya, Syria, Egypt under [Gamal Abdel] Nasser and Iran after the 1979 Revolution – became targets of the Pentagon, the CIA and Israel. Since the administration of Venezuela’s [late President Hugo] Chavez began using its oil wealth for the people, the US has targeted that country as well,” Dores said.

The pundit then noted that the US has been selling arms to Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates for the past six years in order to “murder and starve the people of Yemen,” casting doubt on the purported intention of the administration of US President Joe Biden to end the war on Yemen.

“It’s unclear what that actually means, since US contractors are pretty crucial to Saudi military operations,” he said.

Dores then lashed out at the US protection racket over its humanitarian cost, asking, “How many more people must die to keep this racket going, to keep the wealth of [Saudi] Arabia flowing to Wall Street? 

“Politicians tell people in the US that the weapons industry creates jobs. But what if all those factories were making medical equipment or trains or other things that people need. What if the trillions spent on war went to healthcare or housing or schools. No one would be homeless or jobless. The world could defeat COVID-19 and many more diseases. The world could defeat climate change,” Dores said.

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