MESOPOTAMIA NEW INTEL SPECIAL : THE SAUDIS & THE RIGHT WING PARTIES OF THE WEST

14 Jan 2019 – MESOP / BESA CENTER – The Saudi effort to do so by garnering conservative, right-wing, and far-right support was evident in Northern Ireland. Investigating a remarkable campaign by Northern Ireland’s Democratic Unionist Party (DUP), a key support pillar of British PM Theresa May’s government, in favor of Britain’s exit from the EU, Irish Times columnist Fintan O’Toole suggested that a senior member of Saudi Arabia’s ruling family and former head of the country’s intelligence service, Prince Nawaf bin Abdul Aziz al Saud, as well as its just-replaced ambassador to Britain, had funded the anti-Brexit effort through a commercial tie-up with a relatively obscure Scottish conservative activist of modest means, Richard Cook.

The ambassador – Prince Muhammad bin Nawaf al Saud, the son of Prince Nawaf – was Saudi Arabia’s ambassador to Britain until last month’s Saudi cabinet reshuffle.

“It may be entirely coincidental that the man who channeled £425,622 to the DUP had such extremely high-level Saudi connections. We simply don’t know. We also don’t know whether the…Saudi ambassador had any knowledge of his father’s connection to Richard Cook,” O’Toole said.

Similarly, Saudi Arabia has invited dozens of British members of Parliament on all-expense paid visits to the kingdom and showered at least 50 members of the government, including Ms. May, with enormous hampers of food weighing up to 18 pounds.

One package destined for a member of the House of Lords included seaweed and garlic mayonnaise; smoked salmon; trout and mussels; and a kilogram of Stilton cheese. Others contained bottles of claret, white wine, champagne, and Talisker whisky, despite the kingdom’s ban of alcohol.

In a move similar to Russian efforts to influence European politics, Saudi Arabia has also forged close ties to conservative and far-right groups in Europe. This includes the Danish People’s Party and the Sweden Democrats as well as other Islamophobes, according to member of the European Parliament Eldar Mamedov.

Writing on LobeLog, Mamedov said the kingdom frequently worked through the European Conservatives and Reformists (ECR) bloc, the third-largest grouping in the European Parliament. Saudi Arabia also enjoyed the support of European Parliament member Mario Borghezio of Italy’s Lega, who is a member of Europe of Nations and Freedom (ENF), a bloc of far-right parties in the Parliament.

Though it is pursuing different goals, the kingdom’s strategy, in a twist of irony, resembles to a degree that of one of its nemeses, Indonesia’s Nahdlatul Ulama, the world’s largest Muslim NGO. Nahdlatul Ulama opposes the puritanical strand of Islam etched into Saudi Arabia’s DNA and has forged close ties to the European right and far right in its bid to reform the faith.

The Saudi strategy could prove tricky – particularly in the US, depending on the evolution of US Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s investigation into foreign interference in the 2016 election that brought President Donald Trump to office.

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