Saudi Arabia Still Exports Jihad

Saudi rulers habitually condemn terrorist attacks when speaking to Western audiences; Saudi Arabia has also suppressed Islamist groups within its own borders and is assisting in the fight against Islamic State. However, the kingdom has a long history of supporting jihadists, and has been the major force behind the spread of the Wahhabi ideology from which Sunni Islamism springs. Carol and Jamsheed Choksy recount the deeply intertwined histories of Saudi Arabia and Wahhabism, and explain the role the kingdom still plays in exporting radical Islam:

[O]ver the past three years, in Yemen, Iraq, Syria, and most recently Lebanon, the Saudi state has been able to utilize jihadis to launch a “proxy Sunni-Shiite war” aimed specifically against Iran and its Shiite and Alawite allies. . . . According to U.S. intelligence officials, in September 2013 “hundreds of millions” of dollars were still flowing to Muslim terrorists from private donors in the Arabian Peninsula. . . .

Likewise . . . Operation Decisive Storm, ostensibly a ten-country Sunni offensive against Shiite Houthi rebels in Yemen, on the kingdom’s southern border, reinforces Sunni autocrats and widens the intra-Muslim rift rather than quashing Sunni extremists like Islamic State and al-Qaeda. It all fits squarely with current Saudi policy of ensuring the monarchy leads the world’s Muslims irrespective of negative consequences. . . .

Saudi Arabia complains that the U.S. is no longer the reliable ally who agreed in 1945 to guarantee the monarchy’s security. But as the cradle of Islamist terror, it has become a duplicitous friend as well. It should no longer be allowed to use its oil wealth to take its terror connections off the table.

Read more at World Affairs Journal

More about: Jihad, Politics & Current Affairs, Saudi Arabia, Shiites, Sunnis, Wahhabism

Egypt Is Trapped by the Gaza Dilemma It Helped to Create

Feb. 14 2025

Recent satellite imagery has shown a buildup of Egyptian tanks near the Israeli border, in violation of Egypt-Israel agreements going back to the 1970s. It’s possible Cairo wants to prevent Palestinians from entering the Sinai from Gaza, or perhaps it wants to send a message to the U.S. that it will take all measures necessary to keep that from happening. But there is also a chance, however small, that it could be preparing for something more dangerous. David Wurmser examines President Abdel Fatah el-Sisi’s predicament:

Egypt’s abysmal behavior in allowing its common border with Gaza to be used for the dangerous smuggling of weapons, money, and materiel to Hamas built the problem that exploded on October 7. Hamas could arm only to the level that Egypt enabled it. Once exposed, rather than help Israel fix the problem it enabled, Egypt manufactured tensions with Israel to divert attention from its own culpability.

Now that the Trump administration is threatening to remove the population of Gaza, President Sisi is reaping the consequences of a problem he and his predecessors helped to sow. That, writes Wurmser, leaves him with a dilemma:

On one hand, Egypt fears for its regime’s survival if it accepts Trump’s plan. It would position Cairo as a participant in a second disaster, or nakba. It knows from its own history; King Farouk was overthrown in 1952 in part for his failure to prevent the first nakba in 1948. Any leader who fails to stop a second nakba, let alone participates in it, risks losing legitimacy and being seen as weak. The perception of buckling on the Palestine issue also resulted in the Egyptian president Anwar Sadat’s assassination in 1981. President Sisi risks being seen by his own population as too weak to stand up to Israel or the United States, as not upholding his manliness.

In a worst-case scenario, Wurmser argues, Sisi might decide that he’d rather fight a disastrous war with Israel and blow up his relationship with Washington than display that kind of weakness.

Read more at The Editors

More about: Egypt, Gaza War 2023