Saudi Arabia’s True Role in 9/11

When we lately explained why improving relations with Saudi Arabia would be in America’s national desire, some readers questioned, “Don’t you know about the Saudi’s part in 9/11?” That same objection was elevated again when the PGA Tour declared its intention to merge with the Saudi-backed LIV golfing tour. Nicely, as a subject of actuality we both equally know a fantastic offer about al-Qaeda’s purpose in the 9/11 attacks. Right here is a summary:

Saudis by no means designed up the vast majority of al-Qaeda’s management or membership. Underneath Osama bin Ladin, al-Qaeda’s leadership was principally Egyptian. Al-Qaeda‘s foot troopers came from across the Muslim world with North Africans, Indonesians and Pakistanis contributing much a lot more than Saudis. Saudis were being utilised to have out the 9/11 attacks mainly since it was much much easier for them to receive visas to the United States than it was for their Egyptian or Pakistani colleagues.

Nor did al-Qaeda’s political agenda originate in Saudi Arabia. Saudi Islam has a lengthy tradition of puritanical intolerance which has most often been directed towards the religious procedures of other Muslims. In Saudi Arabia, the religious scholars have an similarly prolonged historical past of condemning terrorism, in particular when it includes suicide.

Al-Qaeda’s principal ideologue was the Egyptian medical doctor Ayman Zawahiri who drew his views mostly from the extra radical features of Egypt’s Muslim Brotherhood movement. Zawahiri participated in the assassination of Egyptian President Anwar Sadat and openly identified as for the overthrow of all Arab monarchies. Once again, this check out was at odds with the Saudi religious establishment who have been then and keep on being right now supporters of the Saudi monarchy.

Osama Bin Ladin was al-Qaeda’s charismatic entrance male and financier. Getting fought towards the Soviet Union in Afghanistan, he returned to Saudi Arabia in 1989 and shortly commenced criticizing the govt for staying insufficiently Islamic. He still left Saudi Arabia in 1991. 3 decades later, King Fahd stripped Bin Ladin of his Saudi citizenship and froze his financial property. This really public and remarkably strange step produced it distinct that Osama Bin Ladin was now regarded as an enemy of the Saudi point out.

In 1996, Bin Ladin issued his Declaration of War In opposition to the American Occupiers of Mecca and Medina. In it he accused the Saudi king of “issuing pagan laws” and serving as a lackey to “the Crusader-Zionist alliance.”

As Bin Ladin’s phone calls for the violent overthrow of the Saudi federal government intensified, the Saudi federal government sought unsuccessfully to extradite him very first from Sudan and later on from Afghanistan. As the ultimate report of the 9/11 Fee said, “Saudi Federal government officers at the maximum degree worked closely with major U.S. officers to resolve the Bin Ladin difficulty diplomatically.” So, extended ahead of 9/11, the Saudi govt acknowledged that al-Qaeda posed a significant risk to its very own safety.

Their fears had been perfectly started. In 2003, al-Qaeda commenced an particularly violent, 3-12 months terrorist marketing campaign in Saudi Arabia explicitly intended to overthrow the government. Al-Qaeda terrorists attacked housing compounds, authorities places of work and oil facilities. They killed additional than 100 Saudi police officers in a seemingly countless collection of shootouts. In 2004 al-Qaeda terrorists took around the American Consulate compound in Jeddah and killed five personnel. In contrast to a comparable occasion in Tehran 25 years earlier, the Saudi Nationwide Guard promptly retook the compound, killing or capturing all of the terrorists which includes a single who tried out to disguise in a palm tree.

Saudi Arabia is a comparatively weak nation militarily with a good deal of wealth to safeguard. It values security and has prolonged opposed nearly anything that unsettles the Middle East, like: the Soviet Union’s Marxism, Gamal Abdel Nasser’s Arab Nationalism, Ayatollah Khomeini’s revolution and Bin Ladin’s jihad. It has also depended on protection commitments manufactured by quite a few American presidents starting with Harry Truman and realized in 1990, when George H. W. Bush sent 500,000 American troops to switch back again Saddam Hussein. It would make quite minimal perception for the king of Saudi Arabia to cooperate with his sworn enemy to launch an assault on his most vital strategic husband or wife.

That is what the bipartisan 9/11 Fee report concluded in 2004 when it stated that there was no proof linking the Saudi govt or its senior officers to the 9/11 attacks.

When the 28 classified web pages of the report have been unveiled in 2016, they did not alter that summary. Then Chairman of the Home Intelligence Committee Devin Nunes designed apparent that “it is important to be aware that this section of the report does not set forward vetted conclusions, but fairly unverified leads that were being subsequently investigated.”

Senators Richard Chook and Dianne Feinstein, the Chairman and Ranking Minority Associates of the Senate Intelligence Committee at the time, issued one more statement noting that “These web pages incorporate unconfirmed allegations and uncooked reporting that has been subject to conspiracy theories for a long time.” “We require to set an conclusion to the conspiracy theories and idle speculation that do not drop mild on the 9/11 assaults.”

The proof alleging Saudi authorities involvement in the 9/11 assaults has been reviewed by the U.S. govt extra than the moment. The FBI launched its possess beforehand labeled reviews on the matter in 2021. Whilst we remain open up to new facts, just after 22 years of vigorous looking, the conspiracy theorists have but to locate a smoking cigarettes gun.

David H. Rundell is the creator of Vision or Mirage, Saudi Arabia at the Crossroads and a previous main of mission at the American Embassy in Saudi Arabia. Ambassador Michael Gfoeller is a previous political advisor to the U.S. Central Command and a member of the Council on International Relations.

The views expressed in this post are the writers’ possess.