Saudi Prince Bandar bin Sultan has become the first member of the Saudi Arabian royal family to publicly criticize the P5+Iran deal. The Prince who was the Saudi ambassador to the United States between 1981 and 2005, has written a damning column in which he compares the Iran nuclear deal to the failed nuclear deal with North Korea – and concludes it will have even worse consequences.
The Prince told Lebanon's Daily Star that the deal would allow Iran to acquire a nuclear bomb and would "wreak havoc in the region. Saudi Arabia and the Gulf powers are prepared to take military action without American support after the Iran nuclear deal," reports Outlaw Patriot News.
Prince Bandar, after relinquishing as Saudi ambassador to Washington ran Saudi Arabia's intelligence service from 2005-2014. While he is no longer a part of the inner ring of Saudi decision-making, the prince is still very well connected. He also said that regional powers have lost faith in America: "People in my region now are relying on God's will, and consolidating their local capabilities and analysis with everybody else except our oldest and most powerful ally," reports MRCTV.
The Prince further clarified in an op-ed he wrote for the London-based Arabic news Web site Elaph, Badar suggests that President Obama is knowingly making a bad deal, comparing the Iran nuclear deal made by Obama to the North Korean nuclear deal Bill Clinton made.
Bandar says [about the North Korean pact], "it turned out that the strategic foreign policy analysis was wrong and there was a major intelligence failure." He added that if Clinton had known the full picture, "I am absolutely confident he would not have made that decision."
Bandar then contrasts this with the present situation with Iran, "where the strategic foreign policy analysis, the national intelligence information, and America's allies in the region's intelligence all predict not only the same outcome of the North Korean nuclear deal but worse - with the billions of dollars that Iran will have access to."
The Saudi prince says the new Iran deal and other developments in the region have led him to conclude that a phrase first used by Henry Kissinger - "America's enemies should fear America, but America's friends should fear America more" - is correct, according to the Washington Post article which translated part of the Elaph piece.
Iran and Saudi Arabia are two opposing players in the Sunni/Shia divide and are competing for leadership of the Muslim world. The Sunni Islam Saudi Arabian monarchy fears that the Shia Islam Iranians will employ terrorists in an attempt topple the monarchy and the ruling House of Saud.
