Last week’s FocusKSA discussion on the deteriorating security situation in Iraq brought together three experts on the subject to make sense of the advance of ISIL and discuss the implications for Saudi Arabia and the United States. Fahad Nazer, analyst with JTG Inc. and frequent commentator on CNN, Al Monitor and other media outlets, focused on the lack of evidence that supports assertions that Saudi Arabia has supported ISIL.
“This notion that Saudi Arabia is somehow responsible for much of the unrest in Iraq and and specifically that it is somehow actually supporting ISIS” is inaccurate and lacks evidence, Nazer told the FocusKSA panel. “It is one thing for casual observer to jump to that conclusion and it is something else for experts to essentially make the same argument. I’ve come across a number of articles by fairly well-respected analysts that are essentially at least – the titles imply – that there is indeed a relationship between Saudi Arabia and [ISIS] and that it is somehow an official relationship. What’s interesting is that if you read the actual articles, invariably, just about everybody at some point adds a caveat saying ‘there’s no actual real evidence suggesting that’ but they still make the argument,” Nazer said.
“While there’s no evidence suggesting that Saudi Arabia has supported ISIL, there’s plenty of evidence that ISIL has actually vowed to take the fight to Saudi Arabia once it has accomplished its supposed mission in Syria and Iraq.”
Nazer notes that Al Qaeda has a long history of carrying out attacks in Saudi Arabia going back to 2003, so “to me it doesn’t really make sense for Saudi Arabia to actively and willingly support ISIS” with the result being a failed state along the Saudi border with Iraq. “It defies common sense to me,” Nazer said.
