MBZ M bin Zayed u a e

see MBZ2

NO MERRI

see saudi

see UAE mbs

primary on mass beheadings crucifixion, head on spike, some were political critics?! DN

rockstar tour?

---}:

// trump tower mtg

Other meetings

Gulf states emissary

In August 2016, Donald Trump Jr. had a meeting with an emissary representing Saudi Arabia's Crown Prince Mohammad bin Salman and Mohammed bin Zayed Al Nahyan, the de facto ruler of the United Arab Emirates. The envoy offered help to the Trump presidential campaign.^[107] The meeting included Lebanese-American businessman George Nader, Joel Zamel, an Israeli specialist in social media manipulation, and American businessman Erik Prince.^{[108][107][109][110}]

Los Angeles based Emirati real-estate developer, Rashid al-Malik, who is close to Prince Mohammed and one of Trump's aides, is being investigated for running an illegal influence scheme. A whistle-blower has also accused the UAE of using cyberespionage techniques from former American operatives to spy on US citizens.^[111]

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https://www.alternet.org/2020/06/how-a-behind-the-scenes-bare-knuckle-brawl-shaped-us-foreign-policy-under-trump/

It was a bare-knuckle brawl of the first order. It took place in Washington, D.C., and it resulted in a KO. The winners? Lobbyists and the defense industry. The losers? Us. And odds on, you didn’t even know that it happened. Few Americans did, which is why it’s worth telling the story of howSaudi, Emirati, and Qatari money flooded the nation’s capital and, in the process, American policy went down for the count.

The fight began three years ago this month. Sure, the pugilists hadn’t really liked each other that much before then, but what happened in 2017 was the foreign-policy equivalent of a sucker punch. On the morning of June 5th, Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates (UAE), Egypt, and Bahrain announced that they were severing diplomatic ties with Qatar, the small but wealthy emirate in the Persian Gulf, and establishing a land, air, and sea blockade of their regional rival, purportedly because of its ties to terrorism.

The move stunned the Qataris, who responded in ways that would later become familiar during the Covid-19 pandemic — by emptying supermarket shelves and hoarding essentials they worried would quickly run out. Their initial fears were not unwarranted, as their neighbors,Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates, were even reported to be planning to launch a military invasion of Qatar in the weeks to come (one that would be thwarted only by the strong objections of Donald Trump’s then-Secretary of State Rex Tillerson).

To make sense of this now three-year-old conflict, which turned aspects of American policy in the Middle East ranging from the war in Yemen to the more than 10,000 American military personnel stationed in Qatar into political footballs, means refocusing on Washington and the extraordinary influence operations the Saudis, Emiratis, and Qataris ran there. That, in turn, means analyzing Foreign Agents Registration Act (FARA) documents filed by firms representing all three countries since the spat began. Do that and you’ll come across a no-punches-barred bout of lobbying in the U.S. capital that would have made Rocky envious.

The Saudis Come Out Swinging

The stage had been set for the blockade of Qatar seven months before it began when Donald Trump was elected president. Just as his victory shocked the American public, so it caught many foreign governments off guard. In response, they quickly sought out the services of anyone with ties to the incoming administration and the Republican-controlled Congress. The Saudis and Emiratis were no exception. In 2016, both countries had reported spending a little more than $10 million on FARA registered lobbying firms. By the end of 2017, UAE spending had nearly doubled to $19.5 million, while the Saudi’s had soared to $27.3 million.

In the months following Donald Trump’s November triumph, the Saudis, for instance, added several firms with ties to him or the Republicans to an already sizeable list of companies registered under FARA as representing their interests. For example, they brought on the CGCN Group whose president and chief policy officer, Michael Catanzaro, was on Trump’s transition team and then served in his administration. To court the Republican Congress, they hired the McKeon Group, run by former Republican Representative Buck McKeon, who had previously served as chairman of the House Armed Services Committee.

And that was just registered foreign agents. A number of actors who had not registered under FARA were actively pushing the Saudi and Emirati agendas, chief among them Elliott Broidy and George Nader. Broidy, a top fundraiser for Trump’s campaign, and Nader, his business partner, already had a wide range of interests in both Saudi Arabia and the UAE. To help secure them, the two men embarked on a campaign to turn the new president and the Republican establishment against Qatar. One result was a Broidy-inspired, UAE-funded anti-Qatar conference hosted in May 2017 by a prominent Washington think tank, the Foundation for Defense of Democracies. It conveniently offered Representative Ed Royce (R-CA) a platform to discuss his plans to introduce a bill, HR 2712, that would label Qatar a state sponsor of terrorism. It was to be introduced in the House of Representatives just two days after the conference ended.

Qatar, mind you, had been a U.S. ally in the Middle East and was the home of Al Udeid Air Base, where more than 10,000 American soldiers are still stationed. So that bill represented a striking development in American-Qatari relations and was a clearly traceable result of Saudi and UAE lobbying efforts.

The unregistered influence of players like Broidy and Nader was evidently backed by other FARA-registered Saudi and UAE foreign agents actively pushing the bill. For example, Qorvis Communications, a long-time public relations mouthpiece for the Saudis, circulated a document titled “Qatar’s History of Funding Terrorism and Extremism,” claiming that country was funding Al-Nusra, Hamas, the Muslim Brotherhood, and other groups. (Not surprisingly, it included a supportive quote from David Weinberg, a senior fellow at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies.)

While that anti-Qatar crusade was ramping up in Washington, the president himself was being wooed by the Saudi royals in Riyadh on his first official trip abroad. They gave him the literal royal treatment and their efforts appeared to pay off when, just a day after the blockade began, Trump tweeted, “During my recent trip to the Middle East I stated that there can no longer be funding of Radical Ideology. Leaders pointed to Qatar — look!”

A week after the imposition of the blockade, the Emirati ambassador to the United States, Yousef al-Otaiba, wrote a Wall Street Journal op-ed calling for Al Udeid Air Base to be moved to the UAE, a development the Qataris feared could open the door for an eventual invasion of their country.

However, this Saudi and Emirati onslaught did not go unanswered.

Qatar Strikes Back

Tamim bin Hamad al-Thani, the emir of Qatar, was caught flat-footed by the influence operations of the Saudis and the United Arab Emirates. The year before Donald Trump became president, the Qataris had spent just $2.7 million on lobbying and public relations firms, less than a third of what the Saudis and UAE paid out, according to FARA records. But they now moved swiftly to shore up their country’s image as a crucial American ally. They went on an instant hiring spree, scooping up lobbying and public-relations firms with close ties to Trump and congressional Republicans.Just two days after the blockade began, for instance, they inked adeal with the law firm of former Attorney General John Ashcroft, paying $2.5 million for just its first 90 days of work.

They also quickly obtained the services of Stonington Strategies. Headed by Nick Muzin, who had worked on Trump’s election campaign, the firm promptly set out to court 250 Trump “influencers,” as Julie Bykowicz of theWall Street Journal reported. Among others, Stonington’s campaign sought to woo prominent Fox News personalities Trump paid special attention to like former Arkansas Governor Mike Huckabee. He was paid $50,000 to travel to Qatar just months later.

In September 2017, the Qataris also hired Bluefront Strategies to craft a comprehensive multimedia operation, which was to include commercials on all the major news networks, as well as digital and printed ads in an array of prominent publications, and a “Lift the Blockade” campaign on social media. Meanwhile, ads on Google and YouTube were to highlight the illegality of the blockade and the country’s contributions to fighting terrorism. Bluefront Strategies was to influence public opinion before the next session of the U.N. General Assembly that month. Qatar and its proxies then used the campaign “to target key decision-makers attending the General Assembly, including Trump” to gain support on that most global of stages.

Its agents weren’t just playing defense, either. They actively attacked the Saudi lobby. For example, Barry Bennett of Avenue Strategies, a PR firm they hired, sent a letter to the assistant attorney general for national security accusing Saudi Arabia and the Saudi American Public Relation Affairs Committee (SAPRAC) of FARA violations in their funding of an expensive media campaign meant to connect Qatar’s leaders with violent extremism and acts of terror.

Such counterpunches proved remarkably successful. SAPRAC eventually felt obliged to register with FARA. Meanwhile, Huckabee tweeted, “Just back from a few days in surprisingly beautiful, modern, and hospitable Doha, Qatar.” Finally, at that U.N. meeting, President Trump actually sat:{ down with Emir al-Thani of Qatar and }:{, “We’ve been friends a long time… I have a very strong feeling [the Qatar diplomatic crisis] will be solved quickly.” They both then emphasized the “tremendous” and “strong” relationship between their countries.}:

The Qataris next mounted a concerted defense against HR 2712. Lobbying firms they hired, particularly Avenue Strategies and Husch Blackwell, launched a multifaceted campaign to prevent that legislation from passing. Elliott Broidy even claimed in a lawsuit that the Qatari government and several of its lobbyists had hacked his email account and distributed private emails of his to members of Congress in an attempt to discredit his work for the Saudis.

In November 2017, Barry Bennett from Avenue Strategies went on the attack, using a powerful weapon in Washington politics: Israel. He distributed aletter to members of Congress written by a former high-ranking official in the Israeli national security establishment explicitly stating that Qatar had not provided military support to Hamas, as HR 2712 claimed it had.

Three months later, Husch Blackwell all but threatened Congress and the Trump administration with the cancellation of a $6.2 billion Boeing contract to sell F-15 fighters to the Qatari military (and the potential loss of thousands of associated jobs) if the bill passed and sanctions were imposed on that country. All of this was linked to a concerted effort by Qatari agents to contact “nearly two dozen House offices, including then House Majority Leader Kevin McCarthy,” to prevent the bill’s passage, according to a report by the Foreign Influence Transparency Initiative at the Center for International Policy where we work. Ultimately, HR 2712 died a slow death in Congress and never became law.

The Saudi Bloc’s Battle for the War in Yemen

Just as Qatar started to turn the tide in the fight for influence in Washington, the Saudis and their allies faced another problem: Congress began moving to sever support for the Saudi-led war in Yemen. On February 28, 2018, Senator Bernie Sanders (I-VT) introduced a joint resolution to withdraw U.S. support for that war. According to FARA filings,Brownstein Hyatt Farber Schreck, LLP, representing the Saudi ministry of foreign affairs,contacted several members of the Senate Committee on Foreign Relations, particularly Democrats, presumably to persuade them to vote against the measure.

That March, the firm sent out dozens of emails to members of Congress inviting them to a gala dinner with the key Saudi royal, Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman himself. According to the invitation from the CGCN Group, another FARA-registered firm representing the Saudis, the “KSA [Kingdom of Saudi Arabia]-USA Partnership Gala Dinner” was to emphasize the “enduring defense and counter-terrorism cooperation” and “historic alliance” between the two countries. It would end up taking place just two days after the Senate voted to table Sanders’s bill.

Emirati lobbyists similarly reached out to Congress to maintain support for their role in that war. Hagir Elawad & Associates, for example, distributed an op-ed written by the UAE minister of state for foreign affairs justifying the war, as well as a letter written by that country’s ambassador, Yousef al-Otaiba, to 50 congressional contacts defending the Saudi-led coalition’s efforts to avoid civilian casualties and arguing that “the United States has a clear stake in the coalition’s success in Yemen.”

When that conflict began, Qatar was still a member of the coalition, but the imposition of the blockade led it to withdraw its forces from Yemen. Qatari officials then used the country’s media empire, centered on the broadcaster Al Jazeera, to highlight the disastrous aspects of the ongoing war. In doing so, they provided the Saudis and Emiratis with yet another reason to focus their own influence machines on both Qatar’s and Al Jazeera’s destruction. (That network’s closure was, in fact, one of the original 13 demands the Saudis and Emiratis had made for lifting the blockade.)

From the moment it was founded in 1996, Al Jazeerahad been an instrument of Qatari soft power, so it was hardly surprising that the UAE had long pressured members of Congress to force the network to register under FARA as a foreign agent. And Emirati lobbying efforts were not in vain. In early March 2018, 19 members of Congress signed and sent aletter to then-Attorney General Jeff Sessions urging the Justice Department to demand that Al Jazeera be registered under FARA. Another such letter sent to the Justice Department in June 2019 by six senators and two representatives asked “why Al Jazeera and its employees have not been required to register.” According to FARA filings, all but one of those representatives had either received campaign contributions from or been contacted by a Saudi or Emirati lobbying firm. Al Jazeera, however, has yet to register.

The Murder of Jamal Khashoggi

Despite the efforts of Saudi and Emirati lobbyists in the early months of 2018, the emir of Qatar still managed to land an invitation to the Oval Office. At their meeting that April 10th, President Trump again described al-Thani as a “friend” and a “great gentleman” as well. The emir, in turn, thanked the president for “supporting us during this blockade.”

If Trump’s cozying up to him was a setback for the Saudis, the murder of critic and Washington Post contributing columnist Jamal Khashoggi nearly did in the Saudi lobbying juggernaut as well. The CIA later confirmed that the crown prince himself had ordered that Saudi citizen’s assassination at the country’s consulate in Istanbul, Turkey.

As a result, some lobbying firmscut ties with the kingdom and its influence on Capitol Hill waned, as did positive public opinion about Saudi Arabia. In December 2018, the Senate passed the Sanders bill to end support for the war in Yemen. Both houses of Congress also passed a War Powers resolution to end involvement in that conflict, a historic congressional move in this century, even if later vetoed by President Trump (as were a series of attempts to block his treasured arms sales to Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates).

Given the president’s unyielding support for the Saudis and Emiratis as especially lucrative customers for this country’s defense industry, the Qataris have clearly decided to crib the Saudi playbook. In May, that country purchased 24 Apache helicopters for $3 billion and, a few months later, agreed to pay for and manage a $1.8 billion expansion of Al Udeid Air Base to ensure the American military’s continued presence for the foreseeable future. In doing so, Qatar was visibly at work coopting two of the most powerful lobbies in Washington: the military and the weapons makers.

And the Winners Are…

Though Qatar faced a near-existential threat to its survival when the blockade began, three years later it’s not only surviving, but thriving thanks significantly to its influence operations in Washington. They have helped immeasurably to deepen economic, diplomatic, and military relations between the two countries.

Meanwhile, the emir’s rivals in Riyadh not only failed to make their blockade a success, but saw their influence wane appreciably in the U.S. as they stumbled from one public relations fiasco to the next. Even their staunchest defender, Donald Trump, recently threatened to sever U.S. military support for the Kingdom if the Saudi royals didn’t end their oil war with Russia (which they promptly did).

In truth, however, the real loser in this struggle for influence hasn’t been Saudi Arabia or the Emiratis, it’s been America. After all, the efforts of both sides to deepen their ties with the military-industrial complex (reinforcing the hyper-militarization of U.S. foreign policy) and increase their sway in Congress have ensured that the real interests of this country played second fiddle to those of Middle Eastern despots. Certainly, their acts helped ensure near historic levels of arms sales to the region, while prolonging the wars in Yemen andSyria, and so contributing to death and devastation on an almost unimaginable scale.

None of this had anything to do with the real interests of Americans, unless you mean the arms industry and K Street lobbyists who have been the only clear American winners in this never-ending PR war in Washington. In the process, those three Persian Gulf states have delivered a genuine knockout blow to the very idea that U.S. foreign policy should be driven by national — not special — interests.

Morgan Palumbo is a researcher with the Foreign Influence Transparency Initiative at the :{Center for International Policy:(style="box-sizing:border-box;outline:none;margin:0px;padding:0px"):}:.

Jessica Draper is a researcher with the Foreign Influence Transparency Initiative and Arms and Security Project at the :{Center for International Policy:(style="box-sizing:border-box;outline:none;margin:0px;padding:0px"):}:.

Trump Preparing to Circumvent Congress on Saudi, :{UAE:(style="box-sizing:border-box"):}: Weapons Sales

jared 2x down on MBS 4/19?

but then

https://www.alternet.org/2019/04/jared-kushner-talks-of-accountability-for-crown-prince-as-saudis-offer-egregious-display-of-brutality-with-mass-beheadings/

Just as Jared Kushner answered questions about the close ties between the White House and Saudi Arabia in New York on Tuesday, the Middle Eastern kingdom beheaded 37 people in its largest mass execution in at last three years.

The executions, of mostly Shiite men accused of terrorism related crimes, were part of what Washington’s Gulf Institute director Ali Al-Ahmed called “the largest mass execution of Shiites in the kingdom’s history.”

Al-Ahmed identified 34 of the 37 victims as Shiite.

According to reports, Saudi Arabian security services nailed one of the heads to a poll as a warning and one victim was crucified after his execution.

Saudi Arabia displays severed head on pole as a warning after beheading 37 Saudi citizens, most of them minority Shiites, in a mass execution across the country for alleged terrorism-related crimes. Via ⁦@AP⁩ https://t.co/J3yxex0VjA

— BrinleyBruton (@BrinleyBruton) April 23, 2019

The killings were announced by Saudi state media Tuesday morning, Eastern time, right before Kushner, President Donald Trump’s son-in-law and a senior advisor to the president, took the stage at the Time 100 Summit event honoring the magazine’s annual list of the 100 most influential people in the world.

Saudi Arabia confirms beheading 37 citizens, most of them minority Shiites, in a mass execution for alleged terrorism-related crimes. One body and its severed head was tied to a pole as a public warning. https://t.co/ydFt8M3r0C

— Steve Herman (@W7VOA) April 23, 2019

During an interview at the event with Time White House correspondent Brian Bennett, Kushner fielded questions on a number of foreign policy questions, including the Israel/Palestine conflict and the Trump administration’s closeness to Russia.

Kushner was also asked a series of questions on Saudi Arabia and the relationship between the U.S. and the kingdom, especially in light of the murder of Jamal Kashoggi in October 2018 and the war on Yemen.

Kushner doesn’t dispute U.S. intelligence services’ conclusion that Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman was behind murder of journalist Jamal Khashoggi https://t.co/iVRb7y2A98 pic.twitter.com/NjXhE77NlJ

— CBS News (@CBSNews) April 23, 2019

In his replies, Kushner downplayed the significance of the murder, pled ignorance on the details of the crime, and admitted that he offered Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed Bin Salman guidance as the world demanded accountability.

Kushner seems to acknowledge he advised Saudi Crown Prince MBS after #Khashoggi‘s murder.

“The advice I gave was be as transparent as possible and that obviously we have to make sure there is accountability for what happened,” Kushner says at #TIME100 summit

— Jennifer Hansler (@jmhansler) April 23, 2019

“Obviously, we have to make sure there’s accountability for what happened,” saidKushner, before pivoting to a series of remarks critical of Iran, the Palestinians, and the Yemeni Houthis.

In response to the beheadings, Maya Foa, director of the U.K.-based human rights groups Reprieve, put the “egregious display of brutality” squarely at the feet of MbS and the Kingdom’s western allies which have shielded it from exactly the accountability Kushner says he supports.

“That the Saudi regime believes it has impunity to carry out such patently illegal executions, without notice,” Foa said, “should shock its international partners into action.”

Reprieve Director @mayafoa: “This is another egregious display of brutality by Crown Prince Mohammed Bin Salman. That the Saudi regime believes it has impunity to carry out such patently illegal executions, without notice, should shock its international partners into action.”

— Reprieve (@Reprieve) April 23, 2019

In March 2018, The Intercept reported that Bin Salman bragged that he had Kushner “in his pocket.”

OMFG

https://www.democracynow.org/2019/4/17/libyan_humanitarian_crisis_worsens_as_over

...GONZÁLEZ: And could you talk about the role of Erik Prince and his former mercenary organization, Blackwater, in Libya?

ANAS EL GOMATI: Well, it’s really the UAE’s role that is behind this. I think, in 2010, theUAE, Mohammed bin Zayed, gave over half a billion dollars to the Frontier Services Group, which is now led by Erik Prince, formerly of Blackwater. And since then, allegedly, according to Western print media, Erik Prince, alongside the UAE, established an air base, a military base, a drone base, in eastern Libya between 2014 and '16.Now, this is well documented by the U.N. Panel of Experts on the Security Council, where the year that Libya was supposed to be delivered an enduring peace, a sustainable peace, a concession by both sides in the civil war, in 2016, when they announced the beginning of this new chapter in Libya's history and delivered this Government of National Accord in Tripoli, was the very year that the UAE violated the arms embargo in Libya in unprecedented levels but also began to establish the final touches and final pieces of this air base in eastern Libya called al-Khadim. Now, it possesses a massive arsenal of drones, Wing Loongs, which are Chinese kind of mimics of the American Predator F1 drone, but it also houses at least two Air Tractors, which are kind of industrial—industrial kind of aircraft that have been kitted out with air-to-surface missiles. And at the very least, this kind of move—I mean, it’s very, very difficult to pin down, so that’s whyI’m using the word “alleged,” because I don’t want to get sued. But at the very least, there have been many, many investigations that have pinned this to Erik Prince’s Frontier Services Group.

At least in the last two years, that arsenal of drones and Air Tractors have been used to support Khalifa Haftar’s ground offensives in Benghazi and in Derna, that have displaced around 100,000 people in Benghazi but have also led to 1,700 people being imprisoned in Derna. And many of those ground invasions, many of those military assaults, are now being investigated by the ICC for war crimes. So, I think it’s that kind of tacit and underlying kind of discreet military assistance that the UAEprovided, that the French provided in Benghazi, that has not only bolstered Khalifa Haftar in the east of the country but has been the platform and the pretext for this latest offensive in Tripoli.

And we should remind ourselves that thi

...

the nation mag

Third, what does Bannon know about the role of Erik Prince, brother of Education Secretary Betsy DeVos and purveyor of mercenary armies, and his Russia connections? Prince, a Bannon ally, took part in a pair of meetings being scrutinized by Mueller. One involved Kushner, Gen. Michael Flynn, and Mohammed bin Zayed al-Nahyan (aka MBZ), the crown prince of Abu Dhabi and de facto ruler of the United Arab Emirates, who held a meeting in Trump Tower in December 2016, a meeting also attended by Bannon. For the second, a month later, Prince flew halfway around the world for a meeting in the Seychelles, an Indian Ocean archipelago, where he met Kirill Dmitriev, a senior Russian financier, at the behest of MBZ.

https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2018/04/09/a-saudi-princes-quest-to-remake-the-middle-east

https://www.newsweek.com/2018/09/07/saudi-arabia-mohammed-bin-salman-charm-west-1096423.html

NEWSWEEK MAGAZINE

Saudi Arabia’s Mohammed Bin Salman Charmed the West but Rules at Home With an Iron Fist

BY RULA JEBREAL ON 8/30/18 AT 9:21 AM

FE_MBS_07_928529192

Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman meets with Queen Elizabeth at Buckingham Palace on March 7.

The crown prince knows how to please. In early March, Mohammed bin Salman, commonly known as MBS, was at Buckingham Palace for lunch with Queen Elizabeth II. It was the first official visit for the 32-year-old, and press coverage was glowing. “He’s a revolutionary!” proclaimed The Daily Telegraph. British conservatives loved MBS’s proposal to privatize Saudi Aramco, his state’s oil company, and list it on the London Stock Exchange—a nice boost to the flagging British economy, as well as his reputation as an economic reformer.Later that month, he was in the Oval Office with President Donald Trump, followed by stops in Los Angeles, New York, Houston, Silicon Valley and Seattle to meet with Hollywood and tech elite—including Oprah Winfrey, Elon Musk and Google executives.This grand tour marked the crown prince’s international debut. His 82-year-old father, King Salman, ceded some of his own power last year, commending Vision 2030, MBS’s plan for social and economic liberalization. In the crown prince’s public statements, at least, he endorses the view that Saudi Arabia cannot survive forever on checkbook diplomacy abroad and government welfare at home. The goals include lessening the country’s dependence on oil exports; investing in education, entertainment and tourism; and invigorating the economy—in part by supporting women in the workforce. A decree permitting women to drive, which went into effect in June, bolstered his international image as a reformer.The arrest last November of a dozen of his royal relatives and ministers accused of skimming on their government deals was reported internationally as an anti-corruption housecleaning—one that added an estimated $100 million to the funds under the prince’s control. (All told, the House of Saud is worth over $1 trillion.)

The prince’s world travels and moves to burnish his carefully constructed “progressive” profile marked an aggressive effort to tackle one of the kingdom’s key problems: Saudi Arabia’s image has never fully recovered from 9/11. The attacks were carried out mostly by Saudi citizens. A declassified 2016 congressional report—which the Saudis went to great lengths to suppress—alleged that the terrorists may have had support from individuals connected to the Saudi government, and a 2009 cable from then–Secretary of State Hillary Clinton said, “It has been an ongoing challenge to persuade Saudi officials to treat terrorist financing emanating from Saudi Arabia as a strategic priority.”The crown prince’s own strategic priority is to bury this narrative by pivoting to a new one, that of a Westernized, consumerist nation hungry for American investment—and weapons to confront common enemies. He played the role with impressive élan, eschewing traditional Saudi royal garb for much of his U.S. trip, even wearing jeans to meet Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg.At each U.S. stop, MBS was heralded by the media. Fox News gushed over his “modernization push.” CNN called Saudi Arabia “the hottest emerging market right now.” American Media Inc. (owned by Trump pal David Pecker) published an entire $14 magazine devoted to the crown prince.Reporters failed to ask about Saudi Arabia jailing women, such as Samar Badawi and Nassima al-Sadah, who had campaigned for the right to drive, and dozens of other civil rights activists. Nor did they ask about the humanitarian disaster that is his war in Yemen, or how the hundreds of millions the crown prince has spent in the recent past on personal possessions fits with his narrative of responsible economic reform.

“The Saudis have used all their resources to suffocate any democratic impulse in the Arab world,” says professor Madawi al-Rasheed, a Saudi anthropologist who has written several histories of the kingdom. For all of the reformist hype, MBS leads an authoritarian regime that brooks no dissent.Raif Badawi, an atheist blogger, remains in jail, along with his lawyer and prominent human rights activist Waleed Abulkhair. Noha al-Balawi, a women’s rights campaigner who posted videos challenging Saudi Arabia’s normalization of ties with Israel, was arrested in February. Saudi prosecutors have called for the beheading of another female human rights protester, Israa al-Ghomgham, for participating in peaceful protests; she has been imprisoned for 32 months without access to a lawyer. Meanwhile, preachers who spread a radical theology sanctioning the killing of Shiite Muslims, Christians and Jews remain in senior position of influence, and the puritanical Wahhabi ideology that has fueled extremism across the Muslim world continues to be a major Saudi export.There’s another long list of Shiite victims in the oil-rich Eastern Province, who have been tortured, executed or have simply disappeared “because their ideas are dangerous to him and no criticism is tolerated,” says Rasheed.Democracy is not on the crown prince’s agenda. Indeed, he personifies the counterrevolution that extinguished the democratic flame that flickered briefly during the Arab Spring. He and allied strongmen across the Middle East have moved ruthlessly to reinvigorate an authoritarian regional order with Riyadh and its core Wahhabi ideology.

:{His Highness Sheikh}: Mohammed bin Zayed Al Nahyan	:{His Highness Sheikh}: Mohammed bin Zayed Al Nahyan


Crown Prince of Abu Dhabi	Crown Prince of Abu Dhabi
Incumbent	Incumbent
Assumed office 2 November 2004	Assumed office 2 November 2004
Emir	Khalifa bin Zayed Al Nahyan
Preceded by	Khalifa bin Zayed Al Nahyan
Deputy Supreme Commander of the Armed Forces	Deputy Supreme Commander of the Armed Forces
Incumbent	Incumbent
Assumed office 30 December 2004	Assumed office 30 December 2004
President	Khalifa bin Zayed Al Nahyan
Supreme Commander	Khalifa bin Zayed Al Nahyan
Preceded by	Khalifa bin Zayed Al Nahyan
Personal details	Personal details
Born	11 March 1961 (age 57) Al Ain, Trucial States
Spouse(s)	Sheikha Salama bint Hamdan Al Nahyan
Mother	Sheikha Fatima bint Mubarak Al-Ketbi
Father	Sheikh Zayed bin Sultan Al-Nahyan
Alma mater	Royal Military Academy Sandhurst
House	Al-Nahyan
Military service	Military service
Allegiance	United Arab Emirates
Service/branch	United Arab Emirates Air Force
Years of service	1979–present
Rank	General
Commands	Deputy Supreme Commander Chief of General Staff of the Armed Forces Deputy Chief of General Staff of the Armed Forces Commander of the Air Force and Air Defence

Early life

President of the United States George W Bush walks with Al-Nahyan through an honour guard upon his arrival at Camp David in June 2008

Mohammed bin Zayed Al-Nahyan was born on 11 March 1961.^[4] He is the third son of Zayed bin Sultan Al Nahyan, the first President of the United Arab Emirates and ruler of Abu Dhabi, and his third wife, Sheikha Fatima bint Mubarak Al Ketbi.^[5][6] He has five younger full-brothers: Hamdan, Hazza, Tahnoun, Mansour, and Abdullah.^[7] They are known as Bani Fatima or sons of Fatima.^[8][9]

Political and business career

In November 2003, his father Sheikh Zayed bin Sultan appointed Sheikh Mohammed as Deputy Crown Prince of Abu Dhabi.^[5] Upon the death of his father, Al-Nayhan became Crown Prince of Abu Dhabi in November 2004 and was appointed Deputy Supreme Commander of the UAE Armed Forces in January 2005. Later that month, he was promoted to the rank of General. Since December 2004 he has also been the Chairman of the Abu Dhabi Executive Council, which is responsible for the development and planning of the Emirate of Abu Dhabi and is a member of the Supreme Petroleum Council.^[10] He also serves as a special adviser to the President of the UAE, Khalifa bin Zayed Al-Nahyan, his older brother. He is also head of the Abu Dhabi council for economic development (ADCED), which is the economic policy advisory council in Abu Dhabi.

Al-Nahyan is also the head of the Mubadala Development Company which, since its establishment in 2002, represents the main investment vehicle for the government of Abu Dhabi. Al-Nahyan is also a Director of the Abu Dhabi Investment Authority, the Sovereign wealth fund of Abu Dhabi.

In addition, he is the head of the UAE offsets programme bureau and is the head of the Abu Dhabi Education Council which was established in 2005. His efforts in the realm of economic development are aimed at increasing economic diversification in the Emirate of Abu Dhabi. As the head of the UAE offsets group, Al-Nahyan is involved with the task of channelling defence-related investments into profitable projects across different sectors in order to help diversify the economy of the UAE.^[11]

In 2008, the first group of Sheikh Mohamed bin Zayed University scholars were selected as part of an initiative with New York University Abu Dhabi, recognising outstanding students in the United Arab Emirates and providing them with special academic and leadership opportunities.^[12]

Al-Nahyan with U.S. Secretary of Defense James Mattis, Abu Dhabi, February 2017

June 2009 saw Al-Nayhan and then President Nicolas Sarkozy of France inaugurate an exhibition at the Emirates Palace Hotel, which included works of art purchased for the Louvre Abu Dhabi, as well as loans from the French national museums to mark the beginning of the construction work of the Louvre outpost, located in the cultural district in Saadiyat Island. Al-Nayhan also stated that he was confident that the Guggenheim Abu Dhabi would be able to "accumulate a prestigious art collection" by the time of its opening in 2012.^[13]

In November 2010, Al-Nayhan and UAE Foreign Minister Abdullah bin Zayed Al Nahyan welcomed Queen Elizabeth II of the United Kingdom and Prince Philip, Duke of Edinburgh to the UAE for their second state visit.^[14][15] Al-Nahyan also accompanied the Queen and the Duke on a tour of the Sheikh Zayed Grand Mosque at the beginning of their visit.^[16] In January 2011, Al-Nahyan received US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton.^[17]

An American citizen Khaled Hassen won a rare $10 million torture settlement granted by federal court in L.A., against three top members of the ruling family in the United Arab Emirates, including Mohammed bin Zayed Al Nahyan, after State Department cables proved the man had indeed been detained and tortured as he had claimed.^[18]

Sheikh Mohammed representing UAE in the NSS 2012

He represented the United Arab Emirates in the Nuclear Security Summit of 2012 and 2014, which were hosted by South Korea and the Netherlands respectively.

In August 2016, Donald Trump Jr. had a meeting with envoy representing Mohammed bin Zayed Al Nahyan and Saudi Arabia's Crown Prince Mohammad bin Salman. The envoy offered help to the Trump presidential campaign.^[19] The meeting included Joel Zamel, an Israeli specialist in social media manipulation, and American businessman Erik Prince.^[20][19]

In 2017 the Government of India Invited Sheikh Mohammed as Chief Guest for the 68th Republic Day Celebration on 26 January 2017.

UAE Government Summit 2015

Sheikh Mohammed bin Zayed Al-Nahyan was invited as a key speaker in the government summit 2015. He gave the opening speech which was the first time he spoke officially to the nation regarding UAE matters. His opening address "went beyond communicating to other government leaders and offered a vision for all Emiratis and residents of the UAE. It was an inspiring speech from someone whose voice is perhaps not heard frequently enough in public." ^[21]

He shared a vision of the UAE post oil age, which inspired everyone and motivated the nation to look forward that date in 50 years.

Interests, activities and philanthropic work

Al-Nahyan and U.S. President Donald Trump in Washington, D.C., May 2017

Mohammed Bin Zayed is actively engaged in several projects targeted at increasing the welfare of the Emirate of Abu Dhabi. He has initiated projects in various areas, such as economic development, education and environmental protection.

He also heads the Mohamed bin Zayed Species Conservation Fund, a philanthropic endowment established to provide targeted grants to individual species conservation initiatives, recognise leaders in the field of species conservation and elevate the importance of species in the broader conservation debate.^[22]

Moreover, in the realm of humanitarian affairs, Al-Nahyan has been underlining his commitment to the fight against human trafficking by funding the 'Global Report on Trafficking Persons' through a Dh55 million donation to the United Nations Global Initiative to Fight Human Trafficking (UN.GIFT).^[23][24]

In 2011 Al-Nahyan and the Gates Foundation pledged $50 million each to fund the purchase and delivery of vaccines for children in Afghanistan and Pakistan.^[25]

Another area of interest of Al-Nahyan is the education sector. His activities in this field include his role as President of the Emirates Centre for Strategic Studies and Research (ECSSR). The centre is dedicated to the publication of academic analyses on topics relevant to the region. In the area of school curricula and higher education, Al-Nahyan is also Chairman of the Abu Dhabi Department of Education and Knowledge (ADEK), which was founded in 2005 as the Abu Dhabi Education Council (ADEC).

https://fanack.com/united-arab-emirates/faces/mohammed-bin-zayed-al-nahyan/

june 2018

Mohammed bin Zayed al-Nahyan, the de facto ruler of the United Arab Emirates (UAE), is highly respected by his fellow Emiratis, extremely well connected on the international stage, yet lately has been putting his fingers in too many pies.

When Bin Zayed was born in the dusty town of Ain in 1961, the UAE was neither a country nor a nation. It was known as the Trucial States, a set of British-ruled protectorates set up in the late 19th century to control piracy in the Persian Gulf.

Bin Zayed was ten years old when his father, Sheikh Zayed, brought together a federation of six other major families to form the United Arab Emirates.

He received his education at local schools in Ain and Abu Dhabi. In 1979, he joined the Royal Military Academy Sandhurst in the United Kingdom – a long-time ally of his family – where he trained in armour, helicopter and tactical flying and as a paratrooper. He graduated a year later and returned home to join the Officers’ Training Course.

He held several roles in the UAE military, from officer in the Amiri Guard (the UAE’s elite security force) and pilot in the air force, to his current role as deputy supreme commander of the armed forces.

Although he put away his uniform some time ago, he remains first and foremost a military man. A look at his biography on the Emirati government website shows the extent of his role in and influence on the army, putting into perspective the expansion of the army’s budget and arsenal since he became the de facto ruler in 2014. It is now one of the best-equipped army’s in the region.

Bin Zayed married Sheikha Salama bint Hamdan bin Mohammed al-Nahyan in 1981 and has nine children with her.

Away from politics, he heads the Mohammed bin Zayed Species Conservation Fund, a philanthropic endowment established to provide targeted grants to individual species conservation initiatives, recognize leaders in the field of species conservation and elevate the importance of species in the broader conservation debate.

Apassionate falconer himself, Bin Zayed is committed to the protection of falcons, as well as other species, including the oryx and houbara from the Arabian Peninsula. In line with his dedication to environmental protection, he has also taken the lead in alternative energy projects in Abu Dhabi, primarily Masdar City.

He is also committed to fighting human trafficking through a 55 million dirham donation to the United Nations Global Initiative to Fight Human Trafficking; and in 2011, he and the Gates Foundation pledged $50 million each to fund the purchase and delivery of vaccines for children in Afghanistan and Pakistan.

Valuable Lessons

Bin Zayed grew up witnessing the rapid transformation of the UAE from huts to Hilton hotels and skyscrapers. Along the way, his father, Sheikh Zayed bin Sultan, elder brother Khalifa and he learned two valuable lessons: the UAE cannot survive without outside protection and they need to remain strategically significant to keep mainly their Western allies interested and on board. Moreover, the country’s geographical location puts it between two regional powers that historically have shown an interest in controlling it.

The shah of Iran had occupied three Persian Gulf islands claimed by the UAE mere days before the country’s declared independence, while Saudi Arabia tried to conquer Bin Zayed’s hometown of Ain in the 1950s but failed. The governments of Saudi Arabia and the UAE signed the Treaty of Jeddah in 1974 to end 40 years of territorial conflict.

Following independence and British decolonization, his father wove a web of alliances mainly rotating around the world’s superpower the United States, offering bases and ports for its growing fleet in the Gulf.

The 1979 revolution in Iran became the main direct threat for the Emirates’ sovereignty.

De-facto Ruler

Sheikh Zayed bin Sultan’s strategy of maintaining the UAE as an oasis of political calm was inherited and upheld by his son and successor Khalifa, until his debilitating stroke in 2014. Bin Zayed then emerged as the de-facto ruler of the country, although he had already been at the helm of its domestic and foreign policy for almost a decade.

Since the Kuwait war, the Gulf states have enjoyed safety and security, provided mostly by their American ally, yet over the year, Iran’s growing influence has raised serious concerns in the region. As the Bush years became the Obama ones, Washington policymakers saw China as an emerging threat and began to shift their focus away from the Middle East towards containing the giant in the Far East.

Beginning in 2010, alarm bells began ringing in Abu Dhabi. Obama was serious about negotiations with Tehran. He also oversaw an oil-dependent American economy shaking off it shackles due to domestic fracking. Subsequently, American interest in and concern about Saudi Arabia dwindled, as did its interest in the UAE.

The fears of Gulf monarchs were aggravated when the Arab Spring engulfed the region and proved that the Obama administration would do little to assist its old allies and friends. More importantly, the rise of the Muslim Brotherhood terrified many Gulf monarchs, who viewed it as a direct threat to their governing models.

Bin Zayed felt the heat when an Emirati opposition group, al-Islah, linked to the Muslim Brotherhood circulated petitions demanding greater representation in the UAE. He responded by arresting the group’s members and forcing them to sign humiliating promises that they would not demand democracy again. He subsequently introduced an anti-terrorism law intended to keep them in prison or in exile. By crushing all opposition, he sent a message that he would do whatever it took to preserve the system at home, and then embarked on a mission to rebalance power in the region.

His fears were amplified when Qatar allegedly supported an array of Arab revolutionaries (liberals, socialists and Islamists) through the state-run broadcaster al-Jazeera, with which Bin Zayed has long clashed over its editorial policies, offering them a platform to speak out.

His response was to try and contain the effects of the Arab Spring immediately and seek all possible avenues to limit its repercussions.

Containment Strategy

He first focused on Egypt as the most significant of the Arab nations where the Muslim Brotherhood had gained a political foothold, allying himself with reactionary forces within the country which it backed diplomatically and financially. After Abdel Fatah al-Sisi seized power in 2013, the UAE flooded Cairo’s coffers with billions of dollars to help stabilize the devastated economy. Al-Sisi’s grip on power tightened, but his biggest threat remained feeding a nation of 90 million people.

With a new leadership installed in Saudi Arabia in January 2015, Bin Zayed moved to strengthen the relationship among both leaders and to align their policies. Indeed, he succeeded by presenting himself as the ‘mentor’ of the young and ambitious Crown Prince Mohammad bin Salman (MBS),Saudi Arabia’s de facto ruler, given his father King Salman’s ailing health and lack of interest in ruling.

The designated enemies then became Qatar and Turkey, who both sympathize with the Muslim Brotherhood and were supporters of the ‘change’ that was occurring in the Arab world.

Leaks of correspondence by the UAE ambassador to Washington, Yousef al-Otaiba, in 2017 revealed the extent of the influence held by the UAE in major political and diplomatic circles in the United States as well as its media. Billions were also spent supporting and enhancing al-Sisi’s regime.

The leaks also revealed how the UAE amassed political loyalty in preparation for the diplomatic battle with Qatar that Saudi Arabia, Bahrain, Egypt and the UAE launched in May 2017.

The final piece of Bin Zayed’s strategy was strengthening ties with the Trump administration, which seemed to use rhetoric that heartened the Emirati.

First came the Russia-Trump spy affair. According to the Washington Post, ‘[T]he United Arab Emirates arranged a secret meeting in January between Blackwater founder Erik Prince and a Russian close to President Vladimir Putin as part of an apparent effort to establish a back-channel line of communication between Moscow and President-elect Donald Trump, according to US, European and Arab officials.’

Bin Zayed then flew to Washington and was among the first heads of state to be hosted by the new president. Ahead of Trump’s visit to Saudi Arabia, Bin Zayed held talks with him at the White House and discussed enhancing cooperation on counterterrorism, confronting Iran and building on the increasingly close relationship.

Bin Zayed and MBS engineered Trump’s visit to the kingdom and talked to the president in the language dearest to his heart: money. An agreement, worth $350 billion over ten years, was signed between the Saudi leadership and the Trump administration.

The strategy behind this back-channel approach was an attempt to neutralize a Russia-US rivalry that had increased under Obama, in an attempt to get Russia to back off Iran, a relationship that had developed after Russia intervened to save the regime in Syria, a common ally for both.

This would give Bin Zayed more leverage to roll back the Iranian threat, which stems mainly from its expansionist Shia supremacist approach.

Moreover, with the coup attempt in Ankara, which Otaiba’s leaked emails alleged had been bankrolled by the UAE,Bin Zayed pushed MBS to a stand-off with the Qataris, the weakest link in the bigger regional chain.

According to the Washington Post, citing US intelligence officials, the UAE arranged for Qatari government social media and news sites to be hacked in late May 2017 in order to post fiery but false statements about Qatar’s emir, prompting a diplomatic crisis that has yet to be resolved.