Egypt will not benefit having relationship with Saudi regime

Question: Now, just to remind you, Saudi Arabia and the UAE became the first countries to stand alongside the military and the new regime in Cairo after Mohamed Morsi’s ouster.
 
We know that the UAE decided to give Egypt one billion dollars loan, yet another two billion dollars it sent, 30,000 tons of diesel fuel; Saudi Arabia said it would be granting Egypt five billion dollars and Kuwait has pledged another five billion dollars and that was later amended to four billion.
 
So basically, we are hearing a total of 12 billion dollars in support.
 
Now the delivery by three Arab governments to a fourth Arab government, a financial assistance on this scale is unheard of, in the Middle East or indeed anywhere.
 
What do you think, Mr. Freeman, this is about?
 
Mr. Freeman he question that we raised here was, what this financial assistance from Saudi Arabia, the UAE and Kuwait is about and whether it is actually sidelining the role of the United States in Egypt?
 
Freeman: Well, the United States has a very conflicted policy towards Egypt at this point.
 
President Obama has supported the Muslim Brotherhood for the first year they were in office, however our own joint chiefs of staff have maintained.
 
Q: Mr. Freeman now would you say that the ties that we know exist between Saudi Arabia and the military goes as far as the condition that we can conclude Saudi Arabia, actually, planned this coup, that it was preplanned and Riyadh had a role in what happened?
 
Freeman: The Saudi family has also worked with the British royal family and also at various times with Qatar and they have, at various times, supported the Muslim Brotherhood. So I do not know if you would say that this is the case that they are simply going for coup; they have played both sides because the fact of the matter is, the policies to disrupt Egypt and to throw Egypt into chaos and war, and this has also been supported by certain factions in the US as well, clearly the breaking point came when the Morsi government was a total failure and the Muslim Brotherhood was going for certain types of dictatorial control and 30 million or so Egyptians came out and protested and that forced the issue.
 
The question now is, we have to have a whole new paradigm for Egypt, we have to have a period of economic development independent of the IMF (International Monetary Fund) and their policies to bring in infrastructure projects and water, energy, food production and there has to be some elements of both the Muslim Brotherhood and the current government working together in this positive future for Egypt, and I do not think the Saudis, the British, the Qataris are interested in that.
 
Q: I am sorry for jumping in here, because the Muslim Brotherhood has mentioned, they have been accusing not just Saudi Arabia, the UAE but also Israel in this. They are saying that Israel was, actually, accelerating the end of Morsi’s rule with funding by Saudi Arabia and the UAE.
 
Some observers have been calling these kinds of accusations too much, but do you think that, actually, that could have happened?
 
Freeman: I do not think that Israel is playing the major role. I think, as I said, the Saudis and the British are playing both sides because at certain points they supported the Muslim Brotherhood.
 
Do not forget the Muslim Brotherhood goes back to the 1920s when the British were ruling Egypt and the British intelligence has all kinds of connections into the Muslim Brotherhood.
 
So what you are seeing is a top-down policy outside of Egypt with certain people trying to manipulate the situation to bring maximum chaos and disruption to Egypt the way we saw in Libya and we have seen in other countries around the world and this is not unrelated to the current economic meltdown that we are undergoing internationally.
 
Q: Mr. Freeman the report that we are getting on this particular website has said here, specifically the coordination between the Israelis and the leaders of Egypt’s interim government. Do you think that that could be possible and would you agree with those analysts who say that Israel would, actually, be in favor of a military-led government in Egypt because that would include at least a quiet collaboration with Israel?
 
Freeman: No, I do not think that you can look at this so simply. I mean Israel has played a very nasty role in the entire region and it is very dangerous, if you look at the report that came out of the Israelis bombing Russian anti-aircraft missiles back on the early part of July, you can see that Israel, actually, is capable of setting off a war in this region which could pit the United States against the Russians.
 
    So they do not have..., they are not fighting a legitimately concern for their own country, they are actually playing a very nasty role in destabilizing the whole region and it could bring us into a much larger world war if the Israelis’ policy continues.
 
 
The US military is very much aware of this and if you look at the work of General Dempsey, the chairman of the joint chiefs of staff, he has maintained a much steadier, thoughtful approach to Egypt and to Syria than anyone else in our government and I do not think that our military was happy with these attacks by the Israelis in Syria.
 
So I think that there are forces in the United States and around the world that would like to see positive motion but there are also forces that would like to see this whole situation blowup and be more chaotic and more dangerous.
 
Q: So you say that Israel has a destructive role, etc. in the region. So what is specifically its role in Egypt? You know, “specifically”, what do you think it is doing there? What is this drone strike in Sinai about?
 
Freeman: Well, I think that there are certain elements in the Sinai that they view as harmful to their country, probably with Hamas and others and so they view this as an opportunity to move in and to deal with them, but they are not going to help Egypt and they are not going to help anyone else in the region in the long-term because that is not their long-term interest at this point and with Netanyahu in charge of the government.
 
Q: And do you think that they are doing this without any kind of coordination with the interim government or with the military?
 
Freeman: Well, I do not know, I do not think ..., I think that the Israelis act on a policy that is not Egyptian. Their policy is, how are they going to be successful in their own orientation to the entire Middle East and the Persian Gulf and so they are going to use whatever opportunities they come and Netanyahu is a very close follower of some of the same nasty policies that we saw coming out of the Muslim Brotherhood in terms of disrupting the country.
 
Q: Mr. Freeman would you agree with that (Richard Weitz comments)?
 
Freeman: The Saudis have been involved, for a long, long time in supporting the Muslim Brotherhood. The Saudis and Qatar may have differences in who they support in the Salafist movement in parts of North Africa and Egypt but overall if you go back to the role that the Saudis played and Prince Bandar played with the Bush administration and with the British and Margaret Thatcher and the BAE Yamamah oil-for-weapons deal, they were very much implicated in the first 9/11 in 2001 in our country and that is a lot of evidence pointing in that direction.
 
So the Saudis have always been involved in the region, they are very dangerous, their work with the British goes back a long period of time and I think that we have to consider them to be a very negative element and Egypt is not going to benefit from any relationship with the Saudis. That is not going to happen.
 
We have to break their control and establish an entirely new policy for Egypt based on the sovereignty of Egypt, not control or influence from the outside.