CNBC, while Iran, post-deal, will likely continue to support groups the United States considers terrorist organizations, “support for such groups has never made a difference in the power structure in the region … [as] Saudi Arabia alone spends much more than Iran per year on defense.”266 Iranian and Saudi defense spending “is so incredibly disproportionate,” says Kerry, “that I believe that working with our Gulf state partners … we have the ability to guarantee that they will be secure, that we will stand by them.”267 Trump’s tweet about the deal imagines instead that Saudi Arabia is gravely threatened by the sudden influx of funds Iran will receive subsequent to confirming that it is not enriching uranium beyond the exceedingly low level (3.67 percent) permitted by the nuclear deal it has signed.268 Uranium must be enriched to over 90 percent to be weaponized, according to a May 2019 BBC report on the deal.269
Trump’s tweet—and his outspoken opposition to the deal negotiated by Kerry—comes less than twenty-four hours after Kerry has issued a rare rebuke to the Saudi royal family following its execution on January 2, 2016, of forty-seven people, including most notably a dissident Shiite cleric, Nimr al-Nimr, who, per CNN, “had repeatedly spoken out against the government and the Saudi royal family.”270 Amnesty International calls the mass executions “appalling,” the European Union expresses “serious concerns regarding freedom of expression [in Saudi Arabia] and the respect of basic civil and political rights,” the UN secretary-general calls the killings “deeply dismay[ing],” and the U.S. State Department says it is “particularly concerned” about Saudi actions “exacerbating sectarian tensions” in the kingdom. But Trump’s tweet implies that were Obama to be replaced by someone with his own inclinations, it would help protect both Saudi Arabia and its oil reserves.271 CNN, recounting al-Nimr’s arrest, imprisonment, prosecution, and execution, will quote a 2011 interview al-Nimr gave to the BBC in which he advocated nonviolence in opposing the Saudi government, preferring “the roar of the word against authorities rather than weapons. The weapon of the word is stronger than bullets, because authorities will profit from a battle of weapons,” he says.272
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According to BuzzFeed News, by December 29, 2015, American mercenaries employed by private U.S. companies are working with the United Arab Emirates to assassinate enemies of the Emirati royal family.273 The digital media outlet reports on a December 29 operation its reporter Aram Roston calls “the first operation in a startling for-profit venture. For months in war-torn Yemen, some of America’s most highly trained soldiers [will work] on a mercenary mission of murky legality to kill prominent clerics and Islamist political figures.”274 While it is unknown whether the mercenary company run for MBZ by Trump shadow national security adviser Erik Prince supplies mercenaries for this December operation, or whether the “anti-terrorism” alliance announced by MBS days earlier corresponds in part to this clandestine assassination agenda promoted by the crown prince of Abu Dhabi, it is clear that the operation occurs simultaneously with another event of dubious legality: the discussion Michael Flynn participates in regarding the possible kidnapping, rendition, and prosecution for treason of Turkish cleric and prominent Erdogan critic Fethullah Gulen.275
The December 2015 operation chronicled by BuzzFeed News is executed by Spear Operations Group, an American company founded by Abraham Golan, a Hungarian Israeli contractor who, coincidentally like the cleric Gulen, lives in the Pittsburgh area.276 In speaking with BuzzFeed News, Golan concedes his company “ran” a “targeted assassination program” sanctioned by both the UAE and the coalition fighting alongside the Emiratis in Yemen—a coalition including nine countries, of which the two chief participants besides the UAE (and the only other countries with troops on the ground) are Saudi Arabia and Sudan.277 Golan’s statement about the multinational nature of the Emiratis’ assassination squad increases significantly the odds that MBS’s “anti-terrorism alliance”—which few of its member nations even knew they had joined—is the same entity as the project established by MBZ, which itself may enjoy significant overlap with Erik Prince’s Emirates-based Reflex Responses unit. Just so, all three of these entities may be connected to Saudi Arabia’s Rapid Intervention Group (RIG), which MBS creates to carry out his own extrajudicial killings and kidnappings (see chapter 6).
Abraham Golan tells BuzzFeed News in October 2018 that from December 2015—the very month MBS created his “anti-terrorism alliance”—onward, his mercenaries were “responsible for a number of the [Saudi-Emirati-Yemeni] war’s high-profile assassinations.”278 He argues that the Trump administration should institute an assassination program modeled on that executed by Saudi Arabia and