Saudi Arabia has warned the Obama administration and members of Congress that it will liquidate hundreds of billions of dollars’ in U.S. assets should Congress pass a bill that would hold the Saudi government responsible for any role in the September 11, 2001 (9/11), terrorist attacks, according to a bombshell report from The New York Times (NYT).
The bill before Senate is meant to clarify that the immunity enjoyed by foreign nationals should not be applicable to cases where a nation is found responsible for a terrorist attack on U.S. soil. If the bill should be passed, it would effectively clear the way for the role of the Saudi government to be explored in the numerous lawsuits filed regarding the 9/11 terrorist attacks.
Realizing that their complicity in the events of 9/11 are on the precipice of being exposed, Saudi Arabia has gone into a full panic mode.
As such, Saudi Foreign Minister Adel al-Jubeir delivered a stark warning to the U.S. last month during a trip to Washington, where he said that the kingdom would sell up to $750 billion in U.S. treasury securities and other assets before the bill puts them in danger of being frozen by U.S. courts, According to the NYT report.
Adel al-Jubeir, the Saudi foreign minister, delivered the kingdom’s message personally last month during a trip to Washington, telling lawmakers that Saudi Arabia would be forced to sell up to $750 billion in treasury securities and other assets in the United States before they could be in danger of being frozen by American courts.
The spectacular threat by the Saudis has caught the U.S. off guard, as speculation about using divestment of U.S. Treasury bills as a economic weapon was largely thought of as a potential threat to be wielded by China in the event of a major geopolitical conflict with the United States.
But surprisingly, it was the Saudis, and not China, that have been the first to threaten to use this potentially devastating economic weapon.
Saudi Arabia is the third largest holder of U.S. Treasury bills in the world, behind China and Japan, but how much do the Saudis really own?
Here’s more insight from Zero Hedge:
… their actual composition remains as a secret, because while the US discloses the explicit Treasury holdings of all other nations, Saudi Arabia’s holdings, for some unknown reason, are not officially disclosed.
“It’s a secret of the vast U.S. Treasury market, a holdover from an age of oil shortages and mighty petrodollars,” Bloomberg wrote of Saudi Arabia’s US Treasury holdings.
“As a matter of policy, the Treasury has never disclosed the holdings of Saudi Arabia, long a key ally in the volatile Middle East, and instead groups it with 14 other mostly OPEC nations including Kuwait, the United Arab Emirates and Nigeria,” Bloomberg goes on to note, adding that the rules are different for almost everyone else. Although Saudi Arabia’s “secret” is protected by “an unusual blackout by the U.S. Treasury Department,” for more than a hundred other countries, from China to the Vatican, the Treasury provides a detailed breakdown of how much U.S. debt each holds.”
So who does know how much US paper the Saudis are sitting on? Well, the Saudis of course,”a handful of Treasury officials,” and some bureaucrats at the Fed, Bloomberg says, noting that “for everyone else, it’s a guessing game.“
Even as the actual holdings of U.S. Treasuries by the Saudis is not yet known, the blackmail threat to the U.S. of sudden divestment — if executed — would almost certainly crash the U.S. dollar alongside global markets, but to what extent that the damage would actually cause economically on a global scale could only be imagined.
Perhaps this would explain Obama’s unwavering support for the Wahhabi regime, as congressional aides and administration officials have confirmed that the U.S. President has been lobbying Congress to block the passage of the bill — because if the Saudis make good on their threat, there could be a potentially extreme ‘economic and diplomatic fallout’.
Here is more from the NYT report:
The Obama administration has lobbied Congress to block the bill’s passage, according to administration officials and congressional aides from both parties, and the Saudi threats have been the subject of intense discussions in recent weeks between lawmakers and officials from the State Department and the Pentagon. The officials have warned senators of diplomatic and economic fallout from the legislation.
Saudi Arabia warns of economic fallout if Congress passes 9/11 bill http://t.co/8q9cDby9BI pic.twitter.com/muYa5jfmLx
— New York Times World (@nytimesworld) April 16, 2016
The threat highlights the continuously deteriorating relationship and escalating tensions with Saudi Arabia, as the two have been at odds over how to deal with Iran, Saudi Arabia’s bitter enemy.
However Riyadh’s resolve to actually deliver on the threat is seen as dubious, since selling off such assets would be difficult and would damage the dollar and thus crush the Saudi Arabian economy, as their currency is pegged to the dollar.
Saudi Arabia has already already felt the effects of a fall in the price of oil which has taken a toll on its economy, and currency speculators have made the situation worse by betting that the kingdom will give under pressure and cut its currency peg to the dollar, thus forcing it to slash spending while also revamping its economy and attempting to setting up a global wealth fund.
Saudi Arabia And The Post-Oil Era: The Plan To Create A $2 Trillion Wealth Fund http://t.co/A6XntDkw9m pic.twitter.com/jpGqAl5T91
— EMerging Equity (@EMequity) April 4, 2016
Edwin M. Truman, a fellow at the Peterson Institute for International Economics, told the NYT that he thought the Saudis were most likely making an “empty threat,” because “the only way they could punish us is by punishing themselves.”
Under the current U.S. law, foreign nations have a degree of immunity from being sued in U.S. courts, under The Foreign Sovereign Immunities Act of 1976, which is one of the reasons why members of the Saudi royal family were not brought to court over suspicions of financially supporting the terrorist attacks of 9/11.
The new bill introduced in Senate would waiver such immunity for cases that involve terrorist attacks that kill U.S. citizens on U.S. soil.
Possible links between the perpetrators of the 9/11 attack and Saudi Arabia could be hidden inside the classified 28-page part of the 2002 congressional report, which allegedly describes how Saudi Arabian nationals with links to the government had financially assisted the 19 hijackers who flew airplanes into World Trade Center and the Pentagon.
Those conclusions, contained in the classified 28 pages of the report, still have not been released publicly.
The Obama administration has opposed the new bill, which it argues would make foreign nations retaliate by passing similar legislation that would target U.S. citizens and firms in their national courts.
U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry told a Senate panel in February that the new bill, in its current form, would “expose the United States of America to lawsuits and take away our sovereign immunity and create a terrible precedent.”
Ironically, sovereign immunity didn’t stop a U.S. judge last month from ordering Iran to pay $10.5 billion in damages to families of the 9/11 victims. A ruling that was passed because Iran didn’t bother to defend itself against the allegations.
The ruling put the blame on Iran over its links with the militant group Hezbollah, which plaintiffs argued, helped to aid Al-Qaeda. The argument is based on the same congressional report, which also said that no link between the hijackers and Iran had been found.
None of the 19 hijackers were Iranian citizens, whereas 15 of the hijackers were citizens of Saudi Arabia.
Last weekend 60 Minutes broadcasted a segment titled “28 pages” in which former U.S. Senator Bob Graham and others urged the Obama administration to declassify the redacted pages that hold the secrets of 9/11.
Indeed, the road ahead is rocky, as Saudi Arabia falls under increasing pressure, as cracks in the regime are increasingly pointing towards a total collapse.
The Coming Collapse Of Saudi Arabia http://t.co/2gzC9kFzX2 pic.twitter.com/Co3hpgPsJE
— EM Equity (@EM_Equity) March 10, 2016
Obama is set to arrive in Riyadh on Wednesday for meetings with Saudi King Salman bin Abdulaziz Al Saud and other Saudi officials, and it certainly appears that the dispute over the new legislation will be on the cards of the agenda during the talks.
So how exactly will this situation play out between the U.S. and Saudi Arabia?
Only time will tell — stay tuned!
Oh please! After about fifty documentaries, thirty plus books and thousands of videos THIS is what’s getting our attention? NOT that building 7 came down at freefall speed, NOT that the FBI immediately absconded with 85 video tapes facing the Pentagon on 9/11, not ONE of which has been released as of yet. IF they show a plane, then what do they have to hide! What about the Israeli Mossad’s role–totally ignored and never investigated by our government. No, only selective villains need apply to make the sheeple in America think the authorities actually care about an investigation. No, they spent $60 million investigating Bill Clinton and Monica Lowinsky but only $600,000 investigating 9/11…plus MILLIONS paid to victims of their own hubris, greed and criminality (and to keep intelligent family members of victims quiet). Hasn’t anyone read any of the books on this subject? Those by Landauer, Griffen, Wood, Bollyn, Hendries, Barrett or Hartwell? If not, why not? Keep in mind that the 9/11 commission stated that the “Financing of 9/11 was of no practical significance!” The head of Pakistani intelligence wiring Mohammed Atta $100,000 on 9/10/01 was not of practical significance? Oh really? And neither did they investigate explosives. Er, none were found, er, we didn’t look for evidence of this. Very funny, NO, very sad for both the truth and for the cause of justice.
Now if Saudi Arabia can be held to a high standard…e.g., the truth of their involvement in the major “distraction” of the events of 9/11, namely, the so-called 19 hijackers….this is the “cover story,” so well explained in the book by Susan Landauer, “Extreme Prejudice,” THEN, the role of Israel in the 9/11 attacks needs ALSO to be fully explored, since the evidence is overwhelming that this whole event, was a Mossad operation, (with rogue elements of the U.S. gov’t whose names I will not list, but if you have an IQ above 100, can probably figure out who they were), and if this is proven in a court of law, then we would appear to be obligated to STOP the 3 billion in annual aid to Israel!
Why isn’t THIS a subject of Congressional inquiry. Oops, I know the answer, we can NEVER question Israel for anything. Witness the pathological applause that this murderer gets, every time he comes to speak to Congress. Applauding a killer? Only stupid Congressmen/women would do such a thing, so I guess our Congress is filled with a LOT of stupid folks, that prefer to vacillate about 28 pages, than to look into the thousands of pages of evidence exposed by authors such as Landauer, Bollyn, Hendries and others about how Israel was knee deep in this huge operation, NOT by some man in a cave using a cellphone. Are we that (fcng) stupid? No! (If you’ve been sleeping for the past ~ 5,365 days, why not Google, Mossad, 911 and then weep at how you could be so stupid for so long!)
I’ve been studying this issue for over ten years. How about you? So NOTHING I’ve said above is stated lightly, as I’m acutely aware of the sentiment in Washington, where NOTHING can ever be said negative about Israel. Saudi Arabia is not far behind, even while they’re beheading people, giving out harsh punishments for minor transgressions of so many of their stupid laws, etc., BUT they let us buy their oil with nothing but “paper currency,” not backed by anything, and not they have a weapon! Crashing the dollar. We also have massive distraction over Iran’s NON-EXISTING Nuclear program (for bombs that is), but Israel’s existence of at least 100 nuclear warheads gets ignored and they even put folks (such as Mordechai Venunu) into prison for 18 years for EXPOSING these facts. Some democracy, right? I ask for a FULL investigation with NO duel-citizens of Israel allowed on any panel in which Israel is investigated for crimes against humanity involving 9/11.
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