Bandar ibn Sultan

Bandar ibn Sultan (2008)

Bandar ibn Sultan ibn Abd al-Aziz Al Saud ; Arabic بندر بن سلطان بن عبد العزيز آل سعود, DMG Bandar b. Sulṭān b. ʿAbd al-ʿAzīz Āl Saʿūd (born March  2, 1949 in Taif ) is a Saudi Arabian politician and represented his country as ambassador to the United States from 1983 to 2005 . On October 16, 2005, he was appointed Secretary General of the National Security Council by the Saudi King Abdullah ibn Abd al-Aziz .

Life

Bandar was born in Taif , Saudi Arabia , the son of the future Crown Prince Sultan ibn Abd al-Aziz and the Sudanese slave girl Khizaran. It was only on the initiative of his half-brother King Faisal ibn Abd al-Aziz that the father confessed to his son. Since the religious law of the Sharia stipulates the equal treatment of all sons of a man, Bandar bin Sultan also enjoyed a modern, international upbringing. He married Princess Haifa bint Faisal , King Faisal's daughter, before taking office as Saudi Arabian Ambassador to the United States in 1983.

In the United Kingdom , he attended the Royal Air Force College Cranwell and became captain in the Saudi Arabian Air Force , which he served for 17 years. As a trained pilot , he has experience in controlling combat aircraft. He attended various military schools in the United States such as Maxwell Air Force Base , Alabama, and the Industrial College of the Armed Forces in Washington DC, before joining the Paul H. Nitze School of Advanced International Studies at Johns Hopkins University, also in Washington DC obtained a Masters Degree in International Politics.

The starting shot for his diplomatic career was given in 1978: As the personal envoy of the Saudi King, he successfully campaigned for the US Congress to approve the sale of McDonnell Douglas F-15 fighter aircraft. In 1983 he was appointed Ambassador of Saudi Arabia to the United States. During his tenure, he reports, he had dealt with five US presidents , ten foreign ministers , eleven national security advisers , 16 congressional sessions, unruly media and hundreds of greedy politicians.

Political career

Bandar developed close relationships with a number of American presidents, most notably George Bush and George W. Bush , the latter nicknamed "Bandar Bush" on the friendly and controversial side. It was well known in Washington that Bandar worked so closely with George Bush and the leaders of his administration (including James Baker , Dick Cheney , General Colin Powell ) that he practically became a member of the government himself . He visited the White House unannounced and was considered the only ambassador based in Washington to receive personal protection from the Foreign Office. (The close relationship with the Bush family is the subject of Craig Unger's book House of Bush, House of Saud and is highlighted in Michael Moore's Fahrenheit 9/11 )

Despite strong dissenting votes from Israel and the American Congress, he secured the purchase of Awacs reconnaissance aircraft during the Reagan administration. To the annoyance of the Foreign Office, he tricked the CIA into buying his anti-missile missiles in China on the occasion of a failed arms deal with the United States. Nevertheless, he never lost the favor of his own regent and the various US presidents, especially the Republican ones. He owed part of his popularity to his predilection for baseball, an elaborate lifestyle and Cuban cigars, with which he surrounded himself with the aura of the ancient American Arab. It is alleged that Bandar and President George W. Bush often met in private to smoke cigars and talk about baseball, and that Bandar was often consulted on questions about the Middle East.

No Arab ambassador - perhaps no ambassador at all - has ever had as much influence in Washington as Bandar. At the height of his power he had made himself indispensable for both sides, serving his king as a personal messenger and the White House as an errand boy .

Terrorist financing

At the Wahhabi Saudi royal court, Bandar is considered one of the most ardent opponents of the Shiites . The investigative journalist Seymour Hersh reported on the news channel CNN that the Sunni terrorist group Fatah al-Islam had received financial help from Bandar ibn Sultan. This was the result of an agreement between Bandar, Dick Cheney and Elliott Abrams, "whereby the Saudis secretly supported the Sunni Fatah al Islam as a counterweight to the Shiite Hezbolla active in Lebanon." He also claimed that the Sunni Future Movement led , Lebanese government helped the terrorist group.

Bandar is said to have financially supported a bombing allegedly commissioned by the CIA in Beirut as early as 1985 . 80 civilians were killed in the attack, a failed attempt to eliminate the leading Shiite cleric Muhammad Hussein Fadlallah .

According to an article published in the New York Post , Bandar, as ambassador at the time , transferred $ 130,000 to the Saudi agent Osama Bassnan, who supported the two hijackers Khalid al-Minhdhar and Nawaf al-Hazmi , in the run-up to the September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks .

Controversial Aspects

Bandar ibn Sultan with George W. Bush (left) in August 2002.

The book The Attack - Plan of Attack by Bob Woodward controversially discusses Bandar's role. It suggests that President George W. Bush informed Bandar about the invasion of Iraq before Secretary of State Powell. The author also claims that shortly before the November 2004 elections, an agreement was reached to lower oil prices . Bandar publicly confessed to President Bush.

It is reported that on June 26, 2005, Bandar resigned from his post as ambassador "for personal reasons." Bandar's return to Saudi Arabia was announced weeks before King Fahd's death. On the day of King Fahd's death, Bandar's father, Sultan ibn Abd al-Aziz Al Saud, was raised to the rank of Crown Prince. It is rumored that Bandar's return was timed to secure a post in the new government. In October 2005 he was appointed Chairman of the National Security Agency of Saudi Arabia.

Corruption allegations

Bandar helped negotiate the so-called al-Yamamah deals in 1985, in which a massive arsenal, including 100 fighter jets, was sold by the UK to Saudi Arabia for a total value of around £ 40 billion. As a result, the British arms manufacturer British Aerospace (now BAE Systems ) reportedly made secret payments of around £ 1 billion in annual installments of up to £ 120 million to two accounts at the Saudi Arabian embassy in Washington over a period of at least ten years. Bandar is said to have withdrawn money from these embassy accounts for personal purposes, such as the maintenance costs of his private Airbus A340 . According to investigators, no distinction was made between the embassy accounts, the government accounts and the private accounts of the Saudi royal family. The payments were discovered during an investigation by the Serious Fraud Office , the UK's Serious Fraud Office , but suspended in December 2006 by UK Attorney General Lord Goldsmith .

After the embassy

According to the United Press International news agency's foreign correspondent Arnaud de Borchgrave (he wrote in late December 2006), a secret meeting between Bandar and US government officials took place after he resigned:

Since Turki ibn Faisal became ambassador, Bandar has made several trips to the United States on the pretext of visiting his estate in Aspen. But Bandar were allowed to stop maintenance at Andrews Air Force Base outside Washington. This made it possible to travel incognito to Camp David to meet with National Security Advisor Stephen Hadley . He also met the director of the National Security Agency for the Middle East, Elliott Abrams , a prominent neo-conservative , according to de Borchgraves' report.

Bandar is 'more defiant' towards Iran than his successor in office Turki ibn Faisal, according to de Borchgrave. Bandar assumes that only military intervention can prevent Iran from becoming the 10th nuclear power in the world. Borchgrave also said that Bandar had convinced other members of the Saudi government, including King Abdullah , Defense Minister Sultan, Bandar's father, and Interior Minister Naif ibn Abd al-Aziz .

civil war in Syria

During the civil war in Syria , Syrian generals Asif Schaukat , Daoud Rajha and Hassan Tourkmani were killed on the spot in a bomb attack in Damascus on July 18, 2012 . General Hisham al-Ichtiyar died of his injuries shortly after the attack. Syria blamed the Saudi secret service and thus Bandar for this attack. It was falsely reported that Bandar was seriously injured in a bomb attack on July 26, 2012 in retaliation by the Syrian secret service and died shortly afterwards.

In August 2013 it was announced that Bandar had offered Russian President Vladimir Putin to buy Russian weapons worth US $ 15 billion for the Saudi armed forces and not to threaten Russia's supremacy in the gas supply to Europe in the future should Russia support it scale back President Assad and his regime, and no UN resolution of the UN Security Council against the Syrian regime more block.

Private life

Bandar is married to Princess Haifa , with whom he has four sons and four daughters.

On July 12, 2006, it was reported that Bandar was selling its 17 km² property in Aspen, Colorado for $ 135 million. The luxurious vacation home called Hala Ranch ( 39 ° 14 ′ 47 ″  N , 106 ° 50 ′ 58.5 ″  W ) is larger than the White House , stands on a mountain top on around 40 hectares of land and has 15 bedrooms and 16 bathrooms, the fittings are decorated with 24 carat gold. Since no buyer could be found, the property remains in his possession, which includes Glympton Park in Oxfordshire.

His daughter Reema bint Bandar Al Saud has been ambassador to the USA since 2019, making it the country's first ever ambassador. His son Khalid bin Bandar bin Sultan Al Saud was ambassador to Germany from October 2017 and has been ambassador to Great Britain since April 2019.

literature

• Simpson, William: The Prince: The Secret Story of the World's Most Intriguing Royal, Prince Bandar bin Sultan . Harper Collins 2006 and 2008

Web links

Commons : Bandar bin Sultan  - Collection of images, videos and audio files

• Biography at Disinfopedia
• Bandar bin Sultan resigns . BBC

Individual evidence

1. ↑ saudi-us-relations.org ( Memento from March 30, 2005 in the Internet Archive )
2. ^ ^{A b} The Saudi Question: Who's Who: The House of Saud . Public Broadcasting Service ’s Wide Angle , broadcast October 4, 2004
3. ↑ Source of Terror. How Saudi Wahhabism is affecting the Islamic world , Tagesspiegel.de, July 18, 2017
4. ^ Hersh: Bush administration arranged support for militants attacking Lebanon , The Raw Story. May 22, 2007. Retrieved May 12, 2008. 
5. ^ Car bomb with wings
6. ↑ 9/11 report supposedly incriminating Saudis in Der Standard on December 17, 2013
7. ↑ Inside the Saudi 9/11 coverup in New York Post on December 15, 2013
8. ^ NBC: Saudi envoy to US offers resignation . MSNBC, June 27, 2005.
9. ↑ Bandar stays as envoy to US: Saudi . ( Memento of June 28, 2005 in the Internet Archive ) In: Gulf Times , June 28, 2005
10. ↑ Tensions remain among Saudi royals . BBC News, Aug. 1, 2005
11. ↑ Saudi prince 'received arms cash' . BBC
12. ↑ Saudi Prince Secretly Made $ 2B in 1985 Arms Deal .
13. ↑ John F. Jungclaussen: Corruption: The Prince and Big Money . In: Die Zeit , No. 25/2007
14. ^ ^{A b} Arnaud De Borchgrave: Analysis: Arabian Medicis . UPI.com. December 27, 2006. Retrieved June 7, 2011.
15. ↑ voltairenet.org
16. ↑ Khaled Yacoub Oweis and Amena Bakr: "Exclusive: Saudi offers Russia deal to scale back Assad support - sources" Reuters, August 7, 2013, viewed on August 7, 2013
17. ↑ Princess Reema made ambassador to US, Khaled bin Salman appointed deputy defense minister by royal decree
18. ↑ Ambassador to Germany HE Prince Khalid bin Bandar bin Sultan bin Abdul Aziz Al Saud