DEBKA - add salt:
The night in Riyadh was torn Wednesday, December 29, by three huge explosions — not just the two officially confirmed. They were followed by long bursts of gunfire in northern and eastern Riyadh. DEBKAfile's exclusive counter-terror sources reveal that the three car bomb blasts were part of an al Qaeda attempt on the life of Prince Mohammed bin Nayef bin Abdelaziz, son of the Saudi interior minister, deputy minister and director of the ministry's security unit which runs the war on terror. This was the first attempt by Osama bin Laden's organization to assassinate a member of the Saudi royal family. It is a pivotal event in that it sharply escalates the terrorist offensive besetting the kingdom and raises the stakes on both sides. | If the Saudi royals believe this story, it sure will. |
I think they're arrogant enough to discount it. Sheikh Hawali's probably sitting on Prince Abdullah's couch, "mediating," even as we speak blog... |
By targeting interior minister Prince Nayef's son, the terrorists declared open warfare on the minister who had been trying for the past year to maintain a dialogue with the Saudi cell through his connections in the clergy. According to our sources, Saudi cell leader Saud bin Hamoud al-Uteibi marked out the Nayef family after concluding that the interchanges the minister initiated were not on the level but an effort to plant his agents inside the terror cell and break it up from within.
| That's kinda the hallmark of the Soddy royals, isn't it? They're better at bad faith and subversion than they are at shooting it out... |
Had the assassination plot against Prince Mohammed succeeded, a major upheaval would have ensued — destabilizing not only the oil kingdom but sending tremors around the Arab and Muslim Middle East as well. The balance of America's war on Qaeda would have been affected and the ceiling lifted on oil prices. The sharp 4% rise in response to first news flash of the attempted murder was but an augury of the upsets to come.
| The war from al-Qaeda's side is as much a war on our economy as anything else. A few corpses, even a city block or two of corpses, doesn't really cost that much to the overall economy. Paying for the security measures necessary to avoid the corpses comes at much greater cost, since you have to protect all city blocks, not just one. |
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