(Ahlul Bayt News Agency) - “Saudi Arabia, which has massive oil reserves, [and] huge cash reserves... is very keen to make sure that every one of its neighbors is not going to give it any criticism or any trouble or problems whatsoever, hence the intervention in Yemen, hence the sort of support for the president in Yemen, hence the very rapid intervention in Bahrain to support the king there, and suppress any of those uprisings,” said Jeremy Corbyn, a British member of parliament.
The remarks by the British lawmaker come as a wave of uprisings and revolutions sweeps across the Arab world.
In Bahrain, anti-government protests against the rule of the Al Khalifa dynasty began in mid-February.
In March, Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates and Kuwait deployed their troops in crisis-hit Bahrain to reinforce the brutal armed crackdown on Bahraini protesters.
Scores of Bahraini protesters have been killed and many others have gone missing during the harsh crackdowns.
The British Labor MP pointed out that Saudi Arabia “has tried to provide a large amount of cash aid to the military council in Egypt, presumably to try to ensure that Egypt doesn't head off in a completely radical direction that Saudi Arabia doesn't want.”
On February 11, a revolution in Egypt led to the ouster of former Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak who handed over power to Egypt's Supreme Council of the Armed Forces, which is headed by the country's Defense Minister Gen. Mohammed Tantawi.
“But one also has to look at the degree of internal opposition in Saudi Arabia which we hear very little about,” Corbyn opined.
“Because there is very limited access to websites in Saudi Arabia, the media are all controlled by the royal families, so the chances of anything getting out are quite minimum,” he said, adding, “But clearly, there is opposition, there have been interventions by the forces on behalf of the Saudi King to put down any kind of demonstrations or demonstration of popular opinion there.”
“If the Western governments think that everything is going to continue as normal in Saudi Arabia, I think they are very wrong, because young people there, as indeed all over the region, are beginning to see the chances of a different lifestyle, of less unemployment, of better chances of education and free expression,” Corbyn concluded.
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