A not-so-subtle message, picked up on in this article on the Reuters wire.
Deputy Secretary of State Dick Armitage went on Al Jazeera yesterday and warned states bordering on Iraq about allowing militants and jihadists to make their way into the country. What stands out is the list of countries and how Armitage seemed to equate them.
Thus Armitage …
“The borders are quite porous, as you’d imagine, and the fact that we’ve captured a certain number of foreign fighters in Baghdad and around Iraq indicates that the ways that these people are getting into the country is from Iran and from Syria and from Saudi Arabia … I’m not in any position to assert that the governments of Iran or Syria or Saudi Arabia are in any way responsible. But, as a minimum, I can state that they’re not — these fighters — are not being stopped at the borders, and this is something that causes us a great deal of concern.”
First, this was an interview for a Gulf Arab audience. Second, Iran and Syria are hostile states which the US now frequently (explicitly or not) threatens with military force.
Armitage seemed to go out of his way to place Saudi Arabia on a par with these other two as neighboring, trouble-making states.
I’m not sure precisely what this means. But it means something.
