Ibn Saud’s Star Wanes

British Scheme to Dislodge Americans
From Middle-East Oil Control

By OBSERVER

In recent days the inner struggle in the Arab world for domination has taken a decisive turn. The star of Ibn Saud, king of Saudi-Arabia, is setting with the rise of the star of Abdullah, king of Transjordan. In this change, the figure behind the scene are British and American interests. Abdullah is a stooge of the British. Ibn Saud is a protege of the Americans. The entire setup shows that the British have been not only playing against Jewish interests in Palestine but developing a long-range scheme against American interests in the Middle East.

The end of the First World War saw the Emir of Mecca under the Turks, Hussein Ibn Ali of the Hashimite Family, become king of independent Arabia. One of his sons, Feisal, was enthroned in Damascus, from which he was later removed by the French, and then invited to be king of the new kingdom of Iraq under the British mandate. Abdullah, another son of Hussein, and the elder brother of Feisal; became Emir of Transjordan, which had been separated from the body of Palestine but kept within the Palestine mandate entrusted to the British by the League of Nations. Thus the family of Hussein the Hashimite ruled over the major part of the Arabian Peninsula and over Iraq and Transjordan.

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A LEADER of the Wahhabi tribe of religious zealots, by the name of Ibn Saud, who ruled in Nejd, in the western part of the Peninsula, rose against Hussein Ibn Ali, king of Mecca and “all Arab countries.” Only shortly before, in March, 1924, Hussein, during a visit at Amman, Transjordan, had proclaimed himself the Caliph of all Moslems. Ibn Saud marched toward Mecca. Hussein and his heir Ali were defeated. Hussein abdicated and went into exile, and was brought by a British warship to Cyprus, a British Crown Colony. There he died.

Feisal, King of Iraq, involved himself in a protracted dispute with Ibn Saud and had the British on his side. When Feisal died and his son, who succeeded him, was killed in an accident another son became the present regent of Iraq, the king being a child, a grandson of Feisal.

Abdullah is now the head of the Hashimite family and a bitter enemy of Ibn Saud, who expelled his father from Mecca. Abdullah is a British puppet and was elevated to the kingship by the British on May 25, 1946. By this step that part of the mandate over Palestine which is on the east of the Jordan was terminated—a wholly unauthorized act, since the British had no right to make such changes in the body of the mandate without the approval of the League of Nations or its heir, the United Nations.

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THE head of the Moslem world is the Caliph. For centuries the Caliphate belonged to the Turkish Sultan. Since the deposal of the last Sultan, Abdul Hamid, and the rejection of the office by Kemal Ataturk, the first President of the Turkish Republic, following the separation of church and state in Turkey, there is no Caliph in the Moslem world.

The chief pretenders for the much desired role of Caliph are Abdullah, the son of Hussein, who was the deposed king of Mecca and a self-proclaimed Caliph; and Ibn Saud, the ruler of Saudi Arabia, which includes the emirate of Hejaz with Mecca and Medina. Other pretenders are King Farouk of Egypt, the most populous country in the Middle East, but his weak personality does not impress the Arab world. Still another aspirant is the exiled ex-Mufti of Jerusalem, a schemer whose entire ambition is directed toward that goal. As a student of the Moslem law he is an ignoramus, and has made many enemies among prominent Arab families because of his assassination of his political foes. With the defeat of the bands which he sent to Palestine, his star has become completely dimmed.

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THE two main aspirants to domination in the Arab world are personal enemies: Ibn Saud, who gave the oil concessions in his kingdom exclusively to American interests, and thus earned the animosity of the British; and Abdullah, whom he deprived of the throne at Mecca and who is a British-created, British-supported, and British-financed king.

In the event that Abdullah, with the help of the British, is successful in the war against Jewish Palestine, he, and not Ibn Saud, will be regarded as the head of the Arab world and as the natural successor to the Caliphate.

This is the objective for which the British prepare, using Jewish Palestine as a rung in the ladder in order that they and Abdullah may return to the riches of Saudi Arabia with its oil.

It is a long-range policy camouflaged by the Palestinian problem. The British Middle-East strategists have maneuvered the American oil companies and the State Department into playing decidedly against their own interests.