I will not go into the details of the accusations against Dr. Saad Al-Jabri because they are in the jurisdiction of the concerned authorities in the State, but I will examine the political aspect that found a place in the contents of the lawsuit that he filed before a court in Washington DC.

In the lawsuit, of which some of the content was published specifically in The Washington Post, Al-Jabri claims that he met in July 2015 with John Brennan, head of the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) at the time, to warn him that Prince Muhammad Bin Salman was encouraging Russian intervention in Syria and two months later, Russia sent troops to Syria. According to the lawsuit, Al-Jabri was sacked in reprisal for speaking to Brennan.

Well, I will not go into the issue that Al-Jabri is a man who took two oaths to safeguard State secrets: the first was upon his graduation as an officer, and the second was upon his appointment as a minister. I will let The Washington Post to answer itself as well as to Dr. Al-Jabri.

On July 2, 2016, The Washington Post published an editorial titled “Obama retreats from Putin in Syria — Again.” It was said in the editorial: “For several years, the Obama administration’s Syria policy has been stuck in a cycle of failure.” It continued: “In every case, the Russian and Syrian regimes have betrayed their commitments, continuing to bomb civilian areas, employ chemical weapons and deny aid to besieged communities. And no wonder: Each time the US response has been to return to the Russians, offering more concessions while pleading for another deal.”

This shows that the one who gave the green light for Moscow’s intervention in Syria was former President Barack Obama, and it was neither Saudi Arabia nor Crown Prince Muhammad Bin Salman. On June 30, 2016, The Washington Post also published a story in which it said: “Internal unhappiness with the current strategy, and the humanitarian disaster the war has brought to Syria, led 51 US diplomats last month to write an internal “dissent channel” appeal for US military action.”

And this is not all, and here is the most important thing that the newspaper published in the same story. The CIA Director John Brennan said on Wednesday in statements at the Council on Foreign Relations that Russia is trying to crush the anti-Assad forces, and that Moscow has not fulfilled its obligations with regard to the ceasefire or the political process in Syria. Nevertheless, Brennan said, the United States needs to work with Russia. There will be no way forward on the political front without active Russian cooperation and a real Russian interest in moving forward, he added.

Yes, dear reader, it is the same John Brennan who was said to have informed Al-Jabri that Saudi Arabia gave the green light for the Russians to intervene in Syria! Is that all? Of course, not. Here is another quote, from The Washington Post itself, based on information from Reuters. The newspaper published the report on Jan. 6, 2020, and that was after the killing of Qasem Soleimani, saying that the man, who argued the Assad case in front of Russian defense and security officials and convinced them that the war was still winnable was none other than Qasem Soleimani.

“In the summer of 2015, Soleimani defied a UN-imposed travel ban and visited Russia to coordinate Moscow’s military intervention in Syria. According to Reuters, Soleimani and his Russian counterparts set up an agreement: A Russian airstrike campaign would accompany the ground battles led by Iranian, Syrian and Hezbollah fighters. Russia’s air assaults ultimately helped shift the war in Assad’s favor.” “Soleimani put the map of Syria on the table,” a senior regional official told Reuters at the time.”

In the following April, Reuters quoted a high-ranking Iranian official as saying that Soleimani had met Russian President Vladimir Putin and Defense Minister Sergey Shoygu in Moscow to discuss delivery of Russian missiles to Syria. According to media reports published between 2015 and 2017, he traveled several times to Moscow in violation of the travel ban imposed by the United Nations.

Dear reader, all of the above information is quoted from The Washington Post reports in response to what was published by the newspaper recently on Saad Al-Jabri. So should I add anything more?

The author can be reached at: tariq@al-homayed.com