Trump Collusion: How Afraid Should We Be of Mohammed Bin Zayed of the UAE?
By Juan Cole, Informed Comment
21 May 18
Another meeting between the Trump campaign and a representative of the
leader of the United Arab Emirates has been uncovered by the New York
Times's Mark Mazzetti, Ronen Bergman, and David Kirkpatrick, this one in
August of 2016.
The gathering at Trump Tower was arranged by George Nader, a
Lebanese-American international fixer with ties to Israeli intelligence as
well as to Erik Prince's Blackwater mercenary company. In the past decade,
Nader emerged as an adviser to Mohammed Bin Zayed al-Nahyan, 57, of the UAE.
Donald Trump, Jr., attended, as did Joel Zamel, head of an Israeli psy-ops
firm called Psy-Group specializing in manipulating social media. Zamel
appears to have been offered to Trump by the UAE and Nader, and the
connection suggests that Mohammed Bin Zayed of the UAE has been deploying
Israeli companies for various purposes for some time and offered to let
Trump in on the deal. Zamel and Psy-Group are denying working for the Trump
campaign according to the Times.
Trump officials' connection to Israeli media manipulation firms is a
constant in the unfolding scandal. It has been alleged that when Trump went
to Tel Aviv last year, his aides hired an Israeli firm named Black Cube to
smear Obama-era officials who had worked on the Iran nuclear deal, as a way
of undermining the deal itself. Black Cube wrote to Informed Comment to deny
the allegation.
The United Arab Emirates is a federation of seven princely states along the
Gulf littoral that had been trucial states with Britain in the 19th and 20th
centuries to guarantee the security of British Indian shipping in the Gulf.
Abu Dhabi, one of the seven, has emerged as hegemonic because of its vast
oil wealth, sold mainly to Japan. The other six have largely been
subordinated to Bin Zayed of Abu Dhabi, whose official biography says:
"His Highness Sheikh Mohamed bin Zayed Al Nahyan, Crown Prince of Abu Dhabi
and Deputy Supreme Commander of the UAE Armed Forces, is the son of the late
Sheikh Zayed bin Sultan Al Nahyan, 'Father of the Nation' and the first
President of the UAE, and the brother of His Highness Sheikh Khalifa bin
Zayed Al Nahyan, President of the UAE. Sheikh Mohamed is married to Her
Highness Sheikha Salama bint Hamdan Al Nahyan, and has four sons and five
daughters."
Nader was convicted in the US in the early 1990s of possession of child
pornography, and served a year in prison in Prague in 2002 for abusing a
series of 10 boys.
The pedophilia angle on Nader needs to be unpacked. Did his activities in
those circles in Washington, DC, in the 1980s and 1990s allow him to
discover which American politicians and even foreign dignitaries were
engaging in secret pedophilia activities, and then to pass that information
to foreign intelligence agencies so that these individuals could be
blackmailed? It is worth noting, though no one does, that at least
allegations have been made against Trump by underaged girls. If Nader had
files on "colleagues" in those circles, it might explain why he kept being
picked up as useful even after the Prague year in jail. He was in Iraq with
Prince's Blackwater in the 2000s, and then around 2011 suddenly pops up in
Abu Dhabi as adviser to Mohammad Bin Zayed, the crown prince.
Nader allegedly told Donald Trump, Jr., at the August meeting that the UAE
and Saudi Arabia wanted to help Trump win the presidency.
Barack Obama had deeply disappointed the wealthy pro-American oil monarchies
of the Gulf. He had decided, instead of backing them to the hilt against
Iran or holding out a prospect of US military intervention in Iran, to play
them off against Iran. He made the nuclear deal and got sanctions removed
from Tehran, and was content for Iran and Saudi Arabia to check one another
in the region. This strategy is one of several often lumped under the rubric
of "offshore balancing." Obama wanted to get out of the Middle East and
focus on East Asia.
Obama also bucked the Gulf in its desire that he intervene in Syria against
the al-Assad regime, as a way of dealing a blow to Iran and the Lebanese
Hizbullah. Obama called his decision not to bomb Syria in September of 2013
a "declaration of independence" against the Gulf states. He was at that
point pretty annoyed with their pressure on the US and their desire to use
it against Iran for their own purposes and he was telling them to jump in a
lake.
But the Gulf states are more powerful than they might appear. They have
trillions of dollars in walking around money and small populations so that
they don't have to spend much of it locally. That is, Saudi Arabia's GDP is
similar to that of the Netherlands, but the Netherlands government has to
spend a lot of money running the country, whereas the Gulf states can do
that with a fraction of the investment.
This extra money can then be funneled into influence peddling. And it is.
Mohammed Bin Zayed also has a suspicious relationship with Vladimir Putin.
The UAE has substantial Russian investments, and both the UAE and Russia
are afraid of Sunni extremism (not only al-Qaeda and ISIL but they also lump
the peaceful Muslim Brotherhood under that rubric).
The UAE and Saudi Arabia appear to have tried to hook Zamel's Psy-Group up
with the Trump campaign so that it could do a number on Hillary Clinton for
them and suppress Democratic votes. At the same time, troll farms in St.
Petersburg were engaged in the same sort of activity.
Mohammed Bin Zayed, having helped elect Trump, then slipped into the US
incognito (highly irregular) in December of 2016, while Obama was still in
office, for a meeting at Trump Tower with Jared Kushner, Michael Flynn and
Steve Bannon. Kushner told the crown prince he wanted a back channel to
Russia. Flynn had been communicating directly with Russian ambassador to the
US Sergei Kislyak. Apparently the former head of the Defense Intelligence
Agency was so thick he did not realize that Kislyak was under NSA
surveillance. Jared seems to have realized the danger of a direct
communication, so he asked the UAE to set up a back channel.
In January of 2017 before the inauguration, Prince met with Nader and Kirill
Dmitriev, an investment banker whose bank is under US sanctions and whose
wife has long been best friends with and works for Putin's daughter.
Dmitriev, with whom the UAE has business, was being provided to Trump at
Jared's request as the back channel in place of Kislyak. Also at the
Seychelles was Elliott Broidy, the co-chair of the Republican National
Committee, who had done $200 million in arms sales with the UAE and is also
close to Israeli Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu.
In February of 2017, after the inauguration, Broidy requested $20 million as
a lobbying fee from a Russian firm under sanctions to try to get the
sanctions lifted.
Broidy had been recruited by Nader some time before and was perhaps himself
a go-between for Trump and Bin Zayed.
Broidy had ingratiated himself with Trump by using Trump's attorney Michael
Cohen to pay $1.6 million to a Playboy bunny who had had an affair and
gotten pregnant, then got an abortion. Paul Campos has argued at New York
magazine that Broidy was taking care of all this for Trump, who was the one
who actually had the affair and arranged the abortion, and that Trump was
afraid it would all come out and sink him with the Evangelicals. In essence,
the $1.6 million may have been a bribe to Trump from Broidy, which then
opened for Broidy the coffers of the Russian firms lobbying to get sanctions
lifted. Trump seems to use Playboy magazine the way other people use online
restaurant delivery menus.
The UAE's Bin Zayed also had a reason to want sanctions lifted on Russian
banks and firms, since he held shares in some of them.
So the plot had several angles:
1. Get Trump elected since he is corrupt and can be easily bribed and
possibly blackmailed
2. Use him to lift sanctions on Russian firms in which the UAE had invested.
3. Use him to scotch the Iran nuclear deal and put downward pressure on
Iran's oil sales, which would help the UAE make more money from its own oil.
4. Offer lobbying money as bribes to Trump principals so as to reward them
for past cooperation and to encourage future cooperation.
5. Enlist the US in a UAE/ Saudi raid on Qatar's $300 billion sovereign
wealth fund, while at the same time drying up funding for the Muslim
Brotherhood.
I suspect getting the US out of Syria was also part of the plot, but I
haven't worked that out yet. Trump cancelled a CIA program that more or less
supported Muslim Brotherhood rebels in Syria.
The June 5, 2017, attack on and blockade of Qatar, orchestrated by the UAE,
Saudi Arabia and Russian hackers, was also part of the plot.
So too was maneuvering Mohammed Bin Salman into being the crown prince of
Saudi Arabia, which Bin Zayed succeed in last summer.
Obviously, there is a big Israeli angle to all this of which we so far only
have intimations, but obviously Netanyahu wanted the Iran deal sunk and
Trump was more likely to sink it, and while Hillary Clinton is insufferably
pro-Israel, she wouldn't have let Netanyahu get away with nearly as much as
Trump does.
Keep one eye on Putin with regard to the collusion story. But keep the other
eye on Mohammed Bin Zayed.
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