Obama blamed for failing to prevent Shiite cleric’s death

[Zorro]

Source: Yahoo News

The brother of a prominent Shiite cleric whose execution has roiled the Mideast and set off worldwide protests is blaming President Obama for failing to use his influence with the Saudi government to prevent his death.

“I am sorry to say that the American government did not offer to make any efforts on this, although they knew the danger of this action and the repercussions,” Mohammed Al-Nimr said about the weekend execution of his brother, Sheikh Nimr al-Nimr, in an interview with Yahoo News.

“We asked very clearly for the American president to intervene as a friend of Saudi Arabia — and the Americans did not intervene,” he added.

While he personally asked officials at the U.S. consulate in Dharan, Saudi Arabia, to urge the president to speak out forcefully against his brother’s death sentence, “the Americans did not issue such a statement,” al-Nimr said in a telephone interview from Awamya in eastern Saudi Arabia. “They limited themselves to general statements from the State Department.”

Read more: https://www.yahoo.com/politics/obama-blamed-for-failing-to-prevent-shiite-022355900.html

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Everyone's getting in on the "Blame Obama" act.

[roamer65]

1. I am disappointed our government didn't step in.

We should have been more proactive on it.

Saudi Arabia is not a friend to the USA.

[TexasBushwhacker]

2. The thing that gets me

Is that they they are only protesting the death of the Shiite cleric. What about the other 46 heads laying in the sand?

The US gets 27% of the oil we use from Saudi Arabia. Iran will be exporting to us soon. It's time to cut off SA.

[CJCRANE]

3. The other ones were convicted Al Qaeda militants

who had nothing to do with the cleric.

[karynnj]

7. Iran executed a larger number of people than Saudi Arabia last year

In addition, the US still has a legal death penalty. (I was very happy that calling for the end of the death penalty was one thing that Pope Francis spoke of before the Congress.)

[Doctor_J]

4. The US has "influence" over Saudi Arabia?

Sort of like a nail has influence over a hammer.

[mehrrh]

5. Obama's fault?

Again, the president is responsible for the world according to some.
Why this should be placed on his shoulders is both puzzling and ridiculous.
Perhaps the brother has Obama confused with George W. Bush who escorted all Saudi family members safely out of the US after 9/11.

[LastLiberal in PalmSprings]

9. It's raining here today. I blame Obama.

I also blame him for The Flood that made Noah a household name, my noisy neighbor, bad movies, rush hour traffic on I-10 and gravity, which is making my scale show I gained weight over Christmas. It's all Obama's fault...

[karynnj]

6. Neither he or we, for that matter, know what - if anything - the US did in private

A public statement, that was anything but general, would likely have backfired - rather than worked. This is especially true if part of the motivation was that the Saudi regime was trying to control its minority population by brute force. Then, a foreign power coming in and demanding that they rescind a conviction or even just a sentence might goad them into actually doing it. (The cleric was held for some time and their was some thought he might never be put to death.)

I understand the anger of the cleric's brother. However, a variation of a tweet I saw yesterday by a Vox writer - saying something like "news flash to Washington, the Saudi prince does not report to John Kerry" should be considered.

The relationship with Saudi Arabia is likely always a tricky one. It is clear that ANY US diplomatic achievement in that area - whether Syria, Iraq, or even Israel/Palestine needs at least passive support of Saudi Arabia. In fact, Obama has more often than other Presidents, done things that Saudi Arabia has disagreed with. He refused to aggressively jump in to impose regime change in Syria and he had the guts to pursue the Iran nuclear deal.

Though the cleric's brother would likely disagree, fact is that we really don't have a huge amount of leverage with Saudi Arabia. The US has been using what leverage we do have to get Saudi Arabia to join the effort to get a ceasefire in Syria, to get a ceasefire in Yemen (where SA has ignored all US requests.) and to rein in any support of Saudis to ISIS. The cleric's death hurts efforts in both Syria and Yemen, which the US has worked very hard with low odds of succeeding because of the need to end the killing. The fight against ISIS is itself hurt by especially the Syria civil war continuing. For those reasons alone, even if the US did not care about the cleric, they likely did all that was possible privately to convince the Saudis not to do this.

Note that the Republicans are making exactly the opposite complaint. Marco Rubio was arguing that the US statements were as if they were neutral between our ally, SA, and our existential enemy, Iran -- and he is claiming this is a bad thing.

This may be a time where the "proxies" are NOT the puppets on strings that some argue -- I doubt Russia wanted Iran's hardliners to allow the burning of the Saudi embassy -- and the US clearly did not want SA killing the cleric. (Iran seems very complex itself - with Rouhani and others condemning the attacks on the SA embassy and the revolutionary guard likely supportive of it.)

[leftyladyfrommo]

8. Do the Saudis actually listen to anyone?

They seem to just go their own way. No matter how crazy it seems to the rest of the world.

They did let that elderly British man go home - the one who had wine in his car.