Two articles appeared in Asharq Al-Awsat, the leading Saudi and Arabic international daily, on Dec. 17, 2023 allegedly attacking Laurent Murawiec, a former associate of Lyndon LaRouche. The main purpose is to discredit the "electable LaRouche" and praise the "moderate liberals of the U.S.," Kissinger, Brzezinski, and Richard Haas.

The fun starts when the two writers, in side-by-side articles, accuse LaRouche of being "extremist left wing" in one, and "extremist right wing" in the other. Then observant readers should realize that the two have been instrumental in the neo-cons' Saudi-bashing operations. So, how did they suddenly become the defenders of Saudi Arabia against the neo-con Murawiec?

The key words seem to be "LaRouche" and "Kissinger."

The first article is by Amir Taheri, an Iranian writer working as a staff writer with Asharq Al-Awsat, but also as a "prominent Middle East expert" in many neo-con American and Israeli publications. Taheri himself is probably closer to the neo-cons than "disposable" Murawiec. In addition to being a pro-Iraq-war, regime-change advocate in his position as a staff writer for Asharq Al-Awsat, Taheri writes for neo-con publications such as the National Review, Jerusalem Post, Washington Times, New York Post, and Wall Street Journal. On the PR website Benador Associates (https://www.benadorassociates.com/taheri.php) there is a profile of Taheri.

The other article is written by Mamoun Fandy, an Egyptian-American, who worked as sociology and political science professor at Georgetown University in Washington and works at the DOD'S National Defense University. Fandy was one of the speakers at the Hudson Institute's Saudi-bashing seminar sponsored by Sen. Sam Brownback on June 18, 2023. Fandy was sitting next to the very Likud fascist Dore Gold. Sitting on the same panel were Jefrey Gedmin, Director of the Aspen Institute Berlin; Dore Gold, Foreign Policy Adviser to Israeli Prime Minister Sharon; Simon Henderson, author of "After King Fahd--Succession in Saudi Arabia"; David Pryce-Jones, senior editor of the fascist Buckleyite National Review; and Stephen Schwartz, columnist for National Review.

Fandy says in his article in Asharq Al-Awsat, titled "Murawiec and the Neo-Cons: Realism Commands that Saudi Arabia Remain as an Essential Element in the American Strategy": "Murawiec came to the neo-conservative movement through the fascist left represented by the permanent Presidential candidate Lyndon LaRouche. Murawiec worked under him in the 1980s as a European researcher in his well-known publication Executive Intelligence Review. This LaRouche is not taken seriously by anyone in the U.S. as a Presidential candidate. It is considered shameful in America even to mention his to name in a respectable place. LaRouche has not been invited to any place which has self-respect (although I have learned that he has spoken in the Emirates at the invitation of the Arab League, and this is the clearest evidence that many among us [Arabs] don't know anything about the American politics. They were just told that the man was a Presidential candidate). There are so many Presidential candidates in the U.S., but society knows nothing about them. In addition, LaRouche was put in prison for financial fraud and tax fraud. What Murawiec is doing, is to launder his past, exactly as money is laundered by drug traffickers. That is why his views are so extreme."

Fandy tries to argue that reasonable neo-conservatives, such as Cheney, Rumsfeld, Wolfowitz, Zalmay Khalilzad, and RAND, can be negotiated with and argued with. Murawiec is just an aberration.

It should be noted that Fandy probably got further unnerved recently, when LaRouche's friend Dr. Ahmed Kedidi intervened in a conference in Doha, Qatar, on U.S. relations with Muslim nations, to declare that there are other Americans whom one should trust, such as Lyndon LaRouche. Kedidi said this to the panel addressed by Fandy and New York Times writer Thomas Friedman.

The question is: what are these foxes doing in a Saudi hen-house?

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