UK cooks Saudi-hatched anti-Iran ploy

In the latest of a series of anti-Iran plots hatched by the Saudi royal family, Saudi Prince Turki al-Faisal has revealed that his country was working on a ploy to usurp the place of the Islamic Republic at the international oil markets, the daily The Wall Street Journal reported. 

Prince Turki, who is a leading member of Saudi Arabia's royal family, has unveiled the plot in a speech to a private gathering of US and UK troops at Royal Air Forces (RAF) Molesworth airbase outside London, said the report. 

The prince, a former Saudi ambassador to the UK and US, said “Saudi Arabia is preparing to employ all of its economic, diplomatic and security assets to confront Tehran's regional ambitions”, added the report. 

"Iran is very vulnerable in the oil sector, and it is there that more could be done to squeeze the current government," said the onetime head of the Saudi intelligence agency. 

Iran's "meddling and destabilizing efforts in countries with Shiite majorities, such as Iraq and Bahrain, as well as those countries with significant Shiite communities…must come to an end," Turki al-Faisal claimed in his statement to the troops in the UK. 

"Saudi Arabia will oppose any and all of Iran's actions in other countries because it is Saudi Arabia's position that Iran has no right to meddle in other nations' internal affairs", he said. 

The prince's allegations came after Saudi king Abdullah sent the country's National Guard into Bahrain and Yemen over the past 18 months to help his allies in Manama and Sana'a in suppressing pro-democracy movements, which were born in the tiny Persian Gulf islands in response to decades of brutal monarchists' rule. 

The democratic movements were created following the Arab Spring in Egypt and Tunisia, where long-time dictators who enjoyed Saudis' and certain western countries' support were toppled by people's revolutions and their call for freedom. 

Saudis accuse Iran of interfering in its neighbors' internal affairs, while they, themselves, are killing defenceless people in Bahrain, and Yemen as an occupying power like what their old masters are doing in Iraq and Afghanistan. 

The Saudi Arabian regime, Britain, and the US are also jointly conspiring in secret to hammer out a strategy to destabilize world's oil markets to their own interests. 

After failing to force members of the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC) to increase crude output at the organization's recent meeting in Vienna, the Saudi Arabian regime has hinted that it could use its vast energy resources as a strategic weapon. 

"To put this into perspective, Saudi Arabia has so much [spare] production capacity-nearly 4 million barrels [per] day-that we could almost instantly replace all of Iran's oil production," the prince said.