“Saudi Arabia has long urged the West to arm the Syrian rebels as they battle forces loyal to President Bashar Assad. In an interview with SPIEGEL, he explains why. He also says Europe should change its strategy in nuclear negotiations with Iran. SPIEGEL: Your Highness, Saudi Arabia provides Syrian rebels with both money and weaponry. What is the kingdom’s strategic aim?
Turki: The immediate downfall of the Bashar al-Assad regime and the immediate stop of “the killing machine,” as King Abdullah described Bashar-Al-Assad’s response to the demands of his people.
SPIEGEL: Troops from the Shiite radical group Hezbollah, supported by Iran, have joined the fight in support of Assad and could soon begin marching on Aleppo. Are the rebels not currently facing failure?
Turki: For the last two years, the regime and its supporters have been claiming victory with any advance they make on the ground. The Syrian people are determined to achieve what they aspired to when they began their protest…..………….”

Also sprach Prince Turki Al Faisal, former chief of Saudi Intelligence, former (briefly) Ambassador to Washington, currently man-about-towns and conferences and symposiums and overall bon vivant, sort of. No doubt, some of the Syrian people want to achieve their revised goals of their uprising. Originally it was more freedom and democracy. After the Wahhabi princes showered Syria with their petro-money, their sectarianism, and their desperate Paradise-seeking horny lost young men, the Syrian uprising became a sectarian civil war. The goal became to establish a ‘kingdom’ that is a cross between the Saudi kingdom and the state of the Taliban.
General Salim Idriss, nominal boss of the Free Syrian Salafi Army, may have other plans, but he only controls the rooms he uses to meet Western politicians and advisers, for now. General Manaf Tlass, ex-buddy of Bashar Al-Assad had his Saudi debut, complete with a photographed Umrah hajj, then vanished. Probably like the rest of them he is in some 7-star hotel waiting for the results of the bloody Syrian Lotto. Like the Salafis, Jihadists, Muftis, and other 5-star exiles, he is praying toward NATO headquarters in Brussels (or maybe Mons, Belgium), if at all.

Cheers
mhg