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NBC Reports on ’Wealthy Arabs’ Funding ISIS

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Anton Chaitkin

(EIRNS)—Robert Windrem on NBC News writes that the ISIS terror group was created with seed money in the tradition of the corporate-tech "start-up" funded by an "angel investor."

Windrem reports that "former U.S. Navy Admiral and NATO Supreme Commander James Stavridis says the cash flow from private donors is significant now and was even more significant in the early fundraising done by ISIS and al Qaeda’s affiliate in Syria, the al-Nusrah Front."

According to Windrem’s U.S. sources, "the biggest share of the individual donations supporting ISIS and the most radical groups comes from Qatar rather than Saudi Arabia.... One U.S. official said the Saudis are "more in line with U.S. foreign policy" than the Qataris. Groups like ISIS and al-Nusrah employ fundraisers who meet with wealthy Sunni Arabs. Most of the Arab states have laws prohibiting such fundraising, but U.S. officials say the Qataris do not strictly enforce their laws."

Windrem notes that last Wednesday, Iranian Foreign Minister Mohammed Javad Zarif, in comments to the Council on Foreign Relations (CFR), "called the recently convened Paris conference on fighting ISIS a "COALITION OF REPENTERS" who are only now seeing that they have created a monster. The Gulf states were among the countries attending the summit...."Most participants in that meeting ... provided support to ISIS in the course of its creation and upbringing and expansion, ... creating a Frankenstein that came to haunt its creators," Zarif told the CFR. "So this group has been in existence for a long time. It has been supported, it has been provided for in terms of arms, money, finances by a good number of U.S. allies in the region."

Then the NBC article cites cites "an interview earlier the same day with Ann Curry of NBC News, [where] Iranian President Hassan Rouhani was just as emphatic, asking... "Who financed them? Who provided them with money? It’s really clear — where do the weapons come from?" asked Rouhani. "The terrorists who have come from all the countries, from which channel [did they enter], where were they trained, in which country were they trained? I don’t think it is somehow difficult to identify this information."