Did the West Ask for Terror?

On March 22, 2018, in a rare and carefully authorized interview with the Washington Post, Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman (MBS) made a stunning admission:

“The funding of Wahhabism began at the request of Western allies during the Cold War.”

According to MBS, it was the United States and its Western partners who encouraged Riyadh to invest in mosques and madrassas abroad — not as a spiritual mission, but as a geopolitical strategy to counter Soviet influence in Muslim countries.

That Cold War logic — fund religion to fight communism — would later shape Operation Cyclone, unleash the Afghan jihad, and give birth to a lineage of violent proxies still active today. From Al-Qaeda to HTS, from Kabul to Idlib, the fire never went out.

In my latest article, I unpack how that alliance of convenience mutated into a global architecture of ideological violence. From the theological heresy of Wahhabism to the pragmatic handshakes with yesterday's terrorists, we trace how terrorism became a geopolitical lever — first for the weak, and now for the powerful.

👉 Read the full piece here