這個稍微vaudevillian （？式的）危機引起卡特政府的迫切關注，因為烏提比，像賓拉登一樣，要掃除貪腐的沙特阿拉伯王室而代之以一個虔誠的穆斯林國協（commonwealth），而其將成為億萬穆斯林世界超級大國的一個核心，自然也會斷絕了其向邪惡西方的石油輸出。 卡特指稱整個事件乃一項 "政治性痙攣的恐怖主義（spasm of political terrorism）" ，並派出兩個航母戰鬥群到波斯灣，以阻止伊朗試圖將該痙攣轉變成一場全規模的癲癇（to deter the Iranians from trying to convert the spasm into a full-blown seizure）。
政府軍士兵邊放槍邊衝鋒闖進了大清真寺，穿過神殿和建築物的走廊追逐綁匪。 主要使用的是手榴彈，其在大理石和水泥材質的會堂內作用甚佳。 當逐一被炸成碎片時，烏提比與其一干"金剛不朽（immortals ）"之身的手下，證明畢竟還是會朽的（mortal）。 C.I.A.幹員也參加了攻擊，為獲准進入天房（Kaaba）而 行改宗伊斯蘭教一天，其為任何異教徒都能輕鬆作出的聲明 "只有阿拉是真主，而穆罕默德是他的先知（there is no God but Allah and Muhammed is his Prophet）“。 最後的一股綁匪被由法國總統Valery Giscard d’Estaing ---應哈立德國王的要請---秘密派出的法國特務隊沖洗出來。 他們用CB氣癱瘓或殺死了剩下的激進分子，其曾在藏身處堆起類似硫黃島的最後據點。
On November 20 1979, Islamist Militants smuggled weapons into the Grand Mosque of Mecca --- Islam’s holiest place --- and took it over. Even greatly distracted high school students like the writer remember that much, but the broader context --- long classified and grippingly revealed by this existing book --- is at least as compelling as the attack itself.
Trofimov places the Meccan crisis of 1979 at the intersection of some key, lasting developments. The Saudi militants struck while the Iranian revolution to depose the Shah and implant an Islamic republic was in full swing. Most Americans assumed a tight connection between the two crises, but it was more of an incidental one. As we all know today, Saudi Arabia is sufficiently dysfunctional to provoke its own crises; it needs no help from abroad.
The militants of 1979 were pious Osama bin Laden types, who professed disgust at the sumptuous, worldly appetites of the Saudi royal family and thought that a takeover of the sacred mosque at Mecca would make a powerful statement. Indeed it did.
The Carter administration --- already reeling from the Iranian revolution --- now confronted a threat to its last remaining “pillar” in the oil-rich Persian Gulf: the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia. The leader of the attack on the Grand Mosque was Juhayman al Uteybi, a skinny, wild-eyed 43-year-old Bedouin preacher. He and his rebels smuggled AK-47s, Belgian machine guns and extra ammo belts and magazines into the sacred mosque in caskets. Once inside, Uteybi broke open the coffins, armed his band, and then took over the mosque, imprisoning the horde of pilgrims as hostages. There ensued a curious scene that would seem only too familiar to weary Iraq-watchers today: hostages and jailers standing toe-to-toe and screaming “Allahu Akbar!” --- “God is Great!” – at each other.
This slightly vaudevillian crisis was of great concern to the Carter administration because Uteybi, like bin Laden, wanted to sweep away the corrupt, rotten Saudi kingdom and replace it with a pious Muslim commonwealth that would become the core of billion-man world Muslim superpower that would naturally refuse its oil to the evil West. Carter called the whole affair “a spasm of political terrorism” and sent two carrier battle groups into the Persian Gulf to deter the Iranians from trying to convert the spasm into a full-blown seizure.
Carter also spurred the Saudis into counter-revolutionary action. The chain of events is deftly described by Trofimov. First King Khalid prevailed upon his clergy to sanction a storming of the Grand Mosque by government troops with a fatwa that condemned the militants --- who were certainly more pious than the Saudi royals --- on the grounds that they had carried weapons into the sacred mosque, which some bright cleric identified as violation of the Koran. Later it was discovered that the Koran only called it a crime for infidels to bring in weapons, so the Muslim scholars went back work and concluded that Uteybi and his militants had “behaved like infidels.”
Government troops shot their way into the Grand Mosque and pursued the rebels through the corridors of the shrines and building. The mainly used hand grenades, which worked well on the marble and cement halls. Uteybi and his “immortals” proved mortal after all, as each of them was blasted to smithereens. C.I.A. operatives joined the attack, gaining entrance to the Kaaba by converting (for a day) to Islam, which any infidel can do simply by declaiming “there is no God but Allah and Muhammed is his Prophet.” The last of the rebels were flushed out by a French team secretly dispatched --- at King Khalid’s request --- by President Valery Giscard d’Estaing. They used CB gas to paralyze or kill the last remaining militants, who had holed up to make an Iwo Jima-like last stand.
The House of Saud had retaken Mecca --- the principal source of its waning legitimacy --- but what a price! Trofmov opines that the Saudis “showed a sickening mixture of arrogance, cruel incompetence and bewildering disregard for the truth.” Well hadn’t they always? But this time, angry young men like Osama bin Laden were watching, and stewing.
