Saud bin Faisal bin Abdulaziz Al Saud, known as Saud Al Faisal, has been Saudi Arabia's foreign minister since 1975. Photo: WikiCommons.

Saudi Arabian Foreign Minister Saud bin Faisal bin Abdulaziz Al Saud on Sunday urged members of the Arab League to support a U.S.-led strike against Syria as a response to the use of chemical weapons by the regime of Bashar al-Assad, Egypt’s Al-Alam reported.

At a press conference in Cairo ahead of an Arab League meeting on Syria, the Saudi foreign minister, known as Saud Al-Faisal, said the international community must stop “the aggression against the Syrian people before these people perish.” He urged Arab states to listen to the “legitimate” representatives of the Syrian people asking for “help from the international community to put an end to the bloodbath” in Syria.

Over the weekend, U.S. President Barack Obama, after only securing international support from France for his plan to attack Syria, passed the issue along to Congress for further debate. The U.S. president said evidence points to the use of chemical weapons by the Assad regime against rebel forces in the country, thereby crossing a self imposed “red line” that the President had declared. Unlike with former President George W. Bush’s invasion of Iraq 10 years ago, today’s evidence against Syria was not enough to convince Britain, the U.S.’s most faithful ally, to support an attack on Assad.

Separately, Iran’s FARS state news agency claimed, citing unnamed diplomatic sources at the Saudi embassy in Washington, that Saudi Arabia has offered to fund all the fuel required by ships and airplanes to attack Syria.

“Saudi Arabia has underlined its agreement and support for any military action by the international forces against Syria and stressed that it will support financially those countries which attack Syria,” FARS cited a source in the Saudi mission in Washington as saying. “Saudi Arabia has also undertaken to supply fuel for invaders during the operation,” the source added.

“From the political aspect, it (Saudi Arabia) seeks to topple President Bashar al-Assad’s government and from ideological dimensions, Saudi Arabia wants to overthrow the Alawis and provide the ground for the formation of a Wahhabi government dependent on Riyadh and protecting the US interests in the region and Syria,” FARS claimed, referencing its source.