Chitchat What happened in Saudi Arabia in the last 3 days ?

[scroobal]

There was absolutely no physical proof of Saddam’s weapons of mass destruction - just Intelligence from a Iraqi source that turned out to be a dud and the likes of Neo-con pushing their agenda.

The recovered missle has the stamp of the Iranian munition factory plus all other fingerprints.

Iran leadership actually surprised me. When you engage in proxy wars there is a line that you do not cross - you do not allow such a missle to target a major civilian airport. It’s worse than a schoolboy error. It it was aimed at Ben Gurion, there would have been hell to pay.

They might have erroneously thought that the Nuclear Treaty provided a huge buffer.

Their saving grace is a dysfunctional White House and Haley rallying support would be difficult.

 

[Kotekbengkok]

As much as I would like to believe that the Saudis are being "smart" and aligning their diplomacy to the new realities and a reaction to their past failures, history has shown that they are no real diplomats. They are too two dimensional for their own good and have not the skills to pick up the nuances and shifty chest board moves. All they have done successfully is in creating little fires on or near their border with no real long term strategy on what to do about this. To quote the author above, their diplomatic strategy to address the "difficult areas" where they have no control now seems to be to "wait it out" and expect to win because "they can wait longer.". Cannot beleive that he actually said that. What kind of policy is this?

Contrary to what the author says, they are still using their petrol dollars in their "diplomacy" even today, by holding contributions to Jordon, Lebanon, Egypt etc when they don't do their bidding. They take the money grudgingly and the resentment is growing. That's all the Saudis know how to do, as as other way requires too much hard work and having real skills. A small island with a small population had an empire on which the sun never set. Maybe the Saudis should consult some scholar on how the British were able to do this for 300 years. They may learn something, adapting and not just copying.

In makes sense for Riyadh to completely change their foreign policy as this habit of using petrol dollar has achieved nothing for them. But they need someone much wiser to guide them. They also need to change their style of diplomacy including some trivial stuff such as dragging the golden escalator all around the World.

 

[aurvandil]

The US seems to be claiming the right to sell arms as it deems fit to the Saudi led coalition. Yet when Iran provides arms to the Houthis, it is seen as somehow a major violation?

Also the intent of providing the missiles is not known. To date, no major civilian target in Saudi Arabia has actually been destroyed. The provision and demonstration of the weapons capability to hit high value Saudi targets could be to force a settlement rather than for actual use. It also sends a personal message to MBS in the only language he understands.

The recovered missle has the stamp of the Iranian munition factory plus all other fingerprints.

Iran leadership actually surprised me. When you engage in proxy wars there is a line that you do not cross - you do not allow such a missle to target a major civilian airport. It’s worse than a schoolboy error. It it was aimed at Ben Gurion, there would have been hell to pay.

 

[gatehousethetinkertailor]

As much as I would like to believe that the Saudis are being "smart" and aligning their diplomacy to the new realities and a reaction to their past failures, history has shown that they are no real diplomats. They are too two dimensional for their own good and have not the skills to pick up the nuances and shifty chest board moves. All they have done successfully is in creating little fires on or near their border with no real long term strategy on what to do about this. To quote the author above, their diplomatic strategy to address the "difficult areas" where they have no control now seems to be to "wait it out" and expect to win because "they can wait longer.". Cannot beleive that he actually said that. What kind of policy is this?

Contrary to what the author says, they are still using their petrol dollars in their "diplomacy" even today, by holding contributions to Jordon, Lebanon, Egypt etc when they don't do their bidding. They take the money grudgingly and the resentment is growing. That's all the Saudis know how to do, as as other way requires too much hard work and having real skills. A small island with a small population had an empire on which the sun never set. Maybe the Saudis should consult some scholar on how the British were able to do this for 300 years. They may learn something, adapting and not just copying.

Bahrain which is as good as a vassal state of KSA (and also has functioned as KSA's nightclub) issued this urgent plea at the beginning of November 2017 (as reported by Bloomberg):

Now fastforward to the end of the same month:

 

[gatehousethetinkertailor]

There was absolutely no physical proof of Saddam’s weapons of mass destruction - just Intelligence from a Iraqi source that turned out to be a dud and the likes of Neo-con pushing their agenda.

The recovered missle has the stamp of the Iranian munition factory plus all other fingerprints.

Iran leadership actually surprised me. When you engage in proxy wars there is a line that you do not cross - you do not allow such a missle to target a major civilian airport. It’s worse than a schoolboy error. It it was aimed at Ben Gurion, there would have been hell to pay.

They might have erroneously thought that the Nuclear Treaty provided a huge buffer.

Their saving grace is a dysfunctional White House and Haley rallying support would be difficult.

The assumption you are relying on is that the Iranians are able to circumvent the Saudi blockade (presumably via Oman) and are in full control of the Houthis as proxies - the Yemenis are notoriously difficult to deal with and whether Iran has that level of influence is quite debatable. And vendatas run very deep in their tribal culture. Since the bombing started by KSA there has been repeated calls from Yemenis to attack the Saudis - not the Houthis specifically but the various factions and non-factions who are Yemenis. So of course the reckless decision by MBS to actually start this war and then realise he can't finish the job is also something to bear in mind. In the end the Yemenis are suffering and you have a cholera outbreak in 2017. The Saudis will claim that if the Houthis gave up all would be hunky dory because Hadi can then return. Up to ten thousand Yemenis have been killed so far in 18 months. That is quite and extraordinary number of deaths of Yemenis belonging to families and tribes who will not be so easy to placate. It is indeed hard for people in this part of the world to sometimes empathise or even remotely comprehend that kind of mindset.

There is a Singaporean ex-lawyer of Yemeni descent that is still there and had turned down the offer for evacuation by the MFA. He has been tweeting anti-Saudi messages from the time the KSA assault started and apparently his family were approached by the KSA ambassador in Singapore about his activism. When Salleh declared for the Saudis he was tweeting about how the lion of Salleh would devour the Houthis and that it was time for vengeance. Salleh was killed the next day and he posted about how sad he was - never mind that Salleh was a tyrant who had mercilessly killed his own people and switched allegiances for his own billions. One tweet stood out in response - something along the lines of "don't think you Singapore passport can protect you". It has since been deleted but that was a clear threat. Well he wanted to be the man on the ground (he is there with his wife and 3 or 4 kids). Despite being of Yemeni descent he is still not really seen as being "Yemeni" according to some of his haters.

Anyway here is Javad's response to Haley's press conference:

In reality, Haley’s statement is even more ludicrous as there is physically no way for Iran to transport missiles or anything else for that matter, to Yemen without being seen and almost certainly stopped by the Saudi blockade, a blockade which started in March of 2015, nearly four months before the JCPOA even came into effect.

This last point is crucial as Haley’s allegations rest on the fact that in delivering missiles to the Houthis, Iran is in violation of the terms of the JCPOA, a longstanding US allegation that has been rejected by the EU as a whole, as well as individual parties to the agreement: Germany, France, Britain, China, Russia and the United Nations.

The fact that she is an Ambassador to the UN but acts increasingly like a hybrid of a Secretary of State combined with a Defense Secretary, is a deeply worrying prospect for all those concerned with global peace and stability.

 

[gatehousethetinkertailor]

 

[scroobal]

Firstly I do agree that the US has a history of breaking the very rules that they preach about - UN resolutions on Israel, end user certificates abuse, starting a war on a spit and hot air.

But firing that missle escalates the conflict rather than help move to a settlement. No country will accept an immediate neighbour that poses a threat to their core national interest. The Soviets was forced to withdraw their missles from Cuba for the very same reason.

We have a doctrine that is common knowledge - stop our water supply and it will be a devasting pre-emptive strike. There is no second guessing. No settlement or negotiation.

Iran has no business playing in Saudi’s backyard. Anywhere else is fair game.

Clearly the Saudi’s have been caught sleeping. If the Saudi’s had followed Israel’s use of missle payload and range to determine threat level, the Iranians would not have given that missle.

The only good news is that there is a proliferation of NGOs that are fair and neutral that operate internationally as they lost faith in the US as an honest broker. They work with the UN, EU and think tanks to track inventory of weapons, assess conflicts, determine culpability and sound the alarm on the likes of impending human excesses. They are the new Red Cross and Medicins San frontieres conflict

The US seems to be claiming the right to sell arms as it deems fit to the Saudi led coalition. Yet when Iran provides arms to the Houthis, it is seen as somehow a major violation?

Also the intent of providing the missiles is not known. To date, no major civilian target in Saudi Arabia has actually been destroyed. The provision and demonstration of the weapons capability to hit high value Saudi targets could be to force a settlement rather than for actual use. It also sends a personal message to MBS in the only language he understands.

 

[scroobal]

I don’t think they are smart, they have found themselves at a dead end with the old approach. The drop in oil prices has made it clear that the old way is costly. So far with their new approach, they area stumbling around like a blind man.

Agree they have no strategy clearly amplified with what they have down in the last 2 years especially in recent month.

As much as I would like to believe that the Saudis are being "smart" and aligning their diplomacy to the new realities and a reaction to their past failures, history has shown that they are no real diplomats. They are too two dimensional for their own good and have not the skills to pick up the nuances and shifty chest board moves. All they have done successfully is in creating little fires on or near their border with no real long term strategy on what to do about this. To quote the author above, their diplomatic strategy to address the "difficult areas" where they have no control now seems to be to "wait it out" and expect to win because "they can wait longer.". Cannot beleive that he actually said that. What kind of policy is this?

Contrary to what the author says, they are still using their petrol dollars in their "diplomacy" even today, by holding contributions to Jordon, Lebanon, Egypt etc when they don't do their bidding. They take the money grudgingly and the resentment is growing. That's all the Saudis know how to do, as as other way requires too much hard work and having real skills. A small island with a small population had an empire on which the sun never set. Maybe the Saudis should consult some scholar on how the British were able to do this for 300 years. They may learn something, adapting and not just copying.

 

[gatehousethetinkertailor]

His comments as reported a couple of days ago:

 

[gatehousethetinkertailor]

A perspective on the roots of the Houthi revolt that is not usually narrated:
The real roots of the current conflict in Yemen are fundamentally connected to Saudi Arabia’s systematic proselytization of Salafism, a puritanical form of Islam, inside Yemen. The effect of this proselytizing has caused prominent Shia Zaydi Yemenis—namely, the Houthi group—to revolt. This uprising has also been instigated in part by former Yemeni president, Ali Abdullah Saleh, and his manipulation and occasional conspiracy with the Houthi group. The Houthis’ current unusual alliance with Saleh, and their control over Yemen, was precipitated by the 2011 Yemen Arab Spring Uprising, which caused great geopolitical disruption in the country.

 

[gatehousethetinkertailor]

 

[gatehousethetinkertailor]

 

[gatehousethetinkertailor]

 

[gatehousethetinkertailor]

From the Arab perspective, this support is grounded in the fact that Israel is one of the remaining colonial outposts. It is important to control the region and its resources far beyond the eastern Mediterranean shores.

Conflict with Israel has exhausted Arab economies, drained limited resources and diverted attention from the genuine struggle for democratic government, not to mention the destruction of the population and the flux of refugees in the last half century.

Arab dictators used the Palestinian cause to suppress the population, delay political change and divert attention from urgent development.

Others used Palestine to promote their Arab and Islamic credentials. From Saddam Hussein to King Faisal, Jerusalem was a good cause to ride.

Non-state actors like past and current resistance movements such as Hezbollah cannot possibly give up their arms while the might of Israeli airpower remains unchecked in the skies of Beirut. In fact, Hezbollah emerged in the context of an Israeli onslaught and occupation of half of Lebanon in 1982.

So, US consistent support for a predatory state like Israel and unequivocal and unconditional endorsement of the"several devils they know" is ultimately the first and final cause of the anti-Americanism that we have come to name as hate.

 

[gatehousethetinkertailor]

"...explained early on that the blockade had its roots in 1995.[5] That year, the Qatari emir’s son, Sheikh Hamad bin Khalifa Al Thani, overthrew his father, Sheikh Khalifa bin Hamad, while the latter was in Switzerland. The palace coup caught the rest of the Gulf off-guard. In an unprecedented move, the ousted emir turned to other Gulf states, asking them for help to restore him to power. Not only was the coup unprecedented, but also it opened the door to possible instability and revolution. In secret recording between Sheikh Khalifa bin Hamad and Colonel Muammar Qaddafi, the former also spoke of undermining the Saudi royal family.

Qatari officials rarely reference the coup during interviews about the origins of the rift. Instead, they gloss over the event and say that 1995 was the year when Qatar experienced a “regime change” and established itself as an independent actor with its own foreign policy.

As soon as Qatar had a new emir, the tiny Gulf state wasted no time in making itself relevant by signing energy agreements with a number of emerging markets. The emir, within months of his coup, helped set up the Qatari-owned Al Jazeera news channel in 1996 by providing a loan of 137 million dollars in start-up funds. Al Jazeera has since become a major actor in all of Qatar’s disputes with its neighbors, consistently giving dissidents and jihadis a media platform. For example, in 2002, Saudi Arabia withdrew it ambassador[8] from Doha in response to Al Jazeera’s coverage of domestic affairs within the Kingdom. It took five years to resolve this issue.

Al Jazeera has become a major actor in all of Qatar’s disputes with its neighbors.

In 2013 and 2014, a larger dispute – this time involving also the UAE and Bahrain – took hold. The trio cut diplomatic ties with Qatar after having discovered that it was housing Islamists, providing them with a major platform with its Al Jazeera Mubasher Misr channel, and fueling the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt.

After former Egyptian President Muhammed Morsi was ousted by a military coup, Muslim Brotherhood members started to regroup in Doha. The Qatari leadership was aware of their presence and facilitated their residency. February 2014 was the final straw, when Yusuf al-Qaradawi pilloried the UAE during a sermon in Doha that was broadcast on Qatar TV. One month later, the UAE, Saudi Arabia, and Bahrain withdrew their envoys from Qatar in protest of Doha’s interference in their internal affairs.

In 2013 and 2014, three secret agreements were signed between the trio and Qatar. These agreements, which has recently surfaced, shows that Qatar had signed off on supporting Egypt’s stability, which included preventing Al Jazeera from being used as a platform for groups or figures challenging the Egyptian government, and ending support of the Muslim Brotherhood and groups in Yemen and Saudi Arabia that posed a threat to the security and stability of the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC).

Qatar initially took steps to abide by the agreement, such as closing down Al Jazeera Mubasher Misr and dispelling a number of Muslim Brotherhood members from the country – asking seven of those members to leave quietly. However, Qatar only had the intention of minimally patching up relations in order to restore diplomatic ties; it never intended to cease backing Islamists on the battleground.

 

[gatehousethetinkertailor]

The assumption you are relying on is that the Iranians are able to circumvent the Saudi blockade (presumably via Oman) and are in full control of the Houthis as proxies - the Yemenis are notoriously difficult to deal with and whether Iran has that level of influence is quite debatable. And vendatas run very deep in their tribal culture. Since the bombing started by KSA there has been repeated calls from Yemenis to attack the Saudis - not the Houthis specifically but the various factions and non-factions who are Yemenis. So of course the reckless decision by MBS to actually start this war and then realise he can't finish the job is also something to bear in mind. In the end the Yemenis are suffering and you have a cholera outbreak in 2017. The Saudis will claim that if the Houthis gave up all would be hunky dory because Hadi can then return. Up to ten thousand Yemenis have been killed so far in 18 months. That is quite and extraordinary number of deaths of Yemenis belonging to families and tribes who will not be so easy to placate. It is indeed hard for people in this part of the world to sometimes empathise or even remotely comprehend that kind of mindset.

There is a Singaporean ex-lawyer of Yemeni descent that is still there and had turned down the offer for evacuation by the MFA. He has been tweeting anti-Saudi messages from the time the KSA assault started and apparently his family were approached by the KSA ambassador in Singapore about his activism. When Salleh declared for the Saudis he was tweeting about how the lion of Salleh would devour the Houthis and that it was time for vengeance. Salleh was killed the next day and he posted about how sad he was - never mind that Salleh was a tyrant who had mercilessly killed his own people and switched allegiances for his own billions. One tweet stood out in response - something along the lines of "don't think you Singapore passport can protect you". It has since been deleted but that was a clear threat. Well he wanted to be the man on the ground (he is there with his wife and 3 or 4 kids). Despite being of Yemeni descent he is still not really seen as being "Yemeni" according to some of his haters.

Anyway here is Javad's response to Haley's press conference:

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In reality, Haley’s statement is even more ludicrous as there is physically no way for Iran to transport missiles or anything else for that matter, to Yemen without being seen and almost certainly stopped by the Saudi blockade, a blockade which started in March of 2015, nearly four months before the JCPOA even came into effect.

This last point is crucial as Haley’s allegations rest on the fact that in delivering missiles to the Houthis, Iran is in violation of the terms of the JCPOA, a longstanding US allegation that has been rejected by the EU as a whole, as well as individual parties to the agreement: Germany, France, Britain, China, Russia and the United Nations.

The fact that she is an Ambassador to the UN but acts increasingly like a hybrid of a Secretary of State combined with a Defense Secretary, is a deeply worrying prospect for all those concerned with global peace and stability.

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https://www.dvidshub.net/feature/iranianviolations

Some responses as illustrations:

 

[gatehousethetinkertailor]

 

[gatehousethetinkertailor]

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A_Clean_Break:_A_New_Strategy_for_Securing_the_Realm

https://web.archive.org/web/20140125123844/http://www.iasps.org/strat1.htm



CATO Institute: Unforced Error: The Risks of Confrontation with Iran:
https://www.cato.org/publications/policy-analysis/unforced-error-risks-confrontation-iran

 

[gatehousethetinkertailor]

 

[gatehousethetinkertailor]