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What to make of Saudi Arabia cutting all diplomatic ties with Iran? An escalation, but no game changer

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Dave Lefcourt
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Saudi Arabia cuts diplomatic ties with Iran Saudi Arabia's foreign minister, Adel al-Jubeir, announces the kingdom's severing of diplomatic ties with Iran after the Saudi Arabian embassy in Tehran was ...
Saudi Arabia cuts diplomatic ties with Iran Saudi Arabia's foreign minister, Adel al-Jubeir, announces the kingdom's severing of diplomatic ties with Iran after the Saudi Arabian embassy in Tehran was ...
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Saudi Arabian Foreign Minister announcing cutting diplomatic ties with Iran

So what to make of Saudi Arabia cutting all diplomatic ties with Iran?

This after hundreds of Iranian's stormed and ransacked the Saudi embassy in Tehran in reaction to the Saudi monarchy executing Saudi Shiite cleric Sheikh Nims al-Nims-along with 46 others-who called for the overthrow of the Saudi monarchy.

It certainly won't be on the radar of most Americans-beyond the brutality of the multiple executions- which will soon be forgotten.

Be that as it may, the enmity between Shiite Iran and Sunni Saudi Arabia go back centuries up to and including present day- what with the Saudi's, a feudal Sunni Wahhabi indoctrinated majority illegally bombing neighboring Yemen for the last 10 months, this after accusing Shiite Iran of supporting the Shiite Yemeni Houthi's who had overthrown the Sunni led government of President Abd Mansur Hadi in Sanaa.

The two countries are on opposite sides of the Syrian conflict with the Saudi's bankrolling the Islamic State (IS) and assorted al Qaeda mercenary rebels fighting against the Shia Alawite sect of Bashar Assad's regime in Syria with the Iranian's fighting alongside Assad's Syrian Arab Army.

The countries face each other across the Persian Gulf not only divided by the Sunni-Shiite sectarian divide but are the primary Islamic powers influencing the region.

Though Iran's demographic of 75 million is four times the size of Saudi Arabia's 18 million nationals, the Saudi's close military alliance with the US and recent entente with Israel make it a formidable opponent of Iran.

Add to the volatile mix is the 15% Shiite minority in Saudi Arabia located in the east of the country, the largest oil producing area where Sheikh Nims was the spiritual leader for Shiite's protesting against the regime.

And let's not forget this whole Sunni-Shiite divide was further exacerbated by the US invasion and occupation of Iraq in 2003 overthrowing the minority Sunni led regime of Saddam Hussein, then subsequently installing a majority Shiite led government in Baghdad that repressed the Sunni minority giving birth to al Qaeda in Iraq that metastasized itself into IS in Syria and Iraq.

So this latest split between Saudi Arabia and Iran over the execution of a Shiite cleric and Iranian's storming the Saudi embassy in Tehran resulting in the complete break of diplomatic ties between the two is an escalation but hardly a game changer.

Not while the Saudi monarchy, though a brutal, autocratic regime and a main financial, proxy backer of IS-the avowed enemy of the US-remains a staunch US ally. This also reveals the schizophrenic nature of US foreign policy to which most Americans seem oblivious to even as the alliance remains the most odious of US foreign entanglements.

Not that Americans would hear it put that way by the fawning corporate MSM which treats the Saudi's with kid gloves, certainly not condemning them even though they are the primary financial backer of terrorists in the world.

Maybe those repulsive executions carried out by the Saudi monarchy will catch the eye of people everywhere revealing the barbaric nature of the regime beyond the sectarian divide in Sunni-Shiite Islam.

Then again, there's the mindless gun violence in the US showing the extent of our barbarism that goes unabated.

At times it seems madness, rather than sanity, is raging in the world leading to what...the unthinkable?

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Dave Lefcourt Social Media Pages: Facebook page url on login Profile not filled in       Twitter page url on login Profile not filled in       Linkedin page url on login Profile not filled in       Instagram page url on login Profile not filled in

Retired. The author of "DECEIT AND EXCESS IN AMERICA, HOW THE MONEYED INTERESTS HAVE STOLEN AMERICA AND HOW WE CAN GET IT BACK", Authorhouse, 2009
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