OH NO! NOT AGAIN!!
Well, that might be too much of a reaction and maybe it will show as totally irrelevant in the coming future, but that's kinda what it inspired me when I followed the developments of it during the day of the 2nd of January and all what followed since then...
Don't assassinate an influencial person with traditional facial hair in a very politically and economically tended context, and especially during the second decade of a century...
Its too bad we've given them hundreds of millions of dollars worth of our most advanced military equipment over the past 15 years.
Well, yeah, in fact in the end of the day what are the main differences between KSA and IS?
One is recognized by the 'international community', and the other officially promotes terrorism.
'Amusing' that, in both cases, both make mess in the whole region thanks to the so brilliant US geopolitics and weapons.
The latter, IS, indirectly takes advantage and use of both the US weapons and geopolitics while KSA always managed to officially benefit from all of it. Again.
WHY, OH, WHY??! (hmm, maybe being voluntarily a bit naïve here...)
Hmm, trying to be less naïve, and to find a few answering elements, maybe it's interesting to notice that KSA begins to change its attitude when, amongst other things, the US begins a serious switch on its oil...
Drill baby! Drill!!
But why always focusing on US, KSA understood it pretty well, and began to play the French against the Anglos for a while now.
And French now looooves all that wonderful money suddenly flooding to also buy their wonderful advanced military equipment that few could buy in the world given its very high price and that it couldn't make scale price reduction given its smaller production, unlike the US. Before the KSA switch, France was the 5th weapon seller in the world, might make a better rank next year...
Seriously, the only big 'positive' economical news we had here during last months came from the military, 'brilliant'.
Then, yeah, it's kinda amusing to see Iran still shouting against their ever historical evils, 'US Big Satan' and 'its little Satan UK', while those both would have tried to help Iran in the recent agreement while France clearly was the bad cop siding KSA.
But, what we see in Iran is, indeed, as all not anti-regime demonstrations, something organized by power.
Then, so far, most of what we see, are both the Shiah/Iran side and the Sunni/KSA side playing with their little toys, maybe kinda testing the effects those could have.
Question is whether one of those both
really wants to play with 'big toys'...
For a long time now, I don't believe in 'random escalations' for war, wars only happen if at least one side really wants war, WW1 would pretty much illustrate it from my point of view, nothing called for a direct war after the assasination, but it was wonderful to use it for some regimes, knowing that such or such move would lead to such or such consequence.
In the same way, KSA
certainly knew the impact that such an assasination could have on the regional geopolitical context and on Iran/'Shiah world'.
And if so, through that, it might be aiming at something big in that 'new' 'trendy' Shiah-Sunni less and less 'cold war'.
It certainly is pissed about all that unsolved ongoing mess with Shiahs/Iran in at least those both almost disappeared states that are Syria and Yemen, not to speak about the fact that those conflicts help what's becoming a challenger to them and their internal stability, the wonderful IS.
It also maybe feels they can less and less count on the US, begins to be more and more self-confident at making an independent and stronger geopolitics (the 'Islamic Coalition' move a few weeks ago was very interesting...), and maybe beginning to enjoy the 'taste of war' by also being more self-confident at making it by themselves...
So, the question would be, is King Salman's New Year Resolution only is to 'murder more people', or to, 'just', open a total war with the Shiah world?
How ironical that, for a while now the country that would need the most the nuclear weapon from a defensive point of view, dissuasion, is, well, Iran.
For a long while now I chatted with people from different parts of Mid-East through Internet, and its crazy how you can verify the stereotype, amongst different kinds of people with different backgrounds, about the hatred between Persians and Arabs, and sorry to keep on that, the reference might again be too much, and I might be culturally biased about it, but what it directly reminded me precisely is the 'traditional' hatred you could have between French and Germans before WW1.
One other thing that marked me about that is through an interesting French documentary about the evolution of Iranian regime since the 'Islamic Revolution' that I saw a few years ago, in that one, at one point, there was an interview of Khatami (Iranian 'Reformist' president, right before Ahmadinejad) who witnessed about the fact he saw Khomeini on his 'death bed', as we say in French, whom would have told him something like:
Maybe, in your life, at one point, you will have to shake hands of Americans, well, if so, that's life...
BUT.
NEVER, never, never, never, EVER, shake the hands of those [insert some very insulting Persian swearings] of Sauds...
Very last news:
Sudan and Bahrein totally cut their diplomatic relationships with Iran.
KSA now cuts all its commercial and aerial relationships with Iran.
They continue to play with little toys...
