A Saudi Murder Becomes a Gift to Iran:\u00a0<\/span>The assassination of a journalist has further hurt the Trump administration\u2019s frail strategy of buddying with Saudi Arabia to restrain Iran\u2019s expanding influence.\u201d<\/a><\/p>\n\u00a0<\/p>\n
The Middle East is a difficult neighborhood. \u00a0And, as any reader of the Bible should already know, it always has<\/em> been.<\/p>\n\u00a0<\/p>\n
It is also, to vary the metaphor, a minefield, an extraordinary difficult place to practice the art of international politics.<\/p>\n
\u00a0<\/p>\n
We\u2019re seeing that now.<\/p>\n
\u00a0<\/p>\n
Just when some of us thought \u2014 hoped \u2014 that a realignment might be shaping up, with some of the Arab states recognizing that the perpetual Arab-Israeli standoff has been a loser for them, squandering their resources and costing them opportunities for tourism and economic development, and that it\u2019s going absolutely nowhere, and with some of the Arab states recognizing that Israel might be a useful strategic and economic ally in the struggle to contain the seeming expansionism of the Iranian clerical regime, the young Saudi prince Mohammed bin Salman seems to have endangered if not scuttled that realignment.<\/p>\n
\u00a0<\/p>\n
Please remember that Iranians are not Arabs. \u00a0Their language is Persian \u2014 sometimes, curiously, called Farsi<\/em> by English speakers \u2014 which, unlike Arabic, a Semitic cousin of Hebrew, is an Indo-European language distantly but definitely related to English. \u00a0And Iranians are, overwhelmingly, Shi\u2018ite Muslims, unlike a large majority of Arabs, who are Sunni Muslims. \u00a0Historically, there has often been unease when not outright hostility between the Shi\u2018ite Persians and the Sunni Arabs.<\/p>\n\u00a0<\/p>\n
And that unease remains today. \u00a0Various Arab rulers have publicly worried about the creation of a \u201cShi\u2018ite crescent,\u201d which is essentially equivalent to an arc of Iranian influence if not hegemony, extending from militantly and expressly Shi\u2018ite Iran through largely Shi\u2018ite Iraq (where Iran has been actively involved in Iraqi domestic politics) through Syria (which is led by the religious-minority and heterodox quasi-Shi\u2018ite regime of Bashar al-Assad, inherited from his father, Hafez al-Assad), to the Shi\u2018ite Hizbollah organization in the south of Lebanon, which sometimes functions as an Iranian proxy army, with Iranian advisors and support.<\/p>\n
\u00a0<\/p>\n
Anyway, some of us were (very) cautiously hopeful that the accession of Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman to effective power \u2014 the King being elderly and, evidently, suffering a degree of dementia \u2014 might lead to some beneficial and forward-looking changes. \u00a0He is, after all, of the younger generation, many of whom are plainly tired of such elements of Saudi life as the old and damaging restrictions on women and of the constant drain of the Arab-Israeli conflict, which distracts attention from other challenges, problems, and opportunities. \u00a0And he has, indeed, made a few significant moves in that direction. \u00a0Unfortunately, he has also been quite ham-handed \u2014 if I may use that imagery with regard to a Saudi Muslim royal \u2014 and, among other things, his war in Yemen, his disregard for the orderly rule of law in his shakedown of wealthy Saudis, his creation of a crisis with Qatar, and, now, the brutal murder of Jamal Khashoggi (which the CIA, at least, has concluded<\/a> was carried out on his instructions), have made him toxic.<\/p>\n\u00a0<\/p>\n
Too bad. \u00a0What the late Israeli foreign minister Abba Eban \u2014 an Arabist by training, incidentally \u2014 once said of the Palestinians in particular is all too often true of Middle Eastern leaders as a whole: \u00a0\u201cThey never miss an opportunity to miss an opportunity.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u00a0<\/p>\n<\/body><\/html>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
\u00a0 \u00a0 \u201cA Saudi Murder Becomes a Gift to Iran:\u00a0The assassination of a journalist has further hurt the Trump administration\u2019s frail strategy of buddying with Saudi Arabia to restrain Iran\u2019s expanding influence.\u201d \u00a0 The Middle East is a difficult neighborhood. \u00a0And, as any reader of the Bible should already know, it always has been. \u00a0 […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1019,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-67500","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"yoast_head":"\n
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