Wednesday, April 27, 2011

'Riyadh Riddle!'

"...The inadequacies of the Saudi foreign policy-making machine, a lack of Saudi political will partly due to the king's age and inclinations, and regional and US obstruction, saw efforts to promote intra-Palestinian peace run into the sand. Mediation on other fronts - Lebanon, Sudan and Somalia - came to naught. This year, the Saudi leadership has watched with horror as the US has in effect rerun 1979 by abandoning a strategic ally - in this case Mubarak of Egypt instead of the Shah of Iran.
'What army did these two seve in? The 'RayBan-left-right-salute' army?' 
...The Saudi response to events in Bahrain - dressed up in a flimsy flag of convenience, that of the six-country Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC), is underpinning al-Khalifa control in the Gulf island,... The Saudi alliance of convenience with Yemeni President Ali Abdullah Saleh has however recently collapsed... Without (a Yemeni) domestic agreement, there will be no Saudi-led breakthrough ...
Baathist Syria is not, however, a neighbouring concern. It has long been distrusted as an Iranian ally ...The Saudi government,in common with the US and Israel, it is not sure that the alternative would be to its advantage, even if it disadvantaged Iran..."

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