Thursday, January 7, 2016
Iran, Obama, and Saudi Arabia
On Friday, January 1, 2016, Iranian officials vowed to expand Teheran's missile capabilities, challenging the United States : "As long as the United States supports Israel we will expand our missile capabilities," the Revolutionary Guard second-in-command, Brigadier General Hossein Salami, told the Iranian Fars news agency, "We don't have enough space to store our missiles. All our depots and underground facilities are full." Defense Minister Hossein Dehqan said Iran would boost its missile program and had never agreed to restricting it. He told Iranian state TV : "Iran's missile capabilities have never been the subject of negotiations with the Americans and will never be." ~~~~~ Iran's defiance came after two Iranian ballistic missile tests that contravened UN sanctions and after Iranian naval vessels had fired rockets close to a US aircraft carrier in the Straits of Hormuz enroute to the Arabian Gulf after an unprecedented three-month absence. Iran was facing down President Obama as the United States and European Union were preparing to end international sanctions against Iran under the July nuclear deal. The standoff was a diplomatic and political test between Obama and Iran's President Rouhani. US officials said they would respond to the missile tests by imposing new sanctions against Iranian individuals and businesses linked to the missile program. Iran's senior nuclear negotiator said on December 31 that Iran's missile tests did not violate the July nuclear deal. Obama blinked -- he postponed imposing any new sanctions. ~~~~~ Then, on Saturday, January 2, 2016, Saudi Arabia executed Sheikh Nimr al-Nimr, 57, a shiite cleric born in the Kingdom’s oil-rich Eastern Province. Nimr, a well-known albeit second-tier figure at anti-government demonstrations, criticized Saudi rulers in his sermons for their treatment of the Saudi shiite 10% minority. In 2009, he threatened to lead Saudi Arabia’s shiite Moslems to secession, provoking a crackdown in the shiite eastern heartland. In his sermons, Nimr criticized sunni and shiite autocratic rulers, but reserved his most scathing attacks for the Saudi and Bahraini royal families. Nimr was arrested in 2012, tried, convicted and sentenced to death in October 2014. His Saturday execution caused protests in eastern Saudi Arabia, where demonstrators denounced the ruling Al Saud dynasty, and in the nearby Gulf kingdom of Bahrain. Nimr's relatives said authorities informed them the body had been buried "in a cemetery of Moslems" and would not be given to the family. ~~~~~ Afterward, Saudi Arabia cut diplomatic ties with Iran following the storming and burning of the Saudi embassy in Iran. Sunni nations followed the Kingdom, severing or cutting back diplomatic relations with shiite leader Iran, whose Ayatollah Khamenei predicted "divine vengeance" for the execution of Nimr. Saudi Foreign Minister Adel al-Jubeir told a Riyadh news conference Iran's envoy had been asked to leave Saudi Arabia. The Kingdom, he said, would not allow the Islamic republic to undermine its security, saying the attack in Teheran was in line with what he said were earlier Iranian assaults on foreign embassies in Iran and with Iran's policy of destabilizing the region by creating "terrorist cells" in Saudi Arabia. Jubeir said : "The Kingdom, in light of these realities, announces the cutting of diplomatic relations with Iran and requests the departure of delegates of diplomatic missions of the embassy and consulate and offices related to it within 48 hours. The ambassador has been summoned to notify them." The US, Saudi Arabia's biggest supporter, called for "diplomatic engagement and direct conversations." A source close to the Saudi government explained : "Enough is enough. Teheran has thumbed their nose at the West. They continue to sponsor terrorism and launch ballistic missiles and no one is doing anything about it. The Saudis really don't care if they anger the White House." ~~~~~ Dear readers, the rest is detail. If Obama won't protect the Middle East from Iran's terrorism, Saudi Arabia and the sunnis will.
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What will be interesting is who will step up with the Saudi to protect them and themselves.
ReplyDeleteThe arrogance of Obama, no the stupidity of Obama in siding with Iran has a mysterious underlying motivation that the Iranians will gladly tell the world the day that Obama becomes nothing more than baggage to them.
The world that President Obama seems to be functioning in is in a parallel universe to the real world where we live. His actions, lack of logic, and just generally 180 degrees out of phase to the things happening here in our world.
ReplyDeleteOr he is the most evil, malicious individual to ever head up democratic free nations. He has no conception of what his actions are breeding and the price that may have to paid by millions in the Middle East region if he is left untethered to continue.
My guess is without any doubt the second.
And here we are once again back at the real problem in the Middle East region – a violent secular difference between the Shiite and the Sunni branches of the Muslim communities.
ReplyDeleteWe cannot allow either side to have nuclear capabilities. One or both sides would use such war powers at the drop of a pin, maybe meaning only to afflict destruction on the other – but in reality starting a worldwide conflict that would draw every nation into reprisal. Such a war could not be confined to the Middle East region.
Within hours of the first use of nuclear weapon someone(s) would go after Israel, then it would be the North Koreans after the South, then Russia and China possibly, then the centers of business and world financial centers. And the opening would be set for civil wars in various countries with the attempt to install new governments amongst the chaos.
This certainly would be the worst case scenario. The best maybe able to contain the nuclear strikes to the Middle east region and only having to deal with the contamination of the air as it circumvented the planet – and some level of a nuclear winter problem.
And all this could occur because on the Obama driven Iranian Nuclear treaty and Obama’s siding with Iran, leaving Israel on their own and playing the King maker and not the Peacemaker.
Obama will for some reason(s) continue to support the wishes of Iran. And in all the United States (federal government) will continue to support Saudi Arabia because of it’s oil.
ReplyDeleteThe gut feelings in the House of representatives and the United Sates Senate will be that the Saudi’s are the good guys and that the Iran nuclear treaty is a bad deal – but not much will be done to undo it or stop it.
Why? There is not a ‘hill of beans’ difference between the two except the Oil.
Since the last day of Ronal Reagan administration the United States has been under the control of “Internationalists” (Internationalism is a political principle which advocates a greater political or economic cooperation among nations and peoples, and whose ideological roots can be traced to both socialism and extreme liberalism) presidents.
Internationalists have no guiding political thought except to get along and what happens will happen – just so we keep making money. Obama says no boots on the ground, except as we speak the only thing that is keeping Afghanistan and Iraq from being overrun by ISIS is a band of a few very brave souls that
Well friends with a U.S. president in one camp and the U.S. Congress in another what is about to happen could be earth shattering.