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Saudi Arabia Wants to Fight Iran to the Last American

Saudi Arabia Wants to Fight Iran to the Last American
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Trita Parsi

Many observers have connected the dots and concluded that Saudi Arabia's crown prince is seeking to drag the United States into a war with Iran and Hezbollah. But that's only half the story. Looking at the recent events through a broader geopolitical lens, a much more sinister plan emerges: a Saudi plan to trap the United States in a permanent standoff with Tehran.

Saudi Arabia Wants to Fight Iran to the Last American

While most of the world has been aghast by Crown Prince Mohammad bin Salman's radical actions of this past week, his conduct is only inexplicable when viewed from the wrong lens, such as the Sunni-Shia sectarian frame or the even more absurd attempt to cast this conflict as part of a greater fight against terrorism. After all, Saudi Arabia provided the seed money for Al Qaeda and openly funded and armed Al Qaeda in Syria [Jabhat al-Nusra], according to the US government.

When seen from a geopolitical lens, however, the unlikely alliance between Zionist ‘Israel' and the Wahhabi House of Saud, their opposition to the Iran nuclear deal and their coordinated effort to ratchet up tensions in the region suddenly acquire a degree of logic.

Rather than ethnic or sectarian motivations, Saudi Arabia's ultimate aim is to drag the United States back into the Middle East in order for Washington to reestablish its military dominance and re-impose on the region an equilibrium that favors Tel Aviv and Riyadh. This, however, does not require just a war in Lebanon, but a permanent state of conflict between the United States and Iran.

‘Israel' and Saudi Arabia see this as justified return to the order that existed prior to the US invasion of Iraq. The "dual containment" policy of the Clinton administration established a balance in the region centered on ‘Israel', Saudi and Egypt, with the explicit goal of isolating and containing both Iran and Iraq. Tehran vehemently opposed the order and sought to undermine it by all means.

But despite Tehran's extensive efforts, Iran failed to bring about the collapse of the US-led order. Instead, it was the United States itself under George W. Bush that-inadvertently-brought about the end of the US-backed balance by committing the disastrous mistake of invading Iraq. The spectacular failure of this endeavor destabilized the region and weakened the United States, to a point where it no longer could restore the old order or foist a new balance upon the region.

The Middle East has ever since essentially been orderless-there is no single dominant power or combination of states that can establish and sustain a new balance. This is precisely why it is experiencing so much instability and violence: the absence of a clear order draws all major powers into a fierce competition to define the new equilibrium. This is also why ‘Israel' and Saudi Arabia have found common cause against Iran and why they have been pushing the United States to take military action against Iran.

‘Israel' 21 and Saudi Arabia were the biggest losers of the Iraq war and the collapse of Pax Americana. They enjoyed maximum security and maneuverability under the previous order, and their regional rivals were checked and contained, courtesy of American treasure and blood. Their priority for the last decade has been to compel the United States to recommit itself to the region and restore the pre-2003 balance, or at a minimum re-embrace the role as hegemon over the Middle East.

But while the United States saw benefit in Middle Eastern hegemony twenty years ago, American, ‘Israeli' and Saudi interests have sharply diverged over the past two decades. Not only does the United States lack the resources to resurrect the previous balance, the benefits to US national security are increasingly in question. President Barack Obama had ordered a global audit of America's resources, commitments, challenges and opportunities early on in his presidency. The conclusion was unmistakable: the most strategically vital area for the United States in this century is East Asia. Yet, most of America's resources were committed to the Middle East in unending wars of increasingly marginal strategic significance. America needed a course correction that reversed its over-commitment in the Middle East and under-commitment in East Asia: a pivot to Asia.

Source: The National Interest, Edited by website team

 

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