Saudi Arabia General Discussion Thread: Purge Time with Finn and Jake

[🦀🎂🦀🎂]

Can anyone explain what is going on here?

The Saudis hate Muslim Brotherhood and the Quataris were big sponsors of them when they were relevant.

There's also Iran, which KSA always gets annoyed that its smaller cousins aren't sufficiently angry about (for reference: Qatar has the weird Islamist fetish that is more utopian unify the ummah than Saudis; UAE only care about money and Oman is in a strange halfway house due to geography and the fact it's brand of religion is different from bath sides).

There's also economic bickering about natural gas etc

[🦀🎂🦀🎂]

The Yemen government and the Benghazi-based alternative Libyan government are joining in on the ban.

I wonder how long this will last? Qatar is completely delendent on outside resources for everything. Wouldn't it be terrifying if this was the new West Berlin, and Iran starts airlifting in aid?

[🦀🎂🦀🎂]

I don;t think there's much risk of annexation - Qatar may be playing both sides of the game, but I highly doubt their elite will go along with that; and I don't see any justication on the Iranian side (even a flims one like Russia in Crimea).

Buy yeah, I don't think it's totally alarmist to imagine that a hot war could very quickly merge all the active and frozen conflicts of MENA into that most terrifying of all prospects - a broad conflict between Iran and its proxies and Saudi Arabia and its proxies with everybody having to take sides.

good time to be investing in fracking tbh

[🦀🎂🦀🎂]

I wonder if Kuwait and Oman will be forced to take a side? Maybe the latter will get a get out clause becaue they always seem to think they're Switzerland or something, but Kuwait caused a lot of anger amongst the KSA with it's "why are we even fighting" shtick a few months or so back. (and apparantly from what has leaked Kuwait was often labeled just as much a prodigal son as Qatar).


fwiw the US will almost certainly back KSA over Qatar, troops or no troops.

[🦀🎂🦀🎂]

X post from aad:

At a guess, I assume this is how things went down:

1) trump's team both are stereotypically as anti Iranian as one would expect, but also contain more scepticism to the Gulf and its foreign influence than was previously expected from the GOP. This is a shift not limited to trump, with anti-Saudi, Emirati and Qatari narratives becoming fairly popular in even 'mainstream' 'establishment' circles.

2) Saudi does not want to lose its cover from the west, so when trump visited it basically blamed everything on Qatar. I.e. "oh we agree with your concerns on terrorism and we are dealing with it, but you know who isn't dealing with it? Qatar". This is not a completely unfair assessment - Qatari ideological influence on the islamic world is a lot more quasi-populist, revolutionary theology than Saudi promoted salafism which theologically is more rooted in ultra-conservatism" Trump would have been happy to hear this, especially as it neatly links in with his handlers' main concern of isolating Iran.

the global western establishment will be in two minds. One the one hand, they view Qatar as a pretty malignant influence, with a lot of delusions about its own significance and far more likely to disrupt 'useful' dictators and more open about funding jihadi proxies than Saudis are. On the other, this is a very risky move, which could cause the ultimate fear - a war between Iran and KSA, which at worst could cascade and bring in the entire Muslim world or even further, draw in Russia and USA to save their respective charges. (trumps relative detente with Russia would not last IMO)

I'm fairly interested on where Erdogan and Barzani will fall in such an escalation.

[🦀🎂🦀🎂]

It's interesting that the "model" moderate Muslim country committed a genocide during my life time.

? This point makes no sense. Pointing out that Indoensian Islam has historically been less fundamentalist than Arabian Islam = defending Suharto? Not catching your drift.

[🦀🎂🦀🎂]

Nah, still not getting your point. The Indonesian invasion and occupation of Timor was on nationalistic grounds, not religious fervour. (Nationalism of course, being a far more deadly religion in the wrong hands than any of the old faiths). It's basically like saying "Christianity is soo violent because Europe invaded Africa and the U.S. invaded Vietnam" (yes, I know some people do say that, but they are foolish).

I mean, if you really want to pick holes on the moderate Indonesia thing, you'd find better evidence at the other end of the archipelago in Aceh. But when people say "Indonesia practices a more moderate form of Islam" they aren't saying Indonesia is some sort of forever peaceful place, just that religiously they are less conservative than the Arab practice. You're falling into a common trap of assuming "more secular" or "less fundamentalist" means "more liberal" or "less violent".

[🦀🎂🦀🎂]

Smart move. This will make the (even more) Islamist opposition go crazy. If the opposition goes crazier, it will force the Americans to back the current regime even more.

Geostrategically though it might be a failure, considering they always want to be considered the leader of the Islamic world or whatever. I mean, everybody knows the Arab leaders give far less of a crap about the Palestinian people than the Israeli leaders (which is already a minimal amount of crap).

And let's face it - Americans have never been above using and allying with islamists.

[🦀🎂🦀🎂]

Yeah that isn't a list that suggests the Saudis are interested in compromise. It is now far more likely than not that qatar will be expelled from GCC and become an Iranian ally.

[🦀🎂🦀🎂]

Yeah that isn't a list that suggests the Saudis are interested in compromise. It is now far more likely than not that qatar will be expelled from GCC and become an Iranian ally.

How about Saudi military occupation and integration into Saudi-Arabia?

Possible for the former, quite unlikely for the latter case. Irredentism is a big move in this day and age.

[🦀🎂🦀🎂]

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2017/sep/02/great-saudi-sell-off-bankers-lawyers-flocking-gulf

[🦀🎂🦀🎂]

http://nypost.com/2017/09/09/saudi-government-allegedly-funded-a-dry-run-for-911/

You must be logged in to read this quote.

George Bush should have invaded Saudi Arabia in 2003, not Iraq, IMO.

But Israel didn't want war with Saudi Arabia.

They weren't delighted about the war in Iraq either, iirc.

[🦀🎂🦀🎂]

Women will now be able to drive in SA as of next year https://www.nytimes.com/2017/09/26/world/middleeast/saudi-arabia-women-drive.html

Before the end of the century, women will have more rights in SA than in Israel.

What is this even supposed to mean?

It means that Beet is bored enough to try on a new outfit: the "I'm not anti-Semitic but..." look.

[🦀🎂🦀🎂]

Fun fact: the hyper gender segregation in KSA has prompted a disprortionate rate of same-sex experimentation, something that would delight the spirit of al-Wahhab surely.

A good step forward but SA is still crazy. It will take decades for them to repeal all their backwards laws. The Wikipedia page says the main reasons women couldn't drive until now were mostly so they don't interact with men outside their family.

I mean, for starters you'd have to remove the parasitic layer of royals; and once that occurs the country won't really be Saudi Arabia anymore.

I have no hope for this current "reformist" princling - the economics seem to be based on a huge privatisation splurge proving a few gazillion dollars of revenue (which will be wasted) and a few token superficial reforms to appease the West.

[🦀🎂🦀🎂]

I'm quite interested in what way Turkey will fall. Traditionally they would have gone with Saudi Arabia, and they did try and ouster Iran's puppet Assad, but recently they seem to have shown to flirt with the Iranians.

Let's hope that it doesn't come to a war and cooler heads prevail. Both countries are far too armed for their own good, and a war would no doubt be brutal and cause a horrendous regional spillover effect.

[🦀🎂🦀🎂]

The boy Prince has been splashing out lately, buying the most expensive home and the most expensive artwork in the past few months. Can't think why