" Trump’s Saudi Scheme Unravels" - Alastair Crooke

 

"And, maybe MbS and Kushner thought Netanyahu spoke for Israel when he promised to be a partner in the front against Hezbollah and Iran? Was it the “grand plan” that was affirmed between Netanyahu and Trump on the day before the latter launched his United Nations broadside at Iran in September? When in fact, while any Israeli Prime Minister can wage war against the Palestinians with a relatively free hand, the same is not true where the state of Israel itself is being put at stake. No Israeli P.M. can commit to a possibly existential conflict (for Israel), without having broad support from the Israeli political and security establishment. And the Israel Establishment will only contemplate war when it is plainly in the Israeli interest, and not merely to please MbS or Mr Trump.

Ben Caspit (and other Israeli commentators) confirm that the Israeli establishment does not see war with Hezbollah, and the risk of a wider conflict, to be in the Israeli interest.

The fallout from this episode is highly significant. It has exposed that Israel presently is deterred from contemplating a war in the region (as Caspit explains). It too has underlined the hollowness of MbS ambitions to mount a “Sunni Alliance” against Iran; and it has undercut President Trump’s containment policy for Iran. For now, at least, we may expect Iran and Russia to consolidate the state in Syria, and to stabilize the northern tier. Caspit’s “war of Armageddon” may yet arrive – but not for now, perhaps."  Crooke

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An eloquent contemplation of the interaction of career Borgists (foreign policy establishment) in Washington with the crowd of enthusiastic amateurs who are DJT's true inner circle.  Kushner, Bibi and MbS thought up this idea of a "Sunni Alliance,' sold it to DJT and then went forth to re-shape the world.  My God! What an absurdity!

If Crooke is right about this cabal of dunces, the notion circulating that people like Mattis, McMaster, Tillerson, Pence are effective minders for Trump preventing the worst of his potential rogue elephant behavior is just completely wrong.  If Crooke is right, then Trump ran this little "caper" all by hisself with the help of "the fam" as Bill Murray once called it.

I would agree with Crooke that the Sunni Alliance as he formulates it was always silly.

1.  Saudi Arabia is worthless as military muscle. Yemen! Yemen! Yemen!  Had anyone in the cabal noticed that the Saudis have fallen on their asses in Yemen?  To launch Saudi and other Gulfie legions at Iran would be precisely like throwing eggs at a brick wall. 

2.  As Crooke writes, Israel really IS deterred by Hizbullah's potentially murderous rocket and missile fire from hardened positions in Lebanon.  the Israelis are far too smart not to know that.  Their ambition in this cabal was likely to find others to do their fighting for them while they made threatening noises.   pl  

https://consortiumnews.com/2017/11/17/trumps-saudi-scheme-unravels/

Comments

[Anna]

Judging by the results, as outlined by "Bandolero" above, it is better that the two stayed in and continue being "handled."

[Anna]

Judging by the results, as outlined by "Bandolero" above, it is better that the two stayed in and continue being "handled."

[mariner]

'Saudi Arabia is worthless as military muscle'

Not the only metric.

The changes in Saudi are already being felt across Asia. In the other hotspot so studiously ignored by US media commentators - Mindanao - one of the obstacles to successful implementation of the Bangsamoro Basic Law [BBL] has been the resistance of the Sulu based MNLF to uniting with the MILF in a single federal State, holding out for their own. Saudi, Turkey and Malaysia are members of the Contact Group facilitating talks. Since the Marawi disaster more urgency has been injected into the peace process and greater Saudi assistance to convince the MNLF can now be expected. The US and Australia are funding this 'convergence' process. Crooke understandably focuses on his particular region of expertise but the great majority of Muslims in Asia are Sunni and while the intractable problems of the ME may remain so, the changes in Saudi hold great hope for developments in Asia. Where the money is.

[blowback]

It looks like JINSA has infected the British Embassy in Washington.

Also height of hypocrisy for Russia or Assad to claim credit for defeat of Da'esh. Vast majority of effort conducted by Syrians working with Global Coalition.

https://twitter.com/BenJarlath/status/933396652773298181
Is it something in the water?

[Babak Makkinejad]

Another fantasy.
When do you people ever learn that outside of Turkey and Iran there in positive direction for Muslims?

[blowback]

Over six years and almost $200 billion spent by Gulfies and perhaps US and Assad is more firmly entrenched than ever. If Washington really wanted regime change in Damascus, there'd be no UNSC resolution, the build up and SEAD would take six months without Russia disrupting it and the total cost to the United States would be several trillion dollars. Trump is not going to repeat G W Bush's errors.

As for the KSA plot, I think Trump's apparent support may have been a marketing tool to flog the KSA and UAE lots of military kit that they can't use. I think to plot was designed to provoke Hezbollah to launch rockets at Israel in response to KSA/UAE air strikes flown through Israeli airspace in the hope that the United States and NATO would intervene on the Israeli/KSA/UAE side and obliterate Hezbollah. This depended on the Lebanese government not asking for help from other countries such as Russia, but the failure of the Hariri resignation means this failed. End of plot but through no fault of Trump so KSA and UAE still on hook for defence contracts signed with Trump.

I think that part of the spat with Qatar was because Qatar didn't want to be involved in the KSA plot and I have speculated that Qatar told the Iranians who told the Lebanese but it wouldn't surprise me if Trump told the Russians who told the Iranians who told the Lebanese. Trump's tweets and posturing may not be very presidential but they're perfect as distractions.

[Peter AU]

From what I read, US troop numbers in middle east have recently increased rather than decreased, this at a time when the last scraps of ISIS held territory are being cleared and not by US troops. In not re certifying the Iran Nuke agreement, he has left it up to congress to decide what to do about it... at a time when they are being swamped with anti Iran propaganda.

"Maybe believing that is equivalent to believing in the tooth fairy, but based on his rhetoric in the primaries I believe it."
From his book, Trump believes that to be successful you must deliver. But two seemingly contradictory promises - to make America great again - and to pull the US out of foreign entanglements.
From what I read of that tweet, and the propaganda buildup for war with Iran, I take it he thinks that leaving the job half done, now that it has been started, was worse for the US than getting it finished quickly and then get out.
But then, IF he is capable of deceiving the neo-cons, then he will also, by necessity, be deceiving observers.
Over here, when I have voted, I always vote for the outsider rather than for one side of the double headed coin and have always been disappointed.
Trump's recent play in Saudi Arabia to do an inside run around the neo-cons makes him worth watching for a bit.

[b]

The better, little known expression is "stratocracy" - a military junta which nominally follows the rule of law.

Kelly, McMaster and Mattis (and more generals in the NSC and cabinet) are running "national security". They watch over Trump, control what he gets to see and what not. They feed him their filtered "reality". Trump is just the figurehead.

(It may be different on the economic side though Trumps hyping of military sales and the enormous increase of the military budget and purchase also point to an influential role of the generals.)

[Bandit]

It should be clear by now that all the bs coming from the MSM and borgist sycophants is strictly for the deliberately ignorant masses. I don't think they believe a word of what they say or write. When you read something as deliberately false as this quotation, you know it is not aimed at the well-informed segment of the population.

The borgist apologists and war-monger neocons will not stray even a little from the established narrative. They are as perceptive as most of us as to the reality on the ground. However, their agenda is to mount a massive disinformation campaign in the hope of distracting the masses in order to subvert the factual reality.

They are far from living in a "parallel universe". They are quite aware of the lies they put forth. It is the suckers who read and believe the shit they write that are the ones destined to live in a parallel universe so completely detached from reality.

[turcopolier]

b

"Trump is just the figurehead." I think that is untrue. pl

[Babak Makkinejad]

You cannot compare Nixon, a strategist of high caliber, with Trump. Trump doing a Nixon in China thing is inconcievable to me.
You saw him in action at UN; first publicly berating Iranian leaders and then seeking a secret audience with no prior set agenda or preparation, no planning at ministerial levels or any other such necessary steps.

[ex-PFC Chuck]

Alastair Crooke has written a supplement to the Consortium News piece on which this post is based. It is embedded in a post put up yesterday afternoon at Raul Ilargi Meijer's place, The Automatic Earth. Ilargi implies that he found it at Crooke's Conflict Forum site but I've so far been unable to find one there. You can read the whole thing here after Ilargi's lengthy introductory commentary. Below are a couple of the money paragraphs:

. . . what we have here is the intersection of geo-politics with geo-finance. Both are now wholly contingent on the ‘saving of appearances’. One co-constitutes the other. One is the saving of appearance that America is not losing ‘respect’, or being disdained in the international arena, as it attenuates its global commitments (that is the Thucydides ‘syndrome’), and two, saving the appearance that ‘recovery’ and ‘prosperity for all’, are continuing to unfold nicely in the economy (the world converging globally to western values ‘syndrome’).

Both these aspects to the dissolution of today’s western ‘modernity’ are intertwined, and co-constituting, and therefore likely to march in tandem – at least for now: western ‘prosperity’ underwrites the global order, and the global order underwrites American ‘prosperity’. The American and European élites therefore find themselves painted into a globalised ‘rules-based order’ corner, geo-politically, just as the Central Bankers have been backed into their QE, low or negative interest rate corner – from which there is no easy escape, either.

[Willybilly]

What’s very interesting about the so-called Riyadh gathering of 40 defense ministers this Sunday is that not one word was uttered about Iran, Hizbullah or the Shi’a crescent....... :)

[Willybilly]

You’re quite right in your analysis, but the Izzies have other ideas as well, for using Saudi territory, airbases and positioning supplies as an eventual springboard against Iran proper..... They can still dream, can’t they?

[English Outsider]

You are right. I think one should be aware that the path has been very difficult for the Jews. I would be grateful for an explanation of why that means it has to be very difficult for the Palestinians.

[ex-PFC Chuck]

Here's the link:
https://www.theautomaticearth.com/2017/11/the-end-of-dreams-and-the-saving-of-appearances/

[Babak Makkinejad]

Mostly for European Jews and only after the anti-clericalism of the Enlightenment left them with no religious protection.
There is a huge chasm between all sorts of sundry discrimination and humiliation and Shoah.

[turcopolier]

Sid Finster

Trump is running the show whenever he chooses to direct an outcome. pl

[LondonBob]

Really though Crooke is still guessing, did MbS have Trump's sign off, did he have just Kushner's?

http://www.theamericanconservative.com/articles/kushner-kept-tillerson-in-the-dark-on-saudi-lebanon-move/

There has been little in the way of follow through.