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I thought Iran and Saudi Arabia always hated each other because the Saudis are Sunni Muslims and the Iranians are Shiites.
That's true. I worked in Saudi for 18 months and I wonder if the Saud family was feeling threatened and wanted an outsider diversion to rally the Saudi citizenry. If yes (and I believe that likely), they are feeling the pinch of lower oil prices and need to cut some welfare benefits but first wanted to rally the sheeple.
The Iran deal emboldened Iran so now Saudi is flexing some muscle leading to this escalation. Thanks Obama. Another president who cannot see beyond the next 3 days.
and it is 50 in Orlando today --- his fault too-- so obtuse??
The conflict is racial. Persians had three great empires over the course of thousands of years whiles Arabs ranged from being vassals to nusianaces. When the Sassanid and Roman empires virutally detroyed each other, the Arabs rose up to fill the power vaccum, toppling Persia and turning the Persia into a client state.
The Sunni-Shia split merely came because Persians intentionally chose a radical version of Islam in order to be revolutionary. It is not a perfect split as there are Arab Shias and Persians Sunnis. In truth, the racial split remains more important.
Despite this temporary reversal of fortunes, Arabs have not defeated Persians on the battlefield for a thousand years.
I am very curious as to why you think this. From my undestanding, Iran is generally considered the greatest power of the region and its not even close. Even when Iraq famously had the fourth largest army in the world, supplemented by pretty good Russian armor, they were no match for the Iranians. A quick Wiki search had John Abizaid deaclaring Iran most powerful military force of the Middle East outside of Israel. The sheer weight of the population differance and the quality of Persian troops have been pointed out.
Have the Saudis been stockpiling? Is this a result of sancitons affecting Iran's capabilites?
Iran and Iraq's war was kinda like WW 1; the difference was BOTH countries said the hell with it after about 10 years and stopped fighting each other. OTOH the US and friends took out Iraq in a few weeks both 1991 and 2003(?). IF Iran was so strong; they'd have steamrolled Iraq like we did.
Its half of the Saudi led coalition fighting in Yemen, as such it would not surprise me to see other countries join, followed by military action.
****s getting real.
IF both of us are right: thank God for fracking here in the US and Canada. With that, both countries can tell OPEC to pound sand. To be fair; I'd MUCH rather see Mexico get our oil money over OPEC as well.
Sudan: who cares? Bahrain, stuff's starting to get serious now IMHO.
Followed by other Saudi allies: Egypt, U.A.E.,Jordan, Qatar, Kuwait, Jordan, Qatar, Pakistan and Kuwait.
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