On the aspiring young dictator Prince Muhammad Bin Salman of Saudi Arabia...

[Allen17]

"Both MBS, as he has come to be known, and his elderly father King Salman, the BND analysts wrote, want Saudi Arabia to be seen as “the leader of the Arab world” with a foreign policy built on “a strong military component.” Yet the memo also pointed out that the consolidation of so much power in a single young prince’s hands “harbors a latent risk that in seeking to establish himself in the line of succession in his father’s lifetime, he may overreach,” adding: “Relations with friendly and above all allied countries in the region could be overstretched.”

And so it has come to pass. In fact, despite being repudiated at the time by a German government more concerned about diplomatic and commercial relations with Riyadh, the BND warning turned out to be eerily prophetic.

Consider recent events in the Gulf. Can you get more “impulsive” than rounding up 11 fellow princes, including one of the world’s richest men and the commander of the national guard, and holding them at the Ritz Carlton on charges of corruption? Especially since MBS, who ordered the arrests only a few hours after his father set up an anti-corruption committee and put him in charge of it, isn’t exactly a paragon of probity and transparency himself. Where, for example, did the crown prince find more than $500 million to spend on a luxury yacht while vacationing in the south of France last year?

Is it anything other than “interventionist” to force the resignation of the prime minister of Lebanon on a visit to your country and then put him under a form of house arrest (though the hapless Saad Hariri, a long-standing client of Riyadh, publicly claims otherwise and says he is heading back to Beirut this week)? Or to also detain the president of Yemen? According to an investigation by the Associated Press,“Saudi Arabia has barred Yemen’s president, along with his sons, ministers and military officials, from returning home for months.”

That the crown prince of Saudi Arabia can, essentially, kidnap the elected leaders of not one but two Middle Eastern countries — and, incidentally, put the leading Saudi royal he replaced as crown prince under palace arrest — speaks volumes about not just his “impulsive intervention policy” but the shameless pass he gets from Western governments for such rogue behavior. Imagine the reaction from the international community if Iran had, say, detained the Iraqi prime minister on Iranian soil after forcing him to resign on Iranian television. Yet President Donald Trump has gone out of his way to tweet his support for the crown prince and his father: “I have great confidence in King Salman and the Crown Prince of Saudi Arabia, they know exactly what they are doing.”

The more sober Europeans haven’t been much better. President Emmanuel Macron of France, on a surprise visit to Riyadh last week, saluted MBS “on the opening of his country and support for a moderate Islam.”

Meanwhile, are we supposed to call the rift between the Gulf countries, instigated by the Saudis, with the support of the Emiratis, anything other than “overreach,” to quote the BND, on the part of MBS? The crown prince and his cronies had assumed that tiny, defenseless Qatar would be brought to heel within a matter of weeks, if not days. Five months on, however, the Qataris, continue to reject the long list of Saudi/UAE demands — including the closure of the Qatar-owned Al Jazeera media network — and have retreated into the warm embrace of the MBS’s key regional rivals, Iran and Turkey. Bravo, crown prince!

Then there is Yemen. More than two years after the richest country in the Middle East began bombing the poorest country in the Middle East, there is no end in sight. MBS owns this disastrous conflict — he pushed for it, defended it, escalated it. But wasn’t the recent Houthi rocket attack on Riyadh — which the crown prince called an act of “direct military aggression by the Iranian regime” — evidence of a complete failure of Saudi military strategy? Weren’t those pesky Houthi rebels supposed to have been vanquished by the Royal Saudi Air Force by now? Instead, Yemen has become the world’s worst humanitarian crisis — which MBS, as defense minister, shamefully intensified with his order last week to blockade all entry points into the country."

https://theintercept.com/2017/11/13/sau ... alman-mbs/

Not that I'm shedding any tears over the people detained in KSA (especially the Crown Prince's comically corrupt rich relatives and other powerful Saudi businessmen) but this kid has only been aggressively escalating the already disturbingly rising tensions with Iran. Oh, and he's leading the brutally terroristic Saudi destruction of Yemen.

But hey, as long as the US government and the military/intelligence/capitalist complex give him the Thumbs Up, MBS will continue his violent jihad against Yemen, Iran, and any internal dissent within the Kingdom. He's all in on toppling Assad, and has been warmer to Israel than most past Saudi leaders. And - most importantly - MB's "Vision 2030" plan to privatize state-owned resources and otherwise "diversify" the Kingdom's economy will no doubt attract Capital from all over (of which the US will lead the way in - as is tradition). All in the name of "Reform" and "Progress." That may be an old song and dance, but hey...if ya got a good thing going, why stop?

[blindpig]

The ISIS gambit has failed, due to stalwart Syria with a good bit of help from friends, and, let us not forget, having the financial rug pulled out from under it, something Trump had to do with. Cause he saw something on TV. So the Saudis step into the breach, with Israel always present, snarling, on the end of it's chain.

PS - the intercept is a libertarian rag and should be approached with skepticism even though it attracts some good reporters