The tangle of conflicts in the Middle East is confusing to many Americans who lack some key facts, such as the transformational Israeli-Saudi alliance that is dragging the American people into a sectarian religious war dating back 1,300 years, as Robert Parry explains, on consortiumnews.com:
Few Americans seem to comprehend what is unfolding in the Middle East – with the latest conflict involving Saudi airstrikes against the Houthi rebels who now control Yemen’s capital of Sanaa. In this swirl of regional wars, it’s often not clear where the U.S. government stands and how American interests are affected.
The reason for the confusion is simple: Many key pundits who get to explain what’s going on from the op-ed pages of the major U.S. newspapers and from the TV talk shows prefer that the American people don’t fully grasp what’s happening. Otherwise, the people might realize the dangers ahead and demand substantial changes in U.S. government policies.
But a few basic points can help decipher the confusion: Perhaps the most important is that – although it’s rarely acknowledged in the mainstream U.S. media – Israel is now allied with Saudi Arabia and other Sunni Persian Gulf states, which are, in turn, supporting Sunni militants in Al-Qaeda and the Islamic State. Sometimes directly, sometimes indirectly, this Israel-Saudi bloc sustains Al-Qaeda and, to a somewhat lesser degree, the Islamic State.
The U.S. news media is loath to note these strange Israeli bedfellows, but there’s a twisted logic to the Israeli-Saudi connection. Both Israel and the Saudi bloc have identified Shiite-ruled Iran as their chief regional adversary and thus are supporting proxy wars against perceived Iranian allies in Syria and now Yemen. The Syrian government and the Houthi rebels in Yemen are led by adherents to offshoots of Shiite Islam, so they are the “enemy.”
https://consortiumnews.com/2015/03/30/deciphering-the-mideast-chaos/
To continue reading: Deciphering the Mideast Chaos
There is nothing new or recent about the Iran v. Saudi Arabia conflict. For centuries the disputes and wars between Shiete Moslem v. Sunni Moslem has been ongoing. The fact that Americans are just learning about this ancient conflict, does not mean that Israel and Saudi Arabia are now partners or have similar interests. Saudi Arabia has been undermining the existence of Israel since its birth. Iran has been undermining Israel since the Islamic revolution of 1979 in Iran.
The battle over the leadership of Islam and the Islamic world has been ongoing and is entering into new chapters with Iranian regime’s interventions in Syria, Gaza and now Yemen. Saudis and their fellow Sunnis will counter the Iranian efforts. Who will win and what will come out of this conflict is anyone’s guess, but Americans and their journalists are missing the fact that while the leaders of Iran and Saudi Arabia are engaged in such battles, that it is the common folk who are paying the price of this absurd conflict between different factions of the same religion. Instead of military intervention, U.S. leaders and their media could do more good by exposing the absurdity of this conflict and the needless bloodshed of innocent folks dragged into war after war in the name of “religion” . . . .
Based on the history you cite, “Who will win and what will come out of this conflict” will most probably be no winners, but just a continuation of this centuries old conflict, with ordinary people harmed the most. There will be more blundering interventions by the US into this region it has never taken the trouble to understand. I am not as dismissive as you of Mr. Parry’s contention that Israel and Saudi Arabia are at least tacitly, for now, on the same side of the Sunni-Shiite conflict. I think shifting alliances for temporary advantage has been a hallmark of the region, and Israel and Saudi Arabia may find it to their advantage to be bedfellows, for the time being, although in the past they have clearly been at odds.