At Riyadh summit, Saudi crown prince backs Iran, accuses Israel of genocide

[Mosby]

Saudi Arabia’s de facto ruler on Monday called on Israel to respect Iran’s sovereignty and refrain from attacking Iranian soil, while appearing to step up criticism of Jerusalem, accusing it of genocide.

Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman made the comments at a summit of Arab and Muslim leaders organized to press for the establishment of a Palestinian state, a year after the Arab League and the Organization of Islamic Cooperation held a first conference on the subject.

Mohammed told the summit that the international community should oblige Israel “to respect the sovereignty of the sisterly Islamic Republic of Iran and not to violate its lands.”

Speaking days after Americans voted to send former president Donald Trump back to the White House, Mohammed also appeared to harden the kingdom’s rhetoric against Israel, signaling that Riyadh may be moving further away from US efforts to broker a normalization deal with Jerusalem.

https://www.timesofisrael.com/at-riyadh-summit-saudi-crown-prince-backs-iran-accuses-israel-of-genocide/

So much for the Abraham Accords. It was all bullshit anyway.

You know what unites Sunni and Shia? Jew hate.

[no_hypocrisy]

1. Well, that puts him at odds with Jared.

[Mosby]

2. And the new SoS.

[moniss]

3. Saudi Arabia

could end up leading OPEC, or at least some of them, to massive production cuts and possibly embargo. While our domestic production in the US would greatly alleviate potential supply problems, so no gas lines like 1973-74, but even just a deep cut of production from the bigger Middle East OPEC nations would skyrocket the oil market and domestic fuels pricing here in the US would respond as well. It would be a fairly simple matter for gas prices to go to $6 per gallon and more in a short time.

The 1973 embargo had huge impact even though it only lasted a few months. There were deep economic impacts with the era of higher energy costs like bankruptcies, shifts of industrial production to areas with lower total operating energy costs and in transportation it caused a massive shift to energy efficient vehicles, which is good in result but extremely painful and disruptive in being brought about in this way.

But the likelihood that MBS will react to being "backstabbed" in as aggressive a manner as Faisal did when Nixon did it to him is not a certainty. MBS strikes me as someone who is going to react to things like that on a more "personal" level in response and if he felt the US President-elect had wronged him he might make reprisals against business interests and personnel.

We just don't know for sure and there are many possible responses by a snake like MBS. It depends somewhat also on any internal threats to his leadership and whether he would be seen as "weakened" if he doesn't respond in some way. That could push the severity of his response as well.

[Mosby]

4. The US has a lot of leverage with the KSA

"Operation Protective Garden", the 20 country coalition that was put together by Biden and aims to protect international shipping could be ended by Trump, and he could also stop weapon sales to the country, which are needed to deal with the Houthis.

The Houthis have vowed to keep up their attacks in the Red Sea, and we don't yet know what Trumps policies will look like. He may well be facing pressure from aids to re-adopt a tough stance on Iran and its allies, including the Houthis.

It's to be determined what expectations the GCC countries will have for Trump, Bahrain recently participated in some red sea exercises with the US navy, but other like the Saudis have distanced themselves from the Red Sea problems.

Time will tell.