Going to War against Saudi Arabia

Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman is a reformist leader who supported the Abraham Accords. He is a staunch American ally, was close to the Trump administration and is fighting against the terrorist regime in Iran.

For his efforts MBS has been targeted by the Biden administration. This reconstituted Obama administration wants to get back in bed with the ayatollahs in Iran, the better to help them to develop nuclear weapons, which they want to drop on Israel.

Dare we note that MBS is not a perfect leader. He has surely made mistakes. But, he is an American ally and has supported American policy in the region. The Biden administration, however, does not see itself as inheriting American policy. It sees itself inheriting Trump policy and it feels duty bound to undo that policy, even though its new policy will obviously damage our Saudi allies and Israel.

Jordan Schactel analyzes the issue. He begins by noting that the Biden administration wants to replace MBS. Thus, while it refuses to call for regime change in Iran, it is happy to do so in Saudi Arabia. You have to ask yourself whose side these people are on.

Schactel explains:

You may not have noticed, but the White House is already attempting to fan the flames of regime change in the Middle East, targeting a longtime U.S. ally — and a crucial force for regional stability — for the first destabilization campaign of the Biden presidency.

Less than one month into the Biden presidency, the White House has taken to attempting to forcibly restructure the power center of the Saudi monarchy. This week, the administration has been raising the volume on an interference campaign into Riyadh’s internal affairs, waging a purposeful ploy to move power away from the de facto leader of the country, Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman (MBS), who has been granted most of his elderly father’s portfolio.

Refusing to recognize the nation’s leader as its leader, mostly because he worked effectively with the Trump administration, is called "recalibration:" In other terms it's called betraying your allies in order to appease your enemies.

Psaki added in the press conference: “On Saudi Arabia I would say we’ve made clear from the beginning that we are going to recalibrate our relationship with Saudi Arabia.”

Schactel explains why this will never work:

First and foremost, MBS is the unquestioned leader of the country, and by all objective measures, he is wildly popular among Saudis for his efforts to modernize the country, increase nationalist and patriotic sentiment, bolster quality of life, and institute economic, societal, and human rights reforms.

Not only is MBS modernizing the country, he is leading a reformation within the Muslim world. Schactel neglected to point out that MBS has overseen the removal of the greater part of the anti-Semitic propaganda within the nation’s school textbooks.

So, the Biden administration prefers to side with the anti-Semitic and anti-American fanatics in Tehran. Only the most visceral hate of all things Trump and the visceral prejudice against the Jewish state can justify this policy.

Schactel continues, that, as has been noted, here and elsewhere, MBS was a major force allowing the Abraham accords to occur. Without his active work on the plan, it would not have happened:

Second, the Saudi Crown Prince has been staunchly pro-American in both his policy actions and his worldview. MBS moved mountains to allow for the success of the US-Israel-UAE-Bahrain Abraham Accords, which brought unprecedented peace agreements to the region. Without MBS, there are no peace deals between Israel, the UAE, and Bahrain. MBS also provided the glue to build a Middle East coalition against both insurgent jihadist groups like ISIS, and jihadist nation states like Iran.

What is worse, the Biden policy is doomed to failure. It is astonishingly stupid, but no one in the mainstream media will say so. Didn’t the Biden group yesterday declare itself willing to bend over for the ayatollahs, the better to rejoin the Iran nuclear deal?

Schacter concludes:

An attempt to sideline the region’s most influential power broker won’t work, making the effort an impressively stupid, unique combination of recklessness and self destructive behavior. The Saudi royal family and the country has coalesced around MBS. Deliberately undermining Saudi Arabia’s leader will only serve to weaken both the interests of the U.S. and the Saudis, to the delight of America’s enemies.

So, the Iranians are cheering. The Houthis have already celebrated the Biden administration's refusal to back the Saudis in the campaign against the pro-Iranian terrorist group by shooting more rockets into the kingdom. ISIS is rising again. And of course, the Biden administration will be doing everything in its power to remove the Middle East leader it considers the main obstacle to appeasement-- that would be Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu.