The Futility Of The Sauds (Or How The US Is Getting Rich From Dead Shiite Muslims)

Because history loves to repeat itself, Saudi Arabia is again waging proxy wars against Iran. In the eighties they threw money at Sadaam to fight Iran. This worked out well, because the Soviets were supplying military hardware, and the US had the CIA meddling. Oil prices had surged and they easily had the capital to write some cheques and know that it was going towards furthering their causes. That war ended and Iran may have “won”, but it was a pyrrhic victory. Their economy and infrastructure was in shambles, and the western world had sanctioned the hell out of them. Short of their absolute destruction, this was pretty much a best case scenario for the Sauds. With Iran (and Iraq) in down and out, and the Soviet Union collapsing, they were then able to leverage their huge oil fields to become the global oil power. Then the Sauds spent the next two decades peddling their influence into all sorts nonsense and groups that the US now declares as terrorists. And no one could do anything except kiss ass, because they had the oil. Well, now we live in the era of the shale boom, and a resurgent Russia. Saudi Arabia by keeping the taps open, has lost enough global influence that he could unleash Iran without much backlash. So the Sauds are doing what they can to retain regional power. Fighting Shiites. With the war in Yemen and their meddling in Syria. However this time is different. Unlike the eighties, no one really cares about Iran. So the Sauds are alone in their wars. They are now both bankrolling and supplying the military hardware. And unlike the Russians make their own military hardware, the Sauds import everything and are paying markup prices. They are handing the US billions a year for arms and munitions. And while the US is normally super happy to sell guns to anyone, there are even a few rumblings that maybe congress shouldn’t sell weapons to a country that is using them to bomb schools and hospitals. So now the Sauds are waging multiple proxy wars with no one on their side against a country that now has the backing of Russia. While also depressing the price of oil. Waging an economic war against America, military one against Yemen, and ideological one against Iran is bleeding them dry. It will be really interesting to see what gives first over there.