Trump with orb
© Saudi Royal Palace / AFP
Many of Donald Trump's core supporters are not particularly keen on Saudi Arabia, and for very good reasons. Candidate Trump exploited this sentiment on the campaign trail, often tweeting in populist terms when it came to the barbaric absolute monarchy. As is too often the case, Donald Trump the President has taken a completely different tack. In fact, his very first foreign visit upon being inaugurated was to Saudi Arabia. This was no accident. It was a very clear and ominous statement of things to come.

Here's some of what I wrote about the visit back in June in the post, Trump's Middle East Foreign Policy is a Disaster Waiting to Happen:
The main thing we learned from Trump's grotesque, orb clutching spectacle of a visit to the 9/11-funding absolute monarchy of Saudi Arabia, was that our demented President essentially green-lighted the Saudis to do whatever the heck they want in the Middle East. Considering Saudi Arabia is effectively being run by a 30-something princeling with sociopathic tendencies, absolutely nothing good can come of this. While Obama's foreign policy in the Middle East was an unmitigated humanitarian and geopolitical disaster, it appears Trump's doing his best to one up his predecessor.
While I knew princeling Mohamed bin Salman (MBS) would do some really insane and violent stuff, the events of this past weekend exceeded even my most wildest of negative expectations. Before I get into that, I want to highlight the likely role in all of this of America's very own 30-somehting princeling with delusions of grandeur, Jared Kushner.

In order to understand what just happened, we should all be aware of a recent clandestine trip that occurred just before all the crazy regional events unfolded over the past couple of days. Specifically, Jared Kushner took an unannounced trip to Saudi Arabia.

As Politico reported on October 29:
President Donald Trump's son-in-law and senior adviser Jared Kushner returned home Saturday from an unannounced visit to Saudi Arabia - his third trip to the country this year.

Kushner left Washington, D.C., via commercial airline on Wednesday for the trip, which was not announced to the public, a White House official told POLITICO. He traveled separately from Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin, who led a delegation to Riyadh last week to focus on combating terrorist financing.

Kushner was accompanied in the region by deputy national security adviser Dina Powell and Middle East envoy Jason Greenblatt. Greenblatt continued from Saudi Arabia to Amman, Jordan; Cairo; the West Bank city of Ramallah; and Jerusalem, where he was on Sunday.

The White House official would not say who Kushner met with in Saudi Arabia. But he has cultivated a relationship with the crown prince, Mohammad Bin Salman, who, like Kushner, is in his 30s. Kushner arrived back in Washington, D.C., on Saturday night in time for a surprise birthday dinner for his wife, Ivanka Trump, at the Trump International Hotel.
The key excerpt from the above passage is the fact that Kushner and MBS appear to be besties, which doesn't bode well for peace in the region. For more on this princeling courtship, we learn the following from The Washington Post:
MBS is emboldened by strong support from President Trump and his inner circle, who see him as a kindred disrupter of the status quo - at once a wealthy tycoon and a populist insurgent. It was probably no accident that last month, Jared Kushner, Trump's senior adviser and son-in-law, made a personal visit to Riyadh. The two princes are said to have stayed up until nearly 4 a.m. several nights, swapping stories and planning strategy.
How adorable.

Now let's move on to the big event, the insane events of the past weekend. Let's start with the Saudi crown prince Mohamed bin Salman's purge of potential political enemies, which happened a little over a week after Kushner's unannounced visit. Here's a brief summary:
Saudi Arabia's Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman says he's cracking down on corruption. But the sweeping arrests of cabinet ministers and senior princes Saturday night looked to many astonished Arab observers like a bold but risky consolidation of power.

MBS, as the headstrong 32-year-old ruler is known, struck at some of the kingdom's most prominent business and political names in a new bid to gain political control and drive change in the oil kingdom. By the count of the Saudi-owned al-Arabiya news channel, the arrests included 11 princes, four ministers and several dozen others.

The list of arrestees includes Prince Miteb bin Abdullah, the son of the previous king and the head of the Saudi national guard, traditionally a locus of tribal power. "The national guard was part of the balance among the royal family. He's taken that balance out," the Saudi executive noted. "He's the goliath who can fight it all."

MBS appears to be deliberately dismantling the traditional governance system in Saudi Arabia, which involved a slow, sometimes sclerotic process of consensus within the royal family. The young prince has instead seized executive power and wielded it aggressively to push his agenda.

The roster of those arrested includes billionaire tycoons, such as Prince Alwaleed bin Talal, head of Kingdom Holding Co. and one of the most prominent Saudi global investors; Saleh Kamal and Waleed al-Ibrahim, co-founders of Middle East Broadcasting Corp., the region's first satellite channel; and Adel Fakieh, the minister of economy and planning, who until the putsch was one of MBS's key lieutenants in developing his reform program.

MBS has now shattered the leadership circle of the previous king, Abdullah, who died in 2015. In addition to Prince Miteb, MBS arrested Prince Turki bin Abdullah, another prominent son and former governor of Riyadh province. Also arrested was Khaled al-Tuwaijri, who as chief of Abdullah's royal court was a virtual prime minister. In June, MBS toppled the previous crown prince, Mohammed bin Nayef, clearing the way for him to eventually succeed his 81-year-old father, King Salman.
Unless you're being paid millions by Saudi lobbyists (like many people in D.C.), the propaganda line claiming that the purge is about battling "corruption" and modernizing the kingdom via reforms is patently obvious nonsense. What's more, the purge was only one of several dramatic events that unfolded in the region over the weekend.

For example a senior Saudi prince was killed, along with several others, in a helicopter crash on Sunday. The BBC reports:
A senior Saudi prince and seven other officials have been killed in a helicopter crash near the country's border with Yemen, state media report.

Prince Mansour bin Muqrin, the deputy governor of Asir province, was returning from an inspection tour when his aircraft came down near Abha late on Sunday, the interior ministry said.

It did not give a cause for the crash.

The incident came hours after a major purge of the kingdom's political and business leadership.

Prince Mansour was the son of Prince Muqrin bin Abdulaziz, a former intelligence chief who was crown prince between January and April 2015, when he was pushed aside by Prince Mohammed's father, King Salman, now 81.
While all the above is insane enough, there's more. Before the purge, the Prime Minister of Lebanon, Saad Hariri, announced his resignation from Saudi Arabia after being taken there. It's important to know a little history of who he is and how he attained his position.

From the Haaretz article, Is Saudi Arabia Pushing Israel Into War With Hezbollah and Iran?
Saad Hariri, who resigned Saturday as Prime Minister of Lebanon, always faced a no-win situation trying to serve in that role. His departure heralds the latest ratcheting up of tensions between Saudi Arabia and Iran playing out across the region, with significant implications for Israel.

Hariri is a good man, but not a natural political leader. His role as the leader of Lebanon's Sunni bloc was thrust upon him by the assassination of his father, Prime Minister Rafik Hariri, in 2005.

But there was another force that thrust him into that role: his Saudi patrons. Saudi Arabia had long backed the Sunnis in Lebanon's multi-sectarian political system and during the civil war. But they also provided a base and financial backing for the Hariri business empire. Hariri could not move right or left without Saudi support, nor could he rebuff their orders that he return to Lebanon as prime minister.

With sustained support from Saudi Arabia and the United States, Saad Hariri withstood these pressures for a time. But Saudi support wavered in 2010, when Prince Abdulaziz, the son of then-King Abdallah, pursued a rapprochement with Assad. When Hariri refused to play along, Hezbollah withdrew its ministers from his government, bringing it down in humiliating fashion while Hariri met with President Barack Obama in Washington in January 2011.

Knowing that history, I was frankly surprised when he returned to the premiership late last year, following a protracted government stalemate, so bad that even the Lebanese trash was not being collected. The logjam was only broken when Michel Aoun, a Christian ally of Hezbollah, ascended to the presidency.

Why would Hariri return under an even tougher set of circumstances than those that prevailed during his first term? Once again, because the Saudis made him an offer he couldn't refuse.

But this was a new breed of Saudi rulers. King Abdallah had no love for Iran, whom he described as the head of the snake spreading poison throughout the Middle East. But he picked his spots for confronting his rivals, and cut his losses in Lebanon in 2011. His successor, King Salman bin Abdulaziz al-Saud, and his son Prince Mohammed bin Salman (MBS), seem determined to contest Iran from Yemen to Syria to Lebanon. Getting their man, Hariri, back to Beirut at least gave them a player on the field.

The bigger question is whether his resignation is a sign that the Saudis withdrew their support for him once again. At first blush, that would not seem consistent with King Salman and MBS's overall desire to confront Iran's proxies on every front.

But it is plausible that the Saudis are trying to create the context for a different means of contesting Iran in Lebanon: an Israeli-Hezbollah war.

With Assad clearly having survived the challenge posed by Saudi-backed rebels, the Saudi leadership may hope to move its confrontation with Iran from Syria to Lebanon. By pulling Hariri out of his office, they may hope to ensure that Hezbollah gets stuck with the blame and responsibility for Lebanon's challenges, from caring for Syrian refugees to mopping up Al Qaida and ISIS affiliates.
Interestingly enough, an article published at Al Jazeera comes to a similar conclusion:
The resignation of Hariri, or sacking by his Saudi sponsors, should sound the alarm bells for any government that doesn't want to see another war erupt in the region.

A lot of chatter involved Israel. It's no secret that Israel has been conducting military exercises on its northern front for several months now. While Hezbollah has been busy helping prop up the Assad regime in Damascus, Tel Aviv has been developing its missile defence systems. Sooner or later, it will want to test those in real-life scenarios, as the logic would have it.

Forcing Hariri to quit the government would help Israel frame any aggression against Lebanon as an attack on Iranian proxies. With Gaza politically neutralised for now, following Hamas' handover of power to the Palestinian Authority, Israel could very well see this as an optimal time to attack. Such an attack would also provide a perfect opportunity for the West to test the new Saudi leadership's "moderate" credentials: Would it cheer Israel on?
And then there's this from The Jerusalem Post:
Saudi Arabia said on Monday that Lebanon had declared war against it because of attacks against the Kingdom by the Lebanese Shi'ite group Hezbollah.

Saudi Gulf affairs minister Thamer al-Sabhan told Al-Arabiya TV that Saad al-Hariri, who announced his resignation as Lebanon's prime minister on Saturday, had been told that acts of "aggression" by Hezbollah "were considered acts of a declaration of war against Saudi Arabia by Lebanon and by the Lebanese Party of the Devil."
Then there's this from Saudi-owned, Dubai-based Al Arabiya:
Saudi minister of Gulf affairs, Thamer al-Sabhan, said on Monday that Lebanon had declared war against Saudi Arabia because of what he described as aggression against the Kingdom by the Iran-backed group Hezbollah.

"We will treat the government of Lebanon as a government declaring war on Saudi Arabia due to the aggression of Hezbollah," he said in response to the recent decisions taken by the Lebanese government.

Al Arabiya reported that Saudi King Salman had informed the outgoing Prime Minister Saad Hariri of the details of Hezbollah's aggression against Saudi Arabia, adding that the Lebanese government should be aware of the dangers imposed by these militias.

Sabhan added that Hezbollah militias are involved in terrorist acts that threatens the Kingdom, stressing that Saudi Arabia will use all political and other means to confront what he called the "Party of Satan."

"We expect the Lebanese government to act to deter Hezbollah," he said in an interview with Al Arabiya.

Sabhan also accused Hezbollah of smuggling drugs to Saudi Arabia and training Saudi youths on terrorism.
Nothing to see here folks, move along.

Believe it or not, there's more. The following title from The New York Times says it all, Saudi Arabia Charges Iran With 'Act of War,' Raising Threat of Military Clash. Here are a few excerpts:
LONDON - Saudi Arabia charged Monday that Iran had committed "a blatant act of military aggression" by providing its Yemeni allies with a missile fired at the Saudi capital over the weekend, raising the threat of a direct military clash between the two regional heavyweights.

The accusations represent a new peak in tensions between Saudi Arabia and Iran at a time when they are already fighting proxy wars in Yemen and Syria, as well as battles for political power in Iraq and Lebanon.

The Saudi statement said the missile could be considered an "act of war" against the kingdom and triggered its right to self-defense under international law.
So much craziness happened over the weekend, today's post was mostly about summarizing it all. Tomorrow's post will detail what I think it all means.

To summarize, it's crystal clear to me that both Donald Trump and Mohamed bin Salman (MBS) are enthusiastically looking for a confrontation with Iran. MBS already has been driving Saudi foreign policy, with disastrous moves with regard to Yemen and more recently Qatar. Now that he's further consolidated power, he'll have the ability to be even more aggressive, which is likely to unleash total chaos in the region. What makes it all far more dangerous is that Donald Trump has given him a blank check.

Part 2:

Mohamed bin Salman jared kushner
Saudi Crown Prince Mohamed bin Salman and U.S. Presidential advisor Jared Jushner
In Part 1 of this series, I detailed the recent aggressive power plays initiated by 30-something Saudi princeling Mohamed bin Salman (MBS), who is effectively the absolute leader of Saudi Arabia at this time. I also highlighted how 30-something U.S. princeling Jared Kushner, son-in-law of U.S. President Donald Trump, may have been involved in MBS's scheming during an unannounced visit to Saudi Arabia a little over a week before the purge hammer dropped. Today's post will focus on what I think this means for the future of the Middle East, as well as U.S. imperial ambitions.

Before I get started, I want to make something clear. I don't think I'm Nostradamus or anything. These posts are based on the assumption that certain realities remain in place in the months and years ahead. The first is that Mohamed bin Salman's attempt to consolidate power will prove successful, at least long enough for him to make more extremely stupid mistakes. The second assumption is that Donald Trump will continue to foolishly give this princeling a blank check when it comes to whatever insane aggressions he pursues within the region.

It's perfectly clear that MBS views recent setbacks in Syria, where Saudi ISIS forces were routed by Russia and Assad, as unacceptable. As such, he's looking for another place to fight a proxy war with Iran. Never mind the fact that his war in Yemen has been a total failure and humanitarian disaster, MBS doesn't appear to be someone who lets one failure get in way of future failures. He appears to have chosen Lebanon as the place for his next chaotic adventure.

In that regard, I found a post published at Moon of Alabama extremely informative. Here's an excerpt from that piece:
Four days ago we asked: Is The "Moderate Al-Qaeda" Set To Target Hizbullah?. The implied answer in that piece was "Yes, the war is coming to Lebanon."

Today the Lebanese Prime Minister Saad Al-Hariri resigned with a statement issues from Saudi Arabia on the Saudi Arabian TV station Al Arabia (video). This is the opening shot of the war.

The Saudi-Israeli-U.S. axis will lose this war while Iran and Russia will win from it.

Earlier this week the extremely sectarian Saudi Minister for Gulf Affairs Thamer al-Sabhan had threatened Hizbullah in Lebanon and announced surprises:

Firebrand Saudi State Minister for Gulf Affairs Thamer al-Sabhan on Monday called for "toppling Hizbullah" and promised "astonishing" developments in "the coming days."
...
Referring to his Sunday tweet about the Lebanese government, the minister said: "I addressed my tweet to the government because the Party of Satan (Hizbullah) is represented in it and it is a terrorist party. The issue is not about toppling the government but rather that Hizbullah should be toppled."

"The coming developments will definitely be astonishing," al-Sabhan added.

While the fighting in Syria and Iraq was ongoing, Lebanon was kept at peace. With the wars ending Lebanon is again the place where proxy fights are carried out.

The resignation of Hariri is intended to provoke a constitutional crisis in Lebanon and to prevent new parliament elections. The further Saudi plan is likely to evolve around these elements:
  • The Trump administration will announce new sanctions against Hizbullah and against Lebanon in general.
  • The Saudi government will slip some of its al-Qaeda/ISIS proxy fighters from Syria and Iraq into Lebanon (possibly via Turkey by sea). It will finance local Lebanese terror operations.
  • There will be new assassination attempts, terror attacks and general rioting by Sunni extremist elements against Christians and Shia in Lebanon.
  • The U.S. will try to press the Lebanese army into a war against Hizbullah.
  • Israel will try to provoke and divert Hizbullah's attention by new shenanigans at the Lebanese and Syrian border. It will NOT start a war.
The plan is unlikely to succeed:
  • The Lebanese people as a whole have no interest in a new civil war.
  • The Lebanese army will not get involved on any specific side but will try to keep everyone calm.
  • Sanctions against Hizbullah will hit all of Lebanon, including Sunni interests.
  • A new Sunni prime minister will be found and installed, replacing the resigned Saudi puppet.
  • Russian and Iranian economic interests will find a new market in Lebanon. Russian companies will engage in Lebanese gas and oil extraction in the Mediterranean and replace U.S. involvement.
The miscalculated Saudi/U.S./Israeli plan against Hizbullah can be understood as a helpless tantrum after their defeat in Syria and Iraq.

In their manic attempts to push back against perceived Iranian (and Russian) influence the Saudis and the U.S. have enabled Iran (and Russia) to gain better and more secure standing that they could ever have hoped to achieve otherwise. Why the Saudis think that their new adventure in Lebanon will have a different result is beyond me.
I completely agree with the above analysis. Everything Saudi princeling MBS has attempted overseas has been an unmitigated disaster, and I expect his Lebanon plan and any that follow will end the same way. The reason this is so important to the world is Donald Trump has completely attached himself to this reckless lunatic. I've been warning about this all year, but in case you have any doubts.

When it comes to the incredible stupidity of Trump going all in with this guy, I came across two perfect paragraphs written by Daniel Larison in The American Conservative.
Trump's embrace of the Saudis has been one of the greatest blunders of his presidency to date, and today he has reaffirmed that he has profoundly bad judgment when it comes to this relationship. There is no reason to have confidence in Salman and his son after the last two and a half years, and there is certainly nothing to support the claim that they know what they are doing. The war on Yemen has become a quagmire for the Saudis and their allies and a catastrophe for the people of Yemen. Trump supports it. The campaign against Qatar has been a useless and ill-advised misadventure that is also hurting members of the Saudi-led bloc. Trump has been an enthusiastic cheerleader. The crown prince is carrying out a massive purge that will drive away foreign investment in the short term and destabilize the kingdom. Once again, Trump is only too happy to approve of anything the Saudi government does, no matter how dangerous or despicable it may be.

Considering his claims to represent American nationalists, it is laughable that Trump is one of the most obsequious sycophants of the Saudi government in the world. Nothing could be less populist or less "Jacksonian" than sucking up to a foreign despotic government in this fashion. As a candidate, Trump criticized the Saudis for taking advantage of the U.S., but since taking office he has been eager to curry favor with them no matter the cost. Thanks to their flattery earlier this year in Riyadh and Trump's own Iran obsession, he has proven to be the easiest mark the Saudis could have hoped to find. The U.S. and the entire region stand to lose a great deal from continuing to indulge one of our worst clients, and Trump will be remembered for his shameless embrace of one of the world's most awful regimes.
I'll take this a step further. I think Trump betting on MBS and his upcoming foreign policy (if you can call it that) failures, will play an instrumental role in pushing the U.S. empire into a more rapid decline accompanied by a massive loss of influence around the world. This is not a person you want to be in bed with, but Trump is a horrible judge of character and his embrace of MBS is just the latest example.

At this point I want to take my key assumptions, that MBS will retain power at least in the medium-term and Trump will give him a blank check, and extrapolate from there. Two things are crystal clear. First, MBS is willing to risk everything in order to fight a war of regional dominance against Iran. Second, Trump also wants a fight with Iran and is willing to use the exact same Iraq playbook as George W. Bush to get it started. I wrote a three part series on the topic earlier this year, which you can find here.

If we assume that's right, Lebanon appears the place MBS wants to get this fight going next, but it's unlikely to end there. He'll carry on with his lunacy until he's either deposed, or suffers monumental and terminal losses. I don't think there'll be much of a coalition of the willing in this battle either. It's likely to be the U.S., a crazy Saudi princeling and possibly Israel against the rest of the world. Specifically, I found the following passages quite instructive of how Europe is likely to respond to MBS led regional aggression.
Europeans can expect to face intensified pressure from both Riyadh and the US to assume a more hardline position against Hezbollah. The Trump administration has singled out Hezbollah for intensified targeting, and Congress recently passed a bill calling on the European Union to designate Hezbollah as a terrorist group in its entirely (Europeans currently distinguish between its sanctioned military wing and non-sanctioned political arm).

But rather than follow this lead, Europeans should veer the other way, taking measures that aim to preserve Lebanon's stability and governance structures, and to prevent wider conflagration. Iran is clearly a key source of regional instability, and Hezbollah has become increasingly assertive in Lebanon. But there is no wider strategy behind Hariri's resignation that can realistically dislodge the group's influence.
If Europe essentially tells the U.S. and Saudi to take a hike on any Iran war, it'll be clear that the U.S. empire as we know it is finished. While bankruptcy, internal cultural/economic decline and failed wars overseas are all key aspects of a failing empire, the key death knell happens when former allies (client states), start to say no. I think a more aggressive policy against Iran led by MBS and Trump (neither of whom have any credibility) will become a pariah position very quickly. And this doesn't even account for the fact that Iran is a very different beast than Afghanistan and Iraq. Those two places represented a far easier battle, yet the U.S. is still involved in a multi-decade quagmire in both (Afghanistan is now the longest war in U.S. history).

To use a term from Nassim Taleb, Iran is the definition of anti-fragile. It's been expecting a war from the U.S. for decades, and it's managed to survive this long nonetheless. Similarly, Russia is much stronger than it was a decade ago. It's survived sanctions and is likewise constantly anticipating U.S. imperial moves to crush it. In contrast, the Saudis are decadent royals who've grown fat and happy on oil revenue, while the U.S. is a declining empire barely hanging on, thanks mainly to the dollar being the world's reserve currency. Who do you think's going to win this fight?

I don't say any of this with pleasure, I'm just calling it as I see it. The U.S. empire is glutinous, corrupt and vulnerable. If Trump follows this crazy Saudi princeling into his regional vendettas, the American public will suffer greatly. I want people to understand exactly how I see the situation, so as many people as possible are not caught off guard if the scenario I outlined above occurs.

All empires die, and the U.S. is no different. What makes the current situation so dangerous is that much of the American public doesn't even accept that the country's an empire in the first place. They don't understand the incredible significance of the U.S. dollar as the world's reserve currency. Ignorance is not bliss, and the less you know the more vulnerable you'll be.

We need to inform as many people as possible about what's coming so they're not caught off guard. Empires come and go, what matters is how we respond to the turmoil. Will we evolve and discover more conscious and ethical solutions to our challenges, or will we resort to a strongman filled with false promises and an authoritarian answers? You know what I want to see.