“The Iranian nuclear program has brought Saudi Arabia and Israel closer, according to a report in Israeli media. Saudi Arabia has now offered to let Israeli fighter jets use its airspace to attack Iran when necessary, in exchange for Israel making progress in the peace talks with Palestinians, a senior European source told Israeli Channel 2. “The Saudi authorities are completely coordinated with Israel on all matters related to Iran,” the European official in Brussels said. Using Saudi airspace means that Israeli Forces could strike Tehran at a shorter distance, without having to fly around the Persian Gulf…………….”

This from the official Iranian Al-Alam network, but it has been covered by other media as well. There is nothing really new here. Speculation about this has been ongoing since before the Wikileaks disclosures exposed the true ‘head of the snake‘. That was when they urged the Bush administration to wage a war of choice against another Muslim country. The Saudis have already prepared their people, the Wahhabi majority of them, for it. 

Their well-financed political propaganda has portrayed the Iranian ruling mullahs as Zoroastrian Sassanids bent on rebuilding the old Persian Empire. Their equally vast sectarian propaganda has succeeded in dividing Muslims and shifting the Arab uprisings of 2011 into futile sectarian conflicts, from Syria to Bahrain, with some poisonous influences in Egypt and Libya and Yemen as well. They have prepared their people well for it, as well as others on the Persian Gulf. The Iranians may also have helped push this narrative along through their intervention in the Syrian war and possibly in Yemen.

So, yes, it is possible and maybe even likely these days. There is always the prospect of implausible denial, and not for the first time. Yet they must also worry that the supremely self-absorbed Israelis will leave them ‘holding the bag’. They have seen the Iran-Iraq war, how it lasted eight years (The Economist initially stupidly predicted it would last only weeks). How it eventually led to what Americans call the First Persian Gulf War of 1990-91. They must have, since they also colluded in that long war through  money, weapons, diplomacy, and oil policy. They could have lost their kingdom and the two Holy Shrines, but for timely American intervention.

They have been flirting with the Israelis for many years now, these doctrinally anti-Semitic princes and their palace clerics. But they have never dared ‘going all the way‘, something we used to obsess with as young students. Now they may feel that they are ready to close the deal and ‘go all the way’.

(FYI: the Israelis will never dare wage that kind of foolish war without forcing some American participation. Even the spineless U.S. Congress would be upset, if only about the bill for the war).

Cheers

Mohammed Haider Ghuloum                          
[email protected]