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Trump: Every country must protect its oil tankers across the Gulf

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The US political system is playing a double game in the region with Israel being the sole "holy cow". As usual. There is also a war between the democrats and the republicans. The Senate is crying about blocking weapons sales to KSA (even defensive in nature such as the THAAD!) due to the democrats being the democrats. I say allow the Houthis (deliberately) to target some compound inhabited by Americans or terrorists to target them and see them (Senate) change their tune. Internal political wars are no excuse. Either you are an ally/partner or not.

Only a presidential veto will solve it which will most likely happen and it will all be "forgotten". The Houthis are not even listed on the US terrorist list despite committing terrorism and war crimes on a wide scale while screaming "death to America" and those words being part of their official slogan.

Sorry to say it but they are not a reliable "ally" at all. We should continue to try and have cordial ties with the US (business in particular where we have had a trade surplus each year for 50+ years), business, educational, scientific etc. wise but US foreign policy cannot be trusted which is also why I am happy that we have developed such close and strategic ties with China and a host of powerful countries and are working towards full independence on every field and diversifying our weapons purchases and opening new partnerships with Russia.

If you notice all the "enemies of KSA" (in the past 40 years), not even once have the US attacked them with the exception of Kuwait and that was only due to them fearing that 1 Arab country (Iraq) would control most of the oil and gas in the region potentially and expand to create 1 powerful regional Arab country. They would have attacked us as well if we tried to incorporate smaller GCC states back in 1990, say Qatar.

Neither Hezbollah, neither Houthis, neither Shia terrorist groups in Iraq let alone the Iranian Mullah regime. In fact I have no doubt in my mind that the US deep state prefers an alliance with the tiny Shias over the Sunnis (in particular Sunni Arabs) who would be a totally different beast to go up against in a worst case scenario.

Not even going to talk about the whole Qatar affair. The US has the largest military base in Qatar in the region yet cannot prevent tiny Qatar from cozying up to the Mullah's. their supposed "archenemies" in the region. A joke that nobody believes in.

No ally is perfect, neither is KSA a perfect ally for the US or US interests (far from it) but the leadership would do well not to be blinded by the US and I think that recent years events in the region have woken even the biggest ignorants up.

Unfortunately Arabs and Muslims are their own biggest enemies and instead of uniting, people (within their own countries) are conspiring against each other. You have "Egyptians" sitting in Qatar or Turkey and openly wishing for Egypt's destruction due to politics. Sellouts in the West barking against their countries of origin etc. to score some brownie points. Power hungry (all of them) etc. Sad state of affairs in the Muslim world and world as a whole.

The SC said:
https://twitter.com/x/status/1143130802701688836
Click to expand...
 
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@Al Watan Al Arabi

Trump administration is inadvertently setting the region up for a war. Reality is that he is not too familiar with the Middle East. They pulled out of the deal without having a plan for what comes next. And now with the campaign to reduce Iranian oil exports you would think they are ready to go down path of war, but they aren't. Trump's base is not anti-war, do not believe that. They will support him on whatever decision he makes. He does, however, feel, as in case with Europe that its not worth the return they are getting to provide allies in the Middle East with protection. Europe is different, they are dependable from a military and political standpoint , but he wanted more financial contribution out of them. Which they gave him for time being.

We Arabs on other hand are not dependable from a political standpoint as we have too any serious rifts/divisions and have not proven to the US or the world that we can be impactful in arenas like Syria, Palestine, or Iraq. Iraq is hard to sway for obvious reasons, but I feel in Palestine and Syria we could have been more impactful. And then from military point of view, we also aren't dependable as there is lack of will to use military means to counter Iran's influence in region with exception of Saudi Arabia. Egypt, Qatar, Bahrain, Kuwait, UAE and Oman do not want be involved in this regional strife. It is not in national interests of Egypt. As for the others, Oman's case is self explanatory. While UAE, Bahrain and Qatar rely on foreign protection by hosting US troops/naval assets. I feel Saudi Arabia is alone when it comes to the urgent will to counter Iran, and I feel MBS has not played his cards right when it comes to securing allies to go on offensive. He has secured their support if there is a scenario where Saudi Arabia is directly threatened in a major way, only.

Now back to the US. Pompeo and Bolton are clowns, believe me. They don't have a proper strategy either. The problem is Trump is being fed information by both sides of spectrum at home so he seems to make escalatory and deescalatory decisions simultaneously. Then he is failing to reaffirm US strategic commitment to Arab allies. And in some cases publicly putting doubts on those strategic pledges in tweets like this.

And so they are going ahead with these sanctions, but they expect the Saudi Arabia and the Gulf Arabs to bear the consequences of them? Why don't they just extend oil sanction waivers to some nations? Sooner or later , Arabs will have to deal with the consequences and tweets like this will encourage Iran and confuse US allies on whether they will come to their support or not. Israel is the only ally in the region that doesn't face any confusion or worry when it comes to US commitment to it.
 
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Falcon29 said:
@Al Watan Al Arabi

Trump administration is inadvertently setting the region up for a war. Reality is that he is not too familiar with the Middle East. They pulled out of the deal without having a plan for what comes next. And now with the campaign to reduce Iranian oil exports you would think they are ready to go down path of war, but they aren't. Trump's base is not anti-war, do not believe that. They will support him on whatever decision he makes. He does, however, feel, as in case with Europe that its not worth the return they are getting to provide allies in the Middle East with protection. Europe is different, they are dependable from a military and political standpoint , but he wanted more financial contribution out of them. Which they gave him for time being.

We Arabs on other hand are not dependable from a political standpoint as we have too any serious rifts/divisions and have not proven to the US or the world that we can be impactful in arenas like Syria, Palestine, or Iraq. Iraq is hard to sway for obvious reasons, but I feel in Palestine and Syria we could have been more impactful. And then from military point of view, we also aren't dependable as there is lack of will to use military means to counter Iran's influence in region with exception of Saudi Arabia. Egypt, Qatar, Bahrain, Kuwait, UAE and Oman do not want be involved in this regional strife. It is not in national interests of Egypt. As for the others, Oman's case is self explanatory. While UAE, Bahrain and Qatar rely on foreign protection by hosting US troops/naval assets. I feel Saudi Arabia is alone when it comes to the urgent will to counter Iran, and I feel MBS has not played his cards right when it comes to securing allies to go on offensive. He has secured their support if there is a scenario where Saudi Arabia is directly threatened in a major way, only.

Now back to the US. Pompeo and Bolton are clowns, believe me. They don't have a proper strategy either. The problem is Trump is being fed information by both sides of spectrum at home so he seems to make escalatory and deescalatory decisions simultaneously. Then he is failing to reaffirm US strategic commitment to Arab allies. And in some cases publicly putting doubts on those strategic pledges in tweets like this.

And so they are going ahead with these sanctions, but they expect the Saudi Arabia and the Gulf Arabs to bear the consequences of them? Why don't they just extend oil sanction waivers to some nations? Sooner or later , Arabs will have to deal with the consequences and tweets like this will encourage Iran and confuse US allies on whether they will come to their support or not. Israel is the only ally in the region that doesn't face any confusion or worry when it comes to US commitment to it.
Click to expand...

I don't think so. They had 40 years to attack their imaginary "archenemy" (Iranian Mullah's that pre-1979 was their closest ally even closer than Israel) even when Iran was weaker than even Syria (!) but they did nothing. Instead they supported them against Iraq (Saddam) and sold weapons to them at their worst and that was after the hostage crisis and failed operation in some Iranian desert to free them. They have done nothing against Iran's proxies in the region but indirectly or directly supported them. They destroyed Iraq that served as an bulwark (successfully) against them and turned that country into a shithole. They even allow the same Iraq to import oil, gas and energy from Iran while Iraq floods in both.

They are looking silently when Syrian Sunni Arabs are mass-murdered but their media is crying 24/7 about 10.000 civilian casualties in Yemen (over half of them direct Houthis casualties) and some "Shia nonsense" of them being mass-murdered (no such thing) similar to their propaganda of Shias in KSA (who are some of the best well-off people as people familiar with KSA on this forum can attest to, Pakistani users who lived in KSA of all ethnic and sectarian backgrounds) while I never hear them speak about the much worse oppression of Sunnis in Iran (Baloch, Arab, Kurd etc.).

The US deep state sees Arabs (being the largest Muslim ethnic group and the second largest in the world after the Han Chinese that happens to inhabit a region the size of Russia with untold riches and great strategic depth) as an enemy. It was already reflected almost 100 years ago in Hollywood representations. A legacy of the time when Arabs ruled significant parts of Europe and the Arab and Muslim was the enemy.

The Arab leaders have failed completely (so have the influential Arab public) to find solutions to relatively simple problems. This is the problem when regimes in power do not reflect the people and even present neighbors (say Morocco and Algeria) from basically integrating (closed borders and almost zero trade or interaction).

Iran cannot afford a war (that they know that they will lose) even in a position where they have little to lose due to sanctions and 40 years of mismanagement. On the other hand KSA/GCC has much more to lose since our societies, industries, economy etc. is booming and nobody will win from such a war as no party can defeat the other. Iran alone cannot defeat/could not defeat Iraq so KSA is totally out of the question. Likewise KSA cannot conquer Iran. Hence the 40 years of proxy war.

If (in a fantasy world) just the Arabian Peninsula was united (militarily, economically, manpower, politically) not even going to talk about the Arab world, Iran would be eaten as an appetizer due to being outnumbered by a ratio of 6-10 on every front starting with population, geographic size, wealth, resources etc.

The problem is mostly that we Arabs have internal conflicts, (political, wars) and that we inhabit 20+ independent states with there own policies depending on the subject. That and useless rulers (by large) who do not reflect the people in many of the Arab countries. All those conflicts need to be solved. The Houthi problem is 20 years old (armed) and has nothing to do with Iran. They just took advantage of it and they barely have any control over Houthis. Same with the Al-Assad dynasty in Syria. They existed before the Mullah's and already committed what we see of atrocious in the 1980's during the Hama uprising. Political Shia Islamism (modern) originated in Iraq. Due to Iraq being weak today the Shias (some not all) have aligned with Iran as that is the only other sole majority Shia country in the region alongside tiny Azerbaijan that plays no political role in the region and is ruled by a secular post-USSR regime where religion plays little role.

Things will not get any better before people who reflect the Arab opinion are in power regardless of ideology. Regardless of ideology all Arabs should be united against all the dangers whether they are deriving from overall the harmless Mullah's of Iran (wider picture) or Israel, West double games and most importantly within.
 
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Al Watan Al Arabi said:
The US political system is playing a double game in the region with Israel being the sole "holy cow". As usual. There is also a war between the democrats and the republicans. The Senate is crying about blocking weapons sales to KSA (even defensive in nature such as the THAAD!) due to the democrats being the democrats. I say allow the Houthis (deliberately) to target some compound inhabited by Americans or terrorists to target them and see them (Senate) change their tune. Internal political wars are no excuse. Either you are an ally/partner or not.

Only a presidential veto will solve it which will most likely happen and it will all be "forgotten". The Houthis are not even listed on the US terrorist list despite committing terrorism and war crimes on a wide scale while screaming "death to America" and those words being part of their official slogan.

Sorry to say it but they are not a reliable "ally" at all. We should continue to try and have cordial ties with the US (business in particular where we have had a trade surplus each year for 50+ years), business, educational, scientific etc. wise but US foreign policy cannot be trusted which is also why I am happy that we have developed such close and strategic ties with China and a host of powerful countries and are working towards full independence on every field and diversifying our weapons purchases and opening new partnerships with Russia.

If you notice all the "enemies of KSA" (in the past 40 years), not even once have the US attacked them with the exception of Kuwait and that was only due to them fearing that 1 Arab country (Iraq) would control most of the oil and gas in the region potentially and expand to create 1 powerful regional Arab country. They would have attacked us as well if we tried to incorporate smaller GCC states back in 1990, say Qatar.

Neither Hezbollah, neither Houthis, neither Shia terrorist groups in Iraq let alone the Iranian Mullah regime. In fact I have no doubt in my mind that the US deep state prefers an alliance with the tiny Shias over the Sunnis (in particular Sunni Arabs) who would be a totally different beast to go up against in a worst case scenario.

Not even going to talk about the whole Qatar affair. The US has the largest military base in Qatar in the region yet cannot prevent tiny Qatar from cozying up to the Mullah's. their supposed "archenemies" in the region. A joke that nobody believes in.

No ally is perfect, neither is KSA a perfect ally for the US or US interests (far from it) but the leadership would do well not to be blinded by the US and I think that recent years events in the region have woken even the biggest ignorants up.

Unfortunately Arabs and Muslims are their own biggest enemies and instead of uniting, people (within their own countries) are conspiring against each other. You have "Egyptians" sitting in Qatar or Turkey and openly wishing for Egypt's destruction due to politics. Sellouts in the West barking against their countries of origin etc. to score some brownie points. Power hungry (all of them) etc. Sad state of affairs in the Muslim world and world as a whole.
Click to expand...
I think the leadership in the Arab and Muslim world is quite aware of the US acrobatics in its foreign affairs.
This tweet in particular concerns all nations that get their OIL through the Hormuz strait, mainly China, Japan, South Korea and many others.. India for example did send 2 frigates last week to protect its Oil shipments.. Trump wants all the others to do the same..
 
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Wilhelm II said:
Some say he have high IQ but now I think he is stupid why a super power should say come on others take my power sectors!!!! A business man is good for his country economy but a nightmare for foreign policy
Click to expand...

Trump was always an idiot. Everyone knew about it. However he was most likely the lesser evil for the region then Clinton. I am not sure what the Arab rulers in power expected, expect or what their long-term thinking is. It is all really confusing. This show (comedy as I would call it) has been going on for 40 years and the only thing that I know for certain is that nobody wants a strong and united Arab world (let alone the GCC) and that they are fearful of Sunni Muslims Sunni Arabs in particular while many of them (decision makers) have a soft spot for Shias hence my examples. While every semi-independent Sunni movement (regional) is demonized. Not even going to talk about the militant ones which are no different from their Shia counterparts despite the propaganda that tells otherwise.
 
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