Persa Sue Thliveris

Alastair Crooke (@AWCrooke): Saudi Arabia is a pillar for one family. If it is no longer oil wealth for Wall Street and the petrodollar, there is nothing there. MBS had Trump as his security. That is gone. The reserves went into NEOM. He cannot deal with Ansar Allah because Washington runs the state. “Saudi is a pillar that rests on one person, one family—one family that gerrymandered the succession so that they can become king. Don’t forget Salman changed the succession. It’s supposed to go from brother to brother to brother, and he changed all of that. He has alienated most of the family. It rests on a very fragile pillar. Unless they are seen as the source of oil wealth for Wall Street, for the petrodollar, for Washington—if that cannot be sustained—then what is there to Saudi Arabia? Nothing. There’s nothing there beyond that. This is a huge humiliation in terms of Saudi culture. MBS had Trump on his side. This was his security. This was his basis for going ahead. And suddenly it’s clear to all the rivals, all those people in his own family. You recall the Ritz-Carlton episode, where he literally imprisoned them in a hotel and hung them upside down until all the money came out of their pockets. They were just literally humiliated. Some of them have disappeared. Some of them have been humiliated. And there are the tribes that have been largely dispossessed of their income. So what’s going to happen? Well, there’s no money. The reserves that were built up. No one’s getting paid at the moment. Contracts, building sites—nothing is being paid. There is no money to pay anything. There’s no money to buy people out. There was a big reserve built up of cash, but most of that has gone on these big projects like the NEOM hotel and these other projects, and there’s none of that left. So bin Salman is on his own there, with everyone looking and wondering. This is the end of a colonial structure. The colonial structure is collapsing in the Gulf, and the Saudis are the lynchpin of that. Why doesn’t he just do a deal with the Yemenis? The answer is he’s just too embedded in the United States structures. He can’t do it. He’s always been wholly embedded with US presidents, with the US military structures, down to the last element. They run the state for him, and he just cannot do it. He cannot make a deal with the Houthis. The consequences are huge. Saudi Arabia is not selling oil. It doesn’t have money. It’s not allowed to sell its treasuries. It’s been trying to sell shares, but even its allies in the Gulf don’t want to buy them except at a huge discount, because they’re not sure that Saudi will be there as we know it tomorrow or the next day, or next month. There’s a great reluctance, even from Gulf allies, to come and help him out. We’re seeing a huge shift. All of these post-colonial states are hanging by a thread, because Saudi Arabia and its connections with Israel—and its use by Israel as an Israeli platform over many, many years—have been the pivot for the whole Gulf region. Everyone is watching that. At the same time, Iran is mobilizing a million people into these self-sacrifice battalions of a thousand people each. A million! This isn’t to defend against some expeditionary force from the United States coming and landing on the other side of the Hormuz. I don’t think that’s even possible. I don’t think it’s likely to happen. I don’t think they can go; where would they launch from? How would they arrive? What would be the transport? Who would supply them? How would they fight? What would be the purpose of it? I think in Washington and the Pentagon, everyone came to the conclusion to pursue this, to go on with war against the Houthis, who have effectively won against Saudi Arabia. It seems pointless and would end badly, end much worse, because it might widen and become a much wider regional war involving Iraq. If I were Bahrain or Kuwait seeing the Iranians mobilizing a million men, I would be very frightened indeed. I’m sure they are. This was the bedrock of Israeli policy, the big gamble: to isolate, defame and undermine Iran and to base everything on the Gulf states and Saudi Arabia as the means to assimilate itself into the Middle East—into the region. Now that is visibly shaking before their eyes. Inflation is everywhere. It has gone global. The crisis that was coming has come. It’s arrived. Inflation everywhere is going up because everything moves by diesel in Europe and in America. That’s the delivery system. The trains, often the boats, survive on diesel. So everything is going up. Prices are going up everywhere. Airfares are going up.” The City built the Gulf on oil, garrisons, and a dollar ledger. The physical economy is sending the bill.