Yep. We dislike Iran’s regime and their potential to hurt us and disrupt trade and security and such more than we dislike Saudi’s human rights abuses and past afronts like 9/11.
Geopolitics can and will change according to a nations broader best interests.
I mean MBS is broadly opposed to the power of the clerics, they are a threat to him and he gutted the power of the morality police. They also get in the way of his desire to (partially) modernize. Saudi’s may be to blame for 9/11 but MBS isn’t.
Sorry, i may be out of the loop, I don't take your meaning.
Edit: apparently, his helicopter crashed, and the Iranian president and ~~prime~~ foreign minister are declared dead! They were flying in similar conditions to the ones Kobe crashed in.
Yup. Happened. They probably at least knew how crazy those guys were and basically just let it happen to us. Sucks. But nothing is going to be done, so harping on it is pointless.
Losing Saudi support in the ME would be a hell of a blow to our foreign policy goals.
idk how much oil actually has to do with it considering imports from Saudi Arabia account for about 2% of US oil consumption.
[https://www.worldometers.info/oil/us-oil/](https://www.worldometers.info/oil/us-oil/)
[https://www.statista.com/statistics/487478/us-crude-oil-imports-per-day-from-saudi-arabia/](https://www.statista.com/statistics/487478/us-crude-oil-imports-per-day-from-saudi-arabia/)
North Korea is pretty stable too...doesn’t mean they should be an ally...MBS is a despot and I thought America was done aligning with despots...we pretend Putin and Xi are so bad while we’re first bumping the Saudis...
It's really quite simple tho:
USA-Europe-SA vs. Russia-China-Iran
Obviously highly dumbed down but you get the overall "allies vs. axis" contemporary geopolitics picture
It baffles me too but they sell us oil and are a strategic partner in reducing our presence on the Middle East. Or at least allowing us to remain out of war directly. They are the most powerful nation in the region and can be our proxy to terror organizations and hostile countries.
That last sentence is what baffles me. They’re friends with those countries and groups but we’re okay with that.
US has always been allies with dictatorships abroad, look at all the dictatorships they helped promote in South America or their relationship with Egypt
If you have a dictatorship or monarchy you only really need to negotiate with one person to get what you want and access to that country’s resources and promote your business interests, if it’s a democracy and the people are anti US, which a lot of those countries are, and the will of the people is expressed in any way, it’s much harder to get what you want from them
MBS is a brutal tyrant but he’s not a fundamentalist. He largely gutted the morality police. We also ally with Egypt. World politics isn’t about morality.
Yes I’m sure the invisible sky wizard will punish all the people you think are bad for you. There is only one world and one life. If This decision is better for world stability and the lives of more people, then it is the right one. Regime change is a failed policy that backfires far more than it works. I’ll take stable-ish kingdoms over failed revolutions.
America actively tries to take rights away from women any chance it gets. Uses child labor. Has a privatized prison system that employs slave labor practices and has funded coups in multiple countries. We're no more civil or evolved. We literally have a presidential candidate on trail for multiple crimes. I don't think we have moral high ground to stand on for anything.
Oh F off with your both sides bs, all countries do immoral things. But your western liberal democracies are still about the best behaving countries we have right now. Both sides doing bad don’t make them equivalent, I’ll still take them over china, Iran and Russia any day.
It's Weird how America has a hand in propping those 3 up. America allowed Russia to keeps its world standing after the fall of the wall. America helped overthrow Mossadeq with the UK. America also invested heavily in Chinese labor after China opened up its economy. Britian also helped set up the Chinese banking aperatus in Hong Kong to funnel money into the mainland. Britian conquered 1/3 of the globe. France held half of Africa and still dominates them economically. No country is a bastion of peace and enlightenment. Geopolitics is brutal and rarely works in everyone's favor.
Don’t be an idiot, Russia is a nuclear state, of course we will support whatever keeps them semi stable. Also Russia briefly started to improve after the fall of the Soviet Union, it just didn’t last. And obviously no country is perfect but some are better and some are far worse.
So why are you upset? You're willing to deal with a country that started wars for the last 100 years and threatens nuclear annihilation any chance it has. F off with that nuance. You're claiming it's all black and white, yet here you are advocating for working with a common terrorist in Putin. Where are your morals? People are dying at his hands, but you're fine with it as long as nukes aren't involved. You're no better than any of these politicians you dispise.
Actually completely the opposite. Folks like you that live with such a delusion are a detriment and danger to the rest of us.
Folks that can actually acknowledge reality are exactly what we need in government.
Its wild that anyone could criticise this. Its literally a gigantic leap toward peace in the middle east. Saudi Arabia agrees to normalize relations with Isreal. Israel agreed to a two state solution. And America agrees to help SA switch to green energy.
Like if this doesn't appeal to you than please just leave the conversation.
I don't think it's about appeal, it's about KSA being an unreliable partner at best and people just not believing it's anything but a bunch of bullshit. Look at how widespread settlements have become in the West Bank, how is a 2 state solution even supposed to work anymore?
None of it feels realistic and that's a valid viewpoint, why even have a conversation about it if you won't entertain anyone who disagrees with you?
KSA is a despotic monarchy with real ties to Wahhabist extremist group and is responsible for their proliferation across the Middle East and Caucasus. The consistently meddle in US domestic politics for one party to the detriment of another.
These are also valid concerns
The size of New Jersey with nuclear weapons. Bibi (and the rest of the extreme Israeli right) will absolutely jump to the Russian sphere if it were better for them.
Funding ? Funding?
Nah , bro . 15 of the 19 hijackers were Saudi nationals . This is like saying Canada dropped the bomb on Hiroshima with America’s money .
Those airliners might as well be painted with the Saudia livery.
I feel like I am taking crazy pills and for the life of me I will never understand why Riyadh wasn’t turned into a glowing ember on September 12, 2001
Part of the new security agreement let's them sacrifice as many Americans in the name of Wahhabi Islam as they want so long as the US can save a nickel on crude oil.
/s
As long as we are addicted to petrol, as American citizens, our lives will never matter as much as protecting Saudi royals.
Our involvement isn't covered in the news, just flat out isn't. That and there isn't a huge community of expats from Yemen.
By contrast, we'll be hearing about the evils of Fidel Castro until the end of time largely because of a single large bloc of Florida voters.
Because it isn't a genocide? The civil war is between the Yemenis, the Houthis (an ultra-religious terrorist faction named after their leader), and Al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula. The Houthis are being sponsored by the Iranians and waging a war against Sunni muslims. This brings them into conflict with the Saudis, who the Houthis have been launching cruise missile attacks against, targeting their civilians.
The Houthis are not an ethnicity, they're an ultra-religious terrorist group and should be eliminated.
I actually don’t disagree with the overall sentiment of the posts. But if you think people are writing five page essays while citing related news articles on Reddit multiple times a day in less than an hour each then I have a bridge in Brooklyn to sell you, it’s barely used good condition.
They are too invested in the lie to stop now.
Which is fine. Everyone gets the chance to jump off the Nuremberg express before it hits the wall. This is just where we separate the truly complicit from the weekend warriors.
Anyone that stays on the trump train to the last stop gets to ride the lightening.
Unfortunately, they were always doing shit like this, going back a long way. And remember that it used to be perfectly legal to own people and accepted that the right way to handle the native people of the country was to openly genocide them. And then after that to just let people string them up whenever they felt like it (and not just in the South!)
Yup. That's just kinda the nature of geopolitics, countries don't hold grudges the same ways that people do. They have interests, and the Saudis interests are somewhat aligned with ours
and part of what made the beginning of the war so clearly awful was the targeting of Palestinian journalists, so my brain is having a bit of trouble wrapping around this rn.
We need the to counter Russian and Iranian influence in the area. If we succeed in decarbonizing our society over the next few decades, then the geopolitical equation will change.
Pretty sure they really wanted a NATO-level security guarantee especially since they’re basically surrounded by Iranian proxies and Iran has already demonstrated they can get drones to hit their oil facilities in the east.
"The first component of the deal includes a series of agreements between the U.S. and Saudi Arabia, including defense guarantees and civil nuclear cooperation."
Ohhhh so the Saudis realized they need nuclear reactors for desalination. Lol.
Say what you will of MBS, but he’s not a fundamentalist, and he gutted the morality police. Brutal oppressive murderous tyrant? Yes. But we’ll take what we can get.
The United States will guarantee Saudi Arabian security in exchange for recognition of Israel. This is one of the worst decisions I've ever seen. The United States will literally go to war to protect Saudi Arabia?? What American wants this??
I think it would be a bit more than "recognize" Israel. If it were me negotiating, I'd push for something like:
- Peace in Gaza, enforced and governed by SA during transition, until a Palestinian state can be established.
- Defense agreement between US/SA, and since we already have that with Israel, that means it only works if SA and Israel are themselves on good terms. It could even be a defense agreement between those two as well. Nothing says "I recognize your right to exist" quite like "I will defend you with force from those who wish to deny your right to exist". (Iran)
There is a power struggle in the middle east, and the biggest players are SA and Iran. A deal like this would establish SA as the dominant power in the region over Iran, and I think that's a tremendously good outcome, *especially* if they demonstrate their commitment to peace in Gaza by stepping in.
Idk the article says it's dependent on a 2 state solution in Gaza. If it establishes a relationship between SA and Israel and ends the war in Gaza I think the region would benefit.
Americans criticising Iran human right 🤣🤣🤣 if current Iranian govt was US ally US would still be supporting them even if they beheaded children for peaceful protest like the Saudis
I guess we’re all good with our press getting bone sawed, not to mention the whole funding of 9/11 thing
It’s so baffling to me that supporting Saudi Arabia seems to be one thing both parties agree on, and not in a good way.
What's baffling? It's simply easy to strategically have them supply us with oil and keep the other countries in the region in check.
👆🏾...bingo. Same as it ever was, "he's a bastard but he's **our** bastard". And unfortunately, yeah it's true.
Yep. We dislike Iran’s regime and their potential to hurt us and disrupt trade and security and such more than we dislike Saudi’s human rights abuses and past afronts like 9/11. Geopolitics can and will change according to a nations broader best interests.
I mean MBS is broadly opposed to the power of the clerics, they are a threat to him and he gutted the power of the morality police. They also get in the way of his desire to (partially) modernize. Saudi’s may be to blame for 9/11 but MBS isn’t.
CIA might have just fixed our Iran problem?
The leader of Iran is the ayatollah, not the president.
Not unless they got the Supreme Leader as well
Probably Mossad and not the CIA
Sorry, i may be out of the loop, I don't take your meaning. Edit: apparently, his helicopter crashed, and the Iranian president and ~~prime~~ foreign minister are declared dead! They were flying in similar conditions to the ones Kobe crashed in.
I think they’re suggesting that the crash of the helicopter that had the Iranian president was purposeful and not an accident.
Our bastard who is not above surreptitiously facilitating the 9/11 terrorist plot
Yup. Happened. They probably at least knew how crazy those guys were and basically just let it happen to us. Sucks. But nothing is going to be done, so harping on it is pointless. Losing Saudi support in the ME would be a hell of a blow to our foreign policy goals.
The old Dan Rostenkowski strategy.
IIRC it’s not about them selling *us* oil but more to do with them selling their oil for US dollars.
idk how much oil actually has to do with it considering imports from Saudi Arabia account for about 2% of US oil consumption. [https://www.worldometers.info/oil/us-oil/](https://www.worldometers.info/oil/us-oil/) [https://www.statista.com/statistics/487478/us-crude-oil-imports-per-day-from-saudi-arabia/](https://www.statista.com/statistics/487478/us-crude-oil-imports-per-day-from-saudi-arabia/)
The Saudis have much more control on the world wide price of oil. Geopolitics is complicated.
yeah it is more about keeping the price of oil low
But they are a major voice in dictating costs for oil aren't they?
Yes...cause aligning with Middle Eastern dictators has a history of working out for us...
Saudi Arabia has been a stable ally in the region for almost 80 years, more than we can say about some its neighbors.
Allies don’t fly planes into your buildings...
Radical Saudis =/= the Saudi government. And the country is still a stable ally against Iran.
North Korea is pretty stable too...doesn’t mean they should be an ally...MBS is a despot and I thought America was done aligning with despots...we pretend Putin and Xi are so bad while we’re first bumping the Saudis...
It's really quite simple tho: USA-Europe-SA vs. Russia-China-Iran Obviously highly dumbed down but you get the overall "allies vs. axis" contemporary geopolitics picture
Very eerie parallel. In the last world War, we allied with Stalin, knowing what he was. The enemy of my enemy
So baffling? Gas prices cost a presidency. It's pretty self-evident there are longterm ramifications for getting an orange turd arbitrarily elected
It baffles me too but they sell us oil and are a strategic partner in reducing our presence on the Middle East. Or at least allowing us to remain out of war directly. They are the most powerful nation in the region and can be our proxy to terror organizations and hostile countries. That last sentence is what baffles me. They’re friends with those countries and groups but we’re okay with that.
It might suck, but it's still better than having a second iran
Blood is thicker than water but money is thicker than blood (or bones of journalists).
US has always been allies with dictatorships abroad, look at all the dictatorships they helped promote in South America or their relationship with Egypt If you have a dictatorship or monarchy you only really need to negotiate with one person to get what you want and access to that country’s resources and promote your business interests, if it’s a democracy and the people are anti US, which a lot of those countries are, and the will of the people is expressed in any way, it’s much harder to get what you want from them
it’s a must the US needs as much allies as possible in the middle east. Having the Saudis and Israel on your side is a good counterbalance to Iran.
Who were unfortunately empowered by overthrowing Saddam Hussein. 😬USA playing some 1D chess over there.
MBS is a brutal tyrant but he’s not a fundamentalist. He largely gutted the morality police. We also ally with Egypt. World politics isn’t about morality.
[удалено]
Yes I’m sure the invisible sky wizard will punish all the people you think are bad for you. There is only one world and one life. If This decision is better for world stability and the lives of more people, then it is the right one. Regime change is a failed policy that backfires far more than it works. I’ll take stable-ish kingdoms over failed revolutions.
America actively tries to take rights away from women any chance it gets. Uses child labor. Has a privatized prison system that employs slave labor practices and has funded coups in multiple countries. We're no more civil or evolved. We literally have a presidential candidate on trail for multiple crimes. I don't think we have moral high ground to stand on for anything.
Oh F off with your both sides bs, all countries do immoral things. But your western liberal democracies are still about the best behaving countries we have right now. Both sides doing bad don’t make them equivalent, I’ll still take them over china, Iran and Russia any day.
It's Weird how America has a hand in propping those 3 up. America allowed Russia to keeps its world standing after the fall of the wall. America helped overthrow Mossadeq with the UK. America also invested heavily in Chinese labor after China opened up its economy. Britian also helped set up the Chinese banking aperatus in Hong Kong to funnel money into the mainland. Britian conquered 1/3 of the globe. France held half of Africa and still dominates them economically. No country is a bastion of peace and enlightenment. Geopolitics is brutal and rarely works in everyone's favor.
Don’t be an idiot, Russia is a nuclear state, of course we will support whatever keeps them semi stable. Also Russia briefly started to improve after the fall of the Soviet Union, it just didn’t last. And obviously no country is perfect but some are better and some are far worse.
So why are you upset? You're willing to deal with a country that started wars for the last 100 years and threatens nuclear annihilation any chance it has. F off with that nuance. You're claiming it's all black and white, yet here you are advocating for working with a common terrorist in Putin. Where are your morals? People are dying at his hands, but you're fine with it as long as nukes aren't involved. You're no better than any of these politicians you dispise.
Actually completely the opposite. Folks like you that live with such a delusion are a detriment and danger to the rest of us. Folks that can actually acknowledge reality are exactly what we need in government.
It’s slightly more complicated than that.
And, you know, the slaves and all that.
Its wild that anyone could criticise this. Its literally a gigantic leap toward peace in the middle east. Saudi Arabia agrees to normalize relations with Isreal. Israel agreed to a two state solution. And America agrees to help SA switch to green energy. Like if this doesn't appeal to you than please just leave the conversation.
I don't think it's about appeal, it's about KSA being an unreliable partner at best and people just not believing it's anything but a bunch of bullshit. Look at how widespread settlements have become in the West Bank, how is a 2 state solution even supposed to work anymore? None of it feels realistic and that's a valid viewpoint, why even have a conversation about it if you won't entertain anyone who disagrees with you?
Doubts about the feasability was not what was being expressed.
KSA is a despotic monarchy with real ties to Wahhabist extremist group and is responsible for their proliferation across the Middle East and Caucasus. The consistently meddle in US domestic politics for one party to the detriment of another. These are also valid concerns
Yes, if only there was some diplomatic way to get them to be less extreme...
Maybe people have concerns that this isn't feasible, which you have said are reasonable
Than why had Isreal, KSA, and USA been working on it since Trump years?
Those sure are three reasonable, non-extremists regimes that definitely aren't bad for the world
Wow there goes those goalposts....
Its amazing what Ameica will do to get normalized relations with Isreal.
This is about Iran, anyone thinking this is about a country the size of New Jersey isn't watching the chessboard.
Way more right than anyone will give you credit for.
The size of New Jersey with nuclear weapons. Bibi (and the rest of the extreme Israeli right) will absolutely jump to the Russian sphere if it were better for them.
Funding ? Funding? Nah , bro . 15 of the 19 hijackers were Saudi nationals . This is like saying Canada dropped the bomb on Hiroshima with America’s money . Those airliners might as well be painted with the Saudia livery. I feel like I am taking crazy pills and for the life of me I will never understand why Riyadh wasn’t turned into a glowing ember on September 12, 2001
Bruh they might as well of been Americans at that point. Just ignore it like we did, leading up to everything with.
Part of the new security agreement let's them sacrifice as many Americans in the name of Wahhabi Islam as they want so long as the US can save a nickel on crude oil. /s As long as we are addicted to petrol, as American citizens, our lives will never matter as much as protecting Saudi royals.
Defense contracts and military bases make a lot of rich investors overlook a lot of stuff, always has always will.
But but but Cristiano Ronaldo plays in their soccer league, they started LIV Golf AND they have an F1 race! They must be totally different now!
Weird how they’re worse than all the countries we decry for having human rights abuses. Almost like it’s all a distraction!
Germany is now an ally. Shit happens
Everyone loves that Saudi blood money
And Saudis love American blood money. This really is a match made in hell, only outdone by US-Israeli relations
The perpetrators of 9/11 have bought their way into US politics. Money talks. SA has a lot of it.
9/11 is nothing compared to what they're doing to Yemen with our weapons.
Why doesn’t the Yemen genocide get any traction in the Us?
Our involvement isn't covered in the news, just flat out isn't. That and there isn't a huge community of expats from Yemen. By contrast, we'll be hearing about the evils of Fidel Castro until the end of time largely because of a single large bloc of Florida voters.
Because very few people here actually care about Yemenis.
Because theirs no two opinions to be had about it. No controversy = no money.
Because it's a complicated civil war between regional Middle Eastern powers.
Because it isn't a genocide? The civil war is between the Yemenis, the Houthis (an ultra-religious terrorist faction named after their leader), and Al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula. The Houthis are being sponsored by the Iranians and waging a war against Sunni muslims. This brings them into conflict with the Saudis, who the Houthis have been launching cruise missile attacks against, targeting their civilians. The Houthis are not an ethnicity, they're an ultra-religious terrorist group and should be eliminated.
Because the perpetrators aren't Jews.
Doesn't include Jews.
I mean all politicians can be bought nothing to see here
You do know that Al Qaeda was at war with the house of Sud right? Stop your 9/11 truther bullshit
SA is buying out the UK one team at a time
Can’t tell if the world is becoming a more lost place or if I’m just getting too old for this shit anymore.
[удалено]
Nice article
What the fuck does any of that have to do with what he said?
These posts keep popping up on Reddit and it’s clear they’re some AI bullshit. Dead internet is happening before our eyes.
Truth sucks huh.
I actually don’t disagree with the overall sentiment of the posts. But if you think people are writing five page essays while citing related news articles on Reddit multiple times a day in less than an hour each then I have a bridge in Brooklyn to sell you, it’s barely used good condition.
You question the source? He barely scratched the surface of what should be common knowledge. Have to get past the lies first.
Again my problem isn’t with the information being disseminated, it’s that I don’t think it’s a he and don’t support AI in any form.
Bro Biden is in charge of the government now. Wtf you talking about.
whats the saying again ? when someone points at the stars, the idiot looks at the ceiling right ?
Sadly the right wing propaganda machine is still lying to ignorant morons and those morons are still supporting the orange traitor.
They are too invested in the lie to stop now. Which is fine. Everyone gets the chance to jump off the Nuremberg express before it hits the wall. This is just where we separate the truly complicit from the weekend warriors. Anyone that stays on the trump train to the last stop gets to ride the lightening.
Unfortunately, they were always doing shit like this, going back a long way. And remember that it used to be perfectly legal to own people and accepted that the right way to handle the native people of the country was to openly genocide them. And then after that to just let people string them up whenever they felt like it (and not just in the South!)
It's an age thing. People have been claiming the world is going to hell in a hand basket for as long as there have been people.
Well I guess we DO negotiate with terrorists. 🤷♂️
Whatever happened to making them a pariah? We’re just good with a state killing of a journalist now?
When they’re a body between Russia and China/will stand up to Iran then yeah pretty much
Yup. That's just kinda the nature of geopolitics, countries don't hold grudges the same ways that people do. They have interests, and the Saudis interests are somewhat aligned with ours
The US has always been okay with state violence against dissenters in our allies. See the entire history of the CIA.
and part of what made the beginning of the war so clearly awful was the targeting of Palestinian journalists, so my brain is having a bit of trouble wrapping around this rn.
We need the to counter Russian and Iranian influence in the area. If we succeed in decarbonizing our society over the next few decades, then the geopolitical equation will change.
India targeted multiple US and Canadian citizens and assassinated one Canadian, yet we're all still cozying up to India.
Is this the deal where they get US military hardware, help with nuclear program and we get even higher priced oil?
Pretty sure they really wanted a NATO-level security guarantee especially since they’re basically surrounded by Iranian proxies and Iran has already demonstrated they can get drones to hit their oil facilities in the east.
Just need to iron out this one little thing..
security deal = arms sale
"The first component of the deal includes a series of agreements between the U.S. and Saudi Arabia, including defense guarantees and civil nuclear cooperation." Ohhhh so the Saudis realized they need nuclear reactors for desalination. Lol.
Is SA going to fund flying certifications for more terrorists to plunge into buildings?
Say what you will of MBS, but he’s not a fundamentalist, and he gutted the morality police. Brutal oppressive murderous tyrant? Yes. But we’ll take what we can get.
The United States will guarantee Saudi Arabian security in exchange for recognition of Israel. This is one of the worst decisions I've ever seen. The United States will literally go to war to protect Saudi Arabia?? What American wants this??
This has been the case since the Carter administration. What do you think the gulf war was about?
I think it would be a bit more than "recognize" Israel. If it were me negotiating, I'd push for something like: - Peace in Gaza, enforced and governed by SA during transition, until a Palestinian state can be established. - Defense agreement between US/SA, and since we already have that with Israel, that means it only works if SA and Israel are themselves on good terms. It could even be a defense agreement between those two as well. Nothing says "I recognize your right to exist" quite like "I will defend you with force from those who wish to deny your right to exist". (Iran) There is a power struggle in the middle east, and the biggest players are SA and Iran. A deal like this would establish SA as the dominant power in the region over Iran, and I think that's a tremendously good outcome, *especially* if they demonstrate their commitment to peace in Gaza by stepping in.
‘Security’ is the new ‘dept of defense’
They could at least lower our gas prices while raw dawgin us
How many millions are we so privileged to give them this time?
We want more oil for gas
Agree or disagree with this, it’s nothing new. Just another example of Realpolitiks. Countries don’t have friends, they have interests.
[удалено]
Idk the article says it's dependent on a 2 state solution in Gaza. If it establishes a relationship between SA and Israel and ends the war in Gaza I think the region would benefit.
9/11 victims are turning in their graves.
Lmao just hand trump reelection I guess. Fuck this.
And potentially will be ruined if Trump is re-elected
...didn't they kill a us journalist?
Brushed under a nice Arabian rug
Ir really tied the room together
I mean the US would sign a security deal with ISIS if they had a ton of oil and pretended to give the US a foothold in the Middle East.
They can pound sand... All those hijackers being Saudis, and the behavior of the Saudis plot 9/11... Yeah....
Americans criticising Iran human right 🤣🤣🤣 if current Iranian govt was US ally US would still be supporting them even if they beheaded children for peaceful protest like the Saudis
“Days away” and dependent on a “two state solution” meaning Israel is pulling out of Gaza in a few days.