Saturday, October 13, 2012

Fear and loathing in the Kingdom

Turkey's Prime Minister Erdogan isn't the only one getting a little antsy about where the great Syrian adventure might be heading.

UN/Arab League special envoy Lakhdar Brahimi paid a visit to the Saudi's last week. It's hard to know the extent to which the House of Saud is driving the Syria debacle. It is widely acknowledged that they have been ponying up the money to fund the insurrection, along with Qatar, but to what extent are they committed to the idea of regime change in Syria?

Interestingly, there was no mention in Saudi media of Bandar bin Sultan being part of the meetings.

Where is Bandar?

But Bandar or no Bandar, at this point the Saudis must be asking just how long they are expected to fund this "revolution".

They would have had the same assurances from the same authoritative sources that Assad couldn't last more than a few months. Bearing in mind that those are more or less the same authoritative voices who talked us into the Iraq war and the quagmire in Afghanistan, it's not hard to see why there might be a few Royals starting to sweat.

The Saudis could be using that money to forestall rebellion among their own Shiite population.

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