Well, Saudi Arabia is the center of Sunni Islam and of course Iran is the center of Shiite Islam.
The two factions have hated each other forever. It has nothing to do with current ideologies nor Israel.
The Saudis can buy any tech they don’t create themselves, from whoever will sell it, which is pretty much anyone if the price is high enough. They have zero incentive to align with the US, who after all sought to pin the Khassoggi murder on MBS. Doesn’t matter if it was true. It’s a betrayal of the relationship as it existed at that moment.
And because that pointed at MBS, that betrayal was a personal one.
Now, the Saudis certainly want Assad gone from Syria and the Russians say no. The most crushing reality in the view of the Saudis is the US did not get rid of Assad. They claimed that was a huge goal and they failed. The Saudis see this. There is no value in aligning with the US.
Hamas is Sunni, btw. It ain’t Iranian money propping them up.
“Well, Saudi Arabia is the center of Sunni Islam and of course Iran is the center of Shiite Islam......”The two factions have hated each other forever. It has nothing to do with current ideologies nor Israel.”
That is something everyone knows.
“The Saudis can buy any tech they don’t create themselves, from whoever will sell it, which is pretty much anyone if the price is high enough. They have zero incentive to align with the US, who after all sought to pin the Khassoggi murder on MBS. Doesn’t matter if it was true. It’s a betrayal of the relationship as it existed at that moment.”...And because that pointed at MBS, that betrayal was a personal one.”
It was a “betrayal” only of the American Left and its media and by a long shot not a betrayal of the American foreign policy establishment. Khassoggi was a “journalist” only by a well constructed pretense. He was actually working in sync with and for the Muslim Bortherhood, whom the Saudis see as an existential threat. KHassoggi’s writing was often targeted attacks on the Saudi leaders and policies and intended to undermine them. Certainly when the U.S. uses precise guided drones to take out an enemy in a foreign place it has no moral authority to claim a moral high ground when it comes to the fait of Khassoggi. The whole affair was a side show and it was that side show that was designed to hurt the U.S.-Saudi relationship. Biden - a tool of the Left - played into it, but “long term” it is not that big a deal.
Yes, the Saudis can buy technology whereever they want to. But nuclear technology has geopolitical implications as well. The Saudis have much more geopolitical reasons to buy that technology from the U.S. than from anyone else, and given Russia’s relationship with the Mullahs of Tehran Russia would be the last place the Saudis would buy it from.
The Saudis are Sunni, really? /sarc