Robert Parry: A Saudi-Israel Defeat on Iran Deal

[eridani]

http://readersupportednews.org/opinion2/290-139/20620-a-saudi-israel-defeat-on-iran-deal

he interim agreement restraining Iran's nuclear program represents a stern international rebuke to the new Saudi-Israeli alliance which sought to thwart the deal and maneuver the United States into another military confrontation in the Middle East.

Despite increasingly hysterical rhetoric from Saudi Arabia, Israel and their many media and political allies, the world's leading powers - the five permanent members of the United Nations Security Council plus Germany - hammered out an agreement that increases chances for a peaceful settlement with Iran. Over the next six months, Iran and the so-called "p-5-plus-1" can now try to devise a permanent framework for ensuring that Iran keeps its word about not wanting a nuclear bomb.

Surely, Saudi Arabia and Israel will not abandon their efforts to torpedo a fuller agreement - and one can expect more sabotage by members of Congress, elements of the Western news media, and countries, such as France (a disgruntled p-5-plus-1 member), angling for lucrative business deals with Saudi Arabia.

Nevertheless, this interim arrangement with Iran - on the heels of a negotiated agreement on Syria's chemical weapons arsenal (which headed off a threatened U.S. military strike last summer) - means that Saudi Arabia and Israel were blocked on two high-profile issues in which they favored a violent solution that would have dragged the U.S. military into another Mideast conflict. On both Syria and Iran, the Saudi-Israeli tandem was stopped by a big-power alliance headed by the United States and Russia, favoring diplomacy.

Thus, what we have seen over the past several months - though mostly missed by the mainstream U.S. news media - is a dramatic shift in the polarity of geopolitics, especially in the Middle East. The Saudi-Israeli alliance, with its combination of wealth and oil on the Saudi side and propaganda and lobbying on the Israeli side, has represented a new pole testing out its combined strength against the more traditional powers of Washington and Moscow.

[kelliekat44]

1. Good! These two "allies" are largely responsible directly or indirectly for loss of thousands of US

soldiers, ruination of many families, and the unending war complex of the world.

[Laelth]

2. Quite so. k&r n/t

-Laelth