When we first heard about this story, we thought it was a joke.
Wednesday humor https://t.co/xpZd3YhIjq
— zerohedge (@zerohedge) December 29, 2016
As it turns out, it was dead serious, and as Bloomberg reports, in an attempt to cozy up with Riyadh, Oman has told Saudi Arabia – perhaps the biggest single state sponsor of terrorism, one which even Americans can now sue for its involvement in the September 11 terrorist attack – that it will join “a Saudi-led military alliance”, a sign that Iran’s closest ally in the region is ready to improve its ties with the kingdom and/or sever ties with Tehran. Oman’s ties with Saudi Arabia and its allies in the Gulf Cooperation Council have been strained because of its close relationship with Iran, the kingdom’s biggest regional rival.
But while we can understand shifting regional alliances, we – and everyone else – laughed out loud when reading that in order to show his “ideological proximity” to the Saudis, Oman’s defense minister sent a letter to Deputy Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, in which the small Gulf nation decided to join the… wait for it, Islamic Military Alliance Against Terrorism.
Amusing.
But back to the latest Gulf state entrant in the Saudi sphere of influence. As Bloomberg reports, the Saudi Prince will go to Oman in the coming weeks to pave the way for a visit by King Salman. The king’s trip would help re-establish security, military and economic cooperation.
The Sunni-ruled Saudi Arabia and Shiite-led Iran are on the opposite sides of Middle East conflicts from Syria to Yemen. The kingdom suspended ties with Iran last year after its embassy in Tehran was attacked in a protest over the execution of a prominent Shiite cleric. Other Gulf countries, except Oman, also took diplomatic steps against the Islamic Republic.
“From a political standpoint it’s a Saudi win bringing in Oman back to the GCC fold,” said Ghanem Nuseibeh, founder of London-based consulting firm Cornerstone Global Associates. “It will give Saudi greater regional influence and greater geopolitical leverage.”
Oman’s Foreign Minister Yousef Bin Alawi Bin Abdullah, in an interview with Egypt’s Al-Akhbar newspaper published this week, said his country “has common interests with everybody, but each country has its own ways of achieving these interests and goals.”
To be sure, a diplomatic rapprochement would help boost cooperation between Oman, one of the region’s smallest oil producers, and the bloc’s richest members. The GCC is a six-member group that also includes Kuwait, Qatar, Bahrain and the United Arab Emirates.
But where things get bizarre is that in the Gulf every day appears to be opposite day: the Saudi-led military alliance is a reference to an anti-terror coalition formed last year at the initiative of Prince Mohammed, King Salman’s son, to face security threats against Muslim nations. Apparently, it does this by either bombing thousands of innocent civilians in neighboring countries like Yemen, or simply creating and funding the Islamic State. Recall that in what may have been one of the most significant email discoveries from the entire Podesta batch, in a leaked email sent on August 17, 2014 by Hillary Clinton to her current campaign manager, John Podesta, who back then was counselor to Barack Obama, she admitted that Qatar and Saudi Arabia “are providing clandestine financial and logistic support to ISIL and other radical Sunni groups in the region.”
But aside from providing financial and logistic support to ISIS and other radical Sunni groups, Saudi Arabia is fully on board with the whole “alliance against terrorism” thing.
We next await for Oman to join the Qatari “anti-terror organization”, especially since in the next few years Qatar will be rather stumped at finding out new and more deadly ways of sending its natgas pipeline to Europe via Syria, a venture which after 5 years of desperate attempts to remove Assad and install a puppet regime, has failed following today’s official ceasefire announcement involving Russia, Turkey and Syria.
via http://ift.tt/2iIY4cX Tyler Durden