Behind the regional scene: the collapse of Saudi Arabia

Written by Nasser Kandil,

The successive vote in the Senate and the US House of Representatives to overthrow the presidential veto on Gesta Law alerts the unwary about what is going on to Saudi Arabia and putting it within an appropriate context to help in understanding what is going on in the region, so the puzzle of many scattered, especially the Deputy Walid Jumblatt in the interpretation of the hurrying of Saad Al-Hariri to have a strange repositioning in his opinion, that is similar according to Jumblatt’s point of view to the repositioning of the father of Sheikh Saad Al-Hariri the date Prime Minister Rafik Al-Hariri with the option of extension for the President Emile Lahoud eleven years ago, as it explains what is going on in Saudi Arabia for those who wonder about the reason of the acceleration of the concessions in search for a political government by the government of Masour Hadi in Yemen. Many can interpret what is going on in Syria and the speech of the Turkish about the visit of the President Recep Erdogan to Moocow and Tehran after he waited for months the achievement of the Saudi promise of compensating the losses resulted from the Russian sanctions at least in the agricultural sector but in vain.

Erdogan went to Moscow but his eye on Jarblos after he has lowered the ceilings of his expectations even if his screaming remained high, what is happening in the eastern of Aleppo under his sight is an accurate reflection about the limits of his ability to move and the size of the allowable steps to take comparing with what he would have been done and said if a similar thing had happened a year ago. In the memory of Erdogan there is Fethullah Gulen who was behind the military coup and who lived in Washington, while Al Hariri goes to Haret Hreik after he has a tour as a bride from Bnashii to Rabieh to Ain Al Tineh while his eye is on Tripoli where is the political line which targets Al Mustqbal Movement, Fethullah Gulen is Rifi who stood behind the municipal coup against Al-Hariri and prepares to make a parliament coup against him while he lives in the Saudi bosom. All of this from Jarablos to Tripoli and from Gulen to Rifi can be understood in knowing what is happening in Saudi Arabia, where the US democracy and the US judiciary are two means to end everything in its Muslim Brotherhood and Wehabbi versions after a marriage of decades and bets on strategic and fateful options which all of them have failed and brought the disasters.

The beginning is from the Saudi Turkish failure in encircling the tripartite Syria, Iran, and Hezbollah, then the repetitive rapid failure in winning a war of overthrowing this tripartite in the Syrian war   and the completion with the US penalty on the Turkish Saudi bilateral, and the repositioning at the lines of the direct interests which are protected by the force of what America has of money, weapons, information pipes and communication technology, towards the inevitable status in making the diplomatic legitimacy and the UN resolutions for negotiations that it imposes surely as an indispensable partner by Russia, China, and Iran. A US wall of pipes of money, information, technology, and energy which America hides behind it as the cement wall which the Israeli leadership decided to hide behind and prepared to make it a diplomatic, political legal wall by dramatic steps under the slogan of entering in negotiations for peace process under American Russian sponsorship.

Saudi Arabia enters the last stage of the path of the collapse which its first episode was breaking the Israeli military superiority in the Middle East which gave Saudi Arabia after the year 1967 and the defeat of the project of the noble liberating Arab leader Gamal Abdul Nasser the opportunity of stabilizing its leadership of the Arab world since 1970 and its consolidation by the force of the rise of the oil prices after the war of October 1973. Since the fall of the Israeli prestige and its emergence to be weaker than the cobweb, the Saudi leadership started to collapse in a path that started in 2000 with the Israeli compulsory withdrawal from the southern of Lebanon towards the war of July 2006 which targeted Lebanon to crush the resistance, but it has ended with Israeli resounding defeat. The second episode started with the Saudi failure in overthrowing Syria and having control over it, despite the size of the financial and the intelligence embroilment and mobilizing Al-Qaeda organization with direct understandings to turn into the only authorized army to overthrow Syria and its president according to the description of the US Vice President Joe Biden in front of Harvard University. The third episode started with the collapse through the Saudi failure in stopping the US thrust toward signing the understanding on the Iranian nuclear program, after the inability to exert pressure on the Americans to carry out the military strike by their fleets against Syria, towards the unexpected  Saudi failure in their considerations in their war in Yemen and its turn sequentially into existential security strategic dilemma  that exhausts them financially and threatens of the unity of the social and the geographical structure which the Yemenis are forming an essential part of it, towards the last dual.

The Saudis face the first unique challenge since their entry as a feared force in the stock of the financial abilities; they are in front of a variable that was not into consideration. For the first time the House of the representatives and the Senate vote to topple the presidential veto on a law that is dedicated to Saudi Arabia in a majority reaches to consensus. the law allows the families of the victims of the events of the eleventh of September to sue the governments of the countries from where the suicide bombers came to ask for compensation,  the matter is neither for compensation itself, nor for the symbolism of the political abandonment only, nor related to the moral humiliation only, it is related to what will happen by blocking all the Saudi assets in the US banks with instating the first lawsuit under the law, up to the time of  setting the lawsuit which will be followed by lawsuits. This means the Saudi preparation to keep approximately seven hundred billion dollars, this is all of what is left of their wealth and which are in US banks frozen indefinitely, after the Saudis involved too much in the war of prices to push Russia and Iran to bankruptcy during two years ago or to the political surrender, so this has led to the decline of the Saudi income annually nearly three hundred dollars with the decline of the price per barrel from one hundred twenty -four dollars to reach to the thirty dollars and then to be settled between forty and fifty dollars according to a country that the oil forms the semi only source of its income, it sells twelve million barrels daily, but the low –income and the direct and the indirect of costs of the Syrian and the Yemeni wars have led to an annual deficit of nearly one hundred billion dollars in the Saudi budget, having no hope but to spend from the deposited funds in the US banks and the return to the policy of raising the oil prices by holding the market with the cooperation of Russia and Iran.

The Saudis have proposed the cooperation on the Russians they have asked an integrated political oil deal starts from Syria, they went to Algeria for OPEK Meeting asking for an Iranian cooperation, the answer was that Iran after the understanding has restored its status in the oil markets and will not accept to reduce its production in exchange of Saudi reducing to raise the demand for oil and raise its prices. Now the role of Iran is to respond fight back. Iran said that it has the right to ask for raising its share to seven million barrels daily for ten coming years to compensate what has left of its share which was agreed upon as a result of the sanctions and after the others have used it at their forefront and most notably Saudi Arabia, they have reached to a suggestion that Saudi Arabia must decrease its production to five million barrels daily in exchange of five million barrels for Iran. This means that Saudi Arabia will achieve any improvement in its income but more loss, hoping that this decrease will lead to an improvement in the price that returns to it what it gets today, but after the price reaches nearly hundred dollars per barrel, it will bear additional bleeding that may last for a year or more. Once the meeting of Algeria for OPEK organization failed, the price of the oil barrel has declined10 % and the stocks of the Gulf and the prices of the shares stated to collapse with ratios that range during hours between 5 and 10 %.

According to the description of the US presidential candidate Donald Trump Saudi Arabia is a purse of money only. By the war Trump has met his rival Hillary Clinton in supporting the veto against the presidential veto, so there is no hope for Saudi Arabia to improve their financial positions after the US presidential elections but they have only one hope, its gate is the understanding with Iran in oil market and other things.

Sheikh Saad Al-Hariri is one of the family members, he knows what to discuss of concerns and interests in the evenings of the royal bureaus, but in front of the anguish and the lament there is no place to talk about his concerns but to let him bear what he did, everything in Saudi Arabia is money, but this purse of money is depleted, but saving Al-Hariri has only one gate it is the Sarai and its key is Harel Hreik passing by AL Rabieh, as it is the Turkish security gate in Moscow and Tehran, and Aden security gate in Sanaa,

where the pressure are escalating, so what if Erdogan delayed of the repositioning and the Kurdish line remained, and what if the group of Mansour Hadi delayed of the settlement and the Saudis surprise them after they expelled them from Riyadh to Aden by announcing the stopping of the war unilaterally and without coordination, and what if Al-Hariri delayed and the supports of Aoun went down to the streets, and Ashraf Rifi or other decided to implicate Al-Hariri with going to the streets and Hezbollah obliged to move?

The phase of the Saudi era ends, so everyone has to reconsider his affairs on that basis sooner or later.

Translated by Lina Shehadeh,