There was an op-ed in yesterday’s NYT by two men named Michael Doran and Tony Badran regarding the Khashoggi murder that requires an immediate response. The gist of it is contained in the following sentence: “Whatever Prince Mohammed’s faults may be, he actively supports the American regional order that the Iranians openly seek to destroy.”
Say what? What American regional order? We have spent the last fifteen years proving it doesn’t exist.
The truth is that there is no order in the region at all—just struggles for power between Sunnis and Shiites, Israelis and Palestinians, autocrats and pseudo-democrats, and, above all, between the Israelis and Saudis on one hand and the Iranians on the other. The US has no strong, direct stake in any of these conflicts. We just want the oil to flow and for terrorists to be kept under control.
The authors of the op-ed are clearly mouthpieces for the Israeli government, which cannot, for multiple reasons, openly support MBS. Their job is to convince us, as they have convinced Trump, that Iran is mostly our problem, and that we need to stick with our loyal lieutenants in a battle in which they have only a passing interest. That is pure rubbish, and we can only hope they don’t succeed.