Iran says it’s planning to hold 1st joint military drills with Saudis in Red Sea

 

Iran says it’s planning to hold 1st joint military drills with Saudis in Red Sea

Iran and Saudi Arabia are planning to conduct joint military exercises in the Red Sea, according to an Iranian report not confirmed by Riyadh, in what would be a first for the regional heavyweights.

The two Middle East rivals, which have long backed opposing sides in conflict zones across the region, severed diplomatic ties in 2016.

However, Shiite Muslim-dominated Iran and Sunni-majority Saudi Arabia resumed relations last year under a surprise China-brokered deal.

“Saudi Arabia has asked that we organize joint exercises in the Red Sea,” the commander of Iran’s navy, Admiral Shahram Irani, was quoted as saying by the Iranian news agency ISNA.

“Coordination is underway and delegations from both countries will hold the necessary consultations on how to conduct the exercise,” he added, without providing details including a timeline. — Times of Israel

Our Take:

I'm shocked by this development. Totally shocked. Never saw this coming. Not in a million years.

I'm kidding, of course. But I am highly amused, watching all the large accounts on Arab Twitter scramble to explain this, after they have spent the past year slandering Saudi Crown Prince MBS as a Zionist puppet and traitor to Islam. (I did actually engage with a few of them a while back, and tried to explain my theory. They dismissed it as folly, and called me an idiot.)

The reason I saw this coming was because the gameboard and playbook seemed so obvious. Netanyahu's play was to bait the Arabs into attacking Israel. That is why the optics of the Gaza campaign have been so severe. That is why the IDF has been so brazen in filming their war crimes; filming themselves playing with the lingerie of deceased Palestinian women, or desecrating the classrooms of bombed out Palestinian schools.

That is why, I imagine, they have indiscriminately targeted civilians. Just last week, the IDF firebombed a tent encampment of refugees outside of the Al-Asqa Martyr's Hospital, resulting in a gruesome scene where a number of sleeping people were burned alive. Among them was a young man named Sha’ban al-Dalou, who was studying to become a software engineer, and had been posting regularly on Instagram and other social media platforms.

Some will dismiss this as Hamas propaganda, but it is not. It has been verified by a number of independent journalists, including Max Blumenthal of The Grayzone, who shared the anecdote with Judge Andrew Napolitano last week, in a segment entitled: "How Israel Uses and Abuses the Media."

I know there are those who think that none of the events being reported in the news cycle are actually happening, and in some cases, they are probably right. But in the case of Gaza, the main reason that I do believe these events are actually occurring is because they are designed to elicit a response from the Arabs in the region. It would appear that Netanyahu is doing everything he can to become the monster that Arab propagandists have always painted him as being, so that their more mild-mannered kin will be imbued with enough righteous indignation to take up arms and go to war with Israel. (It had to be real, in order to invoke the intended response from the Muslim world.)

If that were to happen, it would give Bibi Netanyahu everything he has always dreamed of.

The only winning move is not to play, and the young Crown Prince has demonstrated his brilliance to the world. Not only has he succeeded in staying the hand of the entire Muslim world (proxy militias are another story), but he has also changed the perceptions of Arabs, as he has embraced the role of humanitarian, moving heaven and earth to make sure that Israel remains well-provisioned, while the Houthi rebels conduct operations that are disrupting Israel's shipping industry.

The net effect of MBS's actions has been that Netanyahu's plan has backfired on him. He has jumped the shark on conducting a brutal genocide of Gaza, and had the Arabs taken the bait, revisionists would have exonerated Netanyahu's aggressive campaign in the days following October 7th, fully justified in the face of the subsequent Arab response... which never materialized.

So, instead, Netanyahu is left holding the bag. He, alone, is the violent terrorist who has murdered thousands of innocent people. There were no Hamas fighters hiding among that tent encampment outside of the hospital. Just a bunch of scared people who had become homeless, and had nowhere else to go.

Zionism has proven itself to be a cult, where neither the doctrine nor the leadership can ever be questioned or scrutinized. It is allowed to do whatever it wants, including raping prisoners and burning innocent people alive, and if it is criticized for these actions, it lashes out with a venomous bite, seeking to destroy its detractors in any way possible. (All the tell-tale signs of a cult.)

The world is now repulsed by Benjamin Netanyahu, and is organizing against him. And as he openly plots to wage open war against Iran, his chief ally in Arabia now seeks to conduct joint military exercises for the first time in their shared history.

Checkmate, Bibi. — GhostofBasedPatrickHenry