Saudi Arabia mobilised its F-15 fleet to launch a military operation against the Hezbollah in Lebanon.

I have no idea what the KSA hopes to accomplish here. Nor do I understand what caused the ongoing palace coup, other than old-fashioned extortion.



In some cases the government is seeking to appropriate as much as 70 per cent of suspects’ wealth, two of the people said, in a bid to channel hundreds of billions of dollars into depleted state coffers.

But I can say for certain, if recent history is any guide, this will turn out badly for the Saudi kingdom.

At the center of this crisis is Prince Muhammad bin Salman.



Meet Prince Muhammad bin Salman – overambitious and cunning, a heartbeat away from succeeding his 81-year-old father King Salman bin Abdul Aziz, reportedly suffering from dementia – leading his own Game of Thrones in the Desert Kingdom.

A young, inexperienced heir to the Arab world’s most powerful throne, Bin Salman is consolidating his power by crushing potential centres of power outside the Royal Court. The need is urgent after his string of failures, including initiatives in Yemen and Qatar, and all-consuming, counterproductive hatred of Shia-majority Islamic Republic of Iran.

Remember the Qatar crisis? It's still on-going.



The emir of Kuwait, Sheikh Sabah Al Ahmad Al Sabah, warned of the collapse of the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) - an alliance of Gulf countries - should the crisis with Qatar remain unresolved.

The Qatar boycott is costing the GCC countries big money, and it might destroy the GCC.

The Saudi's record of failure began years before.



According to a top-secret National Security Agency document provided by whistleblower Edward Snowden, the March 2013 rocket attacks were directly ordered by a member of the Saudi royal family, Prince Salman bin Sultan, to help mark the second anniversary of the Syrian revolution. Salman had provided 120 tons of explosives and other weaponry to opposition forces, giving them instructions to “light up Damascus” and “flatten” the airport, the document, produced by U.S. government surveillance on Syrian opposition factions, shows.

The Saudis worked hard to destroy Syria and the Assad regime, one of Iran's very few allies. In the end, the Saudis managed to kill hundreds of thousands of people, but the Assad regime is now fully in Iran's sphere of influence.

While Prince Salman has his fingers all over the Qatar crisis, and the Syrian civil war, it's the catastrophic war against Yemen that defines his foreign policy.



“The Saudi Arabia-led coalition strategic air campaign continues to have little operational or tactical impact on the ground, and is only serving to stiffen civilian resistance,” according to a blunt verdict by a U.N. Security Council panel of experts. It is also helping to “consolidate” a military alliance between ethnic Houthi insurgents and Yemen’s disgraced former leader, Ali Abdullah Saleh, who control 13 of the country’s governorates, including the capital of Sana’a.

The disarray has provided a rich breeding ground for extremists, including the Islamic State and al Qaeda, which, the panel believes, “is looking to launch terrorist attacks against targets in the ‘West.’”

The U.N. isn't the only ones recognizing Saudi failure in Yemen.



Last week, a series of leaked emails revealed that Saudi Arabia's crown prince and defence minister, Mohammed bin Salman bin Abdulaziz Al Saud, expressed a desire to end the war in Yemen during talks with former US officials. In the leaked emails, Mohammed bin Salman said that he '"wants out" of the two-year war he started in Yemen and that he was not against US rapprochement with Iran to end the conflict.

Before the Saudis began bombing Yemen, the Houthis had very little to do with Iran. Now they are clients of Iran.

In an interesting twist, former Yemeni President Hadi, who Salman is trying to reinstall to power in Yemen, is under 'house arrest' in Riyadh.

In an even more interesting twist, former Lebanese Prime Minister Saad al-Hariri, who the Saudis forced to resign, is also under house arrest in Riyadh.