I first read about how the Prime Minister of Lebanon was in Saudi Arabia and then went on national television to resign. Currently, there are suspicions that the Prime Minister is being held under house arrest. To me, this just seems strange, putting a visiting foreign political leader under house arrest. So I don't know how much credence to give that. A few days later, Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates and Kuwait urged their citizens to leave Lebanon.
Then I learned that Yemeni rebels, Houthi, had launched a missile towards Riyadh's airport. The Saudi's shot it down via their missile defense system. The Saudi's quickly blamed Iran for supplying the missile to the Houthi. It should be noted that the two sides have been fighting for months now.
Finally, Saudi Arabia announced that they were arresting a number of top officials. The arrests were based on corruption charges. One of the individuals arrested was Prince Alwaleed bin Talal. Per the New York Times:
He controls the investment firm Kingdom Holding and is one of the world’s richest men, owning or having owned major stakes in 21st Century Fox, Citigroup, Apple, Twitter and many other well-known companies.
Though Saudi Arabia said the arrests were due to corruption charges, I'm not sure many believe this. Instead, from what I've read, the general belief is that this is an attempt to consolidate power.
Two of the three stories (Lebanon and Yemen) have some connection to Iran. Bloomberg has a nice short summary of the rivalry between Saudi Arabia and Iran. One quote from the article discusses the connection between Iran, Lebanon, Saudi Arabia and Yemen over that Saturday.
It [the missile] was fired from territory in Yemen controlled by Houthi rebels, but the Saudis say it was furnished by Iran, which backs the Houthis, and assembled by Lebanon’s Hezbollah, which is supported by Iran.
Based on that quote, did Saudi Arabia force the Lebanon Prime Minister to resign as they aren't happy with how he is dealing with Hezbollah? Is Saudi Arabia hoping that a new Prime Minister might take a more hardline stance towards Hezbollah? Have they already negotiated with Sunni leaders in Lebanon?
It seems to me that Saudi Arabia is expanding a lot of political and military energy into their attempt to limit Iran's power, which goes beyond just the above recent events.
I'm not an expert in this area and so if a real expert comes across this blog post they might laugh at what I wrote. No matter, I'm finding the situation very interesting.
And one major question I have: how can Saudi Arabia and Iran possibly work with each other in terms of OPEC when they are in a proxy war with each other? I've been reading a little about Libya recently and what is happening there might explain things, but that's a future post.
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