Saudi Arabia's Displeasure

"We believe that any of the West's policies on both Iran and Syria risk the stability and security of the Middle East. The West has allowed one regime to survive and the other to continue its programme for uranium enrichment, with all the consequent dangers of weaponization."
"While international efforts have been taken to remove the weapons of mass destruction used by the murderous regime of Bashar Al-Assad, surely the West must see that the regime itself remains the greatest weapon of mass destruction of all? Chemical weapons are but a small cog in Mr. Assad's killing machine. While he may appear to be going along with every international initiative to end the conflict, his regime will continue to do everything in its power to frustrate any serious solution."
"The Assad regime is bolstered by the presence of Iranian forces in Syria. These soldiers did not enter Syria to protect it from a hostile external occupation; they are there to support an evil regime that is hurting and harming the Syrian people. It is a familiar pattern for Iran, which has financed and trained militias in Iraq, Hezbollah terrorists in Lebanon and militants in Yemen and Bahrain."
Prince Mohammed bin Nawaf bin Abdulaziz al Saud, Saudi ambassador to the United Kingdom

U.S.-led diplomacy is leading to a real risk in the stability of the Middle East imploding into a wide-ranging war. Of course as the leading power in the Middle East, the power that is engaged in a struggle with Iran for supremacy in the region, Saudi Arabia has the wherewithal both in terms of influence and funding, to exercise a far greater influence on what has been occurring in Syria, than has been the case up to now. Saudi Arabia takes its importance in the region seriously indeed.

It prides itself on being the caretaker of the two most important sites in Islam, the cradle of Islam. It lauds itself as one of the Arab world's "most significant political powers", with "global responsibilities -- economic and political -- as the world's de facto central banker for energy". And there too there exists a rivalry with Iran, which has the distinction, along with being chronically disgruntled and overbearingly threatening, of having the second largest oil reserves in the world.

The Islamic Republic of Iran -- Saudi Arabia's real target for censure and the hope that the West would have been pushed far enough by concern over its quite obvious plans to attain nuclear warheads which, combined with its savage threats to violently attack another country -- is in fact a far more important matter to be resolved, than that of Syria's regime slaughtering its own in a brutal response to Sunni protest against Shia dominance in Syria; the minority controlling the majority.

The Syrian opposition officials who enjoy the support of Saudi Arabia report Western diplomats have conveyed the information that the peace talks in Geneva next month may not, after all, lead to the removal of President Assad from power, over concern that his absence will give impetus to the more worrying (to the West) spectre of Sunni Islamist jihadists transforming the country into their version of a Shia-led Caliphate.

Saudi Arabia's frustration is fully understandable. They have gone from being, as they assumed, America's number one confidant (if Israel is to be excluded and it usually is, although on this occasion both Saudi Arabia and Israel are on the same track) in the region to a now-dispensable ally and the transformation has both dismayed and angered Saudi authorities.

Prince Turki al-Faisal, formerly head of Saudi intelligence affirmed Riyadh is left with the impression the U.S. and its allies had left it out in the cold in its diplomatic accord with Iran. The U.S. had "given the impression" it meant to take deliberate and definite actions against Syria, but had then simply backed off, abandoned Syrians to their fate.

The refusal of the West to take action on the Syrian file, simply leaving Sunni Syrians to the brutal annihilation of the Shia regime has infuriated Riyadh. The regime's use of SCUD missiles and "barrel bombs" in Aleppo against rebel-held areas of the country's largest city was despicable, representing "widespread and systematic gross violations" by Syrian authorities.

The puzzle in all of this is that it is difficult to understand why the Middle East depends on an outside source to settle their internal conflicts. Iran and Iraq had a dreadful 8-year conflict that solved nothing until the Americans removed Saddam Hussein, where a Sunni minority ruled a Shia majority, and the result of that was to deliver Iraq into the hands of Iran.

Surely the Sunni-majority countries of the Middle East could assemble a combined force to deliver an ultimatum to Syria's president to stand down from his course of destruction?

Why is it perfectly useful for NATO and the United States to launch a military attack on Syria to remove a murderous despot, but the Middle East countries wholly invested in the outcome will not stir themselves to do this on their own? Nothing held them back from assembling the combined force that time and again assaulted the State of Israel, after all.

Puzzles within conundrums.