The Arab League in League With Military Action

Turkey and Qatar, both supporters of the Muslim Brotherhood, earning the enmity of Egypt, have chosen to join the Saudi-led coalition of Arab states against the Houthi rebellion in Yemen to restore the democratically elected Sunni president of Yemen to full authority, against the claims of the Yemen-Arab-Spring removal of its Shiite president who ruled for 40 years as a dictator.

When Mohammad Morsi was elected president of Egypt after the downfall of long-time dictator Hosni Mubarak, Egypt, under the Muslim Brotherhood, moved to reclaim relations with the Islamic Republic of Iran. When General Abdel Fatah al-Sisi became the popularly-acclaimed President of Egypt after the unseating of Mohammad Morsi and the forced decline of the Muslim Brotherhood, the restoration of diplomatic relations with Iran was once again sundered.

Egypt, suffering the outcome of severe economic decline resulting from its revolutionary turmoil, found a saviour in Saudi Arabia which began making up the shortfall in financial support withheld by the Obama administration which supported the Muslim Brotherhood and diligently worked to prevent President al-Sisi from attaining power.

What a tangled web of suspicion, animosity, conflict and intrigue describes the Middle East. The constant meddling of Western interests advanced by oil concerns further complicated and continues to complicate a region forever on the brink of disruptive reaction to sectarian hostilities.

The one common goal of all the Islamic nations, however remains a constant; the irritating presence of a Jewish State upon land theirs by heritage and ancestry and universally-approved UN legal right, but representing to Muslims an insult to Islam with its dictum that land once consecrated to Islam must remain so in perpetuity.

Egyptian President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi speaking at the Arab League Summit. (Al Arabiya)

The one constant in the last half-century and more of the Middle East has been the settling/unsettling effect of the United States. In pursuing its own interests that the geography remain stable and not interfere with America's major source of energy supplies, successive American governments made mutually useful agreements with the dictators of Arab Muslim countries, buying their oil, stabilizing the political situation between its traditional allies as a benefactor and guarantor of security through the threat of physical intervention and the sale of military arms.

At one and the same time, those tyrants and oil sheiks and monarchs resented the sway and power of the United States, even while they were dependent on them. Their dependency came to a screeching panic when the U.S. suddenly turned on its usual axis to ally itself with their enemies, those attempting to unseat the traditional Middle East rulers, abandoning Hosni Mubarak and embracing Mohammad Morsi, cajoling Iran to come to a negotiating table over its feared nuclear technology, and acceding to Russia over Syria.

Finally, it seems, after prolonged American inaction in the face of a Middle East reeling from the effects of Iranian hegemonic actions to upend Sunni rule, favouring Shiite governance of countries conventionally controlled by the sect most prevalent as rulers, those countries of the Middle East facing the growing strength of Iranian power and command have decided to ally themselves to counteract the advances that Iran has made in Lebanon with its proxy Hezbollah disabling the country, in Syria supporting its murderous Alawite ally, in Iraq where a giant billboard of Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeni has taken pride of place where the statue of Saddam Hussein once stood, and in Yemen where the Houthi Shiites have displaced the Sunni president.

Saudi King Salman addressing the Arab League Summit. (Al Arabiya)

A summit of Arab leaders meeting in the Red Sea resort of Sharm el-Sheikh was treated to calls by Egypt's president for a joint Arab military force even while Egypt, Saudi Arabia and the Gulf States launch their airstrikes in Yemen. President al-Sisi whose courage in speaking publicly at Egypt's Al-Azhar University in Cairo, against militant Islamism and the terrorist forces it has created now exhorts his Arab colleagues to join in the battle against the renascent Persian Empire and its use of terror to achieve its ends to stand in command of the Middle East.

Calling for "a unified Arab force" to confront the security threats to the region, he spoke of the need to respond to the religious rhetoric of extremism. The brutal murders of Egyptian Copts in Libya by ISIS jihadis had him emphasizing the need to extirpate ISIS from the Middle East. He spoke of the "imperative" that Egypt support the Saudi-led coalition in response to Iran's move to bring it into its Shiite-dominated fold. The coalition airstrikes now hitting the impoverished nation whose legitimate president was forced to flee represented the Sunni response to a Shiite Iranian ambition.

Yemen's President Abdrabbo Mansour Hadi, now in exile in Saudi Arabia, is dependent on the outcome of the Saudi-led military intervention. An event whose time has finally come; the determination of the allied Arab Sunni majority to confront and push back the ambitions of the Iranian-led sectarian ambush of Sunni controlling interests. Allied Arab armies last marched, and did so repeatedly, on the State of Israel, to destroy its presence in the Middle East. Each time that mission failed, spectacularly.

This time, however, perhaps the sects are well matched; certainly in their loathing for one another. Iran took little time to respond to the bombing begun on Thursday and carried on through Friday. Dispatching al-Quds Major-General Qassem Soleimani to Yemen, from his vital work on behalf of the Iranian Republican Guard in Syria and Iraq, to oversee the Houthi and those Yemeni military units remaining loyal to former president Ali Abdullah Saleh, it appears as though a formal conflict between the sects is imminent.

Saudi Arabia's King Salman spoke of the military intervention his country is leading against Shiite rebels in Yemen as a priority whose purpose is to bring "security" to the Yemeni people.The campaign, he stressed, "will continue until it achieves its goals for the Yemeni people to enjoy security." And nor was Kuwaiti Emir Sabah al-Ahmad al-Jaber al-Sabah silent, informing Arab leaders that the Houthi militia in Yemen, sponsored by Iran, pose a regional threat."Rapid developments underway in Yemen pose a threat to our security", and they had a right to defence.

And finally, even while the U.S.-led coalition in Iraq and Syria continue their air strikes against the Islamic State, by default benefiting Iran, Syria and Hezbollah in the process by weakening the Sunni terrorist groups assembled against the tyrannical, murdering reign of Syria's Bashar al-Assad, the bizarre politics of the Middle East has the United States sufficiently bollixed that it is giving intelligence aid to the Saudi-led coalition conducting air strikes in Yemen.