Make No Mistake ....

Saudi soldiers march during Abdullah's Sword military drill in Hafar al-Batin, near the border with Kuwait, April 29, 2014.  (photo by REUTERS/Faisal Al Nasser)

Saudi Arabia is asserting itself. It is, in a sense, a colossus in the world of Islam, since it is the self-appointed steward of the Islamic world's two most sacred sites: Mecca and Medina. They are sacred, and so is Saudi Arabia, wholly committed to eradicating any trace or whisper of any other religion from its sacred precincts. Including the entirety of Saudi Arabia where Christianity dare not whisper its presence, nor Jews raise their hoary heads though historically Medina was their tribal home.

Saudi Arabia has clout because of its vast oil reserves, and its deciding vote within OPEC, and it has decided that the consortium will continue pumping oil at an accelerated rate, creating a market glut, and take from it a reduced price per barrel, the better to harm Iran's struggling economy and to demonstrate displeasure at America's newfound independence of Mideast oil, thanks to fracking and highjacking Canadian oil.

That aside, the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia has watched with a jaundiced eye of disapproval as its erstwhile oil-suitor has sidled toward the Saudi archenemy, the Islamic Republic of Iran, abandoning in the process its solidarity with the Sunni world of Islam, for the evil claims to the Prophet's ear of the Shiite minority within Islam. Saudi Arabia, whose vast riches funded madrasses from Pakistan to Somalia, France to Germany, Australia to Canada, now fears the Frankenstein it created.

Those Wahhabist madrasses turned out alumni like Osama bin Laden, and from al-Qaeda to the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant was not that much of a stretch. The abominable atrocities that have horrified the West in videos of ISIL torture and beheadings, crucifixion and other renditions of punishment, Islamist-style merely reflect the standard of capital punishment common in Saudi Arabia, a practise that goes politely unnoticed in the West.

Saudi Arabia feels it is past time for it to take its honoured place in the world; it has been too long retarded by its faithful reliance on the United States to maintain the Mideast status quo, and it now feels that trust has been misplaced. The U.S.-led air coalition against ISIL, as an example has been a grudging affair, and barely worth the effort. So Saudi Arabia will take up the scimitar with its foe, through a regional alliance of worthy Muslim states determined to fight "terrorism" where they find it.

Henceforth, it will be an alliance of Muslim countries, plying their militaries to protect Islam from the terrorists that have sprung up on its margins. And that alliance must tackle what the U.S. has failed to; the elimination of terrorist action in Yemen in Syria to begin with, which has the obvious support of the Republic of Iran. Whom the United States has released from sanctions, and given permission to recommence its nuclear plans for the future.

Saudi Arabia offered the first hint of its dissatisfaction with the status quo when it imperiously waved off the opportunity to take its seat with the revolving United Nations Security Council. Why bother when it is a purported world body that is sclerotic in action and impotent, incapable of producing any meaningful results? Witness the ongoing carnage in Syria and the never-ending 'peace process' between Israel and the Palestinians that represent a slap in the face to the Arab and Muslim world.

The military alliance resulting in a joint force under the command of a Riyadh operations centre is the obvious response to the oblivious and miserable incapacity of the United Nations. And, as a demonstration of their pure motivation in combating terrorism wherever it exists in whatever form it takes, there will be no sectarian component to their commitment whatsoever.

Sunni terrorist groups like ISIL will be targeted with equal fervour to the combat waged against the Houthis in Yemen doing Iran's bidding.