A Country has no permanent friends or enemies, only permanent interests

Debka has been described as an "Israeli spook site" and I see no reason to quibble with that but they do have some interesting bits on the Middle East and this is right up there:

In the third week of March, debkafile reveals, King Hamad agreed to hand over to Riyadh control Bahrain's defense, external, financial and domestic security affairs. The Saudi king's son Prince Mutaib was confirmed by the two monarchs as commander of the Saudi and GCC forces invited to enter the tiny kingdom to put down the Shiite-led uprising, and it was agreed that Saudi Arabia would soon start building a big naval base on the island opposite the Iranian coastline.

Sunday, April 3, the threatening recriminations coming from Tehran and Baghdad prompted the Gulf Cooperation Council to hold a special foreign ministers' meeting. It passed a resolution which "severely condemned Iranian interference in the internal affairs of Bahrain in violation of international pacts."

Language this blunt has never before been heard from GCC leaders. It is attributed by our Gulf sources to Saudi King Abdullah's adamant resolve to challenge Tehran headon on every issue affecting the Gulf region's security, to the point of Saudi military intervention when called for – even at the risk of precipitating an armed clash between Saudi Arabia and Iran.

There have been rumours of Saudi-Israeli co-operation and I have addressed some of the possibilities that would open up previously; the fundamentals have not changed vis-a-vis Iran. What has changed is the political climate in the entire region from Iran to Algeria. This may push Iran to start a war to focus attention outside the country, but there are a LOT of reasons why that could backfire. The recent unrest in Syria weakens the Axis of Evil 2.0, and Iraq despite it's veiled anti-Saudi language in the Debka article is in no condition to attack them, especially with thousands of American troops still in the country.

Hezbollah is of course the biggest Iranian proxy (with Syria sidelined) and can certainly tie the IDF up, more so if they and Hamas went at the same time. Hezbollah however isn't a big threat to the House of Saud, but Iran has lots of shit disturbers to foment trouble and run weapons to any Shia groups that will advance Tehran's agenda. In any event, Hezbollah/Israel 2 is only a matter of time and I have a hard time coming up with a scenario which would involve actual co-ordination of Israeli and Arab forces.

So Israel is largely out of any Persian Gulf showdown. That leaves the Saudis and their client superpower, the USA. One US carrier group can control the Gulf, especially with the bases for land based aircraft the Americans still have access to throughout the Gulf kingdoms. That could bring the Israelis back in in a limited strike role to (further) cripple or take out Iran's nuclear program. That would move that action from the main event to a side show, win-win for Israel and for a lot of other people (e.g. our side) in the medium-long term.

I try to avoid predictions so I won't speculate on how likely a knock-down war between Saudi Arabia and Iran is. I will note that in the space of only about a year I have gone from seeing Saudi as the biggest threat to Western civilization (the money behind the brainwashing Wahhabi madrassas all over the place) to the money to bankroll a new balance of power in the region.

The enemy of your enemy can at least temporarily be your friend. I have an eye on the big picture and the long term, but I think that King Abdullah's interests and our own line up in more places than one these days. A pity the American are too overstretched and out of touch with their national interests to be likely to recognize this, let alone capitalize.