| > It's their export ideology Not anymore after MBS came to power. Wahabhi missionary worm was a King Fahd policy (and why so many foreign mosques are named after him). > it is not at all appealing to the citizens of one of the best welfare states in the world Not to most, but it's definetly appealing to a small subset similar to how White Nationalism is appealing to a small subset of Americans. The religious reforms post-2017 have been massive [0], and the fact that shows like Masameer or Bait Tahrir are being openly produced is a testament to that fact > As for Iran, seems like recently there has been a rapprochement(mediated by China) Only limited to Yemen. The relationship post-rapprochement was still fairly shaky and went down the gutter once 10/7 happened [1] > pretty clear to me SA is on the lookout for allies, but US is low on their list Yea no. Saudi is still continuing with US lead Israel-Saudi normalization [2] along with pushing for a US Defense Pact similar to what Japan has [3] [0] - https://carnegieendowment.org/2021/06/07/saudi-arabia-s-reli... [1] - https://foreignpolicy.com/2023/06/12/saudi-iran-rapprochemen... [2] - https://www.mei.edu/publications/saudi-israel-normalization-... [3] - https://www.reuters.com/world/middle-east/saudi-arabia-pushe.... |
The reason why I say this: Around the time of the price cap on Russian oil US was already asking Saudi to pump supply so that Russian budget would suffer, and of course Saudis didn't do anything. I think MBS is going fully down the Erdogan/Orban route where he is nominally "West aligned" but is going to be playing both sides as much as he can. When I said allies I meant someone who they would have reciprocal relationships with(which IMO isn't really the case with US atm).