Trump in the Middle East: A Triumph of Political Paradox

Trump in the Middle East

by Craig Murray - CraigMurray.org

May 20, 2017

It is unlikely to become an opera like “Nixon in China” but the arrival of Trump in Saudi Arabia is pregnant with meaning. The first and most obvious is the United States’ continuing identification with the Sunni side in an escalating Sunni/Shia conflict across the Middle East.

The exception to this of course is Iraq, where US forces are helping Shia forces to pulverise the Sunni city of Mosul.

The paradox is that the plunge of the United states firmly into the Sunni camp was precipitated by their realisation that, in removing Saddam Hussein, they had installed a Shia government in Iraq which was going to be highly susceptible to Iranian influence. The paradox is that Europe, and most of the rest of the world, accepts that Iran is no longer a particular threat to world peace under the comparatively moderate President Rouhani, who was re-elected today.

But the hatred for the Shia in the Gulf states is visceral.