Saudi Arabia waging proxy war against Iran: Pundit

Press TV has conducted an interview with Eric Draitser, founder of the stopimperialism.com, from New York, on Iranian President Hassan Rouhani’s condemnation of Saudi Arabia for executing prominent Shia cleric Sheikh Nimr Baqir al-Nimr.

The following is rough transcription of the interview.

Press TV: You’ve heard what the Iranian president has said about the situation, what do you think? In your perspective, why has Saudi Arabia chosen in this time to cut diplomatic relations with Iran?

Draitser: Well, certainly the pretext for them doing that is the reactions in Iran, the incidents around the Saudi consulate and so forth.

But I think this is really part of a much larger geopolitical conflict that is playing out in various corners of the world. And it’s almost completely unreported in the West but really globally and that is a larger proxy war that the Saudis are waging against Iran - what they perceived to be Iranian interests in various parts of the world.

And I think that part of this has to do with this is essentially Saudi Arabia’s retribution for Iran’s intervention and participation in Syria in support of the legitimate Syrian government and the counter-terrorism operation ongoing in that country and as a way of sort of getting back at Iran.

The Saudis and the Qataris seem to be ramping up the rhetoric and ramping up the actions and I think that we could see this in Nigeria with the massacre of Zakzaky and his followers and his family. We see this with the execution of Nimr al-Nimr in Saudi Arabia as well.

Both of these individuals and the movements that they represented are perceived in the West and by the Saudis particularly as being proxies of Iran. That is why they’re being targeted not because of anything that they have necessarily said or done, but because they are perceived to be working in the interest of Iran and that is what is really at the heart of all of these issues.

Press TV: So, what do you see this going, the situation of course Iran is calling for the Saudis to readdress the situation and says diplomatic line should always be open in order to address any matters? Do you see a difference in the way this current king, King Salman, is addressing issues than as opposed to King Abdullah? It seems that since he’s taken over, it’s been a year that there seems to be some type of schism within the kingdom or perhaps some type of domestic dispute or war that almost there’s schizophrenic way of addressing and handling many issues, how do you see it?

Draitser: Well, it depends on how much we believe from the sources coming out of Saudi Arabia, because there’s a lot of rumors coming out of Riyadh that there are major conflicts within the House of Saud, within some of these different factions that exist, within the ruling establishment of that country.

And from what we understand and again some of this is rumor, because the Saudis are not exactly forthcoming with information, but there is indication that the king of Saudi Arabia is not 100 percent in control of his mental faculties possibly due to disease or some other possibilities and so.

Whether or not he’s actually even making decisions is a very real question. A lot of people in Saudi Arabia including those close to the regime have pointed to the young defense minister who took the initiative and waged the illegal war against Yemen that has taken the initiative in Syria since the ouster of Bandar bin Sultan.

All of these different issues within the Saudi ruling family, all of them have now translated into the political and geopolitical sphere. And again, we see Saudi Arabia humiliated thus far in Yemen unable to achieve even their basic objectives.

We see Saudi Arabia humiliated in Syria as their operation has stalled and failed. All of these things are reasons why Saudis are lashing out in the way that they are, why they’re attacking what they deemed to be Iranian proxies and why they’re going so hard against the Islamic Republic of Iran.

It’s not purely ideological. This has everything to do with tactics on the battlefield and in the political sphere.

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