it plays out in syria, in lebanon, in bay ran. so in a strange way the wonder is it doesn t take longer for this to erupt but now you have open hostility between the leading sunny power, saudi arabia and iran and this is going to complicate the middle east even further if that s even possible. saudi arabia was obviously upset about the nuclear iran deal and any kind of growth or rise of iran on the international stage is of concern to saudi arabia. that s right and saudi arabia views this i think from two prisms. one is strategy, the growth of iran as a regional player and things like that. but the other one is very sectarian. remember, saudi arabia represents is very pure islam in which the shiite are apostates. the saudis be in large destroy any shiite shrine in the country so they are also viewing this as the growth of any kind of shiite
militia. they had only just begun to talk, you know, it was a few week ago i think the foreign minister sat down around the stable for the first time and now they have cut off relations, cut off flights. the saudis got people in the government s to cut off relations so all of a sudden i think it s two big steps backward for one step forward. they are not going to end up fighting each other directly. that would seem unlikely. how does this play out? does it become sort of a cold war? does it continue to escalate? i think a cold war is exactly the right metaphor because if you think of the cold war while the u.s. and soviets never fought directly, there were lots of proxy wars and lots of ways in which this extension manifested and it means that syria could get more complex and bloody but also raises the stakes of internal instability, a place like baja rain supported
going to stop it. even if you got them to agree, who knows whether you d be able to get to the thousands of militia. they had only just begun to talk, you know, it was a few week ago i think the foreign minister sat down around the stable for the first time and now they have cut off relations, cut off flights. the saudis got people in the government s to cut off relations so all of a sudden i think it s two big steps backward for one step forward. they are not going to end up fighting each other directly. that would seem unlikely. how does this play out? does it become sort of a cold war? does it continue to escalate? i think a cold war is exactly the right metaphor because if you think of the cold war while the u.s. and soviets never fought directly, there were lots of proxy wars and lots of ways in which this extension manifested and it means that syria could get more complex and bloody but also raises the stakes of internal instability,
leading sunny power, saudi arabia and iran and this is going to complicate the middle east even further if that s even possible. saudi arabia was obviously upset about the nuclear iran deal and any kind of growth or rise of iran on the international stage is of concern to saudi arabia. that s right and saudi arabia views this i think from two prisms. one is strategy, the growth of iran as a regional player and things like that. but the other one is very sectarian. remember, saudi arabia repres t represents is very pure islam in which the shiite are apostates. the saudis be in large destroy any shiite shrine in the country so they are also viewing this as the growth of any kind of shiite influence in baja rain and syria and iraq and view that as kind
influence in baja rain and syria and iraq and view that as kind of the spread of hair rasy and apostile. these things are taken very, very seriously by lots of people in the sunni world particularly by they re puritanical saudis. the saudis obviously put a lot of money on spreading that belief. we talked about syria. i guess it s syria, the battle for isis and the u.s., this may have the biggest ramification. absolutely. the john kerry s task of getting a political settlement in syria just got a lot, lot harder because the only way you re going to get a settlement in syria is if you can get the major powers fueling a lot of the internal war that s taking place there funding various militia and sending arms and supplies. if you can t get the major powers to agree, you re not