With the new Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman continuing the crackdown on the kingdom’s old exporting of Wahhabist/Salafist fundamentalist Sunni Islam, many who are more sympathetic to the Muslim Brotherhood and political Islam, more generally, have reflexively flinched. Perhaps most specifically, the Iran-Turkey-Qatar axis of Islamism stands most stridently athwart bin Salman’s reforms. Jamal Khashoggi, the Saudi dissident who was killed at the Saudi consulate in Istanbul, was, after all, a pawn of the jihad-exporting Qatari regime.
One side effect of bin Salman’s reign has been to harden the feelings of many on the post-Barack Obama political Left and prod them to double down on their regional preference for Iran over Saudi Arabia. And there is perhaps no better proxy fight in the Middle East right now between Iran and Saudi Arabia than the current civil war in Yemen between the internationally recognized Yemeni government and the Iran-backed Houthi rebels. Suffice it to say that the Houthis are not exactly the most innocent actors in the region.
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