Politics

From an escalating crisis in Saudi/Iranian relations to crashing markets in China, the prospects for peace and prosperity in the new year seem dim.

With the world once again gripped by the latest Middle East snafu in which suddenly every Gulf State has found itself in the worst diplomatic crisis with Iran in 30 years which, incidentally, started after Saudi Arabia executed a Shiite cleric in its biggest mass execution yet, unleashing righteous Iranian anger at its action, many have forgotten - if only temporarily - about Europe's biggest crisis at the moment: the onslaught by over one million refugees, who are desperate to escape from the political disaster that are the broken states of Syria and Iraq.

The British prime minister has been urged to clarify the role the UK Government played in voting Saudi Arabia on to the UN Human Rights Council. The leaders of the Green Party and the Liberal Democrats are calling on David Cameron to come clean on the issue. The calls follow the kingdom’s execution of 47 people in a single day which sparked outrage across the Middle East.

Over the weekend, a series of dramatic events stemming from Saudi Arabia’s execution of Shiite cleric Nimr al-Nimr plunged the Mid-East further into chaos.

The torching of the Saudi embassy in Tehran prompted Riyadh to cut diplomatic ties with the Iranians and on Monday, Bahrain quickly followed while the UAE recalled its ambassador.

Hillary Clinton’s “regime change” policies as Secretary of State helped spread the chaos that has turned the Middle East into a killing field and might have done even worse if not for extraordinary obstructions from the Pentagon’s Joint Chiefs of Staff regarding Syria, as Gareth Porter recounts at Middle East Eye. By Gareth Porter Seymour…