War

As expected, Saudi Arabia has cast itself as the victim of external Shia plotting after its internal weekend of chaos which included a missile attack from Yemen, the deaths of two princes and other high officials within a mere 24 hours, and an aggressive crackdown against dissent in the royal family which saw close to a dozen princes placed under house arrest. And as Al Jazeera noted, in this Saudi version of 'Game of Thrones', the 32-year-old Mohammed Bin Salman (MBS) shows that he is willing to throw the entire region into jeopardy to wear the royal gown.

Authored by Jamal Elshayyal via Al-Jazeera,

Was Saturday a "Red Wedding" moment for the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia? As the plot thickens in Riyadh, here's a roundup of the chatter on the streets...

It started off with the resignation of Lebanese Prime Minister Saad Hariri, a clearly orchestrated move produced and executed by his paymasters in Riyadh.

President Trump is up bright and early in Asia this morning and just unleashed two rather pointed tweets in the direction of Saudi Arabia.

Having commented during the day on the success of America's missile-defense system in the attack on Riyadh that was intercepted, President Trump had been quiet on the 'civil war' going on among the elites... until now:

I have great confidence in King Salman and the Crown Prince of Saudi Arabia, they know exactly what they are doing....

President Donald Trump is preparing to head to South Korea where he will meet with the country’s president (and purported “fine gentleman”) Moon Jae-in to strategize about their simmering standoff with North Korea. Meanwhile, back home, his allies in Congress are carrying out his instructions to request another $4 billion to expand the US’s missile-defense capabilities in the face of the growing threat from the North.

Via GEFIRA,

The Catalan fight for independence is not how conflicts are fought throughout history, let alone how they are won.

Some movements for national independence have succeeded in history, others have not. Presently, it seems that the Catalan bid is destined to fail. Maybe in the future Catalans will change their strategy and achieve their goal, but at the moment of writing the Catalan independence movement can be described as a storm in a teacup.