Kuwait’s Prudent Snub to MBS

Date: 02 October 2018 - 22:19

News ID: ۵۸۰۴۲

By: Kayhan Int’l Staff Writer

"Once bitten twice shy”, goes an old English adage, and in the Persian Gulf region it seems the small oil-rich emirate of Kuwait strictly adheres to the letter, spirit, meanings and implications of this proverb.
Having been brutally bitten and swallowed up in August 1990 by none other than Saddam of the repressive Ba’th minority regime of Baghdad to whom the Emir had given a blank cheque of scores of billions of dollars for the 8-year US-imposed war against Iran (1980-88), Kuwait is now extra cautious in doing any favour to either the US, which had rescued it from Iraq in 1991 or to Washington’s agent-in-chief, Saudi Arabia.
The other day Saudi Arabia’s self-imposed Heir Apparent, Mohamed bin Salman (MBS), returned to Riyadh within only two hours of his landing in Kuwait for a much publicized two-day visit to demand increase in the crude output for compensating the US-planned cutting of Iran’s oil to the international markets.
We don’t know what exactly transpired in the ruler’s palace where MBS, accompanied by Saudi Energy Minister, Khalid al-Falih, was supposed to meet Emir Sheikh Ahmad al-Jaber Aal-e Sabah.
According to reports, however, whoever MBS met he was formally apprised of Kuwait’s inability to produce more than its current OPEC quota and was also told that it is not possible to restart production in the Kuwait-Saudi neutral zone, where the jointly operated oilfields have long been closed – Khafji since October 2014 and Wafra since May 2015.
Kuwait, which over three years earlier had wisely decided not to side with the Saudi war against Yemen, very well knows that MBS and his senile father, King Salman bin Abdul-Aziz, are liabilities for the whole region and definitely not assets.
It means, any state siding with Saudi Arabia, which Britain had created in 1932 for the desert brigand of Jewish origin of Najd, Abdul-Aziz Aal-e Saud, seven years after he had unleashed rivers of Muslim blood to desecrate and occupy the Land of Revelation Hijaz and the two holiest Islamic cities of Mecca and Medina, risks suffering the fast approaching end of the Wahhabi entity.
Saudi Arabia is nothing more than a milk cow for the US, as is clear from the words of President Donald Trump that Riyadh should continue to pay the Americans if it wants to survive, because the moment Washington were to withdraw support it would collapse.
No country or ruler in their right mind would listen to Saudi Arabia to blindly serve the US and its objectives in the region, as the precarious Aal-e Khalifa pirate regime of Bahrain and the UAE confederation that Britain had set up less than half-a-century ago in 1971, are doing in the misconstrued hope of survival against odds when the writing is crystal on the wall.
Kuwait is well aware of the roguish approach of these above-mentioned entities towards Qatar, as well as their suicidal statements against the Islamic Republic of Iran, coupled with acts of terrorism against the Iranian people.
Kuwait also knows that the Americans, despite their rhetoric, have neither the political clout to cut Iran’s exports of oil nor the military capability to stop shipments.
And suppose if the US somehow succeeds in putting the plugs on Iran’s right to sell crude on the international market, then in such a case the whole Persian Gulf region will be deprived of petroleum production and even the pipelines the UAE and Saudi Arabia are laying to bypass the Hormuz Strait will not be safe.
Thus Kuwait seems to have understood that only peaceful coexistence will benefit regional countries and not the militarized state of Saudi Arabia and the UAE, which terrorize fellow Arabs but fall like ninepins the moment support is withdrawn by the US, which for the past forty years has suffered failure after failure in its confrontation with the Islamic Republic of Iran.