Arabia v. Iran

The American love-in with Saudi Arabia and hatred for Iran is insane. Arabia is a medieval despotism, which has never held an election, which has never allowed a free press, which does not allow women to do anything without the permission of a male relative, which beheads or imprisons dissidents and which uses petro-dollars to disseminate the most extreme form of Sunni Islam. Iran has a constitution which has functioned for nearly forty years and allows women to study and exercise professions; it holds regular elections and has a flourishing press, even though these are more controlled than in the West. Saudi Arabia considers Shia Muslims to be unpardonable heretics, and it has supported extreme Sunni movements across the Middle East. The majority of the 9/11 bombers were Saudi citizens. Iran is by far the biggest Shia-majority country in the world, and its foreign adventures have been limited to protecting Shia Muslims from Sunni persecution; they have even supported Assad's secular regime because it was menaced by Saudi-backed Sunni groups. Saudi derives unjustified influence in the Muslim world from its control of the two holy cities, Mecca and Medina, which they were able to seize when the British conquest of the Middle East left them unprotected. The Saudis have destroyed most of the historic character of Mecca with destruction of monuments and with boastful investments such as a gigantic clock tower looming over the sacred precinct. The latest abuse of Saudi power has been the refusal of visas to Palestinians wishing to perform the Pilgrimage. It seems clear that America's absurd policy imbalance is dictated by Israel, where successive governments have demonized Iran, the one country in the Middle East that still stands up for Palestinian rights. Ahmedinejad was a gift to Israeli propaganda, with his talk of 'wiping Iarael from the world map', and nobody in the West made the effort to ask the Iranians what they meant. They certainly did not mean dropping nuclear bombs all over the region, which would have killed as many Palestinians as Israelis. They were in fact talking about the 'one-state solution', which is the only just possibility, now that the two populations are so tangled up together.