And Pompeo is also in on the not so covert meet up. Not quite Middle East Peace, but the sands are shifting. Are they still trying to get Saudi's to buy off the Palestinians and see the end of the two state solution? Is there now a solid Sunni alliance with Israel in opposition to the Persians?

Ohh no, they are going to start a war with Iran before trump leaves office, aren't they?

This.

The trend towards normalization has been happening for the last 10+ years but their shared hatred of Iran has stepped up the pace.

Interesting that Saudi Arabia's foreign minister, Faisal bin Farhan, denied the meeting took place.

"I have seen press reports about a purported meeting between HRH the Crown Prince and Israeli officials during the recent visit by Sec Pompeo. No such meeting occurred. The only officials present were American and Saudi,"

That is a potential outcome. But were it war planning, I think they would have been more successful with their secrecy. Pompeo definitely is positioning to hold the top dog placing in 2024

It's likely Pompeo will be indicted before 2024. Even if he isn't, he has very little chance of taking over for Trump.

May not be war planning, but neither is this kumbaya peace. It's pragmatic regional alliance. Which I'm not complaining about. It can be a good surrogate for peace. But it can also go south. And as much as I despise Pompeo, I'm glad he's there and not a Putin or Xi Jinping surrogate.

I agree. And, for what it is worth, Trump and Pompeo did an excellent sidelining job on the Palestinians. The west bank is de facto Israel and the two state position is dead. No way is the Biden team going back to that plan.

Kumbaya peace was/is/and forever will be a pipe dream in the region.

This is not entirely surprising. The Israelis and the Saudis have been working together on security concerns behind the scenes for well over a decade now. It's a classic "the enemy of my enemy is my friend" type of scenario. While the Iranians chant "death to Israel, death to America" quite vocally the implied "death to Sunnis" is still very much the status quo and the Saudis know that. The IRBMs that are publicly destined for Tel Aviv are very much aimed at Riyadh too.

Another factor is that the Palestinians are seen as running low on friends in the region. The Saudis (and many others) are exhausted with the Palestinians and don't see Palestine as being worth the hassle anymore. At one time Palestine served as a dumping ground for the more violent and radicalized Wahhabist youth but now Iraq is almost the exclusive destination for that particular Saudi export.

If you follow SPAENG (Saudi Press Agency) on Twitter you'll notice a very distinct anti-Iranian tilt after the attacks on Abqaiq and Khurias last September with calls for "all regional partners" to "come together" and stand up to the "Iranian Threat". You'll never get Saudis and Israelis to like each other but I think it's very likely you'll get Netanyahu to say something along the lines of "Mecca and Medina are the only legitimate seats of power in the Muslim world and Israelis would be honored to fight to preserve them" (but more eloquent) and that would be enough to let the Israeli military set up shop somewhere in Northeastern Saudi Arabia.

Some of y'all are WILD in what you think is going to happen to people that work in this administration.

________

Now, over the last 6 months, the Trump administration has been a facilitator of tons of peace deals in the Middle East. That's a Nobel Peace Prize, but for whatever reason they were like no thanks. World Food Program here you go.

But seriously, we have made more progress in the last 12 months in the ME Peace process than we have in three administrations prior to this one.

---

Washed up footy player turned Triathlete.

What peace deals? Can you provide me the countries that were at war that have made peace deals?

Pompeo did a questionable 8 billion dollar arms deal with the Saudis. When the state department IG started investigating Pompeo fired him. Congress issued subpoenas to investigate, Pompeo ordered people at State not to comply. I'm looking forward to what the new Sec. and IG find. Don't think it is going to turn out well for Pompeo. This is just one example. So yea I think there are quite a few people in Trumps administration that are going to feel the weight of Justice.

Seriously? The normalization of relations with Israel is the result of decades of work by multiple administrations. It is also naïve to call them peace deals as they were not at war and some of what is pushing them together is their mutual hatred, and desire to strike, Iran.

And it just got more interesting. Not out of woods yet.

I assume you're referring to Fakhirizadeh? Not much to add other than I sure wouldn't want to be on Mossad's shit list.

It will be interesting to see how Iran responds. Two things Iran hasn't contemplated yet is that the EU doesn't need their oil anymore and that, increasingly, the Saudis look like the adults in the room. Given the German takedown of the Aramco IPO it wouldn't shock me if the EU came up with an excuse to lock Iran out... they just need a narrative that divorces their action from Trump for domestic optics.

Read Rise and Kill first.

It's not remotely limited to just mossad, in fact there's every likely hood it wasn't that particular arm of their security services.

The scale and breadth of their approach is almost unbeleivable.

Bergmans book is one of the best researched pieces of history I've ever read and his access to sources and info is phenomenal

Yes.
Hard to not assess that the assassination, if not proposed and bought off on, was at least brought up as a heads up with Pompeo's meet up with Bibi.

The movement of B-52's from base here in US over to Centcom and repositioning of a carrier battle group over to the region is both cautionary and prudent.

Iran not pursuing nuclear weapons is a political choice, not a technical one.

So the argument is that assassinating Fakhirizadeh makes Iran less likely to choose to purse nuclear weapons? I find that argument much more difficult to accept. Do people think if the Nazis assassinated Oppenheimer, that the US would have choosen not to pursue nuclear weapons?

No argument from me. I agree totally. Israel has had a nut for this guy and time was running out. The question I would pose is did Israel seek and receive US blessing? Did they only give a heads up neither wanting nor needing our blessing? Or was this incident prompted by this admin as a going away present? Intel briefs for president elect don't start until Monday. Roger we only have one president, but somehow I think concern would have been expressed internally had Biden and team been cut in.

I am hopeful nothing more will come of this. From what I read nuclear development for peace or weapons will not be adversely affected by his killing.

It kinda does not matter if the US was involved or was informed. What matter is what Iran thinks happened.

I disagree, I think this is going to make any deal with Iran even more difficult.

There's lots of speculation that Israel sort their blessing. I've literally just finished - 2 days ago - ronen Bergmans book on israels targetted assassination program. Israel may well have sought trumps blessing but there is literally nothing that would indicate they did in a historical context.

The book itself is amazing and at some point shocking - targeting civilian buildings and airliners as an acceptable course of action in the former to make a point and the latter because a target may have been on it though it was unconfirmed.

These operations are months in the making. The opportunities to get to the highest ranking targets are few and far between. Extremely rare. I'm not sure a blessing would have made any difference if they had the opportunity.

Bergmans book is astonishing for the access he clearly had. If you've any interest in israels security it's 25 hours of audible time that's well spent.

The killing had no impact on Iran's ability (not decision) to go either way with nuclear is what I tried to say

yes, whether informed or involved, making a deal is now much harder. Skeptic in me says Pompeo and Trump rode this with knowledge and kept it close hold. Hope our incoming team gets the straight skinny so they may be best positioned to deal. Got to think his foreign policy team has identified problem 1a now.

I hear you, but the timing here is just too good. They could have had this man's routine down pat for a year now just waiting for the politically optimum moment.

Again all this is just conjecture out of my backside .

We're all speculating but after 700 pages and 1000's of targetted assassinations the over riding driver was that when confronted with the opportunity they have not historically chosen to wait. There were things that would stop a job; lack of confirmation, civilians outside immediate close circle (exceptions being when they had orders to target civilians to make a point) but many of those Bergmann spoke with reiterated time and again you could not pass up the opportunities with these targets. They are subject to massive security, their routines change constantly, you can't have Israelis operating for months in Iran, it needs to be done in such a way they leave no one behind.

For all the speculations about how this went down. Its simply as likely Israel was doing it now and just told the US and KSA it was going down.

The book is amazing. Mind blowing.

Ahh, gotcha, I agree with you then.