Gary Sick, a well-known and respected Gulf expert writes in an in-depth piece for Politico Magazine that the turmoil in the Middle East is at the highest point in 50 years, and that Saudi Arabia is dramatically increasing its efforts to slow the spread of Iranian influence across the region.
Dr. Sick, a Columbia professor who also manages a popular email list serve of Gulf region experts, analysts, researchers and journalists called G2K, posted an informative overview of the serious challenges facing Saudi Arabia and the GCC as turmoil reaches a level “greater than at any other time in my nearly fifty years of watching this region.”
Saudi Arabia’s Deputy Crown Prince and Minister of Defense Mohammed bin Salman.
Sick served on the National Security Council under Presidents Gerald Ford, Jimmy Carter and Ronald Reagan and was the principal White House aide for Iran during the Iranian Revolution and the hostage crisis.
“[T]he US installation of a Shia government in Iraq…gave credence to the notion of an ongoing Iranian takeover of the Middle East and to the explanation of much of the turmoil that followed as a sectarian war inflamed by Iran. This perception has likely fed into Saudi Arabia’s momentous strategic reassessment,” Sick writes. “Given the specter of a rising Iran, and a US shift from a policy of containment to partial engagement, it’s not surprising that Saudi Arabia would re-evaluate its foreign policy. But the speed of the strategic shift, and its magnitude, have been stunning.”
