{"id":24179,"date":"2017-06-20T20:19:50","date_gmt":"2017-06-21T01:19:50","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/olduvai.ca\/?p=24179"},"modified":"2017-06-20T20:19:50","modified_gmt":"2017-06-21T01:19:50","slug":"the-middle-east-is-blowing-up","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/?p=24179","title":{"rendered":"The Middle East Is Blowing Up"},"content":{"rendered":"<header class=\"entry-header\">\n<h3 class=\"entry-title\"><a href=\"https:\/\/dollarcollapse.com\/articles\/the-middle-east-is-blowing-up\/\">The Middle East Is Blowing Up<\/a><\/h3>\n<\/header>\n<div class=\"entry-content\">\n<p>Every day brings another scary headline from the Middle East \u2014 which makes it easy to treat them as background noise rather than a clear and present danger. But the latest batch is reminiscent of the Balkans circa 1914, which means it may be time to tune back in. Some examples:<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"http:\/\/www.cnn.com\/2017\/06\/18\/middleeast\/syrian-warplane-shot-down-coalition\/index.html\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\"><strong>A US Navy jet shot down a Syrian warplane.<\/strong><\/a>Syria is a Russian client state, so this puts the US and Russia on opposite sides in a shooting war.<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/2017\/06\/19\/world\/middleeast\/russia-syria.html\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\"><strong>Russia warned the US that it takes the destruction of its client\u2019s military assets seriously.<\/strong><\/a> It suspended the hot line Washington and Moscow have used to avoid collisions in Syrian airspace and threatened to target US aircraft.<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"http:\/\/www.cnn.com\/2017\/06\/18\/middleeast\/iran-launches-missiles-into-syria\/index.html\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\"><strong>Iran has begun launching missiles into Syria targeting ISIS. <\/strong><\/a>This is new in at least two ways: 1) Iran hasn\u2019t used those particular missiles in decades, and 2) it was not previously active in Syria. This escalation from advising the Assad regime to actually killing people and blowing things up adds another player on Russia\u2019s side against the US.<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/sputniknews.com\/middleeast\/201706201054783411-tehran-tillerson-remarks\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\"><strong>Iran and the US trade threats.<\/strong><\/a> US Secretary of State Rex Tillerson accused Iran of destabilizing the region and promised that the United States would support \u201cthose elements inside the Islamic Republic which would bring about peaceful government transition.\u201d Iran called those remarks \u201cunwise and clear meddling in Iran\u2019s internal affairs.\u201d<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"http:\/\/www.newsweek.com\/saudi-arabia-arrest-iran-military-elite-oil-627327\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\"><strong>Saudi Arabia claimed to arrest members of Iran\u2019s Revolutionary Guard<\/strong><\/a> who were attacking a Saudi offshore oil facility, and said that three of the attackers were being interrogated. One day later Iran accused Saudi Arabian border guards of opening fire on Iranian fishermen in the area, killing one of them.<\/p>\n<p>&#8230;click on the above link to read the rest of the article&#8230;<\/p>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>The Middle East Is Blowing Up Every day brings another scary headline from the Middle East \u2014 which makes it easy to treat them as background noise rather than a clear and present danger. But the latest batch is reminiscent of the Balkans circa 1914, which means it may be time to tune back in. [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[9021,7544,522,542,694,776,827],"class_list":["post-24179","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-geopolitics","tag-dollarcollapse-com","tag-john-rubino","tag-middle-east","tag-moscow","tag-russia","tag-syria","tag-united-states"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/24179","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=24179"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/24179\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":24180,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/24179\/revisions\/24180"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=24179"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=24179"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=24179"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}