{"id":27675,"date":"2017-11-06T20:10:49","date_gmt":"2017-11-07T01:10:49","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/olduvai.ca\/?p=27675"},"modified":"2017-11-06T20:10:49","modified_gmt":"2017-11-07T01:10:49","slug":"on-the-verge-of-catastrophe-saudi-arabia-says-lebanon-declared-war","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/?p=27675","title":{"rendered":"On The Verge Of Catastrophe: Saudi Arabia Says Lebanon Declared War"},"content":{"rendered":"<h3 class=\"title\"><a href=\"http:\/\/www.zerohedge.com\/news\/2017-11-06\/verge-catastrophe-saudi-arabia-says-lebanon-declared-war\">On The Verge Of Catastrophe: Saudi Arabia Says Lebanon Declared War<\/a><\/h3>\n<section class=\"node sticky node-type-story node-full node-nid-606748\">\n<div class=\"content\">\n<p>As expected, Saudi Arabia has cast itself as the victim of external Shia plotting after its internal\u00a0<a href=\"http:\/\/www.zerohedge.com\/news\/2017-11-04\/shocking-purge-saudi-king-arrests-billionaire-prince-bin-talal-others-anti-money-lau\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">weekend of chaos<\/a> which included a missile attack from Yemen, the deaths of two princes and other high officials <a href=\"http:\/\/www.zerohedge.com\/news\/2017-11-06\/second-saudi-prince-confirmed-killed-during-crackdown\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">within a mere 24 hours<\/a>, and an aggressive crackdown against dissent in the royal family which saw close to a dozen princes placed under house arrest. And as\u00a0<a href=\"http:\/\/www.aljazeera.com\/blogs\/middleeast\/2017\/11\/saudi-arabia-game-thobes-171105162806956.html\">Al Jazeera noted,<\/a><strong>in this Saudi version of &#8216;Game of Thrones&#8217;,\u00a0the 32-year-old Mohammed Bin Salman (MBS) shows that he is willing to throw the entire region into jeopardy to wear the royal gown.<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>While Saudi Arabia has long blamed Iran for sowing unrest in the region, <a href=\"http:\/\/www.middleeasteye.net\/news\/riyadh-says-lebanon-declaring-war-saudi-575651162\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">this evening&#8217;s declaration<\/a> by\u00a0Saudi Gulf affairs minister Thamer al-Sabhan that <strong>Lebanon has &#8220;declared war&#8221; against the kingdom<\/strong> is truly an historic first. But perhaps the biggest problem is that international media is currently uncritically spreading the statement, whereas what such a bizarre claim actually warrants is laughter. Thankfully, Nassim Nicholas Taleb sums it up nicely with a <a href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/nntaleb\/status\/927644427706880000\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">basic geography lesson<\/a>: &#8220;Either the media is stupid, or Saudi rulers are stupid, or both.<strong> Lebanon did not formally declare war and there is no common border.&#8221;<\/strong><\/p>\n<p><em><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"http:\/\/www.zerohedge.com\/sites\/default\/files\/images\/user5\/imageroot\/2017\/10\/21\/leb1_0.jpg\" alt=\"\" \/><\/em><\/p>\n<\/div>\n<p>With that in mind, here is the statement currently making headlines as <a href=\"http:\/\/www.reuters.com\/article\/us-lebanon-politics-saudi\/saudi-arabia-says-lebanon-has-declared-war-on-it-idUSKBN1D62NQ?utm_source=twitter&amp;utm_medium=Social\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">reported by Reuters<\/a>:<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>Saudi Arabia said on Monday that Lebanon had declared war against it because of attacks against the Kingdom by the Lebanese Shi\u2018ite group Hezbollah.<\/p>\n<p>Saudi Gulf affairs minister Thamer al-Sabhan told Al-Arabiya TV that Saad al-Hariri, who announced his resignation as Lebanon\u2019s prime minister on Saturday, had been told that <strong>acts of \u201caggression\u201d by Hezbollah \u201cwere considered acts of a declaration of war against Saudi Arabia by Lebanon and by the Lebanese Party of the Devil\u201d.<\/strong><\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>&#8230;click on the above link to read the rest of the article&#8230;<\/p>\n<\/section>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>On The Verge Of Catastrophe: Saudi Arabia Says Lebanon Declared War As expected, Saudi Arabia has cast itself as the victim of external Shia plotting after its internal\u00a0weekend of chaos which included a missile attack from Yemen, the deaths of two princes and other high officials within a mere 24 hours, and an aggressive crackdown [&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":[22,3039,3042,701,1633,1634,862,4318],"class_list":["post-27675","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-geopolitics","tag-al-jazeera","tag-hezbollah","tag-lebanon","tag-saudi-arabia","tag-shia","tag-shiite","tag-war","tag-zerohedge"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/27675","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=27675"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/27675\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":27676,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/27675\/revisions\/27676"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=27675"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=27675"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=27675"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}