Riyadh phones Tel Aviv: From petro-power to palace panic

Sometimes an entire political order confesses itself in a single telephone call. Saudi Arabia, custodian of the Two Holy Mosques, self-appointed pillar of Arab leadership and purchaser of some of the most expensive weaponry ever manufactured, has reportedly found itself seeking Israeli intelligence assistance through US Central Command against Ansar Allah in Yemen. The Jerusalem Post reports that CENTCOM-mediated discussions concerned intelligence that could help Riyadh understand Houthi deployments and future operations. There is something almost indecently perfect about the image. For decades, the Saudi state cultivated the mythology of sovereignty while constructing one of the most elaborate systems of strategic dependency in modern history. Washington supplied the security architecture. Western contractors supplied the weapons. Foreign technicians sustained the machinery. […]