Last Friday, King Abdullah cut short his summer vacation in Morocco and flew back to Riyadh not only to meet with his national security advisors but to coordinate a new strategy for winning the war in Syria, one that encompasses a unified regional bloc of Sunni-majority powers now ranged against Iran, Hezbollah, and the Assad regime. The Wahhabi kingdom has exhausted its patience with miscarried attempts to resolve the Syria crisis through diplomacy and it will not wait to see the coming battle in Aleppo play out before assuming control of the Syrian rebellion. State-backed regional efforts to bolster moderate Free Syrian Army elements will thus be joined with the fetid call to jihad emanating from clerical quarters in Cairo, Doha, Mecca, and beyond. The mullahs have only themselves to blame. "Nasrallah fucked up," one well-connected Syrian source told me recently. "He awakened the Sunni giant. The Saudis took Hezbollah's invasion of Qusayr personally."
Although long in coming, and evidenced in the recent contretemps between Hamas and Hezbollah in Lebanon and Syria, this grand realignment has been unmistakably solidified in the last week. A day after the Saudi king returned to Riyadh, Egyptian President Mohammed Morsi severed all diplomatic ties with Damascus and called for a no-fly zone in Syria, leaving no mystery as to reason behind this decision. "Hezbollah must leave Syria - these are serious words," the Islamist president said. "There is no space or place for Hezbollah in Syria."
Then, on Monday, June 17, it was Jordanian King Abdullah's turn to strike a minatory, albeit more nationalistic, note. Ostensibly addressing cadets at a graduation ceremony at Mutah Military Academy, the Hashemite monarch was in fact speaking to Barack Obama and Bashar al-Assad: "If the world does not mobilize or help us in the issue [of Syria] as it should, or if this matter forms a danger to our country, we are able at any moment to take measures that will protect our land and the interests of our people."
Unlike Morsi, who doesn't have half a million Syrian refugees to contend with, Abdullah's deterrent capability is not confined to persona non grata diktats and rhetorical posturing. Operation Eager Lion, the 12-day military exercise featuring the United States and 19 Arab and European countries, is currently underway in Jordan. Around 8,000 personnel - including commandos from Lebanon and Iraq who will no doubt be fighting some of their compatriots in any deployment into Syria - are given lessons on border security, refugee management, counterinsurgency, and counterterrorism warfare. Patriot missile batteries and anywhere between 12 and 24 American F-16 fighter jets were left in Jordan as a multilateral insurance policy against Syrian, Iranian, or Hezbollah provocations. This royal Abdullah is more in sync than ever with his namesake to the south.
If further proof were needed of Riyadh's newfound earnestness about ending Assad's reign, look no further than a recent column by Jamal Khashoggi, a journalist seen as quite close to Prince Turki al-Faisal, the former director general of Saudi intelligence who himself has described Hezbollah and Iraq's Shiite Abu Fadhl al-Abbas Brigade in Syria as Iran's "steel claws." On June 15, Khashoggi published "The expanding Shiite Crescent" in al-Hayat. The piece can only be described as something between a Sunni cri de coeur and a Sunni fever-dream. Khashoggi begins by warning of creeping Iranian hegemony in the Levant, which is of course driven as much by energy and commercial interest as it is by ideology. Allow Assad victory and here's what will happen, according to Khashoggi:
"The Iranian Oil Ministry will pull out old maps from its drawers to build the pipeline to pump Iranian oil and gas from Abadan (across Iraq) to Tartus. The Iranian Ministry of Roads and Transportation will dust off the national railways authority's blueprints for a new branch line from Tehran to Damascus, and possibly Beirut. Why not? The wind is blowing in their favor and I am not making a mountain out of a molehill."
