Egypt marches to a Saudi drummer

At the end of October, the newly formed Saudi supported Army of Justice, Jaish Al-Adl killed fourteen Iranian border guards in the Province of Baluchistan. The organization declared that the attack was retaliation for Iranian involvement in Syria.

Baluchistan was merely a pinprick compared to the confrontation at the beginning of August between President Vladimir Putin and Saudi intelligence chief and former ambassador to the United States, Bandar Bin Sultan. The Saudi prince came with carrots and sticks to have the Russians drop their support of Bashar Al-Assad. According to the leaked news report, Washington was in full agreement with the Saudi offer.

What the prince presented was an agreement for Russia and the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries to set production quotas and prices. Combined, they control forty-five percent of oil production.

The Saudis would not interfere with Russian gas sales to Europe and would guarantee Russia's presence in the Port of Tardus in Syria. How the Saudis could keep their promises was a question that President Putin must have been asking and not liking the answer.

The stick in the prince's bag was to unleash Chechen Terrorist that he claimed to control to disrupt the Winter Olympics in Sochi. The Saudis threatened to escalate the conflict to the point that it would be too costly at home for Russia to bear, but the Russians were already bearing it. The Shia-Sunni conflict in the form of bombings and assassinations has come to the Dagestan and Chechnya regions several years ago.

In spite of the likelihood of violence at the Olympics, Putin shows no inclination to appease Prince Bandar. Instead, suspected potential women bombers are having saliva samples taken in order to identify their body parts and security measures are being intensified as the Sochi Olympics to be held in February.

Border raids in Baluchistan or terrorist attacks in Dagestan to disrupt the Olympics will create anxiety in Iran and Russia, but the actions will not force either to alter the strategy in Syria. In order to accomplish that, Saudi Arabia must put into operation tactics that will overwhelm the opposition. The first sign to achieve that was a statement on August 8, 2013 by the chair of the National Syrian Coalition, Ahmad al-Jarba that Saudi Arabia was to form a national army outside of Syria.

All of this was announced more than two months before the United States agreed with Russia to a program of destroying Al-Assad's chemical weapons and before Presidents Obama and Rouhani were chatting on the telephone. Deputy Defense Minister Prince Salman bin Sultan bin Abdulaziz was selected to organize the national army. His plan is to build a force of forty to fifty thousand troops and is prepared to spend several billion dollars on the project.

The ultimate goal is the organizing of the Army of Mohammed. It is to merge numerous smaller units into an army of two hundred and fifty thousand to be ready by March of 2016, but there are problems with the plan. The Pakistani military that has been training smaller size units on bases in Jordan cannot provide the instructors for a quarter million size force; and Jordan cannot accommodate that many troops.

If Al-Assad is the target of the Army of Mohammed, the Saudis are calculating that it will take two more years and an army double that of Syria's to defeat the regime. If there is another enemy on the agenda, then we have to ask on which country are the bunker busting bombs that are included in a eleven billion dollar order placed recently with the United States to be dropped; and at what targets are the CCS-2 missiles with their nuclear warheads that the BBC says that Pakistan has supplied been aimed. Then, there are those quarter of a million troops in the Army of Muhammad to be send somewhere.

The Saudis have no doubt who their enemy is. A recent attack by tank supported Houthi troops against a Wahhabi madrassa in the Yemen town of Damaj near the Saudi Arabian border is a clear reminder. So is a bombing in the Shia majority Kingdom of Bahrain that is a near province of Saudi Arabia. Of course, the Saudis are certain that there is an Iranian hand stirring the pot of trouble.

The Saudi see the Houthis as a dangerous threat on the southern border that could give the Iranians through a proxy a direct route into the Saudi oil fields that are the sole source of the national wealth. It is a good reason for the Saudis to worry, especially because a large percentage of the workers in those oil fields are Shia.