Saudi Arabia started the Oil War to neutralize Iran

 
As the expression goes, " all politics is local", and that truism might apply to many situations too long to describe here; in the case of the OPEC overproduction it is precisely why Saudi Arabia started this market move.

While American media is fixated on what happens to its companies, they have overlooked the wider more important reality of oil price and purchasing power. Of course the stated reason why OPEC increased production was to increase market share.

Saudi Arabia tried to stop the Iran nuclear deal. They even sounded like Israel in the hopes that Obama would relent. They didn't work. Obama wants a legacy and isn't responsible for protecting Saudi Arabia. Any longer. In fact, with all the illicit support of wahabism and radical Sunni terror, it's more likely this is Obama's payback of Saudi intransigence.

Iran gave up a nuclear program to sell more oil in the wider market which was known to the Saudis as the deal deadline approached.  They faced an 86-million population enemy (in comparison to their 26 million ) that could bring an enemy army right up to Saudi borders with the permission of Iraqi leadership and assault.  The rise of ISIS also gave Iranian hard-liners the justification to enter into Iraq in force should the battle go poorly.  And go poorly it did last summer when Saudi production stayed over demand and started the run on over supply.  ISIS came within 150 km of Baghdad which when you look at that in context of Saudi local politics is a big problem.

In fact, the slow nature of Iraqi counter-offensive against ISIS / da'esh - barely gained Ramadi by January- gives the Iranians more and more justification to pressure Baghdad to let them launch Revolutionary Guard divisions straight into Mosul. This is exactly why the Saudis are now changing their tune towards foreign army / coalitions in Iraq.  Now they are offering their army to go into Iraq not just to defeat ISIS but to make sure that they don't leave a way open for Iran to follow them back.

Better to fight them over there than in your home is also a truism. And Saudi would rather drawn down their wealth than risk arming Iran with more expensive modern weapons.

From an unconventional perspective, having IS operating in Sunni territory acted like a buffer zone to protect one flank from Shia invasion.  They were a resistance point against invasion. IS  united the local population there and neither party trusts Baghdad and would fight Iranian forces on sight.

This is why Saudi has been foot dragging on attacking fellow Sunnis they might need in a few months. Only when greater threats appear through inaction does the kingdom change it's strategy.

So yes, Saudi Arabia wanted to bankrupt shale oil explorers in the US with expensive production costs. The US media can bore you with the dull interpretation of average reporters and journalists trying to remain relevant but aren't willing to do the heavy lifting of assessing data in sum.

But in the local context take all the factors lying in front of you and presented poorly, and reconstruct them along the skeleton I have laid out - remember I was the first person to link the Russian jet bombing to ISIS before they even admitted it was payback to Russia for Syrian invasion.

#Obama admits failure in Iraq and Afghanistan

#Obama's success metric when judging Putin propping up Syria's al-Assad:

"One of those players, Kroft points out, is Russia, which recently stepped up airstrikes and naval bombardments in support of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad. President Putin "is challenging your leadership, Mr. President," Kroft says.

#Obama disagrees. "Steve, I've got to tell you, if you think that running your economy into the ground and having to send troops in in order to prop up your only ally, is leadership, then we've got a different definition of leadership," he says."

So by his own metrics: Afghanistan and Iraq are failed expeditions. For those that didn't catch his subtle flaw; let me elaborate.

He's propping up this president in Afghanistan. And before him it was Karzai.

And #Obama is propping up this president in Iraq.  And before him it was al-Maliki.

So by Obama's own standards, these are failures too. It was only when Steve Kroft pushed Obama that this truth came out.

Where Obama has sold out: Iraq

There are many issues that Obama has staked a position that is pro-citizen and anti-cronyism.

http://im.ft-static.com/content/images/fffd6e71-3772-416e-a397-ce503b151c12.img

Iraq and Syria is not one of them.

The reason why the West is not winning in Iraq is in part due to the fact that Obama has sold out to special interests on strategy in Iraq against ISIS. He is allowing side objectives to get in the way.

What he told the American people about the objective in defeating ISIL :

"This resolution reflects our core objective to destroy ISIL."
http://www.ibtimes.com/full-text-obama-isis-war-speech-islamic-state-terrorists-are-going-lose-president-1813394

What he is not telling the American people is that his real objective is:

This resolution reflects our core objective to destroy ISIL AND maintain favorable interests in Iraq."

That means propping up the corrupt Iraqi leaders that caused this whole mess in the first place. They turned Anbar over to ISIS by not being inclusive to Sunni Arabs. Iraq has disintegrated as a result!

Obama can win or he can maintain the cronys in Iraq that are pro-USA. He can't do both.

If winning is the ultimate objective then all secondary objectives must disappear. If the only way to do that means arming and cooperating with Iranians to crush ISIS then that should be the strategy. If that means arming the Kurds to crush ISIS then that should be the strategy. If it means US ground troops in Syria then that should be the strategy. If it means nuking Raqqa then that should be the strategy.  There is no middle ground in war. There is no appeasing side interests on the way to victory.

The American people deserve to know the truth that Obama doesn't want Iraq on his CV and he is leaving the decisions to the vested interests that caused the mess in the first place. That is making defeat more likely, not less.

If I was Obama, I would tell Abadi he's got 30 days to start showing some victory or Abadi is out of the picture and the coalition will fight over top of what's left of Baghdad.

Maliki wanted to be a sectarian leader, Obama wisely let him fail.

Maliki used his paranoia to widen the sectarian mistrust and fuel the ISIS invasion. He made it impossible to have an inclusive government so the outcome is predictable.

If Obama had acted then, the situation would be worse.  To help Maliki would have tarred USA with the same brush, to engender hatred against oppressors within Sunni community.

Instead, Obama wisely let him fail and the unintended consequence was the ISIS advance happened faster than expected. But ISIS would have invaded later on it was inevitable. 

By not propping Maliki up, Obama used the leverage of the situation to get a better deal from the Iraqi government. Now the Iraqi government, desperate to win, will need to accede to US demands that they would have ignored months ago.