Hired Gun: Is War with Iran Now Inevitable Under New Saudi Crown Prince?

• Emphasis mine:
• Hired Gun: Is War with Iran Now Inevitable Under New Saudi Crown Prince?
  by https://www.rt.com/
  Israel and Washington seem to have been instrumental in the rise of Riyadh’s new leader, a hot-headed young royal who leaves a trail of havoc behind him. But can they control him?
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  It almost seems a fitting description of Saudi Arabia’s new crown prince, Mohammad bin Salman. For those who are only now tuning in to the news from Saudi Arabia, King Salman, 81, gave his court a bit of a surprise when he deposed his nephew Muhammad bin Nayef of all his official duties. In his place, the king installed his son, Mohammad bin Salman, 31, as crown prince and heir apparent to the throne. 
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  By most accounts, the young crown prince was, just three years earlier, an entirely obscure figure whose short period as defense minister was marred by several unfortunate setbacks, including billions of dollars lost in Yemen. Then there was the time he threw his weight behind an oil scheme that resulted in an oil price crash, which has left the Saudi economy decimated.
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  The new crown prince really does have an awful lot to prove. But that’s not a good thing. Ruthlessly ambitious and an outsider, this makes him dangerous and unpredictable, yet for Donald Trump’s purposes the perfect partner to spearhead his ill-conceived campaign against Iran. Slowly, Trump’s pieces are falling into place in the Middle East, and it is no surprise that the first media in the region to praise Mohammed’s swift takeover of the cherished post was that of Israel.
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  Mohammed bin Salman has inherited a country not only at a crossroads in its contemporary history, as it struggles to unshackle itself from oil dependency, but one which appears to be suffocating under its own insecurities, foibles and paranoia. … It’s as though almost everything that Riyadh does outside of its borders just turns to ashes. Syria, Yemen and now Qatar.
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  Can this absurdly young, aggressive and outlandish new leader, who will take the reigns under an increasingly despondent and frail father as remaining monarch, really help his country? Or is he doomed to push it into the abyss as many regional commentators fear?
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  Salman has a reputation as being anti-establishment and desperate to be seen as a reformer. But his haste was his downfall in the past. Despite being hugely popular and very much seen at home as a modernist – who we should remember took away key powers from the religious police and is throwing his weight behind a modernization plan to drag the country into the 21st century – Mohammed’s bold idea to thunder ahead with a military campaign in Yemen was a great error which his adversaries are only too keen to cautiously point out.
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  Never have the Saudis been so up for a scrap with Iran, but paradoxically, so ill-equipped to execute it. The attack on Iran, although carried out by Al-Qaeda, is believed to have been commissioned by Riyadh. But like almost everything they do, it was also poorly timed and misjudged. The Saudis couldn’t have banked on Iran sending over a bevy of missiles precisely targeting Al-Qaeda groups on the ground in Syria. Said by one Iranian commentator to be a ‘slap’ for Saudi Arabia, the message was clear. We can hit your proxies. And if you persist, we can use the same precision missiles against you on your own soil.
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  But the strike must have been music to the ears of those in Riyadh and Washington who actually want a tangible justification to begin a military campaign against Iran.
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  The crown prince is not merely ambitious. I am told he is ready to do anything to take the Saudi throne when ultimately his father’s health wanes, a claim supported by journalist Jamal Elshayyal of Middle East Eye.
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  He is a creation of Washington and Tel Aviv and the recent terrorist attack in Tehran [on June 7, two terrorist attacks were carried out in the Iranian capital, one on the parliament building, and the other at the Mausoleum of Ruhollah Khomenei, which left 17 civilians dead and 43 wounded], designed to accelerate the process of his passage to supreme power, under the guise of Trump and Netanyahu. 
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