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Comment by sdiq | Hacker News Reader

Ironical that the only help that Yemen - the poorest country in the region - can get from the neighbouring resource rich countries is bombs raining from the sky. Now, Saudi Arabia so hates the Shias that they would rather bomb Yemen to the 3rd century than have the Shias takeover. Yet, surprisingly, the long serving Ali Abdullah Saleh himself a Shia, was always friendly to the Saudis. So what changed?

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Iran, a Shia country, is getting more powerful, which Saudi Arabia (probably rightly) sees as a threat to its regional dominance.

In general, Shias and Sunnis got along quite peacefully until a few decades ago.

And unfortunately, when it comes to religion, this is a flat-out religious war.

But I mean, they're all Moslems, right? It has to do with who the rightful heir to Mohammed is. Is it Ali, or Abu Bakr? The answer to that question thus says which side of the interpretation of "Shia" or "Sunni" is.

Long story short, it's not resolvable without a great deal of violence. Disagreements about succession are hardly ever peaceful.

That does not address the question of what has changed causing SA to whack at everything Shia now, where it did not do so before.

The lack of repercussion from the world at large must be part of it.

The new Crown Prince of Saudi Arabia[0] is behind this and other 'efforts' in the Kingdom.

[0]https://www.theguardian.com/world/2017/sep/14/saudi-crown-pr...

Iran is rising and the U.S. is unsteady in the region. The reality is that the U.S. hardly needs MidEast oil anymore. North America is more important to U.S. energy markets. The U.S. imports 3x as much petroleum from Canada as from Saudi Arabia. So the House of Saud is both fearful and no longer restrained.

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