Finland freezes arms export permits to Saudi Arabia and UAE over Yemen

As Frederick Forsyth said in one of his novels, arms manufacturing factories once started cannot be shut down when you have outfitted your own armies - hence exports.

Arms dealers rip off the nations populations whose governments they sell arms to.

Otherwise you are right - Iran is the natueal ally in the region. And it was such until 1979.

But of course, how many UK and American citizens know the history of Iran, our role in overthrowing the democratically elected Mossadegh, who rightfully wanted to nationalize their oil (the obvious source of the Occidents umbrage too...) and our installation of the repressive Shah Pahlavi regime that led to the Iranian revolution of 1979 that initially featured students and workers and such, but later turned into a purge, as most revolutions do, in which the powerful theocrats basically seized the nation, and thus bringing us into the modern era and the detente with Iran that still makes no sense.

Contrast this with the constant support of the various Hashemite kings directly since Trans-Jordan and Syria-Palestina were handed over... basically we set up satrapies in the wake of seizing the Ottoman empire and not being able to manage it ourselves...

The Iranian government is a police state controlled by a bunch of fanatical fascists, who are one of the most successful terrorism exporting states ever. Just recently they were caught attempting to kill people in Belgium and France. And those are just the recent catches.

Iran is also home to many historical sites - if politics were different, it would likely be a popular tourist destination.

I am saying this as a Bulgarian citizen, one of the beneficiaries of the fall of the Ottoman empire (the Ottoman government was very oppressive to my people for centuries up until 150 years ago). It is not selfish nationalism that liberated us, it was the desire to stop being abused by a conqueror.

The Saud family didn't overthrow the Ottomans with the British. That was done the Hashemites, under King Faisal, and of course T.E. Lawrence (whose story was told in his own memoir, and later in David Lean's epic film Lawrence of Arabia).

In the subsequent post-WWI, post-Ottoman chaos, the Sauds conquered Mecca from the Hashemites, and established modern "Saudi" Arabia.

The Hashemites fled and established what is now the modern country of Jordan, which they rule today.

He says that Nationalism and Realism always trump Liberalism. (From his perspective both neo-liberals and neo-cons are Liberal in that to the public at least they espouse bringing freedom and democracy to the peoples of the world even if it is at the business end of a gun.)

He drives home his point that nationalism has "won" by pointing out that most states are now nation-states whereas 200 years ago that most certainly was not the case. (Not all nations have their own state.) National identity is complicated but it explains all sorts of conflicts in the last 100 years.

It is political irony, as you say, that the forces the Brits used to topple their enemies also toppled them. But I think we must realise that the nationalism was there before the Brits decided to use it for their Machiavellian purposes. It is Afghan nationalism that has made Afghanistan the graveyard of empires. It was Irish nationalism (dressed up as Republicanism) that finally broke the Union of Great Britain and Ireland, and as a consequence has made Brexit orders of magnitude more intractable.

You could go further and point out that by nationalism is meant National Identity. So it is social identity in one of its many powerful guises that has shaped the last 200 years. The other being religious identity of course: (internecine – Roman Catholicism versus Protestantism and Shia versus Sunni; interfaith – Christianity versus Islam).

This suggests that the rules-based international order is not going to contain China because China has a national identity going back millennia. The key geopolitical question of this generation (the years to 2049) is whether the US and China come into direct conflict because of China's rise. I'm a rational optimist so I say "no" but I wouldn't put money on it. :/

https://www.ft.com/content/3149b714-2073-11e8-a895-1ba1f72c2... https://www.bbc.com/news/business-45863548

Are there bad guys in Saudi government? There sure are.

Are innocents being killed, and is that horrible? You bet. But they're being killed just as much by the Iranians as the Saudis.

But the Iranians are not going to stop in Yemen, and if they're not stopped, there will certainly be more innocents killed in other countries.

Lets say the Saudis were completely cut off. What then? Iran gets Yemen, and then topples the Saudis? How does that help anyone out?

Sometimes, there are not any really great answers.

Sometimes, just like in WW II when the US and GBR allied with the Soviets, you have to do what you can to tackle the bigger problem.