Lawrence Person's BattleSwarm Blog

Displaying another tiny crack in the wall of Saudi Arabian intransigence, Riyadh has allowed overflight of its country to Israel-bound air traffic for the first time.

Saudi Arabia opened its airspace for the first time to a commercial flight to Israel with the inauguration of an Air India route between New Delhi and Tel Aviv.

Flight 139 landed at Tel Aviv’s Ben Gurion Airport after a seven-and-a-half hour journey, marking a diplomatic shift for Riyadh that Israel says was fuelled by shared concern over Iranian influence in the region.

To be sure, it’s not Israeli air traffic, but baby steps. Combine this with Friday’s story about Saudi Arabia purging Muslim Brotherhood members from the country, and signs that he wishes to loosen the restrictive dress code on omen (hat tip: Instapundit), and it appears that Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman is ushering in real reform in the kingdom. To be sure, the results will not remotely resemble modern western liberal democracy, but they will mark a vast improvement over the status quo that prevailed before his ascension.

Speaking of Saudi Arabia, they also shot down seven ballistic missiles launched by Yemen’s Houthi rebels, the shrapnel from one killing an Egyptian citizen. Pretty much everyone believes the missiles are manufactured and supplied by Iran. Do you think Egypt is going to take that lying down? I rather doubt it. Egypt supports the Saudis in Yemen, but have avoided intervention due to their own unpleasant history there.

Reform in Saudi Arabia is potentially one of the biggest stories this year, and the mainstream media is barely covering it at all.

Tags: India, Iran, Islam, Israel, Military, Mohammed bin Salman, Saudi Arabia, Yemen

This entry was posted on Monday, March 26th, 2018 at 8:52 AM and is filed under Foreign Policy, Jihad, Military. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.