The Saudi-Iran Proxy War Is Already Underway

Michael Knights & Thomas Ricks, Foreign Policy: What Would a Saudi-Iran War Look Like? Don’t look now, but it is already here

When asked to address the question of what a Saudi-Iran war would look like, my first instinct is to ask the reader to look around because it is already happening. As the futurist William Gibson noted, “the future is already here — it’s just not very evenly distributed.” Already, Saudi Arabia and Iran are killing each other’s proxies, and indirectly are killing each other’s advisors and troops, in Yemen, Syria, Bahrain, and Saudi Arabia’s Shiite Eastern Province.

The future is likely to look similar. The existing pattern will intensify, eventually spill over in a short, sharp direct clash, and then sink back down again to the level of proxy wars in other people’s territories.

WNU Editor: Proxy war now .... tomorrow .... something worse?